Horntail’s Left Head Attack: A Necessary Change for Bishop Survival

It's the posturing of some people with the ever so tiring narrative that older players are gatekeeping change due to their toxic elitism that is a disservice to this community. There isn't some elitist group who thinks new players need to suffer. We all want this community to grow, but handholding is not the answer.

IMO the only good thing that came out of this thread so far is Nightz's point, and there seems to be a mutual agreement that an actual perfect frame death is stupid, and a mechanic to help counter that is probably the best solution.

This thread is a direct result of this problem... Instead of adapting to what's already available and proven to work, we're seeing the future of bishop players asking for changes instead of learning how to play their class to its abilities.

I'm guessing you'd be surprised if I said I agree with you on this, but I do want to point out that your assumption of my line of thinking exemplifies the very same aforementioned toxicity of players like you who seem to have some weird obsession against this bogeyman elitist group.

 

Wait but nobody is saying you need to be Trlnltyy. We are saying you need to start from left side if you dont have hp, is that some incredible skill to develop?
I'm done with this thread XDXD

 

No it doesnt surprise me because you mentioned it on a different thread. But that's how you came off on this thread and I was only highlighting that. Maybe try not being toxic to new players and belittle them if you actually believe that?

And if you think I'm bogeyman'ing elitist group, then you're wrong because I think you're the only problematic toxic elitist in the thread. In fact, you're the only person that's been called out by multiple people on this thread.

Edit: it's funny because you were always complaining about new players posting threads about how events were too hard and not accessible to most players, and saying they "only want freebies" but in the end in all the cases from when I started playing again in 2022 the events were eventually made more accessible because staff realized it was too difficult. But yet you keep complaining about how new players are always in the wrong, never realizing you were always the one in the wrong in the past.

 

oh yah i agree, bishops die and I bring them to content again. But that's not what I meant. What I mean is content is EXPECTED to clear, and for that, bishops are EXPECTED to survive. So yah, its fine bishop unexpectedly dies every now and then, but they are still expected to survive. (and yes I agree in HT many things suggested in this thread can be done to mitigate the problem)

 

I firmly believe that any Bishop actually willing to learn and improve can achieve a 95%+ survival rate on HP Challenges provided their host and fellow runners are also competent. Exceptional Bishops can likely achieve a 98%+ survival rate on HP Challenges.

 

yah 100% true and i agree. I think we're just discussing if its like too high a bar for a mushroom game? *shrugs*

 

I personally don't feel strongly about it either way. As I mentioned previously, I wouldn't mind if more HP was added to the Challenges for mages, and I think actual "perfect frame" scenarios shouldn't really exist.

I'm more concerned about the mindset of some players lobbying for such changes. Asking for changes because you believe some players cannot meet the minimum skill threshold to play the class and want to be more inclusive is totally fine. Asking for changes because you refuse to adapt and learn and think literally nothing can be done is pretty whack.

 

Clearly you have some pre-existing issue with me, which is fair, and I acknowledge that I carry myself fairly bluntly on forums to a fault. My intention is not elitism but a sharing of perspective apart from the typical riff raff because I think it's important to vocalize counterpoints when forums often provide a platform for the loud majority. Most people who know me in game or on Discord know me differently, so I guess I should work on my forum persona more, but it's hard to find a balance between shitposts and insightfulness.

If you found my comments on TMA to be elitist, I want to clarify that I don't see 1600 TMA as a strict requirement but as an indicator of the player. It's a stretch goal really only reserved for serious bishop or mage mains (and maybe some petri sellers and grrk), and it's one I regard highly because it's seemingly more and more rare these days.

RE: Event thread, I think players asking for changes only a day after content release is pretty hilarious, but at the end of it all, I agreed with staff changes to make things more inclusive (also, where DKT feedback thread?). I don't want people to feel left out, but some never give themselves the chance to learn and play the content.

In that same vein, I hope the current and future generation of bishop players can give themselves the chance to learn and play the content - whether by relying more on the existing knowledge and information of older players or by creating their own path in-game - and not by lobbying on forums. We should be eager to learn and discover the game in its current form, not mold it into one that meets our everchanging demands.

 

all very fair points. I do admit i should also work on being less sassy and more polite.

