PT: Oryx 3, Bard, and Livestream

[PopoChan]

… I don’t think this is supposed to happen

Well now it’s stuck there forever

[Seelpit]

The key was accidentally left in. Removing it from the list of items given to fresh characters would’ve resulted in players still using them, since they’d just keep one in their vault, so the portal was rendered inenterable instead.

Having a Realm open is likely something that is too difficult to remove. I’m not fully in the know of all this.

[ABearss]

Never mentioned O3 being balanced or easy. Look back at my very first post in this thread and read more carefully.

[Pikaman]

Just some feedback.

• I think the bosses should take longer to activate and close the boss room, maybe about 15 seconds longer so that everyone can get to the room before it closes if someone rushes to it and activates the boss early.
  *Edit: Alternatively, you could teleport everyone to the entrance of the boss room similar to how all the players are teleported in crystal cavern.

• The walls that close off the boss rooms should be much thicker, so that tricksters can’t just teleport out of the arena to avoid dangerous phases. *Edit: The walls being thicker, or the whole hallway before the boss being filled in would also prevent Oryx from teleporting out of the boss room

• To simplify things, 100% of the enemies should be required to be defeated before the gates open. When there are still a few enemies left, some people might get stuck behind the group and not make it to the boss room in time.

[Imasquash]

Currently when leucryx(? Idk how to spell it, maybe look into giving him an easier name lol) changes phases, light --> dark, there is a huge frame lagspike. Often there are still projectiles on the screen when this transition happens. Maybe look into making it a more gradual change with a period of invuln, right now it’s just a little abrupt.

Another note is on the visibility of projectiles, you guys did a great job making them contrast with the background for the most part.

Problems:
oryx’s shield bearers, their weak shots are almost invisible.

A lot of the new shots are very small, meaning players can very easily obscure them, and since this is going to be a full realm activity I see that becoming a big issue. This was kinda showcased when toastrz opened dammah to maybe 100 people, I couldn’t see shit.

Also a side note, maybe in the future use reddit rather than the forums to take feedback. There is a lot of useless comments and stupid bickering bogging down this forum and it is not easy to filter through and find useful information. I think the upvote/downvote system would be very useful in finding out what people actually want rather than having to scroll through 100 comments of back and forth bickering that these threads usually devolve into.

Edit: also please fix the bards range buff, can’t test it while it’s main draw is broken

[Kristian]

I think for the trickster issue the o3’s room should be accessed with a teleporter in the mini boss room like what crystal entity does, or of course just make thicker walls but then slow folks could get left behind.

Edit: add teleporters for the minibosses too, also the expose counter is the least threatening of the 4 counters, maybe make it expose+bleeding?

[Backpedal]

Here are my full thoughts on O3.

At the very start, I think the three runes are flawed.
Needing three rare keys to access one dungeon is a steep requirement.
The statement made by Mrunibro just adds more questions.

There will be a system where using them (But failing to unlock oryx3) will return the rune to you. Otherwise they will be single-use.

What if the rune user nexuses / disconnects, but the rest of the group makes it to O3? What if the rune user dies on the way to O3?

If the rune user leaving makes the run impossible, there will be several trolls as a result (see rune purchasing below). Internet issues will also be on full display. If the rune user is capable of nexusing and the run can continue, discord channels will create an alt account to use the rune and nexus shortly after.

The dev team can’t fix this “return rune” issue. As long as there’s a return mechanism it will be abused. They could possibly require the rune use directly before O3, but that would still allow groups to kill the mini bosses.

“By the looks of it, we will likely continue with that system.”

It is fantastic to see the development team has great foresight about this obvious issue.

In addition there will be hustlers due to the rune rarity (even if the rarity decreases this could still be an issue). Smart individuals will charge for rune use (selling shield rune for 5 decas) because it will be an item in demand. And again, if there is a rune return mechanism these individuals could leave after opening the dungeon.

Ultimately the rune use alone (not even mentioning the extreme difficulty of the dungeon) will force people into discords. Everyone knows this (except the dev team apparently). This will result in tracker issues (like I stated above) where discords appear into realms where only a few enemies are left. Discords are all about speed and generally don’t like clearing realms. This results in a predatory relationship where the warriors come to pillage a village on a routine basis. There’s no way Deca can prevent this either, because discord leaders will send out several loyal players to scout for good locations.

The runes need to go if the dungeon is to be completed outside of discord. End of story. I don’t understand Mrunibro’s mental gymnastics desperately trying to make these three runes work.

