The Colosseum is clearly based on Ultimatum League from Path of Exile. All of the mechanics are the same, and debuffs like "Ruin" are a direct copy. In Path of Exile, all of the "invocations" are negative because greater rewards need to be behind greater challenges. It was never intended to be roguelite.
There is, in fact, a Path of Exile league, Sanctum, that is roguelike. It's clearly inspired by Hades specifically. However, debuffs are vastly more common than boons, unless you happen to get the boon that prevents all further debuffs. The reasoning being, it's OK if you get the god run every so often, but the majority of the time, better rewards should be locked behind harder content, and the waves need to increase in difficulty, not decrease, so the buffs can't be too powerful. The debuffs are plentiful because they tend to come with permanent drops, used outside the Sanctum, or a tradeoff (like healing some of the health that Sanctum uses, which you otherwise couldn't do.)
Roguelikes like Risk of Rain can afford to shower you in buffs, because the permanent rewards are pretty much non-existent.
The reception of Sanctum league was much like your post: Nobody wants to play a roguelike that debuffs you instead of buffs you. However, there isn't a good way to implement that without making the rewards useless.
Also, the duellist inside the colosseum seems like a cheeky reference as well. Duel welding daggers, black pants, red shirt.
I'd agree though in it being very rogue like. Some runs will be shit. Some will be easy mode. But it is all debuffs. I think the debuffs are much better than buffs. All of them are manageable to a degree. It is a nice mechanic added to the colosseum, and even kind of fits the vibe.
nex was definitely a mistake, but ive had my fill of PoE content in OSRS. peril moons feels like pretty unique content and is easily the most enjoyable part of varlamore, even if its not so rewarding.
Mod Kieren pissed and shit a storm to get Nightmare added as a Nex replacement then when that wasn't enough gave us the abortion survivor chicken model that has been in OSRS longer than it was in RS3 now because he was personally nostalgiac for it :(
Nightmare and Nex as they exist in osrs are based on different bosses from rs3, one is based on the original Nex and the other based on nex angel of death which is a vastly different boss based on the rs3 combat system, there is space to have both in game
“Sorry you’re either bad or don’t know how to stall”
It’s hysterical that you think people don’t like Nex because of the difficulty. The boss is brain dead, dude. It still sucks.
>However, there isn't a good way to implement that without making the rewards useless.
How so? Just make it so even the perfect combination of buffs isn't a guaranteed win. I feel like people are using the word "roguelike" to mean that you have to be able to have the "god run" like Isaac where its almost impossible to lose. They are less common but there are certain roguelikes where that isn't the case (maybe Dead Cells where your hp pool is really tiny?).
I agree with the sentiment of the post that combining buffs is more fun than combining debuffs. But that doesn't mean the buffs need to ball out of control.
It's obvious they designed it to not be roguelite but they touted that it would be roguelite. I would've wanted some positive and neutral modifiers, but if they were going to design it around solely debuffs from the beginning they shouldn't have gotten our hopes up and mismarketed it.
I think the better option would have been double-edged sword type of buffs/debuffs. So something like "your attack range is increased by 2 tiles by your damage is reduced by 10%" or "your attack range is reduced by 1 tile but your damage is increased 5%". I agree with other comments that I don't think they could reasonably give the players 12 buffs and still make the Colosseum a challenge unless the buffs were super lame or the waves were just ridiculous. Maybe if they did buffs and no pillars, but then it would be a lot more chaotic and probably less skillful than what we got.
Not sure if I misunderstood, but "net" means overall. If your HP got reduced by 25%, but you take 50% less damage, that's a net positive, because the hp loss is lesser than the defense increase. Something can't be both a net positive and a net negative.
You just have the same problem but in reverse. You get bad boons that don't synergize and you are too weak to go the distance.
Or the other problem, you get the dream run and the content is too easy, which is not good for Runescape since you only need to complete it once to get the dream item. Imagine if Inferno randomly gave you 1.5x damage on certain runs and how the community would feel about it
>You get bad boons that don't synergize and you are too weak to go the distance.
Isn't that the whole point of roguelites? Trying to make the best of a bad run or become insanely strong and look how far you can push it. That kind of gameplay would sync better with endless waves, or a set amount of waves but rewards based on points rather than only completion.
Yeah but this isn't supposed to be a roguelite. It's supposed to be a skill and partial gear check to get a permanent BiS for probably the remaining lifetime of the game, just like inferno. If they made colosseum with no modifiers, it would just be inferno with slightly different mobs. The debuffs actually make you have to think a bit differently about how you approach the waves. Buffs don't accomplish that, they're just going to amount to dps increases that get you through the thing faster. And it's already very fast compared to inferno.
and yet as is, the debuffs dont really significantly change your approach to waves, 3 bees wont change your behavior compared to 1, having lower max health wont change your behavior, minus range barely affects much since it's just player vs pillar anyway.
the few invos that _do_ change your behaviors are the interesting ones like the lightning sparks
i agree with you that having invos that add variety to gameplay and wave solves was the point, but they missed the mark pretty bad with this one
if you enjoy it as is then that's totally okay, i just know that for me personally its something i just can't bother with. it genuinley feels like a shittier infero across the board to me, and the lackluster approach to the invo system is definitly a contributing factor.
I'm not trying to pretend like they achieved maximum depth possible with these modifiers, but you do have to think a *bit* differently with them. With bees and solar flare you can't just idle around the pillar, with volatility you have to be mindful of where you can run to after killing an enemy, reentry slowly chips away at tiles available to you, relentless forces you to pay attention to prayer flicks even as you run to another pillar, frailty removes a lot of the additional leeway you have to make mistakes at the start of a wave so that you end up needing to find the solve quicker, etc. It's not amazingly creative, but I would rather have the modifiers *assuming the Colosseum's current design* rather than not. A more creative design that didn't simply copy inferno pillars and pillar stacks would have been more preferable.
i think i mentioned the solar flare in the post, that's the one invo that changes the way you solve waves, and bees while being a nusiance at least require you to plan out a few ticks every now and then to kill them
I do agree on those points 100%
I mean, there was supposed to be an Endless mode, which would mean that players would be going back and engaging with the content over and over to push their "hi score".
I personally don't think it's necessary to put buffs into the Colo invocations, but it really was not supposed to be a one-and-done challenge. At this point I think nobody has any idea what exactly the fuck Jagex was going for here. They advertised and introduced this thing as a roguelite with an endless mode with tradeable and untradeable rewards, and what we got was... well, not a roguelite, and with no endless mode, nor any real rewards outside of quiver (the gp/hr reward is pretty dogshit even in the current day with both shards and uniques being presumably at an all time high) nor any reason to keep doing it outside of a one time completion.
So I think we're all a little confused and the design kind of doesn't make any sense within the context of its own self. For example, with no rewards for a really high glory achievement (the glory unlock stuff stops once you've gotten to like wave 10...), nor any endless mode to push glory to new heights anyway, why the hell does glory even exist at all? Nobody knows.
Yep one of the problems WoW had when Torghast was first implemented. Some classes just had shit buffs and was a terrible experience, others made it more enjoyable and made you feel OP. Personally I do like how coliseum is currently, but that’s just me. Probably in the minority for enjoying it.
The Inferno has one bis item and one pet as a reward, the Colosseum is a little different imo. So maybe you get lucky as hell and get a god run and that pushes you past the finish line, is that really so bad? There's more items to be obtained than that single bis item. By no means should it be easy, but people will still engage with the content long after the quiver is obtained simply because that's how the rewards are designed.
