Distorted Travesty 3

[jaxter0987]

I did some more thinking, and I think I've determined why WORDS. (Still endgame spoilers)

All the characters we care about die (except Chao). Every single character who had a scrap of development and we've come to like gets killed off (except Chao). The only survivors are the one-dimensional bit characters (and Chao).

And Chao surviving doesn't soften the blow, because she literally does nothing upon the ending. She just vanishes.

I know some people have said that they don't really care about the plot, that it's just there as an excuse for the gameplay, but I actually ended up liking our group of sarcastic gamers. And now the game ends, and nobody we the audience actually care about gets a happy ending, which comes across as a bit of a punch to the gut.

Again, I hope I'm not coming off as too critical. I still do believe the Distorted Travesty trilogy was an amazing set of games and I had a lot of fun with them. The ending was just very jarring and a little upsetting to me is all. I too would love to hear Zephyr's side of this, and why he wrote it that way.

And with that, I feel I've said my piece. Thank you for your time.

You've pretty much echoed my earlier post exactly. Going to also quote my own post in WhattayaBrian's 56th DT3 video, obviously major spoilers but I still have to preface my spoiler sections with this every time.

Context is, Hadriex believes they survived:
"And yet, top level gamer Chao hasn't found any of the other 3 after a month of searching most likely, and still hasn't reported back to Syrus and co after she left on her journey. Yeah no Jerry, Jeremy, and Claire are dead. And since this is Zephyr's last DT game, there's no chance of a Deus Ex Machina thing happening in a sequel / spin off or whatever."
Chao surviving COULD have softened the blow if there was ever hope of a sequel / spin off starring Chao to find the other 3 we actually care about.

[Validon98]

...I said I would maybe post in this thread since I'm actively playing the game. Ignoring srs endgame discussion

even though I have spoiled myself by accident, just not going to mention it since I have mixed feelings about said endgame spoilers

, I wondered about the special effects Zephyr mentioned with right click and the middle mouse button.



Safe to say, I had some fun with this (please excuse my poor mouse-based handwriting).

[Cirno]

More ending spoilers.

I was messing around with the debug menu and I managed to trigger the ending, except Jerry survived as well and there was a bit of extra dialog. Is there a way to trigger this legitimately, or is it part of the previously mentioned scrapped ending?

[ZephyrBurst]

To Cirno:

The ending currently in the game is what was originally there on launch. Some time before launch, there was an alternate ending made, but I really didn't like it and so it was reverted back to what it is now. Jerry did not survive in either ending, what you did was break stuff via debug mode. :P

[Cirno]

To Cirno:

The ending currently in the game is what was originally there on launch. Some time before launch, there was an alternate ending made, but I really didn't like it and so it was reverted back to what it is now. Jerry did not survive in either ending, what you did was break stuff via debug mode.

Yeah, I wasn't paying attention apparently. It was Claire who survived, but I was Jerry because of breaking stuff with debug mode. Good to have it confirmed that it's not a real ending, then. (The beginning of that ending is still in the code if you start a new game and teleport to room 865.)

[Validon98]

Might as well ask, was this not meant to be done until you get the double jump? I was able to pull it off without it, but man, it's one scary climb to have to redo if you mess it up later.

[Lostsoldier20]

Intentional is subjective. I can't remember who said it, but it was said that raocow had the ability to get every item in the game without double jump, just involves super tricks to do so.

The more important question is why is the Air Dash under Claire?

[ZephyrBurst]

Yes, it's intended for the player have double jump before going up there, but of course, options are in to do things earlier.

As for that more important question, there's an option to put the double jump and air dash icon below the player character so the player can easily see what jumps they have.

[jaxter0987]

Is the Hexor fight in the Vault supposed to have contact damage now? I don't remember you ever mentioning this change Zephyr and raocow's fight didn't have contact damage either.

[Validon98]

This heart piece might have legitimately been the most frustrating thing in the entire game to get, bar none. Good god Zephyr you are cruel.

[ZephyrBurst]

This heart piece might have legitimately been the most frustrating thing in the entire game to get, bar none. Good god Zephyr you are cruel.

