I think if the mod needs any criticism, it's that there's a very stark lack of clarity in terms of how the bosses work.
Here's the issue:
- Terraria's bosses already function similarly to a bullet hell, but they don't have a DPS cap, and the most complex interactions they have with the player are increasing stats for leaving their biome, or occasionally being invincible with an obvious animation to indicate this invincibility. Think about the Moon Lord's eyes, which close when they can't be damaged.
- Everything in Terraria is gear based, from DPS to speed and even sometimes health. Your mod includes abilities that functionally ignore equipment, meaning your bosses could theoretically be battled at any time as long as you can do enough damage to be practical. It seems like you also intend the player to be using your mod's mount, which REALLY invalidates the idea that gear matters, because at that point not even movement bonuses are relevant.
- Since your bosses don't follow Terraria's internal logic, it's very important to be hugely obvious when you're changing the rules.
So, to improve on the issues.
- If a boss arrives at a DPS cap and can not take additional damage, you should include an animation, like a barrier or some magical effect, to indicate the change. I notice text pops up during the Spirit of Chaos, but a visual indicator will help make it more obvious.
- I'm not sure what's wrong with the Abomination, but when a using a ranger character it seemed to take very little damage. I think I spent at least fifteen minutes floating around hell gently batting its health away. Someone in this thread suggested you had to be within the white sphere to deal damage properly, but that definitely wasn't indicated. If that's the case, remove that and make it possible to damage the boss from any range. There is no visual way to clearly tell the player that's how that works, so including it as a mechanic is just frustrating design. I HATED this boss because of how long its battle dragged on.
- I notice the Spirit of Chaos has a move where the entire screen flashes white and I die. Flavor text did appear, but I'd have to do a bit of testing to discern what the flavor text means. Please don't include unavoidable attacks. They're very cheesy and not any fun. In theory, I suspect I was supposed to stop attacking the boss when its flavor text arose - though I could be wrong because it is not clear - but in that case there are too many AoE attacks or summons and there's no way for me to avert the attack.
- Please don't give bosses the ability to attack a player after their health reaches zero. Fool me once, shame on you. I don't appreciate getting to the end of a boss just to get sucker-punched by a surprise last hit. I didn't fall for it twice, so the shame remains on you.
Aside from that, the mod takes a related yet novel approach. The DPS cap will ensure good equipment can't make your bosses easier, which is arguably not in the proper spirit of the game, but the rewards are very powerful and there's pros and cons to this. It's good work, and I think it would be a lot more fun if you focus any future work on making the bosses more intuitive to the naked eye and basic logic. It's not that anyone's stupid, strictly speaking, but the boss fights put a person under pressure and it's hard to be calm and analytical with minor clues - and I often can't leave my eyes on a written sentence long enough to draw much from it when I'm trying to dodge a spinning laser.
Also - and this isn't important, but it's worth thinking about - do you think that including DPS caps and other "anti-cheese" methods in your bosses makes them internally pointless? The spirit of chaos is post-Moonlord, so if we assume your mod is the only one I'm using, what's the point in beating him twice? He'll be just as hard the second time, and none of his or any of this mod's drops will make your bosses easier to battle. It's like I'm not even getting a reward unless I play Calamity and haven't beaten Yharon yet.
But seriously, can someone tell me what "Chaotic Pressure" is, why it does 1,000,000 damage, and how I avoid it?
-EDIT-
Another thought: don't fill the background with particles that look like enemy attacks. It's so hard to use my eyes to understand anything during the Spirit of Chaos. That boss could use a lot of polish and cleaning. It second phase also sucks to play, because I'm stuck waiting for it to take any actions and the whole battle is confusing enough as it is.
but about your question the attack comes from time to time between phases and you must be "inside" the circle that appears once the crushing pressure message appears to avoid wasting your lives and death.
I didn't catch this mentioned when I first made my post, but it's exactly what I'm talking about. You're supposed to always dodge every floating projectile
except one. It's a cool concept for an attack, but in execution that is clinically poor design. You can't just do a total 180 on the rules of the game if there's no explanation. Maybe it would work better if half the screen faded white to indicate you need to hop to the
other half. NOTHING prepares a player to need to jump
into a small, moving projectile for safety.
