Phylacteral Link

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Emil_kof wrote:

DO NOT NERF THIS

I'm tired of people complaining and asking for nerfs, the Bloodlines league is already too easy. Please leave this be, it's supposed to be annoying, it's supposed to lead to potential rip situations. LEAVE IT ALONE.

Make the other Bloodline mods harder please.

back to your standard plz


On OP, i too believe p-link really kills all the fun. It is annoying as hell, not hard, just plain annyoing.

Yeah, this thing is still stupid. No challenge at all, we see it in group, we just move on or spam our AoE until everything is dead. They are more of a pain solo then in a party.

But it's just silly mechanic. Whack-a-mole.

I wonder if it would be possible to increase the number of vulnerable monsters based on the pack size. For example, if the pack has less than 5 monsters one of them is vulnerable at a time, if it has less than 10 two are, and so on.
That way huge and separated packs would be less frustrating.

Phy link would have been a great idea to make crowd control usefull again... if only we could damage them...

But no, it's not even possible to freeze or stun them.

And yeah, I agree the max number of mobs un a pack should be 5 for this mod

I wanted to put my two cents in here hoping Phylacteral Link is gone next league.

Before I get into the game design discussion, I'll tell my story of how Phylaceteral Link made me quit the game for a month or so, and quit Bloodlines entirely.

I get into a map, pack size, obtain a Tora's mission. I get beetles, Great! Except they are all Phylaceteral linked! There were probably 30-40 of them all over the damn map, and I spent half an hour clearing the map because of this bad luck.

Oh well, phylacteral link Tora mobs was probably not gonna happen anytime soon. So a few hours later, I'm in another map, pack size, increase monster damage blah blah. Oh it's Tora again. This time I get Phylacteral Linked LEAPERS! (aka worst mob in the game one shot you off screen). I managed to kill 3 of them with several near deaths and tons of kiting. At this point, I exited the game and felt completely demoralized.

It's not that my build was bad. In fact, my arc build should easily be able to clear Phylacteral linked mobs if they were actually together. There is no build that isn't slowed down because of this mod.

Now let's get into Game Design.

Yes, I heard the GGG comment from a podcast about why Phylacteral Link is good. Essentially, it forces you to "change up your playstyle". Now what kind of playstyle or build isn't slowed down from this mod? Are you supposed to be a leap slammer with instant travel to get to the marked mob? An AoE build that literally will shower the screen with damage? None of these can deal with Phylacteral Linked mobs that are separated by walls. It just makes fighting this mob clunky, slowed down, and boring regardless of super builds or dangerous playstyle.

So I'm going to call out GGG. Do you know what genre your game is?
I see it as an ACTION rpg. That's the key word. ACTION.

Games have several cores, pillars, the foundation of ideals on which all features should not misrepresent, and Phylacteral Link (along with Necrovigil, and to a lesser extent, the Immune Aura) is a feature that puts the player in a state of INACTION. We are literally not able to do anything, or able to put ourselves in a better position, to kill these immune mobs, if our RNG is really bad that the mark isn't swapping between mobs that aren't even in the room.

The longer we are in an INACTIVE state, the further we are from having fun.
We play Hack and Slash, ACTION RPGs because we want to kill things, not hiding away, sucking our thumbs, waiting for the mark to arrive on the mob we have on our reach.

And also, about that patch note of increasing the timer of how long a mob is marked. In my scenario, that actually makes it worse, so I have no idea what kind of fix that is.

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Whoaness wrote:

The longer we are in an INACTIVE state, the further we are from having fun.
We play Hack and Slash, ACTION RPGs because we want to kill things, not hiding away, sucking our thumbs, waiting for the mark to arrive on the mob we have on our reach.

+1000

GGG introduced way too many mechanics that are totally boring and designed to slow players down - ice ground, TC, slow aura, ice shot statues, tar, enfeeble, croaking squirrels.... and now PL & necrovigil. PL might not be boring and sometimes is a tactical nightmare (which could be a good thing), but it still mostly results in slowing the player down and ruining fun.

