Early cycle 2 feedback

[Rahme]

I’ll go over a few issues that flew under the radar thus far:

1. Mana regeneration

• just as with health regeneration, % mana regeneration doesn’t exactly do much, when you don’t also have a load of FLAT mana regeneration. SInce the base is around 8, you don’t really get anywhere with it even if you have 160%+ mana regeneration on your gear
• of course, some classes/builds have built-in mechanics to overcome the frankly crappy regen by employing skills or passives that literally bypass the regeneration. Some come with caveats though, like requiring ~100% crit chance to maintain a semblance of mana management on a Void Knight slammer - which means that until VERY late game, you’re gonna have giant downtime issues where you just run around waiting for mana regen, or god forbid, put Vengeance or Rive or something on your bars and flail around doing 0 damage just to regenerate mana a bit easier.
• TL;DR: introduce a flat mana regeneration affix. Most people will be grateful, at least while leveling. Some builds will grow out of it, some will be eternally grateful

2. Idols

• some classes really do need an overhaul of their idols, in the way the various prefixes and suffixes appear on which type. Perhaps even introducing some new prefixes and suffixes.
• example: 2h crit Forge Guard. You tried making the build work better by changing various passives and ability talents, but what you failed to consider was the fact that Sentinel Idols do not have ANYTHING useful for them.
  Nothing to chase. Most classes have at least 1-2 idols where both prefix and suffix are good, and try to get as many of those as they can fit. The affix combination on every sentinel idols though is such that if you might want that particular prefix, no suffix rolling on that idol type will be even remotely useful to you, and same with other way around. So people just gave up and routinely fill all idol slots on 2h crit Forge Guard with just 1x1, 2x1 and 1x2 idols to at least get some resistances and health.
• this weirdness also infects other classes, though not to the same degree I think. Rogue has a different problem - seems like every type of idol can roll affix for every type of weapon (or at least sword/dagger/bow, I have not seen ones for other types of weapons despite Rogue being able to use them and having passives for them - like axe/scepter/mace).
  Which, while nice for the lovers of Tetris, also means that finding any idols that are not ForgeGuard-level useless is HARD. Simply because it’s diluting the pool WAY too much. Think the ideal here is Primalist - pretty much every build you can imagine has a type of idol where their useful stats meet so sooner or later they will get what they want and they can target farm the idol type through prophecies.

3. Monster ranged attacks

• we’ve all been there. You can make the fastest build possible but you STILL won’t avoid getting hit. Because most monster skills, aside from the few most powerful ones, are INSTANT. They know where you are from a screen or two away, and as soon as you enter the range they just start spitting projectiles, or worse, ABSURDLY BIG CONAL ATTACKS (bats, ice cats, etc)
• you might think this is not an issue, but it is. Any unavoidable damage is a bad thing, ESPECIALLY if you have a gameplay loop of ever increasing monster damage to progress through. In campaign it might hit you for 10% HP, but given corruption, it’s a matter of time till it starts 1shotting you.
• this is especially bad on rogue, which apart from paper-thin defense already, also has 2 passives that this mob behavior OBLITERATES. Marksman’s Momentum buff is the less important of the two, I mean, losing half your damage output for ~3 seconds after being hit in basically melee range is bad, but not as bad as in Bladedancer’s case. Bladedancer’s Perfection stacks are ALL lost the moment you take ANY damage at all, and this time you’re not just losing damage, you’re also losing ~500 armor and dodge rating (before modifiers), which leaves you more vulnerable than ever.
• the solution to this is to make mob aggro range smaller (say, 90% of the screen’s diameter, instead of ~170% it is at right now - at least feels that way) and also giving mobs a “reaction time” of sorts - a couple miliseconds between the moment they aggro to you and the moment they start attacking. Cause right now it’s like walking around a corner and the very milisecond you’re in range some phycho shoots you with an automatic leadspitter. Give it some 0.3-0.5 sec so that it appears the monster noticed you and designated you as threat before it unleashes at you, that’s all I’m asking for. Seriously EVERY SINGLE TIME I use Synchronized Strike on my bladedancer, I get hit by like 8 ranged attacks before the ~0.3 sec animation finishes and they all die. It doesn’t do much in terms of damage YET, but it effectively strips my defenses from me literally the milisecond before I jump into melee range. Especially because Dodge chance has a cap (and I doubt spells can even be dodged anyway)… I need to test it with Ward on top but so far it seems even if ward would fully absorb such hit it would still register as HIT and therefore strip all stacks of Perfection anyway.

