Ancient Guard Tower fight hardly relies on insanity, feels incredibly easy as of recent patches

[JazzyGames]

Prefacing this feedback with the disclaimer that I am not looking for overly-complicated or prohibitively-challenging boss fights. I appreciate a challenge, and toward that end I appreciate bosses with unique fighting strategies. That's what I loved about the guard tower fights, the need to summon nightmare creatures to aid your character in battle. Otherwise you get swamped by all four guard towers simultaneously (well, most of the time).

Following this weekend's patches the fight is now incredibly simple and relies even less on the nightmare creature mechanic than it had previously. Now by default only one guard tower attacks at a time. The others will stand around and point at you but won't attack unless you venture too close to them. This makes it a considerably easier fight, and its most unique aspect - utilizing shadow creatures to distract other towers - is now completely unnecessary.

It's an interesting system of taunting players but if we can isolate each tower without any particular trick and just doing the same fight four times while the others watch on, I don't know, it feels rather stale to me. Not nearly as exciting as fighting alongside shadow creatures who helped us to avoid being overrun. I know people are going to hate me for suggesting this but, what if the taunting towers provided some sort of support measure to the tower engaged in battle? Maybe it increases their damage or armor if they're cheering them on, and in order to nullify this boost you need to summon nightmare creatures to distract the support towers.

It is my genuine wish that this incredibly creative mechanic remains more than just a funny gimmick but an integral aspect of this fight. Even if the towers are intended to attack one at a time, hopefully the insanity can still benefit the player as the environment has strongly suggested.

[Waywarbler]

When I heard they were gonna have the guard towers "taunt", I thought "man you already don't really need to interact with the insanity mechanic, this is gonna make it even less necessary."

Now it's almost like fighting four Beargers in a row. They move around a lot less now that they point at you, so you hardly have to worry about spacing them out.

I don't know about armor, but I like the idea of the golem currently engaging you becoming more aggressive/damaging as the others cheer it on. Maybe their pointing at you would apply some kind of vex that makes getting hit more punishing?

[Pumking7]

Due to this being part 1 of the update its hard to say exactly when you're supposed to fight this group of bosses. What I mean is it appears much like Crab King or Ancient Guardian this is a "pre-boss" to another of the sort based on the ancient key. If this is the case I don't mind its difficulty if this is the case and we are going to be fighting these bosses pre-shadow endgame boss.

I actually like the taunting system its reminiscent of the shadow thrall trio from the dreadstone outcrop. I feel like my main issue is that the taunting guards don't really add much to the fight as you've said since you often just single one out. I would love if the guards functioned similarly to the shadow blight trio and exchanged who was fighting the player after each one attacks maybe once or twice. This would keep it fresh as paying attention to which guard is actually attacking the player would make the player way more cautious when approaching the fight. This comes into play as I've noticed that taunting guards can still aggro and attack the player if the player gets close, so positioning for which guard is attacking would become much more important. 

Also when the guard towers are "stunned" the taunting guards should probably come help out their friend, its a bit sad to destroy the guard tower as its friends point at it.

[Cassielu]

I believe the design purpose of Shadow Creatures Help was not to help you kill the guard towers, but to assist you in holding off the guard towers so that you could take the Keystone without combat.

[JazzyGames]

Haven’t tested with the most recent update but I don’t believe the keystone unlocks until you kill the guards.

Edit: Nope that’s flat out wrong, my mistake.

Edited Wednesday at 11:17 AM by JazzyGames

[V2C]

Just wanted to clarify a few things.  Their behavior hasn't really changed much, but we simply added an animation of them pointing at you when previously they would've just been idle.  The only condition for unlocking the Keystone is to get all 4 sockets powered.

[Jussatoon]

17 minutes ago, V2C said:

Just wanted to clarify a few things.  Their behavior hasn't really changed much, but we simply added an animation of them pointing at you when previously they would've just been idle.  The only condition for unlocking the Keystone is to get all 4 sockets powered.

So the interaction of shadows distracting them is still useful for the purpose of rushing to obtain the Keystone, and by extension unlocking the Sanctum Smithy, assuming that's the only thing a player cares about at that moment?

I guess the only concern at that point is the Nightmare Amulet/Bone Helm not consistently spawning enough shadow creatures to distract them all sometimes. 

Edited Wednesday at 01:32 AM by Jussatoon

[V2C]

I think it is a valid point that since there is a way simplify the fight using Shadows, then it can be OK to make a slightly harder, but not impossible, if you choose not to use the Shadows.  I'll take a look at the tuning.

[JazzyGames]

10 hours ago, V2C said:

Just wanted to clarify a few things.  Their behavior hasn't really changed much, but we simply added an animation of them pointing at you when previously they would've just been idle.  The only condition for unlocking the Keystone is to get all 4 sockets powered.

That is interesting because the fight definitely felt like 4 on 1 prior to these updates. Their aggro was never super consistent but they would certainly all target you immediately when you attacked one. Perhaps because in lieu of a taunt they would simply continue to walk towards the character until they were within proximity to initiate an attack.

Edited Wednesday at 11:15 AM by JazzyGames

[Biskit]

@V2C I have a suggestion, that has different aspects, and solves different issues in my opinion.

My suggestion is to change it so, after powering the Pulse Cradles, they'd bring up the levers, before any towers, and you can lock in from 1 to 4 levers, and activate them using a main lever in the middle. Meaning it could be possible to choose how many towers to fight at once.

The idea is to give higher risk, higher reward. So some player(s) can choose to lock in all 4 at once, to get more rewards, while another player(s) choose to lock in only 1 at once.

The towers would need a scalable drop in that case of course, which that also could solve a separate issue, that currently, it is possible to make all 4 towers be occupied with shadows, and simply push the 4 tiny Weevils into socket, and basically skip on the towers and the tower kit. (maybe this is intended? I'm not sure)
Maybe the towers could drop some portation fragments again, and that can be balanced by sanctum having less (or no) orbs.

So for example, fighting 1 tower at a time, would have each tower drop 1 fragment. 2 towers at a time = 2 fragments per tower and ...4 towers at once, each drop 4.
Meaning you can either get 4 fragments if you fight one by one, or 16 if 4 at once. Currently each sanctum reset, equals to 7 orbs to my knowledge, meaning 14 fragments. So not much difference.

I think removing the orbs craft at the smithy entirely would be a nice thing, because a) anyone that doesn't know, uses the orbs to repair the waymarks instantly, and b) it makes sense to have some waymarks broken and reward them being repaired, as you need to find the broken side from the other way around, to fix it and get rewarded for that, being a shortcut in the maze.

Edit: as the new update buffed the economy of sanctum to be 7 x 3 = 21 fragments total, my idea could work as is, or be also buffed by 1 fragments per tower, to much the buff (so it'd drop 2 if 1 tower is fought at a time ... or 5 fragments per tower if all four towers, meaning 20 in total)

Edited Thursday at 07:00 PM by Biskit