View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0005589 | Valley 1 | Suggestion - Balancing Issues | Feb 3, 2012 9:03 am | Feb 3, 2012 8:19 pm | |
| Reporter | Bluddy | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 0.569 | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 0.570/0.571 | ||||
| Summary | 0005589: Provide incentive to specialize in elements | ||||
| Description | Currently in the game, the situation is such that a. It's pretty easy to swap out spells whenever you want to. b. It's really easy to carry every spell element, with no penalty. What b) means, is that one loadout is basically enough to deal with almost anything you encounter, so that a) is not really necessary. I suggest that there should be a strong incentive to specialize, or at least remove some elements from your inventory, so that some enemies become really challenging/worth avoiding until you swap out to a different mix of spells. My suggestion is that there be strong incentives to combining as few elements as possible. The worst combination would be having all elements -- this would decrease the functioning of all spells by a lot. They'd be weaker and/or slower, and/or use more mana. Take away an element (especially an opposing element ie. fire vs water) and the remaining spells get closer to their normal values. Take away more and more, and they get closer and closer to their true power. The only way to get the normal power of the spells is to have only one element. In multiplayer, the effect would be to have players specialize in 1-2 elements, and so each member of the team gets his enemy to fight against. In single player, the player would have to constantly consider what he's going up against and whether he can afford to cover more ground (more elements) at the cost of reducing his damage output and speed. As another idea, players can receive random rewards that boost certain elements (e.g. casting speed or reducing mana costs) after finishing missions. These rewards would only be in effect so long as the opposing element isn't equipped, further giving incentive for the player to specialize. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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The enchants and guardian powers coming soon will (if I assume correctly) probably include elemental bonuses and such. I don't think the game should force specialization though - diversity should be as advantageous as specialization under the right enchants. |
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Yeah; I really dislike the idea of penalties for carrying a large loadout. There are far too many 99% resistant enemies in the game to make that very feasible. |
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The problem is that you have every incentive to diversify and no incentive to specialize. Diversifying means that you can handle pretty much anything thrown your way. If the game doesn't promote specialization, no player will choose to do it. Without specialization, having enemies of different elements is just a game of pressing the right key for the right enemy. Also, the specialization I suggest above is mostly temporary, so players can't get stuck from over-specialization -- at worst, they can return to their settlement and reconfigure. They just have to think through what they want to do and consider the costs and benefits. |
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I personally always specialize -- as determined by the rare commodities on the continent. At lower tiers there is no specialization, but even finding the common materials for a single tier 4 spell is a challenge, and probably not something I'll do for more than two or three spells. |
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In terms of the incentives to specialize versus diversify: yes, it's presumed that all players will need to carry at least one spell of every color with them, to deal with whatever is out there. That has its pros and cons. That said, having the ability to specialize per-player based on enchants in particular is something that's coming, and it should help to alleviate some of this. I am really starting to question whether or not elemental weaknesses/resistances really add much to the game, though. All it does is make you switch around your loadout for the most part. I'm starting to think that what color/element you play should be more of a "lifestyle choice," rather than something that makes you unlock super widely. The idea being no elemental strengths except with the slimes, for instance, so that you can always do a baseline of damage for any given enemy (except the slimes, which are more of a gate than an enemy, and used infrequently anyhow). Then you'd still want to have SOME presence in each class of spell, but there would still be a major incentive to specialize. The problem in multiplayer, naturally, is that the unlocks are global on the continent rather than being per-player-per-continent. So if you want fire spells and I want to be an entropic player, that's really not going to happen. Which is a major flaw with co-op at the moment, I think. |
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I find having to switch between different loadouts to be annoying more than anything. I can cycle through my inventory rows pretty quickly, but then I have to find the right one to place some platforms or whatever before I go back to the set of spells I need for this set of enemies. This is particularly annoying when I'm facing multiple enemies with opposing weaknesses, which happens from time to time. |
