Game Design Panic Zealot

I get what the makers were going for, but this boss is a rather poor execution of that.

limited room, area locking spells, and a constant hp drain, in combination with iffy latency and a mechanic that makes class building almost useless, makes this boss unfit for the vast majority of the playerbase.

The way it’s designed makes it intended that the player has to play absolutely perfect without any room for error.

Usually room for error is added with the introduction of defence and agility but with the hp drain and amount of spell coverage this boss has, that makes these factors absolutely useless.

Nobody is perfect. And if you’re near there, the fact that this is an online server that requires good internet says no.

And that makes the panic zealot functionally a failure as a boss.

A counter argument could be that this boss is optional, but that doesn’t do justice to the fact that all players should be allowed to explore and complete all content they have access to, no matter what their latency is.

A possible fix can be to nerf the zealot’s hp drain to 1% of max hp ONLY, not current hp. This allows a lot more room to compensate for player-end errors while still maintaining the relative difficulty of the boss.

I still think the general idea of the panic zealot is absolutely brilliant however, suiting the dark, chaotic road to dern theme. I merely want to suggest improvements to a great addition :D

Aight thx for listening to the ted talk, and selvut ihy :)

 

Another possibility might be to add a longer delay with spell casts as a way to help against Panic Zealot.

 

Yeah that could help too, but I still want it’s chaotic panicky nature xP

 

just fyi, if it was set to 1% of max hp you would instantly die on the second tick :like:

 

Wym

 

essentially - we can either set it so each tick deals X% of your current health (what it currently does), or so each tick deals X% of your max health. the damage max health would deal wouldn't ever change, so the first hit would do 99% of your max hp, then the second would do another 99%, which would drop you below 0

 

Can’t it have a base line so that if player’s hp is equal to or less than x said sequence is disabled?

I’m probably one not to talk about programming but I know that an if () function could make this possible based on my teachings..

But It’s probably not that simple so what’s the road block?

 

How about neither? An idea could be to constantly set the player's HP to 1% of it's maximum with the one condition that their current hp is greater than it, so they wouldn't get "healed".

Example:

- Player's maximum hp -> 20k
- After tick: player's current hp -> 200
- After tick, after player healed themselves a little: player's current hp -> 200
- After tick, player took 10 damage: player's current hp -> 190

 

eh. honestly i think the current state is fine? health regen at low hp is super tuned up so you dont often stay super low for long

 

It honestly sounds like you've never done a boss altar before. Yes, the boss requires pretty much perfection from the player, and yes, lag is a problem but the CT can't really do anything about that. The fun of the boss, at least for me, is trying to see how far you can get with it, to push your skill as a player, and if you finally beat it, it's more rewarding than any "simpler" boss could be. This is true of practically every good boss altar. You could say Rymek Luke or the Orange Wybel ignore people's builds because of their practically guaranteed one-shot attacks, but half the fun of the boss is trying to see how far you can get with it, and when you finally beat it it feels rewarding because your victory feels earned. And yes, you may have to change your builds for these bosses, something that will probably be hard to do on your first run of the game, but if anything that just gives it more replayability value.

As for every player being able to access all of the game, yes, they can. Every player has access to this boss altar once they unlock the path to darkness. Every player has the freedom to attempt this boss as many times as they'd like. And also, it's not even like this boss has to be defeated to access an area in the game! This boss is just another thing people can explore, right along with all the other optional content in the game. If you really hate the boss, just don't fight it. Unless you're trying to get one of the 3 or 4 item drops or one of the ingredients that you get from the altar you don't have any real reason to fight it apart from doing it for the fun. If you don't like the boss, that's fine, but there are a lot of people who really do, myself included, and I honestly don't want anything to be changed about the altar, apart from small things like the ingredient cost being higher than other boss altars which is kinda annoying.

As for internet quality, this could be said about any part of the game where there's a chance of you dying, hell, you could say this about any game that requires internet. Unfortunately, there just isn't anything the CT can do. It's not like Salted can just decide to get everyone a new wifi router, so there's always gonna be a bit of unfairness when it comes to internet quality, as of now there isn't really anything that can be done about that. Yes, it really sucks, believe me I've lagged out and died on bosses like this too, it pisses me of just as much, but that's just something we have to deal with.

 

I’m frustrated with this reply. It really dredges up horrible memories, that of which I don’t want to deal with anymore.


So here’s my final response.


No matter what, that boss, and boss altars in general are still considered content in the game. They hold special items as rewards for defeating them. These items are locked behind the boss until it is defeated.

There are work-arounds to defeat other boss altars, such as stacking your defence hella high to counter the hits you may take when you lag, but there aren’t any work-arounds for this one.

Perfect latency. Perfect build. No mistakes at all. This is just too unreasonable no matter how I look at it.

A normal player may see that there’s an item that they want, try their hand at the altar, and fail 50 times because they don’t meet all of these requirements.

This boss just demands too much from someone who just wants new experiences and wants to have fun.



Make of this what you will, I’ll try to lock this thread before it turns into a rabbit hole I thought I covered up long ago.

 

Locked per op's request.