Lost Halls isn't a great dungeon...

#21

I wrongly believed that I had managed to mitigate the ability to grief in the dungeon to a level where it would become just a mere inconvenience and not to the point of either becoming deadly or forcing people to nexus.
At the same time my focus was really on improving the overall experience and because it was complete-able in a very very small group without ideal group composition I made the wrong assumption that scaling up could render some of the coordination elements more of an advantage and less of a requirement seeing as HP Scaling is not high enough to become a penalty in bigger groups.

Early crusaders/sentry are something that can kill runs for sure right now, but as long as you pay attention a group, even composed of random should be able to fend off from any major threat by simply attacking and backing off from any threat. Of course this is the ideal scenario in practice it doesn’t quite work out and I want to improve it on that front so if you have any example of things that consistently could kill a public run then I’m all ears.

#22

I don’t like how you use the word “penalty”. HP scaling is fine just the way it is. Leave it alone. If you plop a new player into a Halls and tell them to just do it nobody would be doing halls. The fact is people need to be carried to some extent to learn.

Plus, when a Sentry dies and 50 people enter a Halls from a realm, a lot of them are going to suck.

Honestly the best solution is to just remove the Void Entity minions. The other threads mentioned this. The minions really add nothing to the boss other than making it a dps wall. They either die in 2 seconds to your superior DPS or become a supreme menace that forces you to nexus.

I’d also remove the blind from marble colossus.

I hate marble colossus. The fact is there’s so many players and so many bullets it’s just not possible to see where the shots are coming from. Even in a group ~20 people if you’re all on a single safe space between two tentacles there’s just no way to effectively dodge during the phases.

#23

Speaking of the whole, “its never done publicly”, what do people think if the drop chance of the LH portal was increased to 100%? (I’m possibly missing a reason why it wouldn’t be viable for some reason, but anyway.) The simple idea is if people knew after killing the sentry, a LH may drop, people who actually want to do LH would be much more encouraged to try so. Also, it makes it easier for casual players (like myself) to pop in and try giving it a go. I mean, most runs would probably still end in failure, but this is just an idea for people to explore.

#24

I’d say the main issue IS the hp scaling, or atleast the way it is handled. If scaling was handled instead of just the sheer number of players, but instead on how maxed each player was (no longer do 0/8s count as an 8/8 in scaling terms) things would be much better.
Also remove any instances of blind and darkness

#25

@Kiddforce hint, hint…

#26

If this would be implemented, it would probably be when unity comes out since it seems like a complex thing to do, and maybe impossible on flash.

#27

Halls isn’t pay to win. People pay for the convenience of not sentry hunting. When Pub Halls or mch have had trouble getting keys they did sentry runs where they found sentries in a realm and killed them to get a halls drop. So even the big servers that do halls with keys constantly right now are willing to do it without spending money right now. That means Halls can be one without money, just because people don’t do it without money doesn’t mean it is pay to win, it means people are lazy.

As someone who spends both a lot of time in pub halls I can say that Lost Halls is doable solo. I can also say that my experience doing all the runs in pub halls barely helped me with that solo run, because in pub halls I was always in a strong group, while doing it solo is just a completely different experience. I’ll also say I didn’t defeat the boss- but so what? The end-game bosses shouldn’t be soloable by any random person. It should require skill and experience. I don’t have that experience, but some people do, and they have soloed the bosses before. So it’s possible, not being able to do it doesn’t mean the dungeon is bad, it just means you aren’t yet good enough to solo the end-game.

The one thing I would want to see changed is the infinite spawns that void has, It really is just a dps wall that makes it impossible to solo or do with a very small group.

#28

Urban Dictionary - pay-to-win . Games that let you buy better gear or allow you to make better items then everyone else at a faster rate and then makes the game largely unbalanced even for people who have skill in the game without paying.

Halls is the definition of pay 2 win. Money makes the dungeon much easier.

In response to Piggiesfar, players have never been rational when it comes to dungeons. Shatters is a prime example. It’s far worse than Lost Halls in basically every way but there were people who still farmed it to death.

