[Experimental Update] - 389181


Kevin

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Hey Grifters,

I have something special for you: there's a new option in the main menu on the experimental branch called "EXPERIMENTS". If you click on this, and enter the correct password, you can try out some WIP stuff outside of the main game. In this build, we're using this to help us tune our next boss fight. Experiments will probably get retired and replaced over time, and are a way for us to highlight areas were we need a little extra coverage. 

They are also full of temporary, incomplete art, and probably crash a lot, so I've hidden them behind a password. The password is in the spoiler section below - I just don't want players stumbling into an experiment without knowing what they're getting themselves into :)

 

Spoiler

The first experiment is: FIGHTING KASHIO! Kashio is a very variable boss, so we're looking for your feedback and metrics in order to set her starting difficulty somewhere reasonable. When you fight Kashio at the auction, her fighting style is determined by the artifacts that are there (there's a random pool that we are drawing from). In the lead-up to the fight, you have ways to take 0,1, or 2 of the artifacts for yourself.

In the Kashio experiment, we draw a new random set of artifacts, and then select one of approximately 1000 decks that we harvested from the game's metrics for Sal to use. These decks are all real decks used by players that finished day 4 in the past month. You then pick a couple items from the auction, and get to fighting.

See if you can beat Kashio with 0, 1, or 2 artifacts! Are certain types of decks easier than others? How much health are you losing, on average? Please send in your feedback, and discuss your findings here. We'll be updating the fight based on feedback (and with new art) starting next week.

Oh, and the password is: KRASHIO

 

  • Added EXPERIMENTS! (see spoiler section for details)
  • Erchins now have lower panic threshold on your team
  • Making the compendium show the cards in the new card grid widget with lazy loading - this should speed up load times for that screen considerably.
  • Fixed the default character role on plaxes
  • Hooked up player character specific fight emotes
     

 

View full update

 

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Ok my hot take:

First thing first, the combat decks we're getting are average at best, straight up suicidal at worst. Most don't have anywhere near a reasonable amount of defense. The few that do make the fight a lot more manageable.

It would be nice if we could see the social boons/banes that are in effect before choosing the artifacts. It can make a huge difference.

The boost Kashio gets from the artifacts is extremely variable. One extra action per turn from the Blast graft thingy, one grenade per turn, or 4 counter every turn (this last one comes as a surprise, since that's not what the pistol does for Sal) are downright nasty. The hologram one and the bleed one sound very bad on paper too, but they seem to be currently bugged. The power glaive, heal on debuff, drone beacon are all quite a bit weaker.

This might be an RNG thing, but some fights Kashio applies wound with her attacks, sometimes she applies exposed, and sometimes she mostly just does straight damage. She's extremely dangerous when she stacks wounds, especially when she has any source of extra attacks.

Right now, I don't think a player that knows what they're doing will have too much trouble with her at the end of the campaign, since you should have a much better deck, grafts and social boons than what we have right now in the experiment. Kashio with all 5 artifacts will likely be a tough fight though.

 

EDIT: reread the OP, apparently the decks are from players that finished D4, so guess who made himself look like an elitist pooper :p. Then again, considering I got one that started with 3 Bloated, and another one that had 2 Bullies active, I don't know if this is the best way to select decks (also, people apparently love Thief's Instincts?). I also have a feeling they might have used items to help them win the D4 boss that aren't in the deck anymore after the fight, lowering the quality of the deck for this experiment. Some definitely had pets, considering their grafts, but we don't get those here.

Not sure how to do better though. 

Edited by pacovf
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I played 10 fights and wrote an F8 report for each.

Summary:

Spoiler

Kashio

Fight 1:
Sal: balanced (attack/defense) low synergy deck. Battle deck had between 0-8 defense per turn (with a single exception of 27 defense one turn). Against boss doing 20, 30, 40 damage per turn. No strategy at all. Just play all defense, play the best remaining attack cards, get chunked in the face by boss.

Impossible to win.

 

F2:
Sal: High damage condition deck. Little defense.

Boss took turn 2 off to buff. Deck drew stun on turn 2. Deck drew summon drone on turn 3. Boss attacked drone for 3 turns in a row.
Boss died before attacking Sal for a second time.

Easy to win due to lucky boss attacks + summon.

