I'm unhappy about Crab King changes

[ADM]

(I'm slightly angry in this post but I try to speak only from my experience, so I'm really sorry if that makes the lecture difficult and I'm really not or ever been looking for toxic talks but it's important to let things out on something that mattered as much, to me.)

 

So. I was told that it was best to have it in my hands on it before I say anything despite my first impressions on the livestream, and I've been toying around with it for a couple of hours, and with that I can confirm that I'm massively unhappy about the Crab King rework.

I'll explain myself, and intentionally ignore the bugs (like Klei did about the many CK bugs in the last 4 years), and obviously unfinished stuff, to just talk about direct effects from the fight and gameplay. There is a few good things I definitively need to mention, and let's begin with it because it's the shortest section.

 

What's good ?

The fight is now as clear as water. Everything needed to do for a successful battle is obvious immediately and at each actions of the boss. There's a lot more pacing, it's undeniably easier when pearled, and the different gem enhancements are well tuned for the direction it went... with all of that I'm convinced this boss will no longer scare a fair chunk of the playerbase since it can be figured out even on a first encounter all alone. Sounds good ? Hmm... more on that later *

 

What's bad ?

I hardly know where to start... So I'll explain my thoughts but in the order the combat goes :

At the very beginning, CK will summon its cannon buddies, then claws... scary, or is it ? On 6 fights, only the first time did I try to attack the claws or cannons. Nearly everyone in this combat refuse to fight. The claws remain in a perimeter that feels smaller than before, running into them is required to engage in combat, the cannons barely ever manage to land their shots, and CK stares in the abyss. Keeping on attacking the boss just works and the freezing sequence will just happen with the claws going away. Going after the summons is a waste of time because they do very little damage, have slow attack speed, and are far enough to ignore anyway.

Now it's time to freeze the water (or we could already end the fight). CK's finally gonna do something productive, and it's the weirdest of things, I don't like to pull this card but I'm gonna say it, "this feels like a mod" from now on, and the kind that doesn't care about the look of things and how they play out. Players seem to have been hyped about the little crabbies but cute isn't gonna cut it for me because I can either decide to ignore them considering how weak they are, or I'll HAVE to ignore them because they block themselves on the ice wall, half of them may just filter themselves out and the big knight guys that spawn when CK is low health will be getting the same treatment, pathfinding is overrated you see.

Anyway we break through the ice wall and deal a good chunk of damage and on this part I cannot say anything bad, it's almost nice, if not for the weird delay that happens when the wall is broken but we still can't attack CK. But the ice is about to melt and create a ton of trash in our vicinity, we need to go. Only, sometimes my original boat is pushed away by a remaining wave after the ice is formatted, while that's on me, it's a warning I can give you, be patient before going on ice. Other times, I'll have to place a new boat, and while I was already used to fight CK with a Lazy Forager to avoid items from blocking placement of boats... now it's just impossible in an important share of the battlefield now, there's ice everywhere, platforms, claws, cannons, meat, birds, half of these things shouldn't even matter, we should be able to place boats and everything else in general without having to care about the items on the floor, just push them away, why do they bother placement ?

All this process is also massively ugly, the platforms keeps glitching in and out, the indicators of the melting is... bad, it should be like the docks with a clear marking, all these fx... and the misplays from the players will be ugly too, the amount of times me or my friends sunk because of jumping back on ice or a platform, milliseconds before they depop is too high, and that's despite being careful at least from me because my force attack or action button makes me go somewhere I didn't expect. Picking the right target between the ice walls, CK, the claws, the other crabs is also a problem, I must use the mouse sometimes and I fear nothing can be done about that...

 

Conclusion

But whatever, that's it, the cycle will repeat itself, that's the new CK combat start to finish. Nothing from his kit combos with each others now. The claws could still grab on the boat to help the cannons into aim assists but they'd rather shoot the claws anyway it seems ? The ice formation removes the claws by itself, why bother, and the land crabs will just sink themselves, it's a joke of every instants, it's not to be taken seriously, the boss can literally do nothing once you have the cannons from one side gone and claws too scared to reach out. I definitively didn't have AFKing in a bossfight on my bingo card but here we are.

