Thoughts on Chaos Lord inn challenges (Full Version)

All Forums >> [Artix Entertainment Games] >> [DragonFable] >> DragonFable General Discussion



Message

The ErosionSeeker -> Thoughts on Chaos Lord inn challenges (8/21/2022 22:35:06)

I think more than a couple of people agree that the Lords of Chaos board is kind of dragging on. It's currently the longest unfilled board, and seems to have a lot of baggage:

Most of the rewards are cosmetic
Part of the reason why the Inn is interesting is to see new items that affect the gear meta. 7 of the 11 released so far have been purely cosmetic, 2 were statted items (of which only Forced Reflection was unique at the time, Staff of Inversion was already outclassed by UBLoD or probably even Soulforged Scythe), one on-attack special weapon, and one unique, albeit not very strong (Iadoa's trinket). Not everything new has to be best in slot, but even statted items have art. There's design space for weapon specials (not everything has to be -res like Ice Scythe or 20% on attack button), even things like new DoTs would be different enough to be interesting. Although weapon specials have kind of centralized around Ice Scythe and occasionally Twilly/4oJ, there are still a lot of straightforward useful kinds of specials that can be made.

The bosses aren't very challenging because they're solos
Excluding the first three challenges, every fight afterwards was a single. Singles just aren't difficult to beat unless they have overloaded skill sets like Pandora EX. The only CL out so far that even comes close is Wolfwing, who just has big numbers instead of a threatening mechanic. Even though they may have gimmicks (Discordia, Iadoa), those gimmicks aren't very challenging. This came up for The Corrupted Seven, where a lot of the fights were also very artsy and had new mechanics, but the mechanics don't feel very impactful because the fights weren't difficult.

The final two Chaos Lords are Alteon and the Eternal Dragon of Time (the player). The Alteon fight is fairly simple in AQW (big damage + don't hit him when he's charging his nuke), while the EDoT doesn't have any associated fight. Even if that one is a fight with the EDoT, that's another singular fight with a dragon. A thing I like bringing up is that there are 4 player Chaos Lord classes (Berserker, Thief, Mystic, Cleric), this is an incredibly good opportunity to have another Inn quad, where the pairing is justified and opens up a lot of interesting design space simply by having 4 monsters with different attack rotations, the same way Ice and Dragons was a complex fight even though each individual monster doesn't need to have that many different mechanics.



Korriban Gaming -> RE: Thoughts on Chaos Lord inn challenges (8/22/2022 0:21:51)

Personally I like the LoC board. While you are right in the sense that they aren't very challenging compared to what we have recently, their mechanics are certainly interesting. They also don't have the current problem of just big numbers (maybe apart from Wolfwing and Lionfang). I feel like that's what makes them fun for me. If you don't understand the mechanics, you will still get destroyed but once you understand them, they become super manageable and aren't dependent on stacking high numbers.

With regards to the rewards I do agree that it would be nice to see items other than cosmetics even if they aren't BiS.



Rubioalto -> RE: Thoughts on Chaos Lord inn challenges (8/24/2022 1:03:42)

I would definitely love to see another quad fight on the Hero/EDoT. Especially since it'd be fitting with the 4 different classes theme. I also hope it doesn't give a cosmetic.



Laeon val Observis -> RE: Thoughts on Chaos Lord inn challenges (8/24/2022 2:05:33)

While I do see that most of the good things here have already been said, OP's craving for "tough" battles is pretty much putting the cart before the horse. These are just the Lords. We have yet to fight the Champion himself (apart from translating his mechanics in AQW to here, I won't be surprised if he takes a page out of Chaos Avenger. After all, the latter AQW class is a parallel existence of the AQW hero who decided to trophy the Chaos Amulet and use Drakath's power as his own). In the board's current state, regardless of claims to the simplicity of their mechanics, Kitsune, Wolfwing, and Lionfang are already "men from the boys" enough to potentially wall players from the inevitable Champion fight. And no matter how much I look at it, I see no value to having to multi-enemy fight EDoT. Just by looking at the DOT class, it can already do aspects of the 4 AQW base classes. A bit of evasion courtesy of its RNG blind (Rogue), long-ranged capabilities (Mage), relevant healing factor (Healer), and reliance to tanking and non-crits (Warrior). And there's no stopping to try to add the Chaos Slayer's iconic Courageous>Paragon troll effects. And speaking of Chaos Slayer having only one skillset but four skins, I've always interpreted that as more of the shock and awe value of appearances to terrorize the AQW-verse's people that the hero that they put their hopes on fell under the wiles of Drakath.