 

F3:
Sal: An energy generating, multiple attacks combo deck. Battle deck had a single defense generating card. Boss had 4 counter, making attacking in a 0 defense deck very painful (artifact selection mistake on my part I guess).

Boss attacked Sal every turn. Death by high boss damage turn 4.

Impossible to Win.

 

F4:
Sal: Balanced (attack/defense) deck with high combo stacking synergies.

Blocked a good amount of boss’s damage each turn. High combo combat deck scaled faster than the boss.

Easy victory.

 

F5:
Sal: Balanced (attack/defense) deck with many starting cards, few new cards in deck. No synergy. Several stuns.

Blocked a good amount of the boss’s damage each turn but the boss damage scaled much faster than the mostly base card combat deck.

Impossible to win.

 

F6:
Sal: Ability based discard deck.

Boss damage scaled quickly against slow to establish ability deck.

Decisive loss.
Very hard to win vs fast boss scaling with a slow, long term chip damage deck. Maybe low chance for victory with a lucky boss attack pattern.

 

F7:
Sal: Very high synergy, 0-cost attacks discard deck with very little defense.

Boss took turn off to buff. Afterwards was stunned once and attacked drone with single attacks several times (no aoe damage on Sal)

Relatively easy victory, but mostly due to very luck boss attack selection and lack of boss AoE damage.

 

F8:
Sal: balanced (attack/defense) very low synergy deck.

Low synergy, low damage deck could not keep up with high boss damage.

Impossible to win.

 

F9:
Sal: Balanced (attack/defense) heavily bleed focused deck.

Good shot at winning, mostly depending on card draw RNG.
Very close loss vs difficult boss pattern (no summon for Sal, no stun, high damage boss attack choices).

 

F10:
Sal: balanced (attack/defense) very bloated deck. High defense synergy, low damage low attack synergy.

Accidental extremely good synergy with ravenous ability and boss hologram ability (heal each time something dies, boss summons two holograms each turn that automatically die).

Slow but steady damage, high defense deck with constant, free healing.

Shaky victory.

Summary of the summary:

Four out of ten fights were impossible to win in my opinion.

Of the four victories three were heavily based on easy/lucky boss patterns (mostly summon + no AoE attack from boss).
Two losses (f9, f6) faced very difficult boss patterns with no drone to tank but would have varying chances at victory in more lucky fights.

Averaging out I would say only one of these deck has a very good chance at victory, two or three have a decent shot at victory, and two have a small chance for victory on a medium difficulty boss pattern.

Thoughts:
Kashio is extremely swingy and extremely varying in total damage. Currently the fight is very luck dependant. Selection of boss attacks, availability of the drone summon, boss target selection with the drone, boss attack selection (AoE damage vs single attack) provide a very high margin for total damage taken.

Zero defense decks can get lucky with attacks, summons and targeting and take 20 damage total, while high defense decks can fail to block the escalating 30, 40 damage attacks each turn in an unlucky boss pattern.

The drone summon is IMO the by far most important factor. It can fail but it gives chances to otherwise terrible decks to still beat the boss due to potentially 4+ free turns.

Kashio's abilities from artifacts can provide huge synergy/anti synergy with the player deck. This probably is a good thing, especially if you actually know the deck you built over four days. Some extreme cases might have to be looked at.

Edited by Therlun
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My opinion of balance for each of Kashio's items that she takes:

  • Suitcase Grenades (Extra attack each turn): This hurts, unsurprisingly. You better hope she doesn't get Macro Rasp.
  • Blast Chamber (Extra attack each turn): This hurts, unsurprisingly.
  • Hologram Projector (Summons holograms): It's fine. If you're very unlucky, it wastes up to 2 attacks, but AoE counters it. The first time I encountered it I went "oh my god" but after some testing it seems balanced.
  • Hammerthyst Ring (10 Defense each turn): It's fine (10 isn't that much -- less than Rook's Day 2 boss), and this is the final boss, after all.
  • Sage Conversion (+80 HP): It's fine. Adds a few extra rounds to combat, which can be dangerous, but nothing too ludicrous.
  • Dermal Cast (Heal 5 whenever you apply a debuff): It's stronger than the Ring and Conversion (and makes Bleed decks cry until you scale up the Bleed value)
  • Sonic Pistol (4 Counter each turn): This really hurts, since most of Sal's cards don't generate that much Defense. This will absolutely ruin your Combo decks unless you have the Nailed Glove.
  • Macro Rasp (Every attack applies 4 Bleed): This applies the Bleed even if the attack itself is mitigated, which I feel is unbalanced especially as Kashio attacks multiple times each turn (so possibly 8-12 unavoidable damage!). It should apply Bleed only if the damage is unmitigated.
  • Afterburner Gloves (Every attack applies 5 Burn): This seems to only apply the damage if the attack is unmitigated, which is fine.
  • Support Beacon (Summons an Enforcer): This also hurts a lot unless you have the ability to attack like 4 times a turn to remove the Enforcer shots, which generally leaves you without energy to play defense cards.
  • Power Glaive (Power Glaive does additional damage): I never noticed this. Is it bugged?