I absolutely loved how Crab King used to be, I just wanted some tweaks because I can only agree there were PROBLEMS with him, I know them all and wished them to be adjusted, fixed, but here I'm given the middle pincer, and that's fine, I saved all old files, I'll mod the original back in my worlds, and I'm okay if players will be enjoying the dummy it has become. I really tried not to speak like if I'm nostalgic, or because I'm allergic to change, I've never been, sometimes the change is simply catastrophic, could have been an awesome change like when Ancient Guardian got this fantastic rework after 8 years of it being a boring sack of health, but this is only worse, easier, but worse across the board.

 

* More on that...
The "what's good" section honestly didn't matter to me I was already over the difficulties of his old fight and, true be told, other players could have been too. We're most likely here today because players voiced out a general discontentment on this boss so much it has become an echo chamber, where we'd be arriving on the game hating him by default, even players that did not try CK yet would know it's bad, because we're told so, and it strengthen the impression. How many of you tried to fight CK unpearled ? Figuring something instead of going for a cheese as it seems too difficult singleplayer, now it feels so wrong to do it with a second person, he melts. We had no reason to do it because the loot are trash (now partially solved...) but the real loot was some training. The gap of difficulty with and without the Pearl was massive, nobody would come out stronger against CK because the Strident Trident would have helped in some kind of way (until now ?) for round two... and well the new bumpers neither, but there's a strategy to be acquired and that's nobody's fault because it sounds like a waste of time, pffft, just go head first and blame the boss ! Really, the fault's on the game for not conditioning the players right for it. And I'm angry because after all these years this was the solution found, all goes in the bin. Sorry if I'm the only guy around there who gave a damn about this boss, maybe there's always someone to complain about a certain thing and that's me this time, but I have my reasons and that's because I learned to love this boss for his kit, not his loots, and now I barely have anything left to love...

 

Oh, and... the new bugs

I bet Klei just refused to fix the bugs for CK because the need for a rework was in one of the bottom drawers... so the new ones are gonna be looked into it right ? Here's a few :

Spoiler

• Reloading into the fight will make the ice tiles permanent
• Mudslingers' tiles can replace the ice too
• Claws often clips into the boat collisions
• Cannons can spawn into boats, causing sinking instantly

 

Finally, only looking to add that I didn't make this topic to find / suggest improvements for the fight. I think the idea is hardly any salvageable when it's a joke. Is it really just because a king's supposed to just watch others fight for him ? Should have renamed him "Crab Guy" instead of going this route. Roll it back and address the actual issues and you'd have me SO HAPPY from the start, but that is simply no longer a possibility, and that's normal, at this point, I was just told so many times to make any topic while I was boiling for 3 weeks so here you go... I really hope I don't post something like that again, I didn't like to do it, so I might not even want to answer anything here. WHEW !

[nimzowitsch10]

Agree with all your points, looking at the livestream i was going wtf this is so weird. He really was an ok boss you only had to fight once for cc and now it's even worse fight. Loot is still bad and the fight itself worse.

Think people over exaggerated how bad ck was. You could kill him in like a minute with wolfgang and 3 icestaffs.

[Wander89]

30 minutes ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

Agree with all your points, looking at the livestream i was going wtf this is so weird. He really was an ok boss you only had to fight once for cc and now it's even worse fight. Loot is still bad and the fight itself worse.

Think people over exaggerated how bad ck was. You could kill him in like a minute with wolfgang and 3 icestaffs.

He was bloody annoying before. The new one can be tweeked to be pretty good.

[Jakepeng99]

I have not tried it yet. Though the minion freeze phase looks annoying and very spammy.

[GreenBowers]

2 hours ago, Wander89 said:

He was bloody annoying before. The new one can be tweeked to be pretty good.

I share this sentiment. It wasn't a fun bossfight last time. They have a chance to make this new one actually fun if they take feedback into consideration.

[. . .]

does someone have a link to a vid showing the new fight?

[Wormboi]

1 minute ago, . . . said:

does someone have a link to a vid showing the new fight?

https://cdn.forums.klei.com/monthly_2024_06/ckkill3.mp4.194e50cd49303162a8e554cd594580a5.mp4

[JeezSorry]

The entire fight just seems like a way to get people to stop spamming ice staff

[mr. brj]

12 minutes ago, . . . said:

does someone have a link to a vid showing the new fight?

