Recent difficulty balance changes.

[Bonechill]

Anyone else finding issues with the changes? It seems like in addition to end game bosses being a bit over tuned now some bosses are also bugging out. Their attacks are layering on top of each other like leaving projectiles from previous attack just floating in place on screen. The Weeper in particular felt awful to fight, list of problems i encountered with it below.
1: Homing orb attack frequently leaves the orbs in place and then starts another attack.
2: It will spam the cage attack in rapid sequence in the same spot.
3: Take damage from an attack before the animation even finishes.
4 When it does the aoe around it self it can start mid animation of a different attack.
5: I take damage from the radial aoe before the animation even finishes (idk if its contact damage or what but taking 3 damage for free is dumb).

[Tall Dark and Gruesome]

yep, i tried weeper for about an hour yesterday after finding the last of the piper enemies and boss fight seems to be running at 2x speed or something. safe platforms despawn before the attack you are supposed to use them for fires, orb, wall and box attacks can all be occurring on top of each other. i've put the game down until there is a patch to fix boss mechanics that were broken/overworked by this weeks patch then i will get the true end.

[Tritoch]

Yeah, Pustulant Prince was obscenely difficult now, I had all damage upgrades available at the time of fighting him. His health is extremely high, he gets very very fast, and has a huge aoe range and does two bars of health per hit. I memorized his patterns and still the fight took almost 10 minutes where you have to be nearly perfect or you'll quickly lose health.

[boppagibbz]

I finally got the new weeper but had nothing left for the first. They way overtuned it. Weeper was fine as a pushover before the real deal. Now it’s just ridiculous

[Rognirim]

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback! We're having a look at this as we speak. We will also keep adjusting the boss tuning across the next few days, primarily the Prince and the Weeper.

[stevo]

This tends to happen when you don't balance stuff correctly from the get go mechanically. Fact was, the player got way too many HP upgrades and the combat mechanics alongside it made for a very damaged trade based combat system. Anything else they did thereafter was always gonna be a band aid fix. And if they just ocertune the damage and speed, it's gonna feel terrible.

[Tritoch]

Origineel geplaatst door stevo:

This tends to happen when you don't balance stuff correctly from the get go mechanically. Fact was, the player got way too many HP upgrades and the combat mechanics alongside it made for a very damaged trade based combat system. Anything else they did thereafter was always gonna be a band aid fix. And if they just ocertune the damage and speed, it's gonna feel terrible.

Yeah, but the beginning of the game actually feels fairly difficult. I liked feeling very strong later on, but I know I'm in the minority. Honestly at this point I think am accessibility mode that allows players to adjust difficult would be the best solution, with basically no downside.

[Hooman]

There's nothing wrong with the game being easy if you go out and explore. That's kind of the thing metroidvanias thrive upon, rewarding the player with stuff to help against bosses if they go looking, or just letting them fight a boss straight-up if they're good enough.
A game can be too hard, despite what people will tell you. When things are unfairly stacked against you and it's no longer a skill challenge but just a challenge of the game being ill-designed it is not going to feel satisfying when you beat a boss. It's going to be "Glad I finally got lucky."

[SpaceJump]

Origineel geplaatst door Hooman:

... It's going to be "Glad I finally got lucky."

I agree. This was exactly the feeling I had after finally beating the final boss.

[JumboFatCakes]

Still stuck on final bosses

Feels like you need to know the attacks before they even preform them. Animations don't align with damage or what's actually happening. Stood on fire platforms without taking damage, take damage on Weeper's glowy platforms before they splash up. Weeper, the timing on the beam of light and you teleport across is so messed up now, I get hit almost every time. Keep getting randomly hit by the cross attack from final boss, there's no warning when you're stuck on the far left/right sides. Think it's intentional that it speeds up/slows down, but messes up the jumps when trying to go over the top

Edit: just beat it, but felt like I cheesed it. Jazier the Pompous + Spectral Chakram. Final boss, the invisibility orbs come out as soon as I kill the last one. Even using charge attacks and following the pattern of where they land. Needs some time to do damage before going invincible again

[Tritoch]

Origineel geplaatst door Hooman:

There's nothing wrong with the game being easy if you go out and explore. That's kind of the thing metroidvanias thrive upon, rewarding the player with stuff to help against bosses if they go looking, or just letting them fight a boss straight-up if they're good enough.
A game can be too hard, despite what people will tell you. When things are unfairly stacked against you and it's no longer a skill challenge but just a challenge of the game being ill-designed it is not going to feel satisfying when you beat a boss. It's going to be "Glad I finally got lucky."

Agreed. I thought the game felt fairly challenging, but then not anymore when I explored enough to get stronger. It felt rewarding.

[Maddie @ Kwalee]

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to jump in on this thread again because we've recently released another patch where we've toned down the difficulty of a few bosses that were brought up (The Weeper, The Pustulant Prince, and The Astronomer).

If you've had a chance to fight them again, we'd love to hear your feedback on how you're finding the difficulty level now and if there are any other bosses that you feel are too challenging or still not challenging enough.

[triplzer0]

Not a big fan of the boss changes. Things seem like the dev team swung too hard in the other direction and made things too difficult now. Plus I've found a couple of vaults but somehow I don't have any ciphers so I can't upgrade my damage

[GyrAthena]

4 hours and still cannot beat the Council.

112% Hollow Knight - cannot get past your first boss thats 2000% stronger than my character health-wise. 2000% stronger. WTF!?!?!

[Flandarz]

You might need to consider how you're approaching the boss if it's been 4 hours. I never managed to 112% Hollow Knight myself, but I can respect the work that went into it. But if your 4 hour strategy ain't working, maybe you should try something different.

[King In Yellow]

Origineel geplaatst door GyrAthena:

4 hours and still cannot beat the Council.

112% Hollow Knight - cannot get past your first boss thats 2000% stronger than my character health-wise. 2000% stronger. WTF!?!?!

Understandably, the first boss (like a few of the others) is more of a puzzle than a straight up fight. Watch a video of someone beating him hit-less to get the positioning right in order to avoid his attacks (Especially the homing fireballs - that, contrary to your natural reflex, you actually need to run towards to dodge)>

As Flandarz said, I was having a similar experience to you against that boss until I changed my planning for the fight and focused a lot more on positioning and beat him shortly after.