Regarding the difficulty of kourok and game length

[fruits]

To put it simply, kourok is too easy. The other boss isn't too hard or anything, its just kourok can be easily beaten with any weapon and decent stats and items at best. The boss shouldn't be easier than the monsters you were fighting through to get to the portal.

Now to what I am really bothered about, the length of games. Being able to fight the boss at level 10 seems too quick, too easy. You don't even get to fight teir 4 enemies much before your at the boss. Sure, its safer if you level up a little more and get some better loot, but if you don't risk going into the portal, one of your friends probably will. Games just feel short, like the game would be a lot better and more wholesome if the bosses were harder and/or the level to get into the portal is raised. Some times, nobody even buys much other than a weapon or cheap artifact before someone has already killed the boss. It makes the game feel incomplete without elongating matches intentionally.

[Safety Zone]

I really still don't see what people are saying here. Kourok has slimies all over the floor, and you always get stuck on the boulders on the corner and LAAAAZERED, and the grubs always miss, and you always seem to get bubbled just s kourok gets knocked out and you miss out on the SWEET, SWEET damage. I don't see what i'm missing here, he's so tough!

[Intra]

I mean... he's tough if you're playing human opponents who time the laser to block the path of the grub used to disable you. But CPU opponents don't use the laser for area denial so they get destroyed.

And overall, while bow does less damage when he's up, you can still reliably kill Kourok with a bow relatively easily.

[fruits]

@Roxta2111
Using any roll abilty or shield ability will probably solve most of your problems. With a decent weapon or strength I find it only takes two or three stuns to kill him, and stuns are quite easy to get. My tip is to watch the arrow infront of the tentacles and eye to see where they are going to shoot.

[fruits]

@Crimefridge
Anything is harder against human opponents. The other boss (forgot his name ) is much harder when they can target the healer, have better accuracy with the two shooting heads, and time the fire head to shoot at the perfect moment, forcing the hero to back run, or to take devastating damage. Kourok isn't the only thing harder against your friends.

[BuddySloth]

I find that the bots are better at figuring out Ghidraak than they are Kourok. The Ghidraak fight against humans is perhaps more exciting, but if you have thoughtful opponents, Kourok can be pretty damn tricky. Sure it's easier if you have such and such weapon/ability, but then that depends on timing and drops, to a certain extent.

As for the OP's second point on game length, I have to say I heartily disagree. I'd much rather play two games of Crawl than one long one, and I think not being able to fool around with the high level enemies exactly as much as I want is a great tool to keep players wanting more and prevent the game from losing that sense of constant forward movement.

[qoolbunny]

I think a nice feature to implement would be the option to increase or decrease the Level Cap required to reach the portal. I feel a simple thing like that would solve the problem regarding game length. I also highly agree with you on the fact that Kourok is pretty easy compared to Ghirorak (whatever that guy's name is.) I often find myself breathing a sigh of relief upon entering the portal and finding that my "Final Stuggle" is a boss who I can literally take thirds of his HP in one fell swoop.

Kourok is also pretty hard to win as, too. Mostly because the CPUs are total ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ when it comes to actually working together, although that may just be a flaw with the AI and not the actual bioss itself. Regardless, something needs to change about the Kourok fight to make it a bit more challenging.

[Chippy]

Originally posted by Crimefridge:

I mean... he's tough if you're playing human opponents who time the laser to block the path of the grub used to disable you. But CPU opponents don't use the laser for area denial so they get destroyed.

And overall, while bow does less damage when he's up, you can still reliably kill Kourok with a bow relatively easily.

Maybe instead of a buff to the bosses you should ask for an improvement to the AI playing as him? I only play this game with my friends and its very hard to beat them as they cooperate to beat me :(

[fruits]

Looking over the two bosses, Kourok seems more like a boss from a game like zelda, you have to understand the trick to fighting them while dealing with different attacks. Ghidraak seems like a boss that would be in a more challenging game like dark souls or monster hunter, you have to fight them while dealing with a different side objective to get an advantage in the battle (getting health from the priest guy). I feel like Kourok should be built more like a boss from a brawler and less like a boss from a puzzle adventure game.

[DasaKamov]

Regarding the length of the game: The design intends for short 20-30 minute matches. It's not meant to be a long, slogging dungeon crawl, but a competitive four-person race to see who can be the first to escape. If you and your friends want to play for longer, you can have another go. This kind of game design fits the "arcade" motif quite well, and also keeps the game from being a lopsided "well, one player is level 23 and everyone else is level 8" affair.

