In Discussion Bossing [Feedback Request] Von Leon

This is something that I completely agree on,
Making it annoying doesn’t means making it more difficult.

To top all the concerns raised above with repeating DC issues.

All these looks like just untested content and just thrown into the live server tbh.

Tweak it to 12man like your original intented design, even though it didn’t turn out to be.
Weaker parties to still be able to enjoy this content with a bigger party size.

And please, please play test it properly this time around with 12 GMs, or trustable volunteers.

 

Please remove gargoyle stuns
It's unfair to die after positioning yourself in a gap to then get knocked back and stunned into a rock, meanwhile VL is already bird stunning you from off screen behind you
At least when VL is on screen, you know when the vulture is coming so the debuff is fair. Adding mobs that knock you about after you did everything you could to stand in the right spot is not. It's already been explained that we can't rely on HSH 100% so there's no other way of avoiding mob stuns. If this is a poor attempt to make hw10 relevant, you are just going to get stunned again before the 360s cooldown.

When you're not getting whipped around, you can't even see your character like what am I even looking at here. Is this supposed to be part of the challenge?

I think VL was developed and fine tuned for quite some time--players just needed time and experience in order to master it and figure out the original 18 man vision
Now we can go 30 man gelt just to turn invisible and stunlock into a rock? There's nothing to figure out besides bad luck.

 

This will be the last feedback I'll make before the next update, and it will focus on how to make Von Leon clearable with 12~18man parties, as it was intended.
I'll be repeating what I feel is important from previous posters for the sake of emphasis.

- Crashing Issues

I understand that you guys are working on it, but at the same time, I know absolutely nothing about game coding or the difficulty of resolving such issues. Given that, I'll say what I think needs to be said to improve gameplay.
People have been crashing for a multitude of reasons ever since the release version of VL, these include:

• Opening GFX UI while Von Leon is summoning.
• Opening Party, Inventory, or other UI during and after the run.
• Build up of memory (this seems to be fixed in the latest dll file, but I believe that the above 2 UI problems are still ongoing, and I'm not sure how much of this has to do with the "memory building up" problem)

In my opinion, reasons #1 and #2 about being unable to open UI makes running VL extremely unenjoyable. I've personally never crashed from opening UI, but many of the people I run with do, and this gatekeeps them from doing any party management at all, which is so important for VL, especially in the latest version. For example, if Team Leader A dies and needs to pass lead to someone else in the party in order to join a Ress Party, Team Leader A has to make the extra effort to not give party ownership to the player with UI problems. If Team Leader A forgets or does it accidentally, the situation arises is that either Party A takes a whole 2 minutes to reorganize the party by manually disbanding with /leaveparty command and then redelegating a new party lead while Team Leader A gets ressed, or player with UI problems attempts to open UI and crashes their client entirely.

TLDR: These issues have existed ever since Release-VL, but it has become increasingly frustrating recently because the boss is harder, more deaths happen and more party reorganization needs to be done. While the 24-man squads (~21 with DCs) I've ran with have been able to clear Buffed Von Leon with good communication and stable Team Leaders, these problems shouldn't have existed in the first place, it gives players way more work than intended.
GFX-ing and refraining from opening UI in 2023, I don't know how but this needs to be fixed.

- Scaling Down Von Leon/Summons HP to fit 12~18man squads.

I want to preface this section by saying a big thank you to the Game Balancers and other staff for reading all the feedback thus far and (hopefully) taking these into account for the next update, but I honestly think that given the nature of Von Leon, Release-Version or Buffed-Version, players are simply unable to give good enough feedback regarding this. Running the Boss with 18-man at best during Nerfed-VL, and 24-man++ at best with the current VL, we literally are unable to test or give proper feedback regarding how to scale down HP values to fit 12~18man. Well, we could, but this means gathering data by wasting our weekly runs, attack pots, and time. Hosting a regular run is already a nightmare, I can't imagine convincing 12~18 people to sign up for the run that we don't expect to clear; for "test purposes".

The onus should be on Staff to do proper testing before making changes. If you guys lack the manpower, the onus is also on you guys to bring in trusted players to help with testing.

Some actual feedback:

In the easiest iteration of Von Leon, the smallest team size I've cleared with was 18-man, 17-man with 1 DCs.

• I've heard people say that this version was theoretically clearable with 12-man. Perhaps possible under perfect conditions, but I think there's a good reason why no one attempted this. Also, I think people tend to overestimate themselves a lot.
• There was a gross overreaction to the initial VL Nerfs; my opinion is that even at it's easiest state, it was still not easy enough for consistent 12~18man clears.

In the hardest iteration of Von Leon, the smallest team size I've cleared with was 24-man, 21-man with 3 DCs.

