PT: Oryx 3, Bard, and Livestream


#165

alright then, I will now beat the bush into mulch with my fists.

no matter how clever any of us think we are individually here on the forum or on reddit while we’re giving out feedback, when players are dumped into the brainless masses on prod they’re only ever capable of two strategies:

  1. brainlessly mow everything down in an invincible death march
  2. use discord to make it the first option viable again

so the inevitable result for O3 is either he folds over like wet paper, or no one ever attempts him outside of a raiding discord, and the first option doesn’t look good for the latest of the “endgame” content. so yes, you’re onto something important here, but barking at deca won’t get you anywhere because they aren’t the source of the problem. it’s the playerbase too ingrained in their tried-and-true twin methods of invincible dps ball and discord-based invincible dps ball. the O3 raiding discords that prematurely tried setting up before O3 was anywhere near completed should illustrate this phenomenon clearly.

you can’t escape the inevitable raiding discords no matter what kind of design anyone tries putting into the dungeon specs, so yelling at deca to fix it on a PT thread won’t get you anywhere even if they did listen to you. any runes or lack thereof are entirely meaningless in respect to whether or not people are going to raiding discord this thing to death. any group of players that can’t perfectly steamroll a dungeon needs their collective hand held via discord. that’s sadly just the way it is these days no matter how much you or I don’t like it.


#166

I believe you have to clear it out to open up the way to the miniboss.


#167

Oryx’s Sanctuary

In general for the dungeon part the biggest problem is rushing. Its very easy for people to rush to the miniboss room and lock a bunch of people out from reaching it.
Most of the minions seem fine, a good balance of not being too hard while still having some risk if you don’t pay attention. One thing I would say is the large green portal stays a bit too long.

Leucoryx

This fight seems like the easiest fight of the three available. It’s a bit too easy and sitting still just shooting at the boss actually allows you to tank through most of the fight. The orbs seem to have very little effect on the actual fight. The beam phase started by it is very easy to dodge and doesn’t deal a lot of damage for a supposedly scary attack.
Two issues:

  • At the start of the fight some shots seem to appear out of thin air without any telegraphing.
  • When Leucoryx switches to his dark phase the game seems to have a very big lag spike.

Gemsbok

I found this fight to be a lot more painful in smaller groups since you are a lot more likely to be targeted by the grenades with daze and unstable while in larger groups the fight was generally pretty easy. I think in small groups the fight was the right difficulty but it could be a little bit more challenging for big groups with maybe some more aoe or piercing damage.

Dammah

This fight is probably the hardest but it seems to be a good a level except for 2 attacks. The first attack with dodging the swords is too easy, even with sick this phase is barely a challenge. The attack where you circling portals shooting out a lot of sick shots is a bit too difficult compared to all the other attacks and could use a bit less bullet density in my opinion.

Oryx 3

I thoroughly enjoy most of the fight and my only suggestions would be:

  • Move more damage from the portal shots to the shots from Oryx himself, the portals are a far bigger threat than anything else for every phase except the desperation move
  • The desperation phase itself should have a slight decrease in bullet density, it should be difficult but it is a bit too much at the moment.

Bard

Bard itself feels quite weak to play as with purely its base stats and bow/robe.

Like previous PT iterations I’m still not a big fan of the two new buffs Bard adds as every buff makes the game easier and it’s already fairly easy at the moment. I see that the range buff got nerfed since old PT and I see people complaining about them, but I hope the buffs don’t get buffed back to their old level. The game really does not need even more buffs that big groups can stack to make themselves even more powerful.

Also want to add: I hope the servers can be a bit more stable as there seem to be quite some crashes and I had some memory leaks when in a very busy USE server.


#168

I think the dungeon is fine for the most part. I love how O3 is different from pretty much all other bosses, as he spams so many bullets but leaves you so much space to dodge so that it’s still fair but breaks apart all groups. On all other bosses in the game, if you have a big enough group, you can pretty much sit still and let the healing get you through for the most part.
While I cannot beat O3 so far even with an Oreo Pally and a max divine pet (farthest I got is the last phase, I believe), I do believe this dungeon should be the hardest one in the game by far. A true test of skill with worthy rewards to those few who can manage.
The only change I want from the dungeon is changing up the Gemsbok fight a bit. The white and gold background, combined with the brightly colored bombs make seeing them straight up impossible. It’s not much of a problem on testing because of divine pets, but it’s still annoying.


