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Post by yoshi9048 on Jul 15, 2018 23:35:07 GMT -6
Those who have played the beta found that this otherwise interesting challenge can be rendered moot by simply walking past him and attacking his back. Instead of doing a hardcore nerf, I have a few interesting suggestions.
Let's say each has a 25% chance of occurring
1) The backdash - if you walk past Zangey, he will backdash and immediately attack with one of his 2 finishers, making it much more difficult to cheese when he does so.
2) The takedown grapple - if you attempt to walk past Zangarmarsh, he'll grab Miriam, much the same way as his prepared riposte and dealing equal damage.
3) Rear guard - if you attempt to walk past Zaxbys, you will be successful, but any attacks at his back will be fully guarded (no damage) with an apparent clanking sound as he says "foolish" after some hits. When he's below 10% health, rear guard is ALWAYS active.
4) The look-pretty - He does nothing! Just as he does now! But... do you want to gamble with this chance?
*EDIT*
Multiple others have recommended to give Zangetsu a regular hitbox just like every other mob.
Simon recommended a on-touch stun.
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Post by Yän on Jul 16, 2018 17:41:22 GMT -6
Great ideas! I think one or two of these options would work very nicely. I'm especially fond of the backdash. It's a simple and elegant solution. However, I'd prefer it to be kind of predictable and wouldn't do all four at random. Maybe he'll always do the backdash until he burns his sword (second phase) - from then on it's always the takedown grapple. I don't like the rear guard idea if there's no visual explanation for it. However, if he had a guarding animation similar to his frontal guard but guarding his back with his sword (and maybe turning around to face you upon your first hit, I think that it could work. The two first options could work all by themselves too, to reduce the workload.
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Post by Astaroth on Jul 16, 2018 21:05:22 GMT -6
wait you can walk through him?
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purifyweirdshard
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Post by purifyweirdshard on Jul 16, 2018 23:04:25 GMT -6
Remove the cheese from Zangetsu? Why not GIVE the cheese to Zangetsu  What if one of our only effective strategies in fighting him is giving him cheesy mac bowls, much like how effective cream pies are on Richter in PoR. As he has likely not had it before, similarly to IGA, he will be stunned if not outright surrender. Elbow to elbow with elbows, all is folly. I like the ideas. I'm all for whatever we can do that doesn't involve just giving his character model a damage hitbox, since it's somewhat unique and interesting it is the way it is. |
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Post by yoshi9048 on Jul 16, 2018 23:12:32 GMT -6
wait you can walk through him? Yes, unfortunately. It removes a great deal of the challenge from the fight. Granted, sloppy play will get you tagged by 1 or 2 of his hits, but if you're equipped with fast weapons (the lethal boots) then you can nail zangetsu in under 2 minutes with little effort. |
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Post by Ziazis on Jul 17, 2018 5:34:05 GMT -6
Or instead of all those fancy ideas... Fix him so he has an enemy hitbox like any other enemy in the game has.
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Post by yoshi9048 on Jul 17, 2018 6:59:27 GMT -6
Or instead of all those fancy ideas... Fix him so he has an enemy hitbox like any other enemy in the game has. Which wouldn't remove too much cheese as you'd still be able to jump past him and effectively do the same thing. Simply adding a hitbox isn't really a solution here. |
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Post by Carnack Ketral on Jul 17, 2018 10:56:22 GMT -6
It is enough of one, to simply give him a hitbox. He should be treated like any normal enemy, albeit with more P, attacks, Move sets, range of attack,etc. But just like any other enemy, he should have an opening for more nimble attacks.
That said, I do like the idea of giving him a back dash.
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Post by Psyme on Jul 17, 2018 14:11:19 GMT -6
Instead of a backdash, how about something like Julius' teleport?
Also thanks for mentioning Zaxby's, I am going to spend all evening craving a six piece and not have one.
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Post by purifyweirdshard on Jul 18, 2018 8:07:58 GMT -6
He already has Julius' teleport though
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Post by simon on Jul 18, 2018 9:50:09 GMT -6
This is an easy fix. If you touch any pixel of his body there should be a 1 second stun and knock back effect which allows Zangetsu to immediately resume his attack patterns. He needs to be just barely tall enough that it prevents you from being able to jump over him for those cheesy free backstab attacks without consequences.
