In Discussion Bossing [Feedback Request] Von Leon

I want to properly feedback a problem that has been around forever.
It took me a lot of runs to realize that this problem is actually Bucc specific and does not happen/happens very rarely to other classes.

In short, Bucc gets consistent animation cancels every single run, I don't know what exactly causes it but my guess would be that its one of the class skills.
Whatever animation you get will be personalized, only you will see it and only you will get hit by it:

Example:


As you can see, those rocks are not visible to others as they did not reposition when they appeared.
This happens very often.
I used to think that it happens randomly and I didn't understand why others don't encounter it as much as me.
It's only when I switched new players to Bucc and they started complaining about double animations that I understood the source of this issue.

Hopefully you can look into it and solve it!

 

1 more thing I wanted to feedback for a long time:
When VL tps at the same time people come out from jail, it will do the "slide" back to it's old spot.
Example:

At 19:06 in the video or 40:54 on the top timer.

Theres a few more examples I can find, but theyre all the exact same scenario:
VL shows up as tping to the right for the people outside of jail, but shows up just standing on the left for those who are just coming out of jail.
I believe this difference between VL being rendered in 2 different spots for different players is what's causing this bug, as it only ever happened at this specific spot close to the portal and exactly when people come out of jail.

 

Sorry for 3 messages in a row on this thread, but I have to feedback this new update.
So we ran 19 man today, and this was the result:

Spoiler: video

The most obvious thing that needs to be said first - JAIL IS BUGGED, it only jails 1 person at a time.
This needs to be fixed asap, there's basically no jail anymore.

Other than that, I really don't understand the direction of this update, and I will do my best to explain why.
1 year after release - not many groups successfuly run, VL sees very little traffic and interest.
However, the main reason for this was always lack of incentive to run, and not the difficulty.
This is still not solved.
The major bugs that have been there forever are not fixed, scroll farm is not removed like we have been begging for as organizers, and new harder mechanics were not added.
This is a straight up nerf, and a very uncalled for one at that.

A nerf of this gravity will obviously make almost any group that wants to run able to clear VL.
The HP values are way too low, the boss melts, the mobs melt, the stress from jail+mobs is gone and with it the very little difficulty that was left aswell.
IMO, the party size just became 8-16 instead of the previous 12-24 man, the nerf is that big.
The groups we built, the meta we slowly developed, it all goes to the garbage now - this is the easiest patch by far.
You can brute force this boss with literally any composition now, and do extremely well with small party sizes.
I think most runners will agree, the bigger expeditions were the most fun part of this boss.

This was the only hard content we had in Royals, a weekly boss comparable to our neighbor server's Pink Bean, and now it almost feels like it's gone.

If you looked at the feedback we gave you over the past year, we mostly asked for:
1. Better rewards.
2. Scroll farm removal and other QoL changes.
3. New mechanics (such as stronger DR, 1 shot laser etc).

We got none of that, you decided to just stick a huge band aid on it and straight up nerf the boss.
Yes, every group will be able to clear now, but after a few months we will be back to the same issue - it's just not rewarding!
The only reason some groups still exist are for fun (for those who still enjoyed the challenge) and for belt progression, that's it.

In my honest opinion, this should've never been nerfed that hard, this is a big mistake.
I don't see any point in pushing more records (especially with bugged jail) and this killed my only incentive to still run the boss - fun.

 

I think that Staff needs to move part of their balance discussions from their private discord group to the public forum with the community (of course any future content will remain in private while any content in-game are discussed). That way thought process on possible changes from Staff can be critiqued in my opinion. It'll suck from Staff position since they're not professional Game Devs and aren't used to criticism but that's apart of the game design process.

 

I feel like the nerf was needed to encourage more players to run. I don’t understand how you want to make it more difficult when people already don’t clear it majority of the time. By making it more difficult you’ll be pushing more people out of attempting VL again when the player base is already low. And if you want more difficulty then at least raise the time so people who aren’t clearing every time still have a chance rather then lessening their chances even more.

