27 replies to this topic

[Alucard648]

They tribble into Patra 3s?

No. Simplier.

[strike]

Tribble into themselves.

 

-Strike

[RetraRoyale]

Just one question; why are Windrobes tier 7? They're pathetic. They always spawn in one of the four cardinal directions relative to Link's position, they only do a full heart of base contact damage, and their magic is easy to dodge. Okay sure, they take a lot of hits with a White Sword, but you'd have to be in a room with a lot of enemies for them to catch you or simply not pay attention. The Wind doesn't damage you; it just boots you to the DMap's start. Aside from annoyance, they're even less dangerous than Red Wizzrobes since their magic doesn't do a sudden WTF 4 hearts base damage.

 

Also on another note, enemies like Cracktoroks are dangerous only in poorly designed rooms, rooms with tons of enemies, or if you're somehow without a stunning weapon. Once they're stunned, it doesn't matter if they would do 100 hearts of damage to Link wearing a Gold Ring because at that point, they're completely neutralized. Death Knights are a similar poorly made enemy; either you get a Fire Boomerang/Hookshot stun off for an easy no damage kill, or it rams you to death and ravages a Red Ring bearing Link. If there are like 4 or more of them though, then it just borders on fake challenge and just encourages you to spam Nayru's Love or just hide against a wall or in a corner and just hammer on the sword button, hoping you kill them before they kill you.

 

Annoyance is a significant factor in where you place enemies in a game. First, I don't think I've ever died from a Red Wizzrobe. You can block their magic with your shield, and they die quite easily. Windrobes will kill you by making you re-fight every respawning enemy on your path, and thus their power level is similar to the Summoner: you can make them easy if you want, but generally they are supposed to be a threat. (Besides, you have infinite lives! And if you die, what happens? Nothing. You just restart. That's what windrobes do: they insta-kill you.)

 

Tier 7 might be too high, but they have the same HP as a Bat Wizzrobe (28), so they take quite a bit to deal with. Tier 7 is kind of the level of enemies you would expect to fight upon entering level 9 in the original game. You know, if it had actually been harder than Lv 8...

 

Most enemies in the Zelda cannon are puzzles -- you have to 'solve' their defenses in order to beat them. I actually feel that the fire boomerang, hookshot, and hammer are actually what makes those enemies too easy. Almost every enemy is weak to one of them. Personally, I would remove stun capability on all the L3 enemies.

 

These ratings are largely based on expectation and intent. The stats are easy to adjust, but the player's expectations are not.

Edited by RetraRoyale, 26 June 2014 - 10:22 AM.

[KingPridenia]

I was kind of taking Windrobes at face value, not "If you get blown away, you have to redo dozens of rooms". Still, that could be questionable game design. Imagine going through say 15 rooms where every single room uses a shutter to block your progress with the 16th room being Windrobes. Every time you're caught, you have to redo those 15 rooms over and over. That's where I would say the line is drawn between fair challenge and being tedious to a fault. You also can't employ the "leave 1 enemy alive" trick either, unless said room has Bubbles.

 

I guess in a way though Red Bubbles are technically one of the most dangerous enemies if a quest lacks Whisp Rings or are used in conjunction with strong enemies (such as dealing with Batrobes and Splitting Darknuts in the same room as one). They can also be deadly in rooms that are made such that avoiding a jinx is impossible. Look at AlphaDawq's 3rd Quest; you're constantly forced to fight without your sword in levels 6, 7, 8 and 9. In level 7, you have to Wand bash Gleeok. In level 8, you have to go through the latter half of the dungeon without your sword (unless you use a potion) and even defeat a Patra using the Wand to bash it to death. That makes Blue Wizzrobes and Blue Darknuts MUCH more threatening when your main means of damaging them is taken from you.

 

To be fair, the layout of the room would have to be a factor too. If you have plenty of blocks to hide behind, you could in theory kill a Splitting Darknut with only 3 hearts and Wooden Sword. Now if you're in a 1 block wide corridor with a whole army of them coming at you, then you're going to have problems unless you have the Red Ring or better. Probably one of the most evil rooms in the original Zelda is the spiral block room in level 5 of the 2nd quest with a mandatory pure Blue Wizzrobe fight. That room is the bane of my existence. By contrast, level 7 in the 2nd quest features a lot of Darknuts, but if you're bad at fighting them, most of the early rooms have water you can stand on.

 

I think I better understand what you're trying to get at with the enemy ranking system. Still, it is subjective. What if you're good at fighting one kind of enemy but not another for instance?

[RetraRoyale]

I think, if you're good at fighting an enemy and others are not, then it's a harder enemy. I'm pretty bad at Darknuts (sans hammer or slash), but I see people who breeze through them with no trouble at all. My take is that they are intended to be a challenge early on, but comparatively normal once you get better equipment or enough experience. I would not expect to see Blue Darknuts in Lv1, and I would consider Red Darknuts to be stronger enemies. But I would also expect to have the wooden sword and no armor, so... I take all of those things to be indicative of the fact that Darknuts are not Tier 1/2 enemies.