Now that halls is the end game dungeon people will still throw their characters at it regardless of how worthwhile it really is.

#29

Needing another website to play a video game is just poor design.

#30

You wayyyyyy overestimate your own contribution if a 3/8 is taking away more than it adds. Like… you know how the MBC only gains 20% per additional player? you literally need to be outdamaging them by 400%. Even a tricked out warr or pally versus a 4/8 priest won’t be outdamaged by a factor of five. If it’s pretty much any other class that’s somewhat potted and at least a t8 weapon? No, your warrior does not do that much damage by its own. I don’t even think it’s a valid excuse to try to kill/drag on them before MBC because “if they nexus, I then have to overcompensate for 3 players who aren’t here”, since afaik when DECA fixed the “send one person into void so it calibrates for one player and then destroy it w/ 50+ people”, they made everything else in halls have dynamic HP scaling.

#31

Here are some changes I’d like to see. I’ve ran LH 2.0 200~ times, the majority of which were discord runs with too many people. I have soloed MBC and solo cleared a full LH-Cult myself and do not feel the dungeon has met its goal of being viable for public runs. This is mainly because of disparity between the time invested in clearing, the risk of simply being inside the dungeon, and the reward for completion.

Enemy Changes
The clear of LH itself is alright, albeit a little long for my liking. I simply have a few problems with Crusades, as they’re the only room that consistently ends a solo or small sentry run I am attempting.

  • Crusades need a secondary behaviour beyond chasing. Every room they pass through the Commander should stop in the center and perform some shot patterns while its adds flock around it. Then it could flash and chase to the next room and repeat. This’d allow class compositions without a slow the chance to defeat an early Crusade.
  • Commander sprites need to be bigger than the rest of the crusade. Even if it’s just blown up to look bigger without a new sprite. Having such a deadly enemy appear similar to a player is not ideal. It’s especially bad in large runs where the commander can be lost behind pets/players.

MBC Changes
MBC is an interesting fight that tries too hard to make itself difficult. The bullet hell aspect of it is hard enough, why are there 5+ different status effects to worry about? I believe small groups don’t ever do MBC because it’s harder than Cult and gives terrible pot rewards in comparison.

  • The sheer status spam is too overwhelming. The boss fires status, the circling cores fire status, and respawning pillars fire status. This leads to many situations that are extremely hard compared to other parts of the fight. I know making the fight easier is not the intention, but there’s simply too many detrimental debuffs fired your way.
  • Remove blind from the fight. A lot of the fight has colour based debuffs and the need for precise dodging, so removing the ability to clearly tell bullets apart or even see is sub optimal.
  • Slow down the rate of the silence shot spam. I understand why silence was added to the fight, to prevent heal spamming from ruining the fight, but all silence is doing is stunting the health regen of low lvl pet players and making it harder for classes to play to their abilities.
  • Reduce the spawn rate and hp of status pillars. Also design a crumbled sprite and a rebuilding sprite so the pillars don’t appear out of thin air and potentially insta someone.

Void
Remove adds. That’s all I can say about Void, really. Public groups cannot deal with adds as they’re too spread out. Perhaps replace adds entirely with a turret in each corner that progresses through being crumbled then phases 1/2/3. A turret would be easier for players to recognize as an issue and simpler for pub groups to focus down when it’s a problem. The shrinking arena already creates enough urgency.

The Loot
It’s unfair to the Lost Halls to have it be the only dungeon that drops T13 weapons/T14 armours. It creates an immensely disheartening cycle where players run the same content over and over wanting the items only to be dejected time and time again by RNG. A lot of bitter feelings towards Halls is because of these items I’m sure. I realize it’s out of your power and loot is up to DECA but we seriously need more ways to receive these items. Having them only in the Halls puts too much pressure on the dungeon. A player should want to run Halls because “Oh yeah, these drop the best gear!” Not because of “Oh, this is the only place that drops the best gear…” I simply bring this up here because I feel like it’s an issue that goes without discussion.

#32

I already knew that though :confused: (well the MBC HP scaling at least).

