In Discussion Bossing [Feedback Request] Von Leon

Should it really take over 3 weeks to fix jail...?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the fix should be easy.
Since this is a major issue, I expected it to be fixed within days at most.

 

Hi, so we tested a few things in a run now.
So the bugs seem to be fixed, but there is a major issue now.
Rocks (maybe also Lasers?) hit above the stairs meaning u are safe to just attack under them.
You can tp VL left and right around the throne and just never die by attacking under the stairs.
No way thats intentional right? @Zancks
It's a very major issue.

On another note, my feedback from earlier is STILL relevant after the jail fix.
The boss is just paper now, even on 14-16 man parties sadly, with jail.
If the goal is 12 man stopper runs eventually, I think you achieved it.
The 40% jail feels underwhelming too compared to the old 50%, it makes a difference.

 

Yes and yes to both!
This is not a 100% confirmed conclusion because of the 1 run sample size, but we did try and get it to the spot where its supposed to tp out, and it didn't.
Animation cancels happened, specifically with DP involved.
Oh and also before I forget, the dispel chat message appears even when you don't get dispelled.

 

The new game any% strat

 

Duo attack vl very possible now

 

Yea, also muling res/tl mule and just leaving it under stairs for the entire run

 

Ez belt sales too

 

Note: In the following gifs, the delay/position of each frame of the gifs may not reflect perfectly what is in game. I don't have the patience to make it so.

HP/Jail Nerfs.
When this was brought up before, I was vehemently against nerfing the HP. I tried to give this much thought and gave the update a chance pre and post jail fix, but I'm still confused why all of this was done. Let me be clear, my issue with the HP nerf is not that there was any nerf, but that it was across the board without anything else accompanying the boss. For example, why was jail changed from 50% to 40%? Why were the mobs nerfed? To me, one of the best parts was having Von Leon spawn mobs and then jail. I've heard complaints from players about this, but to me it was one core thing that made the boss difficult. It actually gave VL time to heal. Now golems melt like nothing even more than before.

I want many players to experience the joy of succeeding in VL, but was all of this really the problem? Please don't misunderstand my gripe as some elitist point of view. When you watch videos of most failed runs, was it a lack of time and DPS? In most groups, you'd find it to be rough communication and excessive deaths from players refusing to learn how to time their attacks with VL's attacks, or a suboptimal composition. Again, I would welcome an HP nerf if along with it came more interesting mechanics/tweaks. As of now, the boss just feels like HT to me. Maybe that's just a personal thing.

A case for why the HP decrease may have been a valid change.
50 CGS Max 18 Man Pre HP Nerf: Video 1, Video 2

Most criticisms of this run would be on the level on nitpicking. One could say though that it had a sub-optimal party composition (range heavy) or some sub-optimal play (deaths). The nice thing about VL that was more true pre patch was that optimizations mattered a lot more. For example, this same run would have no issues being cleared with a completely different composition (all melee, for example.)

So I ask the questions, and hopefully someone can answer me. Who is this boss for? What stage of the game is the baseline to join a VL? What does it mean when a group clears the boss? Should the boss be clearable no matter your job composition, just because everyone has the requisite funding and experience?

Expedition Limit
I personally think there should be a limit on the number of signs. The limit should be 18 signs, or 3 full parties. This has some benefits.

1. Keeps things reined in: it's easier to balance rewards when you know the maximum number of players allowed in the run. There's a world of difference between the ranges 12-18 and 12-30, and it's what I believe has been a major contributor to the difficulty of balancing the boss.
2. Adds a layer of difficulty (although, less so now with the current nerfs). A maximum on the number of players is a good way to prevent brute force runs.

Maybe I'm being harsh with an 18 person limit. I've mentioned this to some, who say that a 21 limit would be better if one was to be considered. I understand I'm probably in the minority with this opinion, and it'd be controversial. But I think there's something to be said about a limit which tells a group 'if you cannot clear the boss with x players, then you should come back when you improve.)

Scroll Farm Removal
I think this is something neglected that needs to be addressed. Please consider an alternative to scroll farming, a one-time cost (something similar to an HT badge), or the removal. It needs to be properly acknowledged that unlike all the other bosses in this game, a significant effort is required for organizing a smooth run. In addition, a significant amount of prep time is required, especially waiting for people to gather, not to mention things like last minute replacements.

If scroll farm is removed, or a more viable solo alternative is implemented, it would make practice runs more accessible to people. If you are nowhere near ready to face the boss, you can still practice with 5 other friends and get somewhat far. People have mentioned a practice mode, but that doesn't sound like the Royals style to me.


Alright, enough with the controversial opinions. Maybe the following are more appealable.

Preparing First Timers
I think the concerns that organizers have about the bar being high for new players are valid. This is in the sense that there are no reasonable ways for players to improve other than joining runs which are limited to 2x a week, in addition to dealing with the feeling of dragging down their group.

