Crab King is amazing. Thank you Klei!

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, grm9 said:

freezing is chip damage and you certainly won't die from it if you start the fight with at least 50 hp if it isn't winter

forgot to mention grass boats and grass but i thought that'd be obvious

Allow me to remind you that you said Hambat & Oar.

You said nothing at all about food or healing items..

Chip damage from Freeze attacks on Willow, can & WILL kill her & perhaps even more hilarious than that… if you try to counter it by setting up her newly given to her special skill perk fireballs, Those will actually catch your boats on fire.

I did actually manage to kill CK, but I did it by putting a Campfire on my boat to counter the freeze effects.

All of which is much more than a single Hambat & Oar.

[Guille6785]

1 hour ago, hoxi said:

Should probably not be setting the bar for everyone to be able to do this and pretend it's simple. A lot of responses to people asking for a more fun/less frustrating fight are like this, "X method exists", usually accompanied or alluding a vibe of "if you can't do it it's on you and the devs shouldn't change it". Which really comes across as elitist a lot of the time.

I'm not taking any stance or voicing any opinions, I'm just showing it for the people who think those things are mandatory (I do think crab king has major flaws but at the very least people should be informed)

Edited February 17 by Guille6785

[goblinball]

2 hours ago, hoxi said:

That video highlights a huge part of why the fight is artificial and problematic in design. Your boats are forced to take damage no matter what in the current iteration of it, just from the claws alone, meaning how many resources you bring dictates how much time you have.

I think the practically unavoidable boat damage is fine. I agree the fight has problems but it’s mostly issues with the execution; I really like the concept of having to juggle managing your boat hp/position all while making sure crab king doesn’t heal himself or freeze you, and forced damage isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

[hoxi]

6 minutes ago, goblinball said:

I think the practically unavoidable boat damage is fine. I agree the fight has problems but it’s mostly issues with the execution; I really like the concept of having to juggle managing your boat hp/position all while making sure crab king doesn’t heal himself or freeze you, and forced damage isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Well, making the claws not deal damage on attaching to the boat would help a lot, just buff the damage they deal afterwards instead if you don't deal with them. Still forced damage for the most part, but you can prevent it.

[Cheggf]

Crab King is unironically one of the better fights in the game. The biggest issue is the one demonstrated in your video: a lack of encouragement for gem variety. You did all purples, I do all purples, I bet my next door neighbor would do all purples if he played the game. Everybody does all purples. 

24 minutes ago, hoxi said:

Well, making the claws not deal damage on attaching to the boat would help a lot, just buff the damage they deal afterwards instead if you don't deal with them. Still forced damage for the most part, but you can prevent it.

Why does it matter? He barely even used any planks to repair the damage. Even if the claws did no damage at all you'd still be limited on how much time you have to fight him because you need food and light.

[hoxi]

24 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Why does it matter? He barely even used any planks to repair the damage. Even if the claws did no damage at all you'd still be limited on how much time you have to fight him because you need food and light.

He? Who?

Also it matters, and I mainly suggested it, because if the claws dealt no damage to the boat the instant they latch on (which is 35 btw, not a small amount), you'd have 3-4 seconds to kill them before they damage the boat. That'd be huge and would help a lot in reducing a lot of the forced damage, which means moving around (and into other claws, to dodge geysers) could be more of an option than it is.

If you have to worry less about repairing the boat, doesn't that inherently give more room for preparations about food and light? I feel like those two things are the easiest part of the fight if anything compared to anything else in it.

[Yuuko]

2 hours ago, grm9 said:

what's does "artificial" mean? Does that just mean not being allowed to do the fight by only attacking while the boss isn't attacking and walking/rowing?

I wanna dive into this b/c I feel artificial difficulty is one of the things I find pretty frustrating in games, and DST definitely involves some of it.  Artificial difficulty is not entirely bad - but even where it can help improve a game it usually needs specific accommodations to make it fair.