But I never said that, I simply said its easier to wait for people who are 3/8 (or lower) to nexus or die because the simple fact is that they don’t have enough dps or survivability to effectively clear halls and do marble/cult. And I don’t mean literally sit there like an ass, I meant while clearing to let people nexus or die naturally. Plus, dragging is stupid in LH, because why would anyone risk dying just so have 2-3 people nexus? Plus, people who drag 9/10 nexus or die because they’re fucking idiots and bite off more than they can chew. Which usually leads to a group wipe, wasting everyone’s time.

You could do that in void?

This is the core point of what I said in the previous post (but just explained it horribly), because they have dynamic HP scaling, why would you want low tier players upping that while they’re present in the dungeon. This would not only make your life harder, but the entire group would struggle more unnecessarily. that doesn’t mean I support dragging mobs like a [Naughty Word] and getting people killed because you want to do another failed marble solo. I’m simply stating the fact that it is easier to do halls without players who aren’t that good tier wise adding to the HP scaling.

ALSO DID YOU JUST QUESTION MY CONTRIBUTION TO LH GROUPS? ILL HAVE YOU KNOW I SPELL BOMB PERFECTLY 100% WITH MY 2/8 WIZARD, STOP SPREADING FAKE NEWS ABOUT ME.

#33

I’m not sure about the math, but (@Kiddforce do you know?) I want to say… well, hmm.

You know how the pally max HP buff actively increases your HP, even if you already have a max hp buff on you? Yeah. I’m pretty sure this is how someone leaving a dungeon affects a bosses’ hp - they actually lose that much HP, so (unless I’m completely off-base here) you have nothing to lose. Hell, if anything there’s a point where they could all leave and suddenly the MBC would be much closer to death. I imagine there’s some coding shenanigans in place for MBC (or any other boss, for that matter) to not suddenly cease to exist, but… yeah.

Also, this is how Forgotten King has a much higher chance of getting a gltiched tentacle phase (the one where everyone who isn’t a priest or trickster dies)… yeah.

#34

I always assumed it simply took away that 20% of HP, putting it back to “Full” Health. So if 10 people are doing marble and you take 40% of its scaled HP and 2 people leave, I would just think it would remove the 40% that’s already gone, but yours is probably more possible.

#35

HP scaling has always been dynamic, but the frequency between reassessments of the player count on a map is changeable. Prior to that fix, the Void Entity’s initial cooldown was low enough that a single person could enter early and throw him off, buying people enough time to push him through several phases way quicker than he would be prepared for.

Removing blind entirely would be overcorrecting in my opinion. MBC is practically the only spot in the entire game where it’s actually a meaningful debuff, after all. Nerfing the duration to 1-1.6 seconds would be reasonable though, as I agree that it’s currently too crippling when surrounded by color-coded shots.

This is a very tricky subject, and one that was discussed in great depth in the thread that Kidd linked to earlier. Removing minion spawns entirely would be akin to removing the air mechanic from Thessal, it effectively takes away a core element of the fight and would make the Void Entity himself a total pushover. The sense of urgency from the shrinking arena and need to spread out all derive from managing the minions in the first place.

However, I agree that they currently create too much of a rift between high and low DPS groups. Several possibilities have been discussed, such as scaling the spawn frequency or evolution time, then compensating by putting greater emphasis on the rate at which the arena shrinks. This would all require very precise balancing and a lot of testing, but could prove effective for bridging the gap between group sizes.

I’ll have to disagree with this one entirely. WC tops are already the perfect case study on why this would be a short-sighted design choice. Kabam slapped WC tops onto the drop table of practically everything they did in their later era of content, even things far below the (alleged) difficulty of O2. Even disregarding the debatable true value of LH tops (the statistical improvement of tiered items is a whole can of worms in and of itself), there aren’t really any current equals to the LH where such items could be reasonably placed. The Nest is the only other dungeon close to that level of endgame. Adding T14 armor drops to the Nest could be a possibility, but certainly not weapons. It would be wiser to wait until there is another full-fledged endgame dungeon worthy of dropping the same caliber of tiered items, rather than getting overeager and retroactively spreading them across existing content as a bandaid improvement.