• Currently, I only know of 2 parties (Finland, Create) that managed to clear this version of Von Leon. The consensus between the hosting team of both Finland and Create is that we're not confident with running with a roster of any less than 24-man.
• Finland has had successful 24-man (22-23 with DCs) runs with ~13+ mins left to spare. Still, bad RNG happens, not comfortable to try 18-man.
• So, Von Leon and Summons are definitely too tanky atm for 12~18man.

Here are some suggestions (with numbers) on what to do with Von Leon / Summons:

• Von Leon HP: 6.3b > 4.2b
• Demon Gargoyles HP: 40m > 30m,
• Demon Gargoyles Summon CD: 120s > 180s
• Mini Castle Golems HP: 6m > 4.5m
• Mini Castle Golems Summon CD: 60s > 90s

I believe that these values are a good middle-ground to conduct another round of tests.

Since it seems to be strictly 24man+ at the moment, the changes should be tailored to cater towards making 18~24man runs more possible first, then gradually to 12~18man once players have settled in with the changes.

Once again, diligent testing needs to be done on the staff side. Players can only make a guess because there are just way too many moving parts in a Von Leon Expedition. Extrapolation/Interpolation won't do much to come to a conclusion on what the nerfed HP & Summon CD should be.

tq fellow hosts @autismax @Donn1e @Doo @Ras @Barte , and everyone else that helped with runs ever since Release-VL

thanks for coming to my ted talk

 

Some random feedback after playing this version quite a few times. Finished 6 times and failed twice. Played mostly bishop, hero and bucc once each.

Mobs
Random stuns from mobs feel bad and frustrating. Most deaths of an experienced runner happen because of the stun into rocks combo which you have no personal control over.

Spoiler: Sample death

I get stunned instantly out of demolition and stay stunned until rocks hit me

The counterplay isn't very reliable due to jail or interesting since its either fully bypassing the mechanic with hsh or fully getting rekt after hsh is over (without thief avoid).
Some classes like sair and archer are unplayable without hsh and will lead to quick deaths unless they take themselves out of the fight completely. Doesn't seem like an engaging experience to me.
Warriors and buccs aren't much better because of their low avoidability and hugging mobs isn't too reliable because of visual clutter and you not being in control of the timing when mobs die.

Spoiler: Trying to hug mobs

Here I try to tank the mobs for iframes but keep getting stunned and have a hard time even seeing them. Managed to get a whole one brandish off between the stuns too. Mob dies before the rocks hit the ground to add insult to injury.

Even from the bishop side of things it isn't that interesting or skillful to press one button every 2 minutes.

I would just remove the stun and try another idea for mobs. Even something like seal or darkness spam would prompt hsh being used while being less rng to play against.

The gargoyles' ranged attack animation when it hits players needs to be smaller. It covers way too much right now and lasts too long.

Golems seem ok to me but the heal is so high now that jail rng (who gets jailed) can screw you over for no fault of your own.

Lightning and skull
I think lightning was more interesting for ranged when you could actually move to dodge it without losing that much dps. Now you just have to facetank it and suffer the skull to contribute enough damage.
Lightning could be reverted back to old form or you could make it have another effect.
Another skill causing skull could be added if the latter was chosen.

Some kind of indicator for the skull duration would be nice if possible. The mental toll of keeping the timer in mind is quite a lot. You have to update it and keep track if subsequent lightnings hit or miss you.
You have skull on you so much of the fight that you are guaranteed to have a situation where the debuff ending causes you a death or close call with rocks or laser.
A bit weird design to play so much of the fight with reverse controls?


Laser
Like this change overall. It makes the fight harder while giving players agency. The player can dodge it and a bishop can even try to save someone who got hit. This kind of buff to difficulty is something to strive for.
Now some problems I have encountered with it:
The skill is very laggy which makes it sometimes hard to react (Game drops frames while it loads the attack).
Buccs can be stuck in demolition and get hit without chance to react before you see the animation for laser at all.

Spoiler: Demo into laser

I spammed corkscrew blow at the end of demolition but was still in the recovery state until laser hits me.
To me the iframe abuse and timing it is what makes bucc fun and unique at vl. I hope this is changed instead of forcing buccs to use an inferior combo like barrage + ds.

Is it possible to delay the impact of the skill a bit?
And lastly the heal skill is pretty random on how much it heals. Could it be buffed a bit (healing party members portion)? VL hits so hard that you can't always heal enough if you were dodging laser or mobs farther away and get some low rolls.

Melee
I would lower the vl accuracy requirement to be at a more reasonable level. If I'm playing an already inferior melee class why do I also have to bring extra potions just to hit the boss?
This patch didn't make warriors that much better than before meanwhile shads and buccs got better.
The mobs will usually spread out from moving and being knocked back which makes these higher aoe melees more valuable.
Mob control is very random with how the aggro system works with multiple players in the map.
And because it doesn't work, warriors low range on AoE doesn't help them dps much better than before.
I think warriors would benefit from more static mobs.