As with other things, how this manifests has changed over time but in general the purpose of artificial difficulty is rarely to make a better gaming experience - which is the core problem.  It is usually a trade off a better game experience for xyz thing...  The most well known of which is inflating the cost to "win" a game by hitting you with progression walls that are more easily bypassed with additional payment.  This isn't just f2p and p2w app games, back in the day coin-op arcade days games would measure play time per credit and have obstacles designed to end your run at certain time points forcing you to either pay again or clear you off for another player.  It can be used to extend replay value without actually adding new content, like a NG+ system that increases the health and damage of enemies without any significant changes in the game.  Lazy developing can also introduce artificial difficulty because a developer just doesn't realize what they're doing - tbh a lot of players don't recognize artificial difficulty either or p2w games would be a lot less lucrative lol

Artificial difficulty can be good, but it usually requires accommodations to compensate for the unfair thing the game is doing.  Obfuscating information like health and damage values can make a more thematic experience by focusing the players attention on the game sprites and ambience of the world BUT denying this information can force the player to make bad decisions.  The difficulty is artificial because a player can just memorize hit counts, so ultimately the game is the same either way.  To be fair to the player you need to ensure a sense of these values are conveyed in the visuals given to the player even though the numbers themselves are hidden.

This site gives a decent breakdown of some key categories of artificial difficulty.

Spoiler

• Bad technical aspects make it difficult. Making a difficult jump is real difficulty. Making that same difficult jump under an overly complicated control scheme, horrible jumping mechanics, and/or an abrupt mid-air change of camera angle—and therefore the orientation of your controls—is fake difficulty.
• The outcome is not reasonably determined by the player's actions. Unlocking a door by solving a color puzzle is real difficulty. Unlocking it by pressing a button until you get the right number is not.
• Denial of information critical to progress. A reasonable game may require the player to use information, clues, or logic to proceed. Withholding relevant information such that the player cannot possibly win without a guide, walkthrough or trial and error is fake difficulty. Also includes hidden Unstable Equilibrium (e.g. a later level is much harder if you do badly at an early level, and you're not informed of this ahead of time). In a 2D game with no camera control, hiding important details behind foreground elements or Behind the Black counts as fake difficulty if your character should be able to see them.
• The outcome of the game is influenced by decisions that were uninformed at the time and cannot be undone. (Unless the game is heavily story-based and unforeseen consequences of actions undertaken with incomplete information are legitimate plot elements, or the game offers some way of mitigating or eliminating those consequences.) A game that offers a Joke Character and is clear about the character's weakness has real difficulty. A game that disguises a joke character as a real one has fake difficulty.
• The game requires the player to use skills or knowledge that are either incorrect or have nothing to do with the genre. A football game that requires you to name the eleven positions that make up a team has real difficulty. A football game that requires you to calculate the trajectory of a football in motion has fake difficulty, even if it is tangentially related.

I feel the first point has a pretty big impact on DST in general.  The controls for movement, aiming, attacking, etc are undeniably clunky.  This is why I often say DST just doesn't support high precision combat like Dark Souls.  We can't really doge duck dip dive and dodge if we're unable to clearly read and respond to enemies.  Fortunately DST's combat was built simply so most of the time you only needed to know enemy attack timing which is usually divisible by a number of player attacks.  Attack 2 times dodge, repeat.  More complex interactions start to show the problems though.  Targeting priority can often pick the worst thing to target.  Trying to hit a shadow hand or woven shadow vs AFW can be a big problem since hitting AFW while his shield is up delivers a penalty interaction even if you MEANT to hit the shadow hand AFW is standing on top of.  Even trying to manually click on the thing can be a problem as the sprites overlap possibly preventing us from clicking on the thing we can SEE and KNOW we should attack.  This gets worse on console with its limited controller aiming for things like weather pain and telepoofing.