Rubioalto -> RE: Thoughts on Chaos Lord inn challenges (8/24/2022 20:25:56)

quote:

I see no value to having to multi-enemy fight EDoT. Just by looking at the DOT class, it can already do aspects of the 4 AQW base classes.


To be fair, it's not the EDoT we're going to fight, it's the Chaos Lord. The EDoT would probably be a separate fight unrelated to the Chaos Lords.



Laeon val Observis -> RE: Thoughts on Chaos Lord inn challenges (8/24/2022 20:57:38)

^Uhh... by the time Drakath offed the AQW hero, they were already recognized as both LoC and EDoT.



Cryomancer -> RE: Thoughts on Chaos Lord inn challenges (8/25/2022 11:55:28)

I think Lords of Chaos is probably one of my least favorite boards in the Inn, if not outright my least favorite board.

Notwithstanding the fact that this board is 13 fights featuring characters from an entirely different game with not even the slightest impact towards DragonFable's story or lore, the fights themselves are for the most part not particularly memorable.

Whilst the low difficulty of these fights are a problem with these fights, the biggest issue by far with these fights on a mechanical level is the fact that the mechanics used for the Chaos Lords aren't particularly engaging, whether they be due to the fact that the mechanics in the original fight in AQW were overly simple, fundamentally flawed, or that they didn't translate well to DragonFable's combat. With the exception of the phase changes in Kitsune's fight (and there's a reason why it is probably the most well-received fight of them all), none of the fights have rotations or mechanics that can be manipulated in any meaningful manner (an attempt was made with Chaotic Dragonbond, but the fact that the last boss standing receives 150 MPM regardless of which boss is defeated first makes the decision of which boss to beat first too heavily weighted in the direction of beating Vath first to be meaningful). Similarly, in order to make a good single fight, the boss' mechanics should be significantly more complex than the average Inn boss to make up for the lack of a second boss - and in this case, all of the Chaos Lords at most have the complexity of one boss in a standard duo fight, if even that.

Furthermore, the simplicity of the Chaos Lords' design coupled with defensive mechanics in several of the fights causes many of the fights to greatly wear out their welcome despite being not that long in the grand scheme of things. I don't think Xang needed what is effectively 20k HP despite hitting like a wet noodle, neither did Stalagbite need 10k HP and permanent 190 MPM and nor did Khassanda need 19k HP and intermittent damage immunity - and this is largely because as I stated before, some of the Chaos Lords' mechanics, either just doesn't translate that well to DragonFable's combat such as Khassanda gaining damage immunity and reflect, or were flawed to begin with in the original AQW fight, such Xang healing both the player and the enemy, which merely extends the fight without making it more engaging.

The aforementioned issue of AQW mechanics not translating well to DragonFable is a reason why I would personally prefer not to have a Champion Drakath fight in the Inn at all - as whilst Champion Drakath's ability to nuke the player every time he loses 10% of his HP may not be that much of an issue with AQW's combat system, the fact that skill cooldowns in DragonFable are much longer means that players will have to stall for several turns for the cooldowns to their defensive skills every time Drakath gets close to losing an extra 10% of his HP, as not doing so would potentially have game-ending consequences. Even if this nuke was used every time Drakath lost 20 or 25% of his health, the fight would likely still wear out its welcome.



ergotth -> RE: Thoughts on Chaos Lord inn challenges (8/29/2022 3:02:55)

Isn't the EDoT literally chilling outside the Inn? I agree with the idea of fighting the 4 versions of Chaos Slayer classes, maybe as a multi fight or as a swapping fight like those Super Sentai Togs, if not a constant change like Iadoa's phases would be fun too.

