Open Testing - Shatters’ 2nd Boss! - Realm of the Mad God Exalt


#1

#2

Here are my thoughts on the content from this testing (and the previous one because there wasn’t a feedback thread).

Thoughts on Weapons:
All of the shatters weapons are a bit weak. The stat reductions in combat cause Valor and Warmonger to lose a huge amount of damage potential, falling below similar options (Kusanagi/Bow of the Void in particular). Dusky Catalyst, while quite strong in damage, has an incredibly harsh penalty in that you cannot use your ability. With a high mheal pet, this completely offsets the dps increase from Wand of Retribution(t14)/Theurgy Wand on both sorcerer and summoner, and prevents priest from healing at all.

Suggested Weapon Changes:
I think the best option for Valor and Warmonger is to heavily reduce the downsides from the procs, but also slightly lower their damage. Ideally, they should be slightly better than equivalents (Kusanagi/Bow of the Void) out of combat and slightly worse in combat.
Dusky Catalyst needs to do substantially more damage to be worth using, since the cost of equipping it is the use of your ability at most times. I think potentially adding some dps stats while in combat could make it worth using on sorcerer/summoner at least. I think the weapon concept is fundamentally opposed to priest, so it likely won’t ever find much utility for him.

Thoughts on Abilities In General:
Every single ability is incredibly strong, and most are arguably best in slot. I think the majority of them could be tuned down a little bit, as they currently overshadow most other endgame uts.

Thoughts on Specific Abilities:
Vanguard’s Visage allows warrior to convert mana into damage, giving warrior a big boost to burst damage potential without sacrificing berserk like the Helm of Draconic Dominance. I would have this helm equipped 99% of the time during most boss fights, and I think it could use a bit of a nerf to survivability while using it (something like -20 hp and only giving 5 def could work).
Noble Mandolin is the most situational of the items, and I think after the damage nerf it’s in a fair spot. It isn’t best in slot by any means, but it is a strong swapout.
Polarity Poison is just a solid damage dealer all around, and has slow to cap it off, basically making every other poison worthless. I don’t think this should really be touched at all at least until assassin gets reworked, assuming it continues to be far better than other poisons.
Sentinel’s Sidearm is incredibly strong and certainly best in slot, essentially guaranteeing 3000 damage to the nearest enemy and granting incredible dps stats. The downside of not exposing is largely unimportant in solo play (the extra damage more than offsets the lack of expose, especially at higher mheals), and in a group there is a good chance other samurais will be present to provide expose. I think the damage alone is actually fair, however the dps stats push it into broken territory. I think having it provide no dps stats with a slight damage increase (maybe 1000->1100) would be more balanced.
Primal Arcana is yet again another incredibly powerful damage-dealing ability. I wish that it was possible to have the extra shots on the client side so that they don’t lag so far behind your aim, but I understand that isn’t possible currently. I think the extra shots should not curse at all, as otherwise tiered orbs are completely invalidated. In exchange for the removal of curse, I think the extra shots should get a slight damage boost (maybe 30%, slightly more than the curse would provide for them alone).

Thoughts on Armors:
Mantle of the Monarchy is the best in slot robe for all but very high dps group play and summoner (can’t mana dump for damage). Even in high dps groups, it is an incredible swapout (if in combat, quick switch to it then back to Vesture of Duality/Diplomatic Robe). Energized is an insanely strong effect, and nearly cancels the in combat mana regen penalty with a maxed divine, For lower level pets, being in combat is actually preferable for mana regeneration. The robe also provides incredible survivability stats, meaning that it can be equipped with The Twilight Gemstone for nearly unlimited ability use, regardless of combat status. I think that the robe should either receive a large nerf to its survivability stats or the energized effect as a whole have it’s power halved (20->10 mp/sec).
Royal Guard’s Cuirass is easily the new best in slot survivability armor for melees, which I think is fine. Shatters is now harder than lost halls, and it doesn’t overshadow Gladiator Guard so the item is in a good place in my mind.
Vest of Abandoned Shadows is a bit underwhelming, especially compared to the other two armors. While it is certainly decent, the proc very mediocre. Gaining armored after being hit is really not particularly useful, since after being hit you tend to focus more on avoiding shots in order to heal. I think that in addition to the armored, healing should be granted, facilitating regeneration and helping prevent extreme damage from multiple hits in rapid succession.