Now once we finally get inside the dungeon, we have to deal with the adds. I don’t have too much to say about the adds. I honestly found them to be annoying bullet sponges. However, I will say that the minions capable of teleporting seem to mow down large groups. During several runs they simply teleported into the middle of the large group and massacred a bunch of people before they realized it. For this reason I think the teleport mechanic should be reworked with increased teleport time and very clear indications of where the teleport will occur. In the current state the teleport is impossible to notice in a meatball of players.

Now we get to the mini bosses.

Firstly, the boss wall closing mechanic needs to be reworked. During several runs, as soon as the “way” was open, some cheeky trickster would rush into boss and wall off the rest of the group. In it’s current state the wall is very abusable. A teleporter should be added to prevent this.

Second, players have noticed is that the archbishop is the easiest. This is because the archbishop has mechanics that for all intents and purposes can be ignored. When real runs on the testing sever finally happened, the group reset unless they got the archbishop.

Despite all my screeching, I could never get the group to follow the mechanics of dammah or gem. At this point in the dungeon it becomes apparent that the staggering and countering mechanics are not idiot proof. It seems that the development team has not tried to complete a single public Tomb and they just don’t understand that no amount of furious typing will get a horde of random players to follow even the simplest of directions. Again, this is another instance where Discords will come out on top over regular players.

I also agree with all of Tyii’s points about how gem should stay around longer after teleporting and how the final phase for gem should be toned down. The miasma phase for dammah should also have its damaged reduced.

Honestly, the stagger and counter mechanics are flashy, but they need to go if the devs want to pretend the dungeon can be completed outside of discord. There’s just no way regulars will understand them. Worse, it only takes a couple bad apples to ruin the experience.

Finally we get to Oryx 3. The first thing that becomes clear is that Oryx 3 has been playing lots of Sonic and he moves at the speed of light. The speed needs to be toned down significantly, as Oryx can sit on melees with ease and no amount of fancy footwork can dodge the shots (especially during celestial phase). Again, the stagger and counter mechanics need to go if the devs want to pretend the dungeon can be completed outside of discord. No amount of furious typing could convince people to stop attacking Oryx.

Your expectations for the restraint of realm players (or really any large group of people) is FAR to high. I will bet you that o3 will ALWAYS be staggered.

Again I agree with Tyii that the bomb phase needs to be changed.

Finally, the celestial and desperation phases are simply too hard and need to be toned down in terms of damage.

I really don’t know what to say about the dungeon in summary. You have two groups with two different opinions.

However, based on your statement that it can be completed outside of discord, almost everything needs to be toned down. This current dungeon will never be completed without proper planning ahead of time.

Everyone also seems to keep ignoring the fact that Kiddforce and his team of cronies continue to dream about pet nerfs, which will make this dungeon all the much harder.

In addition, making loot a high or guaranteed drop will also act as a double edged sword, as players will quickly get what they want, but may decide to stop running this tedious dungeon quickly once they get what they came for.

[Imasquash]

What if the vial user nexuses / disconnects, but the rest of the group makes it to MBC? What if the vial user dies on the way to MBC?

Guess you are SoL, endgame dungeons require endgame players. And if you die in O2, you probably weren’t ready for O3. This issue was very easily solved by bringing multiple vials in each run of the halls and will be easily solved again by bringing multiple runes. Also what the hell is this “trolling” with the runes that you think will happen? It’s exactly the same as vials from lost halls, what leads you to think these issues will arise when they haven’t for halls?

[Backpedal]

It’s different than a vial specifically because of what Mrunibro said about a return mechanic.

If the rune returns to you when you nexus, people can abuse that.

Also vials are guaranteed 1 per cult.

[Hzohn]

This update is already amazing.

Chancellor Dammah is an amazing fight. The attacks are satisfying and it all feels fair. I can see this being possible on both melee and ranged. Every time I was hit it felt like it was my fault, because you are able to dodge all of the attacks.

Leucoryx I have no clue what’s going on, but it seems to be the easiest. I haven’t really done this fight to understand what’s going on, so I won’t say much.

Gemsbok is annoying. Being melee is horrible, and soloing gemsbok is akin to torture. He needs to teleport WAY less. Also, why can gemsbok petrify/paralyze you? Almost all of his shots are stacked. It’s basically a death sentence.

O3 starts out great. It feels fair, and you also have to constantly pay attention. Exalted phase is also pretty fun. Having to balance the messengers and dodging the pet stasis shots makes for a really exciting and fun fight, except for the one insta-kill bullshit attack that fills the screen. He goes around the room too many times. This would make more sense if it was akin the the Xolotl survival phase, where when he is done with the crazy attack, you can finish him off. Even then the shots do too much damage and everything stacks. Having this as a recurring attack is just not fair.

