PT: Heroic Abyss and Heroic UDL

#169

Okay, a serious issue: when Malphas cycles through the fire breath and Flamer spawn phases, he’s invulnerable for at least 80% of those phases.
I remember both of them having some sort of ‘withdrawal’ at the end, leaving Malphas vulnerable for a good period of time, but apparently that’s just not there between these two.

#170

The orbs are a good idea but still inferior to regen outside of combat.

The larger rooms in the Abyss make the dungeon stupid easy to complete and take away the Abyss’s identity.

#171

I know y’all probably want constructive criticism but ummm…

this is the worst thing you’ve ever made

#172

The galaxy tiles aren’t actually tiles at all, they’re a background image applied in place of nothingness on a map. They have no actual interaction with the game.

#173

Yeah i forgot the game has backgrounds (like the blue clouds/mist background in the Vault).

I forgot that the reason that the Leprechaun can noclip through the Sprite World is because he goes at Mach 4.

#174

Septavius has a shot that deals 500 damage. I don’t like that at all. While it is very easy to dodge, I do not think that we should be punished that much, especially since regen takes ages.
I wouldn’t mind if it dealt like 300 damage AND IS MADE MUCH BIGGER. THOSE TINY SHOTS DO NOT LOOK LIKE THEY DEAL 500 DAMAGE.

#175

It took a bit to adjust, but I really like most of these changes. Obvious stuff that everyone has already noticed (really, you probably ought to take a second or two w/ an invuln char to at least make sure these things trigger, but w/e): With the room sizes and less rooms overall, some enemies don’t shoot until you’re in their face. Once you fix that, this’ll become a very different experience. That said…

I should probably note that I’m doing this on a “semi-maxed” ninja, and ended up using my void blade a lot for the brutes, because that niche definitely doesn’t have enough usage as it is (/s). The >30% hp malphas attack is incredibly scary if you’re trying to stand back to regen and it occurs, and you’re suddenly trying to dodge these shots, because they like… originate from the wall (I know it’s the off-centered shots you used w/ the sacred idol and the nightmare colony but hear me out), and if there’s a tell, I didn’t see it at all.

Three more things, before I head back to testing: one, you probably ought to tie the regen orbs to a monster (white demon?) at a really high percent, maybe even 100%, and reduce the others - it really sucks to go 6 rooms w/o any regen orbs on a non-healing class, even if you knew what you were getting into, and eventually, it’s just gonna happen. Two, if it’s not, I’d suggest you somehow balance out the orbs (assuming the energizing status effect is 20 mp/sec as of the moment, I’d suggest either: a., make the energizing 10 mp/sec, b., give the drops of life/mana orbs a ratio of 3:2 or 2:1 or something among those lines, or, my personal favorite, make the healing last for 10 seconds). Lastly, it’d be really cool if the white demons only change was to have two more bullets in their shotgun (the white demons currently have… 30 degrees between bullets, and a 60 degree shotgun w/ 3 bullets? now it’d be 120 degrees w/ 5 bullets), but they still only deal 45, armor-piercing damage, instead of 68 armor piercing, and no 230 damage bullets. This would be a really cool call-back for the older players, and still (probably?) be a challenging enemy

I went digging for some info to back that claim up, and it seems that very few people (at least those recording it to put it up on youtube) actually went into godlands. This guy was the only one w/ footage of something other than the current 3-shot, 45 armor-piercing I could find, but… it did 60 damage instead, and doesn’t have its current sprite. Back in my day, I remember being around before they reduced it to three shots, instead of five. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was documented on the realmeye changes log, but it’s nowhere to be found on the White Demon (standard or “of the Abyss” variants) realmeye pages, so… yeah.

#176

I think these changes are a step in the right direction!

Heroic UDL is still really easy to rush (well, I hadn’t tried rushing when I made my earlier post, but after having tried it now it’s pretty easy). Clearing I imagine plays about the same but it would take less time than before to. I think there’s still more that can be done to make it more interesting.

Heroic Septavius still has too much HP in my opinion. The minions seem a bit overwhelming especially for classes without piercing, but I wouldn’t want to remove the majority of them since they do force you to keep moving and they do add challenge. I’m not sure if removing a couple, like 1 or 2 of them would be the right thing to do here, or if it’s fine as-is. The new phases are alright I think (maybe could be slightly harder? unsure though). Minions being present in the phase near the end (rage phase?) is kind of rough because as I stated earlier, the minions keep you moving, but the shot patterns in that phase don’t really allow for good enough movement for you to dodge the minions very well.