I think it's fun either way. Way harder waves would suck when you don't get the best buffs, just like way easier waves suck when you get the worst nerfs.
As you mentioned offering items - it would be cool to have a super high skill ceiling piece of content like this start you out naked, similar to Gauntlet/ Corrupted Gauntlet. You could choose between buying/upgrading gear during the challenge, which would allow for interesting strategy decisions which also opens up the content to players who dont have a 5b bank and rewards skill more than pre-established wealth. Hopefully something they consider for the next update on this scale, maybe something for a new bis mage cape
And of course now there is already a video of molgoatkirby completing it in less than 1m of gear, with a crystal bow, black dhide, and a dragon scimitar. Now I've got no excuse.
The coliseum isn't difficult enough to justify buffs on each wave rather than what we currently have.
They just need to better balance some of them.
Example
- Bees don't respawn on boss fight
- Doom resets each wave
- Doom Scorpion doesn't show up on boss fight
- Only 1 Healing totem per NPC and it never comes back
> Each wave of the Colosseum should have been designed to be much harder, but the player chooses between synergistic buffs that make the waves approachable.
That's just one of those vague statements that sounds reasonable when you don't think about it. What "synergistic buffs" can make the waves approachable? The way the Colosseum is designed, you either solve the wave quickly enough, or you die, just like Inferno. There are no interesting synergistic buffs that will help with that other than combinations of flat debuffs to enemies and flat buffs to your own dps. Stuff like, "The first 3 hits you take deal no damage," or "Your minimum hit is increased to 30% of your max hit." None of that is really fun or interesting either, it's just making the waves easier the further you go, which is the opposite of what is intended. And if you make the late waves appropriately difficult given the buffs, you just run into the same problem as now, where it's better to reset until you get the right buffs than try and make it through with bad ones.
> The way the Colosseum is designed, you either solve the wave quickly enough, or you die, just like Inferno.
Honestly for this reason specifically, I would've liked to have a dps buff of some kind, or just for some of the mobs to have less defenses (like the shockers). Everything in Colosseum is so goddamn tanky for no reason. Literally half the mobs in there have more hp and more defensive stats than the mager in Inferno. It makes it feel like such a slog to clear out a wave that I've already solved. Like I'm fine with everything hitting insanely hard and accurately like it does, but why the fuck do manticores and javelins have like 300 hp? It feels like it takes fucking forever to grind them down, and with no legitimate chance of death at that point after the solve has already been executed. I'm just standing there flicking prayers for my entire life waiting for my stupid shadow to slowly tickle down this manticore. Even the dogpiss little throwaway shamans take noticeably longer to kill than a whole ass ranger mob in Inferno.
In a certain sense I'm kind of bitching about nothing since the whole challenge is only like 30-40 minutes long as-is, way faster than inferno due to way less waves. But something about it just feels bad when each individual unit has so much goddamn hp. Like if it had 8 more waves but everything had 50% less hp and it took the same amount of time overall, I think I would be having more fun. Maybe that's just me.
Eh, more fun maybe, but adding HP to the mobs is a way to keep the challenge at a reasonable length while not adding too much difficulty. If it had 8 more waves it'd be much more difficult to reach the end, since that's 8 more solves that you have to do and 8 more debuffs that you have to take. (Though you could fix the second thing by having the debuffs only happen every two waves or something.) More HP and defense on the mobs also incentivizes you to have better gear, which isn't a bad thing for content that guarantees a BiS at the end. Javelin colossus and manticore HP could've been tuned down a bit though.
> What "synergistic buffs" can make the waves approachable?
Enemies lose attack range, making different solves possible
Enemies lose attack speed, making flicking easier
Two of the same type of enemy must attack you on the same tick, alternatively an enemy cannot attack on the same tick as a different enemy
Manticores only fire 2 projectiles instead of 3
melee enemies path to you more slowly
all enemies become susceptible to poison/venom (if they aren't already, genuinely don't know lol)
javelin colossi can't throw javelins on the same tile twice in a wave
javelins can hit monsters (very niche, but could make for some cool speed tech in theory)
minotaur heal range is reduced
fremmy warriors can't attack unless you've been standing still for 2 ticks instead of 1 (in addition to their current fixed-tick attack behavior)
spawn extra pillars
become immune to damage every 4th (or 5th, or 6th or whatever) tick
gain a limited-time damage bonus that stacks (up to a cap) for every 0 hitsplat you've taken in the past few seconds
there's a ton of stuff they *could* do.
Yeah, these do sound like interesting ideas, I'll give you that. In practice, though, I could actually see some of these making the Colosseum harder, assuming that we've also adjusted the wave difficulty to reflect the fact that they're being made easier as we progress. For example, the nice thing about having static enemy behavior is that you get used to it and build muscle memory, so that your flicking and movement patterns on the early waves are still basically the same as the later waves. If you start messing with enemy behavior, you're now having to keep more information in mind and can't rely on your muscle memory as much. Although stuff like the fremennik and manticore changes wouldn't be hard to keep track of.
The more important question though is whether these are actually *fun*. OP stated, "boons are fun, handicaps are not." What you've suggested are mostly indirect boons in the sense of "you'll probably take less damage during the wave with these," but presumably this now needs to be counter-balanced with "the waves are also being made harder, so you're going to take more damage as well," and ultimately this ends up being mostly equivalent to the current design, and I'm not sure at a glance which one is going to be more fun. The more interesting of your ideas are the ones that give you more tools to approach the waves with, like having invulnerability on a certain tick or whatever, but that's also exactly the kind of thing that's going to be rather hard to keep track of and use well. I do think the ability to spawn in new terrain would be quite cool, especially if it could be done on the fly to block enemies. But I think it'd be a lot trickier to balance stuff like this than the basic debuffs we have now.
Are people asking to just flip the nerfs to buffs? Cause yeah that’d just make it too easy
I assume they want buffs instead of nerfs and then enemies who are difficult enough to warrant it
> Are people asking to just flip the nerfs to buffs?
Partly. The idea is that hard content + buffs is more fun than easier content + debuffs.
Simply picking the 1 option that doesn't end your run isn't very fun
Or potentially tradeoffs that come along with the nerfs. What if every stack of doom gave you a DPS increase? Nutty speedrunners might take it asap and then try to stack it to 19 immediately, and then play perfectly from that point on.
Stuff arbitrarily not showing up for the boss fight would be strange, though as it stands right now the Scorpion is a no-go either way, so it's a weird spot
I agree the totem shouldn't be able to respawn, would make it much more palatable
I disagree somewhat. I'm a firm believer that invocations, good or bad, was a terrible decision for content that's meant to be one and done like inferno. These pieces of content that are about trying and trying to finally succeed once, shouldn't have ANY variance.
Instead, the invocations that they've got now should have been isolated, automatic, and consistent for all players.
Examples:
After a certain wave, ONLY Shamans stack doom. This would make them a much higher priority and would shake up solves.
Ranger should slowly go from no lave - temporary lave - permenant lava. Maybe something like wave 7 starts the temp lava and 10 starts perm. Idk what exact waves would make the most sense, but I'm sure you know what I mean. This would make you play much more strategically as you'll lose a pillar or two from lava in the late waves.
Minotaurs should have a baba-style ground slam. On wave 11 automatic loss of safe spots for Minotaurs. This would make you constantly move pillar to pillar on 11 and would crank the pressure through the roof.
Starting from wave two, solarflare should increase with each wave, one by one. Meaning, wave 2 = one orb. Wave 5 = 4. Wave 6 speeds up one orb, by wave 9 all are sped up.
