Since I came back in 2015, a lot has changed in Pox. For someone who has played and worked on Pox for a long time, it can often times feel like baby steps, but when you put together a list of everything that's happened... it ends up being quite a bit. Towards the end of the year, I felt like we were at a point where I could start focusing more on specific themes and runes, but recent discussions with players and investigations I have done reveals that there are some systemic issues that I would like to resolve first. Thus, this thread is to give you all a heads up of the kinds of larger scale changes you can expect from Pox Nora in 2016 from the design/balance perspective. The next patch coming with the mid-terms will largely be the old stuff, though some of the new thinking does present itself. CHANGES TO OLD RUNES During the initial stages of doing some of the other items on this list, expect a slow down on changes to old runes. They won't stop completely, but I would like to focus on addressing some of the issues here first. Now, of course, in many cases, this actually means changes to old runes, thus this is kind of a misnomer, but basically it means changes to old runes will more often come with other changes, rather than just be for the sake of making one rune more playable. INDIRECT DAMAGE Expect to see nerfs targetd at indirect damage abilities and champions with kits that feature indirect damage. Some champions may simply lose access to some of these kinds of abilities (but will get other abilities). This and other changes will be geared towards returning some of the game more towards basic attacks and less on abilities that ignore many of the interesting interactions relating to basic attacks. PASSIVE CHAMPIONS We will also be considering phasing out passive champions. Passive champions were a neat design idea when it first came out, but is, in many cases, a significant cost decrease in an area for champions who doesn't even care about the "drawback." By phasing it out, particularly for damage-based champions, we should see a better alignment of damage potential to cost for these outliers. Initially this will primarily target damage-based passive champions, but will extend to other passive champions on a case by case basis. It's probable at this time that support champions may remain passive in many cases, but that is to be determined upon review. RANGED CHAMPIONS Expect to see some nerfs in regards to ranged champions. This will likely generally come as some combination of cost increases and damage reductions. Some ranged champions may see HP reductions as well. Expect to see some changes for ranged champions with access to on-attack effects like DOTs. In general, like passive champions, the goal is to see a better alignment of damage potential to cost for ranged champions. ABILITY COSTS There's been a lot of work consolidating and adjusting ability costs. While this is still a work in progress, it will continue to be a focus in 2016. Additionally, some abilities previously reduced in cost may also be adjusted upwards as some have come down too far when looked at relative to other abilities. FACTION BONUSES Some Faction Bonuses may undergo changes in 2016. In particular, KF will be +1 SPD/+1 AP (FF/Split). FW is also under consideration for an adjustment. Aside from that, there will also be considerations on adjusting SPLIT bonuses in particular so they are slightly less than 50% of the full bonus in general. The idea being that split decks benefit from the versatility of extra rune pools and FF benefit from a bigger bonus. STAT STACKING This one is a bit more nebulous, but bears mentioning. Stat stacking is considered a problem for a number of players. A solution is not immediate obvious as we want abilities to be useful so abilities have to do SOMETHING. In general, too much of anything is a bad thing. It's possible that stat based abilities are simply too cheap - they are typically costed with base costing of stats in mind, but when they have the ability to stack their value arguably increases as the stacking increases. Another solution might be that instead of straight up buffing stats, some of the abilities should be using STAT BONUS: Damage, etc. which would represent a hard cap for DMG buffs across all abilities that use that ability to provide the stat buff. (In such a case we'd probably have somewhere on the order of 5 ranks for such abilities.) MAPS We will continue to work on maps, though there has been a problem with the pipeline recently, making map adjustments difficult. Once this is up and running properly again, expect to see some adjustments geared towards 2x2 as well, as that is a problem on numerous maps still. There may also be a thread closer to the next expansion so you can provide some additional feedback on which maps you do want or do not want to see in the next cycle. PLAYER CREATED EXPANSION Some great stuff in here already: http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php...-expansion-together.19825/page-40#post-283438 Based on the created stuff so far, this will likely definitely happen sometime in 2016. HYPE!
Ok, so I love the heads up that your giving us. It's not mandatory, but it goes a long way towards respectfully acknowledging the community. Love you. I like the direction you've taken Pox, and -by the looks of it - your future goals for Pox. As for this; I'm extremely apprehensive. Particularly in relation to the FW bonus. However, I'll wait to see what happens before I start bickering. In regards to splits; I've always found the new interactions to be quite beneficial. Having Faction Bonuses, interact with that can make them a bit over bearing sometimes. HYPE! At least a quarter of the expansion is going to consist of runes designed by @Xirone Tho, you won't hear me complaining.
For some reason "Aside from that, there will also be considerations on adjusting SPLIT" My mind completely ignored the LIT and i got excited for a good 2 seconds.
Oh wow, I really liked this post Sokobud. Gives me hope that the game will progress in 2016. Good job.
Certain abilities giving ranks of Stat Bonus instead of direct stats would go a long way towards curbing the extremes without ruining the mechanics. Good idea.
Sounds good. It will be interesting to see what happens with ranged attackers for sure, and I suspect changes there will end up having a huuge impact on the game, particularly in the relative balance of power of melee themes vs. ranged themes. My big concern with the decline in aoes/indirect damage and ranged attackers is how are themes not reliant on large numbers of cheap champions supposed to stand against them. Like this looks like it is going to end up as an indirect buff to things like moga, zombies, and skeletons unless something else comes along to keep them in line. Also, I am very much in favor of minor/no bonuses for splits, but that should surprise nobody at this point.
I would have thought it would be more of a concern against things with high defense (IS) and miss-mechanics like blizzard cloak.
Also that! There are a lot of impacts on this that I think people are probably ignoring in their ranged and indirect dmg hatred. I mean they are definitely solvable but they are going to take some real work to deal with otherwise in three months we are going to have mass forum rage at all the high defense and scrapper champions running around and dominating the meta.
God bless poor Sok's soul. The Poxnora community is never going to be satisfied. I bet ya 2 pennies that once Sok starts doing changes and shifts up the metas people will complain about the new meta.
That is essentially what I am saying. On a fundamental level sokolov is doing a great job. There are always going to be things that annoy people and they ***** about without thinking what direction the game will go with the changes in place. So what happens with nerfed ranged and indirect damage? Tanks and cheap meat everywhere.
The counters for high defense are are Strike, Illuminate and Magical Bomb. Counter for miss mechanic is Precision. Indirect damage isnt really necessary to fight those.
FYI. These are only accounting for the abilities noted, plus murkwater weakness for FS. It also does not count for how good the runes are our their distribution across themes, or really whether they should be distributed across themes. Counters For Defense (Illuminate, Strike, and Magic Bomb): FS 4* IS 8 KF 18* ST 5* FW 2 SL 1* UD 1* SP 7* Precision FS 2 IS 2* KF 3* ST 0* FW 2 SL 4 UD 2 SP 1* *Contains spot counters.
Wouldn't how good the rune is depend on the meta? It may not be good in this meta, but it may shine in another meta. I mean, Jakei Maiden might not see much play now, but throw scrapper on every champ and I bet people would run her for dispel.
Strike and Precision are pretty rare, though it might be a good to proliferate them as indirect damage is nerfed. edit: ok, not that rare.
Rare enough, particularly if we want themes to be viable. I think creating more spot sources might be worthwhile.
