If you want my honest opinion, it didn't look particularly fun, no.
It seemed like a repetitive grind: i.e. grind on boss before one is inevitably killed, respawn, repeat ad nauseum until boss is dead. The boss's initial appearance until he reached the front of the base looked somewhat unprofessional, with him grinding and twitching against the wall like he did.
Not sure if you value my recommendations, but perhaps changing the beam so that it designates an area one second or so before firing, and so allowing a player to actually avoid the attack. Making him a bit faster might be good.
Seeing the bream eviscerate the brutalisk was undeniably cool, however.
By the way, it took a very high number of tests before we were able to beat him. From my experience, re-spawning to win doesn't work as well as it looks. There's a 70 second respawn timer at this level.
What should I do to make it less of a grind? My goal was to model a simpler version of the Diablo fight (simpler because it's the first boss, out of 4). It's only level 10 out of 43.
Should I disable hero respawn during the fight? Give him more abilities? I don't want to make the beam weaker, because it's easy to avoid if you know what you're doing. It has a minimum range, so all you have to do is either blink, or charge to get past it, or use a minion to waste the boss's cooldown. You can also dodge it if you move fast enough.
And what about the snippet from the level prior to the boss? It's very very difficult to beat, as well.
To be honest, I skipped past most of the snippet, but I didn't notice anything disctinctive about what I saw really, for good or ill.
Maybe the beam is easier to avoid than I thought, but in that video it looked as if it hit nearly every time. I suppose it's hard to tell without playing it. I've never played Diablo either, so perhaps you are trying to capture some element from that game that I'm not picking up on.
But if I was going to make it less of a grind, I would:
A. Make the boss a bit faster, and more "dynamic". The whole encounter seems like it is a bit monotonous.
B. Give the boss "stages" or at least one extra stage. I.e. when he reaches [x] percentage of health, say 25, he gains a new ability or two.
Essentially, add something so it's not just one big hackfest for x number of minutes.
Now I realize you might find what is in the next clip somewhat inapplicable(perhaps entirely inapplicable.), but I always felt Metroid had superb game design when it came to bosses.
An "interesting" and fun boss to me, is one that incorporates environmental interaction, different tactics, stages with their own challenges, etc. to keep things fresh and exciting. I'm not sure exactly the style you're going for though.
I think the boss only makes sense in context. The map is meant to be a slow push. Very slow. You don't win or lose in an instant. If you're losing, you're slowly pushed back to the start. Eventually, you're overrun at the start and you will lose. If you can't beat the boss fast enough, the next level comes before he's dead.
The better you're doing, the less money you have to waste on things like consumables or turrets, so you'll be better geared in time for the later levels. Everything in the game is supposed to be linked. There is no distinct turning point where you can go from doing well to doing poorly. Making the boss more dynamic will break that.
Notice how the first attempts of the players to approach the boss all end in massacre. That is why it moves slowly. You're supposed to figure out how to kill him yourself. If you can't do it quickly enough, you'll be overrun. From what I've seen, it takes players at least 10 games to beat the first 10 levels. I originally gave the boss more abilities, but it was just way too hard. His ice ability original came out in a circle. It was just impossible. Notice his bolts that randomly come out when struck. Anything else and no one will be able to beat him.
Pleeease give it less health.
Make it dieeee faster.
It turns into a damned grind because it takes so long to kill him.
These are the worst kind of bosses (at least my friends and I think so). They have a ton of hp and even after you found the "way" to kill them it still takes you fking ages.
What enhances this effect is that everything is so slow. The boss, his attacks, the players.. the entire video feels like in slow motion for me.
In my opinion this boss fight is very close to the limit of how long is OK, but since it's level 10 of 43 I expect the other ones to be more resilient -_-
But if you saw the part with the level before, where the monsters move at lightning speed, the boss was supposed to be respite from that.
I'll turn off its shield regeneration. It has a regen rate of 1000 per second. So when you die, it essentially gets back to full health before you respawn.
It looks like it could be pretty fun, though his stuff seems near impossible to dodge? You say it's easy if you know what you're doing, but I'm pretty sure I saw a couple of heroes attempt to dodge his eye-laser there a couple of times by moving as soon as he did the animation, and they still got killed by taking one or two ticks of damage. This was especially true for the Brutalisk, who took nearly the full brunt of every single line attack thrown his way, and he did really seem to try to avoid it. The blue line-shot seems pretty cool, but somewhat unfair to melee heroes; they'll have a pretty hard time dodging this compared to ranged heroes.
Speed seems good to me - I'm not sure what 'level' this boss is supposed to be, but for a level 10-20ish boss he seems sufficiently hard. New players will take 2 or 3 deaths to him before they know how to dodge his abilities, and should then be able to proceed to take him down.