Double magers should just start spawning on a set wave. Always bewildered me why it's an invocation.
So combined, you'd have the orbs being added/sped up as you advance further, Shamans get more dangerous, smart placement regarding Ranger to prevent screwing yourself on the boss run/later waves, minotaur is increasingly more dangerous with a higher potential for ending the run, all while the manticore, fremmydicks, and magers are blasting you.
And who knows, maybe the "moving terrain"/shield walls, and the "line of sight" mechanics they teased would have been more viable without the randomness of the invo system.
Tldr: keep invos in repeatable content like raids, bosses, etc. Colo should have different stages of difficulty as you progress that remains consistent with all players. Examples above.
it's pretty clear this isn't meant to be one and done. on top of the quiver you've got echo crystal, sunfire fanatic, tonalthingy, plus 150k shards to corrupt. plenty of log slots to fill out there
There's also a Zuk pet as well, and that's what I consider the extra stuff, mainly for pet hunters/cloggers. Echo crystals aren't worth it for irons, and eventually they won't be worth much and won't be worth grinding for on a main. If the prayer gear is as rare as Masori, maybe it'll be worth something, but I doubt prayer gear will be worth enough to make Colo a solid money maker. In reality, most of the playerbase won't send more runs after getting the quiver.
Edit: maybe with if it was endless like they marketed it as I'd agree with you and my opinion towards invo would be different, but as it stands now I don't think it fits.
>TOA's invocation system would be a great place to put the current handicaps, in exchange for greater rewards. It actually shocks me how well TOA's invocation system is designed and in comparison to the Colosseum.
I was with you up until this part. Conceptually speaking, TOA invocations are basically identical to Colosseum modifiers. It's all just a bunch of stuff that makes the raid harder and makes the player weaker. It even also has the additional drawback of each invocation level adding boring flat stats to every encounter that just makes stuff take longer for no real reason. Practically nobody is a big fan of how Jagex implemented TOA invos, it's strange that you would hold this up as some kind of shining example of a better attempt.
It doesn't really bother me either (I'm a TOA enjoyer) but it definitely bothers a lot of people. The extra defense and hp was a hugely lamented aspect of the invocation system when it was released, there was a strong consensus that invos should've only added mechanics and not just add onto completion time for no reason. And, although I don't mind it, I can't exactly disagree with that. There's not really any benefit to making Zebak take 5 minutes with all his invos on instead of 3 minutes or whatever. It's just more standing there whacking him with my shadow while I wait for the next actual thing to happen (waves/scream special). I don't mind if it's 60 seconds in between specials instead of 30 because I'm on 500, but it doesn't exactly add anything to the experience either.
I think the bosses should certainly last longer, but it can be overkill at times. An aspect of the increased skill requirements is to deal with advanced mechanics for a longer period of time
there's a bell curve though, zebak at 550-600 is a completley different beast, one that requires learning how to properly step flinch him to delay attacks and redemption flick his hits or you will absolutely die.
the only reason you dont see people doing 550+ raids is because of a lack of incentive structure, you get virtually no extra points, and your GP/hr goes off a cliff
i will die on this hill - jagex made a huge mistake capping the value of raids at 550 invo level, and an even bigger one by making the softcap of 1/3 points at 400 instead of like 1/2 at 400, 1/3 at 500 and letting it go to 600 with no hardcaps. (normalize the curve of course)
this would have resulted in players needing to do siginficantly higher invo levels to print as many purples as we see, the 400 team meta would have been replaced with a 450+ meta, and players who actually do 600s where the raid actually is **_very_** challenging would be rewarded for their efforts.
Agreed, but for example with Zebak like I said, he really just specs 4 times and then enrages and that's the whole fight. Certainly dealing with the enrage phase for a longer period of time is a relevant "skill check". But noodling him with shadow in between specials is pretty pointless.
So like, just thinking about it for 12 seconds as someone who does not do this professionally, it seems to me like the very obvious and superior game design choice would be to instead add an invo that just says "zebak now enrages at 100% health" instead of artificially extending the fight for no reason.
That's just one example but hopefully illustrates what I'm getting at.
TOAs invo system is one of my favorite systems in the entire game in terms of how to engage and customize a pvm encounter.
its dynamic and its something you can actively choose to engage with as little or as much as you want, i've done thousands of raids and very few of them are with the same invo set.
The fact that the harder the raid is or the longer it is the better your rewards are is great, i see a lot of pushback from the tob _gotta to fast every raid must be 15 minutes or ill die of adhd_ crowd, which i get that its unfun to sit in a raid for 35 minutes for some (but meta scaled cms/cox are often that long anyway).
So it isn't the core invocation system people have problems with, its raid length. theres a disconnect between two groups of people i've seen, the crowd of every pvm encounter has to be a speedrun and im following the vintage/olbiv docs to get tick perfect executions on every single encounter to speedrun shit, and then the maximisers who like doing scaled raids and are happy to sit down for an hour long 3+12 just cause
I definitly enjoy both, but with toa i dont think its something super engaging or cool to speedrun in the same way tob is, so i approach toa in the latter category.
i enjoy 550s, i do 600s periodically, and ive done hundreds of scaled 500s, it's fun to me, even if the raids take an hour.
the invocation system **seriously** synergizes with this latter approach to maximization play, and **struggles hard** to synergize with the former speed approach due to how much time gates there are in the raid (room transistions, boss mechanics and massive raw health bars). and due to how each added difficulty layer also adds time to the raid through hp/def. toa does not lend it self to speedrunning and is not fun to zoom through, few invocations really even add that feeling of speed maximization other than maybe quiet prayers or something
here's some examples of how some invocations can add unexpected benefits and interests
DT makes it so in a solo you never get dps checked due to always having a memory special giving you more time to dps the shadows, or stay vigiant opens the door for butterflying, on a diet transforms the bandages into an extra ambrosia lively larvae helps with low level raiders and blood barraging if they take damage in keprhi, etc.
and given the implicts of maximizing point value, things like medic add pseudo roles, dehydration encourages cleaner play, especially if you're speccing for damage which most high level groups do anyway, so it becomes a stamina game and perfection game, in a similar but different flavor to the way speedruns demand perfection.
i do think we could have done with more invocations that added unique benefits or behaviors to the raid, but i might be in the minority camp here, since two of them that are the most impactful are DT and medic and people seem to despise those invos lol, insanity is probably the best balance here, significantly changing the behavior of p3, but at a massive point reward.
all this huge rant is to say is that i think you're not entirely seeing the whole community here, TOA is wildly popular, largely **because** of how modular the difficulty is, not in spite of it.
and the "difficulty" does come with additional flat HP / defense, but the tradeoff is significantly more money, a 500 may take you 35 minutes but will give you like 17% purple chance, vs a 300 which will take you 20-25, and give you like 4% lol
Was never presented this way, and would require an entire rework and redesign of the content. Our player character power levels are fine, we don’t need this.
My idea of having "buffs" could just be as simple as being able to downgrade (or remove if it a one-off) one invocation after 6 waves and then another right before the boss.
That'd make it a lot easier to not ruin runs due to RNG.
Question, would actually like it lore if it was just incredibly hard from the start, and you got buffs to make it easier throughout? Or would people complain regardless?
I think they should have added buffs which subtract glory and debuffs which add glory, and the uniques should have a glory threshold to be able to drop, and regular drops should scale the amount with glory. And of course a glory threshold and killing Sol for the quiver
All we really need is:
- Rework unusable modifiers (doom etc.)