The second point covers interactions like forced damage.  The claws WILL damage your boat if you intend to get close and melee him, the geysers will shred your boat beyond repair if you cannot cancel the spell or maneuver off of the spell area.  The game needs to accommodate this forced damage, and this is a point of contention.  It takes a lot of ice staves to cancel geysers through this fight, more if you're on a 1x damage character because the fight is longer and the claw respawns and geyser spell are on time based cd not health breakpoints.  It also takes a bit of swinging to get rid of his claws with 1x damage.  Now if your boat does get hit its not over because you can place another boat to continue the fight BUT then we're hit with point 1 from the sidelines with a chair...  Any debris, birds, seeds, etc will block boat placement - and this is pretty much entirely RNG making your ability to continue the fight on a replacement boat hit point 2 right in the face.

Most of this isn't directed at you, just to set a basis for what I mean when I say "artificial difficulty" - but to the point you quoted:

Point 3 is extremely relevant for CK and breaking his regen.  There is a specific window you need to land multiple attacks to break the healing but that window is not clearly indicated.  Even anim cancelling to maximize attack speed doesn't naturally hit it.  It should have a more clear indicator that "here is when you need to hit me to break this healing."  The healing is extremely powerful for him, if you cannot break the healing it is pretty much worthless to continue the fight.  Without giving the player that tell this is an example of bad artificial difficulty.

Most enemy healing in DST is extremely over powered and not clearly telegraphed.  I'd say its the most blatant artificial difficulty button Klei likes to press.  Having a boss heal can be fine but we need some type of indicator 1) that a certain action is healing, 2) that an action we took prevented it, and 3) if the boss has healed enough to reset the fight.  Ironically point 3 is something CK has, but Klei should add to the other bosses.  Any mob that heals should have some indicator that its restored a significant portion of its health lettings us know that we have failed to progress the fight.

[Evelo]

I like the bee strat.
Buzz buzz.

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, hoxi said:

He? Who?

The video you are commenting on. He brought 20 boards with him, but only used 5. He would have ran out of ice staves way before he ran out of boards, since he started with 6 and ended with 1.75. The damage to the boat was entirely irrelevant. 

1 hour ago, hoxi said:

Also it matters, and I mainly suggested it, because if the claws dealt no damage to the boat the instant they latch on (which is 35 btw, not a small amount), you'd have 3-4 seconds to kill them before they damage the boat. That'd be huge and would help a lot in reducing a lot of the forced damage, which means moving around (and into other claws, to dodge geysers) could be more of an option than it is.

That isn't explaining why it would be good, you're just reiterating what you said. I know that if the claws didn't damage the boat, then the claws wouldn't damage the boat. Why does it matter? Why are you okay with bringing 6 ice staves but you're not okay with bringing 5 boards? 

[hoxi]

Just now, Cheggf said:

The video you are commenting on. He brought 20 boards with him, but only used 5. He would have ran out of ice staves way before he ran out of boards, since he started with 6 and ended with 1.75. The damage to the boat was entirely irrelevant. 

That isn't explaining why it would be good, you're just reiterating what you said. I know that if the claws didn't damage the boat, then the claws wouldn't damage the boat. Why does it matter? Why are you okay with bringing 6 ice staves but you're not okay with bringing 5 boards? 

You should probably read some of my previous comments. I'm not okay with bringing 6 ice staves and 20 boards or anything like that. Just because it's not relevant to that video, it doesn't mean it's not relevant otherwise. The scenario in the video isn't the only possible scenario.

The claws could be more frequent, not deal damage on attaching to the boat, have less health, and not stop the boat completely and prevent movement, just slow it down (this would stack if they were changed to do this, similarly to using multiple anchors on a boat). This would make ice staves more of panic button, and less instant damage from the claws means less forced damage, so less boards or so.

[Cheggf]

3 minutes ago, hoxi said:

You should probably read some of my previous comments. I'm not okay with bringing 6 ice staves and 20 boards or anything like that. Just because it's not relevant to that video, it doesn't mean it's not relevant otherwise. The scenario in the video isn't the only possible scenario.