That said, I do still recommend moving the starting point of the laser attack - with the move speed some heroes have it seems impossible to dodge. Right now the beam goes something like this -------X-< (with X being the target and < being the starting point). Trying something like -----X-----< should make it more bearable.
TL;DR: he needs some balancing/tuning. His ability damage and all is good, but they should be a little bit more dodgeable.
The blue beam thing is meant to freeze, but it's dealing too much damage so it just kills the target. Going to fix it so that it will only kill you if you have little health left.
I'll set it so the beam starts further to the side of the target.
I also changed the blue beam so that it's no longer a straight line of ice balls. It slowly turns about 30 degrees.
1. Maybe it's because you're viewing a replay but default ui in any non-melee/melee oriented map is a huge turn off for me.
2. Heroes don't stand out enough. Give them a glowy aura or something to distinguish them even more from enemies.
3. Thematic/Unified abilities are good. The templar shoots lightning and fire? But the Stetson shoots lightning too. If the Templar is a mage-type character who deals in all school of magic, at least make them appear similar (use blue fire, or red lightning), so the game doesn't look like kaleidoscope of random ass colors. Right now the game is visually ugly in terms of colors.
4. Crotch lazers aren't cool. Especially when the boss's other ability is a different kind of lazer.
5. The Stone Zealot model has a ground punch animation. Use this for an ability that's cooler than crotch lazers.
It's not a crotch laser! It's a stream of Ice Bolts. The fact that it traveled in a straight line was a bug. I fixed it so that it curves now, and deals negligible damage. Its whole point is just to freeze heroes, not kill them.
I don't understand what you're saying about the "blue fire, red lightning". I simply colored the spells the same color as their element. The lightning bolts are yellow-white, the fireballs are orange, and the icebolts are blue.
I think I agree with you about the heroes needing more distinguishibility. I'll work on that.
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From my upcoming defense survival map. The beginning of the video is a small portion of the preceding level.
I need feedback, please.
@Vexal: Go
If you want my honest opinion, it didn't look particularly fun, no.
It seemed like a repetitive grind: i.e. grind on boss before one is inevitably killed, respawn, repeat ad nauseum until boss is dead. The boss's initial appearance until he reached the front of the base looked somewhat unprofessional, with him grinding and twitching against the wall like he did.
Not sure if you value my recommendations, but perhaps changing the beam so that it designates an area one second or so before firing, and so allowing a player to actually avoid the attack. Making him a bit faster might be good.
Seeing the bream eviscerate the brutalisk was undeniably cool, however.
@hawkerhurricane: Go
You can dodge the attack. It starts to the left.
By the way, it took a very high number of tests before we were able to beat him. From my experience, re-spawning to win doesn't work as well as it looks. There's a 70 second respawn timer at this level.
What should I do to make it less of a grind? My goal was to model a simpler version of the Diablo fight (simpler because it's the first boss, out of 4). It's only level 10 out of 43.
Should I disable hero respawn during the fight? Give him more abilities? I don't want to make the beam weaker, because it's easy to avoid if you know what you're doing. It has a minimum range, so all you have to do is either blink, or charge to get past it, or use a minion to waste the boss's cooldown. You can also dodge it if you move fast enough.
And what about the snippet from the level prior to the boss? It's very very difficult to beat, as well.
@Vexal: Go
To be honest, I skipped past most of the snippet, but I didn't notice anything disctinctive about what I saw really, for good or ill.
Maybe the beam is easier to avoid than I thought, but in that video it looked as if it hit nearly every time. I suppose it's hard to tell without playing it. I've never played Diablo either, so perhaps you are trying to capture some element from that game that I'm not picking up on.
But if I was going to make it less of a grind, I would:
A. Make the boss a bit faster, and more "dynamic". The whole encounter seems like it is a bit monotonous.
B. Give the boss "stages" or at least one extra stage. I.e. when he reaches [x] percentage of health, say 25, he gains a new ability or two.
Essentially, add something so it's not just one big hackfest for x number of minutes.
Now I realize you might find what is in the next clip somewhat inapplicable(perhaps entirely inapplicable.), but I always felt Metroid had superb game design when it came to bosses.
An "interesting" and fun boss to me, is one that incorporates environmental interaction, different tactics, stages with their own challenges, etc. to keep things fresh and exciting. I'm not sure exactly the style you're going for though.
@hawkerhurricane: Go
I think the boss only makes sense in context. The map is meant to be a slow push. Very slow. You don't win or lose in an instant. If you're losing, you're slowly pushed back to the start. Eventually, you're overrun at the start and you will lose. If you can't beat the boss fast enough, the next level comes before he's dead.
