Steam advertises Wicked as a “Visceral, precision” Action RPG.
The Official Game Overview from last month continues:
We decided to create an animation driven combat system, which to us meant that every attack you make should be carefully considered. We wanted to bring weighty, precision driven combat to the top-down space. Combat that is inspired by several different genres from ARPGs to Fighting Games
I load the game, wake up on a beach and am presented with exactly that, and it is fantastic and it looks great and I am impressed. And it lasts about as long as it takes for me to begin engaging with the game’s gearing system which instantly breaks all of the fundamentals of that careful precision combat. Giving you unlimited resources and lifesteal on hit and enabling you to smash out Focus attacks without carefully considering anything at all, which becomes the most effective and actively encouraged approach to all content. The game is fantastic and then it sabotages itself.
We have a Focus bar which governs the use of extremely powerful special abilities which completely overshadow the unique and interesting movesets of each weapon class. Then we have on-hit affixes which make this bar functionally endless, so there is no reason to ever use those beautifully animated unique weapon movesets because every weapon simply turns into a container for the most overpowered Focus attack you can find which you then proceed to spend 90% of your time pressing. This destroys all weapon and build variety because Focus attacks are mostly only separated into Onehand and Twohand varieties and can otherwise be used on every weapon with every attribute build. Intellect, Dexterity, Strength, Faith, they can all mash the same twirling ubermove endlessly and it’s the fastest and easiest way to approach every fight.
We have a Soulslike stamina system which should punish poorly thought out actions and make people worry about when and if they should attack, not just which attack button they should press. Then the stamina system ceases to exist because these Focus attacks use no stamina and can be mashed endlessly while also interrupting enemies so you don’t have to worry about defensive play. If you are optimising your character then you have a stamina bar for roughly 10 levels and then it is no longer in the game.
We have a gathering and crafting Food system with a vulnerable Estus-inspired eating animation that would make players think carefully about when they can safely heal. The limited healing and complete lack of regeneration even when “resting” at checkpoints makes any damage you take meaningful and rewards the player for precise gameplay to end fights with as little health lost as possible. Until you exit the tutorial and then you can pick up infinite on-hit healing that can apply to endlessly spammable multi-hit Focus attacks which fill your entire health bar repeatedly, faster than you can eat pies, WHILE you murder enemies and there is no reason to eat ever again.
We have timed parries and backstabs and stamina-limited guard mechanics and timed charge attacks and controllable attack chains that vary when they begin from the unique running and rolling attacks of a large roster of novel melee weapons and none of it matters because it’s all inferior to SPINNING
I want to play the game I am presented with when I land on the beach. The game that appears in the developer interviews. Can we please not ruin the “visceral and precise action combat” to enable a gear enchanting lottery minigame?
I’ve noticed this a lot with my “endgame” character and they’re far from being optimized. I just threw a couple gems into their wooden sword (which I’ve been using the entire run with that character because I put Lightning Flurry in it). I’ll run up to an enemy, whack them a couple times if my focus isn’t already full, then use Lightning Flurry. This immediately fills up my focus bar (because I have focus gain on attack or something similar in my weapon) AND it staggers most enemies. So I just use it again, unleashing another barrage of devastating attacks. Repeat until the enemy is dead. It’s pretty silly and more than a little busted. If I’m able to do this with my casual build, then people with a better mind for min-maxing are probably able to do some truly absurd things.
I have an issue with this as well. Regaining Focus is too easy right now. If the goal is to spam Runes, it should require heavy investment with trade-offs elsewhere. There’s a number of ways they can go about pulling back on the generation of Focus without hurting any Runes. A couple off the top of my head:
As you listed, Stamina costs in addition to Focus costs.
If we don’t remove the on hit Enchantments, then don’t allow them to benefit from every target hit in multi-hit attacks.
We have Enchants for additional Focus granted on kill which I think is a fine way to go about it, too.
Same thing as above. Ideally we remove this Enchantment and keep the healing on kill, or change this to only work on enemies undamaged.
This one you will have to accept since, while it has combat akin to From Software’s games and Monster Hunter, its goal is to have more intense combat for an ARPG which is where these lotteries come from.
They should also put cd on focus potions/skills as you can get like 1000 focus spam it without any on hit anyway. Staffs and Bows should have basic special move sets like the melee weapons so they don’t need to reliant on focus bar.
Bosses should be immune to any hard cc and have special parrying attacks that severely punish players that spam same attack moves in quick succession. I was playing horizon forbidden west recently, the human enemies will parrying Aloy’s melee attacks if she is using the same moves multiple times, so you have to try mix up the moves.
Also Aloy’s special melee moves use timed R1 presses.
R1 R1 R2 break shield
R1 pause R1 R1 R1 quick light attacks
R1 R1 pause R1 R1 aoe attack
R1 R1 R1 pause R1
R1 R2 for jumping off enemies creating distance.