The claws could be more frequent, not deal damage on attaching to the boat, have less health, and not stop the boat completely and prevent movement, just slow it down (this would stack if they were changed to do this, similarly to using multiple anchors on a boat). This would make ice staves more of panic button, and less instant damage from the claws means less forced damage, so less boards or so.

So your issue isn't that the claws deal damage, your issue is the entire fight and you want it to be completely different.

[Yuuko]

3 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

So your issue isn't that the claws deal damage, your issue is the entire fight and you want it to be completely different.

To be fair - they listed what they think the problems of the fight are.  They also made a mod to test out changes, and how they felt these changes improved the fight.

You're commenting only on the tail end of that logic, you should probably read it all to see how they got from A to B.

6 hours ago, hoxi said:

It's amazing how the claws are the main issue with the fight, along with interrupting healing being able to require more than one hit as that just screws over solo players unless they use very specific methods.

The main issues with them is how they're there for most of the fight, how they can hold the boat in place instantly, even just a single claw, how long it takes to kill them on your own (even with Wolfgang, since you'll likely need to freeze Crab King to deal with them or use weather pains to interrupt the healing). All this on top of their decently high unavoidable damage on the boat. The only saving grace their current iteration could have is that boat bumpers could block and tank the damage first, but instead they just destroy bumpers, not even allowing that as an option.

I recently got more into modding this game to address some bugs on my own until klei fixes them or so, and things that just felt frustrating and boring to deal with, and that included this fight, so I gave it a try without doing too much complicated stuff. And did the following to see how it would feel...

 

[hoxi]

11 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

So your issue isn't that the claws deal damage, your issue is the entire fight and you want it to be completely different.

Yes and no, it depends. The main two issues with it are the claws and the healing interrupting requiring more than 1 hit (on top of its strict timing). With some adjustments to both, the fight could go from overly punishing over 1 or 2 mistakes, to something more fun that's still challenging enough that requires some multitasking and moving the boat around.

The fight doesn't need to be completely reworked in its entirety, though that wouldn't be unwelcome.

[Jakepeng99]

10 hours ago, Cruvimaster said:

And I still tell you that most of those who complain here can't defeat Wilson's or even Wolfgang's Ancient FuelWeaver.

This is not true in the slightest.. Your take on this argument is somewhat inconstructive and twisted. You are ignoring everything everyone is saying and is believing that everyone is complaining because they have a skill issue and you ignore when they say otherwise. You did a hard strategy that is cool but irrelevant to what everyone is saying.

 

To repeat, nobody here is complaining about not being able to do it. Just because it is beatable does not make it fun or well designed.

8 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

"datamine" ????? placing the boat where only 2 claws can reach you does not require datamining lmao

also relevant for anyone who thinks ice staves/setups/a specific spot in the arena for the boat are necessary (I used only purples here because I was lazy but you can actually add oranges/yellows/blues/reds and this would still work): 

Crab King is far from my favorite boss but I think he's overhated, the biggest issue is the lack of drops

. I honestly wont mind if they heavily nerfed or even fixed ice staff from canceling attacks, lr instead made this version of the fight much more appealing and make ice staffs seem super overkill. This is the best way (in terms of fun) to fight crab king and they just need to nerf claws more to make it better.

Edited February 17 by Jakepeng99

[Trontar]

You guys are talking about the boss fight but not Crab kings music!?
I just love Crab king’s boss music.

[Jakepeng99]

9 hours ago, Well-met said:

give it a rain conch and nerf the boosts of all non-purple gems

but noooo klei never revisits flawed content.

 

I also like the idea of using gems to give the strident new abilities. Nerfing gems is a good idea too.

 

Blue gem could let it create ice boats for example.

[marshyds]

Removing the claws would just improve the fight, making the strategy circling him while dodging bubbles would be infinitely more fun

[_zwb]

12 hours ago, Cruvimaster said:

I made a video showing the use of a fighting technique, among the many that exist (using Weather Pain, Wolfgang's freezing dumbbells, bees, Ice Flingomatic, bringing together 6 people to melt the boss in a beating, etc.) and expressed my opinion about the work done by Klei (can I like something Klei does?).

