Very good points overall, my initial point is more about ensuring that every weapon type has equal access to certain affixes; the viability. Most tend to favor quick hitting stuff atm.
I think your suggestion for making it scale with damage is probably the best balanced one. However, I do think some variety in focus gain could be healthy and favor other types.
Yeah, I also had the same issue as you with my halber (Regal Cleft, I wish they would fix the vfx, elemental enchants don’t show).
But, I do think using people who work fulltime is a good argument since they are part of the playerbase. Furthermore, I agree farming for stuff is part of the game. I don’t mind farming for stuff I stalled my crucible run for about 30-40 hours farming to get the gear that I like, I still don’t have it.
A gameplay loop should be healthy, it’s the reason I stay away from ARPGs and play CRPGs since I hate those mechanics. I think it is artificially extending the game time. If I have complete freedom over my class, build etc, I should have that over my enchants. I don’t mind farming for days to get the right enchantment on a piece of equipment but after some time I can’t be bothered anymore.
I don’t think affixes are endgame either, If I want to use a flaming sword I should be able to do so at the start. If I roll 5% heat damage I should be able to farm for some hours to reroll that. Not farm an entire new item.
Ok but like…this is the essence of arps, the devs are big fans of arpgs, the players are, everyone is, some arpgs are going into that rerolling a little bit but generally you can’t go in here and say “i hate that concept about arpgs, i don’t want to spend time farming that much, remove that in your arpg so I can enjoy it the way i would like arpgs to work.” That’s like me coming into a platforming game and saying remove the platforming i keep falling I just want to finish the level. I do hate it. But if that’s part of the game here who am I to demand a different approach. Especially platforming combined with an isometric perspective lol.
You misconstrue what I am saying by a very large extent, to the point even where I don’t appreciate it.
I NEVER said this:
This is what I have been saying across multiple posts, you can check my post history…
Randomization and Customization should exist side by side with regards to Enchanting. I don’t mind farming to be able to customize some randomized aspects of my gear. I am fine with random enchants yielding unique results you can’t get from manual enchants. But, give me the ability to reroll some affixes and values of affixes by farming and trying again.
Nono i get your point as i said some arps are already doing that but it’s dangerous because this is always multiplicative. It can reduce playtime A LOT suddenly. So at least there would have to a expensive magic resources you’d have to also farm in order to reroll certain things. Like fallen embers. That are currently also in discussion for respecing.
I wanted to give a visual example of this because it’s probably something most people wouldn’t understand or notice:
Here’s a Curved Greatsword failing to cause any hitstun on a regular sized wolf, regular sized lizard and a generic solider with a sword and no shield. The poise damage listed on this weapon is the same as on the Dagger weapon class, the same issue occurs with lots of medium speed weapons which you might expect to interrupt this type of enemy like Hammers, Clubs, Axes, Spears or Katanas. Again anybody can put a fast and cheap Focus attack on a Dagger and endlessly stagger all of these enemies right now so the lack of complaints about this stems from the fact that nobody is using the regular movesets of the weapons. Mashing Spin is just better and easier and faster.
If that is the weapon I think it is, Divine Scimitar, then yes. I used to play with that weapon and dropped it because I wasn’t staggering people. I then added plague throw as a rune and noticed it perma staggered Falstead with enough focus.
So yeah you are 100% correct on this. Some poise damage feels off, but then is ignored by runes so you spam runes.
I agree, I don’t want the game to lead to the one-button spam solution for everything gameplay, but this can be solved with just some balancing tweaks.
But what your gameplay against the knight shows (by the way, well played) is for me a bigger problem.
Regardless of which weapon you’re wielding, you would approach this fight most likely in the same way.
But imagine if you were carrying a dagger that didn’t allow you to parry or carry a shield, but instead deal´s bonus damage when you attacked an enemy from behind.
Or imagine wielding a two-handed sword that deals bonus damage when you hit an enemy in the front, but has a negative effect that gives your dodge roll a cooldown. However, you’re also wearing a ring that gives you bonus attack speed and lifesteal every second you don’t dodge, stacking up, leading to the most manly fight known to men and the universe.
Okay, at that point, I’m just fantasizing about Tryndamere from LoL.
generally playstyles could be more diverse. that’s why i think mages and archers shouldn’t be forced in melee. there has to be more than, “roll, parry, smash, repeat”
I think that the issue that this game has goes deeper than all of the mini tweaks that we all can suggest.
The main issue is:
What Moon Studio wants for No Rest For The Wicked ?
Is this visceral combat system just a marketing thing or will it be the core of the gameplay ?