In terms of power level for Kashio when she gets them, organized from strongest to weakest in my opinion:

  • Sonic Pistol
  • Macro Rasp | Afterburner Gloves
  • Suitcase Grenades | Blast Chamber
  • Support Beacon
  • Dermal Cast
  • Hammerthyst Ring | Hologram Projector
  • Sage Conversion
  • Power Glaive

The decks I've had the most success with is with defense/counter-stacking decks (Spines + Boulder Stance or Viciousness will destroy Kashio).

Edited by ArtixBot
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  • Developer

Thanks for all of this! We're going to be going over all of the feedback and comments here on Monday, making some adjustments, and posting a new build.

A couple of notes on our design intentions:

  • The fight should be VERY HARD if you don't get to pick any of the the items.
  • With two picked items, it should be pretty doable for a deck that made it that far.
  • Most players will probably get to pick one item, and *maybe* get an additional random item. Two picks will probably be rare, and will require very successful negotiations.
  • You will probably face Kashio alone, but you'll probably get some limited-use cards to call in support from Nadan or Oolo (if they still like you and are alive)
  • You probably won't have full health when you face Kashio - or at least, the more items you have, the lower your health is likely to be. It's a tradeoff you need to navigate in the lead-up to the fight.
  • I think the ideal experience for someone who reaches Kashio the first time on prestige zero is to lose, take the day do-over, and at least do better the second time. It shouldn't be a super impossible fight, but it should be a good challenge.
  • Some of the items that are available in the auction are supposed to be hard counters for certain deck archetypes. That's why we let you steal some :)

On a side note, I find the breadth of winning decks that we harvested to be *fascinating*.  On the team, some of us are card-heads, while others (like me!) are more focused on the overall experience. Watching our card experts try to pilot decks that they did not build has been very satisfying, because it makes them have to improvise and make the best with what they get. That's the feeling that I usually have when I play, because I'm not the world's best drafter.

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Im inclined to agree with ArtixBot that the bleed is far too punishing. Personally dont think it should even be able to be applied to Sal since there's no way to mitigate the damage outside of debuff removal, and even then it still guarantees some damage. Completely neuters combo decks as well since you're always guaranteed to take damage. Far prefer getting hit with Bleed cards that can clog your deck but can be mitigated.

 

Havent been hit by burn yet to say anything about it.

Edited by TF3
Might be wrong on the combo ruining
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3 hours ago, ArtixBot said:

Macro Rasp (Every attack applies 4 Bleed): This applies the Bleed even if the attack itself is mitigated, which I feel is unbalanced especially as Kashio attacks multiple times each turn (so possibly 8-12 unavoidable damage!). It should apply Bleed only if the damage is unmitigated.

More like 16-24 extra unavoidable damage per turn. 1 point of bleed is roughly equivalent to 2 points of damage, if you take into account the damage over multiple turns. It's whack. It should only apply when it does unmitigated damage.

 

4 hours ago, ArtixBot said:

Hammerthyst Ring (10 Defense each turn): It's fine (10 isn't that much -- less than Rook's Day 2 boss), and this is the final boss, after all.

Note that Rook's fight gives him a workaround for the Flead's queen defense, in the form of larva stingers. There is no such workaround against Kashio. It's stronger than Hologram Projector and Dermal Plating on average, although those two might give you a harder time depending on your build. It's just that the top artifacts make a huge difference. 

