Dracula.

[Metessius]

Dracula is far too hard for the average player to clear on normal. As an above average player I find it insulting how hard he is compared to the other bosses on normal. I'm not the upper 10% of players soloing brutal. I'm not trying to. I'm on normal. I'm not afraid to hear it all. the "just dodge" the "practice more". Sure i have time for it. But how many do not? I find it insulting that we are forced to change our play style, our enjoyment of the game for just 1 boss. If I was able to face smash my way too Dracula, why can I not smash through Dracula? Again I understand relaxed is there as an option. But if I'm only using it for 1 boss its not the difficulty that's an issue. I am solo, but feel this is unrelated as in online pvp they offer a specialized servers for 1-2 players. Therefore the game should be looked at from a 1-2 player perspective as they are suggesting you are able to do such by offering said servers.

When I read the difficulties I Understood them as follows:
Relaxed - Exploration/Crafting > Combat
Normal - Exploration/Crafting = Combat
Brutal - Exploration/Crafting < Combat
Note; Only Brutal has a "Season Veteran" recommendation.

I do enjoy this games replay loop outside of beating him and understand it isn't needed. But the overlay holds it over your head constantly. If the average online server is hosted at Normal difficulty then why are average players not clearing Dracula? Personally he seems jarring as a an experience in comparison to the other bosses. The fight feels more like random chance than skill. Adam the Firstborn, by comparison is well designed. Overwhelming you if don't do your work around the arena. Rewarding the player for critical thinking. Dracula does not do this. Dracula feels out of place. Like he doesn't belong.

Understand I am trying to look at this from the perspective of the average player. Not the people clearing brutal. Not the people speedrunning. Not the people trying to get a world record. I say these because anytime I've mentioned Dracula being difficult this is what i hear. Use this build. Play this way. I understand people want a challenge in their games. I enjoy Remnant 2, a game where I have 8 premade loadouts. All different and all playable on the hardest difficulty. Hard without compromising the player ability to play how they want. I just want that on Normal.

[Mercurial]

Publicado originalmente por Metessius:

I find it insulting that we are forced to change our play style, our enjoyment of the game for just 1 boss.

You aren't.

Adam and Solarus are both harder than Dracula.

Publicado originalmente por Metessius:

You guys, 3.2%. All you have to do is click on your achievements and it will show you. 3.2% of 3.9 Million copies sold. And that achievement isn't even tied to difficulty.

That's less than 150,000 people clearing Dracula in the lifetime of the game on steam.

Achievements were not present in the game at launch, you absolute clown.

Millions of people bought V Rising and played it and then stopped playing it before achievements even existed in the game.

Publicado originalmente por Tanyon:

Dracula my friends and I fought for about 90 minutes straight on normal.. lost count of how many times we tried but enough for us all to go through 3 vials each of 100% blood. I gave up..

Why go on the internet and lie to cause silly drama.

You never need more blood vials while fighting Dracula. When you fail, you exit the shadow realm with the same blood type and level that you entered with.

You could fight him all day and not need another vial.

[RAmieL]

I agree. All other bosses don't even come close to Dracula. Cleared everything on normal without any major issues up to this point. My server used to be full yet I saw very few players with 4/4 altars. Since last week half of my server moved on to greener pastures, it's crumbling castles everywhere, and all of them have 3/4 altars.

Game is fun but if clearing the last boss takes almost as much time as clearing the rest of the game then perhaps Drac is slightly overdone after all....

[@xaker89]

He is supposed to be hard, he is the final boss after all. Every other boss is just a joke on normal, i think every boss should be as hard as him on normal, that you have to actually learn the moves and not just brute force/spam all your stuff and win.

[Errant_Cipher]

Fighting Dracula right now with a friend on relaxed mode, got lvl 90 gear score, full potions, and still can't beat that bastard. Strictly speaking the amount of unblockable attacks such as his curse and the player's abysmal cool-down of dash.. waaaay too BS of a fight. Was enjoying the game up until this point.. I didn't sign up for a Miyazaki game.

[Firecam]

Curse being only a multiplayer thing is what bother me the most, i can deal with wolfs and shadow clones but being punished for playing with a friend is such a d*ck move. I still prefer dracula over adam random bullsh*t go.

[LazyJoeBeard]

He is hard but every thing he does is react-able if you learn the patterns, after nearly 100 attempts I could more often then not no hit his first and second phase, third one was a big wall for me and my friend.