4. Shop

• there are a lot of people that would love to support this game via supporter packs and cosmetic mtx, but I’m sorry to say but right now, most items in store look like they were modeled by someone with only passing experience in modeling (and no experience texturing) modeled after a derranged 5 year old child’s fridge drawing… I mean, hey, I bought a supporter pack, but outside of a forum badge, I’m not even using that armor because it’s honestly making me queasy, like you accidentally made something so ugly it’s borderline lovecraftian in nature. The rest of the mtx in shop are not much better. It’s kind of a shame really.
• I commend your prices, but the contents… you really need to hire more talented artists - or heck just release armor sets NPCs are already using - like Grael, Zerrick, or even that “elder who can’t be over 30” readhead in the first town (killer hair on her, would love to get that as a helmet mtx btw).

to be continued

[Rahme]

5. Puncture is still really bad (NO CHANGES in cycle 2 ?!)

• still has high added chance for mobs to Dodge arrows (which is then eliminated if you use the unique bow for it)
• still has the same problems with projectiles disappearing or shooting OVER mobs when used with even small elevation difference
• since the idea behind charged Puncture Marksman is to drive Puncture’s mana cost as high as possible (and there’s no way to scale mana regen sufficiently without FLAT mana regen stat), I suggest changing Mind Piercer puncture talent to return a lot more mana per cast if you have Stay of Execution talent (aka charged puncture - or just make it return more mana on fully charged shots)
• do not force players to pick Dark Quiver for charged Puncture. That skill is objectively THE WORST in the entire game at this time. Make it a Black Arrow OR Jade Arrow instead for the Night’s Descent node
• also would be nice to add a talent that converts added elemental damage (cause for some reason you LOVE to stuff marksman full of it instead of physical damage, despite almost none of the marksman skills having any elemental scaling by default) into phys damage, because that’s the ONLY ONE WE CAN SCALE. Elemental damage and physical damage is scaled only by a single type of affix (% bow damage), and even then you only have any sort of tools to scale physical part of it (via phys pen and armor shred). There’s no other options, and no uniques that help with it either. So your two options is to play pure phys and fizzle out in 100 corruption, or play a mix and fizzle out at literally the same point anyway. This is why I was so disappointed with cycle 2 bringing virtually no changes to archer marksma

6. Dark Quiver is still the most anti-QoL and downright absurd skill in the game (NO CHANGES in cycle 2 ?!)

• why would you enchant the arrows in your quiver and then SHOOT THEM AWAY only to be forced to pick them up one by one to SHOOT THEM AGAIN?
• if you think having N boosted arrows to be shot at once is too OP, just make the buff have an internal CD so only say, 1 attack every 2 seconds benefits from Black Arrow buff. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY but the dev who made the skill (and even that’s a hard maybe) likes how the skill works currently. It’s a nightmare to play with.
• ideal state: casting Dark Quiver gives you N (+X extra arrows from modifiers) Black Arrows that can be spent every 2 seconds (modifiable via Dark Quiver talents to be more impactful on higher iCD or less impactful on lower iCD). No more running around like a headless chicken or having all the arrows fall behind you if you’re trying to use the skill as you move around.
• IT’S BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD.

7. Can’t put mana on a bow

• for some reason I think this was possible before, dunno. Maybe not. But both weapon Mana prefixes (Mana + mana regen and Mana + mana spent gained as ward) should be allowed for bows, simply because Marksman IS a mana stacking class. You made it this way, so why did you not allow this? It would also solve the ward starvation of Marksman, since outside of maybe Smoke Bomb/Shift affixes and idols (that both have CDs), there’s not really many options for marksman to gain a layer of ward over their pathetic health pools.

[Kulze]

@Rahme

you might think this is not an issue, but it is. Any unavoidable damage is a bad thing, ESPECIALLY if you have a gameplay loop of ever increasing monster damage to progress through. In campaign it might hit you for 10% HP, but given corruption, it’s a matter of time till it starts 1shotting you.

This point I’ll have to disagree with.

It provides a natural cut-off point which is a mandatory design point in a game with a economy.

Without it a player with fantastic skill could outpace a ‘normal’ player by magnitudes of several hundred times, pushing the corruption so high that the rarity modifier is so big that they regularly drop double T7 items without using CoF.

This would utterly remove any incentive for progression outside of getting LP bases for the majority of the players in MG, which would be a net negative and hence can’t be done.

It would immediately kill the game.

@Rahme

Marksman’s Momentum buff is the less important of the two, I mean, losing half your damage output for ~3 seconds after being hit in basically melee range is bad, but not as bad as in Bladedancer’s case. Bladedancer’s Perfection stacks are ALL lost the moment you take ANY damage at all, and this time you’re not just losing damage, you’re also losing ~500 armor and dodge rating (before modifiers), which leaves you more vulnerable than ever.

This on the other hand I 100% agree with, those types of mechanics are badly designed.

Singular hits shouldn’t cause the loss of those buffs, they should have a ‘buffer’ to allow taking a specific amount of true damage instead.

@Rahme

there are a lot of people that would love to support this game via supporter packs and cosmetic mtx,

Yes, they need to focus heavier onto the shop. Variety and design are lackluster when we watch the competition.

I find it very good from a customer standpoint that EHG is focusing on the game mechanics so heavily and leaving the shop behind… but from a business standpoint it’s a bad long-term choice. A single extra designer for those assets solely focused to make models for the shop would go a long way already. Make that 3-4 and you got a good state. They need to be exciting and thematic.

@Rahme

Dark Quiver is still the most anti-QoL and downright absurd skill in the game (NO CHANGES in cycle 2 ?!)

It absolutely is. Much like many other classes having bad design implemented into them still. This is something which should’ve been gone over before making the game 1.0.
Currently I still treat LE as a early-access game, it’s not worthy to be called ‘released’ and I’ll only change my stance on that when there’s been a grand pass over all classes to provide a baseline balance as well as a finished campaign.