Runes or Consumables (like food) need a cooldown!

Wicked Feedback
,
41

It is not really comparing apples to oranges though.

If a company wants to make an ARPG, but, want to add Soulslike elements. They will look at successful soulslikes and use that as a base. That is what I am saying.

As for cooldowns specifically. Our weapons have 4 rune slots, and in MOBAs we have 4 abilities. Those abilities generally have a cooldown of some sort.

What I am saying is, is that from the outset it is comparable to an extent. So they COULD draw inspiration from it. But, as I pointed out earlier, it also creates issues. Since you can slot 4 throwing runes on a weapon, and then cycles through 3 different weapons with the same runes. And still achieve the rune spam. So then you would add internal cooldowns.

But, the simplest way to solve the rune spam issue is prevent focus gain on rune usage.

42

Personally I’ve always liked cooldowns on abilities in games like these, it incentives you to use all of your abilities instead of just spamming the best one. Giving us cooldowns and CDR on gear would be great, though if people are opposed then an affix giving cooldown on abilities in exchange for increased power would be cool too…

43

I need to wall-of-text this. Sorry.

Consider Rune A (copyright 2024, Rune Naming Institute of Isola Sacra)

Rune A:
Project a magic circle on the ground. After a delay of 3 seconds, everyone in the circle takes damage.

That sounds pretty clunky and unwieldy, right? But that can be balanced, because it could deal slightly more damage to compensate for being unwieldy. Now there are suddenly situational uses for such a rune:
If you have a rune that roots enemies to the ground, then rune A is good. If you’re in a position where lots of enemies have to pass through a choke point, rune A is good.

Let’s say my gear has the following runes:

Rune A (as above)

Rune B:
Deal a small amount of damage. Debuff the target for a short time, causing it to take a percentage extra damage from everything that hits it in the next few seconds.

Rune C:
Deal a fair bit of damage. Deal extra damage if it hits a debuffed target.

Rune D:
A fast-casting rune that deals moderate damage, but also drains your stamina and poise.

Rune E:
An instant lightning bolt with no travel time that deals good damage, but has a long after-animation that can’t be cancelled (rumbling thunder, dark clouds seeping out of your sleeves, all that good stuff). You’d better be sure this kills the target, or it will leave you extremely vulnerable.

Individually, all of these would be, in most circumstances, inferior to a simple fireball. But if you chain them correctly, and if you have good situational awareness and make the right tactical decisions, together, they form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts and is far more effective than just spamming fireball. For example, the fact that rune A deals damage on a delay means you can make better use of rune B’s window of opportunity.

Runes need mechanical distinctions, because then synergies can be discovered and actual builds can be crafted. I’m certainly not necessarily against cooldowns, but mechanical distinctions (such as, but not limited to, conditional effects) are more important.

2 Likes
44

No thanks. That’s creating an unnecessary problem and filling it in with another hard to balance solution.

Most of the great ARPGs don’t really have cooldowns on skills. Diablo 2 and Path of Exile, for example. Most of the great soulslikes also don’t have cooldowns on skills either.

I like that Moon didn’t put cooldowns on skills here either. Cooldowns just lead to games where “press the button when the skill is ready” is the right move 99% of the time, and that’s not particularly interesting. I want to be able to pay attention to the fight, not my cooldown bar.

1 Like
45

Just to play devils advocate here.

We have 4 runes on our weapon. Most people tend to use 1 or 2, from what I have seen. So, we are using 25-50% of our ‘‘weapon kit’’ essentially.

Cooldowns are a way to introduce incentive to use more runes. Again, this comes with a lot of other issues.

What I would personally love to see is something similar to what @Nechrond suggested. Where we chain runes together into something special.

I think more Rune diversity, with regards to their purpose, would be healthy.

Maybe a rune that generates a lot of stagger on an enemy, followed by 1-2 attacks, into a rune that has a long windup, but deals crazy damage.

Some more interaction would be nice. Overall, I think diverse runes are better than cooldowns.

1 Like
46

To be fair, in a game like this where you’re liable to get hit and lose all of your health mashing your buttons off cooldown isn’t really a viable strategy, though I see your point. Implementing cooldowns doesn’t really change how we’re playing beyond making us push the best button that’s off cooldown during our window to attack. I can see how that’d just be a source of irritation a lot of the time.

Still, I wish there was more of a reason to use all of our abilities. You mentioned pushing the button when the skill is ready not being particularly interesting but that’s the exact system we currently have, except that it’s gated by focus rather than a cooldown.

I’ve heard talk of a talent tree so maybe they give us something there, or some kind of elemental reaction system could possibly work though that might be a weird fit for Wicked. If certain skills gave debuffs that could also create playstyles more interesting than spamming one ability. I think there are options here, though thinking about it I agree that implementing skill cooldowns is very likely not the best solution. I think it’s probably better design to incentivize players with a reward rather than create a restriction that they’re forced to work around.

47

Love these ideas, I like some of the current runes but many of them are indeed just different flavors of the exact same thing and don’t have functionality beyond damage. Your write-up seems like a better system and I think it’s safe to say that there needs to be more synergy between runes to incentivize players to go for a more dynamic playstyle rather than spamming a single ability.