To Those Who Complain About 'Cheap Tactics'

[Grimmsy]

1. It's normal to die a few time against bosses, no doubt about that. People are actually using them in normal mode a lot if you read the threads.

2. It's not about being dark. Nyan sword is a joke, not a light hearted feature, like the whoopie cushion which isn't the biggest melee damage dealer in the game. There is an expert mode because of players that find it too easy.

3. I can play it well enough to defeat Moon Lord without cheesing. Only normal though.

4. Thinking that those are the options available is bad game design. Mechanics are what make boss battles interesting. Compare the Cultist fight to the Moon Lord fight, the former being well designed (you can't really run; the boss is in reach but also it can flee when it takes too much damage; it gives you a breather from time to time; it has that little guess-the-illusion minigame which spawns a wyvern that can supply you with health/mana but makes it a bit more difficult at the same time). Moon Lord battle is basically "let's see how many times you can dodge 3 rotating sustained long range beams at once". Frankly, bullethell games that do throw everything and the kitchen sink at you are fairer.

5. The lost is not broken. Just very punishing to mistakes. There are little to none unfair mechanics or enemies in Binding of Isaac. If you get hit, it's your skill at fault. Nothing else. And everything is dodgeable. In Terraria, not so much. And I actually have the worst of luck in both games, so it isn't that. I get an OP run once in a blue moon.

6. It's relevant because those are mechanics that hinder the player for no apparent reason and make the game less enjoyable.

7. I see. So it's only an issue for other games where reflexes matter.

EDIT: but at the end of all, why are you opposed to the idea of an easy mode to be added? How does that harm you?

 

[Move The Sky]

Changes:

• You can no longer escape from the final boss's wrath.

Lol

 

[Grimmsy]

Anyone had any doubts about that one coming? Still, it's the funniest thing I saw all day.

 

[Nano]

snip

Wonder what this means. Gonna have to go beat the final boss again now ~

 

[MadCat]

The reason this is a cheap tactic is because like all other bosses he should despawn when travelling to far away this is likely a glitch that he doesn't

 

[Hyperion1994]

Well, you've angered Cthulu's brother, so it's not surprising he wants to see every single person responsible for it dead and will not just stop and leave unless everyone has caught a severe case of death.

 

[Grimmsy]

Well, you've angered Cthulu's brother, so it's not surprising he wants to see every single person responsible for it dead and will not just stop and leave unless everyone has caught a severe case of death.

Not only that he want that, but he's more than capable of achieving it too.

 

[TheGuide]

1. It's normal to die a few time against bosses, no doubt about that. People are actually using them in normal mode a lot if you read the threads.

2. It's not about being dark. Nyan sword is a joke, not a light hearted feature, like the whoopie cushion which isn't the biggest melee damage dealer in the game. There is an expert mode because of players that find it too easy.

3. I can play it well enough to defeat Moon Lord without cheesing. Only normal though.

4. Thinking that those are the options available is bad game design. Mechanics are what make boss battles interesting. Compare the Cultist fight to the Moon Lord fight, the former being well designed (you can't really run; the boss is in reach but also it can flee when it takes too much damage; it gives you a breather from time to time; it has that little guess-the-illusion minigame which spawns a wyvern that can supply you with health/mana but makes it a bit more difficult at the same time). Moon Lord battle is basically "let's see how many times you can dodge 3 rotating sustained long range beams at once". Frankly, bullethell games that do throw everything and the kitchen sink at you are fairer.

5. The lost is not broken. Just very punishing to mistakes. There are little to none unfair mechanics or enemies in Binding of Isaac. If you get hit, it's your skill at fault. Nothing else. And everything is dodgeable. In Terraria, not so much. And I actually have the worst of luck in both games, so it isn't that. I get an OP run once in a blue moon.

6. It's relevant because those are mechanics that hinder the player for no apparent reason and make the game less enjoyable.

7. I see. So it's only an issue for other games where reflexes matter.

EDIT: but at the end of all, why are you opposed to the idea of an easy mode to be added? How does that harm you?

1. People use them a lot more in Expert Mode than in Normal Mode.

2. Binding of Isaac has joke items as well.

4. There isn't much else they can do in Terraria, although I do admit some of the pretty much undodgeable projectiles are annoying.

5. Well, he's not broken, but he's far less fair than playing Terraria on Expert Mode. One mistake and you're screwed.

6. The mana damage decrease is sorta a problem, but the others are just to balance the game.

7. I haven't seen much of a problem so far. No one has ever mentioned age problems.

 

[Grimmsy]

1. That's probably true. It's still an issue. But instead of stopping them, the devs should look at the reasons so many players choose to do it, cause most of them are the game's fault.

2. True, but the game is consistent with all it's elements. The difficulty in Terraria is all over the place. It' one thing to be smart enough to choose a piercing weapon (variations available for all classes) to fight Destroyer, and another to have almost all items/approaches rendered useless against ML. The boss is difficult for the wrong reasons, and it makes the fight unenjoyable. Do you really have fun fighting him? If so, it would appear you're in the minority, at least based on this week's threads.