I don't think the HP nerfs address this issue properly. I think the best idea so far was to have content which prepares a player for VL. Now, I don't think the correct route is to wait for the next new content expansion to think about implementing this. We should modify existing content with the resources we already have.

If you want a lore reason for any of these so that it seems less jank, imagine Von Leon bestows his power among his most powerful minions or something. The following suggestions should require minimal custom art work, if at all.

King Castle Golem (KCG) attacks: KCG currently has 3 attacks.

The current rock attack should be changed to either stun at 100% rate, or whisks the player away to the previous map/some place in the current map. This acts as a time penalty.

Spoiler: Rock Attack 1

Add the VL rock drop attack to one of the slamming attacks. Make the falling golem a garden golem, and maybe change the rope to be a vine instead. The area warning can be left the same for consistency, and maybe just recolored a bit.

Spoiler: Rock Attack 2

Make the other slam attack knockback, where one can dodge if they jump.

Spoiler: Other Slam Attack

Finally, remove touch damage so iframes from damage can't be abused. (Garden Golems negligible imo). I think these changes would add depth to an otherwise bland boss, and accomplish partially what we want here.

New Ani Fight: In addition to KCG, we could add another repeatable Ani fight, and fit Ani with two of VL's attacks:
Gargoyle Shout. If you want to avoid a straight copy paste, perhaps Ani can have the same attack except with a demon gargoyle (I took a part of its attack animation that can be used.) Prone to dodge.

Spoiler: Ani Shout

Ground Slam. Same as the change I will propose to VL's punch attack, make it a knockback attack which is avoided via jumping.

Spoiler: Ani Slam

Eruption attack: have a longer beginning, to act as another thing to dodge similar to rocks, or refit an areawarning from some GMS mob that would be suitable at the beginning of the eruption animation.

Spoiler: Ani Eruption

Von Leon Attacks
Laser. The laser is not deadly in its current form; there are way too many cop outs that follow a laser, including bird, slam missing, golem consume, dispel, teleport, jail, mob summon, rocks that are not on you, being too far away for lightning, etc. The solution is two fold:

1. Make the laser action something other than prone. I was originally in favor of the prone sed for aesthetics (you get lasered, you're 'stunned'), as I don't think a sed walking left or right (which do you pick and why?) is ideal. If the direction is random (if that's even possible) then that's not a fair mechanic to counter from a bishop's perspective. I'm not sure how this would be accomplished, as the only seduces I know to currently exist are prone, walk, jump walk, and jump. There is a property there that could be played with but I'm unsure what it controls, and of course I cannot test it. Either make the seduce put the player in a sitting animation (funny), standing, or alert.

2. Is it possible to add an avoidability decrease to the laser attack? Specifically to the debuff that limits the visibility of the screen (or add an additional debuff.) It is criminal how much shadowers get away with in VL. They can dodge every attack with bstep with absolute ease (the timing is very easy to learn)...

I don't know if it's possible, but it would be nice if VL knows to follow a laser attack with another attack as opposed to a skill.

Ground Slam: Contrary to some players beliefs, this attack is not currently avoidable by jumping. Instead it is a type 3 attack similar to the falling rocks, where VL picks 5(?) places randomly around him to attack. This attack should be changed to one covering a wide area to the left and right of VL, which is dodged by jumping. This is so if you are lasered on VL and he follows up with a punch, you will have less chance to survive.

And of course, hopefully with the new client we'll be able to have the falling golem attack be 100% hit?

In Conclusion
I understand where staff is coming from with the patch to a degree, but I think it's too heavy handed in one direction. It's undeniable that certain things are being accomplished, such as higher morale throughout the server and more groups running. However, I hope that more things get implemented which address the root problem of more groups not running VL while also satisfying us players that want to maintain the difficulty curve. In my opinion, Von Leon should not be a casual boss (like the rest of this game).

While I expect many to disagree with my sentiment or the ideas here, I hope they at least serve as a stepping stone for improvements in the future.

 

There's already an effective limit of 24, after that it's just too chaotic. IMO it's fine to keep it as 30, which is consistent with other bosses in the game. People can try and brute force with numbers but honestly lack of skill among members will let any party size still fail.

At the very least a massive buff to scroll drop rate, and/or making them stackable again would help a lot.

Whole section is great, well thought out, just as long as RG boss golems don't 1shot you. As hilarious as that would be it's probably not the best idea.

IMO it doesn't need to be too deadly, it already does kill people a decent amount. Adding too much just makes it a 2nd insta kill attack, with more steps. IMO slight sed duration increase would be good as sed ends before rocks hit, which lets some classes just iframe and ignore rocks after laser too. Changing slam as you suggested would also help.

