Two very simple changes:
1) Water blobs dissipate if they are not on their pedestal and Vanaduke comes in contact with them.
2) Vanaduke's lunge attack pushes away dead bodies.
Fix Vanaduke already (and here's how)...
Sun, 09/25/2011 - 22:22
Mon, 09/26/2011 - 00:40
#2
Because
it's stupid and makes it too easy. I just duo'd him with someone using one revive after having been to FSC for the first time two days ago, using water lock.
Ever occur to you that the final boss is supposed to be hard?
Mon, 09/26/2011 - 01:51
#3
hard is one thing impossibly
hard is one thing impossibly hard is another. With the new vana where he spawns new minions at a whim, in addition to the increasing difficulty with each phase, it like you're saying you want to spend 100s of units of energy just to defeat him.
i say we need an edge of some kind on him other than numbers and shivermist
Mon, 09/26/2011 - 02:25
#4
And that edge is an
And that edge is an unintended barrier that lets you damage him infinitely without being damaged yourself?
Yeah, no thanks.
Mon, 09/26/2011 - 02:40
#5
ok fine, it doesnt need to be
ok fine, it doesnt need to be the water trick but something else. i still think you want Vana to be unbeatable
you cant tell me that vana's charge with the orbiting fireballs is fair not to mention renders most swords useless, less someone sacrifices DPS just to water them constantly. shivermisting/bombing at phase 5 is hazardous to say the least which leaves gunning which is hard with the harassment from spawns and the shadow fire drops.
Mon, 09/26/2011 - 05:32
#6
Don't care.
I don't want him to be unbeatable, but I don't want him to be laughable and not work as intended.
Mon, 09/26/2011 - 09:53
#7
"Ever occur to you that the
"Ever occur to you that the final boss is supposed to be hard?"
Nick said once that Vanaduke is in no way the final boss so don't consider him in that way.
Mon, 09/26/2011 - 10:17
#8
Me and my guildmates always
Me and my guildmates always kill Vana without trapping him, first times we had to do the 10energy revive everybody but now we do it without even needing to revive. I'm not saying we own everything, i'm saying vana can be own without water trapping, you just need to know how to play. So yeah, it should be fixed to avoid low skilled people killing him without loosing HPs, even though it isn't the final boss.
Mon, 09/26/2011 - 15:08
#9
glowing ember
everyones idea of easy is their own definition. THATS what makes pinpointing a correct level of it so hard. what one considers easy, another may think is hard, and thus... these sort of debates come about. I believe that keeping a barrier of water between yoru group and Vanaduke is a very viable strategy, and it is the group's choice to use it. You cannot make the decision to outlaw it for those who choose to use it, just as they should not be allowed to outlaw any sort of strategy that you may use. Madadder also puts forth a very convincing point of enemy spawns still posing a threat while this strategy is being followed, this paired with any ranged attacks that may be used still pose a threat to groups.
Mon, 09/26/2011 - 15:57
#10
The fact is,
The fact is, it was unintended by the developers and lowers the skill bar dramatically. Seals should be proof of enough skill to beat Vanaduke, not enough skill to cheat your way to a win. It looks utterly ridiculous, it wasn't intended, it's not hard to do, and it guarantees a win unless you really suck.
I see people complaining that it would be too hard. Well, maybe you don't deserve your seals, because that's how hard Vanaduke was meant to be.
Mon, 09/26/2011 - 16:33
#11
Preface: Demon Souls is my
Preface: Demon Souls is my fav PS3 game of all time and I pug vana a lot.
Most of the time when groups want to "trap" vana they fail and die because of it: I've seen it predicted and executed on que ONE time in enough kills to sell multiple FoV and have the rest of the token rewards in my bag. Its like 400-500+ tokens, don't care to do the math. The other time it occured it was an accident and of course we exploited. That being said, just as many times vana has stayed frozen on his start point and forced the group to leave the game and start over.
The guy is easy when you have a familiar group and difficult when you do not. Just as you complain about the water trap the fact that he can charge from off-screen and hit you without warning is challenging for PUGS. You should know who has vana's/trojan's attention off the screen or mini-map, not by guessing due to lack of visual que. This, to me, is as much of a design flaw as the water trap, as pugs do not have any form of communication in a major fight like vana apart from visual ques and most game devs do not include massive amounts of unintended damage into their boss fights. Its not my fault SK was designed to hinder chat (see WASD, constant action, etc.)
Also, the fact that bombs hide the pending ceiling damage is also a design error imo. What bombs do people use on vana? Okay, how many are in the game? Yeah, 1 bomb out of 10+ are even remotely effective. Yet bombs are one of three weapon groups. Despite the fact that only 1 bomb actually impacts the vana fight now you hide the damaging ground effects under the bomb graphic. It seems unrealistic that developers "planned" to have vana's damaging abilities hid by other abilities. If somebody wants to frost bomb (or any other bomb for that matter) the difference between the ceiling crashing down and the bomb being deployed should be obvious, not deceptive.
Fix these two errors and you can spend time on the fact that rarely vana can get trabbed behind a water globe and give a group a free kill. Until then please do not take somebody off a beneficial project to fix a bug that only effects <5% of fights against him. (In real life I have had as many times vana starts frozen and bugged requiring leaving the map (2) as I have vana trapped behind a water globe (also 2)).