Thoughts on the Dungeon Crawl Between The Forgotten Sentinel and The Twilight Archmage:
Once again, I feel that the dungeon is too slow. It takes quite a while to clear

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the area leading up to the archmage, although it is quite easy to skip. The switches themselves take a long time to do. By necessity, you need to clear most of the enemies, then escort the flame. The enemies are interesting, but largely don’t pose much of a threat, so clearing them quickly becomes a chore. The number of enemies is reasonable in this section, but could be a bit lower. The escort portion itself is quite slow. Reducing the number of waypoints would help make the area less tedious.

Thoughts on The Twilight Archmage:
I was surprised at how simple this fight felt. Most of the dodging was quite intuitive with the exception of the phase that throws random fire bombs (I’ll elaborate later). Although it may be fairly easy for me, I have years of built-up mechanical skill, and the boss challenged them in an interesting way. This fight is a very stark contrast to the bridge guardian, and it plays almost completely differently. If The Forgotten King is a hybrid of the two fights, I think shatters will be a very interesting dungeon in terms of bosses. The ice phases are a bit less tense than the fire phases (in particular firenuke and rage) because there’s quite a bit more freedom to dodge how you want, which is not a bad thing at all.
The phase with random bombs throws the entire rest of the well-choreographed fight completely out the window to the detriment of the experience. You have a small window to deal free damage at the start of the phase before you are pushed out by bombs, then given almost no opportunity to go back in. On the wall, the phase is hilariously easy, so it becomes a waiting game as you can’t safely push in to deal damage. This phase could use a bit of reworking, probably towards a more pattern-based approach like the circular bomb phase. Perhaps a pattern somewhat like Oryx Three’s cosmos phase would be interesting, especially with the extra projectiles from portals.

Thoughts on The Spritework:
The artists responsible for the sprites did a fantastic job. All of the items look unique and interesting, and most importantly are distinguishable as the item type they are.

Conclusion:
The uts are by and large close to the level I would expect, mostly just needing a bit of fine-tuning to balance. The dungeon itself, while a bit slow, is not unenjoyable and the boss is a very interesting Dammah-esque encounter with one phase dragging it down a bit. The bosses of the new Shatters are shaping up to be a highly memorable and fun trio and a worthy endgame challenge and I am very excited to finally meet the King himself.


#3

The testing session wasn’t planned well at all.

You have to give people some time to test things if you want feedback.


#4

Lucky Gods guaranteeing a modified dungeon would be a neat addition

I thought the modifiers were well balanced, but they are somewhat generic. I enjoyed the more unique modifiers like Generous, Chef and Bis. More like those would be exciting.

I think player names being purple when they call out a dungeon ruins the exclusivity of purple named players from the Unity Campaign

A minor bug I found is that when the contextual click is held, dungeon names and grades may display incorrectly

Didn’t get the chance to test 2nd shatters boss, which was unfortunate


#5

I think the one thing that sticks out to me about modifiers is that you they are a unique addition but you don’t have time to process them.

If you’re out in the realm looking to get DEX potions, you do the first Sprite World that you see drop.

If you’re in the nexus and someone pops a dungeon you like, you have to go in fast or risk the dungeon filling up.

If you’re in a halls discord and someone pops a halls, you’re going to go in with the group.

So while I think it’s a good idea in concept, I honestly don’t think it will impact how players approach the game at all.

If you want a specific dungeon, you do the first version of that dungeon you see. An unspoken rule of ROTMG.


#6

Part 2 of My Post from Yesterday, this time covering my thoughts on dungeon modifiers.

