suggestions about boss and frenzy levels

[dish-order man]

Well, while play more, I have discovered something  that could be further optimized:

• I believe players should be able to open the map in the combat scene to see whether their previous levels were resource levels, power levels, skill levels, power upgrade levels or unknown levels. This would allow them to review if there were any power upgrade levels along the way, helping them make better decisions about which path to take. Currently, players have to rely on their own memory to keep track of this information.

 

• Upgrading the frenzy level only affects the difficulty of regular small levels, but it has almost no impact on boss levels. This means that when facing a boss for the first time, it is almost its strongest form. The difficulty of the boss does not increase smoothly with different frenzy levels (or I would say, the boss difficulty remains unchanged), which is not reasonable. It lowers the challenge of the frenzy level in some extent.

My suggestion is to address this issue in two ways: either reduce the initial boss difficulty and gradually increase it in subsequent frenzy levels, or keep the initial boss difficulty still and gradually enhance it in the following frenzy levels. (Personally, I think the boss at level 8 is too weak.)

these two pictures is the mother treek of frenzy level 0 and frenzy level 8, not only its abilities have no enhancement, but its health also didn't increase. Only the summoned minions became slightly stronger. However, for wolf boss of the second chapter, it hardly underwent any changes in frenzy level increasing.

frenzy level 0 mother treek:

Spoiler

frenzy level 8 mother treek:

Spoiler

 

• After failing a level and saved by the aircraft, the distance showed up in village is too far from the aircraft. This means that players have to walk a distance before they can start a next battle. On the contrary, if a boss is successfully defeated, the player appears right next to the aircraft. While this may not be a necessary modification, I find it frustrating to have to walk a distance after a failed battle. Failure itself already be discouraging, and having to walk to the aircraft to start the next battle adds to the frustration.

[Instant-Noodles]

I agree. It does feel like the difficulty of bosses should ramp up better when going from Frenzy 0 to 8 in the current playtest.  But, it appears the poor ramping is not what was intended by the devs.

Boss HP not increasing at Frenzy 5 and above is actually a bug.  Devs commented this in the code.

-- Bosses have more health
-- TODO BUG: this one doesn't actually activate for some reason?

They had intended for bosses to have 1.5x its normal health (past Frenzy 5), but it's not working:

TUNING.BOSS_HEALTH_MOD = function()
	local val = original_val()
	val = val * 1.5
	return val
end

The "Bosses are more aggressive" (Frenzy 8) modifier currently acts the same as the other "more aggressive" modifiers.  It reduces the cooldown rate of boss abilities and attacks.  But, that too also has an issue in certain instances:

TUNING.BOSS_COOLDOWN_MOD = 0.7 -- down from 1
TUNING.BOSS_MINIMUM_COOLDOWN = 1 -- down from 2
-- BUG: If any creature has manually overridden their own minimum cooldown, this stomps it. For example, if Zucco sets itself to 7, then this sets it to 1.5 instead of to 3.
-- Halving is the intention, so this should be a multiplier to their existing cooldowns, rather than overwriting the default.

--

From the code comments, it seems the devs actually plan to have 20 Frenzy Levels per stage.  This is a way too many in my opinion; especially since we can't skip forward multiple Frenzy levels at once. 

Having to replay a stage 20 times (original + 19 Frenzy) to reach the highest difficulty (Frenzy 20) would get way too repetitive.  For the actual game release, I hope the devs either reduce the number of planned frenzy levels (8 from the playtest feels good) or allow people to skip to whichever frenzy level they wish to do (instead of having to beat one to unlock the next).  Another alternative that might work well would be to have all the modifiers available and let people pick and choose which modifiers to apply (the more active modifiers the better the loot).

Spoilers for what the modifiers are for each of the 20 "planned" Frenzy levels (called "Ascension" levels in the code) below:

Spoiler

 Ascension 1 - Elites spawn more often.
    There will be approximately 60% more Elites spawned in a map.
FORGE: Increase Difficulty 3 room spawn rate

 Ascension 2 - Normal enemies are deadlier.
    Normal enemies deal more damage with their attacks.
FORGE: Increase small enemy damage, Decrease enemy cooldown time

 Ascension 3 - Elites are deadlier.
    Elites deal more damage with their attacks.
FORGE: Increase big enemy damage, Decrease big enemy cooldown time

 Ascension 4 - Bosses are deadlier.
    Bosses deal more damage with their attacks.
FORGE: Increase boss damage, Decrease boss cooldown time

 Ascension 5 - Heal less after Boss battles.
    Heal for 75% of missing health instead of 100%.
FORGE: Potion heals for 75%

 Ascension 6 - Start each run damaged.
    Lose 10% health at the start of each run.
FORGE: Start with 90% health

 Ascension 7 - Normal enemies are tougher.
    Normal enemies have more HP. Some gain higher Icon Block.png Block. They are overall harder to take down.
FORGE: Increase normal enemy health by 2x

 Ascension 8 - Elites are tougher.
    Elites have more HP.
FORGE: Increase big enemy health by 2x (Yammo)

 Ascension 9 - Bosses are tougher.
    Bosses have more HP. Some gain higher Icon Block.png Block. They are overall harder to take down.
FORGE: Increase boss health by 2x

 Ascension 10 - Start each run cursed.
    Obtain 1 Ascender's Bane at the start of each run.