4. I can't agree that there's not much to do about it. I'm sure if we start a brainstorm thread we'll eventually find good mechanics to make the ML fight fun, but still difficult. I do not want him to be a whimp, but I can't respect the ML we have now.

5. Can't argue with that. Still, you picked the hardest challenge in the game. Not many are able to do it, nor need to in order to experience the game from start to finish. Azazel is available for easy mode as well.

6. Balance how? The potion sickness debuff duration is insane and easily countered by heart statues and heart lanterns/camp fires. It feels a needless handicap.

7. I doubt that came up on this forum in the first place. I'll just let it rest (mainly cause I'm too lazy to search for materials that validate the point)

 

[ψeud]

@TheGuide and @Grimmsy

Something seems to be off about how you both interpret the words "easy" and "casual". I don't think you guys are talking about the same thing.

It's just probably a difference of opinion on where to draw the line between "difficulty leeway for casuals" and "outright broken game mechanics"

 

[Grimmsy]

@TheGuide and @Grimmsy

Something seems to be off about how you both interpret the words "easy" and "casual". I don't think you guys are talking about the same thing.

It's just probably a difference of opinion on where to draw the line between "difficulty leeway for casuals" and "outright broken game mechanics"

You might have a point there. So I'll get back to mine: why shouldn't we have an easy mode for Terraria and how does it harm the skilled/hardcore players?

Also I have to give props to TheGuide for keeping the discussion civil and actually providing arguments. Cheers!

Edit: almost forgot the other point: we need better boss battle designs. If the battles are fun, players feel like they're missing out on the experience by cheesing so it's much less likely to do it.

 

[SaintD]

I have literally fought The Destroyer a single time 'properly'. The first ever time. It was utter garbage so I immediately went online, and then built myself a solid block bridge to cheese him to death. I have never done anything else whatsoever against that boss.

To be perfectly honest, hardmode has been conceptually broken from the very moment it was added. The very second hardmode activates, the gameplay mechanics for bosses and events break. It's why melee, as you reach into hardmode, becomes 'mid range', because it's impossible to actually perform melee. Enemy DPS scales so heavily compared to defence and health regen that the entire game quintuples down on not being hit. Having a high defence and stacking what little regen is available only works against lots of enemies or a boss of your 'level' as long as it is combined with one of the two available Not Getting Hit methods. The first is mobility, which everyone uses. It's why we build arenas. The second is abusing invincibility frames by gluing yourself to a very low damage source that can't hurt you faster than you can regen, and thus being literally invincible.

.....that's not good design just as-is, as the game is forcibly funneled into ranger gameplay. The rest is just semantics, you can call it 'melee', but it isn't. Even this wouldn't be very offensive if the game wasn't still trying to pretend a distinction actually exists; it could be accepted as part of the progression that we eventually ditch the swords and melee and evolve into magitech toting supersoldiers re-enacting Starship Troopers each time an event or boss fires, with an arsenal of increasingly apocalyptic ranged weapons against outlandishly powerful enemies who could rip your face off in seconds if they could just get past the wall of nuclear explosions and catch up to your cheating jetpack bastardry. But no, it doesn't. The game clings to the whole 'melee, ranger, mage' thing even as it hands you various swords and spears that actually fire stuff so you can....run and jump around at range like a ranger does because you'll be killed immediately otherwise.

The end result is that the game just keeps doubling down on the same broken mechanics. The only way to win is 'git gud scrub' and bounce around like Sonic the Hedgehog after a jaunt through the Cocaine Zone. So the 'only way' to raise the difficulty is to keep increasing the bullet hell dodging requirements by throwing more stuff and/or making it hurt even more in relation to your defence and health regen ability. In response the players have to find ways to Not Get Hit....sometimes it can be as simple as "Haha, got my UFO, watch me fly around easily dodging everything you losers," or it can require very specific arena setups just like I do to the Destroyer every....single....time.

The Mood Lord change is stupid and pointless in that it doesn't do anything to encourage good gameplay. It thinks it is, by forcing you to fight the Moon Lord entirely with the only combat mechanic Terraria has, which is Move Around so you can Not Get Hit. But you can't encourage 'good gameplay' in fighting the Moon Lord because he's the apex of all the conceptual flaws in Terraria combat that have been building up relentlessly throughout hardmode. He is the ultimate wall of numbers in a game that has been trying to crush you with walls of numbers ever since the Destroyer....uh....destroyed you. No-one wants to fight the wall of numbers. He doesn't have any set pattern to reward attentive players who can defeat him with skill....he just throws huge numbers at you.

The result isn't that you force people to fight the Moon lord 'properly'. They already WERE. Moving around and dodging and retreating to the nurse is the HARD option. It's doing the only thing Terraria combat actually does, with the caveat that you had to pay enough attention to teleport out to recuperate before going back and doing the only thing Terraria combat actually does. The result will actually be that people will be forced into just finding a different way around the wall of numbers....probably by setting up some sort of AFK faceroll invincibility arena that utterly trivialises the Moon Lord even worse than a skybridge does to the Destroyer.

 

[Grimmsy]

Snip

Well said.