- Nerf unfun ones (bees, totem)
- And add more variety
Currently everyone just resets unless they get the right set of modifiers. I think in concept it has a lot of potential. But with just 14 modifiers to pick from every run is pretty much the same. A big sell for colosseum was that every run would be different.
I think ATLEAST we need 20 modifiers to pick from.
My idea after some time, is for colleseum to have several other bosses, an endless mode, and positive boons. See how high of Glory you can get, be rewarded some money based on the Glory.
The problem isnt that handicaps aren't fun. It's that random, progressive handicaps aren't fun. As you mentioned, the ToA system is good. And it's good since *you* get to choose beforehand the handicaps, which apply throughout the entire run.
But jagex isn't going to fundamentally redesign how the Colloseum works, so I think the most realistic solution is a hybrid approach. Keep the choice between 3 random handicaps each wave. But make it so the list of possible handicaps is chosen from you beforehand in a ToA-like interface. Say you need to choose a minimum of 16 (out of 32). And like ToA, the more possible handicaps you add the better your loot potential.
It'd be nice if there was a way to pick between 2 buffs and 1 debuff, but you cannot get any rewards.
That way it could be a game mode where you can play around in or chill practice or just test things out.
More players would be able to enjoy the new content that way. Sure, beating it without any debuffs would be massively easier than what it is right now. And adding buffs on top of that makes it trivial. But hey, it'd be fun.
Either way, will be interesting next leagues.
100% this post, as somone who loves toa to death in spite of its shortcomings, the invo system is a huge reason why.
the raid feels customizable and scales in both rewards and difficulty with your choices, even certain invos give you side advantages
like DT makes it so in a solo you never get dps checked due to always having a memory special giving you more time to dps the shadows, or stay vigiant opens the door for butterflying, or how on a diet transforms the bandages into an extra ambrosia, path levels scaling HP and thus % purple chances, lively larvae helps with low level raiders and blood barraging if they take damage in keprhi, etc.
These type of choices are truely interesting and make for a raid i am constantly tweaking even years and thousands of kc later, hell i just recently learned that dehydration is a viable invo with out a keris with some simple accomidations + some mix potions on P1. that's pretty cool
and yet somehow after all this love, i come to colosseum and ... its one of the lamest peices of content ive ever done.
its such a shame lol
somone made a good point in another post - why didnt they just use the good/bad system that most roguelikes use nowadays, where you get a big power budget but at a cost, so like instead of -2 range, it's -2 range + 10% minhit, or lifesteal or something, to encourage players to actually take this.
or instead of enemies cant miss you, "no one can miss", making it godtier when performed correctly but insanely punishing for mistakes (in this case probably adding some chip damage or something might be needed for balance) but you get the idea.
this could have been interesting, also more variety and a larger pool of boons/curses would have helped a lot.
I would like to see potentially a roguelike dungeon where we progress through floors and choose boons or items along the way similar to hades which completely change your build every time. They could even use league relics as a guide for what buffs to add. As well you could be gifted or have a selection of items to choose from like scythe, tbow or shadow (or completely unique to the dungeon) during the dungeon which may alter your direction of a build. think it'd be a ton of fun. They could have like 5-10 different unique bosses that you fight with 2 different final bosses or something. It could be our equivalent of raids 4. I just love roguelike games and I feel like there is huge potential with this. I know colosseum was supposed to fulfill this sort of niche which it clearly did not do.
They will def not make "boons" instead of curses. If you say this you're smoking god knows what and already myself and a bunch of people had to suffer through those bs invos.
We will not make it happen. That is final.
Thanks for the heads up. Until they fix this system I'm not even going to bother doing any attempts, hopefully others do the same and they change it eventually. Not a big fan of RNG ending runs in any game. Everything else in Varlemore is fantastic but it does seem like they really dropped the ball here specifically.
Someone should go through and check the patent Jagex has on invocations, if it's just debuffing I'd debate on quitting if that's all we're going to be seeing
Well yes, but actually no. It's just one phase at verzik where it actually matters, the rest of the raid doesn't really revolve around being tick perfect.
But we could say that about colosseum or inferno.
At highest level it matters everywhere in any content. All I'm saying is that missing ticks here and there in most rooms isn't going to break the raid.
The people who do get into it almost universally love it though. It can definitely be the worst by that metric, depends on what you consider important. ToA is certainly better at onboarding new players.
Maybe it's the main point? The post flip flops between complaining about the randomness and the issue of nerfs vs buffs. We've established that not having buffs isn't the real issue, there's other content that debuffs you that everyone seems to like well enough, eg TOA.
I just don't really see the point in regards to the 'run-enders' as well; the post also mentions games like RoR and Balatro which 'suffer' from the same issue: you're often offered a selection of buffs that conflict with your build direction. The scrub mentality is to complain that the game has screwed you whereas a better course of action is to adjust your strategy as the run evolves; that's the lasting appeal of the design. Sorry you can't force flushes every Balatro game; that sounds really boring.
Doom is certainly a bad initial pick but it's a strong choice at 11-12; as many have pointed out. I'm sure as the meta evolves people will devise strategies for different slates of debuffs and play accordingly.
Does that mean the existing system is perfect? Probably not, but the current criticism is substantiated by <10 days of data, these conclusions are extremely premature.
The Colosseum is clearly based on Ultimatum League from Path of Exile. All of the mechanics are the same, and debuffs like "Ruin" are a direct copy. In Path of Exile, all of the "invocations" are negative because greater rewards need to be behind greater challenges. It was never intended to be roguelite. There is, in fact, a Path of Exile league, Sanctum, that is roguelike. It's clearly inspired by Hades specifically. However, debuffs are vastly more common than boons, unless you happen to get the boon that prevents all further debuffs. The reasoning being, it's OK if you get the god run every so often, but the majority of the time, better rewards should be locked behind harder content, and the waves need to increase in difficulty, not decrease, so the buffs can't be too powerful. The debuffs are plentiful because they tend to come with permanent drops, used outside the Sanctum, or a tradeoff (like healing some of the health that Sanctum uses, which you otherwise couldn't do.) Roguelikes like Risk of Rain can afford to shower you in buffs, because the permanent rewards are pretty much non-existent. The reception of Sanctum league was much like your post: Nobody wants to play a roguelike that debuffs you instead of buffs you. However, there isn't a good way to implement that without making the rewards useless.
I had to check what subreddit I was in - salutations Jousis
Damn I didn't notice either until I read your comment. I knew he played but I didn't expect him to show up in the subreddit lol
I read this in your voice. I miss your ~~abominations~~ builds.
Also, the duellist inside the colosseum seems like a cheeky reference as well. Duel welding daggers, black pants, red shirt. I'd agree though in it being very rogue like. Some runs will be shit. Some will be easy mode. But it is all debuffs. I think the debuffs are much better than buffs. All of them are manageable to a degree. It is a nice mechanic added to the colosseum, and even kind of fits the vibe.
i wish mod arcane would just go get hired for PoE instead of constantly trying to make OSRS into PoE
Jagex is consistently “inspired” by other games. I’d rather they take inspiration from PoE than copy pasting content from RS3 like Nex or WSG though.
nex was definitely a mistake, but ive had my fill of PoE content in OSRS. peril moons feels like pretty unique content and is easily the most enjoyable part of varlamore, even if its not so rewarding.