 Ascension 11 - Start each run with 1 less potion slot.

 Ascension 12 - Upgraded cards appear less often.
    Upgraded cards are 50% less likely to appear in Act 2 (12.5%, down from 25%) and Act 3 (25%, down from 50%).
FORGE: Rare upgrades appear less often (decrease bad luck protection)

 Ascension 13 - Poor bosses.
    Bosses drop 25% less gold

 Ascension 14 - Lower max HP.
    -5 for Ironclad, -4 for Silent, Defect, and Watcher
FORGE: 10% less max HP

 Ascension 15 - Unfavorable events.
    Many events have less positive outcomes and more severe consequences. For example: More HP loss. Less gold or card as rewards. Guaranteed Curse.

 Ascension 16 - Shops are more costly.
    Everything costs 10% more.

 Ascension 17 - Normal enemies have more challenging movesets and abilities.

 Ascension 18 - Elites have more challenging movesets and abilities.

 Ascension 19 - Bosses have more challenging movesets and abilities.

 Ascension 20 - Double boss.

    Fight 2 bosses at the end of Act 3
        After you defeat the first boss that can be seen from the map, you will immediately enter a battle with a different Act 3 boss.

 

 

[lakhnish]

7 hours ago, Instant-Noodles said:

Spoilers for what the modifiers are for each of the 20 "planned" Frenzy levels (called "Ascension" levels in the code) below:

These are just Ascension 1 through 20 from Slay the Spire. If anything, the devs are just using that for a reference.

Based on what I saw in biomes.lua, we're getting quite a few biomes and there even seems to be quests with different bosses in each biome.

If the devs truly are going for 20 frenzy levels, having to get to A20 for all of them seems like it'd be a pain as the 8 we have right now feels like a pretty good number, even if its bugged imo.

It took me like 30 hours to get to F8 in both of the zones we currently have (but that could just be b/c I suck).

[Instant-Noodles]

34 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

These are just Ascension 1 through 20 from Slay the Spire. If anything, the devs are just using that for a reference.

Interesting, I wasn't aware they were drawing inspiration from Slay the Spire.  I guess that's why they're not calling it ascension levels in-game.  The code itself still refers to frenzy levels as "ascensions" (see ascensionmanager.lua).

In that case, the levels with "FORGE" underneath the comment must be what they plan on making as an equivalent Frenzy modifier.

[dish-order man]

17 hours ago, Instant-Noodles said:

is actually a bug.  Devs commented this in the code.

-- Bosses have more health
-- TODO BUG: this one doesn't actually activate for some reason?

woops, i'm very glad to see this bug in tode list. that means we could have more powerful challenge

17 hours ago, Instant-Noodles said:

For the actual game release, I hope the devs either reduce the number of planned frenzy levels (8 from the playtest feels good) or allow people to skip to whichever frenzy level they wish to do (instead of having to beat one to unlock the next).  Another alternative that might work well would be to have all the modifiers available and let people pick and choose which modifiers to apply (the more active modifiers the better the loot).

i agree with you so much. Actually, I got some inspiration from your statement and I have come up with some new ideas for this system, such as categorizing these "mutations" into three types: creature variation, environmental variation, and boss variation. Each category will have several smaller elements that players can freely choose to active.

Kind familiar with the world setting in DS, each of these elements will have a certain "variation score," and the system accumulate these scores to determine the frenzy level at present setting. I have a conceptual idea for this part, making the frenzy level resemble this type of format.

[RealPanda]

On 6/23/2023 at 2:30 PM, Instant-Noodles said:

-- Bosses have more health
-- TODO BUG: this one doesn't actually activate for some reason?

How to do coding with steps

1) First, believe in yourself despite past failures

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11) Start next project

12) Code doesn't work

13) Don't know why

14) Google the answers

15) Instructions unclear

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Coding in a nutshell, original joke made by bri_xu

[mota1122q]

Upgrading the frenzy level only affects the difficulty of regular small levels, but it has almost no impact on boss levels. This means that when facing a boss for the first time, it is almost its strongest form. The difficulty of the boss does not increase smoothly with different frenzy levels (or I would say, the boss difficulty remains unchanged), which is not reasonable. It lowers the challenge of the frenzy level in some extent.