It’s so creative to slap an RoD in literally every so called “build” lol
Are there even builds anymore in the game? Seems like RoD and call it a day. GG I’m good.
Damn, I didn’t even know about that ring. It’s a million times better than the Battlecry Ring, which makes you only use health instead of focus, AND disables lifesteal. Why even put that ring in the game when you have this?
Anyway, balance is a finicky thing. You don’t want to make an item so insignificant it becomes useless, but you don’t want to make it so good it becomes mandatory either. I think this is the latter case. If I got that ring I’d never take it off.
Is the ring the problem or is it that by endgame you can one-shot everything?
To me they are both potential problems.
It may also be that the game doesn’t properly scale difficulty yet. Before Breach the game was easy by endgame. It has the same problem now.
It may be that they want you to be one shotting everything in the endgame like most other ARPGs out there.
Maybe I’m not the intended target but I enjoy the campaign going from 1-21ish with different builds then I do the crucible or the plague system. I have four characters that have completed the campaign and I haven’t upgraded my gear beyond 12 for weapons and probably 8 or 9 for gear.
I also do the same with POE2. I’ll make multiple characters to run through the campaign but then I find maps very boring when you are one-button spamming everything. So I quit the endgame and make a new build.
Once the game no longer presents a challenge I lose interest.
True, tho.. if we’re talking about “pre-breach” then, as mentioned in the post you’re replying to. We had the Large Potion of Focus to refill your bar in an instant.
Just chug one and run into any fight.. or after you blink across the map.
(Essentially allowing for the same gameplay as there is now, if left unchanged.)
*Especially considering that we could use realms to duplicate items back then. So you didn’t even need to waste time harvesting/gathering.. or fishing. (-.-')
Regardless, I think I would actually be on your side in removing or nerfing it.. or maybe even having a look at other things people are actively “abusing”.
However, in it’s current state, the rewards aren’t even worth the challenge.. let alone if the game was much harder.
Sure I can blow through the Crucible in about 5 mins now.. but what do I get for it?
My loot usually consists of 1-3x embers, a bunch of useless blues along legendaries that mostly just gather dust in my collection.. and handful of various potions that wouldn’t even replace the ones I’d of had to use if the content was actually challenging.
If I want to get mats to upgrade my current build or try putting another one together.. the crucible is the worst place to do so in NRftW.
Even the Outbreaks give lackluster loot, outside of the exclusive “torn” mats that upgrade your gear.
So you’re not really rewarded for completing hard content, it’s just another “daily” you need to get outta the way.
Arguably this is why I stopped playing PoE2..
*My build wasn’t good enough to spam-clear maps anymore, so venturing out would take 20+ mins running around to gain a handful of “currency” that would often go to waste due to RNG rolls.
~ tl;dr ~
I’m in the camp of gamers that enjoy playing games through experiencing challenging and engrossing content so long as I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time.
The loot in NRftW does not justify harder content, so I get my enjoyment from rolf-stomping it instead.
Granted, I get addicted to games like Warframe, Starbound and Palworld. Often wasting insane amounts of time doing repetitive tasks.
Honestly, the game I have the most amount of time in is an isometric turn based tactical MMO called Wakfu.
*Over 15,000 hours - lost count after year 3.
Even as repetitive as Hades and other rogue likes are. Those games still have unfolding stories and a variety of different gear to make for unique and fun experiences in training you to play the game.
Once you “get gud” and have beaten the story mode entirely (often taking well over 100 hours) ~ players will often start experimenting with the Pact of Punishment because they’ve become invested in the game and actually “want” to challenge themselves.
Much like beating the Valkyrie Queen in God of War made me want to play a NG+ on the hardest difficulty.. *Which took me over a 2 hours to get out of the starting zone.
Perhaps?
Personally, I’m having fun powering through content by trying out different over powered builds to find “my playstyle”. (Some don’t even use the RoD).
Right now, I enjoy blinking around maps and nuking groups of enemies with Plague Splatter and Plague Dart.
Prior to this was my Fire Dart build.. and of course, we can’t forget the subzero build I altered by adding Hoar Frost Sickle’s Ice Dart!
Honestly, the more I think about it.. the more I lean towards “gun builds” via the elemental darts.
Sure the rest of the build is great for nuking enemies/bosses but I play on a mouse + keyboard and sprint everywhere (because walking is painfully slow, even in full cloth).
So cliffs and edges are not my friend. XD
*Ironically this is why I’ll never play on a hardcore realm (due to the uncontrollable camera combo’d with my propensity to sprint).
At it’s core, I think this might very well be “the” issue with the game.
It’s trying to be many things to many different people.
*If you stripped away the beautiful aesthetic (art direction).. what do you really have left?
Boiling down the game to it’s mechanics, reward structure and gameplay loops could result in a lackluster opinion of the game.
So how do you improve it other than “make it harder”?
@thomasmahler has said we have Stardew Valley styled farming coming, along with more intricate crafting options.. but what about the game play?
He’s been asking around twitter for people to post their favorite Rouge-lite games to study for the crucible.
A worthwhile goal that could result in a great experience for those seeking it.
However, when we look at the general gameplay of having to run around collecting mats, chopping trees and mining rocks.. just to craft potions, I’m reminded of why I resorted to the item duplication bug in Tears of the Kingdom.
The item economy in that game was so tightly controlled, I almost lost interest in playing it.
That’s not to say the game wasn’t fun occasionally..
For those curious, think of an “item economy” this way:
*I wanna fight an Arch Angel.. but no one sells Dragon Teeth to attach to my arrows.
So I have to engage with the “item economy via trading” one type of item to eventually acquire the item I need to fight the Arch Angel.
In order to get those Dragon Teeth, I have to:
- Defeat dragons, (I need Mega Bombs for that)
- To get Mega Bombs, I need to defeat the Harpy Sisters with Ice Arrows
- To get Ice Arrows, I need to win a race by feeding my mount Golden Carrots
- To get Golden Carrots, I need to buy seeds and grow them with Super Fertilizer
- To get Super Fertilizer, I need to…
You get the point.
All this doesn’t make the game more interesting, it’s just a way to artificially pad out the gameplay like the “housing build timers” do in NRftW.
Indeed, you can’t please everyone..
*All the devs can really do to limit the blow back is have a difficulty settings as the primary.
- Story Mode (easy) -
- Adventurer (Normal) -
- Survivalist (Hard) -
- Cerim Trials (Hardest) -
- Custom
Indeed, I think the trick is to come up with more than just one or two types of “energy” systems.
Right now we have “Focus” as the main, with Stamina and thanks to the RoD we have HP.
But really, look at almost any MOBA/MMO or even some adventure games.
*They have Magic, Stamina, HP.. along with Rage, Momentum, Heat/Overheat, Combo Meters and of course actual “energy” gauges.
Perhaps that’s the solution?
*Limit the mandatory nature of having the RoD by simply creating more interesting/engaging energy systems?
Prior to the Breach and the RoD.. what was your favorite build?
I’ve always been partial to the Fire Throw pick axe you find early in the game.
In fact.. on the topic of creating new/interesting mechanics that don’t rely on the RoD. It would be pretty cool to have a shield or rune similar to Dravens Axe throw in League.
Add a bit of a “wicked twist” to the ability..
- Throwing the shield it will auto target your enemy and bounce back to you.
- If you parry or strike the shield with your weapon, it will go back out and auto target the next enemy without costing you any energy (focus?).
- Every “bounce” increases the damage, speed and knockback (poise dmg) from the shield.
Sure, you could use RoD to spam the shield throw.. but it’ll do marginal damage because it’s “power” comes from the multiplier you gain from each bounce.
Now that I think about it, that’s kinda how Steve Rodgers fights with his shield and Mjolnir.
I agree that Ring of Determination in its actual state is very overpowered. However as another comment abouve states you could also blame the lifesteal for the problem. So here are a few ideas how so solve the issue:
-
Lifesteal should not calculate of off the damage you deal but of off the life you reduce of you enemie. That might sound similar but it is a huge difference. Most of the time you heal that much because you deal massive amounts of damage to little enemies wich do not even have that much life. Bigger enemies have better resistances and you do not deal as much damage to them so you recognize that you do not heal as much.