The actual sad thing is the vana fight requires very specific equipment: barb, DA, Frost bomb, Blitz, AP, Polaris maybe, Vog/Salamandar. I'm not saying you couldn't do it in 1star armor, but lets face it, everyone in vana groups has the same stuff OR they wish they had the same stuff. To me an end boss should be very challenging yet not require every single person to have the exact same items (see: lockdown strikers, full vog, da, ap, etc.)
But lets say you want to argue. What if the water globe trap WAS intended by developers. Devs have been leaving game crippling bugs in games since they were invented. I can list hundreds. I can name games (most recent, Zelda ported to 3DS) that were REMADE with the same bugs left UNTOUCHED. Simply claiming that a scenario is unintended is stupid, you have no idea what the devs intent is and even if a dev said they wanted this fixed it does not represent the actual desire of the organization.
All I can say is in my experience the people who try to do this die and it is much harder to actually trap him than it is to just kill him outright. There are 1,000,000,000 things the people coding SK should worry about and some bug on the end boss that only idiots try to accomplish is not it. The guy fixing this should be designing / coding new lockdown maps, making the next tier, designing new equipment, etc. I don't care if joe newb gets 3 tokens because Vana accidently trapped himself, my FoV still sells. If you care you probably aren't that good at this game.
Mon, 09/26/2011 - 18:57
#12
@Farakos
Most of the time when groups want to "trap" vana they fail and die because of it: I've seen it predicted and executed on que ONE time in enough kills to sell multiple FoV and have the rest of the token rewards in my bag. Its like 400-500+ tokens, don't care to do the math. The other time it occured it was an accident and of course we exploited. That being said, just as many times vana has stayed frozen on his start point and forced the group to leave the game and start over.
Like I said, a friend and I executed it on all three of the applicable phases, we both have gotten less than 40 tokens (me less than 20). It's not hard and it's not my fault you choose to play with randoms.
The guy is easy when you have a familiar group and difficult when you do not.
Agreed.
Just as you complain about the water trap the fact that he can charge from off-screen and hit you without warning is challenging for PUGS.
Challenging? Isn't that the point?
If you don't have the foresight to know whom Vana is targeting at any given time (it's determined mostly by damage output), it's your fault for getting hit. If you don't know who's being targeted, keep him in your sights.
You should know who has vana's/trojan's attention off the screen or mini-map, not by guessing due to lack of visual que.
Guessing? You look at who he's swinging his mace at...
This, to me, is as much of a design flaw as the water trap, as pugs do not have any form of communication in a major fight like vana apart from visual ques and most game devs do not include massive amounts of unintended damage into their boss fights. Its not my fault SK was designed to hinder chat (see WASD, constant action, etc.)
My friend and I coordinated this purely in-game with no voice chat. I do think there need to be some sort of communication hotkeys, though, beyond the 3 or 4 available.
Also, the fact that bombs hide the pending ceiling damage is also a design error imo. What bombs do people use on vana? Okay, how many are in the game? Yeah, 1 bomb out of 10+ are even remotely effective. Yet bombs are one of three weapon groups. Despite the fact that only 1 bomb actually impacts the vana fight now you hide the damaging ground effects under the bomb graphic. It seems unrealistic that developers "planned" to have vana's damaging abilities hid by other abilities. If somebody wants to frost bomb (or any other bomb for that matter) the difference between the ceiling crashing down and the bomb being deployed should be obvious, not deceptive.
Yeah, the ceiling glow should appear above bomb AoE's, but this can be played around as well.
The actual sad thing is the vana fight requires very specific equipment: barb, DA, Frost bomb, Blitz, AP, Polaris maybe, Vog/Salamandar. I'm not saying you couldn't do it in 1star armor, but lets face it, everyone in vana groups has the same stuff OR they wish they had the same stuff. To me an end boss should be very challenging yet not require every single person to have the exact same items (see: lockdown strikers, full vog, da, ap, etc.)
I agree the metagame is pretty stagnant, but "make two minor patches" (and they are minor) is a better start than "let's fix weapon balance!" (which is in about 100 other topics anyway).
But lets say you want to argue. What if the water globe trap WAS intended by developers. Devs have been leaving game crippling bugs in games since they were invented. I can list hundreds. I can name games (most recent, Zelda ported to 3DS) that were REMADE with the same bugs left UNTOUCHED. Simply claiming that a scenario is unintended is stupid, you have no idea what the devs intent is and even if a dev said they wanted this fixed it does not represent the actual desire of the organization.
Fine, I won't call it unintended anymore, I'll call it stupid, boring, and easy.
All I can say is in my experience the people who try to do this die and it is much harder to actually trap him than it is to just kill him outright.
Our experiences differ.
There are 1,000,000,000 things the people coding SK should worry about and some bug on the end boss that only idiots try to accomplish is not it.
Watch the ad hominems.
The guy fixing this should be designing / coding new lockdown maps, making the next tier, designing new equipment, etc.
My proposed changes are very easy on the developers (much easier than the things you listed, not to mention it would go to different developers).
I don't care if joe newb gets 3 tokens because Vana accidently trapped himself, my FoV still sells. If you care you probably aren't that good at this game.
You can easily do it on purpose, and again, watch the ad hominems.
Tue, 09/27/2011 - 03:53
#13
I'm on Glowing-Ember's side.
I'm on Glowing-Ember's side. It obviously is unintended and we will probably see this fixed sometime in the future (probably a long way away) as the developers have done with other Vanaduke exploits.
wait wait why 1)? thats one of the few strategies that work to an other wise hard battle its not like it work everytime