 

3 hours ago, Kevin said:

Some of the items that are available in the auction are supposed to be hard counters for certain deck archetypes. That's why we let you steal some :)

This is cool, but then it should be easier to guess what each artifact does when Kashio gets it, otherwise the player will feel cheated. The pistol and dermal plating hard-counter multiattack decks and bleed decks, respectively, but you wouldn't guess it from the effect they grant Sal (the pistol doesn't even have the word "counter" in it!). Kashio's and Sal's effect should be brought closer together to remedy that.

 

3 hours ago, Kevin said:

I think the ideal experience for someone who reaches Kashio the first time on prestige zero is to lose, take the day do-over, and at least do better the second time. It shouldn't be a super impossible fight, but it should be a good challenge.

Is this the case for all bosses, or just for Kashio?

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4 minutes ago, pacovf said:

More like 16-24 extra unavoidable damage per turn. 1 point of bleed is roughly equivalent to 2 points of damage, if you take into account the damage over multiple turns. It's whack. It should only apply when it does unmitigated damage.

 

Note that Rook's fight gives him a workaround for the Flead's queen defense, in the form of larva stingers. There is no such workaround against Kashio. It's stronger than Hologram Projector and Dermal Plating on average, although those two might give you a harder time depending on your build. It's just that the top artifacts make a huge difference. 

 

This is cool, but then it should be easier to guess what each artifact does when Kashio gets it, otherwise the player will feel cheated. The pistol and dermal plating hard-counter multiattack decks and bleed decks, respectively, but you wouldn't guess it from the effect they grant Sal (the pistol doesn't even have the word "counter" in it!). Kashio's and Sal's effect should be brought closer together to remedy that.

 

Is this the case for all bosses, or just for Kashio?

For kashio. I’m actually more ok with relatively harder bosses earlier in the run, given the game structure. (Shorter time to replay) 

An entirely new challenge that comes out of left field at the end of a permadeath game can be rage-inducing :)

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Found that Afterburner Gloves are just straight up nonfunctional for Kashio, that's why I had no opinion of the Burn effect on Sal. Posting this here so people are aware and will choose their items accordingly for the test fights until its fixed.

 

I'll probably dislike it as much as Bleed once it's fixed since guaranteed damage every attack with no chance of mitigation is extremely dangerous, so I hope they'll consider making Burn cards as well.

 

Edit: Found out something interesting. I definitely recall losing combo when I took Bleed damage back when I accidentally applied it on Sal with the Buster graft and the self damaging Spark Core, but in a Kashio fight where she had the Macro Rasp I wasnt losing Combo to bleed. Still adamantly hate Bleed on Sal due to guaranteed damage, but if it doesnt completely ruin Combo, its a lot less egregious.

Edited by TF3
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The overall idea of testing is good but It feels really weird to me what to do.

Should I sit on 1 seed and test with different options? Or I should pick up new a seed every time?

Is there a way to reduce that amount of decks to 10-15 archetypes? Or maybe give us a way to draft decks? (or even let us pass to the auction with our own decks - I know it's possible, did it once).

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7 hours ago, s5unaMe said:

The overall idea of testing is good but It feels really weird to me what to do.

Should I sit on 1 seed and test with different options? Or I should pick up new a seed every time?

Is there a way to reduce that amount of decks to 10-15 archetypes? Or maybe give us a way to draft decks? (or even let us pass to the auction with our own decks - I know it's possible, did it once).

that last part, yeah. if there was any way you could bring a deck that gets to kashio that was already used by the player, well then...(cracks every joint in my body while trying to look as cool as possible...and failing) my bleeds or EVEN my combos would rick roll kashio.

serious though, the current fight is very rough around the edges since many decks just can't survive kashio and holo belt+pistol need to be taken so kashio doesnt get LITERAL HOLOGRAMS and give me a mild stroke seeing 3 kashios dealing instant death damage. i believe many fights that got past nadan/oolo were because they had the alllies you could pick up and skipped the fight before nadan with the unimportant spree members

also very fun bleed seed:1578834315

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I think for Sal it's not a thing (at least for me) but mb give us (experimental players) a way to submit our decks for a final boss fight? That way you can collect info about archetypes we make and then set up a counterplay (make our lives not that easy :D I would say). 