Just like HP thresholds for state transitions, HP scaling is proportional, not a flat number. Although you can technically “lower” a monster’s HP by reducing the number of players in a dungeon, you’re also reducing their max HP, keeping their HP percentage (which is what the game actually reads) the same. You can’t push an enemy into another phase just by removing players from your group.

#36

I would also like to respond to Nzl by pointing at Tharms. Tharms is just another example of a high level character who dies a ton. If he’s so skilled he should be able to maintain a bunch of chars.

All these high level players clearly show that halls is not a worthwhile dungeon. If it was worthwhile they wouldn’t die so much in it.

#37

You completely ignored what I said about it not being pay to win. Spending money on halls doesn’t make it easier, it makes it more convenient in the fact you don’t have to deal with a sentry. If you were to have a group of just free players who never used keys they could still do halls by finding sentries and killing them to get Halls drops that way. There’s no magic thing that Deca sells that makes halls and specifically halls easier.

#38

Uni, take notes

Pretty sure that idea’s been floating around him earlier, iirc.

#39

As Toast said, would minion spawn frequency and amount scaling with the group size be something you’d want to see? I do want to add that if we do it we’ll also likely tweak the arena shrinking to make sure there’s some urgency even if you know what you are doing.

Regarding HP Scaling, let’s do some experiments:

Let’s take the Void Entity (400,000 HP) a Warrior with top of the line gear, to him it would take in theory 88 seconds for him to take down the Void Entity. Now what if we added the lowest realistic DPS to his? Enters the T8 wearing Priest with average DEX and ATT!

The Void Entity now has 480,000 HP and the TTK when you combine both (assuming Berserk is given to the Priest) is now 98 seconds, clearly that means it’s a bad thing to have additional people, but what if that priest was maxed? Well a maxed priest with T8 gear and berserk alongside our top player warrior would result in about 88 seconds. Again this is basically the widest gap and is theory, warrior and priest might not hit all the shots, the priest range could be useful as well as the heals which would make up for the longer TTK but let’s put that aside for now.

Let’s try the exact same thing but with a T8 Wizard with average stats, the TTK is now 95 seconds, however if the Wizard’s DEX and ATT are now 55 each, the group kills the Void Entity slightly faster at 87 seconds! As you can see in general unmaxed classes might not be as punishing as it might seem on paper but let’s keep digging.

Now what if our group was 3 people? First off the Void Entity would now have 560,000 HP and to add to our top decked Warrior, we will add a top decked Paladin! Their TTK on a 2 player VE is about 40 seconds, now if we add the average stats priest to the equation and again assume he’ll receive both buff we get 44 seconds, as you can see the difference is a lot smaller this time around, but he could still be considered dead weight, now what about a maxed Priest with T8 gear? It takes about a second longer and once again this is ignoring all the priest advantages as well as the fact it has the lowest DPS of all the classes and is bound to run into those sort of issues.

Now what about our wizard? Let’s try him again! With average stats it takes only 2 seconds longer to defeat the Void Entity and with 55/55 it takes about the same time. Again we are overlooking the advantages of the classes but even in what would be the worst case scenarios the threshold to be useful isn’t actually as high as you might imagine and relies more on the actual class stats and weapon type than maxing.

TL;DR: Yes unmaxed character can negatively impact your group if you only talk about raw DPS but even in the worst case the difference isn’t as high as you think and that’s overlooking things like range and other advantages those underleveled classes might bring to the table.

#40

yuppers, that is true. but what your both missing is the true monster behind all of this, and that’s the events Deca throws up. Most of the past dungeon events have broken the game economy in some form, but the LH events were really something special, and not in a good way. From people sitting in USSouth for 20 million years to LH discords running dozens a day, destroying the value of Life and mana potions and making LH whites almost as common as some of the lesser UTs. And of Course, Deca always had key boxes on the shop to make it worse. Which drags in the old obligation issue with the events and all that bad stuff.

Quick Edit: “Past dungeons events have broken the game economy in the past” Inception level of writing here.