 

There is a bit of rationalization that happens here. Take Lanmolas, for instance. The red Lanmolas actually have quite a bit of hit points, but they move fast enough and are weak to the sword so that if you hit them, they can pass through you without doing damage. However, the blue Lanmolas move even faster, so they can be hard to hit. So speed makes the red Lanmolas slightly easier, but the blue ones harder.

 

So I am not operating under the assumption that there will be no disagreement. I really just want to have a place to start when making a quest. One of the things I hate most about editing quests is deciding what enemies to put on each screen. It's tedious and arbitrary. Especially in the late levels, where you want variety, but most enemies aren't even pretending to be threats. I want a formulaic way of narrowing the subset of enemies I have to look at so that I can challenge the player without boring myself to death. I have made far too many dungeons with no enemies in them because I did the fun part and procrastinated on the enemy placement.

Edited by RetraRoyale, 26 June 2014 - 12:59 PM.

[KingPridenia]

For me personally, I would probably rank Darknuts a bit lower while upping Wizzrobes, but I'm only going off my opinion, not the general consensus or using a systematic method like you are. I'm used to fighting Red/Blue Darknuts with the pitiful stab and no sword beams when I'm at the point it takes 4 sword hits to down either. On the other hand, Blue Wizzrobes are trouble for me and I will often lose a good number of hearts to a group of 2-3 of them since I suck at fighting them. Keep in mind these metrics are going under the following rules:

 

-Movement uses the grid system the original Zelda does

-No sword beams on Wooden/White Swords and 1/2 damage beams on others

-Link doesn't get slash, leaving him with sword stabs the entire game

 

With slash however, I usually just face up or down, slash, move a bit, rinse and repeat for Darknuts for a pathetically easy win. I found out while testing my own quest Spin Attack is very useful against Darknuts. Also, when I fought Blue Wizzrobes with diagonal movement and slashing, I had much less difficulty and took hits far less often. However, adjusting their HP, damage or other parameters could really change their difficulty. I mean a Death Knight speed Splitting Darknut is going to be considerably more dangerous than if he was only 100 Step Speed. I do like your system and I think it helps avoid imbalances where level 7 could be hell yet level 8 is a breeze. Or level 4 is a joke while level 5 is a massive spike.

[anikom15]

Wizzrobes are harder without diagonal movement. Blue Wizz. > Blue Dark. > Red Dark. > Red Wizz. I'd say.

[trudatman]

....Darknuts....most of the early rooms have water you can stand on....

this made me think... can a ladder be scripted to allow enemies to walk onto it with you?  how about a script that gives a ladder to enemies to use on their own?

[RetraRoyale]

I don't usually have trouble with Blue Wizzrobes. They tend to just bounce around in the walls and leave me alone. I do think their movement pattern is probably the most unique out of all the LoZ enemies. They really got creative with them.

 

this made me think... can a ladder be scripted to allow enemies to walk onto it with you?  how about a script that gives a ladder to enemies to use on their own?

 

This seems pretty simple actually, as long as you assume water is only on layer 0 (or something similar). You just draw a ladder combo on the layer above it, and make sure only one combo is drawn at a time.

 

For the enemies, it is harder. I think you'd have to place a ladder anytime an enemy was facing water and almost on the tile, so that when they were aligned with the tile, they could decide to walk onto the ladder. The one-ladder-per-enemy might be tricky though.

[Alucard648]

Tribble into themselves.

 

-Strike

Nada! No tribbling.

[BtjCraft]

I made a difficulty tier list of my own about a year ago, it was mostly based on how strong the enemies were compared to each other (only including defeatable enemies, minus the spinning tiles). I'm actually currently using this for my score system in my Race For Power quest.

 

Tier 1 - 50 Points (reserved for enemies instantly killed by the L1 Boomerang)

-Fire

-Gel (L1 & Tribble)

-Keese (& Tribble)

 

Tier 2 - 100 Points

-Armos

-Bombchu

-Dodongo (& BS)

-Gel (L2 & Tribble)

-Gohma (L1)

-Goriya (L1)

-Leever (L1 & L2)

-Moblin (L1 & L2)

-Moldorm

-Octorok (L1 & Fast & L2 & Fast)

-Rope (L1)

-Stalfos (L1)

-Tektite (L1 & L2)

-Wall Master

-Zol (L1 & Tribble)

 

Tier 3 - 200 Points

-Aquamentus

-Bat

-Digdogger Kids

-Ghini (L1)

-Gohma (L2)

-Goriya (L2)

-Lanmola (L1)