Here come people questioning using Wigfrid with Ham Bat when facing the boss alone, using purple gems (Klei's strategy), being guilty of knowing the position of the boat, being unhappy with canceling the attack animation (I can redo the fight without it) etc. .

Do you think it's bad to bring DST videos to the DST forum?

You haven't answered this question: I've killed these bosses ""legitimately"", then what? Why can't I complain about a boss that's just killable, not enjoyable?

Just baffling how you missed the entire point of my comment and responded with something unrelated.

11 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

"datamine" ????? placing the boat where only 2 claws can reach you does not require datamining lmao

How did you find out about the exact position without it then? I'm genuinely curious.

[Guille6785]

6 hours ago, _zwb said:

How did you find out about the exact position without it then? I'm genuinely curious.

by playing the game???

[Cruvimaster]

6 hours ago, _zwb said:

You haven't answered this question: I've killed these bosses ""legitimately"", then what? Why can't I complain about a boss that's just killable, not enjoyable?

Just baffling how you missed the entire point of my comment and responded with something unrelated.

While you continue questioning, I continue training in combat. That's the difference between us.

Point out to Klei the changes you want, as I cannot assist you with that.

If Klei makes the boss more docile, it won't be a problem for me, because whoever does the difficult thing also does the easy thing.

Good game to you.

[Yuuko]

7 hours ago, _zwb said:

How did you find out about the exact position without it then? I'm genuinely curious.

Trial and error.  Roll backs basically give us a save state / restore state type practicing environment.  Place the boat, fight the boss until the claws summon, and replay as necessary.  Even console can do this.

42 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

While you continue questioning, I continue training in combat. That's the difference between us.

Point out to Klei the changes you want, as I cannot assist you with that.

If Klei makes the boss more docile, it won't be a problem for me, because whoever does the difficult thing also does the easy thing.

Good game to you.

Oh wow, take the criticism about using a damage mods when showing how "easy" something is and turn it up with more damage mods... well played.

Are you sure your first post wasn't sarcastic and this was all a troll thread?

b/c at this point I'm starting to get less impressed by your choice of hat, which was frankly the most interesting thing about your first video...

Now its starting to look like this...

Getting some real Andrew Tate vibes from this post ngl...

Edited February 17 by Yuuko

[Cruvimaster]

2 minutes ago, Yuuko said:

Oh wow, take the criticism about damage mods vs 1x damage characters and turn it up with higher damage mods... well played.

Are you sure your first post wasn't sarcastic and this was all a troll thread?

b/c at this point I'm starting to get less impressed by your choice of hat, which was frankly the interesting thing about your first video...

Getting some real Andrew Tate vibes from this post ngl...

The Guille6785 left a video with Wilson here. What's the matter with you?

Please complain to Klei.

I can't help you with your personal frustration at not being able to play your favorite character.

[_zwb]

1 hour ago, Cruvimaster said:

While you continue questioning, I continue training in combat. That's the difference between us.

Again, what's wrong with questioning? You keep avoiding the question and respond with something unrelated. This isn't going anywhere...

Also as Yuuko said, the Andrew Tate or "sigma male" vibe is getting real, feels like a troll post at this point.

34 minutes ago, Yuuko said:

Place the boat, fight the boss until the claws summon, and replay as necessary.

Making the player abuse rollback isn't something good either...

[Cruvimaster]

4 minutes ago, _zwb said:

Again, what's wrong with questioning? You keep avoiding the question and respond with something unrelated. This isn't going anywhere...

Also as Yuuko said, the Andrew Tate or "sigma male" vibe is getting real, feels like a troll post at this point.

 

The only people who can help you with the game are the developers.

I'm sorry, but I can't help solve your problems.

[_zwb]

1 minute ago, Cruvimaster said:

 

The only people who can help you with the game are the developers.

I'm sorry, but I can't help solve your problems.

I'm not asking you to change the Crab King in the first place