 

Today, I tried the new version of VL, and here are my personal thoughts:
1. Jail Room only allows one player to be imprisoned at a time, making it difficult for us to accurately assess the strength of this VL. We still need to observe.
2. I wouldn't call this update a NERF; it should be considered a BALANCE change.
a. Clearly, the profit from VL doesn't allow players to have a high probability of getting splits above 100m. In team sizes ranging from 18 to 24 players, it's even more challenging to distribute the profits.
b. For VL Hosts, the amount of private effort and time required is significant, from finding people, forming teams, finding leaders, splitting bonuses, selling items, and dividing the mesos takes too long. Finding attackers is also a big issue.
c. In our server, due to the significant time zone differences, we can't provide enough players to run VL. Evidence of this is the fact that only 2-3 VL teams are currently consistently running. And we share attackers.
d. For a nostalgic server, the times for VL runs are concentrated around GMT +8 22:00 ~ 23:00 and irregular times between GMT+8 10:00 ~ 12:00. This makes it challenging for players in certain time zones to participate unless they take leave from work or school since VL requires a large number of hitters and coordination with other players. Otherwise, they may never have a chance to participate, which is a pity.
e. The current situation allows veterans to take on bosses with fewer players, and newcomers to VL can use large numbers of players for a swarm tactic to take down the boss. This is a better approach, as GM designed this boss not just for a few players.
f. If players prefer to defeat bosses with larger groups, Staffs doesn't prohibit it either, and we can still have a 30-player raid, so there's nothing inappropriate about it.

 

I believe this balance change accurately depicts the initial target of 12 man VL. I ran yesterday with 12 man. The timing feels tight even with the jail being bugged but we managed to clear the 2nd attempt (attackers were using a mixture of gelts/apples). This change welcomes a variety of players to attempt VL which can potentially bring ease to hosts. However, the rewards do feel underwhelming to keep constantly running.

 

This nerf is great, now more groups can run and host vl runs and not the same 2-3 groups in the whole server.

 

if you think its too easy then run with a smaller party, bigger splits = more incentive right?

 

Select difficulty:
Easy
Normal
Hard
Nightmare

 

I agree with @Doo ’s post, I think it sums it up great.

Previously I would be too scared hosting at more EU/Asia friendly hours because I would not be sure if I could fill out my runs, with around 60-70% of my party being from NA.

The profit was pretty bad as a 24 man group, and that was the generic party size for groups holding multiple first timers/newer runners.

This boss actually gets worse if you go closer to 30, people start covering your character too much and the tombstones obscure your vision of the floor.

I disagree with you @Donn1e

As someone who’s run plenty of public 20-24man runs, and who has helped host/recruit a few times, there are people who genuinely suck at the boss. They do not have the mechanics or ability to make quick decisions:

• Where to move your character to dodge rocks, like tight spots especially btwn a huge row of rocks
• The mechanics to jump laser while crazy skulled
• Clicking down arrow fast enough in between attacks to dodge bird
• etc.

even after seeing them in the runs 5+ times, even being part of multiple clears, and still dying 4+ times each run.

That being said, this nerf allows the players with high death counts be less impactful. I feel like I have to worry a lot less at how many vets we have signed up, as they can carry the boss with newer players easier now.

Let’s say before in a 24man, you’d probably want 14 players with a lot of experience and 8 max learning/new players. Now with the boss easier it probably can be dropped to like 20 man runs with 12 vets and 6 learners.

Maybe have a direct Q&A with the game balancers once in a while, but personally, the feedback section is our Q&A with them. Also, I would say at least 75% of feedback is invalid. Not counting just the created threads, most specifically class balancing feedback. Who are we to critique staff when as I glance in class balancing feedback just now, people are talking about buffing beginners, the annual give warriors 100% stance argument, and people who assume Staff never takes any feedback, while that is incredibly false, they’re just not reading the feedback thread/patch notes. Besides bad suggestions/critique, we are naturally biased towards our own benefit, making those also invalid.

• That’s like saying because I play mage, I want cheaper potions so I can save up for gen30 faster. Economics of the server? Fuck that nerd shit, let me one shot skele quicker lmao
• I play marksman, I think we should have hexa strafe because NL gets to throw 6 stars, so it’s only fair (we shouldn’t)

At the end of the day potion prices were heavily adjusted because the pure profits people were making multi mage farming. Nobody asked for those nerfs, but mages were outperforming every other content astronomically.

If we’re going to have a channel to directly critique staff balancing. Staff should have a channel to launch community members with the worst suggestions into the sun.

I think the nerfs were a bit much but now I have to recruit less people for an incredibly difficult to recruit boss.