Hold R2 for heavy attacks.
Hold R1 for closing in connecting combos, so you can do something like
R1 R1 R2 → Hold R2 → Hold R1 pause R1 R1 R1.
This system is pretty cool, maybe Wicked can incorporate some of it into the game.
One of the issues as well is that Meta runes start to exist. If we have On-Hit effects people will favor Runes with a lot of Hits. Or we start preferring runes with a low Rune cost, short animation time, lots of stagger, so they become spamable.
Also, what will this mean for the future of PVP.
I agree that the way focus gain works and how some affixes work should be looked into to create a more balanced approach to combat where you still have to dodge, attack, parry and then finally you can use a rune special. So it becomes more meaningful.
As for the enchantment lottery I have two issues with it.
Random enchants should’t exist by itself and we should have more freedom with our enchants. Like the ability to reroll 1 specific enchant, or reroll the affix value for a better roll. It would then feel like we are actually making progress on our gear.
I farmed for about a week to get a load of white T2 Crestfallen Knight armor sets. I enchanted them and got mostly horrible rolls. At some point I just gave up and ran to the blacksmith and started buying in bulk for the right rolls.
Enchanting should be a combination of randomization and customization where they work together to create something unique.
Do Focus attacks actually generate focus?
Wouldn’t it make sense for them not to generate any so the stamina/normal-moveset game is unavoidable?
Adding stamina cost to focus attacks is imho not a solution. It wouldn’t change anything, people would still spam rune abilies, they’d just have to watch their stamina bar. It still wouldn’t make it necessary to use normal weapon movesets.
So what happens is there is are multi-attack runes that can trigger on hit effects and basically make it so you can stunlock bosses.
Other suggestions were making it trigger once, maybe not letting focus attacks generate focus, rune cooldowns to promote other rune specials.
At the start we have a nice gameplay loop of: Dodge, Punish, Dodge, Punish, Parry, Combo Punish/Charged Punish, Dodge, Rune Special.
Even with some mobs, everyone develops their own plan of how to deal with certain mobs/attacks. This is healthy. Stunlocking bosses with runes that have a low cost and stagger isn’t.
Most people seem to agree it’s an issue, just not on how to go about fixing it.
I believe that the souls-like combat is the core of the game. Stamina, dodges, blocks, parries, combos, poise, stagger etc.
Rune abilities are something extra to weave in on top this.
So in my mind it’s just a question of how to nerf focus generation to the point that you cannot ignore the core of the game.
The first and most obvious step is to not let focus abilities generate any focus.
If the problem is class fantasy; that the archers and mages are forced into melee, then they might need a few regular stamina attacks that are ranged and/or theme appropriate. Like the wizard staff in Kingdoms of Amalur. Those werent long range, but still felt like playing a mage.
I 100% agree on this. However, if I have a large enough focus pool, I can still achieve this to some extent. And then just drink a focus potion to replenish.
Cooldowns, could be an additional measure.
Now I can also slot 4 different throwing runes/multi-hit runes onto 1 weapon, then swap weapon with the exact same rune setup and repeat.
Edit: I think the best solution might be a combination of not generating focus on rune attacks and Edit 2: stagger immunity for an X amount of time to prevent stunlocking.
I should mention that I did not suggest making Focus attacks cost stamina, I simply pointed out that if the attack which you use 90% of the time costs zero stamina then the stamina bar is irrelevant. If Focus attacks became occasional, situational abilities which act as a compliment to your core weapon moveset instead of replacing it then their lack of a stamina cost wouldn’t be such an issue.
I could give multiple specfic suggestions for changes but there are endless ways to approach the problem and it’s more important to identify the problem to be solved first. If we want to talk broadly about the best way to solve things however:
Heal / Focus / Stamina regain on ALL DAMAGE has to go
Flat out gone, delete it. This is a horrible design, you would have to cripple it to the point where it’s unnoticable on the majority of builds before it stops actively harming the game. If you really like the idea of multi-hit attacks being better resource generators then the best thing to do is to limit this recovery to “On Regular/Charged Attack Hit” so that it doesn’t apply to the spenders themselves.
Significantly improve the damage of standard melee attacks
If you reduce the Focus regain but keep the relative balance of standard attacks to Focus attacks then Focus attacks still remain the most important attacks in the game. They currently deal about 5x the damage of your regular melee, stagger enemies, freeze enemies, blow up shields, cost no stamina and deal vastly more posture break than actually swinging your weapon. As things stand if you were to move the Focus regain to basic attacks only then you would probably encourage a meta where people have an offhand dagger or dualdagger (even without appropriate stats), and use it to build Focus so they can swap to their actual weapon to spend it, without swinging their real weapon normally at any point. It would be far healthier for Focus attacks to offer situational utility so that you have reasons to use them at specific points - Because they offer Hyperarmour or break Shields or cause Knockdowns or close gaps or don’t require stamina… Not because they are the vast majority of your damage.