#169

Yes but I would like them to just admit this then. They deliberately misled about this in the Q and A.


#170

Given that the runes are visible when used and there’s no risk of loss in using them without all three being present, this allows people to freely use them after O2 dies to essentially “show your hand” to the rest of the party. While the runes are planned to be rare enough drops that Oryx’s Sanctuary is not borderline guaranteed like the Wine Cellar is, they’re no Beach Bums either.

All that being said, your concern is understood and valid, and it’s something we plan to actively watch after release if it really does seem like the disparity between public opens and Discord-organized opens is too great. Discord runs are inherently more organized, and thus dungeons with higher skill ceilings and mechanics are naturally going to reward that kind of coordination, but the entirety of the dungeon is very much doable in a random setting without the aid of voice chat or designated leaders. Not being able to access directly and endlessly with keys already greatly bridges the gap for the effectiveness of public runs vs. raids (and the free nature of realms means people cannot be forcefully excluded either).


#171

Surely, still so rare that it’s not enough to motivate anyone to do O3. Atleast with the current rage phase being way too hard, needing to pray to survive or be knight / pally and have invincibility.

Same goes for the Drops and Accessibility. The drops aren’t NEAR as worth the risk as Voids drops and Void tops are compared to this just minimally worse. Void is way easier, and way easier to access.


#172

I think I ran sanctuary enough times. I like the dungeon a lot! I love the current design Is it weird I liked how bare it was? The “huge tile” patterns made it feel like a grand hall towards the end of one’s journey. I also like the enemies, though they could use some scaling in a group. The cut-off when activating the boss should probably take a bit longer. I could also be in a separate area and be connected through a one-way portal (Like LoD). That way, one could still rush without leaving others behind.

The minibosses themselves are extremely fun and have lovable gimmicks, though I have a few issues with the Treasurer. It’s hard to keep track of the coin while dodging and he also teleports too quickly, can’t react fast enough to land hits on him whenever he’s in range. In the phase where he’s standing still, it’s very difficult to approach him without taking a couple of hits. This is only really an issue if he happens to be on the far side from you. The other bosses are pretty fine. Though I had the least experience with the Chancellor, the bullet patterns are very amusing (my favorite is the one with the knives). With the Archbishop, I notice a lot of players just standing right in front of him, so it seems that he’s ridiculously easy to tank at close range. Maybe an extra bit of heavy-hitting AoE close to him would fix that so players aren’t constantly standing near him. AoE seems to be his gimmick after all. Though this might change once IC/OOC comes out.

As for Oryx, his fight is really fun. I like how we have to juggle our attention between fighting Oryx and those immobile guys, I find that it’s the perfect blend of high-pressure as you have to keep moving, shimmy your way between bullet as you move to the next ones. Also, Oryx is hilariously fast, unlike all his other incarnations, so I was rather surprised. It’s not a huge problem until that one phase where there is very little room to breathe. Every time Oryx circles he brings with him a wall that is nigh-impossible to dodge. If you’re in the outer ring of the room, you’re gonna get sandwiched between those shots and the red pet-stasis shots. I’d honestly slow him down just a smidge and push him closer to the center so that there’s actually space between his bullets.

Overall, I love the Sanctuary, and can’t wait until O3 and the Bard are released!


#173

GBSlayer, I didn’t know that. All I could tell was from the livestream/videos uploaded, and my shitty, 2 fps laptop. Thanks for telling me.


#174

If possible, you should run Sanctuary. It’ll give you a more accurate feel for the dungeon itself.


#175

I think this is because there isn’t one type of player, but wildly diverse player types (because Realm itself allows for us to play (most content) however we feel like). Some enjoy the Discord raiding, others hate it and are more casual. There’s days-old newbs alongside people who have been playing almost a decade. This is maybe Realm’s best aspect, when it puts no barrier to participation other than experience/skill at WASD.

So for anything “endgame” it’s weighing up who they please, and who feels let down. Do they make it teamwork-essential (for the Discorders) or slow soloable (for casuals/loners)? Divine pet required? (so payers get a challenge). Bullet-hell dodging? (hardcore players would enjoy). It can’t possibly do everything, so someone will be left typing a “whyUdothisDeca” rant.