Personaly, if I were to make a challenge with the four chaoslords, I would make it inspired by that mind-controlled tog, they would be grouped together and you can chose which one to attack, but once one is killed, the others gain a buff, so it would be a "pick your poison" fight, where the order of killing the many "parts" of a whole could be the game-changing mechanic for each player. Just a thought. But overall they would be a single entity with one HP pool.


@Cryomancer
basicaly... AQWorlds isn't that good at boss-balancing and Dragonfable is the other-way-round so better avoid it xD
But you forgot one fundamental thing here: DF is not BOUND to AQW. They can make their own mechanics, see Iadoa and Discordia* as examples, in AQW they lack any memorable mechanic whatsoever, with Iadoa simply petrifying you less you fight with a specific item. So in DF verly went completely bonkers with those bosses and gave us some fun, engaging and really well-planned mechanics to keep us on our toes. So sure their original mechanics would suck in DF, so thats why we can trust the DF team to come up with something that will NOT suck.

*also, fair reminder he is a "fake Chaoslord" in AQWorlds, getting the absolutely short end of the stick in that narrative and instead being a puppet of the "real chaoslord", Kimberly, a direct AQW Avatar of the lead singer of one-eyed Doll, Kimberly Freeman. However... she's a real person, for AE to keep using her image, they would need her permission, a hassle that isn't really worth the trouble when you already have the escapegoat chaoslord as a better replacement. Besides, design-wise Discordia is a much better chaoslord too, be either a Phantom of the Opera, rose-wielding maestro or a strict Daft Punk Prima Donna!



Roxas45 -> RE: Thoughts on Chaos Lord inn challenges (8/30/2022 1:24:25)

I'll be honest... I wish that there were "regular" challenges alongside the Inn challenges for the Chaos Lords alone.
Some of the most interesting characters from AQW, in DF's (IMO superior) art style and you get bodied 2 or 3 turns in. XP

I do like the concept though - I really do. I'm looking forward to how they're going to implement the 13th CL (which, when I checked last, had yet to happen), and Drakath.
I do NOT like the fighting in the inns nearly as much, if I'm going to be honest.
I'm just not the kind of player that goes for min/max equipment, and it DOES affect my opinion.

Story wise...
I mean.
Yes, we have non DF universe stuff happening, but then again...
The Inn is SUPPOSED to be the anomaly, isnt it?
That being said, the chaos lords make some sense in being added here - since they're SO important to the AQW story.
Drakon... eh. Maybe because I haven't progressed in the story beyond a point, but I see his addition as... Odd?
Cool, that people like it, but maybe not for me, is all.

But now that you've opened the can of worms that is Cross game IP... (Which happened before too, I just mean at the INN)
When we gonna get Mechquest fights in the inn? We've done one whole malerous with that lore.
Kathool is his "own" entity in DF's universe, so I'm not counting it.



ergotth -> RE: Thoughts on Chaos Lord inn challenges (8/31/2022 19:29:20)

Or go the other way-round and give Inn bosses their own story. Maybe after this whole Rose hulabaloo, I would absolutely LOVE to see the Exalted become the villains of a saga! Explore their personality, give those like Ezrajal, Datael and the Engineer their own personality, agendas and worldbuilding. I can easily imagine these Exalted coming out like the next big group of badies and we have to deal with them.
They are basicaly designed like long-lost Gods and Notha pretty much confirmed their canonical existance in DF lore at the end of the Maleurous saga.



Sflamin -> RE: Thoughts on Chaos Lord inn challenges (9/4/2022 0:36:41)

How ironic is that the most mechanically engaging Chaos lord on this board is originally a DF character lulz.



mds2006 -> RE: Thoughts on Chaos Lord inn challenges (9/5/2022 2:39:43)

Honestly I kinda actually like that some of them are relatively low-difficulty compared to some other Inn stuff. And I don't mind that some lack duo battles. Honestly I kinda wish lone opponents without duos would happen more often for Inn releases lol

I'm quite curious as to how they'll go about the 13th Lord of Chaos tbh



Page: [1]

Valid CSS!




Forum Software © ASPPlayground.NET Advanced Edition
0.09375