Please Fix Jackal: Too Tedious, Flawed, Not Fun (Tldr Included)

[Luxangel7]

Dear devs, 

 

In my opinion Jackal is a tedious and not fun boss encounter (even though he is the most "complete" boss so far). This is why:

 

1) Window of time to attack him is too short. Should be a fixed amount of time, not a max amount of damage.

 

This problem leads me to single handedly incapacitate him, throw my glaive, and he gets up because I've done on my own the max amount of damage permitted before he recovers. This results in my other three team mates essentially trying to look busy. It goes without saying that balancing his hp might be necessary to avoid high damage players from taking him out too easily. But that's your area of expertise, not mine. :)

 

2) Legs are way to weak. 

 

It is not hard to stun lock the jackal into oblivion. I believe that the legs should have more hp before they cause him to go down. This would be balanced with set time windows to attack him, instead of max damage. (see above, 1&2 are linked)

 

3) Rocket attack almost always explodes on the ceiling, horrible tracking to tenno.

 

In the rare event the rockets don't fly all the way to the ceiling they track the players horribly and barely do any damage. (although it does look cool)

 

4) That blue energy grenade attack thing instantly downs any players caught in range, but there is no way to see them.

 

This is easily fixed by giving the little grenades some sort of effect. Whether that be a glowing trail or blinking or something, whatever. I welcome a powerful attack, but I would like to be able to avoid it with skill. (seeing where the grenades are)

 

5) Don't close the doors to the room.

 

I love this game, but let's face it, it's not exactly hard most of the time. My personal suggestion is to leave at least one door open for some normal enemies to come through and make it feel like the Corpus are throwing everything they have at us. As it is now, it feels like they're waiting for us to kill their super robot and THEN attack us. (kung fu movie logic, anyone?) :P

 

General "icing on the cake" suggestions:

 

If possible, to make this boss fight "perfect", after taking a look at the above mentioned issues, please consider two other things:

 

a) making it so those glowing orange mines dropped by ospreys explode reliably within a certain proximity to the player. Right now they feel like a graphical effect that sometimes explodes dealing very minor damage if I'm dumb enough to stand on one for 5 seconds. 

 

b) It would really be great if Jackal's legs could explode / be destroyed leaving it to fight in a progressively deteriorated and "limping" state. I realize this would require more animation / dev resources, but I think it would really make the player feel like we're hurting the jackal, instead of just chipping away at a red bar at the top of the screen. (at least one or two legs, not necessarily all of them)

 

Basically, the same way it feels awesome to dismember a human - type enemy, it would be really awesome if we could see this mechanic in effect on this boss.

 

If you applied these changes to the Jackal, I can safely say that I would consistently and reliably run this boss's level simply for the enjoyment of killing it.

 

Thank you for your hard work, I realize you all are very busy with upcoming updates and other content/fixes. I just hope you have the time to take a quick look see and hopefully consider some of these suggestions. 

 

 

 

TLDR: Jackal is a long and tedious boss fight. Low difficulty, long artificially stretched out fight and flawed mechanics of this encounter are addressed in the body with suggestions on how to fix / improve and increase difficulty among other things. Please read. :)

 

Edit: Topic deleted from general discussion, as I mistakenly posted it there first. Sry for any confusion. :)

Edited May 22, 2013 by LuxAngel7

[Magicfingers]

how many times you gonna post this?

[--GOOLOO_GOOLOO_GOOLOO--]

How about.

Edited May 22, 2013 by GoatGodJohn

[Luxangel7]

how many times you gonna post this?

 

I deleted it from the general discussion as a friendly user pointed out that it made more sense to put it here, I'm just used to posting in general discussion. Sry if it caused any confusion :)

[Magicfingers]

ahhh...ok....sorry if i sounded testy then....carry on good tenno

[MetalGerbil]

jackel is considered by many to be the most fun boss.

all other bosses are shoot and continue. you hardly have to think about anything besides the rare skill here and there.

jackal is balanced around low level play. when your gear isnt the best things get allot more hectic and he feels alot more threatening.

ive had much of the same myself. i sit there and just do leg/body/leg/body/leg/body for what seems like too long. but i also remember my first fight with him and just how insane it all felt.

he is fine. we need more bosses like him. ones balanced around endgame play.

[AngelGuardcc]

Get a High damage weapon

 

Dont shoot the legs, shoot the body

 

once his shield is down his HP is nothing

 

Ez fight

Edited May 22, 2013 by AngelGuardcc

[SolluxCaptorTA]

Part of the issue is, he's fun and cool when you first fight him. While the strategy is easy to figure out, it's new, exciting.