<3 <3 <3
Spoilers

Hidden thing Jerry can do. He can Strike Chain to those. (Because Samus could grapple beam to them in Super Metroid.) Certainly not required based on what you said, but uh... yeah. Random easter eggs. :P

[Validon98]

Raging about a late game place:

Okay no I'm sorry this one boss fight in the weapons facility place, after all the stealth bullshit and now the Strike Chain nonsense with this very terrible input, no, no I'm sorry this is the part where I say "this feels unfun", because of having to make very precise and consistent use of a platforming tool with a very awkward input. And this is with dash buttons. I can only imagine how hard this boss is without dash buttons. I just find it completely unfun because of the controls. Yeah sure part of it is also me making mistakes but when it's partially because the input is so easy to flub up, something's off.

I like this game. I really do. I want to finish it. But I'm calling bullshit on this one thing. Make of it what you will.

EDIT: Beaten, but never again. Never. Again.

EDIT2: I'm of the mind that the CHAOS Weapons Factory is the Secured Data Segment of this game. Would I be right on this? Is the warship worse? I have to know, because dear god my patience has been strained so hard by the overusage of Strike Chain.

[Slit08]

So guys who have completed the game. A question to you:

Who did you find harder to beat? Hex or the Warmaster?

[Lostsoldier20]

Is the Hexor fight in the Vault supposed to have contact damage now? I don't remember you ever mentioning this change Zephyr and raocow's fight didn't have contact damage either.

He's been like since since... like 1.7 or 1.8 if this really was a change that was made. I went to check his Par Time after beating the game, and he had contact damage. raocow does also run into the Hex in the video.

So guys who have completed the game. A question to you:

Who did you find harder to beat? Hex or the Warmaster?

My top 3 goes Hex > Abomination > Warmaster.

Hex is just an annoying jerk with how he could spawn the hands and ceilings at the worst possible times. The final Mario hit was actually strangely difficult too. Abomination's stamina test took me a good 2-3 hours to beat. I mean, being a 7 minute fight doesn't help. Warmaster was a marathon, and an all out test of all of my abilities as a gamer. He's the hardest fight in the game to me, and my favorite fight. He took me 3-4 sessions of fighting him to win, but he never really angered me either.

RAGE

That boss is in the competition for being in my top 5 hardest bosses. As for your EDIT2: Well... Let's just say things aren't going to get any easier.

[Validon98]

Potential bug report thingy:

Dunno if this is a bug or not, but when I got to this little "trapped" area, and killed the healer and the shield guys that were around, the barrier that shows up behind you doesn't go away, but since I didn't kill all the enemies before then (there's like a couple more shield guys and whatnot), the barrier in front doesn't go away either, so I'm trapped here unless I force game over, since the other enemies are off screen.

[jaxter0987]

So guys who have completed the game. A question to you:

Who did you find harder to beat? Hex or the Warmaster?

Hex > Warmaster > Abomination
[ispoiler]Hex is infinitely worse than Warmaster because part of difficulty as a concept is your perception of it in my opinion. And Hex's fight is just plain "unfun" because the player gets no sense of progress for a large portion of the fight. There's the "survive until you get an opportunity to strike back" feeling with other games and then there's the "survive until.... what exactly?" feeling in the Hex fight.

Objectively, I'd say the Warmaster is the more difficult one but taking everything into account and the fact that Hex takes abilities away from you throughout the fight, he gives you the perception that he is harder. And thats why he was harder for me to beat.

Warmaster is rated lower than Hex for similar reasons. But instead of being unfair, everything he does feels completely fair. Your deaths are simply Warmaster outplaying you so to speak, or its simply "you are not competent enough". The death screen's encouragement also helps.

Abomination was "learn how to damage each weakness effectively" and more of "wait until you get an opportunity to strike back". Its an endurance fight with clear breakpoints.[/ispoiler]

Validon, more spoilers are needed buddy. The last few pages might be about end game content that the current posters already have knowledge of, but not putting the stuff you're talking about in a spoiler makes it so players earlier on in the game are punished for going to the latest page in the thread.
To answer your question though:

Warship is worse, but the Factory is the part that feels THE MOST like the Secured Data Segment. Also, the Factory is probably the most difficult when it comes to Strike Chain usage. You'll be using it again in two more major areas but none are as difficult as that boss and the stuff in the Factory in my opinion.

[Validon98]

Ack, sorry about that, I'll go spoiler tag my last couple posts. X_X;

Still, I mean, I'm worried about later areas now but at the least things seem to have smoothed out in terms of difficulty.

[ZephyrBurst]

Potential bug report thingy:

I know what's causing that. Next patch (whenever in the future that happens) will have that fixed.