When I use a Focus attack it would be nice if it felt like I made a smart decision by using it at smart moment for a smart reason, and “Because I had some Focus” is not a smart reason.
Adjust Poise damage for standard melee
Another big issue with the balance of regular attacks to Focus spenders right now is that it is very common for enemies in this game to have enough passive poise to ignore hits from your regular melee. Poise damage for almost every weapon in the game is set to “10”, which is the poise damage of a dagger. This includes weapons as slow as the Curved Greatswords, which have slow attack speeds similar to Greatswords but due to having Dagger poise damage their regular attacks won’t stagger the most basic soldier mook enemies - Some pig with a stick will just attack clean through your big swings. This is going unnoticed because Focus attacks have higher Poise damage and consistently stagger enemies or break shields, so instead of acknowledging this as an issue people are simply sidestepping it by mashing spenders. In general:
The basic attacks of any weapon slower than a 1H Sword should probably stagger all small sized (backstabbable, but not the Crucible knights) enemies on hit
The charged attacks of ANY weapon should probably stagger all regular sized enemies on hit and not bounce on shields
If this leads to a situation where enemies which are intended to be challenging are too easily locked down then simply allow these enemies to use their “Backstep” abiliity out of hitstun after a certain number of staggers in a row. It seems literally every enemy already has a backstep evade so this seems simple enough to do
Take the stagger/pushback off the upcoming free Bow attacks
I’m heading this one off at the pass - Currently “Arrow” on Bow costs Focus but causes high poise damage and pushes enemies away. The Focus regain on hit makes this ability functionally free right now and the devs are going to experiment with making it actually free. Here’s the immediate problem, all basic enemies get locked down by spamming Arrow because Arrow is better at interrupting enemies than hitting them in the face with a sword is. I see no issue with making it free and even having it regain Focus as long as it doesn’t stagger lock every melee enemy to death.
I wouldn’t go for the stagger diminishing returns.
I’d suggest first keeping to the issue with rune spam and not messing with the core of the game.
Even if you make the rune spam less efficient (by adding stamina cost, by buffing stagger bars, etc.) you are still not motivating players to use normal attacks. The problem is not that rune spam is overpowered, but that it makes the core of the game obsolete. OPness is just a side-effect.
I read this a lot but it’s also dangerous as it’s potentially cutting down the content and playtime of this looting game by a majority. It’s supposed to be a lottery, not a match 3.
I think the X% of focus gain should then depend on the weapon type. Some weapons attack faster than others, thus benefit more. You can balance numbers out to roughly create an equal value.
I do think the overall gameplay of rune attacks should be an addition to the combat loop and not the entire combat, like how focus rushing is now meta.
I might have worded this improperly, I meant some form of temporary stagger immunity upon being staggered once. I like the orange bar fillup of stagger, but stunlock bosses messes with the core combat loop.
I don’t think this messes with the core of the game but rather stunlocking bosses messes with the core of the game. I don’t want buffed stagger bars but just some option to prevent me from stunlocking the boss.
100% but this also applies to stunlocking the boss through either rune spam or stagger locking with basic attacks.
I have been farming T2 gear for an entire week to play the enchantment lottery. I eventually gave up and started buying blacksmithing gear and played the lottery with that. This is not fun nor good design.
I want to complete the game with my favorite gear/weapon/runes etc, more freedom with enchanting is something we 100% need.
Maybe lock the more powerful enchantments behind randomization, but let us reroll certain affixes. I don’t wanna spend several hours farming for a weapon to lose the lottery. Imagine how a 9-5 dad would feel over this.
The counterpoint to that is “equal” doesn’t create real variety. If you could choose between weapons which deal more damage vs weapons which recover focus faster that would be an interesting build decision. Currently this isn’t a real decision because Focus recovery on damage is always the best option and if basic attacks don’t deal meaningful damage then you would choose the greater Focus recovery all of the time.
If you make basic attack damage matter then giving up some Focus regen to hit harder on a big melee character or giving up melee damage to gain more Focus on a caster character become real options.
Well, I agree with the problem of buying and enchanting being more efficient than farming. This IS a problem.
But you can’t used dads (and moms) as an argument to remove the replayability and long time engagement that people love so much about this genre. People WANT to farm for weeks or months.
You can finish the game with “unoptimized gear” and if you are stuck at a certain point you have more game. The game isn’t running away. None forces you to stop playing in a month.
There should be more weapon variety easily available to play your fantasy. I first got a halberd 40 hours into the game and actively stopped progressing to not finish the game before getting a weapon I actually want. But affixes are the endgame, affixes are what makes this genre so beloved because you can play so much with so little.
Yeh all good when you are good at game… but not everyone are like you …
I die 50 times on first city guarding boss and at lvl 30 cant kill crucible Boss with op life on hit rings… nothing preventing you killing all bosses with 1 lvl sword and board, let me have fun too…