The better you're doing, the less money you have to waste on things like consumables or turrets, so you'll be better geared in time for the later levels. Everything in the game is supposed to be linked. There is no distinct turning point where you can go from doing well to doing poorly. Making the boss more dynamic will break that.
Notice how the first attempts of the players to approach the boss all end in massacre. That is why it moves slowly. You're supposed to figure out how to kill him yourself. If you can't do it quickly enough, you'll be overrun. From what I've seen, it takes players at least 10 games to beat the first 10 levels. I originally gave the boss more abilities, but it was just way too hard. His ice ability original came out in a circle. It was just impossible. Notice his bolts that randomly come out when struck. Anything else and no one will be able to beat him.
Nope.
@Mephs: Go
Wrong.
Pleeease give it less health.
Make it dieeee faster.
It turns into a damned grind because it takes so long to kill him.
These are the worst kind of bosses (at least my friends and I think so). They have a ton of hp and even after you found the "way" to kill them it still takes you fking ages.
What enhances this effect is that everything is so slow. The boss, his attacks, the players.. the entire video feels like in slow motion for me.
In my opinion this boss fight is very close to the limit of how long is OK, but since it's level 10 of 43 I expect the other ones to be more resilient -_-
My 2 cents.
Also ~~ he's shooting laser out of his crotch.
@s3rius: Go
Okay, I will look at the speed again.
But if you saw the part with the level before, where the monsters move at lightning speed, the boss was supposed to be respite from that.
I'll turn off its shield regeneration. It has a regen rate of 1000 per second. So when you die, it essentially gets back to full health before you respawn.
It looks like it could be pretty fun, though his stuff seems near impossible to dodge? You say it's easy if you know what you're doing, but I'm pretty sure I saw a couple of heroes attempt to dodge his eye-laser there a couple of times by moving as soon as he did the animation, and they still got killed by taking one or two ticks of damage. This was especially true for the Brutalisk, who took nearly the full brunt of every single line attack thrown his way, and he did really seem to try to avoid it. The blue line-shot seems pretty cool, but somewhat unfair to melee heroes; they'll have a pretty hard time dodging this compared to ranged heroes.
Speed seems good to me - I'm not sure what 'level' this boss is supposed to be, but for a level 10-20ish boss he seems sufficiently hard. New players will take 2 or 3 deaths to him before they know how to dodge his abilities, and should then be able to proceed to take him down.
That said, I do still recommend moving the starting point of the laser attack - with the move speed some heroes have it seems impossible to dodge. Right now the beam goes something like this -------X-< (with X being the target and < being the starting point). Trying something like -----X-----< should make it more bearable.
TL;DR: he needs some balancing/tuning. His ability damage and all is good, but they should be a little bit more dodgeable.
Thanks for the feedback.
The blue beam thing is meant to freeze, but it's dealing too much damage so it just kills the target. Going to fix it so that it will only kill you if you have little health left.
I'll set it so the beam starts further to the side of the target.
I also changed the blue beam so that it's no longer a straight line of ice balls. It slowly turns about 30 degrees.
What you asked me a question and I answered.
@Mephs: Go
Well. What can I do to make it better? What of the changes I talked about?
Delete and start over. Your only option.
@Mephs: Go
And then? Which direction should I go after starting over?
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ModeratorsI feel like this is a good place to re-continue the discussion.
The direction that sucks less.
@Mephs: Go
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Curse Premium@Vexal: Go
1. Maybe it's because you're viewing a replay but default ui in any non-melee/melee oriented map is a huge turn off for me.
2. Heroes don't stand out enough. Give them a glowy aura or something to distinguish them even more from enemies.
3. Thematic/Unified abilities are good. The templar shoots lightning and fire? But the Stetson shoots lightning too. If the Templar is a mage-type character who deals in all school of magic, at least make them appear similar (use blue fire, or red lightning), so the game doesn't look like kaleidoscope of random ass colors. Right now the game is visually ugly in terms of colors.
4. Crotch lazers aren't cool. Especially when the boss's other ability is a different kind of lazer.
5. The Stone Zealot model has a ground punch animation. Use this for an ability that's cooler than crotch lazers.
@PirateArcade | I make games | Ask me things on Discord
@greythepirate: Go
It's not a crotch laser! It's a stream of Ice Bolts. The fact that it traveled in a straight line was a bug. I fixed it so that it curves now, and deals negligible damage. Its whole point is just to freeze heroes, not kill them.
I don't understand what you're saying about the "blue fire, red lightning". I simply colored the spells the same color as their element. The lightning bolts are yellow-white, the fireballs are orange, and the icebolts are blue.
I think I agree with you about the heroes needing more distinguishibility. I'll work on that.