Prone would be good if duration is increased, as being prone makes your hitbox wider, so you can't fit in-between 1-wide rock gaps. This would make rocks more deadly. Sitting/standing wouldn't make it harder since bird 1/1 can't kill you, and that's the only extra attack that would hit you vs prone.


As for the HP nerfs in general, I believe that's less to allow people to clear easier, and more to let smaller parties clear, which will help with the profitability of the boss. And keep in mind, the original goal was 12-18 man parties I believe, which this patch makes much more reasonable. Easier clears for 24 man groups are just a side effect, and as I said before, lack of skill means they'll still fail.

 

Hey @Zancks
Just updating that VL tping out of the left side of the map still exists...
We did try to test that in our initial run but we probably just missed the spot by a step or something.
Yesterday it tped out of the map again, perhaps @cremcrem can post the clip.

 

It's been 2 months since the nerf, and despite making feedback right away, I wanted to give it some more time to get a real good feel of this update, and be open to seeing if the change was good.
In all honesty, in my entire 4 years of playing this server I've never been this frustrated and angry over an update.
I'm frustrated for multiple reasons:

Party size:
I honestly understand why you would want smaller party sizes than before.
It's been hard for organizers and in general this is a healthy approach for the server.
I was against it at first, but I am more understanding towards it now.
Smaller party size = easier to organize = more interest.
However, this came at a heavy cost of making this boss a free clear.
With the difficulty lowered, the party size was not given a lower limit, you can still run the boss in 20-24 man and have the easiest clear of your life.
You don't need to learn mechanics like you had to before, you just go in with enough bishops and res and you brute force a clear.
This was also doable before, but now more than ever.
I've seen some absolute shitshows the past 2 months (not trying to offend any other group, I appreciate your effort), these runs should've never cleared, and the organizers know it.
You don't get punished, you can have your entire party wiped multiple times with people dying left and right, and it will still clear with over 20 mins left.
This is extremely unhealthy for the community in my honest opinion.

Difficulty:
Everything was nerfed across the board - HP, mobs and jail.
With this - one of the hardest and more interesting parts of the boss is gone entirely.
You don't have to optimize party compositions and you don't need to worry about unfortunate timings such as double mobs + jail.
On all party sizes so far, Golems just melt - no matter the party composition, if Gargoyles are alive or how many are inside jail.
There is no depth anymore, and no planning needed.
Also, does it seem right that the "endgame" boss of Royals can be cleared on gizer in 14-15 man parties?
How about 12 man on stopper?
Heck, we don't even communicate anymore during runs cause it's not needed, we just come, clear, log off.
Here are some clear times just to demonstrate how ridiculous this update is:
(most of those were apple -> stopper runs)

Spoiler: click me

10 man (8 attackers):


10 man (8 attackers): VL POT


12 man (10 attackers):


17 man (15 attackers):


17 man (14 attackers):


15 man (12 attackers):


14 man (11 attackers):

Let me ask you an honest question:
Why are we as a server allergic to difficulty?
Why would we rather listen to the silent majority who would rather clear a boss and have fun without learning mechanics?
How do you want to release pink bean (a much harder boss to coordinate) into a community that has gotten used to staff catering to them and spoonfeeding them with clears, instead of letting them work?

Profitability:
You would think that lowering the party sizes will lead to more profits, and as a result to more interest.
However, that's not the case.
Splits are a joke atm:
- Bullet/Quiver manuals are not sellable due to too many of them being on the market.
- Star manual is somewhat sellable, tho very hard and the prices decrease quick because of the high supply.
- HW did maintain it's value for now.

Bonus is just dry, we have been trying to run 12-10 man apple runs for profit, but even when we get 3 boxes each, on average we would profit way more from HT/AUF/RG/CWK.
So why run?
Many regulars just stopped running to focus on other content as a result of this market, it's just not profitable.

Communication and transparency:
I've been spamming this thread with feedback for almost a year, just scroll back and see how many walls of texts I've been writing.
At this point, I hosted over 120 runs, so I think it's fair to say that I'm familiar with the boss from both organizer and player point of view.
I've been getting no replies from staff.
My feedback can get as many likes as you want, but it's being entirely ignored.
I'm ok with staff not agreeing, but can I hear some reasoning? can we have a discussion?
There is no transparency, and as far as I'm concerned there's not much logic behind updates too.
The only thing I heard so far is staff wanting to introduce DR to this boss, which in my opinion is not fitting at all and is a worrying sign.

If I'm being completely honest? I'm tired of this.
I invest a lot of my time in VL -> I feedback to the best of my ability while being objective -> I get ignored.
This cycle will end eventually and I will (along with others) just lose my will to feedback.
Why does this thread even exist?
I probably forgot a lot of things I'm frustrated about, but honestly I don't see any point investing more effort into this post.