I did not think your own personal requirement to have a "pro" bishop on your HT run as elitist per say (because trying to be elite and being elitist are two separate things), but posting it in a thread where people are trying to discuss surviving HT was the elitist part. It was like telling poor people "I only hire people with 10+ years of experience." Like, sure, you're free to hire whatever kind of people you want, but is there really a reason to rub that in to others trying to just survive? I hope this wasn't too unfair of a comparison.

I agree it's the most infuriating when people complain without taking any criticism, or when they ignore all advice they get.

Do you think making HT easy invalidates all the effort previous bishops have done to survive HT/make guides/find various strategies? Let's say, for example, if they made dispel come with iframe, would that make HT too easy for bishops?

 

Honestly, that was my fault for not being thorough with my explanation. It was a response to Sweatz's post above that got me thinking - if you could pick two characteristics from this list for your bishop to have, which would you pick?

1. Good mechanics/understanding of the fight
2. 1600 TMA (vs 1300 TMA)
3. 10k HP (vs 5k hp)

I'd pick the first two 10/10 times because HP is only really a pot luxury, and dying is something that can usually be played around.

I don't think it's about the invalidation of past efforts at all, but it robs the possibility of a shared/common experience of past, present, and future players if the game is constantly being changed to cater to a certain playstyle. If there is no risk of death in HT from dispel, the excitement of skillfully timing your rebuff is lost, and dispel gets watered down as a rebuffing mechanic. Personally, I think it'd be more interesting if there were a skill-based counter to dispel, kind of like a parry or shield that protects you from losing your buffs, but some players don't seem receptive to any type of skill-based counters, paying attention, or finding best practices. With fewer and fewer risks involved, you only push forward the overall homogenization of the Horntail experience which IMO sounds really stale.

The challenge system is pretty exciting because it allows new players to experience how the game was played back in the 2019-2020 era where even meta HP washing standards were vastly different. We died a lot, learned a lot, and grew from those past mistakes, and we made a lot of fun memories doing so. I hope new players can go through that same experience, too -- or at least have the opportunity to if they choose it.

 

mmhmm I see.

I feel like your argument about past experiences and joy/sadness you experienced with bishop is very similar to nostalgia argument maybe? I feel like its important to balance "nostalgia" and making the game better.

However, I don't think its good to use nostalgia/shared experience to stop any change to the game, after all ML has made many changes despite nostalgia. (I agree in that I don't think the answer is just bumping mage HP challenge though, but for different reasons than just "shared experiences")

Also, can you truly have "shared experience" when the game has changed so much, and the playerbase/meta/hp/optimization has changed so much? Back then, hyper washed bishop and starting RH was just a theory. Now it's the norm. Can we really just tell these players "I had fun, so you should have fun too? Can we really just say "stop comparing yourself to optimized runs" when we in the past we only had theories to compare ourselves to? (I agree OP is being soooo stubborn about RH/LH though ugh)

Also I think its a bit unfair to cry over "homogenization" of HT experience when you yourself only seek optimized runs with 1600TMA bishop? Depending on the solution, that "homogenization" might not even happen; IN FACT, bishop's safety might allow for more diverse strategy of attackers optimizing DPM over bishop's safety. Also, for low hp bishop, if they are forced to always start left head, etc, isnt that homogenization in their world as well?

 

I don't think it's necessarily based on nostalgia. I believe the server can be made better without trying to iron out every single crease or fold along the way. The risk of dying is an inherent part of the game, and we've already agreed that perfect frame situations are not something we want to keep, but the work around you proposed has the unintended consequence of making irrelevant all of the work arounds that have already been figured out. To use the event as an example, it's like getting rid of some of the community-discovered skips in the original implementation of the DKT JQ and replacing it with only one neutered path forward. Sure, the new format is more inclusive and might be easier, but it kind of sucks that instead of giving new players the chance to choose, they are now only given the easier path.

And yes, I do believe the community can continue to have shared experiences so long as the players choose to interact with each other. This requires there to be opportunities for veteran players and newcomers to mingle which has gotten progressively difficult. Discussion spaces like this on the forum or on Discord are probably the most common areas for sharing experiences, but lately things have gotten quite annoying or tiresome with the constant brigading, and I've noticed forum participation from veteran players has gotten pretty dead as a result. That being said, I noticed several 'new' players growing into leadership roles in their respective communities over the past year and I'm excited to see where things go. IMO, the biggest differences of quality in players that I've noticed are those who aren't afraid to seek out answers by either experimenting themselves or asking questions -- a stark contrast when compared to those who choose to remain heavily opinionated and stubborn on their own.