This sums it up exactly for me too. Players who wish a higher octane challenge; simply choose melee and have to get up close and personal! That’s part of the beauty of having different classes in the game. But the fight should be tailored so we don’t feel we have to go in with a 1000HP character and a Divine pet to stand a chance.

I don’t really want it to be the new pinnacle most-difficult content, though I appreciate some players do want that. But O2 was never that. If you could kill a Cube God you stood a chance at O2. And then let dungeons take the “toughest content” label, since they’re “optional” rather than part of the core loop.

Players can get through O2 by being fairly bad and/or cautious (hi), so I hope O3 is something that a random group after some practice and gathered knowledge will also be able to manage. Make it clever/fun not just punishing, and we will enjoy it. ie. make it more complicated than O2, not only more brutal. Things like the Stagger/Counter concepts sound good, I’m seeing in my mind the Parasite Barrels where a good group hits them every time.

The best thing about O1 (vs O2) is how if you can’t do one O1 phase, there will be another one along shortly that you can do, so I’d have liked random/cycling phases to be a part, rather than it being a ABCDEF progression which makes a fight get stale faster, especially since players get into the rut of the “right” way to do a fight = boring.

(speaking here entirely theoretically, haven’t been on testing)

Yes, I think it’s bad that they let players test it using Divines. Pets in testing should have been capped to level 50 (or maybe 70 or 90) pets and the dungeon balanced to that feedback. And then when you actually play it in prod, your pet makes it easier than the ‘rated’ difficulty, so you’re a happy customer.

Getting feedback from someone using a level 100 pet is basically worthless (sorry but that is the 1% and we should be testing how the dungeon is going to play for the 99%). I hope the devs realise this and factor it in.


@Imasquash The blue Summarise button might be useful here, it will collapse many of the posts, leaving only the “best” replies (it’s at the end of the first post), if you don’t wish to scrolling through all of a long topic:


#176

I have played a few hours of Oryx Sanctuaries, I’ve beaten a few using a 90/90 pet in groups and alone, and I think the dungeon is very fun, challenging, and mostly well balanced. The only changes I feel need to be made are mostly small adjustments.

  • For the minions you have to kill before accessing the minibosses, make any that can teleport immune to paralyze. Currently, they can teleport while paralyzed and it feels like they have a pseudo-immunity to it, and it makes it harder to keep track of an enemy that appeared to be temporarily immobilized.

  • For opening sections, its currently too easy for someone to rush through and mess up the dungeon for a group. I suggest that either less enemies should be allowed alive once the doors open (reduce the starting number or require more of them to be killed), players who are in the hallway near the boss should be teleported inside like in the crystal cavern, or the boss should have a higher delay before closing the room after being activated.

  • Something should be added to prevent people from standing outside of the Oryx fight after it closes, I have already seen two people who waited outside the entire fight on a sorcerer, only doing damage when Oryx came near their wall, until Oryx eventually teleported outside of the arena and killed them. (That also may be a bug, Oryx can teleport outside of the arena into the hallway during his final phase when he has his short ranged teleport)

  • For when Oryx is doing a counter, it should be more obvious that he is giving people a debuff because they kept shooting him. Currently, almost every person I have been with has just kept shooting him without noticing he was debuffing us afterward. I suggest additional dialogue is added after enough consecutive counters (like Xolotl the Lightning God has when people fail to use his lightning to kill him after surviving a survival phase), or an animation and particle effect/shot are added when the debuff is applied (something like when Daichi the Fallen petrifies players)

  • During Oryx’s phase when he says “Fleeing is futile!” and moves in a circle going toward the nearest player, I think there should be a visual indicator that he is about to charge in addition to his dialog (maybe flashing red or something) because currently anyone nearby risks getting sat on very quickly and killed.

  • Oryx’s “Fall before my celestial strength” phase should be made a little easier (not too much), maybe make the bullets do less damage but have him circle an extra time or two. The phase should also have the portals stop shooting their tentacles toward the middle sooner so that melees can hit Oryx no matter which side they were dodging on, currently its too easy to miss most of the stagger by not being able to cross the tentacles to get closer to oryx.

  • An option to show text bubbles for only enemies would be good for this dungeon since all of the phases and the towers give information through taunts, but the taunts can be hard to see without text bubbles on and when text bubbles are on other players talking can make it hard to dodge (especially since some players purposely spam from time to time)

  • Oryx’s base health for when there is only 2-3 people feels a little too high, if the dungeon is meant for players to actually be able to run it through the run without coordination on discord, it should be lowered a little (not too much) so that smaller groups don’t have to spend too long relative to larger groups. I think this part is especially important because as the hardest fight in the game, a random group of 50 players from a realm will likely fall to only 5 after a difficult miniboss followed by many hard phases of a boss, and players will probably be more inclined to nexus when they have their loot from Janus, the stone guardians, Oryx 1, Oryx 2, and anything that was fought right before the realm closed to avoid losing any valuable items before getting a chance to use them. The amount of health he has in larger groups is fine, so if his base health is lowered the hp scaling should be increased to keep it similar to amounts he has now in bigger crowds.

Other than those changes, I am extremely happy with the dungeon. I especially love the tiles leading up to the miniboss and how they change color in the final section before each boss.

Edit: Another change I forgot to suggest was when Oryx has the shots that split into fragments which are marked by the circles on the floor (He says “Loathsome worms! The cosmos shall rain my wrath down upon you!”), the circles should stay longer so that they are there until the shots appear. They currently disappear at the start of the animation for the bullets appearing and it feels a little delayed from what the indicator shows, and if you are walking across the arena it looks too much like the bullets just appear out of nowhere.


#177

Bard
Can the bard just function as a mana paladin? By this I mean it provides an instant MP burst, gives energized (mana healing), and increases the max mana of the players it affects? Obviously as this is much more powerful than paladin’s HP healing it should still have its cooldown, but Inspire is just such a massive problem. If inspired applied only to the bard it would be totally fine too (with the above effects as well if you wish), but currently this ability is just way too powerful. No application radius or increase will really make it balanced unless it is so small that it benefits nobody, at which point it should just be removed in favor of something else (this something else being provided above). Looking at the weapons list under the current increase, we have:

Tiered swords -> Sword of the Colossus

Colossus sword is so powerful not just because of its damage, but because of its range. This mitigates the melees greatest weakness almost completely, but now it is not a rare lost halls item, but an ability which can be provided at every stage of the game with every item. This also makes swords like the Crystal and Ancient Stone swords even more useless.

Sword of the Colossus -> Tiered Dagger

Do I have to explain this…?

Tiered Dagger -> 7 Range , Bow of the Void / Deathless Crossbow -> 7 Range , Doom Bow - 8.8 range

While these are different weapon classes so this may appear confusing at first, it is because they have the same range (and therefore the same point). 5.6 was already a relatively comfortable range. You are still vulnerable to shots, but usually far fewer than the melee for example, and even much safer than the shorter range options such as the Dirk of Cronus (cronus already has 3 better daggers and t14 may be the fourth… can you please buff it? This is not a joke, it’s an event white) and the Etherite Dagger (which will now have an incredibly comfortable range of 4.8 under Inspire as well).
However, a range of 7? The point of shorter range swapouts is for more risk in exchange for damage, but this is just completely erased from the picture with the bard. A range of 7 (which is a doom bow for those who are unfamiliar) allows for you to be in a minuscule amount of danger at almost every point in all fights. For classes that already have the benefit of stealth (rogue), deception (trickster), incredibly safe damage through poison (assassin), crowd control to hinder and prevent enemies from reaching the group or themselves (archer/huntress), offering this range with no downside makes them creep on the definition of dungeon balance, and as anti range is a seldom implemented game mechanic safety will become a major problem in both game design and class composition over time. Allowing the heavies to become leathers and the leathers to approach staves is not acceptable. Doom bow is effectively a wand, meaning that this swapout will now allow for the bow classes to almost never be in any real form of danger.

Katanas 4.75 -> 6

This may not be quite as meaningful as the above boosts, but the katanas still follow the general theme outlined above.

Staves & Wands - As both of these reach over 10 tiles there is not that great of a difference between them, but need we forget that in the old Lair of Draconis the St. Abrahams wand (which has less range than both staff and wand under Inspire) could skip black entirely?

This kind of power, especially under the fullscreen of exalt depending on what class is being discussed (see the previous weapons) is completely unacceptable for any class to wield under any condition. While I understand this PT is more oriented around o3, I am very disappointed to see Inspire as anything besides a self buff or just outright removed from the game (I feel the previous may be more fair given that it is a robe class after all), I thought after PT 1 you would learn but here we are again. Bumping the range down, regardless of the extent it is done, will still be overpowered unless it is brought to a level that is insignificant, making the class useless in many cases. Please consider the suggestions I left at the start of this post as I feel they are the best direction to take this class in, but at the very least do NOT let a range buff to others make it into production.

Oryx 3
I enjoy the mini bosses greatly, nice work on them! I do feel Gemsbok could have more powerful attacking phases and less movement as I found the first half of the fight to not only miss almost all challenge but just generally feel annoying due to the quantity of teleports, luckily it picked up as the fight progresses but it takes too long for it to reach that point, possible damage but more difficult damage is the ideal scenario to come out of changing him (for me). No criticisms for the other two personally. I do have a small complaint about the enemies, I feel like you should have to kill them all to continue because currently the group (or a single person) could rush ahead and greatly complicate things by forcing you to take on enemies from the previous area as well as the current one or get locked out from the ability to complete the dungeon, and when the enemies stack up they start to get very overwhelming if from all directions. This could either be done through better placement of the enemies (why are so many just sitting at the end of the areas?) in addition to the requirement of killing them all or just one could be picked, both are fine by me as long as traveling through the gate as you are instructed does not result in being swarmed by lethal enemies.

Finally, NERF THE DESPERATION PHASE. It ruins the progression of the fight and it is just overall absurdly difficult. While this may take more work than you would want to do, if you could elevate the difficulty of the fight at all points and then nerf that one it would seem to address what me and the other players I have been seeing think should be done for the fight. This adds a greater overall feeling / experience for the battle and stops what is an honestly unfair phase in desperation.


#178

I like the idea, but with this, If you had enough bards, you can have them easily permanently spamming their abilities every second, and allowing others to do the same with free infinite mana regen.


#179

Currently it has a 6s cooldown I believe (forgot if it was 7, I am very tired at the moment), this should not change as mana is obviously a more valuable stat than health so it should not be spammable like the paladin’s ability. However, I do see that the point could still have some truth to it, so maybe a very low burst amount or just removing it entirely could be good (however with this you have to consider how strong the class will be with its underwhelming stats and, assuming it went the direction of my post, no absurd range buff anymore)


#180

Strongly agree with that. After fighting Oryx 3 a couple times, this became the main issue for me as well.


#181

Sheep are really good for lavawalking
In a big realm of the full 85, I’ve seen an average of 20 people. Those people are almost all yellow/white star. A few will inevitably dc, with how long it takes. A few don’t want to waste time/die. That leaves 10


#182

Due to its frequency Colo sword will see no benefit from the inspire buff. I honestly don’t like the buff because it is only useful on daggers melees and katanas, I think id rather see the inspire buff increase shot velocity than range.


#183

Been on testing for a bit today and while I haven’t been able to solo O3 yet due to the rage phase I still think it’s fine.

The problem I’ve been having is while soloing, the mini-bosses often times won’t open the next room despite killing every enemy I possibly can. My first thought was the teleporting enemies maybe glitching outside the room but I have no idea.

Hasn’t happened with others yet but it’s really ruining my solo attempts, have some video of it too.


#184

Actually, O3 functions quite a bit like O1! WHICH YOU’D"VE KNOWN HAD YOU GONE ON TESTING, WRYYYYY
He picks a specific order of attacks to do - I believe it’s usually 3? - and then does each of them.
For instance, he might pick “Smashing Ground” (throwing lotsa bombs) - “Mine Mayhem” (summons those red artifacts) - and “Tornado Spin” (slowly circling in place while firing multiple rotating attacks). I’m not sure if that’s an existing combination, since they’re all set, but really, the only set parts of the fight are:

  • Introduction
  • Exalted transition
  • Desperation move

Also, remember how I lived the third DM during the stream? I was using a Legendary, and only used 2 health pots. Granted, there was a priest to restore my health a couple times, but still.