No ARPG player wants to be slowed down!!

Redesign PL to at least scale the amount of active mobs with pack size: 1 for 1-5, 2 for 6-10, 3 or more active for >10. And remove necrovigil, that thing is just lame.

So how is phallic link now? Contemplating to start another Bloodlines character because these leagues will go on until June or so.

While there is truth to "no ARPG player wants to be slowed down," it is also true that having to reposition your character instead of continually DPSing is a sign that the game is actually challenging you. "Move to new screen, nuke, everything dies instantly, repeat" is the epitome of challengelessness, while playing what fighting games call "footsies" is a very strong indicator of a challenging fight.

I think the core concept behind P Link is very solid; if you can't DPS footsies are your only option. However, reposition to... where? What is your movement objective? You don't know. And that's why it feels like shit. Footsies slow down the player, so they only work when the player can understand the situation.

What P Link needs is a limited range and better visual identification. Make it so players can see where the real target is. If the target is off-screen, fine, but give it an aura-style visual so huge the visual is still on-screen, pointing the way to go. Since the visual can only be so large, the real target can only be so far off-screen, so some form of range limitation is required.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

While there is truth to "no ARPG player wants to be slowed down," it is also true that having to reposition your character instead of continually DPSing is a sign that the game is actually challenging you.

Agreed, but there are already mechanics that make you move and don't slow you down (= the gameplay is not "dead time"), like leap slamming mobs, charger mobs, avian retch... PL makes the player move for the wrong reasons, eg. sometimes the pack get scattered and you have to "park" them and do all sort of BS to clean the mess, shuttling back & forth between several screens...

Instead of PL, mobs in the pack could all have (maybe a different version of) proximity shield, which would still require you to move around, but not in an obnoxious way. (some will lament this would be just a copy of Nemesis, but I dont care.)

The problem with Phylacteral is that they are spread way across the map sometimes , I get to one and then it jumps back to the other, for gods sake what's hard about that apart from frustrating as hell. 10 mins to kill a pack on a hard map, 'hey just skip it', I have put sometimes 15 chaos into this map hoping for a map, no way, 10 mins later I am done, frustrated as hell, no map and extremely frustrated. Its meant to be fun for god sake. (By the way I am sure they purposely run away from you).

I don't want easy, I agree with the frozen sky, it was ridiculously changed because I suspect some high profile streamer at the top of the ladder died and was moaning. I watched the death and if he was even being slightly careful he would not of died. Yes strong box, magic monsters, lets just open it, no leap away, no other defensive mechanic used ie smoke mine. Just daft death, next minute its nerfed!!!! I yawn whenever I see frozen sky now, it might as well say, bit of drizzle to wet you slightly.

I died on bloodlines at level 93, had fun apart from the above phyl and those god dam green leaving circle things in a tight space. I have loved playing the game since beta but this league has been the worst yet I fear to say. I have tried levelling up again and have come to the forums after turning off as I was stood on one side of the screen away from obelisks( which killed my previous character with over 8000 life in a split second) thinking what should I do. My answer was better than last time as I just turned off. It does not encourage extra play.

I have spent around 300 to 400 pounds supporting this game because I have loved its challenges but so many of the monster mods in bloodlines are frustrating as hell and think apart from playing half an hour here and there running a docks map etc as its nice and chilled, I am done until next league and lets see if things have improved.

Looking back on what I have wrote it looks like I just want an easy game. NOOOOOO. I want a really hard game that can be overcome when you build a really powerful character with lots of time and effort. That's rewarding and fun to see the screen melt. At the moment no matter how powerful your character is you are still spending 10 mins sometimes chasing things around the map. For no reward.

Hats off to GGG though as I have prob played this game more than any other. Just trying to help out that's all. The league seems to be going dead and this is my reason maybe why. There is nothing challenging running to one monster and when I get there, I to have run back to the previous monster etc.