And if it is suppose to be the core of the gameplay, for me, for now, it feels that they are going in the opposite direction from mid game and later on.
And its not a high level game difficulty issue. Raising or lowering health bars or whatever resources won’t solve it.
Right, I mean I slaughtered the Echo Knight with the Chipped Daggers which just has the regular flurry. I don’t know what was the cheapest aspect of the fight - the life/focus/stamina regen or the stunlock.
Aside from the Echo Knight it made the rest of the game absurdly easy as well. Only shielded opponents make you stop for a moment to maneuver. Everything else just dies.
I DON’T agree with completely getting rid of “gain X on hit” - these are key mechanics in both ARPGs and Souls. You couldn’t even hope to play through Diablo II on Nightmare/Hell without lifesteal. Just needs a bit of tweaking. It’s the Flurry runes that need to be nerfed or gone altogether. I did find a legendary rapier that has a version of Flurry that costs 100 focus instead of the dagger’s 50 and that one doesn’t seem to stagger as much. Make Flurry more expensive and/or no stagger perhaps?
An alternative for not removing it is restricting the proc to the first hit of a multi-hit attack. I don’t remember this kind of effect being necessary for any Souls game that I’ve played. Truth be told I can’t think of how to even get this effect in them.
As for ARPGs, this one is meant to be slower and encourage the use of food to keep you afloat instead of crutching hard on the affix.
Ranged weapons can already play entirely from range due to the current state of Focus% on Damage affixes, so this change will only really impact people who were not already taking advantage of those overpowered bonuses for some unknown reason. As for whether these builds should be able to play from range, I think it would be interesting to allow variations in playstyle so that ranged characters who DO dip in and out of melee to build focus would be able to deal more damage. Let them get faster regen to use more range abilities in return for the higher risk and challenge of going into melee to hit things between spells/bow shots.
By design it’s clear that Ranged weapon gameplay shouldn’t lean as hard on basic attacks, because their basic attacks just don’t have as much going on as the melee combat does. Casting Arrow over and over again from 30m away simply isn’t very engaging, so having this be a builder with the main source of damage being Focus abilities makes far more sense for Range/caster builds than it does for melee. The question then is how you allow these builds to access more Focus regeneration to support that playstyle without ending up with the infinite Focus attack spam we currently have in melee.
That question brings us on to Attributes and makes you wonder what exactly the current Attribute design is trying to do. It might make sense for Range builds to choose to sacrifice damage or survivability in order to get more Focus to fuel their ranged ability gameplay, except they don’t have to. You currently double your Focus pool by investing just 6 Attribute points into it, then with 2 Focus rings you have quadrupled your Focus pool (And quadrupled the amount of Focus recovered from %Focus on damage dealt) for essentially no Attribute investment at all. The %Focus on Damage Dealt rolls on weapons are also taken at no real ‘cost’ because there is nothing remotely comparable in value that you would give up in order to get these. So every build takes these as the objectively best option and now Focus is “Solved” for all characters.
Would it not make far more sense for abundant Focus to require significant sacrifices to achieve? Sacrifices which ranged characters might need to make to enable their ranged ability playstyle, where Hybrid characters might make slightly fewer tradeoffs because they don’t need to rely entirely on range abilities. The current attribute system doesn’t support these kinds of decisions, instead all we’re currently doing is picking a Damage attribute which increases weapon scaling in the same way as every other Damage attribute and where every build does the same thing in the same way.
Picture this kind of situation instead:
Focus on Damage dealt is gone entirely
‘Free’ ranged abilities deal low damage and build Focus, but not nearly as fast as melee attacks build Focus
Ranged Focus abilities deal significant damage but their costs require a lot of free attacks to fuel
The ‘Focus’ attribute increases the amount of Focus gained from both melee and free ranged attacks, but you need a lot more than just 6 points if you want to be able to use a lot of ranged abilities
Now if you plan to build for an entirely ranged playstyle you need a lot of points in the Focus attribute, meaning you have an actual build decision to make. This likely requires sacrificing something else like equipment weight or damage. Hybrids who use a mixture of melee and range would not require as much investment into the Focus attribute because melee recovers Focus faster. Pure melee builds should not be as reliant on Focus spenders to deal damage so could choose to put those Attribute points into weight for higher armour and so on.
This would likely require some Softcaps on the value of the stat, and these kind of utility Attributes likely won’t scale to infinitely high levels because they are altering gameplay (Number of basic attacks you need between abilities) but if you don’t do something like this with Attributes then you don’t have any real build differences.
No, ranged characters have their own set of mechanics they have to contend with, running out of resources, being squishy etc. to force mages or archers into melee is the craziest thing I have ever heard.