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Yep, I'm sure. I find that annoying, too, which is why I want to move away from that. Letting players express more personality in what they're choosing to unlock, and set themselves up with a small stable of small spells that vary by tactics needed but not by forced elements-needed AND tactics-need is important, I think. |
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I think elements and resistances add a lot. Perhaps the key here is not to have resistances that are quite so high. Instead of freely dishing out 99% resistances, the highest resistance could be 70% e.g. for an esper which is pure element, (you could still picture a lightning esper overwhelmed by a huge lightning swarm) with other monsters having at most 50% resistance. This would make shuffling spells an optimization rather than a necessity. |
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I'd say that damage types CAN add a lot, but having them over prevalent doesn't help anyone, as an example recent Castlevania games have had anything up to 11 damage types but the odds of any given enemy being resistant to what you were attacking with was fairly small, so when you did actually meet a resistant enemy it mattered more, especially as changing weapon generally implied changing the manner in which you attacked (so if I had gotten used to playing with swords then having to switch to hammers was actually unsettling, if only slightly). Basically I'd say limit resistances to enemies where it really needs them (the espers are the obvious ones), and make there greater differences between the magic types, playing a fire mage should Feel different to playing an air mage, rather than just having different colours. |
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What we're going to do is make sure that almost all monsters only ever have one resistance -- that way you can play with just two colors (a primary and a secondary) and never have to worry about changing up stuff. In terms of the different colors feeling different, they already kind of do. Having a central ranged spell that works almost identically to fireball with different graphics is a must, of course. That's like having your basic SMG. And having some form of melee-range spell is something I also want -- that's your pistol. Then everything else from there differs by color. If you want the whip, you need purple. If you want things like boomerangs, you need yellow. Stuff like ice cross, that's blue only. Etc. The problem is that we just haven't been able to focus on developing out the more unique spells too much yet, but the baseline model for that further development is there already. That's one reason in particular why the lack of ability to specialize was such a problem. |
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For now, this is the solution as Keith and I see it: * Boss monsters are now only allowed to be allocated ONE elemental resistance. And if the monster already has an inherent elemental weakness, it will only be able to add to that existing resistance (if possible), not add a second one in addition to that. ** Additionally, the max randomly-added elemental resistance is now 75% rather than 99%. And the randomly-added elemental resistance is added in increments of 15% rather than 25%, to keep bosses from having too crazy many other points to allocate elsewhere. ** The intent here is to allow for more specialization of players to colors of their choice, rather than forcing them to play all colors all the time. It will still be difficult to play ONE single color for all of time, but having one primary color and one backup color is now possible with this simple change. This will become even more important as enchants are introduced next week. Beyond this, what you're looking for in terms of true incentive to specialize is coming via enchants, and was always planned to be a part of enchants in general. We're also going to be making a change to co-op next week such that unlocks are per-player-per-continent rather than just being per-continent, so that each player can unlock the spells that they choose. The resources are still shared by all players, but each player gets to use their own copy of each resource collect -- making it still easy for older players to catch up. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 3, 2012 9:03 am | Bluddy | New Issue | |
| Feb 3, 2012 9:07 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Feb 3, 2012 9:07 am | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Feb 3, 2012 9:12 am | TerraSleet | Note Added: 0018540 | |
| Feb 3, 2012 9:39 am | Toll | Note Added: 0018545 | |
| Feb 3, 2012 9:40 am | Bluddy | Note Added: 0018547 | |
| Feb 3, 2012 10:11 am | tbogue | Note Added: 0018552 | |
| Feb 3, 2012 10:53 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0018557 | |
| Feb 3, 2012 11:10 am | jerith | Note Added: 0018559 | |
| Feb 3, 2012 11:22 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0018560 | |
| Feb 3, 2012 12:04 pm | Bluddy | Note Added: 0018566 | |
| Feb 3, 2012 12:54 pm | Terraziel | Note Added: 0018567 | |
| Feb 3, 2012 3:03 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0018574 | |
| Feb 3, 2012 8:19 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0018590 | |
| Feb 3, 2012 8:19 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | considering => resolved |
| Feb 3, 2012 8:19 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 0.570/0.571 |
| Feb 3, 2012 8:19 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Feb 3, 2012 8:19 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
