As far as I know, DoG has not made a final decision yet. They are now cataloging (whatever that means) and vetting (I hope their dog is ok). So maybe this thread will help them in that process. Here is the challenge... How would you make possession a viable theme? Please provide specific descriptions of the ability, spells, equips and champs affected. This may include nerfs/buffs to other factions, maps, bonuses, whatever it takes. edit: note, I am not setting myself up as a judge and will not comment on any ideas posted. this thread is meant to be a platform to showcase how each nominee would tackle a difficult balance issue (as well as bring it to DoGs attention). Very curious to see what any other FW players thoughts on this might be as well.
Can only nominees reply? Oh, well, I'll reply anyway. I think that's a very tough challenge even for the developers themselves. For starters, nobody plays possession as a long term strategy, following the fantasy trope of a long duel between the hero and his mind controlled best friend. In Pox Nora, possession is either about cliff dive, or poison/lava hike (which, iirc, FW on itself have none), is all about insta kills, or close to. Hence, a theme based purely about it would be so infuriating I don't think it would go alive on its current form. Anyone remember when cyclops hurler had that ability to create chasms? Or Timmy? Possession should be designed with the idea there will be a split ready to break it. The only instance I remember possession being broken within FF FW and no map dependency was more an oversight with throw bones + necrosis. And I think everybody agrees domination should be reworked, if anything because the infuriating nature of it. So, this lead us to two paths: - We mess around with the code. In this case, we simply add some of the myriad of ideas around to fix domination (my personal favourite would be the same clause than gale force), and we slap a similar line to possession abilities. "When target champion is possessed...", then we add "it gains lumbering / immobile", or "get its AP reduced to 1" (to avoid abuse with steal life), or "its speed is reduced by 2". The idea is to reduce the amount of AP available to be employed on terrain shenanigans. Disabling a champion can be a powerful tool, but turning it around is entirely another matter, hence it needs strong drawbacks. If a player can possesses the opponent scout and remove it from the nora font long enough, even if said possessed champion does nothing, then possession is a match winner condition by itself. - We work only with what we have available. /me throws the laptop throw the window and flips the table. I don't think is possible to made possession a viable theme with the current setup, without a split breaking it in half with create chasms and poison or lava tricks. If anything, I would slap loyalty, and some kind of bound race on any champion intended to be part of the theme.
I would not make any work whatsoever towards making a Domination theme runable. MY secondary reason is that FW has several underdeveloped themes I would concider far more importnet to flesh out. The primary reason: It would be the most hated theme by far if it had potential and the most useless one if it did not. And actually making it work would be a colossal task. You would have to change the rules for chasmdiving, Ironwill/Prestige/Bastion of will, Differentiate between spellbased and champion based possession and how they interact. Resources to do that would have to come from other areas and i think it would be a waste of energy.
I understand the possession dilemma. If it was an easy fix it wouldn't be much of a challenge. I would hope though that making the runes runnable is worth the effort even if it doesn't amount to a proper theme. I miss the disturbed spirit and it's probably only a matter of time before dom gets nerfed.
I wouldn't... (Catalogue this as the most succinct response I've ever given before elaborating). To elaborate. I don't see possession, solely by itself, as a mechanic to build a theme around. It's a piece of a much greater theme. Something akin to that whole mess of a racial the ferren things got, only not actually quite as clunky. Two champ types; Enablers and Controllers. Enablers break the defenses of the target, and Controllers manipulate the target. Manipulations can range through things as simple as Possession, to a few more juicy, but not really any more complicated things, like making a champ take damage when it attacks, or lose X amount of speed for Y amount of spaces moved, and so on. As cool as it would be to be able to just mentally dominate your opponent's champs, I think aiming solely on the single mechanic itself is screaming to birth a deck-type that would arguably be even more rage-inducing than AP Denial decks. You know, those decks that are completely and utterly focused on driving one game nullifying mechanic to the brink of indecency? Yeah, making possession all by itself a focused mechanic to build around would make AP Denial an enjoyable match up. Mainly for the fact that in Denial, the question is 'What can I do?' and in possession it's just a flat 'Whelp, can't do anything.' My 2 nora on the matter.
Seems like the new standard for FW design is to make it work more or less like other factions and not be too annoying. k
Annoying should never be the goal on how something works. Its a game, its supposed to be fun for both parties.
