#Big Thoughts on Current "Endgame" / Bosses (lots of yap, sorry)

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lusty walrus
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TL;DR / Summary before yap:

  • Pathfinders being one per account leaves no room for a constant chase/grind, plus it's kinda weak rn. Also, imo that kind of endgame shouldn't be entirely locked behind a secret lore quest.
  • Gem balance might be a little off, nobody seems to want to use Reds for anything other than a first throw at a robe (and if it misses, u discard both the robe and the gem u grinded for which kinda feels eh).
  • Bosses could use some more moves/mechanics to make them more fun to fight.

now i yap :3

Okay first off, Pathfinders. Love the visual design to this hat!!! but it having 0 inherent stats to it means you need to currently hit seven blue gems just to make it on par with a high roll cloud hat that has 3 blue gems on it. Personally I don't find glow to be useful enough to warrant that kind of stat difference tbh, and is more a nice QoL thing than anything worth sacrificing stats for. If the intention for the one-per-account rule is to make Pathfinders special/rare, I think it'd be fair to make them untradeable/soulbound (only one ever in account inventory wink wink), but also add a way to refund lost upgrades and/or just wipe the hat clean entirely (maybe you get an item through abyss reruns, to still incentivize running it a second time?). Additionally, I think it'd also be fair to include items similar chase items to dungeons (maybe only dungeons that use rare inputs, similar to kmitty dungeon) for people who don't have interest in chasing for secrets/lore. Personally I wouldn't mind if they were the exact same stats as the pathfinder but w/ diff designs, but it's up to you on how much you want to reward secret hunters ig.super important information break!!: i think a blue flower petal SPD aura (hunt for secrets faster!) would be rlly cute as a lore chaser reward ;3c if u kno u kno

Gem balancing is funky. I mentioned it in pathfinder yap, but a way to either wipe items, or refund lost upgrades might be nice even for non pathfinder hats/robes. Also the difference between 2 main stat(blue gems), vs 3 main stat (red gems) doesn't feel worth the 50% drop in success rate. Maybe red main stat gems could be bumped up to 4? 5 Might've been too strong, but 3 just doesn't feel worth it, personally. (tho i never liked main stat gems anyway, so other math-minded min-maxers might wanna check that one)

Bosses!! Love them! But I also wish the fights were more interesting/challenging. Currently my endgame looks like stacking 10-20 def, placing down a campfire, grappling to a wall to avoid knockback, and then just clicking funny buttons while healing/keeping up Ice Charge until the thing dies. Group play doesn't change that very much, and if anything the addition of mages with high lvl healing makes the fights even more mindless (everyone stack together w/ def/con, and repeat solo strat of standing in corner and spamming). I think there are a lot of ways to go about breaking up this gameplay and making it more fun! The struggle definitely lies with keeping bosses soloable, but also making it so ppl can't just mindlessly kill it. One way you could do this is by adding debuffs that need to be cleansed.

Example: After forest reaper does the big scythe swipe, you're "marked for death" w/ a vignette around ur screen to cause FEAR!!!!/ communicate danger to player, and if you get hit by that same move again (or maybe 3 times, w/e feels good) you just die. To get rid of the debuff, you would have to go jump into a cleansing bubble that spawns on random nearby platform on the map. Just an example, but something that forces you to move and feel engaged in the fight rather than just face tank the whole thing. I think puppet does a pretty good job of this actually! (though we still need slightly longer aggro on puppets, or a better aggro system overall if we want to build tanks/more complicated fights) Fish/Forest need the most love imo, and chompy could use just a liiil bit of an extra push perchance.

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lastly, you could combine these ideas :)

make the world boss versions of these bosses occassionally drop a unique dungeon item, these versions of the dungeons require a party of 4 (or w/e number). rather than a full dungeon, it's a more complicated arena boss fight that requires 4 people to complete. ex; requiring ppl to stand on specific platforms, or break certain items at the same time, becoming frozen and another player needing to break you out, avoid stage hazards or aoes, etc etc. with these bosses having a consistent "arena" and party size, you can make mechanics that incorporate both. (fallen is a decent example of using the arena in it's mechanics tbh). these dungeons could mayb drop those endgame upgrade cleansers or chase items that are on par w/ pathfinder, but would be easier to find for ppl who don't like secret hunting :3 (would kill for forest reaper robe pls n ty uwu)

wheat lodge
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i feel like to add on to the endgame part (and gem balancing)
def gems are just way too strong
like @spiral seal has what 26 defense from equipment and pretty much has 0 use for potions (and healing for the most part, since you can campfire most bosses or just have one healer)

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its just that a +2 dex is just nowhere close to being near the value of +2 defense for the same chance
because to get that +2 defense normally you'd need 20 con, which is more points than that 2 dex and as such requires you to lower your dex by a lot