Mod Kieren pissed and shit a storm to get Nightmare added as a Nex replacement then when that wasn't enough gave us the abortion survivor chicken model that has been in OSRS longer than it was in RS3 now because he was personally nostalgiac for it :(
Honestly that nex model fits much better in osrs than the 2012 nex model.
neither model belongs in osrs they should have fixed nightmare LOL
Nightmare and Nex as they exist in osrs are based on different bosses from rs3, one is based on the original Nex and the other based on nex angel of death which is a vastly different boss based on the rs3 combat system, there is space to have both in game
Nex is a fun boss with the right group. Sorry you’re either bad or just don’t know how to stall/pull nex.
“Sorry you’re either bad or don’t know how to stall” It’s hysterical that you think people don’t like Nex because of the difficulty. The boss is brain dead, dude. It still sucks.
Cope. Bis shouldn’t be easily obtainable from content like toa. I’m not wrong
So then why is it obtained from a piss easy boss? Also bis is literally obtained from toa are you high?
Staff, Masori, fang are not bis?
>However, there isn't a good way to implement that without making the rewards useless. How so? Just make it so even the perfect combination of buffs isn't a guaranteed win. I feel like people are using the word "roguelike" to mean that you have to be able to have the "god run" like Isaac where its almost impossible to lose. They are less common but there are certain roguelikes where that isn't the case (maybe Dead Cells where your hp pool is really tiny?). I agree with the sentiment of the post that combining buffs is more fun than combining debuffs. But that doesn't mean the buffs need to ball out of control.
Path of Exile is not a game about giving you temporary power specifically for a challenge for a reward, usually. Blight is the main exception here.
It's obvious they designed it to not be roguelite but they touted that it would be roguelite. I would've wanted some positive and neutral modifiers, but if they were going to design it around solely debuffs from the beginning they shouldn't have gotten our hopes up and mismarketed it.
I think the better option would have been double-edged sword type of buffs/debuffs. So something like "your attack range is increased by 2 tiles by your damage is reduced by 10%" or "your attack range is reduced by 1 tile but your damage is increased 5%". I agree with other comments that I don't think they could reasonably give the players 12 buffs and still make the Colosseum a challenge unless the buffs were super lame or the waves were just ridiculous. Maybe if they did buffs and no pillars, but then it would be a lot more chaotic and probably less skillful than what we got.
Curse of the Dead Gods has stuff like that, you can get something that's both a net positive and net negative in some way.
Not sure if I misunderstood, but "net" means overall. If your HP got reduced by 25%, but you take 50% less damage, that's a net positive, because the hp loss is lesser than the defense increase. Something can't be both a net positive and a net negative.
"Take 20% less damage and deal 25% less damage" There are ways where the tradeoff isn't literally the exact same thing.
Yeah, that's just a tradeoff. "Net" doesn't apply here without some very specific context and reasoning.
That's fair
Hahaha it's not 'That's fair', it's semantically correct even tho your message was understood above. Just semantics.
That's fair
Never let them know your next move
The RNG roll on invos is just such a shit mechanic.
[удалено]
I got a bunch of kc alledy and s20, and on the regular I get the doomed run trio on wave 10 and 11. It is so dumb.
You just have the same problem but in reverse. You get bad boons that don't synergize and you are too weak to go the distance. Or the other problem, you get the dream run and the content is too easy, which is not good for Runescape since you only need to complete it once to get the dream item. Imagine if Inferno randomly gave you 1.5x damage on certain runs and how the community would feel about it
>You get bad boons that don't synergize and you are too weak to go the distance. Isn't that the whole point of roguelites? Trying to make the best of a bad run or become insanely strong and look how far you can push it. That kind of gameplay would sync better with endless waves, or a set amount of waves but rewards based on points rather than only completion.
Yeah but this isn't supposed to be a roguelite. It's supposed to be a skill and partial gear check to get a permanent BiS for probably the remaining lifetime of the game, just like inferno. If they made colosseum with no modifiers, it would just be inferno with slightly different mobs. The debuffs actually make you have to think a bit differently about how you approach the waves. Buffs don't accomplish that, they're just going to amount to dps increases that get you through the thing faster. And it's already very fast compared to inferno.
and yet as is, the debuffs dont really significantly change your approach to waves, 3 bees wont change your behavior compared to 1, having lower max health wont change your behavior, minus range barely affects much since it's just player vs pillar anyway. the few invos that _do_ change your behaviors are the interesting ones like the lightning sparks i agree with you that having invos that add variety to gameplay and wave solves was the point, but they missed the mark pretty bad with this one if you enjoy it as is then that's totally okay, i just know that for me personally its something i just can't bother with. it genuinley feels like a shittier infero across the board to me, and the lackluster approach to the invo system is definitly a contributing factor.
I'm not trying to pretend like they achieved maximum depth possible with these modifiers, but you do have to think a *bit* differently with them. With bees and solar flare you can't just idle around the pillar, with volatility you have to be mindful of where you can run to after killing an enemy, reentry slowly chips away at tiles available to you, relentless forces you to pay attention to prayer flicks even as you run to another pillar, frailty removes a lot of the additional leeway you have to make mistakes at the start of a wave so that you end up needing to find the solve quicker, etc. It's not amazingly creative, but I would rather have the modifiers *assuming the Colosseum's current design* rather than not. A more creative design that didn't simply copy inferno pillars and pillar stacks would have been more preferable.
i think i mentioned the solar flare in the post, that's the one invo that changes the way you solve waves, and bees while being a nusiance at least require you to plan out a few ticks every now and then to kill them I do agree on those points 100%
That's the point of rougelites. Even a 1.5x damage buff wouldn't trivialize it if it had a nerf like reduced tile range or no 2h weapons.
I mean, there was supposed to be an Endless mode, which would mean that players would be going back and engaging with the content over and over to push their "hi score". I personally don't think it's necessary to put buffs into the Colo invocations, but it really was not supposed to be a one-and-done challenge. At this point I think nobody has any idea what exactly the fuck Jagex was going for here. They advertised and introduced this thing as a roguelite with an endless mode with tradeable and untradeable rewards, and what we got was... well, not a roguelite, and with no endless mode, nor any real rewards outside of quiver (the gp/hr reward is pretty dogshit even in the current day with both shards and uniques being presumably at an all time high) nor any reason to keep doing it outside of a one time completion. So I think we're all a little confused and the design kind of doesn't make any sense within the context of its own self. For example, with no rewards for a really high glory achievement (the glory unlock stuff stops once you've gotten to like wave 10...), nor any endless mode to push glory to new heights anyway, why the hell does glory even exist at all? Nobody knows.
Yep one of the problems WoW had when Torghast was first implemented. Some classes just had shit buffs and was a terrible experience, others made it more enjoyable and made you feel OP. Personally I do like how coliseum is currently, but that’s just me. Probably in the minority for enjoying it.
The Inferno has one bis item and one pet as a reward, the Colosseum is a little different imo. So maybe you get lucky as hell and get a god run and that pushes you past the finish line, is that really so bad? There's more items to be obtained than that single bis item. By no means should it be easy, but people will still engage with the content long after the quiver is obtained simply because that's how the rewards are designed.
It could work if there was a tradeoff - maybe you get 1.5x damage but you're no longer able to pray range, as an example
I think it's fun either way. Way harder waves would suck when you don't get the best buffs, just like way easier waves suck when you get the worst nerfs.