I hope you do better and I hope you realize the importance of difficulty in a game like this.
Other servers can do it successfuly, there's no reason why we can't.

 

https://gyazo.com/263884e99afabb1f61dc0006012a6e61

The server's been alive for quite some time now, 10 years+

There's such a canyon in terms of player-to-player gear progression.

• In some of the newer runs that finally cleared, that would not have in the past, maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of them may be on a perfect weapon.
• In your runs, you're probably pushing around 1/3 of the entire run having a +20 86-87 stat auf helm
• Your 16-Man clear group in terms of pure DPS is probably the average public run group's 20-22man group's DPS, this isn't even accounting for player skill and death count

Auf helmed attackers probably have at least 60cgs and a perfect weapon. They're probably worth 1.5x the average public VL attacker

While we shouldn't make this boss zerg rush brute force clearable easy, I think a nerf to reduce the # of players needed was good.

However:

• Reducing jail # and HP of all mobs. I think either of those would be a good nerf, but never expected both of them to go through.
• Boss HP is minor but with the addition of the first two nerfs, it seems a bit overkill

It was inevitable at a certain point the drops would become oversaturated, however, the nerfs definitely sped it up.
And if you view Donnie's S>Belt VIP threads, there doesn't even seem to be much desire from players there to buy the services

 

I am adding a new post because I'm adding way too much extra stuff:

Any content is going to be difficult to cater to all players. This content I believe was released with the intent of being end-game content. And it was dialed back so a larger pool of players could clear it.

I believe VL has lost its original identity and goal.

• It's some combination of an end-game boss which 12-16 end-game players can clear with relative ease and a boss you can get a bunch of midgame players with enough TL/Ress and brute force it.
• As a result, the drops are going to continue to drop in price, and at a certain point, all the vets will have finished looting enough belts.
• Without worthwhile value, regular VL runners will eventually stop running it all altogether as the drops and even bonus items slowly lose value/interest over time

Also VL Bonus in an attempt to extend its popularity kind of screwed over several other content:

• Belt 60s were added in Neo Tokyo to increase their value and make them more worthwhile to do. Adding them into VL bonus made their value tank to a lukewarm/uninteresting drop (20-30m). Yes these scrolls are not very popular, but, if they only dropped in NT, I could see them being 50-100m
• Eye for Luk 10% @Jooon can write you an entire essay about how unhappy people who bought this scroll @ 300m and how quickly it was added into new content. In addition, all the Face/Eye 10s

I feel like the Scarga scroll drop rates were awful. Buffing the drop rates might have made it reasonable enough and given midgame players another great way to make mesos in content most endgame players would not do. Now people just print out these scrolls in the VL bon. Repeated statement for belt 60s

 

Could we reduce the totem and/or meso cost on VL medallion? Or make parchment stackable again?
If I haven't spent the week farming, I can't loot coin/parch--since the other rewards are so weak, I should stay farming instead of running

Rather than an effective meso sink, I think it creates incentive to generate more and boss less

 

Completely agree with this, mainly the totems. Especially when you're lvl 200 (which a good chunk of VL runners are) you don't really have a way to get more totems outside of slowly accumulating them from RG golem boss, in which case it'd take about a month to gather 500. It's not really worth it imo to run LHC as a 200 if you're not getting any xp out of it.

When I've described the cost/process for scrolling a VL belt to other players, they typically just say "no thank you" and don't bother with it. I understand it's meant to be the ultimate, best-in-slot endgame belt and it shouldn't be easy to complete, but I think it's a bit too much in its current state. I think it will drive away all but the very most dedicated players from wanting it and thus more people will be ok with skipping VL. I don't think that's what we want, right?

Same thing for the quivers. I would love to craft a few more for myself but it's torture trying to save up the totems

 

I can't be the only that's upset with this change.

It now costs only ONE cs for a guaranteed one pass per week. Meaning it's on average 400% cheaper than before, and at least 200% less burning energy required.

- I spent well over 30b on von leon belt scrolling, and alot of time doing LHC golems for the mats.
- Since 2022 december when von leon just came out, i said vl cs 60% shouldn't be a thing
- Didn't seem like there were gonna be changes to it, so fast forward 4 months later, i made another feedback asking for vl 100% scroll.
- Again, didn't feel like there were gonna be any changes.
- So i guess it is what it is right, just accepted that scrolling a good belt isn't gonna be cheap and easy, so i persevered with those rates.

And now suddenly after 11 months (14 months after my first feedback about vl cs), after which a good number of players have invested a lot of time and effort into their belts, this change comes along.
This is such a huge FU to all the players that have been actively scrolling von leon belts for the past 1 year.

 

I feel like a white scroll should belong somewhere in there but it may not make sense since ws doesn’t increase proc rates.