Also, isn't it a shame the the pillars have some very nicely designed enemies (talking about mechanics) yet you can't appreciate them because the game has to throw everything and the pigsty at you all at once? I mean some of those would be quite iconic if encountered in other circumstances, like medusa.

 

[Alaron]

...we eventually ditch the swords and melee and evolve into magitech toting supersoldiers re-enacting Starship Troopers each time an event or boss fires, with an arsenal of increasingly apocalyptic ranged weapons against outlandishly powerful enemies who could rip your face off in seconds if they could just get past the wall of nuclear explosions and catch up to your cheating jetpack bastardry.

Oh this is too funny.

I do have sort of the same beef though, that melee essentially becomes another ranger once you get far enough in the game, and that tanking becomes nonviable (barring lifesteal, which presents it's own problems). If I'm melee, I want to be up in thing's face, winning on superior DPS and defense. Not zipping about half a screen away, lobbing swordbeams and things. That was how it worked prehardmode, so why must it change?

 

[Xylia]

The result isn't that you force people to fight the Moon lord 'properly'. They already WERE. Moving around and dodging and retreating to the nurse is the HARD option. It's doing the only thing Terraria combat actually does, with the caveat that you had to pay enough attention to teleport out to recuperate before going back and doing the only thing Terraria combat actually does. The result will actually be that people will be forced into just finding a different way around the wall of numbers....probably by setting up some sort of AFK faceroll invincibility arena that utterly trivialises the Moon Lord even worse than a skybridge does to the Destroyer.

Oh you watch, they'll buff the ML so that each aspect of the "AFK faceroll invincibility arena" won't work. They'll make his eye beams go through solid walls or something.

They just don't seem to understand that insta-death is just not fun, nor is doing a 30 minute event for one shot at a boss that will probably cheap you in seconds and leave you with nothing to show for it.

They could AT LEAST have the hands/eye drop a few pieces of luminite. That way I could EVENTUALLY make my armor and get a better chance at him. That'd at least give me motivation to keep doing it.

Right now, it looks like "Multiplayer or don't bother"......

 

[TheGuide]

Oh this is too funny.

I do have sort of the same beef though, that melee essentially becomes another ranger once you get far enough in the game, and that tanking becomes nonviable (barring lifesteal, which presents it's own problems). If I'm melee, I want to be up in thing's face, winning on superior DPS and defense. Not zipping about half a screen away, lobbing swordbeams and things. That was how it worked prehardmode, so why must it change?

Because melee is useless as just melee. Even in pre-hardmode, melee weapons that are just melee suck against bosses usually. Also, the things that differentiate weapon types is their criteria.

Ranged:
- ammo-required (only like 2 exceptions)
- projectile shot out of gun/bow/etc
- no mana
Melee:
- no ammo/mana
Magic:
- mana
- no ammo

You're basically meant to consider these classes as: bow/gun, sword/boomerang/spear/yoyo, and magical anything.

 

[ψeud]

Because melee is useless as just melee. Even in pre-hardmode, melee weapons that are just melee suck against bosses usually. Also, the things that differentiate weapon types is their criteria.

Ranged:
- ammo-required (only like 2 exceptions)
- projectile shot out of gun/bow/etc
- no mana
Melee:
- no ammo/mana
Magic:
- mana
- no ammo

You're basically meant to consider these classes as: bow/gun, sword/boomerang/spear/yoyo, and magical anything.

Melee isn't exactly as useless as you might expect. Melee types have the best defense stat in the game, and that goes a long way when it comes to things like the Moon Lord. Melee types also don't need ammo or mana.

The trade-off is that Melee weapons have piss-poor DPS, compared to Ranged or Magic weapons.

 

[TheGuide]

Melee isn't exactly as useless as you might expect. Melee types have the best defense stat in the game, and that goes a long way when it comes to things like the Moon Lord. Melee types also don't need ammo or mana.

The trade-off is that Melee weapons have piss-poor DPS, compared to Ranged or Magic weapons.

I find it hard to believe that melee weapons aren't useless in pre-hardmode unless it's against normal enemies or you're using the Dark Lance.

 

[Alaron]

They just don't seem to understand that insta-death is just not fun, nor is doing a 30 minute event for one shot at a boss that will probably cheap you in seconds and leave you with nothing to show for it.

The emphasized part bears repeating forever. This may actually be the biggest problem with the Moon Lord-- you have to spend so much time going through the Lunar Event to fight him. It makes it hard to learn his patterns, and makes it more beneficial to use "cheap" tactics because that way you are less likely to die and have to slog through the Lunar Event AGAIN.

Because melee is useless as just melee.

Ah, I see you recognize the problem.
I don't have trouble using melee as melee prehardmode most of the time. Even the more ranged options, like Boomerangs, tend to work better the closer you are. It's once you get to Hardmode that you switch to what are essentially laser guns with bayonets, cunningly disguised as swords.

 

[Grimmsy]

For me, melee came online only after Hardmode starts. Granted, the only reason it was also viable against bosses was because of Vampire Knives. But after Golem, melee just falls in a pit compared to other classes, until the solar pillar fragments.