I know there are a lot of other players who play this game more casual way and we are testing their deck (imagine one test I had a deck which consists of 104 cards!), but as I see the game, there should be several builds which we should all be aiming for. In another case, I don't feel it's possible to balance the game at all.

Not sure if I'm correct with my suggestion. 

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There's a lot that you can do if you use the debug tools, but they're not particularly user-friendly.

launch the game with --debug as a command line parameter, and you can get the lua console by pressing CTRL+~

The distribution gets zipped up, which makes looking at the files a bit challenging, but it's all there in plain-text lua.

Give me a couple minutes, and I'll find some copy-paste code for setting your deck state using that.

Actually, it's nontrivial to get it working on the non-dev build. Sorry about that.

We're not really looking for y'all to actually beat Kashio with the decks in the experiment. We are measuring how well experienced players do with real decks that people have actually beaten the game (to day 4) with. It can feel a bit random when playing, but the stats you are generating (and the bugs that you are finding!) are very valuable to us.

By mid-week or so, you'll probably be able to play through into the boss fight itself within the actual game (in experimental). That's where you'll get to see what it's like with your own decks. I would assume that skilled players (who can regularly get to the end) playing at prestige zero with their own decks will probably win most of the time. Higher prestiges will be where your challenge actually is.

If anyone finds some good deck seeds, feel free to share them. :)  

 

 

 

 

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Just saying, if this is Kashio prestige 0, it's significantly harder than D4 bosses at prestige 0, as evidenced by some of the decks we've seen. I'd say about half of the decks have 0% chance to beat this fight as it currently stands. Not sure a day do-over will help those decks. I don't know if this says more about Kashio than it does about D4 bosses at prestige 0 though. Nadan in particular is not a threat ever since convincing the Oshnu handler to help you went from extremely hard to rather easy (after the bartender special ability rework).

Not trying to draw any conclusions one way or another, just giving my opinion.

I would also point out that, unless we won't have access to the black market before fighting Kashio, most players will likely have a pet. The absence thereof in the experiment might also be biasing the results.

...Also, this is as good a time as any to request that we eventually get a Hall-of-Fame thingy where we can see our previous runs (score, decks, grafts, etc). :p

 

1 hour ago, s5unaMe said:

(imagine one test I had a deck which consists of 104 cards!)

how is this even possible

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Whoever built deck 1578858935, damn dude, props. I don't want to spoil it but it's very funny. Folks should try it out.

I've started *always* clicking on "skip the rest" to see how often I can win without any of the items/grafts offered. A few observations from that:

1. As others have mentioned, bleed and counter are generally the toughest. They just hard counter certain decks. Feels like bleed/wound decks are the most popular "archetypes" for Sal, but even good bleed/wound decks will die to a Kashio that can counter and apply wound/bleed.

2. Some of these decks man... people beat day 4 with these? Lmao. I get decks with like... a ton of cards that ask to be discarded and then 0 cards that actually can discard, or like... 1 "discard one" card.

3. Otherwise... if the deck *does* have a synergy going, the counter/discard decks have been the strongest. They just clown on Kash. Counters her summon, counters her counter, counters her own attacks. The only thing that will still give trouble is that bleed status. That being said, I don't see these decks often. The wound/bleed decks are the majority and in those cases they *need* some kind of block synergy. Either gaining block on bleed, or the bleed card that grants block equal to the targets bleed. Because even the big nasty bleed decks die to chip.

4. Just as an aside, I note that you can consistently tell which Kashio is the real one when they use the hologram ability if you look at the glaive icon. Kashio always has a different one.

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5 hours ago, frood said:

Just as an aside, I note that you can consistently tell which Kashio is the real one when they use the hologram ability if you look at the glaive icon. Kashio always has a different one.

I noticed that the Clones all have the Power Glaive effect even if Kashio was never even offered a glaive in the pre-fight. If Kashio does have the Glaive, then the clones have a stack of 2 Glaives. Dont know if the devs intend for the clones to be that obvious, but as it stands, that's how it works. Clones also end up with different health values if they have the heal from debuffs item and Kashio had atleast one debuff on her.

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There's a bug where I input seeds in experimental using the Numpad the seeds don't type correctly. Even if I have numlock on, it register as both functions on a numlock key. For example, when I type in 7, it also automatically jumps to the beginning of the string. Using the numbers on the main keyboard works fine though.

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