Forgive the English, not my 1st language and don't have too much time... Extended from this post here: http://forums.poxnora.desertowlgame...y-council-thread-poll-inside.5758/#post-81953 ====================== Original post regarding summons: Hello, I'd like to share the idea that 'hard countering' may be bad game design. I think nerfing summons is the correct choice rather than having more 'hard counters' to summons. Hard counters in games are poor design. It facilitates very little player interactions. Some hard counters probably exist because some effects are so powerful, it's easy to stick a hard counter and bandage it up. Some, not all. If I deploy something so powerful that the other player can do very little about it, unless he happens to draw a counter to what you're doing in order to not lose. This is bad game design. At the same time, if your strategy was built around summoning and its too easily countered by a skill like sever summons, you dont really get interesting gameplay out of it, since he just hard countered you... The fact that I'm seriously considering sticking a shielded, magic immune salaman negamage in any bg i run just to cast sever summons, is a symptom of summons too powerful, therefore making a skill like SEVER SUMMONS seem so powerful. By extension, the rock-papers-scissors style matchup in most games, is also bad game design due to lack of interesting player interactions. ================ I'd like to expand on this, since I think it's a multi layered issue. Things I can think of that allow no player interactions at all currently in poxnora, unless the countered player draws another counter as well: 1/Summons being too powerful(hp, damage, etc), 2/summon swarming, elemental immunities/eater, 3/arrow eater, 4/elusive, 5/the old nohkan do, etc. 6/ Some suggested solutions to the above are: 1/Summon swarming need to be addressed by the rate of summons, handicaps to free pets, etc. Capping HP/damage/upgrades on summons to something like a 10 or 15 HP max, damage cap of like 10, etc. This way they are manageable and no heavy desire for sever summons. 2/ Elemental immunities/eaters should not have existed so casually, I'm not around long enough but was this a symptom of elemental damage ramp was too high? Or did this exist since the beginning of this game design? Some suggestions to elemental immunities/eaters should be get rid of them all, and just let 50% resistance be a cap and perhaps hard to get, perhaps your average resistances should be around 35%. This still rewards having alt damages. I suspect the desire for alt damage is due to the fact that immunities and eaters are so rampant and you have no way to play against it till you switch elements. Removing them almost completely and just go with resistances should alleviate this and still reward playing with alt damage. In psychic or poison BG, an immunity/eater hard counters your bg resulting in no player interactions unless you happen to draw a counter to that counter, which is mechanisms that make a champion weak vs your element.... You may also need to tone down the cap to elemental damage ramp, 25~30%? 3/ Arrow eater: Again I'm not keen on poxnora history but I suspect 'Absorb' was a re-design of arrow eater, because arrow eater really allows no interactions unless you heavily dump nora on spot removals, which puts you at a heavy disadvantage. If your melee champs are pure meatshields with no damage output(bloated toad im looking at you), game over, and if your melee champs are too squishy to be able to trade with arrow eater, game over. Solution is that arrow eater probably should not exist, and Absorb is a step in the right direction. One question I have is, is the design of arrow eater a symptom of power creep and the fact that ranged attacks were getting way too strong in pox? This is what I suspect happened. One way is to tone down ranged attacks in this game, at the same time tone down healing values in order to reward poking, but not so much that it has become a poking meta, there's a balance that needs to be reached. 4/ Elusive... suffers the same as arrow eater, pretty damn powerful mechanism, more powerful than absorb because stun is not easy to come by, out of the current existing mechanisms, I like absorb better from a balance perspective. 5/ NKD fundamentally changes the way the opponent plays the game, searching to counter it, the amount of effort piloting the decks between two players is very different, because it takes so much effort to get around NKD especially ST has support spells to enhance NKD (blizzard cloak, etc). Suggested solution: don't know, if I were designing this I'd deemed it too powerful to make it past brainstorm stage, but I suspect these were mechanisms spawned in during the heavy SOE power creep days. 6/ Elven prodigy: Elusive, blindfire, surge:enemy, 6-8 range... Currently dropping something like an elven prodigy(and protecting it well) can probably win you the game. A package such as elven prodigy also fundamentally changes the way the opponent plays the game, such that the piloting efforts are extremely polar. I'm not specifically bashing this one rune, however I think it's a great example to show condensed power creep. Suggested solution: I don't know, I suspect this is a multi-layered issue and perhaps from a history of power creep, ranged damage too high, SOE being silly, etc... Most of these things wouldn't make it past the brainstorming stage for me... Could it be that a lot of these mechanisms were created because some already existing mechanisms were deemed too strong, therefore needed a quick bandage fix like complete immunity? I'm thinking damage too high, ranged damage too strong, range is too long/too far, etc. Aside from revamp and simplifying abilities on runes, do you think the next step is to fundamentally change the game is played? Right now it's like an armsrace, they deploy super strong ranged champ, you deploy arrow eater to counter that, they deploy super strong melee to counter arrow eater, or find a way to spot remove, etc, all of which are not interesting playing choices, because they allow one sided steamroll if not countered, you can't do anything about it. Why is one-rounding so important? Is it because healing is too strong, or is it because damage is so high that if you don't one-round something, you get one-rounded in return? Or both, plus other factors? In the recent changes, we are trying to move away from one-rounding, right? Addressing one-rounding will have to address healing values as well, and perhaps increasing base HP in relation to global damage, environmental damage, and the newly adjusted ranged damage values, whatever they might be. That's all for now, will think of more, forgive the poor language.
I believe Arrow Eater was on Pincushion (Shattered Peaks expansion) from the start. Sever Summons is a little too hard-counter though.
True, I think sever summons probably wouldn't be desired if summons were weaker and more manageable. There was a time I debated to slot it in or not before revamp, and the answer was no, since summons were manageable back then, for some reason.
I agree with several of your points, but I want to touch on the following: Hard Counters There are times when hard counters are appropriate and necessary for preventing stagnation. Without the existence of Arrow Eater/Elusive, range-heavy factions would bully melee-heavy factions like UD. Likewise, immunity to a type of damage can serve as an important tool for dealing with Amp BGs. In my mind, anything that prevents your opponents from overemphasizing one way of playing the game to the point of exclusivity is a good thing. Every BG should need to run a few damage types and mix melee/range champs. On the other hand, excessively efficient hard counters like Sever Summons or Unobstructed view are definitely unhealthy for the game. The consumed resource (AP/Nora) ratio is so skewed as to be game winning maneuvers at times. To elaborate, Sever Summons seems like it would be more appropriate as an on-hit effect rather than an activated ability with massive range. Alternatively, it could be a defensive passive that destroys a summon after it damages the champion. Unobstructed View should provide all friendly champions with Detection 2 so that you must spend AP to move about or your opponent can attempt to avoid your temporary Detection coverage. In either situation, you expend a limited resource like AP or HP rather using an infinitely scalable ability/spell. One-Rounding This concept exists because an almost dead champion deals just as much damage as a fully healed champion. Additionally, CC is never to be trusted as spot cleansing is an expected part of every BG. To that end, trying to prevent the need for one-rounding is a futile effort given that it's no different than the practice of "focus fire" in most PvP environments. It is more effective to knock someone/thing out of a fight, entirely, than it is to merely hurt them.
On the other hand, look at how The Banner Saga does things: Health is directly related to damage. Unfortunately, this solution makes champs that are almost dead laughable nuisances that it is almost better to leave alive, as they will do no damage unless they are heavily optimized in armor breaking instead (in fact, due to their turn system, it probably is better not to kill weakened dudes, but that is a completely different issue that has no bearing on Pox).
Great explanations, thank you. What do you think of rather having a full immunity/eaters, we tone the abilities down a bit with things like Evasive 3, Absorb, and 50% resistances to elements? This way, it still rewards alternative damages, still rewards melee damage over ranged, but its not so helpless for the other player that they can do nothing about it unless they draw another rune? At the same time, do ranged damage need to be addressed with a damage cap, and do minimum damage need to be raised? The damage cap is to prevent damage creep on range from going out of control, and min damage raised a bit since to be frank, some runes are just boring because they do no damage, slowing down the game. As a separate topic, I feel like there should be a sweetspot for the maximum range in this game, right? you need 3 AP to make your first attack, the map is only so big, and your usual 6 speed champ only gets 6 AP a turn, there must be some average estimation of what the maximum range on a champ should be, before it becomes too strong? I feel like that range is something like 5, and 6 or beyond should be hard to come by, what do you guys think? Don't want to make the game too boring either, but this should give the melee a better chance, since closing the gap and reserving 3 AP might be a challenge vs some high range champs. In this game, range = AP!
Using damage mitigation is usually better than damage immunity, but removing immunity entirely isn't a good idea. DoT abilities require that you damage your target to be applied. Even if ranged were only doing 1 damage per attack, that's still enough to apply a DoT of any rank. KF Archers is a prime example of how this works. They have multiple abilities/DoTs that trigger when they successfully deal damage and the spell Fire for Effect can provide Burn 3 (Charred 5) to all Archers as needed. Creating a damage cap for ranged and/or melee, separately, doesn't seem like a good idea. BG's that rely on boosting damage in the mid-late game to compensate for a slow early game would be adversely affected. It would also slow the game down more than the revamp already has; that's not appealing. Regarding low damage runes, there are a number of reasons for why they exist, but I agree that some could use a damage bump. I agree that long-range champs should be rare which, to be fair, they definitely are rarer after the revamp, but they're less of a problem if you keep the hard counters we've discussed. Range 7 doesn't matter if you are immune to ranged attacks.