[Mercurial]

Curse is an entirely avoidable mechanic.

Because playing as a team presents multiplicative benefits (i.e., one teammate can bloodrage all 4 teammates), it would be important for Dracula to also have multiplicative advantages when fighting a team. Curse is one way of doing that. If one member of the team screws up, that screw up multiplicatively affects every teammate near him.

It's an almost perfectly crafted mechanic for the fight, and people having a problem with it at Normal difficulty damage scaling is a definite git gud situation.

[ledkit]

I feel like I have an issue with the whole battle design. All encounteres are centered around dodging, but dodging is horrible in this game. It's a sin adding cooldown to dodge while expecting players to avoid atack with snail pace.

[theworld]

Publicado originalmente por ledkit:

It's a sin adding cooldown to dodge while expecting players to avoid atack with snail pace.

The real sin is not knowing there's more than just the Space button to avoid attacks.

[Mercurial]

Publicado originalmente por Errant_Cipher:

Fighting Dracula right now with a friend on relaxed mode, got lvl 90 gear score, full potions, and still can't beat that bastard.

This goes beyond a simple skill issue and speaks to you fundamentally not understanding basic aspects of the game. Or being 70.

Strictly speaking the amount of unblockable attacks such as his curse and the player's abysmal cool-down of dash.. waaaay too BS of a fight. Was enjoying the game up until this point.. I didn't sign up for a Miyazaki game.

1) He has no unblockable attacks.

2) Correct, you signed up for a game better and more challenging than a Miyazaki game. You happen to be playing it on a nerfed and easy difficulty, so your experience will be nerfed and easy — but that doesn't change the design and intent of the game, which is to be difficult and challenging but fair, in ways more complicated than Roll/Or-Wait-to-roll.

[Myst Leissa]

I'm not really following this thread, but I think it's a crying shame 70% of players from Early Access didn't rush back to see 1.0....

[ravioli]

Publicado originalmente por Metessius:

You guys, 3.2%. All you have to do is click on your achievements and it will show you. 3.2% of 3.9 Million copies sold. And that achievement isn't even tied to difficulty.

That's less than 150,000 people clearing Dracula in the lifetime of the game on steam.

This isn't a fair quote. The game as sold 3.9 million copies but the game has a 24 hour peak of 12,000 players. The retention for this game was really poor for the first year because the game was so easy in normal that people completed it twice over and then forgot about it never checking out the updates.

May 2022 (launch month) - 92,448 players
June 2022 - 41,00
July 2022 - 13,000
Then we see August 2022 - April 2023 averaging around like 4,000 players. There was just no meaningful content updates. Now the game feels finished and takes enough time to hold players which is why the average is up from as low as 2,734 in December 2022 to 19,143 in the past 30 days.

The May update saw 44,562 people. I bet half of those were returning players and the rest were new. So saying anything about 3.9 million copies sold is suuuuuper disingenuous. Doesn't apply. With peak players in May and the last 26 days totalling at 180,00 players - I think 150,000 clearing it is pretty reasonable. If we estimate that 400,000 have played since May, then it's not all that bad at all of a clear rate.

(I recently came back and have not beat dracula - I'm not there yet at level 63 or whatever)

[Mansen]

Publicado originalmente por Metessius:

So it's good 90% of players didn't make it through the 3rd act of the game? I'm very confused what exactly you are arguing here.

Since 1,0*

Your numbers are biased hard.

[Ragnar]

So to be clear why mister D means not Dracula but Disbalancula. Me and 2 mates easy-finished all bosses on my dedicated server with +30%hp, +70%dmg and +3 lvl for all enemies including V-blood bosses to compensate x3 res drop (grind can go fck itself). We died a couple of times on hard bosses, but it was rare case and game with this stats feels just fine balanced for experienced tryharders like us.

But then, having purple gear and all the builds we like to play, we came to mister D. and feel helpless like puppets, hardly droping him to 70%hp on lucky tries. And when I dropped all boss stats to 100%, only then Downgradecula became beatable like all his colleagues with boosted stats.

It is possible to beat him solo on hard stats, you must take no damage with evade and counterspells. But in coop it's just meaningless to tryhard him. It's obvious that his stats is OP and he is a wall for a people that do not want to grind gear for cheese builds. Difficulty jump between all game bosses and D is too high for those who value their time.

[Smug Kot]

Lmao, they need to denerf dracula.