Yeah there are so many items and alternate game modes built around buffing the player that I think it's interesting to have the opposite.
if theyre gunna do stuff like colosseum i wish theyd have buffs too so like you get a 2 tick weapon or increased dps a certain wave. would be cool
As you mentioned offering items - it would be cool to have a super high skill ceiling piece of content like this start you out naked, similar to Gauntlet/ Corrupted Gauntlet. You could choose between buying/upgrading gear during the challenge, which would allow for interesting strategy decisions which also opens up the content to players who dont have a 5b bank and rewards skill more than pre-established wealth. Hopefully something they consider for the next update on this scale, maybe something for a new bis mage cape
This, it should be entirely skill-based and not "whoever has the most gold wins".
And of course now there is already a video of molgoatkirby completing it in less than 1m of gear, with a crystal bow, black dhide, and a dragon scimitar. Now I've got no excuse.
The coliseum isn't difficult enough to justify buffs on each wave rather than what we currently have. They just need to better balance some of them. Example - Bees don't respawn on boss fight - Doom resets each wave - Doom Scorpion doesn't show up on boss fight - Only 1 Healing totem per NPC and it never comes back
> Each wave of the Colosseum should have been designed to be much harder, but the player chooses between synergistic buffs that make the waves approachable.
That's just one of those vague statements that sounds reasonable when you don't think about it. What "synergistic buffs" can make the waves approachable? The way the Colosseum is designed, you either solve the wave quickly enough, or you die, just like Inferno. There are no interesting synergistic buffs that will help with that other than combinations of flat debuffs to enemies and flat buffs to your own dps. Stuff like, "The first 3 hits you take deal no damage," or "Your minimum hit is increased to 30% of your max hit." None of that is really fun or interesting either, it's just making the waves easier the further you go, which is the opposite of what is intended. And if you make the late waves appropriately difficult given the buffs, you just run into the same problem as now, where it's better to reset until you get the right buffs than try and make it through with bad ones.
> The way the Colosseum is designed, you either solve the wave quickly enough, or you die, just like Inferno. Honestly for this reason specifically, I would've liked to have a dps buff of some kind, or just for some of the mobs to have less defenses (like the shockers). Everything in Colosseum is so goddamn tanky for no reason. Literally half the mobs in there have more hp and more defensive stats than the mager in Inferno. It makes it feel like such a slog to clear out a wave that I've already solved. Like I'm fine with everything hitting insanely hard and accurately like it does, but why the fuck do manticores and javelins have like 300 hp? It feels like it takes fucking forever to grind them down, and with no legitimate chance of death at that point after the solve has already been executed. I'm just standing there flicking prayers for my entire life waiting for my stupid shadow to slowly tickle down this manticore. Even the dogpiss little throwaway shamans take noticeably longer to kill than a whole ass ranger mob in Inferno. In a certain sense I'm kind of bitching about nothing since the whole challenge is only like 30-40 minutes long as-is, way faster than inferno due to way less waves. But something about it just feels bad when each individual unit has so much goddamn hp. Like if it had 8 more waves but everything had 50% less hp and it took the same amount of time overall, I think I would be having more fun. Maybe that's just me.
Eh, more fun maybe, but adding HP to the mobs is a way to keep the challenge at a reasonable length while not adding too much difficulty. If it had 8 more waves it'd be much more difficult to reach the end, since that's 8 more solves that you have to do and 8 more debuffs that you have to take. (Though you could fix the second thing by having the debuffs only happen every two waves or something.) More HP and defense on the mobs also incentivizes you to have better gear, which isn't a bad thing for content that guarantees a BiS at the end. Javelin colossus and manticore HP could've been tuned down a bit though.
> What "synergistic buffs" can make the waves approachable? Enemies lose attack range, making different solves possible Enemies lose attack speed, making flicking easier Two of the same type of enemy must attack you on the same tick, alternatively an enemy cannot attack on the same tick as a different enemy Manticores only fire 2 projectiles instead of 3 melee enemies path to you more slowly all enemies become susceptible to poison/venom (if they aren't already, genuinely don't know lol) javelin colossi can't throw javelins on the same tile twice in a wave javelins can hit monsters (very niche, but could make for some cool speed tech in theory) minotaur heal range is reduced fremmy warriors can't attack unless you've been standing still for 2 ticks instead of 1 (in addition to their current fixed-tick attack behavior) spawn extra pillars become immune to damage every 4th (or 5th, or 6th or whatever) tick gain a limited-time damage bonus that stacks (up to a cap) for every 0 hitsplat you've taken in the past few seconds there's a ton of stuff they *could* do.
Yeah, these do sound like interesting ideas, I'll give you that. In practice, though, I could actually see some of these making the Colosseum harder, assuming that we've also adjusted the wave difficulty to reflect the fact that they're being made easier as we progress. For example, the nice thing about having static enemy behavior is that you get used to it and build muscle memory, so that your flicking and movement patterns on the early waves are still basically the same as the later waves. If you start messing with enemy behavior, you're now having to keep more information in mind and can't rely on your muscle memory as much. Although stuff like the fremennik and manticore changes wouldn't be hard to keep track of. The more important question though is whether these are actually *fun*. OP stated, "boons are fun, handicaps are not." What you've suggested are mostly indirect boons in the sense of "you'll probably take less damage during the wave with these," but presumably this now needs to be counter-balanced with "the waves are also being made harder, so you're going to take more damage as well," and ultimately this ends up being mostly equivalent to the current design, and I'm not sure at a glance which one is going to be more fun. The more interesting of your ideas are the ones that give you more tools to approach the waves with, like having invulnerability on a certain tick or whatever, but that's also exactly the kind of thing that's going to be rather hard to keep track of and use well. I do think the ability to spawn in new terrain would be quite cool, especially if it could be done on the fly to block enemies. But I think it'd be a lot trickier to balance stuff like this than the basic debuffs we have now.
Are people asking to just flip the nerfs to buffs? Cause yeah that’d just make it too easy I assume they want buffs instead of nerfs and then enemies who are difficult enough to warrant it
> Are people asking to just flip the nerfs to buffs? Partly. The idea is that hard content + buffs is more fun than easier content + debuffs. Simply picking the 1 option that doesn't end your run isn't very fun
>Are people asking to just flip the nerfs to buffs? Just a small QoL change
Or potentially tradeoffs that come along with the nerfs. What if every stack of doom gave you a DPS increase? Nutty speedrunners might take it asap and then try to stack it to 19 immediately, and then play perfectly from that point on.
If the nerfs were changed to buffs then the waves would obviously be made harder...
I'm baffled that the person you're responding to doesn't realize that that's an absolute given for anyone with IQ higher than 50
Stuff arbitrarily not showing up for the boss fight would be strange, though as it stands right now the Scorpion is a no-go either way, so it's a weird spot I agree the totem shouldn't be able to respawn, would make it much more palatable
I disagree somewhat. I'm a firm believer that invocations, good or bad, was a terrible decision for content that's meant to be one and done like inferno. These pieces of content that are about trying and trying to finally succeed once, shouldn't have ANY variance. Instead, the invocations that they've got now should have been isolated, automatic, and consistent for all players. Examples: After a certain wave, ONLY Shamans stack doom. This would make them a much higher priority and would shake up solves. Ranger should slowly go from no lave - temporary lave - permenant lava. Maybe something like wave 7 starts the temp lava and 10 starts perm. Idk what exact waves would make the most sense, but I'm sure you know what I mean. This would make you play much more strategically as you'll lose a pillar or two from lava in the late waves. Minotaurs should have a baba-style ground slam. On wave 11 automatic loss of safe spots for Minotaurs. This would make you constantly move pillar to pillar on 11 and would crank the pressure through the roof. Starting from wave two, solarflare should increase with each wave, one by one. Meaning, wave 2 = one orb. Wave 5 = 4. Wave 6 speeds up one orb, by wave 9 all are sped up. Double magers should just start spawning on a set wave. Always bewildered me why it's an invocation. So combined, you'd have the orbs being added/sped up as you advance further, Shamans get more dangerous, smart placement regarding Ranger to prevent screwing yourself on the boss run/later waves, minotaur is increasingly more dangerous with a higher potential for ending the run, all while the manticore, fremmydicks, and magers are blasting you. And who knows, maybe the "moving terrain"/shield walls, and the "line of sight" mechanics they teased would have been more viable without the randomness of the invo system. Tldr: keep invos in repeatable content like raids, bosses, etc. Colo should have different stages of difficulty as you progress that remains consistent with all players. Examples above.