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Post by Carnack Ketral on Jul 18, 2018 20:50:33 GMT -6
I do like the idea of the stun/knockback, but it would be the same as giving him a regular hitbox, more or less.
I do not, however, like the idea of not being able to get behind him at all. This severely limits the options available. The fight devolves into being more of an outright brawl. Who ever has the greater HP/DPS wins, which may enforce excessive grinding before the fight.
Being able to dodge and get around him should be a viable tactic in the fight. We just need to speed up his response time and have him turn around faster or dodge away.
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Post by yoshi9048 on Jul 18, 2018 23:17:21 GMT -6
Yeah, the objective is not to remove getting behind him. The objective is maintaining a fair challenge for when you do. So increasing his reaction speed (he is a trained killer targetting Miriam specifically at this point, he should have his eyes on her the entire time) is a plus. The objective isn't to make him invincible from behind (barring suggestion 3 above) but to reduce exploitive cheesing. Any means to that end would be satisfactory.
Some things like the rear-attack on his riposte are fun and engaging. These shouldn't be removed; but shoring up the window (instead of 2.5 or 3 seconds of free hits before he can react, make it like 0.75s to where the player can get a quick free hit, but not much past that) and making it more difficult to rear-cheese him should do wonders.
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Post by ovenkitty on Jul 19, 2018 9:54:37 GMT -6
I thought you were going to say that his character is cheesey.
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Post by azdrerios on Jul 19, 2018 15:09:29 GMT -6
Yeah, I'd say this definitely needs to be addressed in the final product.
How this should be done is up to the devs, of course, but out of all the ideas listed in the original post, the takedown grapple thing would make the most sense. You're usually not supposed to straight up run into a boss in any vania game, so why should it suddenly work here?
However, if grappling just doesn't sound right for our man, then perhaps some sort of punishing evasive maneuver would suffice? Making him completely immune to attacks from behind would weigh heavily on immersion, especially when there's absolutely nothing in Zangy's visual design that would indicate such an immunity.
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Post by ZeroSbr on Jul 19, 2018 17:25:57 GMT -6
Or instead of all those fancy ideas... Fix him so he has an enemy hitbox like any other enemy in the game has. Which wouldn't remove too much cheese as you'd still be able to jump past him and effectively do the same thing. Simply adding a hitbox isn't really a solution here. He already does ridiculous damage per hit. Adding a hitbox is enough. |
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Post by yoshi9048 on Jul 19, 2018 23:24:22 GMT -6
I thought you were going to say that his character is cheesey. A trained martial swordsman that doesn't know enough to watch his back is pretty cheesy. |
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Post by fatihG on Jul 20, 2018 4:16:38 GMT -6
All he needs is an attack that hits both sides. Like a 180 slash, instead of his slow turn.
Slow turn could still be a thing in first phase, but second or ''1.5th phase" he stats doing the attack that hits both the front and the back and turning him at the same time.
There is off course still a chance that you can not get him to activate the second phase, if you hit him fast enough. Thats why I suggested the ''1.5th phase'', so he cant get locked into his '' wait let me turn and phase you'' loop.
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Post by DSLevantine on Aug 2, 2018 1:38:35 GMT -6
he is human, human don't have hitbox. source: AOS (julius) OOE(albus) etc.
Get to his back should be a valid strategy, apply penalty on doing that is counterproductive and makes this boss fight boring. I agree with yoshi9048, increase his reaction time is good enough.
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purifyweirdshard
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Post by purifyweirdshard on Aug 2, 2018 7:59:34 GMT -6
yeah I don't agree with giving his sprite a hitbox, human bosses don't have one. In addition to the ones DSLevantine listed, I can confirm Richter in PoR as well.
Here's the thing to me. These games do/will have AI loops and strategies to beat them to make them easier, which they've always had. I think we're being given an opportunity to put Zangetsu specifically under a magnifying glass here when most of the game's bosses will have something like this and that's completely normal. Tuning the difficulty of the boss too much could worsen the overall game experience for people trying to beat him for the first time, which I think should be a focus over tuning our experience felt when fighting him repeatedly in his beta form.
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