As for HT, you'd be surprised. At least in my experience, the state of HT is always changing even though I run with mostly the same people because HT is considered social exp content now. People are on their 4th or 5th set ups, so while the strategies might already be 'solved', the runs are rarely ever the same. Like blen mentioned, we don't expect perfection from everyone, but we do expect you to try and contribute to the best of your abilities. And even then, we manage to discover a new type of scuff each week anyways.

That said, I actually disagree with the left side first strategy for an experienced player. If you've already proven to me you are reliable, I wouldn't mind if you took more calculated risks. If you mess up and die, so be it as long as you're capable of learning from it. Skilled bishop players are doing that currently with Auf, and within the small circles of Auf runners, I've only seen respect for those players trying their best to represent their class, even with the scuffs that may come along the way.

A 12-man HT is different, though. If both bishops are inexperienced and underwashed, I'd consider it the host's responsibility to strategize and lead the best path forward.

 

Gurk , master scuff discoverer

Once more for the people in the back

 

I agree the proposed hp challenge solution is not good, i think most of us agree on that already. However it's interesting that you bring up DKT JQ because the staff got rid of a similar skip in CWKPQ, which is nearly 100% identical situation. I wonder if staff would have fixed DKT JQ skip if it were a permanent feature?

We were using the term "shared experience" to say current player base experiencing the same problems/work arounds as we did in the past. "sharing experience" is another thing altogether; of course we can still TALK to people and share experience, but that's vicarious and not relevant to whether "shared experience" is important enough for us to not make any changes.

But in either case of "sharing" or "shared" experiences, it CANNOT be an end-all-be-all argument against making changes. (yet again i will emphasize i dont agree with hp challenge solution)

I have no idea what you mean by "brigading" o.o I'm sorry if that happened to you--do you mean for example a lot of ppl came to your guild or whatever and made a mess of things??

There are stubborn players and experimental players in ANY generations of players that joined ML; perhaps you are biased because you were new player back then vs now? I dont think OP's behavior represents the new player base, especially when new playerbase is much larger than number of 1600TMA bishops. I know you carefully worded it to not generalize it, but the placement of that notion right next to talking about new players suggests otherwise, since its not directly relevant to discussion about HT.

If you think your current state of HT with same squad and hyper optimization is "varied" what makes you think making bishop safer will make HT experience any stale? seems to me you're giving credit to only your side of argument and assuming the worst of the other situation.

If the same set of hyper optimized runners can have "varied" experience, then so can any other HT group, whether or not bishop is safer or not. In fact, your bishop's TMA/HP/expertise has the same effect as making bishops safe, so by definition HT --after bishop has somehow been made safe-- can only be as varied, or even more varied, than your own runs.

So by that logic, if you feel like your own HT experience is varied enough, then so is HT runs with safer bishops, or you are holding unfair double standards. I'm sorry if im scrutinizing your words too much.

I don't think anyone here is saying experienced players should start left side, it was only a recommendation for bishops that die in HT. Yes I'm very familiar with Auf runs and mages there have my respect as well

I think we agree in that we dont' want every "crease ironed out" but my suggestion was that DP should come with iframe, and are you saying that will make "irrelevant all of the work arounds that have already been figured out"? But didnt you say:

And would giving iframe to DP even "invalidate" past efforts to begin with? If you agree perfect frame DP death shouldn't exist, then what are your ideas? Given that attackers have the time allotted by iframe to repot on a pot fail or whatever, shouldnt bishops have the same grace period? (and before you bring up DR, mages have to react to those too, and DR isnt nearly as common as DP)

 

A lot of this thread is making me feel real glad that I'm on GMS now and not this server

 

GMS is trash

 

elitism in a 2000's pixel mushroom game is crazy

 

At least when I can't beat a boss on GMS the solution is not "I should have remade my character to do nothing for one year before being able to play on them"

 

Too long didn't read

 

This is no longer necessary with hp challenges