True Final Boss health potion usage on Hard.

[Own]

I wrote this up about a week ago elsewhere, but given the sheer number of people struggling I feel I ought to at least post it publicly as well. I'm not saying the fight should be made easier, only that it might be more enjoyable with an additional skill-based mechanic added into it:



So, I think I might have an idea that would make everyone happy. The devs don't want to make Zhamla weaker on Hard Mode because, it's Hard Mode. You're there for the difficulty. People are angry because they have no healing, every bit of damage counts. But there's a mechanic in the game that has been in for about... 8 years now? One that no one ever really uses intentionally, to the point where not even the wiki lists it. The Flying Fortress Perfect Guard screen doesn't even mention it, leaving it completely undocumented. Because it doesn't ever matter. (Even though, if the schoolhouse had a book on PGing it might be mentioned there, or if Master Ji had some shield lessons it might come up there...) After you Perfect Guard, you can do one of three things:

• Charge a skill to Silver.
• Guarantee the next melee attack is a crit.
• Instantly drink a potion.

My suggestion is to make this small, insignificant mechanic that exists buried in the games code for reasons I can't even imagine relevant. You want to drink your Health Potion? Earn it.

• Option A) You can only drink your health potion immediately after perfect guarding, using the instant drink mechanic. Too fast for Zhamla to grab it. Zhamla usually attacks multiple times, so landing the perfect guard on the last attack in a combo will likely be required to use it without getting hit for doing so.
• Option B) Each time you want to use your health potion, you need a minimum perfect guard combo that is one higher than the number of times you have used your health potion in battle. Have you used your health potion twice? You need a Perfect Guard combo of 3.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that Option A should suffice and B is overkill. It means you can heal in moments of great skill and timing, you can't just run around waiting to use your potion on cooldown meaning it remains a rare resource. If you ever try using it outside of that window of opportunity, it's gone for the rest of the fight. Make your potion drink attempts count, because if you mess up it's not coming back.

It also lets you be able to tell people who want to heal that they're on hard mode - perfect guarding is required

I don't think it would... completely snuff out the frustrations, but it's a way to add another mechanic to the fight without taking anything away. A skill-based mechanic, which seems more than fair.

 

[Literally Who]

I'll introduce my two cents by repeating my criticism from the first impressions thread regarding this.

>I don't hate it because it's "challenging". I hate it because it is inconsistent. Why does he block those two specific skills (healing potion and barrier in this context)? Because they are overpowered? Then why did you not balance them? Let's say you can't balance them, and you are convinced that these two things are such massively overpowered crutches that they make it a trivial fight, then how come they are available for the rest of the hard mode, making it trivial by your definiton? Do those encounters not deserve to be challenging as well? Or did you balance the rest of the hard mode around them? Then why was Zoidberg not balanced similarly? Once again, I'm not averse to challenge, I just want things to be consistent.

Your proposition is a handout. I personally didn't need a handout when I beat Ziggurat on hard. I was just pissed that the game taught me for the entire playthrough that it's totes okay to spec defensively, only to rug pull me at the very last fight. I'm not gonna say I think this change should outright not even be considered, but I personally just don't see it improving the encounter design beyond making it straight up easier. I don't see it removing or aleviating the fundamental inconsistency.

 

[Own]

I don't hate it because it's "challenging". I hate it because it is inconsistent. Why does he block those two specific skills (healing potion and barrier in this context)? Because they are overpowered?

Because the developers had two ways to design the final boss. With factoring in the many various types of simple, repeatable damage mitigation and healing, or without.

They could balance the Hard Mode version of the fight around the understanding that most people will be relying on Barrier and Health Potion on cooldown. This means you have to account for people spending large sections of time circle strafing the arena waiting for Barrier to come back online, or Health Potion to hit 100%. This was decided to be an unsatisfying Hard Mode challenge against the most difficult enemy in the game if players are encouraged to run around like chickens with their heads cut off until they could hide behind Barriers. To compensate for the lack of healing they would give the final boss 30% less HP on Hard. Letting him steal your Barrier and smash your potion just to show how big a threat he is compared to every other enemy in the game before him as well.

They chose to go the route that requires memorizing attack patterns, dodging them and shielding them to give players a challenge worthy of a true Hard Mode final battle.

Personally I don't think it's a handout to say "If you want to use your potion, use the Perfect Guard mechanic that has been hammered into you across the entire game." Primarily because it makes the health potion not something to be used on cooldown, and one misstep still nullifies it. Currently I don't see any difference in whether his attacks are normal guarded or perfect guarded, except that your shield breaks less often. And that's not even an issue with Shiidu. It'd be nice to have it matter some way in the final battle.

 

[Literally Who]

Because the developers had two ways to design the final boss. With factoring in the many various types of simple, repeatable damage mitigation and healing, or without.

They could balance the Hard Mode version of the fight around the understanding that most people will be relying on Barrier and Health Potion on cooldown. This means you have to account for people spending large sections of time circle strafing the arena waiting for Barrier to come back online, or Health Potion to hit 100%. This was decided to be an unsatisfying Hard Mode challenge against the most difficult enemy in the game if players are encouraged to run around like chickens with their heads cut off until they could hide behind Barriers. To compensate for the lack of healing they would give the final boss 30% less HP on Hard. Letting him steal your Barrier and smash your potion just to show how big a threat he is compared to every other enemy in the game before him as well.

They chose to go the route that requires memorizing attack patterns, dodging them and shielding them to give players a challenge worthy of a true Hard Mode final battle.

I've heard this explanation before and it does squarely nothing to provide a compelling counter-argument to the point I bring up. Allow me to repeat myself to hammer it home: Why does he block those two specific skills (healing potion and barrier in this context)? Because they are overpowered? Then why did you not balance them? Let's say you can't balance them, and you are convinced that these two things are such massively overpowered crutches that they make it a trivial fight, then how come they are available for the rest of the hard mode, making it trivial by your definiton? Do those encounters not deserve to be challenging as well? Or did you balance the rest of the hard mode around them? Then why was Zoidberg not balanced similarly?

I don't even fundamentally agree with your (or the devs', depending on who suggested this line of thinking in the first place) assessment regarding the potion and barrier availability making for an unsatisfying challenge and I believe the headless chicken stalemate can and even has been (on other bosses in this very same game) prevented more organically, but this is too long and ultimately fruitless of a discussion to get into so I just don't want to. For the sake of this argument we will just assume that everything you've said is correct. In that case, just be consistent by your own standards. Are healing potions and barriers not satisfying and not challenging to play with? Can their effects not be balanced to remove this? Then why did I get access to them in the first hour of the game on Hard? Why did I get access to them at all? It said "Hard" difficulty right there on the character creation screen. Why am I not playing on a Hard difficulty by your definition despite choosing it?

Personally I don't think it's a handout to say "If you want to use your potion, use the Perfect Guard mechanic that has been hammered into you across the entire game." Primarily because it makes the health potion not something to be used on cooldown, and one misstep still nullifies it. Currently I don't see any difference in whether his attacks are normal guarded or perfect guarded, except that your shield breaks less often. And that's not even an issue with Shiidu. It'd be nice to have it matter some way in the final battle.

I see it as a handout because it makes the fight objectively easier than before, and doesn't add anything beyond that.