-
Ring of Determination could have a healing debuff. Like all healing is reduced by 50% or something.
I really like the idea of this ring. Wich is in my opinion that you can use your strong focus based abilities with the drawback of being very low on health after. If you tweak the numbers and implement the first solution from above it might be enough that you do not even need to nerf the ring.
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Bad game design. Remove. Done.
There is another ring that gives you the ability to use health for focus and disables lifesteal.
That’s an interesting alteration and would indeed affect the ability to “endlessly” spam spells (if fighting higher level enemies).
One other alteration you could make is to remove the 60% reduced cost based on missing health from the RoD.
That said, I think Lifesteal itself does need a bit of a rework.
*Even without the ring, pretty much every build sockets lifesteal into the weapon because nothing else even comes close to it’s usefulness.
Granted, the devs could simply buff other gems to be on par with it.. or perhaps come up with new (more interesting/useful) gem effects.
Let’s address this first: Why does the Battlecry Ring even exist when the Ring of Determination (RoD) is essentially a superior version of it? Sure, there are two “when on High Focus” mods, but I don’t think it makes any difference.
Now, I’ll play devil’s advocate and argue that the RoD is not the problem itself but rather a symptom.
- The main problem is that using Focus to cast runes is too restrictive and requires significant investment. Not only do you need to allocate points into Focus, but you also need to roll various Focus gain mods–and even then, you might still need the Band of Calmness. Additionally, refilling Focus is less convenient. The RoD solves all rune-casting problems with a single ring slot.
- Rune only builds are too powerful. Runes generally deal higher damage, but they also have the highest damage-scaling potential due to items like the Rune Ring and mods such as Damage after Fatality.
- Regaining health is probably too easy. Life leeching with ranged runes feels a bit odd. I would expect the character to need to be in close proximity to the victim in order to “drink its blood.”
Proposed solution:
- Make casting runes more accessible in general.
- Personally, I don’t enjoy a playstyle centered around spamming runes exclusively. However, I believe that playstyle should remain viable for those who do. I don’t have an exact solution, but I would balance it by making runes deal less damage when spammed and more damage when used situationally. This could probably be achieved through rings, mods, or mod grouping. Or perhaps some kind of rune charging mechanic?
- First of all, we know that wands and bows will be able to use default attacks that cost only stamina. Putting that aside, I believe life leech should be restricted to melee weapons to compensate for their significant disadvantage compared to ranged weapons. You would still be able to replenish health with ranged weapons through health-on-kill mods, meals, or by approaching enemies with a melee weapon. Additionally, life leech runes could be introduced. For example, a dark magic spell that drains health.
In any case, I like the idea of casting runes with “blood magic.” It’s an interesting twist that opens up opportunities for more diverse build choices.
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lol, indeed!
*It works thematically for the Cerim as well.
It seems our friendly neighborhood kitty is also interested in this topic..
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RoD and any mechanics that make resource economy obsolete need to go.
What’s the point of resources if they are trivialized?
The whole point of a resource is to pace the use of an ability.
An ability’s output and impact are balanced around its frequency.
So you have two outcomes:
1-The ability is nerfed when it can be used too frequently.
2- If you don’t nerf said ability despite frequency of use, developers instead create huge health sponge enemies.
There’s a third degenerate impact, which is that generators are pushed out of the rotation.
Animators and VFX artists worked hard on creating beautiful regular attack chains, and this ring and similar mechanics make them fall out of use since you can go straight to spamming the spender.
Even stamina rune attacks are a questionable design, because they either have to be tuned to be significantly weaker than focus using rune attacks, as stamina generates more quickly and has other side benefits like enabling dodge and parry.
Whereas focus is entirely for casting rune attacks with no other side benefit. If stamina rune attacks end up having to be so down-tuned to not make focus rune attacks non-competitive, then you might as well call them regular attacks with extra steps, since both consume stamina and the damage difference is not that large.
