Leqesai
02-10-2012, 11:46 PM
Tensions are high with the player-base, lately, and it is because we are seeing drastic changes to the game very frequently and without much warning.
To alleviate some of the tensions I am suggesting a few key points, to the Dev team:
1. :mage: If something seems unbalanced go for a small change initially and see how the players react to it. IE: if Apprentice towers seem to be 30% more powerful than you want, begin by making a 10-15% reduction instead of a stark 30% change.
2. :warrior: For every negative applied toward the balancing of a particular class, do something that boosts the class in an area that it has been previously lacking. IE: Had the apprentice changes been made, but paired alongside something like... varied projectile types for various staff models (explosive projectiles, piercing, slow effect etc.) the community would be able to see that the changes against their favorite class were not meant to shut them down.
3. :apprentice: Considering the change recently made to Huntre/huntress concerning their weapon types, it is somewhat important to those wanting to play the other classes that their weapons be made more unique as well. Squires have already felt a good batch of balancing across their weapon types, but Monk and Apprentice are both dealing with mostly generic weapon fare. It just seems peculiar that neither has a compelling set of ranged effects like the huntress. Furthermore the melee weapons feel (for the most part) only differentiated by attack speed. It is possible to find katanas with more knockback than hammers, and none of the weapons have inherent status affecting properties (more on this in the next point).
4. :huntress: Status affecting properties inherent to weapon types. This is a pretty major change to the current system, but to truly differentiate weapon types there should be qualities unique to more than just one or two weapons. This can be accomplished in various ways. The first way, which will be discussed here, is the implementation of status effects. We could see a variety of status ailments added to the game (both for the heroes and for the mobs) such as poison, defense down, defense up, attack down, attack up, regenerating health/mana etc. I know this sounds a little crazy for DunDef but hear me out. What is the major problem with dundef mobs? They're currently only differentiated by elemental resistances. But what if that lightning kobold also exploded and caused a 30 second debuff to nearby attack damage (non stacking effects)? What if the apprentice had a staff that perpetually recharged his mana pool? What if hammers caused a debuff to monster resistances during a combo (initial hit would apply a 3 or 4 second debuff to armor) etc?
5. :monk: If status effects are just too far out of left field, consider giving monk and apprentice weapons unique qualities. Not all apprentice staffs should have the same number of projectiles, and not all of those projectiles should be essentially the same outside of a graphical difference (what if we saw a +0 projectile staff that caused large explosions?!). The same goes for Monk. Monk weapons, with a couple of exceptions, are almost exactly the same. Why don't any monk/apprentice weapons have creative projectile effects like the huntress? I understand that huntress is made unique in having cool projectiles, but she is also made unfairly unique. At the very least we could see the spread on more monk/apprentice weapons being changed up. Circle pattern? Star pattern? bonus projectiles with a slower damage ramp (say a +8 projectile weapon with 50% damage ramping).
:dragon:My final point concerns stat caps.:dragon:
In a game like this, why do we not have hard caps on certain stats?
I'm not talking make the hero damage cap out at 1500 or something. But have SOME cap in there. Say... 3000 or 4000 (caps can always be changed to accommodate new levels and gear).
The huge influx of extremely powerful gear has come out of, for the most part, hackers abusing the game's stat system in order to create towers with unbelievable stats (I saw a character in Open with 850,000 tower attack).
If there were a hard cap set to these values hackers would have a severe disadvantage over the current system, and would thus have to work harder to do end game content.
That is all, for now.
~Leqesai:skeleton:
To alleviate some of the tensions I am suggesting a few key points, to the Dev team:
1. :mage: If something seems unbalanced go for a small change initially and see how the players react to it. IE: if Apprentice towers seem to be 30% more powerful than you want, begin by making a 10-15% reduction instead of a stark 30% change.
2. :warrior: For every negative applied toward the balancing of a particular class, do something that boosts the class in an area that it has been previously lacking. IE: Had the apprentice changes been made, but paired alongside something like... varied projectile types for various staff models (explosive projectiles, piercing, slow effect etc.) the community would be able to see that the changes against their favorite class were not meant to shut them down.
3. :apprentice: Considering the change recently made to Huntre/huntress concerning their weapon types, it is somewhat important to those wanting to play the other classes that their weapons be made more unique as well. Squires have already felt a good batch of balancing across their weapon types, but Monk and Apprentice are both dealing with mostly generic weapon fare. It just seems peculiar that neither has a compelling set of ranged effects like the huntress. Furthermore the melee weapons feel (for the most part) only differentiated by attack speed. It is possible to find katanas with more knockback than hammers, and none of the weapons have inherent status affecting properties (more on this in the next point).
4. :huntress: Status affecting properties inherent to weapon types. This is a pretty major change to the current system, but to truly differentiate weapon types there should be qualities unique to more than just one or two weapons. This can be accomplished in various ways. The first way, which will be discussed here, is the implementation of status effects. We could see a variety of status ailments added to the game (both for the heroes and for the mobs) such as poison, defense down, defense up, attack down, attack up, regenerating health/mana etc. I know this sounds a little crazy for DunDef but hear me out. What is the major problem with dundef mobs? They're currently only differentiated by elemental resistances. But what if that lightning kobold also exploded and caused a 30 second debuff to nearby attack damage (non stacking effects)? What if the apprentice had a staff that perpetually recharged his mana pool? What if hammers caused a debuff to monster resistances during a combo (initial hit would apply a 3 or 4 second debuff to armor) etc?
5. :monk: If status effects are just too far out of left field, consider giving monk and apprentice weapons unique qualities. Not all apprentice staffs should have the same number of projectiles, and not all of those projectiles should be essentially the same outside of a graphical difference (what if we saw a +0 projectile staff that caused large explosions?!). The same goes for Monk. Monk weapons, with a couple of exceptions, are almost exactly the same. Why don't any monk/apprentice weapons have creative projectile effects like the huntress? I understand that huntress is made unique in having cool projectiles, but she is also made unfairly unique. At the very least we could see the spread on more monk/apprentice weapons being changed up. Circle pattern? Star pattern? bonus projectiles with a slower damage ramp (say a +8 projectile weapon with 50% damage ramping).
:dragon:My final point concerns stat caps.:dragon:
In a game like this, why do we not have hard caps on certain stats?
I'm not talking make the hero damage cap out at 1500 or something. But have SOME cap in there. Say... 3000 or 4000 (caps can always be changed to accommodate new levels and gear).
The huge influx of extremely powerful gear has come out of, for the most part, hackers abusing the game's stat system in order to create towers with unbelievable stats (I saw a character in Open with 850,000 tower attack).
If there were a hard cap set to these values hackers would have a severe disadvantage over the current system, and would thus have to work harder to do end game content.
That is all, for now.
~Leqesai:skeleton: