May 6th Design Notes: Arena at the Edge of Time: CARNAX


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May 6th Design Notes: Arena at the Edge of Time: CARNAX

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5/7/2023 1:18:02

Laeon val Observis
Member

quote:

Saturday, May 6, 2023
Arena at the Edge of Time: CARNAX
Hey there, heroes!

It all began when a giant monster was reawakened... The final challenge in the Crossroads board at the Arena at the Edge of Time has arrived!

Face off against the Great Scourge, Carnax, brought forth once more by the evil wizard Makkisar!
Seems like a group of heroes has arrived before you, though...

Defeat Carnax to earn yourself one of two new capes, or a cosmetic weapon, or take on Carnax alone without help in the Extreme battle to lay claim to the cosmetic Blade of Carnax!

Head over to the Inn at the Edge of Time if you think you have what it takes to stop Carnax's rampage!

Also this week, some bug fixes and adjustments!

Fixed an issue where Pirate's Lime-Aid would not behave itself.

Fixed an issue where Ninja's Walk Within Shadows would not properly purge effects.

The LUK stat now additionally increases BPD Defenses by LUK/20.

Color Custom Ninja has been added as a customization option for Ninja! Other customization options for Ninja have been updated as well.

As a result of this, Color Custom Ninja will now load Ninja armor.

May's seasonal specials have arrived! First up, we have the return of the Midnight Wish weapons, available for free in the seasonal shop!

To go with them, we have the cosmetic Midnight Grace cape and Midnight Blessing helm, available for 300 DCs each!

We also have May 4th items returning for one week only! Check them out before they leave!

Finally, a crown and color-custom crown have been added to the Cosmetics shop in Cysero's Superstore of Savings!

Phew! That's all we have for now. See you again next week!

And that's all for this week!

AQW

Post #: 1

5/7/2023 3:16:37

TFS
Helpful!

I liked this release a lot! Extreme Carnax head is way too easy though lol

Post #: 2

5/7/2023 12:27:57

Korriban Gaming
Member

I enjoyed the release even though it was extremely tedious

AQW

Post #: 3

5/8/2023 0:35:41

DragonKeeper
Member

I defeated regular Carnax with pirate and doomknight. It was good...

Post #: 4

5/8/2023 17:22:21

Baron Dante
Member

Since I for once actually took the time to do the fight, I might as well throw in some thoughts on it.

I did really like the fight as a whole, from the ramping anticipation from going from battle to the other. It really delivers on the feeling of Carnax being this huge threat that you can't take down in one go, similar to something like SMUDD once was.

That said, I think the difficulty scaling between the enemies is a bit questionable.

The arms being the hardest part of the fight feels anti-climactic as a whole. It's just my assumption, but I guess the logic would be that you wanted to frontload the difficulty because of the length of the fight, and you wouldn't want players to get completely destroyed by the head before they can even figure out what it is they're doing.

If that's the case, I feel like the fight having sort of "checkpoints" in Normal via the potion dispenser bots is good enough for that purpose. For Extreme, I think it's fair to assume that the player already has an understanding of the fight, so such a safety net isn't needed. So basically, I think that the head should be buffed to deliver on a good, satisfying fight at the end.

Meanwhile, Makkinax is not exactly great. I get that he's supposed to be sort of a mid-boss, sort of a breather, but for that, he feels like he's too bulky. Given how head is weak to elements, Makkinax ends up being relatively almost as bulky, assuming you're prepared for weapon swapping etc. I think it would make sense that if the head was buffed, Makkinax should take a hit in exchange, to make it easier to get past him. Or, if he's not meant to be a breather, well, he should probably have a bit more to him than big health.

I don't have an issue with the two first enemies in the quest or anything, but I'm curious as to why they're there? Is it just so we can actually see the enemies do things since they're so puny in comparison to the arms?

Again, I want to stress the fact that I think this is a pretty good challenge as is, but that it has a few sticking points, and being who I am, nitpicking is the only thing I know how to do.

AQW

Epic

Post #: 5

5/8/2023 17:32:24

Glais
Member

Glad to see Carnax show up even if I know longer have any idea how to play the game well enough to beat these things lol.

_____________________________

Post #: 6

5/8/2023 21:31:01

TFS
Helpful!

Agreed with Dante. The mounting tension as you progress through the quest is what I like best about this release, and making Carnax's head the most difficult fight in addition to the most thematically exciting one would capitalize on that.
As it is the player doesn't really have a loss condition outside of an extremely telegraphed nuke; most of Carnax's attacks do very little damage and give him individually weak defensive effects (though they can add up). Since most modern classes have innate healing skills rather than relying on limited potions/etc, long-term sustain vs a static threat isn't very difficult. Some sort of soft timer (stacking -END/-All, MP burn, etc) would probably have helped to increase the fight's difficulty while retaining its identity.
(Nerfing the arms so that the head is the proper climax would also accomplish this, but that's no fun.)

Makkinax is also just a big HP sack who doesn't do much except bloat out the runtime. While having a mini-boss here is good for the quest's pacing and directly translating the AQ mechanic is a neat detail, he isn't very engaging and probably contributes to the feeling of tedium that's been mentioned above. The quest would probably have been better if Makkinax was more engaging (difficult) in some way and/or just less fat.

quote:

I don't have an issue with the two first enemies in the quest or anything, but I'm curious as to why they're there? Is it just so we can actually see the enemies do things since they're so puny in comparison to the arms?

it's for atmosphere smh you're crashing an ongoing war and fighting off increasingly tough enemies that's why they're in the arms fight too

< Message edited by TFS -- 5/9/2023 1:51:41 >

Post #: 7

5/9/2023 1:54:01

Cryomancer
Member

Regarding the gauntlet, the overall difficulty of the gauntlet isn't the issue. The issue is that the head feels a bit tedious - it has too much health and doesn't pose enough of a threat. 45k HP on Carnax isn't that much of an issue on paper considering that he has elemental weaknesses, but the reactive resistance that Carnax gets and the -Crit/Boost which Carnax inflicts in phase 2 is excessive - the latter debuff has near permanent uptime and effectively cuts the player's damage output by around half, which causes the fight to drag on for longer than necessary.

I think the best way to improve the fight against the head would be to decrease the amount of health the player will have to get through (perhaps the head could transition into the final phase at 20% health instead of 5%, and perhaps the -Crit/Boost debuff could also be toned down) whilst increasing either the damage that the head does or adding some sort of soft timer to the fight as TFS suggested above (perhaps the Psionic Link debuffs could slowly grow stronger with time, as aside from the STR/DEX/INT/CHA/LUK debuff, they're fairly inconsequential right now) to make Carnax more threatening offensively and less tedious.

That being said, if the head is to be buffed, then I think the arms and Makkinax could both use a nerf to maintain the current difficulty of the gauntlet, as it is already quite difficult even without any buffs - perhaps the damage of the arms could be reduced and Makkinax could have his All resistance removed to make him less tanky?

< Message edited by Cryomancer -- 5/9/2023 2:43:26 >

Post #: 8

5/9/2023 3:57:29

TFS
Helpful!

quote:

The issue is that the head feels a bit tedious - it has too much health

it is literally carnax

He also isn't even that bulky. (45610 x 0.95) / 1.8 is only about 24,000 effective HP - on a boss that doesn't (really) heal. That's less than most duos and effectively less than bosses like Illumina or Darkon or Fluffytog with their (widely beloved and extremely interactive) immutable defensive mechanics.

quote:

but the reactive resistance that Carnax gets

This seems like a very silly complaint considering he starts at -80 resistance to 4 different elements and each one resets after 5 turns.
If you simply must spam 12 hits per turn every turn then use a big boy weapon.

quote:

-Crit/Boost which Carnax inflicts in phase 2 is excessive

This also seems silly to me because this move is always used the turn right after the nuke. It's hard NOT to shield it.

< Message edited by TFS -- 5/9/2023 4:14:12 >

Post #: 9

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