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i do wish that there was more co-op required bosses and such like sirius said though
because beach pq is super fun, but even the reapers (besides maybe pea which is a whole lot easier with two ppl) can all be soloed to an extent

lusty walrus
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DEF is very strong yes, tho u can stop around 17ish nd still be in that "campfire outheals forest reaper dmg" zone 😔 which is why i think mechanics that hurt/kill through DEF could be nice :3 DEF could also just be nerfed (nd prolly should be even with new mechanics), but that's less fun/interesting than a mechanic imo 🤷‍♂️ also want to highlight that i think world boss versions of the reapers should still be soloable to an extent until player pop is consistent enough for multiple ppl to be willing to hunt them oftenish

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pulling us away from a stand still + stack meta would also be indirect nerf to DEF, esp if we have a better aggro system. would mean people are more willing to risk glass cannon builds if they know another player can consistently tank the boss instead.

spiral seal
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  • abyss/pathfinders
    i got the impression that the abyss thing was a bit of a WIP. Felt odd having a dungeon like that including all the previous bosses at the end of a secret quest line. I think the idea of dungeon with a ton of waves with all the monsters like that could be really interesting as more of an actual dungeon/content people can normally do, rather than hidden behind a secret quest line. To me it would make more sense that the secret questline just has a boss or something at the end. And yea pathfinder unfortunately isnt that good, 4 extra slots isnt really that worth it when it doesnt have any base stats

  • stats
    yea defense is really strong, yea you definitely dont need over 20 def like i have, but if you stack high defense, it pretty much insures that you have no risk in any fight. even if a new boss is added with twice as much damage, I think I'd still have 0 risk. I think the damage reduction curve could definitely be lowered a bit! I would also love to see some different stats on items too like melee/magic cooldown reduction, crit rate, crit damage, +max hp/mp, drop rate, elemental damage, +skill levels, etc. There are lots of interesting ideas for stats that could rival defense!

paper mural
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Make it so that the player is locked out of heals after being hit by "reaper" enemies for a couple seconds so that having a big enough hp pool means something.

Also to make boss fight more interesting, first big red damage zones every mmo bosses have it why not here, it forces players to move accordingly or take tons of damage and maybe also the debuff stated above; projectiles also makes the need for a tank in a team along with dps checks for the damage dealers and long enough fights so that we need actual healers, this makes the triangle.

In addition, if we're going to make bosses require a party to take down, we would need to limit their spawn in the overworld, otherwise normal player or solos won't be able to deal with them and be locked out of zones even harder then it is now

dim mountain
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a way to reset the rolls would make pathfinder so much better

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also yeah DEF is highly overpowered and super easy to stack loads of, I actually think some of the bosses are pretty fun when you can't just tank them entirely

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I almost wanna say maybe DEF gems can be removed? idk about that one lol but to me at least they're pretty much a direct upgrade over con gems, which are themselves already pretty good

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while I'm here, as a stat minmaxer myself I'd like a slot to roll for reds on my collection of throwing knives 🤪
I was thinking that'd be a kunai advantage but technically anyone can equip them so it's just a little silly free slot

paper mural
lethal birch
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how does DEF work? Is it not a flat reduction?

spiral seal
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Around 15 defense is about 50% reduction

lethal birch
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woah that's crazy

spiral seal
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There are diminishing returns, but pretty low compared to other games

dim mountain
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yeah like sirius said its possible to get a lot more def than you even need because even at like 15 you become unstoppable

undone gate
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I don't like how world bosses are even part of the end-game experience grind. They're so much better than normal grind spots that you have to go out of your way to kill them every 30 minutes or you feel like you're missing out. And it is pretty boring since they're just massive meatshields. They should probably only give drops and a bit of EXP, not like an absurd amount tho like they currently do. I've also always disliked that the bosses interrupt normal grinding by spawning on top of you every night. If the spawn timer was like 3-4 hours or something that'd be better. But yeah I might be in the minority here, idk, I just hate super spammy immobile gameplay. I like grinding that involves map rotation and optimizing mobility, so world bossing is like the antithesis of that.

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More gameplay like that! Less gameplay like world boss or killing blorp with 50k HP :3

lusty walrus
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That's why I think the main issue is that the bosses need more interesting mechanics that force you to move instead of just being big bullet sponges. Even if DEF gets a nerf, that'll just make it so we need to spend even more gems to get to that comfortable stack strat, meaning less room for damage gems, meaning a longer boring fight. We need mechanics that kill/damage through DEF (not just bigger damage numbers, but DEF piercing attacks, poison/fire DOTs that do percentile HP dmg, instakill debuff mechanics, etc etc). But any mechanics that REQUIRE multiple people should always be left in dungeons / non open world instances imo so we don't run into issues where solo players feel completely helpless at night. I love forest reaper's design so much, so would love it if they also felt really fun to fight y'kno? I wanna be able to look forward to it being night so I can have fun in a fight rather than because it's more exp or w/e.

dim mountain
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do enemies have the same def formula as players? imagine if that got nerfed too lol

spiral seal