I've tried approaching the fight in slightly different ways using nothing but plain weapon and armor, and this (sadly) ended up being what I thought the fight was encouraging me to do.

 

[Fufuji]

The reworked CK seems pretty "dumb" as he barely do anything in both phases. He even lost his summoning animation, when now his only "attacks" are summoning.

But I prefer the current design, mostly due to that it's much easier. Tweaks can be made to make reworked CK more animated, like adding roar or summon animations for him. 

[Reiko24]

The design itself is pretty good, the numbers, AI, etc. is not. Crab King needs to be harder. I'm sure even if it will be harder than the old CK, it will be more pleasant to fight.

[GreenBowers]

It is also day 1 of the beta. I am positive they are reading all this immediate feedback, and will make at least some manner of changes to improve it.

The design of the fight is not unsalvagable.

[Szczuku]

6 hours ago, ADM said:

pathfinding is overrated you see

Ahahaha, Klei have been refusing to fix the pathfinding for years and it continues to cause them problems

Oh, you love to see this

[Jakepeng99]

6 hours ago, ADM said:

Nothing from his kit combos with each others now

Good point, sucks they removed that concept. Every one of his skills previously synergised with each other.

 

Old crab king needed a claw nerf, and maybe a few things to be good to be honest.

[Notecja]

4 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Good point, sucks they removed that concept. Every one of his skills previously synergised with each other.

 

Old crab king needed a claw nerf, and maybe a few things to be good to be honest.

Crab King needed better loot, so people would feel to try him on easier mode than with pearl...

[YouKnowWho]

This is very earnest criticism and I appreciate that. Might not agree with it myself, but it's a very good post nonetheless.

That said, I'm a little confused about what it was you liked about the old crab king. There doesn't seem to be much beyond being "already over the difficulties of the old fight."

[Cackenberg]

On 6/7/2024 at 3:21 PM, ADM said:

I was already over the difficulties of his old fight and, true be told, other players could have been too. We're most likely here today because players voiced out a general discontentment on this boss so much it has become an echo chamber, where we'd be arriving on the game hating him by default, even players that did not try CK yet would know it's bad, because we're told so, and it strengthen the impression.

This is true. I used to dread the crab king, but one day I finally realised that it is possible to fight him legitimately, with no cheese whatsoever, and that it is actually a fun fight. This isn't obvious, so I dont't exactly blame people for not finding this. I cant remember exactly, but I realised either due to a post you made on the forums, or one of the crab king solo videos on youtube by mr brj. I felt disturberd that I had gone so long without realising it. "Why did no one tell me this earlier?"

At some point after this realisation, I went on youtube to attempt to find a video of a fight with the crab king, where the fight is won with the simple teamwork of a group of people, rather than with cheese or with an intimidating solo strategy like guille's. (The teamwok-based fight is what I wanted to do in the fight, but my friends have gotten bored with dst and it sounded like it would be difficult to convince people I didnt already know to do it with me.) Anyway I couldn' t fine any videos. There were even videos of people cheesing it as a group, standing around on a starionary boat using the ice staff and looking bored out of their minds even though they have more than enough people to handle the multitasking of the fight with no ice staves that is actually engaging

It was sad in the first place that so few people were understanding what was fun about the crab king fight. but now it has led to us losing that crab king fight. I don't really blame any players for hating him or the devs for wanting to rebuild him. The design: the healing cancel, the health of the claws, and the mulltitasking of rowing,was probably for it be fought in a group which made it seem like a terrible boss for a normal person trying to solo it. I do sincerely hope the new crab king fight can become a good boss that people enjoy, but the situation for the old crab king fight had an unfortunate ending

[arubaro]

On 6/7/2024 at 5:00 PM, Wander89 said:

He was bloody annoying before. The new one can be tweeked to be pretty good.

The old one could have been tweeked too. It was an interesting fight if you sail but now you are forced to be stand still... atleast the old version give you the choice

I hated the old version but had potential

[Arcwell]

and now for the opinion no one asked for:
I tolerated old Crab King, not because the non-cheese methods were fine, but because I actually enjoyed the cheese method, needing to dodge geysers and keep the boat in a specific range. It was never a good fight in my opinion. Tweaking the old version might've helped, but regardless, we already have a new Crab King so there's little point in discussing the possibility of doing so.