Do you have anything helpful, constructive or beneficial to say on these forums ragic? It feels like all you do is shooting off snide remarks and ask for a FF ranked ladder.
well lets see, in this thread I asked for helpful and constructive comments on how to make possession workable. did I get any?
sorry shim, I stopped reading your post after you called throw bones an oversight. though the rest of it seemed more geared towards how to nerf dom rather than how to buff possession. and plz, FW is supposed to be annoying. why you all drunk the coolaid of the general forum is beyond me. I suppose you will be jumping on the global dmg bandwagon next and calling for nerfs to unholy tomb? its annoying you know. oh and blocks. don't forget those annoying things. and oh my BOON OF THE UNDEAD. that unfair racial bonus has been OP for soooo long. lets nerf that too. sad sad day for FW. First its flavor gets kidnapped and then its players fall in love with the kidnappers.
I casually play FW, so I'll bite, but take everything I say as such. Given the availability of counters to possession and the general consensus towards the idea of possession in the game, it would be difficult to propose a theme or module based around it. I think that Voices in Their Head is a solid example of possession done right. It has a clearly defined role, a decent drawback in the range of the ability and is, in my opinion, arguably well designed and balanced. I would not mind seeing more units with this ability, however, we should be careful. A theme based around this "gimmick" is vulnerable to hard counters. Does this mean that due to counters, the units should be able to fend for themselves should the "gimmick" be countered? Possibly. Whisperghast is a powerful and simple unit with ViTH as an upgrade. Is Whisperghast the direction to take future ViTH champions? I see units with this ability as being more fragile myself, so potentially, yes. Another possession mechanic I'm a fan of is the SL spell, Enslave. One again, the role is clearly defined and has it's drawbacks, but can be extremely effective given the situation, just like the more hated version of possession, Domination. Players seem to passionately hate Domination and don't want to see more of it. This is understandable, given the potential power it has to swing games. If Possession is a theme we want to explore, the kinds of abilities I propose are as follows: Voice in Their Head, perhaps with a longer cooldown if it becomes too prevalent. Cast:Enslave on a unit with not much else going for it with a fair cooldown. I don't see this as being unreasonable. An ability, let's call it "Turncoat" for now, that reads as: "When this champion deals damage on a basic attack, the target will attempt a melee attack on an adjacent opposing unit." Preferably an ability for a melee unit. Not directly possession, but the concept is similar. An ability where when the unit is attacked, you possess the attacking champion for 2 turns and they receive some sort of debuff, such as speed reduction or distract. Functionally like an uncleansable feedback or stun. This would have to be on a low HP unit and not tossed around like candy. Those are my ideas, flaws and all. Cheers, Ragic.
Setting chasms to be damaging terrain would help make the current use more acceptable but the same potential is still there to turn champs into self destructing bombs unless all damaging terrain/effects are toned down. Otherwise this creates too much of an unbalancing swing. The duration of possession would need to be set to just 1 turn but as the tradeoff it wouldn't paralyze the unit using it. So I guess more like Crown of Corruption instead of the current ability on champs. It becomes more of a punish like ability except with room for more interesting uses. This would indeed result in steal life getting a nerf ^_^.
I disagree with our faction being the 'annoying' faction, only in so far as most of the complaints I see about things we have as innane whining. Not that there isn't merit in some things that get brought up, but most of it is silly. People don't like to see their carefully laid plans ruined, and that at the core, is our faction flavor. 'We are the end of all things, the answer to every question.' It's why we get some of the better defense bypasses, and the bulk of raw hp swinging effects. Which all are used to thrash investments on the other side of the board. So naturally, we're going to take more than the lion's share of the flak whenever the word 'nerf' starts flying around.