To you guys that have played up to the first boss in the final level:

I've considered since forever ago to reduce the damage from all of Hex's attacks by 1. Do you guys think that's something that would help the flow of that fight? Sure there's assist mode, but let's be real, people rarely use it. It's a long fight and by comparison to the Abomination, tends to actually be longer.

Also considered reducing the frequency of the ceiling attack by about 1-2 seconds. (the one you have to use the idle shield to break through)

I've also considered reducing the frequency of the hands by just a tiny bit, maybe half a second. (It really does make a difference)

[Lostsoldier20]

To you guys that have played up to the first boss in the final level:

I've considered since forever ago to reduce the damage from all of Hex's attacks by 1. Do you guys think that's something that would help the flow of that fight? Sure there's assist mode, but let's be real, people rarely use it. It's a long fight and by comparison to the Abomination, tends to actually be longer.

Also considered reducing the frequency of the ceiling attack by about 1-2 seconds. (the one you have to use the idle shield to break through)

I've also considered reducing the frequency of the hands by just a tiny bit, maybe half a second. (It really does make a difference)

While the damage will give you an entire extra mistake or two, the attack changes are much preferred. Though at the same time, in my replay, I've been changing my opinions of a lot of bosses. I don't think Hex would be one that changes, but I never know.

[ZephyrBurst]

A lot of these sorts of changes are primarily with first playthroughs in mind.

[Lostsoldier20]

As true as that is, I've also come to appreciate some of the "first playthrough" moments of other things. Others I hated more, or reversed total opinion on to like how I was treated while blind. (I also appreciate HP more, but that's an entire other factor entirely) As a default though, I say do the latter if either.

On another note: Temple of Wind in Gate 6. We saw it in raocow's run, but I've also just re-gone through it and I noticed the bug happen a lot, where you "store" the wind state and will either randomly "hop" as if you were standing still in wind, or have the ability to jump super high like in wind. It's mostly not an issue, but I don't recall this always being a thing. (though I could just not be remembering, as is the more likely event)

[WhattayaBrian]

Rankings:

Normal: Warmaster > Hex > Abomination
Achilles: Abomination > Hex > Warmaster

Zephyr:

I wouldn't do that, but I would probably make hearts not despawn. Or potentially have the hands persist for longer before dropping down, giving the player more time to bomb both. Maybe have damage shield have less health or take more damage from things other than Special.

The fight really does need a lot of changes imo, but these are some potential non-invasive ones.

Validon:

Warship is definitely harder, but nothing really requires the precision of strike chain like Brain Machine does. I'm curious, what kind of controller do you use, and do you use analog/dpad for your movement? I'm still of the opinion that the current control scheme is one of the best that could be achieved with trying to map 4 actions to 3 buttons, which is the primary reason for the wonkiness.

[Count Mohawk]

So guys who have completed the game. A question to you:

Who did you find harder to beat? Hex or the Warmaster?

I'm gonna say Warmaster > Hexor (> Abomination, since others mentioned him).
Abomination was long, but spaced out. If it took me more than one day's worth of tries, it wasn't much more, and I did it on Normal.
Hex was a complete ass; less damaging than Abom per hit, but harder in more "fake difficulty" ways. It took me three days of attempting him before I switched to Assist mode, and another day of tries after that to actually give him his well-deserved boot to the head. I could probably have beaten him on Normal if I'd wanted to hard enough, though.
Warmaster... well, I'm super bad at proper duel bosses and I had already given up after Hex, so I gave him a few tries to feel the fight out, then opted not to restart my computer for a week and fought him to the death with DT3 running at 5FPS.

[Validon98]

Validon:

Warship is definitely harder, but nothing really requires the precision of strike chain like Brain Machine does. I'm curious, what kind of controller do you use, and do you use analog/dpad for your movement? I'm still of the opinion that the current control scheme is one of the best that could be achieved with trying to map 4 actions to 3 buttons, which is the primary reason for the wonkiness.

I use a PS3 controller (it's the only controller I have), digital pad for movement (dear god I cannot imagine using an analog stick for a 2D platformer). It works really well most of the time, just not really in that case.

[Slit08]

Rankings:

Zephyr:

I wouldn't do that, but I would probably make hearts not despawn. Or potentially have the hands persist for longer before dropping down, giving the player more time to bomb both. Maybe have damage shield have less health or take more damage from things other than Special.

The fight really does need a lot of changes imo, but these are some potential non-invasive ones.

]

Eh, you were meant to say the fight doesn't need a lot of changes right? Otherwise your sentence wouldn't make that much sense.