But then you want Rhino. And you kill Jackal 40 times to get it. (And still miss the Helm even though you've got ten systems and ten of the chassis.)

Then he's just an annoyingly tedious boss.

Edited May 22, 2013 by SolluxCaptorTA

[CY13ERPUNK]

good post OP

while the jackal has been the gold standard in warframe previously, considering it is the only boss that has any kind of mechanic besides mega-hps and lots-of-damage, i do agree that it also could be improved

pretty much all other "improve bosses" threads have been along the lines of, "make the other bosses more like the jackal fight"

but i like your ideas here to make the jackal fight less of a chore and more of a fight

personally i would recommend the DE staff go play the God of War 1/2/3 games and use those boss fights as brainstorm material

so anyways, +1 OP

[A5PECT]

I liked what someone said in the previous thread (forgot the username) about changing the stagger/recovery threshold to a percentage of the Jackal's health rather than a fixed amount. That would go a long way in helping it scale through increasing levels. Giving him some new attacks and variations of existing ones would be nice, too.

 

To decrease the monotony of the fight I'd like to see some changes to his behavior and moveset as his health lowers, so that each time he gets back up he fights a little differently. He can start out with his current strategy: fire machine guns at range, stomp at close range, occasional missile barrage. Then when his health gets lowered, he can start doing more elaborate maneuvers, like charge/leap attacks. When he's on his last legs, the Jackal would get a speed boost and use a new set of powerful melee attacks.

[Budu]

jackal is so easy...if you're having trouble for whatever reason bring a vauban with you >_> just Tesla a leg and hes forever down. takes me less than 2 minutes to kill.

[Luxangel7]

...so anyways, +1...

 

Thanks I'm glad you agree :)

 

 

 

ahhh...ok....sorry if i sounded testy then....carry on good tenno

 

No worries, I'd be annoyed too if it seemed like someone was spamming the forums with their topics hehe :)

Edited May 22, 2013 by LuxAngel7

[SolluxCaptorTA]

Budumpshh, I doubt anyone here finds him hard. Just tedious. Other than my first time (just painful) I've never had trouble beating him, but when I once had to take him down in an Alert where he was level 40, it took forever. no challenge, just charge attack charge attack charge attack cover, repeat 500 times till he dies.

[Luxangel7]

Budumpshh, I doubt anyone here finds him hard. Just tedious. Other than my first time (just painful) I've never had trouble beating him, but when I once had to take him down in an Alert where he was level 40, it took forever. no challenge, just charge attack charge attack charge attack cover, repeat 500 times till he dies.

 

yeah that's what I meant, I hope it didn't come across as me saying it's hard. Cuz it's not.

[Deadmice]

like others have said, get a good gun and shoot the body, i can kill it in less than a clip of afuris. or just punch it a ton with furax. It only really gets hard when you're in a 4 person group and you have lots of dead weight. I think he's fine the way he is now.

Edited May 22, 2013 by Deadmice

[SolluxCaptorTA]

So it's either tedious challenge or normal bullet sponge.

See the problem?

[Stupid_Idiot]

Edit:  I fell you deserve more details, so here they are:

 

1)Jackal is supposed to be easy from a numerical standpoint.  Venus, where he has a permanent presence, is a low lvl area.

With that being said, I believe a lv 60 Jackal in alert should be a bit tougher than that

2) don't close the door = people pull Jackal and fight at the door where it will very likely get stuck

Edited May 22, 2013 by Stupid_Idiot

[A5PECT]

Edit:  I fell you deserve more details, so here they are:

 

1)Jackal is supposed to be easy from a numerical standpoint.  Venus, where he has a permanent presence, is a low lvl area.

With that being said, I believe a lv 60 Jackal in alert should be a bit tougher than that

2) don't close the door = people pull Jackal and fight at the door where it will very likely get stuck

1) There's no real issue with the Jackal on Venus; he's perfectly balanced there. The problem is when you run into his level 55+ version during an alert.

 

He's "tougher" in the sense that he takes more time to kill. The difficulty in fighting him is the same, if not less since with higher level weapons you can reach his stagger threshold even more quickly, going as far as stunlocking him so he can't get an attack off. But the amount of damage you can do to his body during his knockdown window is an even smaller fraction of his total health, so there comes a point where you spend more time waiting for him to go through his falling down/getting up animation (during which he's invincible) than actually dealing damage to him. That's the main reason I'm in agreement with changing his stagger threshold to a percentage of the Jackal's total health rather than a fixed number; it scales better.

