I agree with this assessment. At its core NRFTW is a more reactionary game than others. Or rather waiting for the right opportunity.
Some additional points:
With Cooldowns, if you arrange your Runes into some form of Wombo Combo it could feel really satisfying. With Focus only its more realistic to have a single ability combos instead, which are boring.
Without Cooldowns we have stronger competition between individual Runes, which mostly is a bad thing (can be a good thing, because ideally it forces Runes to be pretty balanced in terms of cost or rewards).
Fair points. I also like the idea of opportunity cost. Currently there is none. U carry around a weapon with 1 good Rune and the other 5 items are statsticks / carry your buff and utility runes. I like to play support, but when everyone carries around their own buffs, what is the point. I want to play a Tank stacked with tank runes, a mage stacked with spells, a dps monster with only offensive runes, a rogue stacked with utility and annoyances … More identity to every build.
Maybe Cooldown reduction?
With Cooldowns instead of Focus Costs, more Runes on an item are a bigger advantage, than it is now. So white and legendary items get an additional edge they did not have before.
@ Cibo: Please take care of your language, the discussion might slip where we dont want it
This is not what i said. The point is that there are advantages and disadvantages. And i have the impression you only see “that the others have it easier” without realizing the costs.
I think that you make a Focus Pool 300/ Focus Reg per Second “viable”
Wait for full Focus before enemey contact > delete enemies with Focus Combos > Bosses dont die in a Focus Pool Combo
After that visit the offical forum and complain that normal gameplay and boss Gameplay is total different , and bosses are “garbage” because i must use autoattacks for Focus Regeneration after the game tells me i dont need auto attacks. Give me back my Money
“Normalize” means that the basic framework in this game must be the same for everyone. Means Autoattacks msut be a must have for everyone. Make Focus reg maybe less decay and make focus decay over time. Or make it Focus on Kill and give maybe 50% Focuspool and you can maybe use 1 Focus Skill after kill but no 2-3. The game needs bounds before something becomes “bullsht” ir “OP”.
I’d love a wombo combo or even an ultimate rune with a 60 second cooldown.
Facts. Cooldowns will create competition for the 4 slots rather than: the one rune to rule them all.
I definitely don’t do this as well
I agree with you on build identity. Runes should facilitate this, but, in a way they don’t. In MMORPGs we get abilities relative to our class. I genuinely don’t know how to achieve this in Wicked. I feel like it is more our responsability to do this since we have the freedom. But, then the game incentivizes us to not do this.
I see what you mean now, they could just allow 4 runes on each. Quickest and simplest solution
You could also achieve this with passive runes. Imho something that rn misses anyway.
Edit:
Also you could just add a passive perk on the existing runes that modifies the other runes. With this the rune combination is quite relevant suddenly, even when you dont use the others.
The fated day where I disagree with one of your takes.
I’ve never been a fan of cooldowns in games that are rooted in ARPGs. Wicked is not fully rooted in ARPGs and I haven’t played a game similar to them such as V Rising. What I can say is cooldowns have usually felt too limiting and relegating players to a very passive playstyle.
Commonly in ARPGs, players run around waiting on cooldowns to nuke large clusters of enemies they’ve gathered during the cooldown period. It becomes a much lesser active playstyle and one that’s purely rotational rather than reactionary as well. It also takes away the feeling of investing a good amount into maximum Focus. You gather all this Focus and just let it out on a boss. I feel like a rush is taken from us with this.
I can understand the argument for runes such as buffs. Many of us now carry around a second weapon purely for runes with utility so we can place only offensive runes on our DPS weapon. I really want to have a Healer playstyle in the game, just like Evocator1000, and the second weapon that most carry essentially invalidates this idea. On the flip side, how do you make it so mages can still feel like mages? The basic Fireball still hits hard but now is behind a cooldown and mages are forced to go melee, more so than now.
To summarize: Pros:
Decreased reliance on secondary weapons for utility.
More methodical gameplay.
Cons:
Less feeling of power and control over it.
Potentially limiting the mage fantasy.
Potentially devolving into a waiting game for runes to come back.
You guys wrote so many comments during the time I was at work it would take me too long to actually address them all right now (tired), but I’m glad you had a discussion between yourselves.
Regarding cooldowns, there are ups and downs to it from my perspective, but I wouldn’t want cooldowns to be the solution immediately. The game is still in early access and I think we can still do some more in-depth brainstorming.