Finally, this entire thing seems EXTREMELY pet heavy. During the Dammah fight I was able to get pretty far without a pet because that is a great fight, but I could not possibly imagine doing o3 without a good pet. Every shot does 100+ damage, and my divine pet was keeping me afloat. I found myself focusing more on dodging the pet stasis shots than what Oryx was shooting. That is why it is surprising that as this gets announced, there is a massive nerf for a lot of commonly used feed power. This dungeon requires at least a legendary pet heal, which puts a paywall upon this highly anticipated dungeon.

Besides that, this update is a lot of fun. It’s (usually) a fair and exciting fight. I can’t wait to see where it goes!

Edit: The boss room closes too soon. I literally cannot catch up to the trickster who decides to be an asshole and close the entire dungeon.

[Toastrz]

Just to be clear on the rune returning mechanic, the runes are used in the Wine Cellar after O2. If one or two runes are used but not all three to allow for the portal activation, the runes will then be returned to players. Once the Oryx’s Sanctuary portal is opened, then the runes are consumed for good. No rune usage will actually take place inside the sanctuary dungeon.

[Yamikoto]

I feel like you guys REALLY need to nerf the Rage phase of O3 and Buff every other phase a bit. The Phase is extremely dangerous, can be reactivated by oryx multiple times (Literally, in 1 Oryx run I had that phase 6 times and died at the 6th since i had no hp and mp left and only survived cause of OREO before.). The content is really good, but for a perma death game this is too risky to even try because:

• You lose the rune which is extremely rare
• You lose an 8/8 Char
• You probably use high end pre t14 and t15 gear and lose it.

Just not worth to do it, especially since Void Tops aren’t really that much worse and way easier to get.

[Backpedal]

Ok that clears it up.

However, can I ask why you are doing this? Did Deca mandate these three runes? Do you seriously believe a random group will successfully assemble all three runes?

Like at this point just admit that it’s a discord dungeon. Stop beating around the bush.

[Platformz]

I think it’s healthy to have coordination in a multiplayer game. In fact, relying on coordination makes multiplayer games really fun. BUT Realm is also a rogue-like, which means you have to make hard choices, improve your skills, and risk death. This makes third-party programs very appealing, the risk of death is reduced greatly, and to some point, almost required due to the sheer coordination the game demands at times (LH for example), but-

In a rogue-like, there should be an opportunity to learn what certain enemies or phases do so that they can be mastered eventually. If the content is inaccessible because a player doesn’t use third-party programs, then, at least, as a rogue-like, Realm would have failed, because then you don’t have all the resources to master everything, within the game. So when I said “poor game design” that’s pretty much what I meant.

Though I may have been harsh. It’s very finicky balancing Realm’s content cause it’s both an MMO and a rogue-like. The latter being more focused on improvement via trial and error and personal skill, and the prior is more focused on coordination and communication. There are very few things in common with them. Making it more MMO-esque by relying on third-party programs will take away the rogue-like quality of the game. Cracking down on third-party programs will severely limit Realm’s MMO potential.

[Megayeah]

After having actually gotten a deeper understanding from doing this dungeon, i’ll give a more detailed critique of every part of it.

The regular enemies - Their attacks are excellent, but their HP doesn’t scale enough to keep them from dying in a few seconds to groups, these are peak of endgame enemies, so by all means they should get an HP buff to some extent;

All 3 minibosses: All of them need quite a significant HP buff, why you ask? Well it’s simple, compare them to other endgame bosses, these minibosses are only minibosses by O3 standards, and are actually held up to the standards of most endgame bosses in terms of number and complexity of phases, so it follows they should have comparable HP to survive long enough to make each phase a major threat even in groups right?

Archbishop Leucoryx - He’s way too safespottable and has some attacks that can’t reach people far enough away, especially with bard range buffs, add more deterrents to just standing in a safespot or sniping the boss with long range in certain phases;

Treasurer Gemsbok - He teleports too much for some parts of the fight making him quite annoying to hit with slow melees, make it less frequent, but also, most of his shot patterns don’t hold up to Leucoryx and Dammah difficulty wise, he should have either an extra attack or higher bullet count in his beginning and middle phases;

Dammah - No significant flaws other than: HP cited before, and maybe you should add something extra to the 2nd and 3rd sword portal segments to differentiate them from the first;

O3 - The difficulty is a too inconsistent, needs to be a little bit higher on average, however, as many other people have noted the desperation phase needs a nerf, you know the one (but don’t overnerf it), other than that, the beggining and middle of the fight are a bit easier than they should be, being vastly less difficult than when he goes Exalted, and the very end of it feels a bit anticlimatic because he just dies without any insane final attack that sticks out, overall needs a shot pattern buff except for desperation which is excessive;

TLDR: Buff the HP of enemies and minibosses, buff a few miniboss phases, make Gemsbok teleport less, nerf O3 desperation, buff the shot patterns in most other O3 phases.