The larger room size on Heroic Abyss was pretty surprising! I think that’s a neat variation from the original Abyss. The larger room sizes also make the dungeon perhaps slightly too easy, but I think that can be fixed by making the enemies utilize that larger room size to be more of a threat, in ways that would be unfeasible in the small room size of the original Abyss. I think even restoring their old behaviour would help add some difficulty, if not adding new shot patterns entirely. Currently, the white demon still is a little underwhelming, but I think the new large shot it does could contribute a lot to adding challenge when the player has a bunch of other stuff to dodge as well. It’s definitely one of those “underwhelming alone, but a big thing to keep track of when fighting other enemies” kinda deal I think.

Heroic Malphas I think is much better. The HP is now a lot more reasonable. The first new phase is pretty interesting, and I love the second new phase. If anything, the second new phase should be longer (getting people to circle around the lava-filled arena), maybe it could toss out the red star things as well during that phase to give people something to dodge additional to the tentacles so it’s not too easy. The thing Unicorn mentioned about Malphas not shooting in one of his phases unless you’re right up next to him should definitely be fixed though, it’s really out of place to have Malphas suddenly become a glorified punching bag. Additionally, the phases other than the new ones are still pretty easy.

I think the new dungeons have improved; new things are being tried, and some of the kinks might still need to be worked out, but they’re cool new things. I like the concept of the HP and MP orbs too.

#177

I may have jumped the gun a bit too early with my previous comment. I appreciate the changes that have been made to the heroic dungeons. They definitely do require a little more sharpening up, but they’re at least better than what I’ve witnessed in the very first hours of these dungeons being uploaded to testing.

These changes have made me realise that heroic dungeons do have potential to stick with the main idea of them being direct upgrades from their original dungeons, while not changing too much to the point of being a completely new dungeon like an epic dungeon. Furthermore, I’ve just realised that these are the first godland dungeons to get harder versions, as compared to all the epic dungeons which are harder versions of non-godland dungeons, so maybe you guys have different plans for godland dungeons, or perhaps you’ll also make a separate epic version for them.

Regardless, these are testing content after all, and hopefully the feedback and backlash you have received about these dungeons being too bland or unoriginal might have actually served as a guideline on how to spice these dungeons up, which is pretty clever imo~ I look forward to seeing how much improvement these heroic dungeons could get, either to lower the tediousness, increase the challenge and time worthiness, or just some other surprise we don’t know yet.

#178

@DemonDeath

You are correct, in between now and what is shown in the video, the White Demon had a 5 bullet spread with the current sprite and effect. Before the bubbles, he had a fan which you can see in this older Vulcan video, and the red armor piercing star wasn’t even there originally. I think it would be cool to see any of these variations in the heroic abyss.

#179

Nice vid find! (dated Jun 2011 which ties with abyss changes in build 117).

I remember the White Demon in godlands changing more than the Abyss variant, and people getting very mad at that being “unmelee-able”. Release history on the wiki gives that happening in b.122 (Feb 2012) and then nerfed to current in 122.3 (Mar 2012).

At some point they unified them, possibly during this time, because later when Ice Cave portal was added to White Demon, intended to be the godlands one, it also briefly dropped in Abysses before this was fixed by reactivating the White Demon of the Abyss.

Edit: the wiki migrated to RealmEye in 2013 so, if curious, that’s why there’s no history of this on the pages, as all this was prior to then.

#180

Do you like the new “Heroic” Dungeons concept?

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

[Edit: merged this poll and replies from being its own topic onto the PT discussion topic. -Nevov]

#181

Wow 50/50 right now

#182

Good concept but has room for improvement.

#183

Great “idea”, poorly thought out and executed. But I mean, this is the testing server.

#184

I have to agree with you the ideas were not nearly as good as deca could’ve done

#185

I’m on the fence about it.
Generally, not a fan, would prefer epic versions of these dungeons.
But it’s nice to be involved in some raw concept testing /w\

#186

I like it. But all the game could be heroic at this point, meaning no use of pets at all.
Still udl is too easy; both bosses need more hp, more damage per shot and faster shots.

#187

Imo it would be better if pets were allowed, but every shot would inflict pet stasis for like 10 seconds, that way you wouldn’t have to wait forever to regenerate health and you’d still be rewarded for having a high level, but you’d still have to dodge a lot.

With the current risk/reward ratio, I don’t think I would even do them on a backup char.

#188

Pls no I don’t want to go back to spamming my ability and dodging for 10 minutes straight :frowning: