I've recently favored the idea of upgrades simply tweaking a champion in most cases. That way you don't use up design space (since the champion occupies only one core build) and you don't feel like your champion has to be 200 CP before you can use it. However, there is still some level of customization.
Another voice of support for the SoE-era system. Roll everything back to pre-revamp state and you've got a much stronger place to work from.
I think this was true kind of as a... "I don't know any better" perspective in the short-term. But losing is not fun for most people, and running inefficient champions (which that system allowed for very easily) meant that bads had more chances to be bad. It's like League of Legends' items. If you are a vet, you know what to build, as a new player, it's "fun" to have lots of items, but most of the time you are just gonna be inefficient than someone who knows what to build.
the worst thing about the old upgrade system was how hard it was to change build. I think you had to use a reset token. so it effectively cost money to experiment. who knows if all the meta builds were discovered. and even if there was an additional effective build for another deck strategy, who wants to pay to swap their champs back and forth between decks.
Or you could cast your sails, free your inhibitions and decide to completely revamp every rune DOG style at the disgust and possibly picket sign protests outside your office from the older veterans. But what the heck, at least you could do it your way, the exact way you want it. For DOG as a company to succeed, it needs far more new players than it does right now with the remaining survivors leftover from the SOEpocalypse. New and fresh ideas can bring Pox back. I believe in the dream. I think people here love the Lore quite possibly more than they do the gameplay (which is fun). But that's a guess. It needs to be easy to learn and play with a fun story.
This is the best fitting so far. Number of abilities does not make one more powerful. Certain combinations of abilities definitely can tho. Upgrades can always help change roles, themes, and so on. This is what i like. I'm not even saying Rend 1, and Rend 2 upgrades might not fit some runes, but it sure doesn't fit others. About 50% of the "newer" runes available have had almost all upgrades put on one tier. On units like assassins or supports, this removed some aspect of survival, usefulness, or functionality. Combined with the loss of base abilities, its a wonder they were expected to function at all. That being said, i think the initial point of the revision was to shrink the number of abilities on units and therefore decreasing the time invested to learn the game, making it more noob friendly. I think this was a bust. It might have worked if you could have shrunk the straight up number of abilities players needed to learn down first, then modding the number of abilities on the units to fit the new abilities as best as possible. As it is, even with only 4-6 max abilities on most runes, as a new player you still have to read for 1 minute 50 seconds of your turn to figure out all the 1000's of different abilities. By then you have lost. Therefore, without ditching hundreds of unique abilities (like shatter, pilfer, and recycle being shrunk to just shatter), might as well go back to a varied upgrade system that lets people that think outside of the box have fun. Upgrades are awesum, but not as they are now. The SoE upgrade system was great, the currrent system after 1000's of hours of revision could actually be even better than that, but it would take so much work. I also think that rarity should lend a little power to the runes. And that power should be limited in number.
Pre-SOE was riddled with OP runes. One of the better things CorpsE did was remove many of the Combo mechanics, like BBND or hit runes like sacrifice/mobi (although that was hit again later). Pre-SOE also started the "nerf everything the last expansion brought us before the new one" trend. The Dark Knight was a total joke on release, moga, ST amp, Fin Lord, KF/x with Ravagers etc etc. It gave us the Demon Shield and beckon, Attrition FW and 2 years of FS being a no.1 faction. DB, Quick, Mobi, Sac, etc. are all faction defining runes, but also development space limiting runes that have seen repeated nerfs. This doesn't mean SOE was perfect by any means. You saw balance shift to be more dramatically focused on the newest runes and access to the game became garbage due to the need for LE/exo. But, I felt there were less mis-balanced mechannics (like Nora gen, summons, spells etc than before). And, while complexity shot well up, I also felt the runes were actually interesting.
I'd say that is partly because SOE was a time when there were actual game designers (who played the game frequently) working on it. And with Corpse, Rev AND I on the team initially, we balanced each other's outlier tendencies out as well.
I thought deckbuilding/upgrading was half the game and half what distincts good vs bad players? If its "bad" that its possible to build "ineffective" champs or decks, it means you want to move 100% of the game to the tactical combat, and only allow premade champs and decks that devsmake sure are "premade" to maximize efficiency and synergy? This goes in line with discussion about themes, where u want to strengthern them to give less choice to the player. Is this really what the game needs? To me thats like taking away half the fun of the game for sure.
One major downside to that time was that I felt every expansion tried to introduce a new mini theme. Sure, it was fun to see Strig, Creeps, Nids, Jellies whatever introduced, but it got really annoying when old themes stopped getting attention. It was like "Play the new stuff or don't play anything". I much prefer having a Little bit of everything until all the themes are actually competitive. Make for more diversity IMO, even if it does not compell pack sales as well.
I don't understand why you always go to the extremes of things. The point is that systems that allow for high variance in terms of efficiency in "deckbuilding" (we'll use that term to also include upgrade selection and other things of that nature) by definition exacerbates skill differences. And there are ways to mitigate that problem somewhat by not offering false choices (that are outright bad and no one should ever pick), or by providing better tools for learning and improving (ability to see what other people run, etc.). This is how you improve accessibility without giving up choice.
Thought. What if there was a way to set the default skill on your champs to the one most players use. That would help others in knowing what is chosen the most.
Complexity is GOOD, the more player choices the better. Flavor is GOOD, the more distinctive a certain strategy/theme is the better. Faction bonuses are GOOD for the same reasons. Revamp is BAD! FIX the Firking overnurfed champs and themes. Example: You overnurfed shadowrake before even releasing it as a champ, due to whining in previews. Get some sense please! and build on the strongest points of your game! Those being: COMPLEXITY, FLAVOR, FACTION DISTINCTIVITY, DECK BUILDING, CHAMP CUSTOMIZATION, DIFFERENCE IN STRATEGIES
I agree, as long as the choices are REAL. But when the choices are false, it's silly. And complexity for the sake of complexity is bad. Agreed. This is why theme development is important to me. Somewhat disagree. I feel that faction bonuses homogenize runes within a faction, rather than creating diversity. They do create differences BETWEEN factions in some instances, but in others they just serve as a cost discount for the most part (KF) rather than manifesting as a real difference. Nope. Almost all the runes changed from previews to launch, because I am constantly finetuning them. If you secretly was able to see all the runes before launch, you'd realize Shadowrake wasn't singled out. Besides, people were whining without knowing what the new abilities did; that kind of feedback isn't useful in any way.
After hearing about the pre-release version of Ruby Catalyst, thank you for that finetuning, that would have been nerf-called on day 1. Now, I bet it'll be like a week before the vast majority of the UD players figure out how good it is and people start whining about it.
If faction themes gain racials/abilities that make that theme unique in its own faction, and from other themes that do similar things in another faction. Then I am ok with Faction Bonuses being removed. Until that time I vote they stay. For Example: Demon Elfs need to have a far more aggressive racial synergy, than that of the Jakei, and regular Elfs.
i go to extremes because it makes it more easy and pure to discuss different small cha ges and i what direction they affect things. about that there are bad choices that must be protected from players, i totally disagree. First of all, this game is too complex for devs to be able to anticipate all future possible combos, so what appreas to be bad, sometimes could be good. Second, it can be good for newbies to first choose wrong and lose games and then to make adjustments and feel they made a big difference and they win a bit more. Third, according to revamp, nora costs of abilities and upgrades should be balanced, so except in a few very obvious synergy cases there should not be an obvious bad choice as its reflected also on the cost. but i understand that it makes the work for the devs in balancing much much more easy if they dont have to cinsider all different builds of champs.
You may want to consider logical fallacies when making arguments. http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/30-appeal-to-extremes
I was going to make a point, but polltroy activated Incoherent Babbling and I became distracted. Give me some time and I'll get back on topic.
@Sokolov Maybe this has changed since I last looked but a decent number of the new champs have ability lines with only one ability. What's that about? Also in line with your previous post are you guys going to bring back the meta analysis thread where you post what percent of the top players are running what runes?