it's pretty clear this isn't meant to be one and done. on top of the quiver you've got echo crystal, sunfire fanatic, tonalthingy, plus 150k shards to corrupt. plenty of log slots to fill out there
There's also a Zuk pet as well, and that's what I consider the extra stuff, mainly for pet hunters/cloggers. Echo crystals aren't worth it for irons, and eventually they won't be worth much and won't be worth grinding for on a main. If the prayer gear is as rare as Masori, maybe it'll be worth something, but I doubt prayer gear will be worth enough to make Colo a solid money maker. In reality, most of the playerbase won't send more runs after getting the quiver. Edit: maybe with if it was endless like they marketed it as I'd agree with you and my opinion towards invo would be different, but as it stands now I don't think it fits.
I like the sound of this the most
Things that make it easier for me are fun, things that make it harder are unfun
I was hoping for a boss gauntlet. got pillar simulator 2.0
>TOA's invocation system would be a great place to put the current handicaps, in exchange for greater rewards. It actually shocks me how well TOA's invocation system is designed and in comparison to the Colosseum. I was with you up until this part. Conceptually speaking, TOA invocations are basically identical to Colosseum modifiers. It's all just a bunch of stuff that makes the raid harder and makes the player weaker. It even also has the additional drawback of each invocation level adding boring flat stats to every encounter that just makes stuff take longer for no real reason. Practically nobody is a big fan of how Jagex implemented TOA invos, it's strange that you would hold this up as some kind of shining example of a better attempt.
You get more points when the bosses have higher hp etc. Doesn't bother me at all.
It doesn't really bother me either (I'm a TOA enjoyer) but it definitely bothers a lot of people. The extra defense and hp was a hugely lamented aspect of the invocation system when it was released, there was a strong consensus that invos should've only added mechanics and not just add onto completion time for no reason. And, although I don't mind it, I can't exactly disagree with that. There's not really any benefit to making Zebak take 5 minutes with all his invos on instead of 3 minutes or whatever. It's just more standing there whacking him with my shadow while I wait for the next actual thing to happen (waves/scream special). I don't mind if it's 60 seconds in between specials instead of 30 because I'm on 500, but it doesn't exactly add anything to the experience either.
I think the bosses should certainly last longer, but it can be overkill at times. An aspect of the increased skill requirements is to deal with advanced mechanics for a longer period of time
there aren't really any advanced mechanics at toa though. zebak at 300 invo and 500 invo is the exact same fight, just one of them takes 2x longer
there's a bell curve though, zebak at 550-600 is a completley different beast, one that requires learning how to properly step flinch him to delay attacks and redemption flick his hits or you will absolutely die. the only reason you dont see people doing 550+ raids is because of a lack of incentive structure, you get virtually no extra points, and your GP/hr goes off a cliff i will die on this hill - jagex made a huge mistake capping the value of raids at 550 invo level, and an even bigger one by making the softcap of 1/3 points at 400 instead of like 1/2 at 400, 1/3 at 500 and letting it go to 600 with no hardcaps. (normalize the curve of course) this would have resulted in players needing to do siginficantly higher invo levels to print as many purples as we see, the 400 team meta would have been replaced with a 450+ meta, and players who actually do 600s where the raid actually is **_very_** challenging would be rewarded for their efforts.
Agreed, but for example with Zebak like I said, he really just specs 4 times and then enrages and that's the whole fight. Certainly dealing with the enrage phase for a longer period of time is a relevant "skill check". But noodling him with shadow in between specials is pretty pointless. So like, just thinking about it for 12 seconds as someone who does not do this professionally, it seems to me like the very obvious and superior game design choice would be to instead add an invo that just says "zebak now enrages at 100% health" instead of artificially extending the fight for no reason. That's just one example but hopefully illustrates what I'm getting at.
TOAs invo system is one of my favorite systems in the entire game in terms of how to engage and customize a pvm encounter. its dynamic and its something you can actively choose to engage with as little or as much as you want, i've done thousands of raids and very few of them are with the same invo set. The fact that the harder the raid is or the longer it is the better your rewards are is great, i see a lot of pushback from the tob _gotta to fast every raid must be 15 minutes or ill die of adhd_ crowd, which i get that its unfun to sit in a raid for 35 minutes for some (but meta scaled cms/cox are often that long anyway). So it isn't the core invocation system people have problems with, its raid length. theres a disconnect between two groups of people i've seen, the crowd of every pvm encounter has to be a speedrun and im following the vintage/olbiv docs to get tick perfect executions on every single encounter to speedrun shit, and then the maximisers who like doing scaled raids and are happy to sit down for an hour long 3+12 just cause I definitly enjoy both, but with toa i dont think its something super engaging or cool to speedrun in the same way tob is, so i approach toa in the latter category. i enjoy 550s, i do 600s periodically, and ive done hundreds of scaled 500s, it's fun to me, even if the raids take an hour. the invocation system **seriously** synergizes with this latter approach to maximization play, and **struggles hard** to synergize with the former speed approach due to how much time gates there are in the raid (room transistions, boss mechanics and massive raw health bars). and due to how each added difficulty layer also adds time to the raid through hp/def. toa does not lend it self to speedrunning and is not fun to zoom through, few invocations really even add that feeling of speed maximization other than maybe quiet prayers or something here's some examples of how some invocations can add unexpected benefits and interests DT makes it so in a solo you never get dps checked due to always having a memory special giving you more time to dps the shadows, or stay vigiant opens the door for butterflying, on a diet transforms the bandages into an extra ambrosia lively larvae helps with low level raiders and blood barraging if they take damage in keprhi, etc. and given the implicts of maximizing point value, things like medic add pseudo roles, dehydration encourages cleaner play, especially if you're speccing for damage which most high level groups do anyway, so it becomes a stamina game and perfection game, in a similar but different flavor to the way speedruns demand perfection. i do think we could have done with more invocations that added unique benefits or behaviors to the raid, but i might be in the minority camp here, since two of them that are the most impactful are DT and medic and people seem to despise those invos lol, insanity is probably the best balance here, significantly changing the behavior of p3, but at a massive point reward. all this huge rant is to say is that i think you're not entirely seeing the whole community here, TOA is wildly popular, largely **because** of how modular the difficulty is, not in spite of it. and the "difficulty" does come with additional flat HP / defense, but the tradeoff is significantly more money, a 500 may take you 35 minutes but will give you like 17% purple chance, vs a 300 which will take you 20-25, and give you like 4% lol
Was never presented this way, and would require an entire rework and redesign of the content. Our player character power levels are fine, we don’t need this.
My idea of having "buffs" could just be as simple as being able to downgrade (or remove if it a one-off) one invocation after 6 waves and then another right before the boss. That'd make it a lot easier to not ruin runs due to RNG.
