Could we perhaps make this game slightly more...compact?

I'll explain what I mean. I just recently started playing this game again after a break that lasted more or less throughout SOE's time in charge.
Now that I've started playing again I do enjoy it. It's just that the game seems to have gotten considerably more cluttered, there's really no other way to put it.

There are just so many different abilities in the game now and so many different ones on each champion that it takes an ungodly amount of time to read through it all and make strategically appropriate decisions, for more than a turn allows for.
While playing against a Kanen bg just now I noticed that Kiergana by herself had 15 different abilities (or icons representing an ability or effect anyway).

Now while I'm sure there are some players who enjoy the fact that the game now requires an almost encyclopedic knowledge of all champions and abilities in order to play well, this is probably not the case for new or returning players.
Personally, I'm still very much used to the old cp system which was engaging in that you could spend cp not only on abilities but attributes as well which created a lot of variety and different ways to play each rune.
By contrast, each rune now no longer has anywhere near that variety but this has been 'compensated' for as it were by cluttering the majority of them with tons of different abilities.

I'm not exactly sure what to do about it other than go back to the old system many players might not even remember but...as DoG rebalancing anyway perhaps a general review could be undertaken to at least reduce the amount of abilities per champ, as well as the total amount?

The game is still very intimidating for newcomers at the moment.

 

Without mentioning a lot of icons are repeated among different abilities and effects ^^'

 

Of course I completely understand that, it would be totally unrealistic to expect instant results here. Was just curious what DoG's thoughts on this were and whether you were planning on renovating the system itself in addition to rebalancing the runes.
It's great to know that this is the case even if it is much too early to predict what that final system will look like. I will happily continue to play and try to make the best of the current situation until that time comes

 

It would be a big undertaking but one idea worth mentioning is ability consolidation. There are numerous abilities that have several different ranks when, in reality, a single rank could suffice. For example, there are three ranks of Damage Shield: Physical but ranks 1 and 2 are rather pointless. Some abilities, like Regeneration, should keep their ranks, however.

 

Should remove CP/leveling and just build the champ how it "should be" built to avoid design space issues and make it simpler. Yes, people want customization but you can offer that with reskins, taunts, and with making sure each champion has the potential to be played.

Personally I would love a rotation system for this game to avoid issues that consantly came up over the years with powercreep, shoebox, and general overly general units or ones too niche. Take like 100 runes from each faction, then have a yearlong rotation of 4 expansions for a standard format. If its 10 runes per faction per expansion thats 140 runes per faction for standard play in a 30 rune deck there is loads of variation potential.

People who dont want to have to buy in have the ability to run each expansion rune for a year before having to replace it which happens much faster when powercreep was used to cycle units out with Corpse. Likewise they would also have a extended or classic league they can play in which would give runes an extended play time but be " uncontrolled" interms of balance since you would focus on standards for that.

edit: Also there seems to be way to many themes right now. Everthing seems to want to be a theme and thats just plan silly as there is way to much overlap/redundancy already.

 

Minor customization (such as minor abilities and stat boosts) is still a possibility, and I prefer some ability customization to no customization. The champion can still serve one role, and upgrades can still work as long as they only provide small changes.

Ideally, each rune would only have a few abilities, but this takes a while to get right.

 

This should of been the first thing that was done.....and while were on the subject mixing custom games into the ranked lobby was a mistake.

 

However, I do agree with keeping an environment where only the standard public decks could be used secure. There used to be a difference between "Anything Goes" "Training Grounds" and "Ranked Play" - They then got rid of the Training Grounds and made it Anything Goes, but kept the Training Grounds name, now they put Anything Goes and Ranked Play together, returning the Training Grounds to what it was originally intended

I don't really see the problem with it though aenix, it's not called "Ranked Play", it's called the "Battlegrounds", *shrug*

 

The problem is there is nowhere for players with unlvleed runes to play they cant take custom decks in training grounds, not everyone wants to play campaigns because lets face it its unbalanced as hell, add lag to the equation and bots take nearly five minutes to make a turn, then theres battle grounds its the most inactive looby there and considering its supposed to be ranked and custom games its completely broken, its needs a serious overall right now single player is the most active lobby.

 

I disagree. Bug squashing is more important than perfect balance. That said balance is very important. I know ability consolidation is a big project but if a discussion thread was created I know a lot of people would help point out areas of improvement.

 

Balancing runes also takes a long time, and it can't be done in pieces -- if a counter is changed but not what it's countering, things will be temporarily off balance.

There's a lot to do, and it seems like doing quicker things is a good idea here.

 

Dont get me wrong I know its a big job, and perhaps my words were poorly chosen, at the end of the day I just want poxnora to be as enjoya as it was back when dow was dow and tg was tg and most of the runes were semi balanced.

 

Am I the only one who likes the game BECAUSE it's complex? I'm really fed up of MMOs dumbing everything down, Pox allows me hours of experimentation to find interesting new combinations and the like…as for newbies being "overwhelmed", that's what public decks are for, to ease them into it. I'm really sick of games being progressively dumbed down for the uncreative and strategically incompetent...

 

There's a difference between intricacy and complexity. Pox Nora can be trimmed down a bit, but this doesn't need to come at the cost of intricacy. Having 12+ passive abilities/effects on the same champion is poor design; i think we can all agree that it's not healthy.

 

Same here. I played very actively for a year or so starting around Dawn of Elements, where I thought the game was incredibly deep and complex, but in a good way.

Due to life events I had to take a long break. A couple of years or so later I try the game again, and it has turned into a monstrosity. This was incredibly disheartening to me. Knowing that even I, as a returning player, was put off by the feature creep, I knew that there was no chance that the game would remain healthy with a constant influx of new players (and that's exactly how it came). Since then I have checked in every once in a while, but it never got any better. I remember when sokolov became lead designer, I believe he said something about wanting to reduce the ability creep. Nothing ever materialized... It's so frustrating, because the potential of the game is completely wasted like this. I am glad that the Owls are looking into this, and that is why I dare to be hopeful about the game's future again. But after all these years of disappointments, I will believe it when I see it.

I just played a game against Voil. Every single one of them had a full bar of passive abilities (and it doesn't help that they all roughly look alike). At first this was just annoying, but when the game filled up with champs, I completely lost any sense of what was going on and lost my will to continue playing. This isn't just a matter of getting used to playing against Voils (which I have done countless times in the past), I would just literally prefer to learn Chinese than to memorize all those abilities.

It's one thing when an exotic hero is a bit more complex, the problem with New Pox Nora is just that this philosophy has seeped even into common runes. I have a lot more to say about this, but that is for another thread.

 

Lets just stop for a second and compare the two editions, they are totally different.

The early Poxnora (the one I played) was to a point well balanced game lobbys were made perfectly, game lobbys had moderators, the greens and yellows actually cared about the game, the rune customization was deep and complex much more complex than it is now.

And now we have this new version, game lobbys that are absolutely useless, take 0 people in tournament and bazaar lobby so what happens we have people in drums of war or battlegrounds as its now called spamming their trades their because noone can be bothered to go into the bazaar, this is where moderators would be useful just as they were in the early days.

Runes that have too many abilities, abilities that are just the same as others, abilities that dont work they way they are designed, rune pictures and descriptions all messed up.

This never happened early pox gen.

 

I was thinking: how to make the game less complex when there are 2000 runes? If you take away 50% or more of the abilities, alot of peuple will be upset, because alot of runes will become less good. I did not find a good solution.

Just now I got an idea. What if you introduce two different ranked play:

A) ranked play like it is now, for those who want super complex (no change)
B) ranked play with ONLY Core set runes

alternatively

B) ranked play with ONLY Core set runes and latest expansion set runes

(second option to still give peuple reason to buy the new runes)

I strongly belive the one way to get peuple hooked in this game is to give new players possibility to play ranked play, its just not the same to play training games or games against bots etc. This is also a very easy fix, could be done prob by one programmer in a week or so

Of course you would need to add some better filters for the rune manager and the rune checklist etc as well.

 

You will find that most who play now are old school pox players or are players that were about before it went downhill, I recognize a lot of them some are not here but some are, the fact of the matter is there is no unique champs anymore all if not most of the runes are exact to each other, it has come a point that no faction is strong in their area anymore because other factions have it now, i could go into examples but all you have to do is look at the runes to see what i mean.

 

I fully agree with you, it seems now the only thing that really separates the factions is choice of race and some basic spells. Thats why I sugget a ranked play with only core set runes, these were made before they ruined the game and with exception of some buffed runes, should be "ok".