 

As for going straight through his shield without knocking him down, that takes away the one thing that made him different from every other boss in the game and an actually interesting fight.

 

So at higher levels, he isn't any harder, he's just more tedious.

 

2) I actually agree with this one. I wouldn't mind putting in some ledges along the outer walls that Corpus crewman and Moas can jump down from, though.

Edited May 22, 2013 by A5PECT

[Loswaith]

Part of the issue is, he's fun and cool when you first fight him. While the strategy is easy to figure out, it's new, exciting.

But then you want Rhino. And you kill Jackal 40 times to get it. (And still miss the Helm even though you've got ten systems and ten of the chassis.)

Then he's just an annoyingly tedious boss.

That said, any boss (or mission) reguardless of how interesting the mechanics are will get old after heaps times doing it. So thats not realy an issue of the boss, its an issue of grinding.

 

Atleast unlike many other bosses he is interesting about the first 3-5 times.

Edited May 22, 2013 by Loswaith

[SolluxCaptorTA]

Not really. First time, he's cool, but after that not really.

Because, honestly. This is the Jackal fight:

-Shoot weak spot

-Shoot Jackal

Repeat endlessly till he's dead. The only reason he's considered so interesting is that that's one step more than most bosses, namely:

-Shoot weak spot

But isn't really that much strategy.

[neKroMancer]

Even the best designed boss will be repetitive if you're going to farm it for 40 times.

How can one boss be less repetitive without much investment in mechanic? How to make boss fight feel fresh even it's the 40th times you farm it? These are the questions that really need to be answered. While the OP's intention is good, the suggestions are simply not going to make a different in boss fight's repetitiveness.

Really, I don't know how to answer these two question. However, generally the better designed bosses involved a lot of random events and AI behavior in order to make it less tedious. With multiple ways to fight against it.

- Adding some sort of variations when players are fighting against the boss would make it less tedious (well, to a degree anyway). When a boss received certain amount of damage then it changes fighting behavior.

- At some point, the boss retreat from battle and unleash its minion to fight you while it recharges health/shield. Random the number and type of these minions would makes the fight less predictable.

- Add random events to all bosses. Perhaps the Stalker comes to rescue the boss when it's low on health. Or Grineer death squad join the fight against Lech Kril. Fusion Moas spawned to give Nef Anyo a hand(well, legs).

Well, at the end, even these are bound to get repetitive.

Something like that.

[Ferriwind]

Just give him a 500% movement speed boost and a stomp that only deals damage in an area and no knockback. Also change rockets to lasers, it's corpus after all. Heat seeking rockets are lame. There, problem solved, although his legs could be destructible and when all of them are down, he spams lasers in a circle until you bring his hp to zero.

 

Imo, bosses need to be more responsive to player damage and have weaknesses where they react different.

Edited May 22, 2013 by Stygi

[SFkenny]

Someone was suggesting God of War games for boss fight inspiration. Allow me to suggest Metal Gear Solid 3.

Imagine if Corpus Sgt. Nef Anyo had a fight more like The End's...

[neKroMancer]

Someone was suggesting God of War games for boss fight inspiration. Allow me to suggest Metal Gear Solid 3.

Imagine if Corpus Sgt. Nef Anyo had a fight more like The End's...

I love that fight. He snore when you're not doing anything and run like a madman. His sniper is deadly though.

I beat him with cigarette.

[Carcharias]

Part of the issue is, he's fun and cool when you first fight him. While the strategy is easy to figure out, it's new, exciting.But then you want Rhino. And you kill Jackal 40 times to get it. (And still miss the Helm even though you've got ten systems and ten of the chassis.)Then he's just an annoyingly tedious boss.

The problem in the case you describe is not the boss, it's the farming. I think you should be able to go to market and trade say four systems for a helmet blueprint. That would cut down of some of the farming without changing a whole lot in the game. As for the jackal, if his rockets wrent bugged he'd be a fine boss. Might even be a little difficult for the level he's at. Maybe switch him with the boss in Sedna.

@op are you fighting the jackal with pimped out gear? If so then yea he's boring. If you want it to be exciting agian remove your mods back to where they were when you were first working your way through that system and you weren't level 30 on everything. Then instead of tedious, he's challenging again. :D

Bottom line is you can't buff him without hurting the new players facing him for the first time. When you have to do the same thing 50 times it's gonna get old no matter what.

Edited May 22, 2013 by Carcharias