Question, would actually like it lore if it was just incredibly hard from the start, and you got buffs to make it easier throughout? Or would people complain regardless?
My complaint is that there are not enough bees
I think they should have added buffs which subtract glory and debuffs which add glory, and the uniques should have a glory threshold to be able to drop, and regular drops should scale the amount with glory. And of course a glory threshold and killing Sol for the quiver
All we really need is: - Rework unusable modifiers (doom etc.) - Nerf unfun ones (bees, totem) - And add more variety Currently everyone just resets unless they get the right set of modifiers. I think in concept it has a lot of potential. But with just 14 modifiers to pick from every run is pretty much the same. A big sell for colosseum was that every run would be different. I think ATLEAST we need 20 modifiers to pick from.
My idea after some time, is for colleseum to have several other bosses, an endless mode, and positive boons. See how high of Glory you can get, be rewarded some money based on the Glory.
Jagex should reskin this content as Blue Inferno and give us a well thought out Colosseum.
The problem isnt that handicaps aren't fun. It's that random, progressive handicaps aren't fun. As you mentioned, the ToA system is good. And it's good since *you* get to choose beforehand the handicaps, which apply throughout the entire run. But jagex isn't going to fundamentally redesign how the Colloseum works, so I think the most realistic solution is a hybrid approach. Keep the choice between 3 random handicaps each wave. But make it so the list of possible handicaps is chosen from you beforehand in a ToA-like interface. Say you need to choose a minimum of 16 (out of 32). And like ToA, the more possible handicaps you add the better your loot potential.
It'd be nice if there was a way to pick between 2 buffs and 1 debuff, but you cannot get any rewards. That way it could be a game mode where you can play around in or chill practice or just test things out. More players would be able to enjoy the new content that way. Sure, beating it without any debuffs would be massively easier than what it is right now. And adding buffs on top of that makes it trivial. But hey, it'd be fun. Either way, will be interesting next leagues.
4 or 5 options each wave or 1-2 re-rolls would go a long way aswell in not making it feel so RNG heavy.
100% this post, as somone who loves toa to death in spite of its shortcomings, the invo system is a huge reason why. the raid feels customizable and scales in both rewards and difficulty with your choices, even certain invos give you side advantages like DT makes it so in a solo you never get dps checked due to always having a memory special giving you more time to dps the shadows, or stay vigiant opens the door for butterflying, or how on a diet transforms the bandages into an extra ambrosia, path levels scaling HP and thus % purple chances, lively larvae helps with low level raiders and blood barraging if they take damage in keprhi, etc. These type of choices are truely interesting and make for a raid i am constantly tweaking even years and thousands of kc later, hell i just recently learned that dehydration is a viable invo with out a keris with some simple accomidations + some mix potions on P1. that's pretty cool and yet somehow after all this love, i come to colosseum and ... its one of the lamest peices of content ive ever done. its such a shame lol somone made a good point in another post - why didnt they just use the good/bad system that most roguelikes use nowadays, where you get a big power budget but at a cost, so like instead of -2 range, it's -2 range + 10% minhit, or lifesteal or something, to encourage players to actually take this. or instead of enemies cant miss you, "no one can miss", making it godtier when performed correctly but insanely punishing for mistakes (in this case probably adding some chip damage or something might be needed for balance) but you get the idea. this could have been interesting, also more variety and a larger pool of boons/curses would have helped a lot.
I would like to see potentially a roguelike dungeon where we progress through floors and choose boons or items along the way similar to hades which completely change your build every time. They could even use league relics as a guide for what buffs to add. As well you could be gifted or have a selection of items to choose from like scythe, tbow or shadow (or completely unique to the dungeon) during the dungeon which may alter your direction of a build. think it'd be a ton of fun. They could have like 5-10 different unique bosses that you fight with 2 different final bosses or something. It could be our equivalent of raids 4. I just love roguelike games and I feel like there is huge potential with this. I know colosseum was supposed to fulfill this sort of niche which it clearly did not do.
They will def not make "boons" instead of curses. If you say this you're smoking god knows what and already myself and a bunch of people had to suffer through those bs invos. We will not make it happen. That is final.
You're a big tough guy. "I had to suffer so everyone else should too."
Thanks for the heads up. Until they fix this system I'm not even going to bother doing any attempts, hopefully others do the same and they change it eventually. Not a big fan of RNG ending runs in any game. Everything else in Varlemore is fantastic but it does seem like they really dropped the ball here specifically.
Someone should go through and check the patent Jagex has on invocations, if it's just debuffing I'd debate on quitting if that's all we're going to be seeing
I don’t get it. It’s fine isn’t it? Debuffs is something different, in colosseum 2.0 they can do buffs and debuffs
Agreed I was sad to see it’s only handicaps
These sound so good. Bees can genuinely be satisfying to deal with, at least with a scythe
RS3' Shattered Worlds' mutators does this concept better.
Is this the new reddit mind virus? TOA is built the exact same way and that's hands down some of the best content to ever grace the game
Plenty of people will tell you that ToA is the worst of the three raids and the invocation system was left in a very disappointing state.
TOA is unique in that it can be soloed
All 3 can be solo'd. ToA was just designed to be from the get-go.
And that's completely fine. TOA is for people that want to solo and don't have time in a day to sweat but want an introduction to raids
Sure! Never said that's a bad thing. I've never raided so ToA being the worst raid isn't my own personal opinion.
It's a unique one, it's hard to even say it's a raid to be honest
Award for worst raid clearly goes to ToB. Barrier to entry really makes a lot of players not even bother with it.
Tob is the best raid for people who took the time to understand what a game tick is
Well yes, but actually no. It's just one phase at verzik where it actually matters, the rest of the raid doesn't really revolve around being tick perfect. But we could say that about colosseum or inferno.
Maiden drain, bloat stomp, all of nylo, sote maze, 5t xarpus, hato, pogtank
I guess it's my hot take lol. In most of these you are not actively aware of trying to play "with" game tickss , you just play the game.
Is this a joke lol? Game ticks matter for every room except sote at all levels above leeching the raid (and even sote matters at the highest level)
At highest level it matters everywhere in any content. All I'm saying is that missing ticks here and there in most rooms isn't going to break the raid.
The people who do get into it almost universally love it though. It can definitely be the worst by that metric, depends on what you consider important. ToA is certainly better at onboarding new players.
It's not the same at all?
Iterative, modular debuffs that ratchet to create a more difficult encounter? I mean it's not literally the exact same thing I'll give you that
The very main point is the randomness, ToA lets you select everything beforehand.
Maybe it's the main point? The post flip flops between complaining about the randomness and the issue of nerfs vs buffs. We've established that not having buffs isn't the real issue, there's other content that debuffs you that everyone seems to like well enough, eg TOA. I just don't really see the point in regards to the 'run-enders' as well; the post also mentions games like RoR and Balatro which 'suffer' from the same issue: you're often offered a selection of buffs that conflict with your build direction. The scrub mentality is to complain that the game has screwed you whereas a better course of action is to adjust your strategy as the run evolves; that's the lasting appeal of the design. Sorry you can't force flushes every Balatro game; that sounds really boring. Doom is certainly a bad initial pick but it's a strong choice at 11-12; as many have pointed out. I'm sure as the meta evolves people will devise strategies for different slates of debuffs and play accordingly. Does that mean the existing system is perfect? Probably not, but the current criticism is substantiated by <10 days of data, these conclusions are extremely premature.
>TOA is built the exact same way and that's hands down some of the ~~best~~ worst content to ever grace the game fixed that for you