Overall Thoughts:
I was very much hoping for a system that would introduce variety into already existing dungeons and change the way that they are played, while rewarding players for stepping out of their comfort zones. A select few of the bonuses actually do provide this experience, but most simply make the gameplay slower/faster or more/less dangerous without requiring any playstyle changes.

Thoughts on Modifier Levels:
I think internally something is off about the available modifier levels, the xml says that S-tier keys should have modifiers from level 3-5, but I was frequently getting level 2 mods and only rarely even saw level 4 mods. The higher level mods seem incredibly rare to the point that they may as well not even exist, so I think raising the rates of their occurrence would be a good thing.

Dealing with Child Dungeons:
Dungeons that have internal dungeons (Lost Halls -> Cult/Void for example) should pass their modifier on to their child dungeon. This should be exempted from the Oryx Chain.

Specific Modifiers: (If I don’t mention it here, I think it’s fine the way it is, if a little boring)
Tame/Ferocious - These are huge changes at higher levels (32% at IV), and they can make a dungeon nightmarishly difficult or hilariously easy. I think the magnitude of the effect should be reduced quite a bit.
Tough - This does nothing. Defense is pretty much irrelevant in rotmg because enemies need to have very high amounts of it before it starts to impact gear choice. I think the higher levels of this bonus should be more like double enemy defense, since that much would actually make players consider using armor piercing/strong against def weapons as opposed to their normal equips.
Rewards Decrease (Minion Only) - This was already removed from bosses, and it is equally dumb on minions. Why does this exist.
Dull - This should not be considered as a positive effect. At best, it is neutral, since stationary enemies are pretty much identical to fight. When enemies chase the player, this causes shots to stack up tighter together, making it more likely you take massive damage from bursts of shots.
Keen - Just a bug, the faster projectile speed shouldn’t be negative in the description of the modifier
XP Decrease (Minion Only) - This is yet another dumb effect that really shouldn’t exist. The only way this would make sense is if it required an accompanying minion HP decrease.
Weak - This is a huge bonus and will absolutely trivialize bosses. At level 3, the boss will only have 55% of it’s original HP. This needs a huge nerf.
Bulky - Don’t increase minion sizes please. This just makes more unnecessary visual clutter.
Elite - The increase to HP is fairly large, although I don’t think this is necessary bad. It will likely just be fairly boring.
Lazy - Don’t increase minion sizes.
Skilled - Make absolutely sure that all minions that are included as part of boss fights do not receive this bonus. In this testing, MBC status effect rocks had minion bonuses, making survival phase incredibly bullet-dense.
Bis - How does this bonus work with dungeons like lost halls or fungal/crystal cavern? Ideally, child dungeons should drop their parent. (Crystal Caverns boss drops a Fungal Cavern, Void/Cult drop a Lost Halls)
Dimitus - What is the point of this bonus? The fight is incredibly easy and doesn’t have any of its own drops, so this could be replaced with a chest without changing anything.
Pet Collector - This bonus should have levels similar to Chef

Non-Modifier Changes:
The character count in the text box is very much appreciated.
Dungeon callouts are great, only complaint is that players named should be a distinct color from any normal chat (perhaps red)
The Dungeon Grave System being expanded to 10 is great. I don’t know what all specific dungeons have been ranked as, but they can’t be much worse than they are now, so this is a good change.

Monetization:
I am not a fan of how modifiers are being monetized at all. The cost to increase a key to S tier is doubling the purchase price per key, and unless you are incredibly lucky with mods, buying a 2nd key would always be preferable. Rerolling modifiers on keys should be free or cost fame, not gold. I also want to see modified dungeons drop naturally more often, and drop at higher tiers.

The Future of Modifiers:
After the initial release, I would really like to see more creative gameplay-altering modifiers. Things like: Flooded (dungeon is underwater with added air bubbles), Permanently active status effects for enemies/players, Players fire backwards (all weapon shots rotated 180 degrees), etc. Most of the current modifiers don’t do too much to actually change the way you approach completing dungeons, they just make it take longer. There is a place for that, but adding some variety to the dungeons you complete would be amazing.


