Oryx 2, after the latest modification, can be quite difficult. Excluding his first stage(classical old Oryx), Oryx 2 kills those who get too close and are not prepared. He takes (some) skill to kill, whether you’re melee or ranged. With this high difficulty increase, the new increased drop rate makes sense, right?
Clearly, a problem has formed. Ever since the drop rate increase of Oryx 2, there had been a influx of tops and the value of tops has dropped significantly. The simple explanation is that although Oryx 2 has been buffed, his difficulty has not increased relative to his drop rate. This explanation could explain more tops, but as I haven’t received a top from every Oryx 2, it shouldn’t have led to such a massive increase.
The problem that is being missed is that a solid 90% of the people in every Oryx 2 I’ve run have only landed damage during the first stage, the stage in which Oryx 2 is stunnable and easy to deal with. These people then leech for the rest of Oryx 2, leaving the actual killing to more skilled players. As they have hit SB, they have the exact same chance of receiving as those risking their lives to finish off Oryx 2. Because these people aren’t actually risking their lives but have landed SB, more people (by a considerable amount) are receiving tops then deserve to if everyone were putting in full effort throughout the entire battle. This problem doesn’t just occur at Oryx 2 but is most evident there due to the massive amount of people there.
Below are a couple of my potential solutions:
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The first one is what I believe DECA may have planned. Changing all of Oryx 2’s stages at once would make it too difficult for players to adapt. Because of it, they decided to begin Oryx 2 with a familiar stage but changed his second stage into a variety of different possibilities. Once, the majority of the player base had adapted, change the first stage. In the end, a drastic change has occurred but the player base seen it as two seperate changes, neither of which suddenly made Oryx 2 entirely different.
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Running through the Wine Cellar is more tedious than it is difficult. If the purpose is to weed out the weak, it’s a failure at that. Any level 20 who can dodge can make it through the maze to Oryx 2. All the path actually does is separate out the slower troops from the faster troops. In that case, why not remove it. Instead, similar to the concept from Mad God Mayhem, have people teleported into the Oryx 2 room. If there is no long path to Oryx 2, there is also no escaping the room.
Some level of skill could be encouraged by lowering the size of the room and adding more movement to Oryx 2 (In adding the more difficult stages, they removed Oryx 2’s movement stages). This would force leechers to at least do some basic dodging. Otherwise, they could get trapped into a corner or shotgunned.
- The reason why such a massive number of people are able to leech is that with a massive group of people, there is almost a guarantee that someone is capable of taking out Oryx by themselves. Now they just have to do twenty times the work. However, why not cut the number of people.
Algorithm for splitting x people into separate groups (MATH :D):
Find the smallest integer less than x/10. Call this new integer b.
If x = 0 (mod 10), create b groups of size 10
If x < b (mod 10), create b groups of size 10 or 11
If x = b (mod 10), create b groups of size 11
If x > b (mod 10), if x < 6 (mod 10), create b groups of 9, one group of 5+b
If x > b (mod 10), if x > 5 (mod 10), create b groups of 10, one group of x (mod 10)
Note, the size groups maxes out at 11 and minimizes at 6. By decreasing the number of classes, it would be more difficult for people to get easy damage on Oryx’s first stage. The lack of people there also forces cooperation. In addition, knowing that there is a max of 11 people, the necessary soulbound damage could be increased to at least 1/30 - 1/40 of Oryx’s total hit points. Assuming no one’s leeching (and you know the damage threshold), you’re likely to back off after doing slightly over the required damage. By increasing the damage threshold, people are forced to go in during the later stages or risk not getting loot.
The largest problem with this concept (not individual parts of the plan) that I can think of, comes with the removal of luck loot to beginners/PPEs/poorer people. However, the problem is that Oryx 2 was never supposed to be a beginning game boss. Oryx 2 is supposed to be the ultimate boss of the game. With the introduction of Halls bosses and Nest, it is unlikely that he will be the ultimate boss, but he should not be a top dropping test chest for beginners.
