Author Topic: Ze Operator's Boss Battles Megatopic  (Read 11228 times)


« Last Edit: February 10, 2018, 05:55:50 PM by Sebi »

Another image dumping.
Credits go to Carbon Zypher once again for his outstanding work.





ohey i remember working on one of the maps

gj

A NEW CHALLENGER ARRIVES:


I'm gonna be honest here, I had REALLY high hopes for this.

Operator hosted a "Boss Battle's Test" server, if you can even consider it that.  It was just every boss pinned against another.  While playing this, I came across a few issues, which not only I addressed but a few others as well.  Operator's reactions to these complaints were to either ignore or shrug off as the fault of the player.  Seeing the host act this way completely destroyed my high expectations for this gamemode.

Here are the two issues that I have found:

Fall damage - Fall damage is overall very annoying to deal with.  Very minor falls can kill you.  Heck, I've died more than a few times just by lightly tapping the ground or a wall.  William was a boss that displayed this fault beautifully.  William has many tools at his disposal to move about the map quickly, but literally all of these tools can kill him almost instantly cause of fall damage, why even give him these tools if they're just going to kill him?

Balance - Most bosses just didn't seem balanced, or fun to play at all.  A few bosses just seemed to be overall much more powerful than the others and some seemed to just be very weak.  An example of an unbalanced boss would be the imitator.  It had an okay amount of health and no weapons, other than an imitation tool.  You use this tool to copy someone else's playertype and their currently equipped weapon.  Except this barely works half of the time, you often have to spam in close quarters just to have a small chance of copying their weapons.  My suggestion to fix this was to add a minor weapon to the imitator alongside their tool, such as a revolver or something of sorts.

Stating this once more; when I, and many others, told this to Operator, he either ignored it or shrugged it off in some way.  An attitude like this is really unacceptable for a TEST server.  A test server is used to iron out issues with balance and core gameplay.  Though after a bit, he did change the server to be named "Playertype testing," so that makes it completely okay to just ignore issues, right? No.

I really hope Operator can fix his behavior towards fixing issues, rather than shrugging them off, because right now he's throwing away literally all of the potential this gamemode has.

I'm gonna be honest here, I had REALLY high hopes for this.

Operator hosted a "Boss Battle's Test" server, if you can even consider it that.  It was just every boss pinned against another.  While playing this, I came across a few issues, which not only I addressed but a few others as well.  Operator's reactions to these complaints were to either ignore or shrug off as the fault of the player.  Seeing the host act this way completely destroyed my high expectations for this gamemode.

Mistaking my silence for ignorance is untrue. I actually do take suggestions, but I don't respond half the time due always having walls and walls of bloody text in my face either spamming or otherwise. So sorry on that front.

So, lets go through each bullet point, shall we.~

Fall damage - Fall damage is overall very annoying to deal with.  Very minor falls can kill you.  Heck, I've died more than a few times just by lightly tapping the ground or a wall.  William was a boss that displayed this fault beautifully.  William has many tools at his disposal to move about the map quickly, but literally all of these tools can kill him almost instantly cause of fall damage, why even give him these tools if they're just going to kill him?

William was never designed to be an easy boss to be played. Pecon made sure of that. And the fact that he was played with no HP modifier during server testing to begin with simply made it a bit harder. Only playing him very often would allow players to learn to cushion their falls. Luckily, I've also been on the receiving end of Issac Newton's principles more than once. So I understand your pain for fall damage.

Speaking of, I leave fall damage on as a means of being aware of ones surroundings. Pain in the ass, but that's where I leave it. But as I've said, I give plenty of opportunities to save yourself, and will do so further. For example;
  • Shockwave Commander has his Shockwubb cannon. A little bit stronger than the real thing, and can be touchy, but still manageable to land on your feet.
  • Chaos Samus has a double jump. Pretty self explanatory. And if that doesn't work out, fire a Storm Bomb if you have enough shielding.
  • Sans can use his dodge ability to land at a certain angle. Anything at a lateral angle of 90 degrees, and you will need to use the Gaster Blaster to rocket jump.
  • William has 3 ways of landing well; his lunge (right click) his charged jump, and his Super Smoke ability. Charging your jump in the air can save your life, and lunging at the right moment could hlep grab on to a ledge. Supersmoke is more finicky, but you're immune to all damage while flying. So you could simply slam at the ground without any ill effects until the effect resolves.

If it is any consolation that it bothers you this badly, then I may create a "server cushion" of sorts to compensate, as the Normals will have less of an issue with falls. More on that some other time.

Balance - Most bosses just didn't seem balanced, or fun to play at all.  A few bosses just seemed to be overall much more powerful than the others and some seemed to just be very weak.  An example of an unbalanced boss would be the imitator.  It had an okay amount of health and no weapons, other than an imitation tool.  You use this tool to copy someone else's playertype and their currently equipped weapon.  Except this barely works half of the time, you often have to spam in close quarters just to have a small chance of copying their weapons.  My suggestion to fix this was to add a minor weapon to the imitator alongside their tool, such as a revolver or something of sorts.