#7

This would need a literal 10x loot modifier to be worth.


#8

Doesn’t have to be negative ones.
Could give players damaging and enemies armoured
or players speedy and silence
or any other combination


#9

the item pack for the motmg armors and rings has the chaos ring missing


#10


The set has an error where it shows +2 Vit & +4 Vit at the bottom of the tooltip. Also, the damage variant (dark ring) is not available in the shop for testing.

Ember of the Daeva is very well balanced. The extremely long cooldowns of both effects are warranted as the effects are more noticeable in gameplay.

The healing spirit is literally a walking fungal tome that follows you around but weaker by 40hp and 5 less targets, and has a 35s cooldown. My first impression was that the cooldown was way too long, but after testing it in a random group fungal (7+ players) I can definitely say the long cooldown is warranted, as this enabled the group to tank more shots and also heal the wearer enough to survive a sticky situation when they are on low HP. This helped me survive getting cornered by Monstrosity and fractals.

The 15+ Def boost is also very good.

I’d say that the full set (using light ring) is worth using. It becomes a complete replacement for WC tops.

I would definitely appreciate if there was both a dark and light variant of each weapon and armor, so players can match their set items. Also, the katana is not available in the testing shop.


#11

It really just depends on which status effects are used. Permanent Weakness/Daze would be atrocious, but permanent unstable would change the way you play a bit without making the dungeon too much more difficult. I personally would also like to be able to see much more difficult effects (perma sicken anyone?) with very high reward increases but that would probably not be too popular.


#12

Was looking at 2nd shatters boss fight videos and just noticed something.

There is no way you are going to see a twilight archmage bomb on top of you if there are 50 players covering it; the bomb is smaller than a player. Please make the bomb sprite twice as large.


#13

the hp scaling is a bit high on small enemies
the existence of the respawning purple enemies makes enabling twilight archmage impossible solo if you get many of them.


#14

I wanted to add that the Archmage is harder than o3 in my opinion.

I think the fire phases should not have sicken.

The purple grave enemies should be reworked they can interrupt the boss fight as well.


#15

A small error slipped in through PT. The graves - and by extension, the enemies - are supposed to be deleted once the Archmage fight starts, but a recode caused this deletion to no longer work correctly.
It’s really annoying this happened, if there’s another pt for King, then it should be fixed.


#16

My opinion on the fight itself hasn’t changed since last time it was on testing, but I have some additional complaints about the clear to the boss. Respawning enemies are an incredibly painful mechanic to deal with, especially since they can attack conductors very far away. With a group of 4 people, we spent nearly 20 minutes trying to drag a single flame to the boss due to respawns destroying the conductor chain and the flame resetting. This was with a coordinated group in voice chat. In public runs or with players intentionally dragging enemies to conductors to grief, it may be genuinely impossible to activate boss. I think either the tower defense mechanic needs to go altogether or the flame needs to never reset its position. One other than that probably needs to go is the puzzle room. Although it is a cool idea, it is far too easy to grief and even a single player can easily mess it up for the whole group (Technically a group could skip this room, but then it simply becomes dead content and shouldn’t exist for that reason).

One other weird thing I noticed was that item drop locations seem quite odd. One of my guild members got the leather armor from a minion in the village. This is quite weird for an item that looks like it is obviously supposed to drop from archmage. Also, it is odd that archmage does not have a full UT set while the other bosses appear to (samurai from sentinel, bard from king). Adding a dagger to archmage would complete an assassin set and I think also deal with the issue presented by the balancing of the wand (nobody will use the wand, the penalty is far too harsh).

Finally, one new item was present this testing:
Peacemaker is an unusual mace and I really do not know how to feel about it. It seems to be fairly strong, but I find that it is fairly unsatisfying to use, especially because placing it is not nearly as simple as other maces. I think making the archer spawn on the player instead of on the cursor would make using the mace more intuitive, and I think having a more useful item description would also help in understanding what benefits it actually provides.