IMO the ideal tuning for a rune attack is for the player to have to complete 1-2 regular attack chains to be able to cast a moderate focus cost skill (50-75 focus), and 2+ regular attack chains to cast focus skills that cost 100 focus and above.
Another tweak that should happen with focus, is that upon reviving from death, the player spawns with 50% focus. This would lessen the dependence on spamming fish food or being tied to the Channel rune and band of calmness+focus gain stacking.
A lot of utility buffs also cost way more focus than they should.
Should these utility buffs exist, even?
Is it really entertaining to spend a minute before every boss going through an annoying pre-buff ritual of buff runes, channel, heal with buff food, apply flasks, apply oils, maybe channel again after using more utility runes and then eat up again to heal up and apply another extra stamina or extra health effect?
Just have runes be impactful rune attacks and leave baseline performance alone without having to add buff crust over baseline player performance.
Indeed, this is something I talked about a few times here.
More specifically, that the over powered nature of lifesteal (in it’s current form) along with the 60% reduction on the ring are the main issue with RoD.
If all the ring did was allow you to use HP as a resource when you run out of Focus, it wouldn’t “trivialize” the resource economy.
Of course, having more “resources” beyond the heavy reliance on Focus and Stamina would help as well..
IE: Lobo mentioning blood magic.
If we were talking Melee or even physical classes exclusively, I’d definitely agree!
However, Thomas wants to add in a bunch of “mage” classes.
This creates the “Gandalf problem”.
*Limiting mages with rules designed for mere mortals. ;3
With the ranged revamp Thomas teased, I expect a full ranged attack sequence to generate focus for a rune attack.
Granted, they might not get an actual sequence, as he hinted he just turned the likes of fire/ice dart into costing stamina, in which case it’s just casting like 2-3 of those to be able to cast a moderate focus rune spell.
Either way, it’s always best to have a flow of different spells culminating in a bigger rune attack rather than a boring spam of 1-2 spells.
That was the promised difference between this game and garbage like Diablo where it’s basically spam a core spell and very occasionally press something else.
In the future I hope they give synergy and interactions across rune attacks so you’re not just spamming the highest damage per focus point rune attack, and are encouraged to rotate across rune attacks.
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To be fair, while I’ve never played Diablo.. from what I understand, it’s designed for farming dopamine.
IE: Smash button to get loot, so you can kill things faster to get even more loot.. ect
In contrast, you have souls-like games that are designed around beating or cheesing hard bosses for unique loot/trophies.
Imagine having to fight a specific boss in a souls-like game, again and again.. just to get their signature gear/weapon.
Eventually, people stop caring about the challenge and just want the loot. So they figure out the fastest way to trivialize the encounters.
In some respect, this is a dilemma for many game devs because they want to extend the lifespan of their game/content.. often putting in awful systems that “pad out” game play or make it redundant rather than making it a rewarding experience.
Which explains the explosion of “games as a service” over the last decade or so.
Absolutely. +1
I kinda like the rotations in FFXIV and even GW2 to an extent.
*Streamlined to give a specific experience and playstyle to each “job/class” beyond just using your “best skill(s)”.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of soulslikes either because they have the same problem as Diablo, just a different way.
In Soulslikes, since you have hard animation commits and enemies are tuned to pretty much 1-2 shot you unless you overlevel them, it becomes a tedious game of 1-2 chicken scratches to the leg and then 10-20 seconds of rolling around in dodges or parries until you can do 1-2 attacks again.
Most soulslikes don’t have you doing a visual spectacle of extended combo chains or something like DMC or mosty other action RPGs, usually in a soulslike any sort of combo chain only happens if an enemy is staggered after a certain amount of parries, etc.
It’s very monotone combat and the emphasis of the power fantasy is placed on the boss choreography rather than the player feeling individually and visually powerful. In practical terms, it also ends up in hugging the boss leg and always trying to roll behind their back. These games are mostly boss simulators with the player character taking a distinct backseat to the spectacle.