The latest idea that I mentioned regarding multiple resources similar to how wow had them seems to be stuck in my mind and I would wanna develop it further, why? Because in a way it fills the different roles or playstyles…
Again I’m going to borrow the names from Wow… for example:
Resource:
Rage - Melee weapons & Runes that use Rage - promotes active and aggressive playstyle, starting the fight with zero resource - the intention is to be aggressive and fill up the resource by attacking the enemy, intended for close combat fighting style.
Energy - Bows & Runes that use Energy (For this example imagine Bow being a mainhand weapon - normal attacks would still only use stamina) - promotes opportunistic playstyle, starting the fight with full resource - the intention is to keep track of your resource regeneration and plan your dmg accordingly while keeping the distance and actively dodging. Intended for people who love ranged arrowy playstyle…
Mana - Staves, Wands & Runes that use Mana - promotes crazy damaging playstyle while resource is up, starting the fight with full resource - the intention is to unleash damaging spells and kill the enemy before you run out of resource. Intended for people who love unleashing magical attacks on the enemies from range and doing their best to prevent them from coming close.
So if I give an example from NRFTW…
Piercing Flurry requires X Rage to use.
Cone Shot requires X energy to use.
Glacial Spike requires X Mana to use.
Wielding a specific weapon would provide you with its resource. Meaning having a staff, your resource is mana; a melee weapon, your resource is rage; bow, your resource is energy.
Regarding rage generation… Fast and light weapons would generate less rage per hit than slow and heavy ones.
New hybrid runes that can be used on multiple weapon types. This would provide even further variations and diversity among the runes and weapons. For example:
Rune A requires X rage or Y mana to use. - Melee weapon or Staff
Rune B requires X rage or Y energy to use. - Melee weapon or Bow
Rune C requires X energy or Y mana to use. - Staff or Bow
depending on the weapon you are currently using.
This is just a simple and broad idea of what could be a nice in-depth system with many possibilities for combat styles, talents & gearing possibilities and so much more. I would like to develop this further so we can see where it leads us and what the possibilities for this are; what challenges (besides implementation and balance) we run into and how to overcome them. If any of you find this idea interesting and would like to help me out, I’d appreciate it. Contact me on discord: Rakunish#2596 so we can brainstorm together
I think most of your concerns can be alleviated by having short cooldowns. Most of V Rising cooldowns are between 6-9 seconds and can be further lowered through jewels. I think that would also be a good baseline for Wicked.
I’ll DM you a V Rising video for how I would like Wicked to play, so you can see it yourself. It is super reactive and you use certain abilities to counter certain mechanics. That would be so cool for Wicked if you slot a certain rune to bypass 1 mechanic.
As for the Rush, they could add rune customization, I was waiting with mentioning this as I wanted to make a bigger post about it. Especially, since a lot of people want a more in depth rune system. But, what you could then do is slot mini runes on other runes. So, you add like a mini rune that makes the ability have like 5 charges. Then if you press it you release 1 charge and holding it begins a channel where you release multiple charges. I have other ideas, but, I’m saving those for my Topic
I hope I have been able to convince you every so slightly
Cooldowns are barely half a solution. If you try to fix it with cooldowns, then you just put your best damage rune on slot 1, second-best on slot two etc. and your in-combat decision tree is as follows:
Q. Which rune should I cast?
A. The lowest slot that is currently off cooldown.
This tree has no branches. Again, I’m not necessarily against cooldowns. PART of a solution could be to nerf all the current damage runes, and then introduce some harder-hitting runes with a long cooldown - and possibly a mechanism for lowering them. But that’s still a bit spammy for my taste.
I’m sticking with runes needing far more mechanical distinctions so that you can make situational choices or chain them for greater effect.
I will say you have at least made me intrigued, haha. You intend to make a different post so I’ll have most of my thoughts for that. A main one I want to mention is Moon would probably have to bend and give a non-rune magic attack to staves if this route were explored, otherwise there will be some upset players about the mage fantasy.
I didn’t have time to read through everything, but what about implementing a “focus refund” mechanic instead, and balance it to ensure it can never get near 100%.
For example, instead of the current focus gain on hit system, we could have something like “regain 20% of the focus spent when using a rune attack”. This ties the focus gain to the cost of the rune attack itself, and it means that the rune attacks can never serve as the focus generator. Staves and mage weapons could have 20-30% built in, and Topazes could grant another 30% or so. As long as the player can never accumulate close to 100%, it should be relatively balanced.
I just want to add that after thinking about it for a while:
If you have specialized resources, balancing is much easier.
However, you disadvantage various different hybrid game styles.
With this you effectively could also just re-add classes, because this is what you favour in the end.
So in the end i like a single resource more, not specialized ones.
True, but, it would already be better than we have now where we default to 1 rune.
But, it is as you say, the idea is contingent on mechanical distinctions between runes.
I’m going to refer to V Rising, again, since it just does it fantastically.
Boss that summons mobs → AOE Ability
Boss that shoots projectiles → Shield Reflection Ability
Boss with a hard hitting ability → Counter Ability
Boss with a dash → Gap close weapon ability + Ranged Ability
Boss has an extended punishment window → Enrage Ability that enhances Attack Speed.
In essence you swap abilities for different instances and combat is so fluid, I highly recommend you watch a V Rising Brutal Boss video. It looks and plays so ing good.
Imagine if Wicked allowed for this, where we have a shield rune that can reflect the echo knights projectiles back at him. He uses his eruption/charge ability we use a leap rune to jump away. Then when we have staggered him we use an ultimate rune/enrage rune.
I’m with you 100% on mechanical distinctions I just want them paired with cooldowns and more customization.
So basically we mostly agree, but with a different sense of emphasis/priority
You mention customization. The devs have been asking what other enchantments we’d like to see. This is a match. I’d like to see enchantments on weapons that customize the runes on that weapon.
E.G.: Multi-projectile runes on this weapon get +1 projectile.
Or: Channelled runes on this weapon can be channelled for +1 second (for increased effect)
My idea for spell / arrow reflect is to have it act like parry and not active all the time. Right now there are enemies who can parry you but they don’t do so all the time.
I think the cure to playing plate and emphasizing focus is a 2-second delay after creating focus (through combat) before the degeneration of focus begins. This would force plate wearing heroes to chain together groups of enemies if they want to have focus-dependent builds. Ups the tension. Having focus pots available to start fights would also be key.
Now if a player wants to wear plate AND be a great mage who plays at range - tough luck - that would make the game incredibly boring (although a casual single player mode that would allow it would be fine).
For mages, the staff damage could either scale with the abilities and/or be the primary source of positive focus generation over time.
To be clear: I don’t want the game to force a playstyle identity onto me. I want to be able to create my own!
From my pov the build identity comes directly from true opportunity cost. Limited Rune Slots with Cooldowns would be one way to force it. When you ideally want to keep all your Abilities on Cooldown, what you can and can’t do and what you can do more of is strongly dependent on what Runes you equip.
But…
This only works when it is somewhat balanced. True opportunity cost = There are multiple great things, that NOT only differ in numbers), but in function as well - Gapcloser, long range, pull / push, status buildup, defense, specific buffs of any kind, … etc.
Look at Hades/Hades II and their Weapon/Boon Choices and combinations. There is true opportunity cost there. You want it all, but you can’t have it all. Once you have it all you can’t even use it all, because you can only use one thing at any given time. That’s how that particular Game handles ressources btw (with a few exceptions).
Also there have to be enough choices and a little bit of freedom. Diablo 4 for example is far too restricted imo (you are limited to 6 abilities in total, which includes basic attacks). In that game you have to fulfill some requirements for a decent build - You simply pick the best performing option for each requirement and your build is set in stone.
Wicked is on the right track with Runes and hotswapping weapons (I think 2 Mainhands and 2 Offhands would be enough though, and allow to make it more intuitive and fast).
Yes, when gems are strong enough that would work. Problem solved
Actually I was not planning on proposing that. It was a mere conclusion, more a con than a pro - If we had cooldowns, more Runes would mean more abilities more frequently → more power → Whites and Legendaries have to be tuned down, or the others up relatively.
Support Runes would be nice though - But not high on my personal priority list.
If I had to choose between 150 Runes and 150 Support Runes resulting in 1 Rune with 3 support Runes that i spam all day, vs choosing between 300 Runes with distinct advantages and disadvantages resulting in 4 different Runes I use frequently i’d much prefer the latter.
If you’d like we can spitball how you would achieve this with a Focus based system without cooldowns… I think its tough. Much harder to balance than cooldowns for sure.
ing good.