Spiral Knights - Relocating the boss strata.

Relocating the boss strata.

4 replies [Last post]

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 21:10

Melonfish

Alright, now bear with me, since this is a radical suggestion. I think we should discuss the idea of boss depths being accessible in different tiers. To start it off, this is the way I suggest it should break down into.

THE NATURE OF VARIABLE BOSS STRATA

Boss depths still appear only in the second stratum of their respective tier.
Boss depths may have the depth count trimmed down to fit the tier's range they are encountered in. (e.g. only Firestorm Citadel's first three depths would appear in lower tiers)
Boss stratas of Tier 1 or Tier 2 origins may or may not receive additional depths within Tier 3. To be discussed*.
The boss depths that conclude into a boss fight only appear from their respective tier and beyond. This is meant to preserve the exclusivity of the boss Tokens to the knights that have proven themselves via tier clearance. (e.g. Royal Jelly and Roarmulus Twins will only show up for knights from Tier 2 and on, while Lord Vanaduke can only be fought within Tier 3)

IMPLEMENTING THE VARIABLE BOSS STRATA

Only one variation of a boss stratum can appear in an Arcade's gate, as it is currently the case still.
The boss stratum will begin showing up in Tier 1 if the gate has been newly created recently within the past 48 hours.
The boss stratum will move up to Tier 2, switching places with Tier 2's set of levels from Depth 14 and Depth 17 at the time. This change will last throughout the next two gate cycles (96 hours). (Note: this will require careful placement of levels not generally found in Tier 1)
The boss stratum will finally hit Tier 3's range at the end of its third cycle in the Arcade, replacing the set of levels in depths 24 through 28 before it. It will then last for its final cycle's remaining 48 hours until it begins anew in the next gate at Tier 1 .

*Should such boss depths appear as normal in the last depths, using normal levels of matching themes in depths 24 and 25 before entering them? Or should they get additional depths to fill in the bigger range of the gate's sixth stratum?

Are there overlooked flaws in this proposition? What impacts would this change have on explorating the clockworks as a whole? Would they be good or bad for the overall experience?

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 21:49

Fehzor

I suggested this a while ago, so of course I support it.

Adding new depths to the bosses isn't entirely necessary, and would probably feel a bit off to be honest. We can just stick the usual themed levels before the boss.

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 23:00

Melonfish

I can't think of anything witty to type here.

I had no idea you did. Or anyone else, actually. Can you redirect me to your interpretation of it?

I'm inclined to agree. I thought at first of simply going along with the idea of adding new levels for them for the sake of expanding on the settings and maybe the lore on top of being depth filler, which would be amazing if the new layouts end up being sufficiently engaging, but given the flow OOO has been running with in term of development and the fact that the Shadow Lair reflects the boss strata as they are right now already it may be an easier and less abrupt solution.

For the record, the entire suggestion until now was without taking into account additional boss levels in the future. I still uphold the rule of one per gate, meaning that either one boss stratum becomes absent for a cycle or a new active gate would be added in the Arcade. There are advantages and penalties for both situations. And that's before we even bring up gate construction to return into the mix.

Tue, 11/18/2014 - 10:44

Fehzor

From this thread- http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/94242

3. Allow Lower Tiered Bosses To Spawn in T2 and T3

The idea here would be for lower tiered bosses, like the jelly king, to spawn in T3. Higher tiered bosses would NOT spawn before they are due, but lower tiered bosses would have a chance of spawning later on, so while T1 knights couldn't find themselves with fang of vog, T3 players would end up with a brave new challenge to face- the snarbolax.

The levels themselves would not change with the tier whatsoever- except for the difficulty of the mobs within. Shadow lairs would still be challenging beyond normal difficulty, and there would still be one boss per gate. Since players can now challenge bosses at ANY TIME in their correct stratum, this shouldn't be much of an issue.

This is basically your suggestion, but with a large number of other ideas...

I believe the reason this thread did not go over well was because I suggested to make the lesser used "hipster" gear like the winmillion available only through means found off the beaten path. The idea behind this was that no one should have to play through the game with winmillion, iron slug, bombastic set, or anything like that as their main gear. Doing so would make the game much harder on them and would force them to provide very little support to any teams they were placed in. Rather, these weapons would be made more interesting by being given some form of rarity, and made the "goal" of people's runs. Once you're set up with acheron, you'd get to earn the right to use shard bombs... and in doing so, would be more likely to find the good in that weapon (even though shard bombs are basically just bugged- http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/82883 ), which would in turn give you something to do with your time in the endgame since currently a good half of the players don't mess with these unique and interesting weapons.

Speaking of Shard Bombs, I actually DID send a support ticket to the GMs with the express purpose of figuring out if the developers were aware of the bug that Zeddy pointed out in the link above, as I had recently done all of the damage calculations and determined for at least myself that without the so called invincitinks shard bombs would be entirely sorted out in terms of balance.

Atropos - Oct 18 at 7:08pm:
Greetings, I really couldn't say for certain if that is a feature or a bug, please file a bug report about this issue with the F2 key, so our developers can check on this, and if it's a bug they will fix it."

In other words, the GMs haven't spoken to the developers about this issue at all, and given the general reputation of the shard bomb update, number of people submtting bug reports, and most of all number of faulty complaints with no evidence backing them up (I'm guilty too) aimed at shard bombs, it wouldn't surprise me if they just didn't know that it was a bug at all. I mean, I would hope that they see it as a bug. If it was intentional, then the developers were just spitting on bombers for no reason- introducing a weapon that penalizes bombers for being skillful and removing one of their main sources of damage is quite attrocious.

I don't want to derail your thread either, I'm glad you made it. Maybe the developers would rather take your suggestion over mine, since yours is a good bit more compact and findable, and I doubt they (or anyone, for that matter) care about what I write.

Thu, 11/20/2014 - 08:35

Blandaxt

hmm,.

I do hope that more bosses arise and that they also can be incorporated into this system you are proposing cause the game will be incomplete to me if we remain with our current bosses.

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Relocating the boss strata.