well it seems the answer lies somewhere in the realm of allowing possession to be one of those 'investment swings' without being the ultimate swing (an instakill). But if you take away the ability to kill the possessed champ, how then do you make it worth the deck slot and nora to run a possession champ. If you simply removed every chasm from the game, would anyone still run Dom? How do you make investing in taking over an enemy worth it when the game is centered on killing the enemy champs. What if you permanently lost the source of possession and gained the possessed unit permantely, then readjusted costs accordingly? So a disturbed spirit would be a risky investment since its pretty much useless until it takes something over, but once it has, you get the nora advantage (assuming you took over a champ that costed more than your investment in the spirit). In that kind of situation you wouldn't even have to remove chasms, as you would simply be killing your own champ. spell based possession would clearly be too hard to balance, so I would differentiate between 'possesion' and 'domination', keeping 'dominated' a temporary condition. iron will would need to be looked at again and maybe also split into 2 things, one being a protection against possession and the other a resistance to domination (perhaps lowering the number of turns controlled rather than a hard counter). Then how do you discourage the killing of a 'dominated' champ? I would have no problem with domination being thought of as only partial control that wouldn't allow suicide moves (but then increase its duration). But only if 'possession' was its own ability with superior effect and fewer counters. but if 'death by chasm' is unfair via possession/domination, it should also be unfair by any other means (knockback, etc). and chasms just be unpassable terrain except by flying.
So now we're on the track of logical discussion again, I'll bite. A difference between possession and domination would be a very good start. Possession being the weaker of the two would be allowed to work like it is now, with more or less gobs and gobs of counters (Although, we do need to hang the global reach of prestige). Domination on the other hand, is relatively uncounterable. The Hero ability can still make a champ immune, and maybe a couple other things, but for the most part, Domination will be the 'hard possession.' Domination would require far more intense mental effort to control the unit, so that when it dies, the 'psychic feedback' is potent enough to damage or kill one of your own champs (Real, non-summoned/illusion), or in the absence of those, your shrine. Something in tune with remaining hp sounds like a good place. This also means domination as a debuff is uncleansible, and lasts a bit longer. Since possession would become one of those 'Oh, a weak mind, punch yourself in the face' parlor tricks. And we can add even more counters to drive down the cost of the ability (Half the reason, I'm sure, Disturbed costs so much). Such as damage in a certain range (1/4 hp?). It takes a big enough wallop, and it's mind clears and returns to its owner's control. Also, we could explore a third layer. Such as for Disturbed Spirit, where for the duration of the possess, the possessing champion is removed from play. So now we have the means for establishing 'tiers of possession.' Lowly rank 1 possession, easily broken, with the most counters, it's effect on nora cost is minimal, and you're likely only to really make benefit of it in the early game. Haunting. (Maybe keep it exclusive to Spirits or champs with phase shift on base). Your champ leaves play, and the target is possessed and defiled for X number of turns. And Domination. The least distributed, and most powerful form, This is the version the spell applies, and might [MIGHT] show up on one champion. Cuts through all forms of possession 'counter' except the Hero ability, with the added disadvantage that the target dying while possessed is going to cause some damage to transfer to something you own (An encouragement to not just toss it off the cliff, in other words). Now, we need to can the global range of prestige before we can try to implement any of that. I'm not even sure if I can blame Crupz for that one, but it's still a ridiculous hardcounter ability that should have never been allowed to see the light of day. I'll blame him anyways. Along side this, we need another champ ability or debuff condition, that temporarily makes a champ unable to benefit from effects such as iron will. Can go completely uncreative and just call it 'shattered will.' Shattered Will would also amplify the effects of other champs designed to work alongside the possess/haunt/dominate champs to flesh out a 'Control Theme.' So, we have a symbiotic relationship between 'Enabler' champs and 'Control' champs that requires more strategic placement than just 'derp casting' a dominate on the champ nearest a cliff, but not so many working pieces that you need a Ph.D in PMP to play a deck. AND, for one last effort, we can enable a whole new suite of ability designs that provide passive effects that force your opponent to make decisions. "Rigid Mind" - Movement becomes painful for the targeted champ. For every three spaces moved while under the effect of Rigid Mind, they receive a stacking debuff that applies -1spd per stack. This effect is doubled if the target is under the effects of Shattered Will. "Heavy arms"- Damage dealt by this champion is reduced by 15% per attack while under the effects of Heavy Arms. This effect is doubled if the target is under the effects of Shattered Will. "Paranoia" - This champion suffers 1 psychic damage for every empty space between it and the nearest champion. This effect is doubled if the target is under the effects of Shattered Will. So on and so forth. At least, that's where I'd start........and not finish until all quake beneath the will and power of mono-black control.
