General community feedback on plague and pestilence is that it’s lacking, and overall experience is bland. Being the only source of endgame plague materials and not much else than few items of low value, people are, technically, coerced into participating in it with the focus being those materials. I’m sure it will see changes coming to it with 1.0, but because it’s farming related rather than reward focused activity people will grow annoyed. It’s like trying to make going to work/school more fun and exciting by placing different obstacles every day. While enemy pool is, mostly random, it doesn’t add variety due to how watered down majority of the boons are.
Feedback is coming from combat focused perspective. I have mentality not to rely on crutches of a single build. Variety, is what motivates me and keeps things fresh as i get to experience indepth combat variety, because of it. However, forcing it on others can backfire if it’s done poorly and rewards ain’t worth it. In my opinion, debuffs and curses we experience aren’t transformative enough. While at times they can seldom synergize, making boss fights difficult, more often they cover wide range of elements being watered down or so hyperfocused that you need to fully change a build to counter it.
Changing builds should never be the solution, skill based approach should be.
That said.
-100% focus on cast use + 50% damage reduction on high health, regen and lifesteal on enemies is the type of curse combos i enjoyed playing against. Mainly so, because changing build with ring (use health if out of focus) and added +100% gem bonuses at low hp including % hp recovery, completely counters the focus part and sustain.
This was the only exciting part interacting with it, but as i stay on this build it happens to completely counter everything else. Main rng appeal gets completely trivialized.
Biggest issue i find with this system is that boon effects don’t have transformative enough theme that, for the most part, people ignore and just rawdog through it with miniscule difficulty that turns tedious down the line because their focus are materials tied to it.
Instead, i look at pestilence as potential to be an exciting endgame activity that encourages preparations and use of tools like utility runes, vials, bombs, even gear or specific gameplay elements, such as, parry, cc, lunge (dive strike).
Curses and difficulty should be oppressive enough where people would feel inclined of using “World purge” function in crucible. Obviously, to balance it out and cater to players, rewards should have more focus on Ember drops, gems, gear pieces that have unique Facets and rune skills unique only to pestilence drops. The bigger the challenge, the better should be the rewards.
That said, curses and boons should be more expressive and personalized.
Whole system of 10 boons and cluttered list should be condensed into 4 categories
Each category effective once sacrificial threshold has been met
Theme
Enemy curses
Player curses
Boss boons
Theme, this would be the biggest randomizer that would change the plague experience.
It should always come with a type of hazard or condition that affects everyone. Even enemies.
Gravity -
Movement/ attack speed lowered, stamina usage increased, fall damage increased - weapon plunge attack greatly increased. Projectile/bomb speed reduced. Applies to foes and allies
Featherfall -
Fall damage disabled, lowered load, stamina usage reduced, speed increased, projectile speed increased, but damage reduced. Knockbacks significantly increased.
Elemental storm (1 random type)
Elemental damage is greatly increased, every entity is given that element buff, damage of it is increased and so are random explosions of said element coursing through
Horde-
200%+ more enemies, far more aggressive, faster, but low hp
Parade-
Only 1 type of enemy
King of the hill-
Only one elite on top of a small area or platform with greatly increased stats, damage reduction and powerful ranged attacks.
Anti magic-
Greatly reduced magic damage, focus drain and magic based enemy attacks disabled
Mother earth-
(This one is a suggestion under assumption that we are getting summoner job, thus relatable )
Weapon and rune usage disabled. Instead, each gatherable wood/ore/fish/dig spawns a minion of different rarity that fights alongstside you. (Lots of fiddling would be required to balance them out)
CopyCat-
(Unsure if even possible , but)
Your weapons and runes are disabled. You are given 3 embers that upon activation roll same rng crate animation with all available minions, npcs, elites and even bosses with normal/rare/legendary tiers to morph into. Aka, you take shape of a random character and inherit their moveset and stats. (adjusted size too ofcourse)
etc
Regarding enemy curses.
Instead of having random list with enemy buffs they should be a lot more clear and pronounced. Like hue around a mob or even tint on it indicating what type of alignment they are, maybe even icon above their characters to better translate it for color blind.
(Theme that would also declutter boon list by introducing recognizable titles)
Borrowed idea of “Pre-fix and suffix” system
Enemies having pre-fix and suffix boons that greatly specialize their presence.
(Main focus behind system is to have clear, counter, that’s effective, but also utilizing previously mentioned tools and tactics)
Pre-fix
(Main focus, making distinct presence, implied threate and obvious weakness)
Chubby -
Immune to stagger damage and parry, high health, lower speed, higher physical damage, but weak to unarmed damage and kicks
(Dodge and timing centric encounter)
Frenzy-
Low hp enemy, whose speed grows with time
(High priority target)
Spectral -
Immune to physical damage, low damage, each hit drains resource on hit, high melee threat
(Implied counter, elemental damage from vials/bombs/utility runes)
Lifesapping -
Immune to all damage. Drains hp from enemy players, once fully restores it - dies
(Life trading, healing aura utility)
Fortress -
Immune to ranged attacks, high defense vs physical and magical attacks, extremely low movement, attackspeed, but attacks are aoe that cause explosive tremors.
(Dangerous, but manegable presence. Weakness being dive attacks, elemental procs )
Infested -
Low hp pool, on death splits into several visually smaller versions(just like siren)
Glass -
High damage resistance, immune to stagger, attacks cause bleed, but practically shatters on cc or parry
Brittle
Extremely high defenses with low hp - takes true damage from explosives (bombs)
(Focus being use of bombs)
Fire/Ice/Plague/Lightning
Charged with specific element, immune to all damage except opposite element
Lucky
(Would be a goofy wildcard)
Very timid enemy or special one that retreats a lot with chance to escape. Like a loot goblin.
Upon death drops an orb, a roulette which reward potential is endless. It could be a single ember, it could be 5, it could be a chest drop or even a legendary one, it could give you a full recovery or a buff even instant plague clear or, something more sinister. Instant durability break, or a heavy cc with goons spawning around to finish a job. Could also be a teleportation someplace in the region or even pestilence spawning next to you casting strongest attack, that happens to be hallucination … this time.
Suffix
Widowmaker -
deals significantly higher damage to male characters
Ladykiller -
deals significantly higher to female characters
Inferno -
Clad in flames, builds constant aoe elemental effect, each attack causes burn, range attacks have large aoes and explodes on death (has friendly fire)
(Same with other elements)
(Idea is that damage aoe is so oppressive its not possible to avoid it, but one takes negligible damage once passing certain elemental resistance threshold, like utility rune elemental resistance buff)
Shadow -
Difficult to see outline, makes no sound. In dark areas gain increased speed and damage. Immune to damage unless exposed to light through Illuminate rune, torch, flame/lightning spells
Priest -
Heals nearby enemies with slow, periodically charged waves
These being just a few examples.
To stay within theme only 1 type would be common per plague while rest being rare spawns.
When it comes to player curses they should always come as double edge swords.
Greatly decreased focus recovery / Greatly increased stamina recovery
Greatly decreased defence / Greatly increased movement speed
Using physical/magical attack expands full resource bar / amplifies damage by the consumed amount
Constant, heavy hp drain / used food 200% more effective, including buffs
In terms of boss curses
They should have strong effects that don’t need new movesets or anything, but, should be, to a degree, challenging, unique experiences.
Grim reaper-
Immune to all damage, gets increasingly faster (scales with player amount). Lives only 3 minutes
Mirror-
Everyone, periodically change polarity between 3 states that change incoming damage.
Normal. White state - reflect 100% damage. Red state - heal 100% taken damage.
King-
Significantly increased hp, increased defences and reaching certain % threshold spawns minions.
Size-
Either bigger, slower, more damage or smaller, quicker less damage variations
Home Domain-
This has huge amount of potential, upon initiating fight both are moved to one of many arenas. Each filled with different type hazards, or better yet, their former home turf, but plague themed.
All of this are just examples and my opinions. I have no idea to what standard this system will be held and what value its being held once full game is released, but these are elements and suggestions i feel would improve general outlook and personality of the system.
Endword:
I trust that once 1.0 comes out and the eventual vision of the game gets finalized, horizontal content gets much needed attention to detail and depth. Crucible and plague on their own have high potential, turning into unique horizontal content in addition to the main game.
While crucible isn’t fully released and plague is relatively new, both lack depth in current state all i hope is that suggestions by the community give enough feedback in inspiration to change things for the better.