It might not seem like it from analyzing the flaws under a microscope like this but EXCELLENT job, Toastrz, Kidd, Uni and everyone else, you did something outstanding with what Unity offers, comparable to the best bullet hell games, i can’t wait for more, just kink out these flaws and it’ll be near perfect.

So what do you think, @Toastrz

[Platformz]

First off, roughly double o3’s base HP. This will tie into the concept of o3 being an endurance-based boss fight which can be completed in unorganized groups, which is what o3 should ultimately be.

I think that’s a brilliant idea. It sounds very reminiscent of The Forgotten King’s fight and Marble Colossus which take a decent amount of time on their own, both are end-game content (though MBC is hardly done unorganized, and Forgotten King is easily cheesed) shatters rework plox

[Platformz]

Again, the stagger and counter mechanics need to go if the devs want to pretend the dungeon can be completed outside of discord. No amount of furious typing could convince people to stop attacking Oryx.

I don’t believe that to be the case, so long as there are clear indications and warnings, like how Forgotten King is usually cheesed by staying out of his range. People can take signals if it means making things easier for themselves, though I believe that rewarding players for avoiding a counter would help players sway, like a temporary pause and opportunity to heal with accompanied by a frustrated response from Oryx.

[Novachiz]

I think with the amount of bullets on screen its pretty hard to read the chat. Maybe this can be fixed if the enemies have chat bubbles?
Also I think a full list of phrases that hint at stagger/counter opportunities would probably be useful for testing (and for learning)

[XCalebrune]

Personally, I love O3! Especially Exalted Oryx, his sprite is awesome, and he actually feels like a very dangerous encounter. I do have some thoughts on the dungeon as a whole though.

I Like how the dungeon is difficult and all, because it makes it difficult to get new tops, and it still feels like an achievement to triumph over O3 even with a big group. However, a quickly rotating true damage shotgun, along with pet stasis spam and true damage lightning aoe seems a bit impossible unless you’re a priest or something, and still crazy good at dodging. KiddForce’s team was even having major struggles on this phase, and they all died the first and second run through.

My suggestion is that you slow oryx’s rotation so players have a chance to survive by rotating, or at least allow the players to slow Oryx so that its at least somewhat possible for someone not in a discord group to complete the dungeon. That or give the players slightly more space to dodge.

Secondly, I think it would help IMMENSELY if you made the boss’s counter text show up a different color and/or get highlighted like guild or whisper text does. This way players would know when counters are happening and/or going to happen, without having to read all of the text the bosses are constantly spamming whilst dodging for their life!

Overall, great work, and thank you so much for reviving this game so many years ago!

[Isavi]

Alright, so having finished the entire fight (unlike most of the know-it-alls in this thread), I’d like to give some feedback on the dungeon as a whole to help make it a better experience when it comes to production.

The Dungeon

I’ll start with the dungeon itself. I love the variety of enemies. None of them feel unbalanced and overall this is where the dungeon shines. The way the dungeon is laid out makes it feel literally just like an upgraded wine cellar and that’s fantastic! It’s not at all what I expected to see going into the public testing but I love it. I especially appreciate how every class seems to have an enemy that they are effective against (such as the red cultist-looking guys who can be stunned and the archbishop minions that can be slowed and paralyzed). That’s very helpful and makes it feel like every class has its use in the dungeon! Overall, great job with the enemy design!

That being said, there are some major issues outside of just the enemy design. There have been many runs where the doors have just completely failed to open despite all enemies being cleared. I’m sure this bug has already been pointed out and will be fixed soon enough. Another thing I have noticed is that the bosses activate too quickly, often leaving many trapped outside of the boss room if someone rushes ahead. This can easily be addressed by either making the bosses activate slower or just make it so the entire last room has to be cleared before the way opens, that way people aren’t forced to rush through a bunch of minions just to get to the boss.

With all of that said, I think that addresses all the issues I have with the mob clearing portion of the dungeon.

The Mini Bosses

The minibosses are a lot of fun and provide a large amount of variety to players, making the dungeon a lot more replayable than other previous endgame dungeons. They all have a wide variety of phases and I can tell a lot of time went into making these. The problem is the balance between the bosses. Having completed all of the bosses, I have noticed a major balance issue with the Archbishop in particular. It’s just so incredibly easy compared to the other two bosses. A melee class can tank almost the entire fight without worry. I think the solution to this one would be to add more silenced, pet stasis, and sick into the fight to make it less tankable because as it currently stands, it feels like a big pushover similar to the bosses in the shatters.

Gemsbok is near perfect. I love the phases and the coin trick phase is really cool and takes actual cooperation among everyone in the dungeon. Overall a really unique fight. I think making it so he stays on the golden platforms for maybe a second longer before teleporting would make the fight feel like a little bit less of a drag but overall I think the fight is excellent and balanced perfectly as a precursor to Oryx 3.

Dammah is hard. I think it’s a good fight, regardless, but in small groups without a purification tome priest it is just a very hard fight. I don’t mind the difficulty, but I think that balancing the fights around Gemsbok would be the ideal path ahead. Dammah has just a few specific phases that are substantially more difficult than the rest of the fight. The sickness phase with the portals that circle around him in an X pattern feels a little too difficult to be balanced with the rest of the fight. Maybe tone back the shot duration of the sickness shots or just the rate of fire of the projectiles and the phase would feel balanced with everything else in the fight. The green portal phase is a little scary, but not actually that difficult since you don’t have to stand in the center with Dammah and you can easily have someone drag the portal away into a corner while everyone else shoots the boss.

So yeah, overall I think there just needs to be some balance touches to these guys. Balancing around the difficulty of the Gemsbok fight would be ideal.

Oryx the Mad God 3

Unlike many others, I feel that this fight is balanced for the most part. Everything except for one particular phase feels balanced appropriately.

I’ll get right into it with that specific phase, the celestial fall phase. I really don’t understand what the goal of this phase is. I don’t want to say that it’s unfair or anything as it can be survived, but it’s substantially more difficult than anything else that exists in the game. It doesn’t feel like a proper desperation move as it only lasts for about 15 or so seconds, and it just feels kind of out of place in a game like Realm of the Mad God. I don’t want to feel like I’m salty about dying or anything, as I have completed the fight, but this phase just feels like it comes down to getting lucky. Even Marble Colossus survival phase feels skill based despite the RNG of the shots flying your way (at least until you get darknessed, then it’s game over).

If the goal is to have Oryx Sanctuary be this dungeon that people rarely run because of the rarity of the runes, having a phase like this where your chance of survival (with good dodging) is about 50% is just poor design. The lightning does 500 armor break, which I actually like. I think that’s excellent and it is the ultimate noob killer in the fight but Oryx’ shotgun is too much and absolutely needs to be toned down in this phase. I think the best way to tone it down would be to either make his shots during this phase move slower so that reacting to his shotgun as he flies by is more manageable, or make Oryx’ circle rotation a little tighter. Move the rotation that Oryx does in 2-3 tiles so that there’s a little more dodging room. I’m perfectly fine with this phase being the hardest in the game, but it currently feels a little overkill to the point that trying to complete this on production without the use of a raiding discord will be virtually impossible. With the way the phase currently works, I expect the only worthwhile strategy in production to be huddling in the corner and having everyone tank with paladins spamming their heal (which is unaffected by sickness) during this phase and I really don’t think that’s what the devs are hoping for when they release new endgame content. It needs to be toned down, and even with this phase made less difficult, Oryx 3 is STILL by far the hardest boss encounter in the game in terms of raw difficulty for the individual player.

I think the rest of the fight is reasonable. I like how the difficulty scales as you progress in the fight. It makes the encounter feel much more epic and makes it very rewarding when you finally complete the fight. The phases towards the end of the fight with the lines of lightning shooting down as Oryx attacks are VERY difficult but not so difficult that they feel like a 50/50 like the celestial fall phase. The lightning lines phases are honestly my favorite phases the fight has to offer and I think the celestial fall phase needs to be balanced accordingly to be more similar in difficulty to Oryx’ last couple phases.

Overall, Oryx 3 is a really cool encounter but the latter half of the fight needs to be rebalanced. When making a fight like this, it needs to always be kept in mind that we’re playing a permadeath game that requires many hours of play time just to get a character maxed to 8/8 so that you can stand a chance again Oryx 3. If there’s a phase that feels like an RNG 50/50 chance of survival, it won’t ever be worth running on production with anything that isn’t just a throwaway character, and I think that’s honestly pretty lame if I can’t use my cool equipment in the game’s hardest dungeon.

I really appreciate how this fight feels more difficult than Marble Colossus and Void Entity but, yet, feels more manageable than the other two bosses mentioned. It really is a good work of balance (other than that one phase) and I really appreciate the dedication to this project thus far. Making a dungeon more soloable than other endgame dungeons, yet much more difficult, is a really impressive feat and I applaud the devs!

Thanks!