That said, I would welcome options for XP Gain (Slow XP gain, Medium, Fast, etc.) as the game gets closer to completion.

[tursel]

Kourok is definitely not too easy.

In my game group, Ghidraak is beaten more often than Kourok. Kourok is deadly if the player shooting bubbles is accurate. When Ghidraak has not be beaten, it has been only one or two heads left with very low health, but Kourok has often more than half the health left.

I think the design in bosses should be varied and they should all tactic, puzzling and brawling. If all the bosses were just "big bad normal monsters", I'd be disappointed.

Have you seen the new coming boss? Judging from gifs and images, it seems more like a super trap room - and I like it.

Have nothing to say against bots, bots for me are just for "let me checkout these new cool changes in updates" before I play against human opponents.

The game length: Our games take 20-50min, maybe once even an hour. That's also what it would take to play a single matchmaking in CS:Go. At least in my gaming group we have thus far played only 1-2 Crawl matches per gaming night, since it's not really a game that you want to play for hours and hours. If Crawl was any longer, we might skip it. Especially if there are more than 4 players, the extra players are willing to sit out and watch one game of Crawl right now. If the game took 1+ hours regularly, I would get really bored watching it.

[Safety Zone]

Originally posted by Arcane:

Kourok is definitely not too easy.

In my game group, Ghidraak is beaten more often than Kourok. Kourok is deadly if the player shooting bubbles is accurate. When Ghidraak has not be beaten, it has been only one or two heads left with very low health, but Kourok has often more than half the health left.

I think the design in bosses should be varied and they should all tactic, puzzling and brawling. If all the bosses were just "big bad normal monsters", I'd be disappointed.

Have you seen the new coming boss? Judging from gifs and images, it seems more like a super trap room - and I like it.

Have nothing to say against bots, bots for me are just for "let me checkout these new cool changes in updates" before I play against human opponents.

I agree on all these points. I can't wait for the new boss.

[Darkfiro]

Or they could add a Hard mode feature for the bosses (they are coloured red instead of Green) the requirement for the hard mode boss is for the hero player to out level all of the other player level combined ( Hero's level > 3 spirit's level). then they could do slight modification to the boss fight like Kourok take 99% less range damage while he up, stun time is less, the bomb dropping less. Triple shot of all his skills (make it harder to dodge). for the Hydra it could be the healer appear less often or heal less or back to his pre nerf days. Smalls things like this.

[fruits]

I have something completely different with the game length. I find most games only last 10-15 minutes. Me and my friends don't get to do most things in the game before they are already at the boss. I recently did a practice run with only myself, and intentionally made it long to practice against higher level enemies, and found many new objects that I didn't find in the small matches with my friends.

[Ghostican]

Originally posted by Arcane:

Kourok is definitely not too easy.

In my game group, Ghidraak is beaten more often than Kourok. Kourok is deadly if the player shooting bubbles is accurate. When Ghidraak has not be beaten, it has been only one or two heads left with very low health, but Kourok has often more than half the health left.

I think the design in bosses should be varied and they should all tactic, puzzling and brawling. If all the bosses were just "big bad normal monsters", I'd be disappointed.

Have you seen the new coming boss? Judging from gifs and images, it seems more like a super trap room - and I like it.

Have nothing to say against bots, bots for me are just for "let me checkout these new cool changes in updates" before I play against human opponents.

The game length: Our games take 20-50min, maybe once even an hour. That's also what it would take to play a single matchmaking in CS:Go. At least in my gaming group we have thus far played only 1-2 Crawl matches per gaming night, since it's not really a game that you want to play for hours and hours. If Crawl was any longer, we might skip it. Especially if there are more than 4 players, the extra players are willing to sit out and watch one game of Crawl right now. If the game took 1+ hours regularly, I would get really bored watching it.

Agreed on every point, except that the game lenght can actually vary quite a bit depending on luck and skill. Overall, I think the variety in boss types is the most important point

[hotfist.com]

Kourok is tough to explain - but I think he's well balanced. Two of my buddies I frequently play with are solid at crawl, but I routinely crush them. I can constantly crush them with kourok, whereas if I am in kourok, I can totally deny access to the blob in the mouth and virtually never lose. You really need to work on the area denial with kourok, and keeping the blob seperate from the human.

If you are the human, you need to do what you can to rush the blob, through the laser - if you can deal more damage to kourok then a couple lazer pecks, you can probably roll in, stab the blob, and take it down.

I think the issue we're seeing with balance is has a lot more to do with player skill levels than anything to do with problems with the boss.