Player count and balancing
I think the required player count for the boss should be lowered for the following reasons:
- Makes recruitment easier. Making these runs happen isn't easy when you need at least 24 people with very specific characters. I think this, the current difficulty and the increased player frustration from unfair deaths and client problems has made many vl groups stop running altogether.
- It would help with balancing rewards. There are too many people sharing tradeable drops right now. It is very hard to fit even 50% of the runners on characters that they want to loot untradeables on.
I'd like to push back a bit on how the class balancing is done in this regard. I think it is not realistic to have a lot of melee or even bm/mm mains that would want to loot untradeables every run or even once a week.
- Less geared or experienced players can run with higher player counts to learn the boss if the hp is balanced for less people.
I propose to balance the boss and mob hp around 18 people including 3 bishops. I think this player count will keep the big boss raid feel and allow for enough space for flexible party compositions.
Sadly I can't comment on the exact hp/mob values because I don't have the tools or data for testing it.
Maybe 75% of the current values is a good starting point for testing since you can clear the boss with 24 people.
But this will obviously change a lot when you tune other aspects of the fight.
I think some clear and public staff communication regarding the expedition size would help steer the balancing discussion in the right way. I have no idea why it is 24-30 people now when you could probably do it with 18 before patch. Why does the release post say 12+ when it has never been clearable with 12 people.

Perkele

 

Seems like everyone addressed the points and possible fixes to it that I wanted to cover. However, I wanted to bring up the lightning attack. I understand people just need to git gud and use their brains with the movement reverses, but can people also git gud by dodging it somehow? Right now, unless you're a bucc that has a long iframe, melees basically have no choice but to face-tank the attack. Could we make it so that right in the middle of VL, there's a small window where you don't get hit by the lightning? Melees won't always be in the dead center of VL and if they're paying attention, it gives them some time to git gud by moving there. That way, melees have an option to dodge the attack instead of having no choice but to have a debuff everytime.

(sorry sairs, BMs, I guess there's no option but to just eat the lightning every time xd)

 

I thought that "git gud" meant recognizing the wind up animation for lightning strikes, knowing its max range, and positioning yourself to avoid it

It actually means forget all that and just keep attacking xd
I don't think anyone has an issue playing with reversed controls, only when it wears off at the last millisecond and you bump 1px into a rock. Or if players and effects are covering up your character, you can't even see if the skull is above your head. But even then it's kinda whatever

I agree there should be a min range for melees to avoid it. And the max range brought back so ranged can avoid it.
Unless the intent really is unavoidable skull, why not just perma skull the boss room lol

edit: If you are fixed on keeping the attack unavoidable, rather than adjust the timing of the debuff, make a more prominent status icon or have it flash as it's about to wear off. Even if you count 15s or rely on the in-game timer, you could still be stuck in a spot where the last millisecond matters

 

turns out you are the one spreading misinformation

 

I thought lightning was a 1/1 attack, so I believe you still don't need to wash
edit: nevermind it's like 16k rip

 

mmm the point is that the range is so far, it's absolutely not worth repositioning for anyone if you can just deal with reversed controls for a majority of the run. The debuff itself is not an issue for anybody.

 

I do like the idea of changes being made for VL to be an 18players and below run. Fixes to animations and more work into why players crash adds to the list of good things.
With that being said I still feel like two things need further looking into, especially the first one since it just adds to a more negative running experience.

Lightning:
Avoid falling rocks, duck under vulture stun and jump over VL's laser, those are all fun challenges. Challenges that players can git guder at. Playing the majority of the run with reversed movement is not a fun challenge. Especially when, at VL's current state, there is no trade-off. If you were to attempt to dodge lightning you would simply lose too much dps with how frequent it casts.
I like @lee1 's idea with creating a "safe spot" for melees. That + reverting the cast range would only activate players to pay more attention if they want to dodge said attack.

Stun
Regarding gargoyles RNG-stun, I don't agree with most of the options above being valid counterplays for each time you face this attack. Holy shield is dependant on if your bishop is in jail or not. Smokescreen requires a "shad party" or constant use of TL to be active for each wave of gargoyles. Repositioning means for most classes not to participate in clearing mobs until either of the two skills mentioned before are ready to be casted again.
A solution would be to not make VL able to summon gargoyles whilst people are in jail. That + increased summoning cooldown would remove most of the RNG related deaths.

 

This. Great suggestions by Ras.

Trying not to repeat what has been said above, but basically the changes needed are A) significantly reduce RNG elements and B) tune HP of mobs and boss to be more in line with expedition size goals.

