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TFS -> RE: Friday, April 5th Design Notes: Book 3: Convergence - Convergence (Part 2) (4/8/2024 11:01:12)
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@Lee:
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Nowhere in the game, does the Player get taught (besides a single popup on the Status Screen with your stats and the like) on how Bonus Vs MPM works or even how much it matters.
This is, frankly, an insane statement. Every class in the game has a -Bonus debuff. Nearly every class in the game has a +Bonus buff. About half of the classes in the game have a +MPM buff. Bosses have been using Bonus and MPM buffs since quite literally Book 1, let alone Book 3. Like you said yourself, this very basic game mechanic fundamental to DragonFable's combat is explained on every single stat panel in the entire game. I genuinely have trouble believing that this statement applies to any number of players who have gotten to Level 2 and unlocked their shield skill, let alone to players who have reached the very end of the game.
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Jaania's body parts is another new mechanic that short of Oddtog in a Side Story - has not been brought up in the Main to my knowledge. Nowhere in the game does it explain how this "new" mechanic works or whether you should pay attention to it.
Uh, what? I genuinely don't know where the clarity issues lies with this mechanic. In DragonFable, the player targets enemies by clicking on them, and initiating the battle with Jaania informs the player that her body, glaive, and tome can all be targeted. Hovering the mouse over Jaania's body, tome, or glaive will highlight it, and clicking on it will inform the player that they're now targeting the part, along with how much HP it has remaining. I don't think you need a solid grasp of theoretical physics to understand this one - what the player has to do and how to do it are very clearly presented and communicated. I sincerely don't understand where the confusion lies and haven't spoken to anyone who has, nor seen any other comments indicating as much - can you point me towards what step of the process specifically you're missing?
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Or the fact that Mana Damage (Hi Necrotic Strike) makes it an absolute joke.
Uh, first of all, this was a glitch that was fixed two days ago. Second of all, mana damage does not make it an 'absolute joke;' the one very specific interaction you're referring to occurs specifically with DoomKnight and only DoomKnight - the very few mana attacks in the game otherwise do less damage than a normal attack on average. Third, this isn't an "inn mechanic" - this persistent glitch has been fixed on every boss it's actually been reported for, and clearly isn't intentional. I don't think launching with a glitch that has since been patched and strictly helped the player in the extremely rare instance it came up makes the mechanic poorly designed or inaccessible, and again have missed the leap in logic here.
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The Command's are great, however they're extremely easy to miss if you don't think to check the Status Page (in the wider community, do people actually think to check it?) as well as the orbs at her feet, acting as a count down.
The condition for each Command is very specifically announced in a pop-up when it's used, though? They would be completely unmissable even if the stats panel didn't exist. And, again, I very heavily doubt that many players would make it this far into the game without knowing to check the stats panel. Surely most players figured this out at Level 5 when they tried to use Fire on a Fire Elemental...? I'm not sure what kind of theoretical player you've been talking about in this post so far - someone who doesn't know what shields do, how to check the stats panel, or even how to click on enemies...? I think these claims aren't very generalizable at best, and outright dishonest rhetoric at worst. If you think the boss is too hard, just say the boss is too hard - you don't need to claim that players who have made it to the very end of the game don't know how to check stats/resists or even click on enemies, to try and conflate it with some sort of accessibility/clarity issue.
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A lot of Inn mechanics that your average Story Player wouldn't know about are finding their way into this fight. Throw in the fact that none of them are really explained, short of thrown in your face ("think fast, chucklenuts") as well as the most basic mechanics (All res, Bonus, MPM/BPD) being extremely relevant here yet but not explained in any capacity whatsoever really shows
I don't mean to be trite, but you haven't listed any "Inn mechanics" in this post so far. You mentioned having more points that you didn't go into, I'd maybe understand your perspective a bit more if you went into them?
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I imagine this is what people would call a "hot take", but inflating a fight's difficulty primarily via RNG that has little to no counterplay, is not remotely fun in the slightest in my opinion. For example, if you roll Command - Halt and are unable to skip your turn via a potion or not attacking, then you're just screwed
It is hot, because it's wrong. You're forewarned about her Commands 3 to 5 turns in advance, which is warning to not waste your non-damaging moves, as you'll need them when the command expires. Even if you end up in the rare (but realistic) situation where you have no non-damaging moves that will be off of cooldown when the Command is announced, and this has somehow happened three times to the point where you're out of mana potions to burn, you can just not connect an attack? Don't buff your Bonus and target the glaive with a 1hit, maybe even equip a -Bonus item such as the Magi Helm, to miss the attack and satisfy the command.
Also, it's not like failing a Gear check is even a loss condition if you aren't doing it consistently? Failing one check causes the gear to do 800% damage (several of her normal moves do 600%, as a point of comparison) and heal her for 8%... that's not the end of the world? Classes like Paladin that match up well into the fight can fail like half of the gear checks with no issue.
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There's also having do deal with 2 Commands in Phase 3 and Phase 4 (1 of either Halt or Attack, and 1 of either Effect or Solitude)
It is literally not possible to fail Solitude if you are actually reading the text on screen. There is no situation where the player can fail to dismiss Draco.
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To be blunt, this fight is very overtuned and having the excuse "Oh it's an Extreme fight so that's normal" being thrown around does nothing to solve it at all.
But you haven't listed any examples of overtuning? Overtuning refers to when content is well-designed but the numbers behind it (in the context of DragonFable, examples of this would be damage %s or Bonus buffs) are too large to be fair or enjoyable. The allegations you've leveled against the fight are that it's poorly-designed, not about its tuning.
Also, well, it is an extreme fight. It's supposed to be hard. That's the point.
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An extremely late Draco Claw as well in an Extreme fight is brutal and a massive kick in the face for no reason in my opinion. This is further inflated by the fact that Jaania will execute the Player if their HP is below 33% in Phase 4
When does said Draco Claw occur?
At the beginning of Phase 4
This is completely untrue, and never has been true. Please play the fight.
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I've seen a few players across the community since release - Discord and Reddit - having trouble with Jaania in Normal Mode alone. I've seen players outright mocked for having difficulty with this fight. This in particular is more directed at the community rather than Jaania.
I don't know about Discord servers, but I haven't seen a single comment like this on Reddit. What I have seen is exactly one Redditor calling Verlyrus a 'moron' for making the fight too hard, before apologizing and deleting it after completing the fight.
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Who exactly are these Story fights as of late being tailored to? Because there's a large gap between who meant to be targeted for and who it's actually being targeted at.
It's literally the final boss. It's meant as - and should be - something players have to learn, practice, and work towards being able to beat, as it is the culmination of the entire game. It doesn't gate progress, it is the end goal of progress.
While I do think there is merit in lowering the regular version's MPM to account for lower-level players, I think the complaints you've leveled against the fight are largely pretty poor and 'addressing' them would make it a substantially less fun/interesting/memorable boss. Like, I'm checking Reddit right now because of your comment, and all I'm seeing is people sharing strategies and successfully clearing the fight - that indicates to me that it's probably in a good place?
@Dr. Paradine:
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'Hey you busted her Tome? It'll be back a turn or two.'
The act of breaking the tome purges her debuff and causes you to take less damage, forcing her to build it up again - so just by breaking it you've already gotten what you wanted.
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'Hey you broke both her items? Absolutely no debuffs to her overall stats for the loss of equipment, also screw you she regens them anyways with no turn/damage cost.'
Breaking the glaive gives her -20 Boost and Bonus.
The tome and glaive also always come back when she uses specific moves that she always uses on the same turns, so you can wait for her to exhaust the moves and then time it accordingly.
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