The current fight is easier, which is good, but it comes at the cost of, well, any enjoyment I'd get out of the fight.

• How to deal with claws? Ignore them. They can't reach you.
• How to deal with crabs? Ignore them. Trying to do anything else lets Crab King heal.
• How to deal with cannon towers? Ignore them. You I can't reliably dodge them and attacking them means you've lost a damage window on Crab King.
• How to deal with crab king? Hold F.

It's just not fun.

I'm hopeful the fight will get better as the beta goes on, but I'm not keen on reintroducing old Crab King mechanics. It could work, but I'm skeptical about it creating an overall good experience given how most people viewed the old Crab King fight. My main issue is that the current Crab King mechanics need to be interactive.

[Copyafriend]

6 minutes ago, Arcwell said:

and now for the opinion no one asked for:

[Jakepeng99]

18 minutes ago, Arcwell said:

and now for the opinion no one asked for:
I tolerated old Crab King, not because the non-cheese methods were fine, but because I actually enjoyed the cheese method, needing to dodge geysers and keep the boat in a specific range. It was never a good fight in my opinion. Tweaking the old version might've helped, but regardless, we already have a new Crab King so there's little point in discussing the possibility of doing so.

The current fight is easier, which is good, but it comes at the cost of, well, any enjoyment I'd get out of the fight.

• How to deal with claws? Ignore them. They can't reach you.
• How to deal with crabs? Ignore them. Trying to do anything else lets Crab King heal.
• How to deal with cannon towers? Ignore them. You I can't reliably dodge them and attacking them means you've lost a damage window on Crab King.
• How to deal with crab king? Hold F.

It's just not fun.

I'm hopeful the fight will get better as the beta goes on, but I'm not keen on reintroducing old Crab King mechanics. It could work, but I'm skeptical about it creating an overall good experience given how most people viewed the old Crab King fight. My main issue is that the current Crab King mechanics need to be interactive.

Yeah i agree. I actually tried doing it "legit" like how Klei showcased in the stream by purpously not ignoring everything by killing claws or cannons if they approach me, and trying to face a few of minions, but doing that made the fight kinda annoying since by the time i got near him and got a few hits he just puts up another ice arena and heals. There is no effective gadgets to help me in the claw phase either since his cooldowns still happen when frozen. Maybe a cannon would be good? 

 

He should have like a 5 second or longer delay before he starts healing, and items like the ice staff and other ranged weapons like weather pains should be able to hurt him in his shield (i heard it wont work) so we have the option to freeze him and take out the minions. Fire weapons should deal a large amount of damage to ice.

It wont undermine the fight, since we still have the option to not use things like weather pains to save resources.

[chaosmonkey]

I love the direction they are going with the Crab King fight, but the tuning needs a lot of work.

[cybers2001]

The fact that you can drown mid-fight is ridiculous. If it happened as a result of a critical failure like your boat getting destroyed, then fine. But slipping on the ice and getting stuck on a glacier as it melts away is very much an "anti-fun" mechanic to experience. Hated that with Frostjaw, too.

[Jakepeng99]

1 minute ago, cybers2001 said:

and getting stuck on a glacier as it melts away is very much an "anti-fun" mechanic to experience.

I would like the mechanic if they broke slower while you are standing on it. I liked the feeling of rushing onto an ice boat to try return to my boat. I only like it when i succeed though.

 

Can they be repaired with ice?

[GreenBowers]

I posted a whole thread about my own proposed changes. I really think that they need to incentivize the player moving their boat around the arena. If they can do that, then suddenly you interact more with the mechanics.

The problem is yeah, you can and should just ignore 100% of the fight's mechanics while holding F and thats garbage. At least if there was a reason to row your boat around the arena then

A: You would be forced to interact with the crab claws, because they can only hit you if you go to the edge of the boat, and you need to go there to row around the arena.
B: Moving around the arena brings you into range of new cannon towers, so you actually might interact with them more.

My solution was just bring the geyser attack back, make it so he only does it in the claw phase, and make it so he only does it after getting hit a lot by the player, as a revenge move to make them back off and deal with his summons, since they would have to focus on moving the boat to avoid the big damage. The geyser attack would have to be slow, and very clearly telegraphed.