 

Few notes on this:
1. The original goal was 12-18 man, with 12 man being the absolute limit and the hardest clear, and 18 man being the go-to, as stated by staff before.
The situation currently is that it's just simply too easy, 12 man clears are not really tight, here is the time remaining on a 10 man clear:

This could literally clear on stopper, it's nerfed by that much.

Now I know, a part of it still because of the nerfed jail, and it's a significant part, but the boss is still a 2 parties boss now, which brings me to my next point:

2. The "expedition" feeling is gone, this is not a boss for small parties, let it settle in for a bit and you will see that even the biggest runs with the newest players will be 16-18 man, with most people running 10-12 man, perhaps even less if jail doesnt get fixed (6 man with 1 bishop?).
To me, the boss has a completely different feeling that I simply don't like.

To me, this is the wrong approach.
You can't balance the absolute end game boss of royals around people who cant walk away from rocks.
There needs to be difficulty and a learning curve and not everyone is supposed to clear, while still keeping the boss easy for those who were willing to learn and improve.
Everyone can run this boss, I've seen even the worst players become decent with practice and positive reinforcement.

Why didn't enough teams run if it was not the hardest to clear? Because the rewards don't encourage ppl to form groups and run, simple as that.
If it was THE MOST profitable content in this game, you wouldn't have a hard time filling and clearing.

Also let me ask you this:
You say it's now easier to organize which is fair, but let me give you another perspective.
What about the groups like ourselves who built around consistent 18 man runs, I have to exclude people who were regulars now, is that a good thing? I think that's something staff should also take in consideration.

Whats the solution to this?
- fix the jail bug.
- limit expedition size to 18 (can't sign more).
- dial back the nerf a little bit, meet in the middle - to the point where 12 man will be very hard, and 15-18 man will be relatively easy).

After you do that, you should have a look at the rewards and give them major improvements, along with long desired bug fixes.

My point is - staff did fix the problem where not enough ppl run this boss, but they did it in all the wrong ways.
I hope this response was clearer.

 

IMO there's a way to fix this, but it's really not easy for staff at all.

Von Leon is designed for a lot of people - originally 12-24 man parties. Von Leon also takes skill and practice, and most people only get their practice in by running Von Leon.

Most bosses are 2-5 person parties (+ mules).

So why not combine these, and add a daily boss that takes 2-5 people to run, yet has mechanics close to VL's difficulty? This would be boss people could attempt without too much of a downside as they just try again the next day and don't need to spend hours recruiting for. Having this would help raise the skill level of players who run it, providing an on-ramp to VL. Yeah, it takes staff designing and implementing a whole new boss, but I think it could help a lot, especially if they want PB to be even harder than VL (please make it harder mechanics-wise and not only more of a DPS check)

 

I think just man power issues :/

I think the priority would be:

1. Events being on schedule
2. Actual mage content that is rewarding similar to pre nerf RG
3. This. More content to help build mechanics but on a smaller pt size scale

 

For sure, and don't forget QoL improvements like we sadly had rolled back this patch. But this is an option, and would allow staff to add new bosses that aren't the new final endgame boss. Eventually, once they have time.

 

Would actually be cool if there was difficulty tiers for von leon, and rewards that scales according to the difficulty selected.

• Easy - probably this version?
• Medium - probably prev version? boxes have +#% more chance to drop vl shoes
• Hard - same hp value as medium, lasers one hit, reflect is back and one hit, harder jail rooms. boxes have +#% chance to drop vl shoes
• Death - same hp value as medium, lasers one hit, von leon's bird attack one hit, reflect is back and one hit, rocks drop much quicker, golem heal 2x the amount, harder jail rooms, expedition size is capped at 15. boxes have +#% chance to drop vl shoes and now drops CS/WS as well. Maybe a leaderboard that automatically records squads roster upon death mode completion.

One can only dream

 

VL: summons golems
Also VL: casts damage reflect

 

yeah, might be abit too punishing , only way this would work is if there wasn't rubberband and monster magnet works flawlessly.