I always knew that pitting bosses against each other would be a poor idea, however, my reasoning behind it was to test if there would be any issues with boss types clashing, since I intend to add the ability for two players to play as boss in a round. That was and will always be the only reason or time I will pit together.

As for the Imitator, I made him with those limitations in mind from the start. No, he's not supposed to have any other weapons other than his Imitation tool, and yes, he's limited in that regard. That's what makes him challenging to play as.

His tool does need some better tweaking however. I wasn't too satisfied by it's mechanics and I'm still working on him (DIO as well; that Time Stop is too abusable at the moment.) and may ultimately extend the raycast range of the actual tool for better use.

Speaking of, I leave fall damage on as a means of being aware of ones surroundings. Pain in the ass, but that's where I leave it. But as I've said, I give plenty of opportunities to save yourself, and will do so further. For example;
  • Shockwave Commander has his Shockwubb cannon. A little bit stronger than the real thing, and can be touchy, but still manageable to land on your feet.
  • Chaos Samus has a double jump. Pretty self explanatory. And if that doesn't work out, fire a Storm Bomb if you have enough shielding.
  • Sans can use his dodge ability to land at a certain angle. Anything at a lateral angle of 90 degrees, and you will need to use the Gaster Blaster to rocket jump.
  • William has 3 ways of landing well; his lunge (right click) his charged jump, and his Super Smoke ability. Charging your jump in the air can save your life, and lunging at the right moment could hlep grab on to a ledge. Supersmoke is more finicky, but you're immune to all damage while flying. So you could simply slam at the ground without any ill effects until the effect resolves.

If it is any consolation that it bothers you this badly, then I may create a "server cushion" of sorts to compensate, as the Normals will have less of an issue with falls. More on that some other time.
I understand that everyone should be aware of their surroundings.  However, as a boss, fall damage shouldn't be that much of an issue.  It should be significant enough to keep in mind, but not significant enough to kill you due to minor mishaps.  For a normal, fall damage should be a major issue.  A normal should always be aware of falls that could instantly kill them.  Tweaking the fall damage for only the boss could fix this greatly.


I always knew that pitting bosses against each other would be a poor idea, however, my reasoning behind it was to test if there would be any issues with boss types clashing, since I intend to add the ability for two players to play as boss in a round. That was and will always be the only reason or time I will pit together.

As for the Imitator, I made him with those limitations in mind from the start. No, he's not supposed to have any other weapons other than his Imitation tool, and yes, he's limited in that regard. That's what makes him challenging to play as.

His tool does need some better tweaking however. I wasn't too satisfied by it's mechanics and I'm still working on him (DIO as well; that Time Stop is too abusable at the moment.) and may ultimately extend the raycast range of the actual tool for better use.
Sorry for the misunderstanding here.  I can understand testing to see if bosses would clash.  As for Imitator; with a fixed tool, I can see him becoming a very fun boss.

I understand that everyone should be aware of their surroundings.  However, as a boss, fall damage shouldn't be that much of an issue.  It should be significant enough to keep in mind, but not significant enough to kill you due to minor mishaps. 

Bosses that literally have a mechanic that makes them jump high as forget just to make them a victim of fall damage is stupid.

Bosses that literally have a mechanic that makes them jump high as forget just to make them a victim of fall damage is stupid.

Once I officially start hosting, you'll have the option not to play as those bosses if you dislike them so much, as the spawn room is incomplete.


way to not take criticism man

the aya playertype on my server that moves at 200 speed all the time has fall damage turned off, just do that for the faster moving bosses and it'll be fine
at least raise minImpactSpeed for fast bosses a little

Mario with fall damage is unbalanced. Let's just make it so mario with fall damage also flies up so high that he takes max damage every time he lands.. so the players have to learn to land their fall when being shot at like an alien in a redneck country. Good balance. Good criticism.

Once I officially start hosting, you'll have the option not to play as those bosses if you dislike them so much, as the spawn room is incomplete.


if thats the case literally no one is going to use that boss

Once I officially start hosting, you'll have the option not to play as those bosses if you dislike them so much, as the spawn room is incomplete.


That is the dumbest thing I have ever seen as a response, being a victim to fall damage is not fun especially if a boss is prone to it just by jumping around. That is just outrageous.

way to not take criticism man

the aya playertype on my server that moves at 200 speed all the time has fall damage turned off, just do that for the faster moving bosses and it'll be fine
at least raise minImpactSpeed for fast bosses a little
Mario with fall damage is unbalanced. Let's just make it so mario with fall damage also flies up so high that he takes max damage every time he lands.. so the players have to learn to land their fall when being shot at like an alien in a redneck country. Good balance. Good criticism.
if thats the case literally no one is going to use that boss
That is the dumbest thing I have ever seen as a response, being a victim to fall damage is not fun especially if a boss is prone to it just by jumping around. That is just outrageous.

Ooooookaaaaaaay...
Had I known I would get this much of a response, I would've set to not take fall damage altogether.
I suppose I could raise the impact speed necessary.

Disclaimer: I was testing the bosses in a TDM style combat. None of the bosses had an HP Scale Modifier, thus, they were more fragile to falls, as opposed to taking some damage in OMA as punishment.
I get it, fall damage is a bitch. I'm working on it.