Simplest and easiest way IMO:
A) remove garg stun, replace with seal/darkness if desired. And remove that animation, why do they even need one?

B) reduce VL and mob HP by 10-20%. This would put it in a 20 man ish pro range or 24+ for weaker players. Can always scale down in the future if 12-18 man is desired but allows to test out and tweak as needed. Keeping in mind RNG and DC (which will be fixed one day... Right?) are big elements adding to group size today

I agree that lightning sucks now, but to me that's the lesser problem. If staff are reluctant to make large changes I'd suggest this simple approach for now so the server doesn't just stop clearing the boss entirely other than 1-2 groups.

IMO this issue happened because too many changes were done all at once. I get it, for example CVS were clearing with 18 man gizer, so staff wanted to buff VL fast before it became a meme. But I think incremental changes are better here.

Lastly, huge shoutout to those players with the infinite patience to host! (and yes I'm calling out specifically @Donn1e but this is to all of you, you rock, thank you for your service!)

 

These are highly disappointing proposed changes, and I hope that another discussion takes place and changes are made before their implementation.

Lightning:
Some points that have been raised regarding the lightning debuff so far:
1) Is it really the gameplay direction we want, to just live under lightning all day long?
2) The point at which the skull debuff ends can cause confusion and lead to near unavoidable deaths, if unlucky
3) The lightning used to be dodgeable before, and incentivized to do so by ranged, and this incentive no longer exists

The currently proposed change only really minorly affects point 1, by reducing the duration of the debuff. This in turn potentially actively increases the influence of point 2, because at least right now skull stacks on top of itself so hard you can just acclimatize yourself to living under its debuff. As it is, the currently proposed change to decrease its duration and keep the frequency constant will only lead to more frustration and near-unavoidable deaths. Yes, anyone can handwave away these deaths saying "should've timed it properly" or "just learn to dodge" as you've done, but... why make the game like that? It isn't skillful or interactive, just annoying.

Also, the current problem to lightning attack isn't that it makes it "harder" for players to dodge it, it is that it entirely disincentivizes the notion of dodging it in the first place. The skull modifier itself is not a difficult debuff to work under, and so the only aspect for which to "git gud" is to face tank the skull and maximize your DPS. Which means that it does nothing to address the elephant in the room at all.

I suppose to provide some actual proposals, mostly drawing from previous posts:
- Introduce a visible skull timer
- Make lightning dodge-able again (or make it meaningful to do so)

Gargoyles:
The randomness inherent in the murder of a gargoyle is unaltered by the reduction of the stun duration of gargoyle attacks. It only makes it less likely that the stack between the gargoyle stun and the Von Leon vulture/rock will occur. Reducing the frequency of frustrating random deaths is not a desirable alternative to reducing the randomness aspects of the issue.

Further, I think it's important to clear the air on some subjects. Smokescreen is an irrelevant point of discussion regarding mob stuns excepting the shadowers themselves. Holy shield has proven time and again to be useful, but unreliable in solving the stun problem. You can't reposition while stunned, and I would venture maybe 5 people on this server even has Hero's Will 10. These are not actual alternatives you have stated regarding this issue, only platitudes, when the main conceit of our complaints isn't anything silly like "oh my god this is too hard we're dying too much" as this post seems to imply, but that it can happen at all.

Would not everyone on this thread agree that if anyone managed to play the boss run "perfectly," they should be able to completely avoid deaths wholesale?

As above, some proposals:
- Get rid of it
- Hard lock gargoyle summon timer to jail timer, so that it can never overlap with jail timer
- Make the stun a projectile that can be anticipated
- Get rid of it

I have many concerns as to the direction Von Leon is being taken, as the continued changes does not seem to align with previously stated staff goals, and continues to introduce RNG over skillful gameplay and replaces fun elements of the boss with frustration.

One other point I wanted to bring up again:
Class diversity (i.e. make warriors great again) was an important point of contention in early discussions, which makes me continue to wonder why warriors (and buccs, I guess) are still punished for joining VL runs with the accuracy requirement that quite explicitly only affects warriors and buccaneers.

Thanks again for your hard work.

 

But I'm not done complaining yet

 

Just something to add,

when you have two debuffs,
slow + crazy skull

Only one of them show at a time, so there were periods that i was slowed and couldn't tell if crazy skull was still in effect or not. i think this can cause a bunch of deaths when the person is relying on information visually.

e.g :
gets lightning, sees crazy skull, doesn't time but relies on watching the effect to note when it has ended. He then gets slowed, and suddenly that information is gone and has to deal with lasers etc.

 

it not even touched me, fix please.

 

the ankhs are a scam, the glowing floor is the actual hitbox