 

I really like this idea, or some similar way to practice and/or "warm up". I've only run vl twice and both times I died immediately at the start of the run to something dumb because my brain wasn't fully activated yet. Once I got warmed up I had no issue dodging everything else for the rest of the run. But dying to something avoidable was really embarrassing and hurt my confidence in myself. It made me hesitate to run again because of the feeling of not wanting to drag the team down. I'm sure many are in this boat, and we might never see those players run again because of it. If I can practice somewhere with less consequences I would feel more confident in myself and be more eager to join runs. Especially if I can warm up right before a real run

 

People need to acknowledge that most of the content in this game are pretty straightforward/easy which you can do by just holding one key and zoneout. When you introduce an interactive and skill-demanding boss like vl to the server, people are bound to have a hard time adapting it, unless there’s a friendly enough environment for them to practice and improve.

I’ve been joining 1~4 vl run every week with 6 groups since vl released (shout out to cvs, yavs, baa, hdvl, finland, and charley/cho’s).
One thing that I noticed is there are usually 2 types of players:
1) the ones that fit the challenging gameplay well and were able to adapt the gameplay within 3 runs. or
2) the ones that just kept dying 5+ a run even after 10 runs. These people either get frustrated to the point they stop joining or just keep being that chaotic factor in runs non-stop.
There’s really nothing wrong with being the second type of player because as mentioned above, most of the content in this game isn’t as interactive. And there’s nowhere for them to practice the required mechanics other than joining an actual run, dying, and staying there as a ghost. I also want to point out that it is very hard for hosts to take in too many inexperienced players because spending time ress’ing these players will eventually risk the main party losing hsh/heal, therefore affecting the performance of the skilled players who were meant to be there to carry the run, or just ruins the overall game experience.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the difficulty pre-nerf, and the dps-check nerf surely wasn't necessary. Public runs were not failing because they didn't have good enough dps, but because there were too many unskilled participants that just dies 5+ times every single run making the run chaotic. The reason why hosts were having a hard time recruiting was not because people didn't want to run vl. There's always a decent amount of people who want to get Olaf quest done, get belts, get manual, etc. It's because it was very hard to find newer players who are well-prepared and confident enough to contribute to the run. If there's no friendly enough place for newer players to practice, the numbers are still hardly going to rise up.
The recent nerf sure made it easier to host smaller runs hence there's an illusion of more incentive to run. But my observations are the nerf only makes vl absurdly more farmable for the existing private skilled groups (eg. clearing with 15-man with full gizer/clearing with sub-12-man full apple). While the newer groups still struggle to find prepared enough players to even clear a 20-man apple run. You can argue these groups definitely have potential if they scale the numbers up to 24 and have ress/tl army standing by. But I think we shouldn't just let a boss that was meant to be challenging get bypassed with raw numbers and ress/tl army. People need to do their homework before they run vl, stop treating vl as krex, and aim for 0~2 deaths per person...

A better solution than a straight dps-check nerf is to help the community transition from a hold-this-key-and-zoneout type of game style to a more interactive type of game style. Give the people who are struggling have somewhere to practice vl mechanics.
King castle golem from rose garden is a very good place for this purpose as rg and vl basically share the prequest and the theme fits well in general.
Some ideas in my mind that I believe would be helpful for newer players to learn vl mechanics:

• Adjust the rg boss green stun rock. Make the green rocks have similar features to vl rocks (eg. animation, hitbox, hitbox indicator, cast delay) but keep the stun and no 1-shots. Now people can practice dodging rocks with less consequence. (If you just want to do rg and don’t give a f about vl, just run into the boss to get iframe then you won’t get stunned)
• Adjust the rg boss unpredictable double smash knockback. Make it only cast one smash, and have similar features to vl lasers (again eg. animations, hitbox, cast delay). And it doesn't have to have prune sed. Maybe you will get kb and get crazy skull if you got hit. Now people can practice jump-dodging hits. And they also can practice crazy skulls together with dodging rocks/jumping smashes. (again if u don't bother with vl mechanics just run into the boss to get the iframe)

I believe helping the community build up the required skill set would be a better approach than a direct dps nerf. People who care about getting better for vl can spend 5 min of their rg time practicing the mechanics daily. This way more and more players can learn the required skills in a less stressful environment. More and more skilled players will be available for the hosts to recruit. And newer groups will be much ready to set up a run that can actually clear. Most importantly, now we can have a challenging enough boss that is mainly skill- and strategy-based, and still keep the fun part where it requires a medium/large-sized expedition to come together in order to clear it. In addition, people might be much more prepared to welcome a harder boss like pb(?). Because let's be honest are we going to just do the same thing to pb again if it ever comes out?