The action RPG’s whose combat I prefer tend to be the likes of Granblue Fantasy Relink (and DMC/Onimusha in other examples), which have a guard/dodge, perfect guard and perfect dodge system, that can have one shot damage but no hard animation commits for the most part (skills still go on cooldowns and resources are spent when you dodge out of them, so there is still a penalty for mistiming abilities).
(well timed perfect dodges give a golden aura extended iframes as a reward).
The game has multiplayer, I just selected a solo run as a showcase of how the combat flows without other people’s VFX.
Obviously, there are more examples like Zelda combat and Darksiders (Darksiders 2 being my favorite by a landslide).
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Ah, Darksiders.. that brings back some memories!
*My fav being DS2 as well.
Speaking of which, for anyone following along that wants to check out the Darksiders games. Steam has them on sale (80% off) for the next few days.
That said, while I’ve never played GBF:Relink.. it does look interesting (even if just as a spectacle).
As for combat in Zelda.. I’m reminded of an old video by EgoRaptor where he does a deep dive into some of the design choices after the transition from 2D to 3D.
Timestamp: 8:03
Granted, his comments are often hit or miss.. especially when it comes to his delivery.
On this topic however, it’s interesting to see how much I agreed with his take on “implied difficulty” by putting in mechanics that only made the game take longer rather than being actually difficult.
Later in the video he points to how that same issue (waiting) creates other problems, outside of combat.
Timestamp: 15:52
*Chests, doors, NPC dialog, puzzle music, fast travel + cutscene, ect
Many of his criticisms make me think of Elden Ring and how they’ve essentially been addressed there-in. Well.. that and Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom.
But then again, BotW / TotK also had a lot of their own “issues”.
The big one for me was the feeling that post-game was pointless.
Specifically the lackluster rewards for completing time consuming or difficult tasks.
Unlike the RoD in NRftW.. end game didn’t open up new game play possibilities.
Yeah, Majora’s Mask felt amazing because you had to pay attention to NPC dialogues and environmental cues, and it really rewarded you for exploring the secrets of the game and doing the difficult content. Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons duo on gameboy advance did as well.
ToTK and BoTW had innovative and engaging mechanics, I enjoyed the shrine puzzles, but the rewards are just not there and the lack of linear storytelling was a major drag on top of all the survival gathering bloat that just detracted. Hopefully Wicked avoids that while having interesting mechanics and puzzles.
Thankfully, what Wicked won’t have is the atrocious Sage ability activation system ToTK had. Whoever thought it a bright idea to have to chase down a moving AI NPC to talk to them to activate an ability needs to be sent to game dev Alcatraz, and the key thrown away into the Mariana Trench.
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Honestly, I thought I was mostly alone when the game came out and I didn’t really enjoy my time with it.
Mostly thinking it was because I was burnt out from spending near 200 hours playing BotW leading up to the release of TotK.
That was, until I seen the flood of dedicated Nintendo content creators making long form rebuttals or “why I hated” type of videos about the game.
Yes.. that video is OVER 3 hours long! XD
*Skittybitty spent hundreds of hours editing.. far longer than most people even played the game.
Back on topic tho..
Regardless how the devs “tweak” the RoD, I hope to see some end game items that offer interesting mechanics or at least open the door to cheesing content with items you get by reaching certain achievements.
Obviously, these items would likely need to exist as “realm specific equipment” (preventing you from taking them to other realms).. something that would also allow the devs to create a whole new line of items via story or challenge achievements.
Perhaps that’s the solution to items like the RoD?
*If the devs refuse to tweak lifesteal or their reliance on the focus system.
Yeah, my main desire is for the game systems to not make the game a 1-2 shot fest on both the end of the player and mobs/bosses.
Enemies should not be health sponges, but players should not be breezing through them either. Fights should last long enough for at least one rune attack to be used after a rotation.
I really like extreme power creep that then leads to massive mob health sponges and one shot mechanics to threaten the player because everything is so power crept.
I’d rather rewards and progressions stay mostly cosmetic and in gameplay flavor upgrades rather than raw stat and throughput increases.