Battle-Jesus Wrote:And yes, but how much time will one waste before figuring that out?
The only reason I was actually sure that the manoeuvre was possible was that I saw GP do it online.
Still though, as soon as one gets ruined once, one will start wondering "Wait, what the fuck do I even do to DODGE that?" and I suspect, without being certain, that one could
come up with the answer oneself, after observing the way that Mistress tends to hover after a block.
You don't absolutely have to do it in the arena itself, you could practice outside of the arena, in no danger, after realising what was necessary.
I've always liked to have games' mechanics properly explained, but even in commercial games, sometimes the explanation has to come from a place outside of the game.
I mean, think of fighting games, for example.
If you want to learn how to really play 'em properly, you either have to be some kind of prodigy, or spend endless hours experimenting in order to figure out the intricacies of the combo system yourself, or ... you go see the results that people who DID that have posted up on the internet already.
The game itself won't necessarily tell you, and I'm not sure that is a universally bad thing.
If it had been a mechanic you needed in order to progress, then I'd have been more likely to agree that the game SHOULD make it rather more obvious.
Since it's just something you need in order to beat an entirely optional side-boss though ...
I dunno, seems like the current structure might be all right-ish, once dat dash invulnerability has been made clearer.
I have nothing against a mention that you can act again after air-blocking, though.
Like, 2 sentences added to a tutorial screen, one about the invincibility and one about experimenting with airblocks, and I'd say things were pretty much perfectly in order.
Battle-Jesus Wrote:Hard gameplay makes not a good game. Enjoyable gameplay makes a good game
As a statement of principle, that's quite literally indisputable.
However, even apart from the fact that "enjoyable" is a subjective value in the abstract, and apart from the fact that some people find rock-hard challenges to be enjoyable per se, I'd say that the mask itself does become enjoyable once you figure out and master that one single dodge requirement.
It's hard, but fair.
And yes, I did use that particular phrase SPECIFICALLY because I'm ripping off a GodHand motto. XD
Battle-Jesus Wrote:The with things like an arena, where you have to restart from the beginning when you die, the final tier shouldn't be a giant spike in difficulty.
...
If the boss is the real point of the arena, then why punish the players by making them spend most of their time on the mobs
Now, I don't disagree with the sentiment, but the arena grinding doesn't take that long, once you're level 8 or so.
I don't think it's really inconvenient enough to go over the line between "annoying" and "just fucking terrible."
Empower+SwordThrow at level 8, and possibly at lower levels than 8 if a person is going to use the rusty sword, makes short work of the Gorgers.
There's also the fact that one of the "real points" of the arena IS, in ITSELF, soul grinding. That's one of the reasons that GP originally even put it in in the first place,
or at least, to be more accurate, it's CERTAINLY why I had mentioned that an arena would be a nice thing to have, in the first place.
That, coupled with the fact that you can practice the skills necessary for beating the mask in an ENTIRELY mask-unrelated scenario, makes me think that the current situation
is actually okay.
If you couldn't shorten the fights so very substantially, though, and if the trash mobs weren't so helpful in grinding souls, then I'd just be in agreement with you 100% here.