Upgrades are going to be the death of this game

I had a full explanation planned for why this is but I doubt anyone will take the time to read it and most of the responses will ignore the basis anyways so i'll stick to a tl;dr version.

Upgrades force you to tack on extra abilities to a champion which results in unintended powercreep. Everybody takes the same upgrades on their champs so the idea that you're customizing your runes is a delusion. Nobody enjoys leveling runes and tokens are a hassle to get now (seriously you can make money some other way). The rare few champs that actually fit more then one role can be split into two which opens up new rune development spaces.

 

check out my thread and you will see that people will read.

I see you're bashing THE CURRENT system. since there is new incoming, you should focus on it.

 

The proposed system is admittedly the best you could hope for with a leveling system and I give the owls props for it. However I think they'll find it is difficult to give a champ a core purpose AND supply it with four different upgrade choices. Removing the leveling system altogether makes the revamp easier, makes keeping runes balanced easier and eases the burden on new players. I know everyone loves the customization aspect of this game but it just doesn't fit with what pox needs to do.

 

Make upgrading happen in-game, and give a wider variety of options (like League). No more static champs. Dynamic, in-game upgrade paths with a variety of viable options for different champs to follow, that are based on time spent, nora collected, damage done, and CP gained (like what it shows at the end of the game)... allows you to build the champ during the game. This could then take the place of sideboards, and allow for more flexibility in response to your opponents faction, theme, racials, style, and choices.

 

Upgrades make balancing much harder. I think in the long run if we want to keep the game balanced with 1000+ champs, we're gonna have to cut them down at some point. It's going to become too time consuming and too hard to keep balancing them.

 

Is this post also taking into consideration that LVL 1 runes now come "leveled" making the difference between a lvl 1 and lvl 3 rune negligible as opposed to a massive difference burdening new players?

 

how did you come up comparing League (MOBA) with PoxNora?

I mean, if we want to create "growers", it might be the whole expansion based on such champions, but at most, it should be just design choice, not game template.

however, growers introduce new problem... it's snowballing on dope. winning font battle, taking globe, getting map presence already gives you a significant advantage. what you ask is to snowball it to the whole new level.

and in general, that was simply not clever enough to compare MOBA and TCG/TBS. MOBA is designed around that. what you suggest might go well if that would be new game. like new-new. it's extremely experimental.

as for now, if community would like growers more, we could ask for developers to introduce some of them to see how the game accepts them.

actually, I have one template for grower ability.

Prowess: Y/X - When this champion makes a basic attack, it gains rank of Y. When this champion uses Y ability, it gains rank of X.

guess what comments I got. "these abilities need duration!!!"...

 

Sir, If I'm understanding you properly then it sounds like a serious overhaul of one the major systems in the game. While I appreciate the dynamic adaptation that MOBAs provide, a large portion of the appeal of this game is the deckbuilding. I enjoy playing favorites with certain factions or themes and tinkering with things that some might not consider meta.

I suppose the best description of my position is that I'm against upgrades that only add to the value of a rune rather than even-handed utility. Many have pointed out that if a rune is less than three stars it's indisputably weaker than it's 200cp counterparts.

 

Why exactly do people think that the new upgrade system is a good thing? It's the same as the upgrade system under Octopi except MORE restricting with less customizability. Can we please just remove cp and stop wasting time that could be spent balancing the runes?

 

You do know that all of these arguments for why upgrade options are bad can be used to explain why split decks are bad.... right?

 

If "growers" are imba, then make the abilities not imba. If snowballing is imba, then there are a metric Bane Shift-ton of runes that need to be completely eliminated from the game. If dynamic, weird, variable, flexible, and non-static abilities, runes, upgrades, and synergies constitute insurmountable obstacles to game viability, to the degree that the entire upgrade system should be scrapped (when it has been a core part of the game since its inception)... then we should simply play chess, and stop pretending. Hey, we could even sell customizable skins for our chess pieces. If I skin my chess set with elves, we could say I was playing KF!

Seriously, the upgrade system is nowhere near as stale, damaging, or broken as you folks are implying. I run things with different upgrades a lot more than you might imagine, and I see people running alternate upgrades a lot more than you might think...

I think I smell an ulterior motive with respect to token costs. If that's the root of this, then just say so, but seriously, customizable upgrades are interesting, fun and different... they add to the complexity in a nice way, and what is needed is not to eliminate them, but to make the upgrade choices meaningful and interesting.

When I was talking about in-game leveling, I was talking about having the same set of upgrades on the runes. I was also talking about still only being able to choose two out of the four. However, you can imagine a case where a champ that has one upgrade that is phys. resist 2, and another that is detection 3. Now, normally, you'd either A) choose the detection and use that champ as support... or you'd choose phys. resist, and get a different detection champ. Under the system I imagine, you could place that champ, and start using it... as it gained CP, you'd have the option of upgrading either Phys.Resist or Detect... by that time, you've had a chance to see what your opponent is doing, and could make an upgrade choice that benefitted you the most.

It eliminates the "oops, I got a bad matchup, now I lose to drawluck" problem...

Again, TL;DR -- it's not the upgrade system that is the problem, it is the upgrades themselves that are a problem. (and I contend the static nature of those choices augments the problem)... so, make the upgrades better. Make them choose-able in-game.

 

@RedDain I would love to see you balance that though

 

65K per year with benefits and relocation, 3 year contract, and done.

 

(I'd start by re-costing abilities, and charge nora for upgrading in-game)

and, btw, the system I suggest would eliminate tokens entirely...

 

if dain ever gets signed to DOG, i think part of his contract has to be that he has to have a 48 hour cooldown period before he ups and nerfs something


#ragedain#redrage#sinkofthethunderpedes



also just sayin, if you're getting stealthrushed and your best shot at detecting them relies on being on the field/in combat for a while to actually do so, it still doesn't really "eliminate" drawluck. in a game with draws, nothing eliminates drawluck.

 

And how exactly do ingame upgrading possibilities help us ever to balance things?

Sounds even more imbalanced than out of game upgrades because you always start with the highest form of efficiency on deploy and only later are obliged to spend nora on it. I honestly think this is a ridiculously silly idea.

 

My feeling is that upgrades need to be minor in order to work well. That way, the champion is still basically the same, just tweaked one way or the other. I've discussed this more in other threads.

The main issue with major upgrades is having two or more different builds for champions -- then it's very difficult to see which champion your opponent is playing with. Addressing this will be difficult, thus this is why players oppose using upgrades which change the role of the champion.

 

I've had this idea, but realized it(among many others) are more fit for a Poxnora 2.0.

 

Most like customization. That is why a % of us ask TO PAY for taunts, skins, special font zone appearance, and several avatar options per faction. (Just to name a few). I don't believe in "unintended powercreep", to be honest. But I also 100% agree that all too often the best upgrade choices are fairly obvious. (And if one does not get it, just copy the 1337s anyway). Thus I would LOVE to see better choices, which would improve ye olde customization somewhat. Acquiring tokens is very, very easy--but not sleazy. Leveling avatars is beyond simple as well.

I am most pleased that DoGz be in da house. But the road ahead will be most challenging. Optimism is needed.

Pox's path will probs look something like the following to the majority:

 

To be fair some upgrades are actually choices. They really serve to stratify champs for different BG/theme styles or give them a different role.
It's just been impractical to design the game around making this a standard.
The new 'old' system leaves me hopeful.

I don't know that I'd pay nora for taunts, when I say 'pay' I mean $.

I'd be pretty miffed if taunts even cost 1 nora more.