-Lynel (L1)

-Patra (BS)

-Peahat

-Pols Voice (Arrow & Magic)

-Rope (L2)

-Stalfos (L2)

-Vire (L1 & Tribble)

-Zol (L2 & Tribble)

-Zora

 

Tier 4 - 300 Points

-Darknut (L1)

-Gibdo
-Gleeok (1 Head)

-Like Like

-Lynel (L2)

-Manhandla (L1)

-Octorok (L3)

-Patra (L1, Oval)

-Wizzrobe (Teleporting)

 

Tier 5 - 500 Points

-Gleeok (2 Heads)

-Goriya (L3)

-Lanmola (L2)

-Octorok (L3, Fast & L4)

-Patra (L1, Big Circle)

-Stalfos (L3)

-Wizzrobe (Bat)

 

Tier 6 - 750 Points

-Darknut (L2)

-Gleeok (3 Heads)

-Gohma (L3)

-Leever (L3)

-Octorok (L4, Fast)

-Patra (L2)

-Wizzrobe (Fire)

-Wizzrobe (Floating)

-Wizzrobe (Mirror)

 

Tier 7 - 1000 Points

-Ganon

-Gleeok (4 Heads & Fire, 1 Head)

-Manhandla (L2)

-Patra (L3)

-Wizzrobe (L3)

 

Tier 8 - 2000 Points

-Darknut (Splitting)

-Gleeok (Fire, 2 Heads)

 

Tier 9 - 3000 Points

-Gleeok (Fire, 3 Heads)

-Octorok (Magic)

 

Tier 10 - 5000 Points

-Death Knight

-Gleeok (Fire, 4 Heads)

-Gohma (L4)

 

The Summoner Wizzrobe does not have a tier, since its difficulty is based on what it summons.

 

A bit more related to the recent discussion, I personally consider Floating Wizzrobes and L2 Darknuts about the same difficulty. By themselves, I consider L2 Darknuts stronger since they can randomly turn around on you if you're not careful, unlike the Wizzrobes where you only have to use the magic shield to block the attacks. In groups however, I consider Floating Wizzrobes stronger since their ranged attacks can make navigation difficult.

[Yloh]

These lists are very interesting. I would like to add that some enemies are more dangerous when in groups of different enemies. For example: teleporting wizzrobes are not too bad to handle if they are the only enemy type in the room, however, when mixed with different kind of enemies, they become far more dangerous. Darknut 2s are a little dangerous alone, but they don't make a huge spike in difficulty when mixed with most other enemies. Some enemies make better assists while other enemies are dangerous even when alone.

 

Room design, equipment, and enemy combination also plays a huge factor. In Armageddon Quest, you had a room where your sword is disabled. You had to fight pols voices and darknut 2s. Not having a proper sword makes those two a mean team. The darknuts block the arrows while the pols voices are immune to bombs. Alone they are not too bad, but in that senario, they are very dangerous. I find death knights quite fun to fight, when the room has a clever design to it.

 

Another thing to consider with enemy difficulty is how hard is it to avoid them. A splitting darknut, while very damaging, is not to hard to avoide; even in groups. A goryia 3 is a pain to avoid alone and a menace in groups. Fire gleeloks are very difficult to kill without taking a hit. A one headed gleelok is relatively simple to beat without taking a hit. 

 

My main point is you can rate the difficulty of enemies based on their stats alone, but that doesn't give you the complete picture. What may work on paper may play out very differently out in the battle field. What may be a harmless stat on an enemy may become deadly when put in the right situation.

 

It would be interesting to see what combination of enemies would be the most deadly. Mixing ropes with enemies immune to the boomerang is quite painful, especially in small rooms.  

[Orithan]

Adding onto what Yloh just said, some enemies that are not very menacing alone can be incredibly dangerous when paired with other enemy types. In Zelda Classic, I see several distinct offensive qualities enemies can have:

• Vanilla Offense - Their ability to threaten the player directly with no added support from other enemy types or room layout. Enemies with this as their strong points include Goryias, Darknuts and Blue Wizzrobes.
• Stallbreaking - Their ability to punish the player for playing defensively, usually by being fast and aggressive or otherwise forcing them to quickly attack them. Examples of enemies that score high here include Windrobes, Summoners, Bat Wizzrobes, Red Wizzrobes and Bombchus.
• Countering - Their ability to punish the player for playing offensively, usually by dealing high damage and having high HP or by spamming projectiles. Enemies that focus on this include Fire Wizzrobes, Pols Voices, Gidbos, Ghinis and Lynels.
• Support - How well they complement other enemies, often by putting the player at a disadvantage should they get hit or by blocking attacks aimed at allies. Enemies that are strong in this department include Bubbles and Red Wizzrobes.

Edited by Orithan, 01 July 2014 - 04:39 AM.