For me it was quite the opposite, I played hardcore only this time and got the Ashava on the second attempt (first attempt, we got like 5 people one-shot in the first swipe lol (in HC.. Was actually fun to watch)). And yes :) I died once while levelling to a fucking Butcher, I was not geared well enough and this fucker destroyed me before I could make it outside of the dungeon haha

For the record, played rogue/barbarian mainly; they are by far my favorite characters. After you really spend time upgrading/crafting/enchanting/imprinting stuff at level 20, you can pretty much kill anything. Even the level 30 areas were easy to farm, got probably like 20+ legendaries per hours (did that for 2 or 3 hours, with few level 20 tho, rest was too high :D)).
I managed to have a power level of 560 on my rogue with several item levels 370+ (still equipable at 20); got some lucky drop. This was on my rogue mainly and did not even get the Twisted Blade legendary (and I farmed like hell for it haha). I'm pretty sure I could have soloed the boss (it scales with the number of participant) no problem but I never managed to be alone anyway.

I love the state of where the game is right now; yes it requires a lot of time to optimize your character and Ashava was a good example of that but this is how I want it to be. And I mean this is really just up to 20 too.

I totally understand the frustration for some tho; I'm a hardcore Diablo player and I optimize like hell and play non-stop for the beta. But even for people who spend let's say 6 hours per day in the slam, they could end up be unlucky and don't get the Ashava kill simply because of bad luck. I kinda hope Blizzard will say something this week that anyone who got to 20 and at least tried the boss will get the reward; it would be very nice. For a Beta, I think it make sense cause it is not like you could take all the time you need to level up, etc and then you need to be lucky enough to do not be grouped with bad players.

My GF was playing next to me (softcore) and I could see the fight on Ashava where more than half of her raid would die on EVERY swipe... I mean, nothing she can do and she died maybe only once. She did very well... But did not manage to get the kill before the very last attempt.

Because it adds nothing but artificially pad out time. It's empty. It was clearly done because everyone else was doing it. It would have worked better to just use a map and location select if it wants to let the player do it in any order. I don't hate the game by any means but MS and its shooting IPs need to stay away from open worlds as they have not figured it out and not sure they ever will. At least when it comes to Halo and Gears as those IP's don't really lend themselves to that.

Nah, fuck dem noobs. Give them a tag of shame instead. Failed challenge, scrub/10

I avoided the mark of shame, beat Ashava on my 5th attempt this morning on the 9am spawn.

Thought the drops were kind of lame for a 13 minute boss fight though, I got a single legendary wand drop for my Sorceress (admittedly one of the best legendaries for sorceress, the one that increases damage by up to 30% when standing still for awhile and wasn't cancelled by moving with teleport) and a legendary cache which had nothing but some gold and obols inside. Feel like they need to improve the world boss drops before launch, these are by far the hardest boss fights in the game, generally taking players more than 10 minutes to kill unless you have multiple people that are very well specced and equipped in your instance of the fight, for that kind of time investment you deserve more than a single legendary drop imo, you can farm legendaries faster in dungeons and such even after the nerfed legendary drop rate since the open beta.  

For me it was quite the opposite, I played hardcore only this time and got the Ashava on the second attempt (first attempt, we got like 5 people one-shot in the first swipe lol (in HC.. Was actually fun to watch)). And yes :) I died once while levelling to a fucking Butcher, I was not geared well enough and this fucker destroyed me before I could make it outside of the dungeon haha

For the record, played rogue/barbarian mainly; they are by far my favorite characters. After you really spend time upgrading/crafting/enchanting/imprinting stuff at level 20, you can pretty much kill anything. Even the level 30 areas were easy to farm, got probably like 20+ legendaries per hours (did that for 2 or 3 hours, with few level 20 tho, rest was too high :D)).
I managed to have a power level of 560 on my rogue with several item levels 370+ (still equipable at 20); got some lucky drop. This was on my rogue mainly and did not even get the Twisted Blade legendary (and I farmed like hell for it haha). I'm pretty sure I could have soloed the boss (it scales with the number of participant) no problem but I never managed to be alone anyway.

I love the state of where the game is right now; yes it requires a lot of time to optimize your character and Ashava was a good example of that but this is how I want it to be. And I mean this is really just up to 20 too.

I totally understand the frustration for some tho; I'm a hardcore Diablo player and I optimize like hell and play non-stop for the beta. But even for people who spend let's say 6 hours per day in the slam, they could end up be unlucky and don't get the Ashava kill simply because of bad luck. I kinda hope Blizzard will say something this week that anyone who got to 20 and at least tried the boss will get the reward; it would be very nice. For a Beta, I think it make sense cause it is not like you could take all the time you need to level up, etc and then you need to be lucky enough to do not be grouped with bad players.

My GF was playing next to me (softcore) and I could see the fight on Ashava where more than half of her raid would die on EVERY swipe... I mean, nothing she can do and she died maybe only once. She did very well... But did not manage to get the kill before the very last attempt.

Agreed with you on Gears but I disagree on Halo.

For Gears, the Skiff was fine and the cool lightning effects but other than that there wasn't anything to do and of course since characters in Gears move slowly, the Skiff is the only solution to get around a large area. The idea felt half finished, one foot in the door, it felt like they wanted to test the reception to open-world Gears first before fully committing to it.

Then the Gears 5 Expansion came out which from what I've heard is linear fully, so I guess they've made their mind up. Gears should stay linear Imo, it's simply too slow paced for an open-world in terms of character movement, it's scarier as a linear title and feels more action compact, linear lends itself better to Gears cover based action.

I also think the multi-choice was a mistake, I get the vibe that The Coalition will regret it as well. Wonder if it was Rod's decision, Lol. They should change the name back to Gears of War as well. Anyway, I did think Gears 5 was great, I enjoyed the story, I liked the character growth, I liked the lean more into the horror aspects, I enjoyed the linear levels, etc.

Don't think Halo Infinite's open-world was a mistake though, I really hope the next Halo still has an open-world environment, Infinite blended it well by having a main open hub but still had its main missions be linear. Halo's sandbox & physics are simply 10x more deeper (and fun) than Gears is which allows them to go crazier with open-world environments and throw you a dozen vehicles and mechanics to easily get around and populate it with more stuff.

Infinite's biggest mistake was a lack of environments and no large scale battles, both easily fixable when building on it, I really wanted to fight Scarabs on Zeta Halo and like take my crew of Marines with me to go take one down, Lol. All the environmental reactions as well such as enemy chatter was great too and the day/night cycle (although I wish night was darker).

Because it adds nothing but artificially pad out time. It's empty. It was clearly done because everyone else was doing it. It would have worked better to just use a map and location select if it wants to let the player do it in any order. I don't hate the game by any means but MS and its shooting IPs need to stay away from open worlds as they have not figured it out and not sure they ever will. At least when it comes to Halo and Gears as those IP's don't really lend themselves to that.