PT: Oryx 3, Bard, and Livestream

#245

Made a ~20 minute video discussing what I like and don’t like about the dungeon, with gameplay to demonstrate my points. I go into more detail in my video, but I’ll list my main issues here so that they can be more easily seen.

  1. Dungeon Progression: This is the biggest issue with the dungeon overall. Dragging minions to deal with them safely leads to a softlock? Boss doors close almost instantly? No telegraphing to the player on how these elements work? These mechanics are really unfair and not at all in the spirit of Oryx’s Castle/Chamber/Wine Cellar. The ability to hop walls into and out of boss rooms also falls into this category – it should definitely just work like the reworked cemetery with hallways that teleport and aren’t walkable after closing. I’ll be hugely disappointed if this stuff isn’t changed before this reaches prod.

  2. Difficulty Curve: This is a boss-specific issue. Most of the bosses in here have phases that vary wildly in difficulty. Most of the phases on all bosses are pretty easily dealt with, but they each have one or two that are way harder than the rest. I’d strongly recommend that the difficulty be evened out so that the easier phases more closely match the harder ones, while keeping their respective identities.

  3. Survival Orientation: Mainly a complaint with Oryx, but it applies to Dammah as well. The setup of phases timing out felt like it was pushing me to just dodge during the actual fight and get my hits in between phases, since there was a fairly large opportunity between them. I suggest instead making phases damage-based like Oryx 2, and reducing the downtime between them in order to encourage players to actually engage with the boss instead of winning a battle of attrition.

  4. Group Dynamics: Smallest issue on this list, but still worth a mention. This dungeon felt like it was designed for a group of 10 people. Gemsbok’s exceptionally fast teleportation is the most obvious example of this, but there’s also stuff like the green portals bearing down on the nearest player in the Dammah fight where it’s hard on your own but not a big issue with 3+ people. It was also strange when I ended up trying to solo O3 on a rogue – it was like he turned into a Wildshadow boss with how little he did against a cloaked rogue (for the most part). It felt like the bosses were made with the assumption that no one would ever try to solo with a rogue or trickster, so that wasn’t a design consideration. I also heard that it has exponential hp scaling which is nice in terms of discouraging huge discord raids, but it really makes it feel as though you’re being compressed from both sides into bringing a very specific group in order to run the dungeon.

In terms of positive stuff, I have a lot of specific phases that I like, and the overall structure of the dungeon really works for me, provided the issues I listed in point 1 are fixed. I quite like the minion design as well – they all have unique patterns and personality, and are (refreshingly) not bullet sponges. The dungeon overall has a lot of character and I like the spritework for the environment/characters. There’s also a prevailing sense of fairness in the dungeon – it’s hard, but it doesn’t have any insta-pops that other lategame dungeons rely on – Shatters, Lost Halls, Nest, Caverns, etc.

Overall I really liked this dungeon. All the major flaws are pretty easily fixed and it doesn’t have any underlying inherent design flaws holding it back. Looking forward to trying this again on prod, especially since I wasn’t able to put in enough time to actually complete an O3 fight due to finals week taking priority.

The video I referred to at the beginning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ePO2A3TBhE

P.S. This isn’t feedback regarding the content itself per se, but I wish there was a way to open portals to specific bosses for testing purposes. Every reset took a really long time to run back due to the extended minion sections/random midbosses, and I eventually gave up on doing anything other than medium group runs for that reason. I would have appreciated the ability to test more thoroughly for small groups/solo purposes, but I gave up on that due to time constraints and tedium.

#246

I know the description refers to the knight as he, I was saying it could be changed to “they” because it would make more sense

#247

Hmmmmmm what if Bard was deliberately hampered by having a default range % nerf (lifetime projectile nerf) to make their (non-Inspired) bow projectiles only travel as far as a katana/dagger…? I mean thematically they aren’t an archer so would fit to be worse at firing bows.

And then with Inspire they get that :muscle: bigger range. So the class would play like a katana-bow hybrid when Inspire was off/on, with fragile due to robe, so you actually DO need to Inspire yourself unless you are happy to be super close range on a robe.

But we’re probably going too far back to the drawing board aren’t we with things like this. Though I love these fantasy class discussions!

Somewhat related:

#248

I feel like ninja could have been a good “they” class, but if you think about it, most classes could be gender fluid with skins. Representation of the non-binary community (probably?) wasn’t as big of a deal in 2013, when ninja was added, and samurai was a traditionally masculine word.

#249

I know I may be inputting late on this, but as I was re-reviewing the stream for a clip I needed I couldn’t help but notice how the new new tops powercreep on a ton of existing items, changing them from “situational” to “put in the bin once you have o3 tops”, and the #1 case of this I noticed is in the Armor of Nil. While item strength is a great motivation to participate in a dungeon, removing the entire purpose of swapouts or specific items should not be (and by extension it greatly limits the amount of content players want to complete as they will have less items to go for overall and never have to make choices in what they use, when, and why). Just because o3 has exclusivity does not justify some of the new tops at their current power level (especially when their rates are highly favorable), because in the long term people are going to get their hands on these items, and with the rates that will likely be put out, in abundance. This is not to say that o3 should not be rewarding because it absolutely should for the effort required, but considering that it will also likely drop very powerful UTs (untiereds were mentioned in the stream not only for all minibosses but o3 himself) in addition to this myriad of new tops I think some considerations about these items should be made. For my primary example I will be pointing to the Nil referenced earlier.

Armor of Nil
+24 DEF
-4 SPD

Leviathan Armor
+21 DEF
+7 DEX

In what universe do you not wear the leviathan at all times? O3 drops should not be powercreeping what is currently the most endgame dungeon, especially not when they are just a tiered item. Not only does Nil give up 4 speed which is a loss in terms of tank technically due to a minus in potential to dodge, but it also misses an entire 7 DEX, almost the equivalent of an exa dex, just for 3 defense. You already balanced some of the halls armors around the tiered item buffs, so what are you going to do about the even greater problem presented by o3 tops?

#250

It’s showing up the limitations of adding more and more items without making the sidewards step expanding into entirely new types of armour/weapons. Because we cannot possibly have more than a few “best” swapouts for a class, necessarily everything else becomes second-rate.

Imagine we had stuck with only leathers and heavy, without robes. The variety of loot would be so much worse. The opposite/converse is true, the game is focusing too much on giving us what we’ve already got.

#251

They actually balanced it, if I remember correctly it used to +21 def which would be… yeah. In the universe where you would like to tank, instead of have dps. UTs weren’t made to be used all the times (though Kabam seemed to think so). Tiered items were always meant to be superior overall, and UT items weren’t meant to be niched swapouts. That said, I do think some changes are in order.

#252

Someone had to be that guy

referring to myself not you btw

#253

*were

#254

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