Greetings, Creators-of-Worlds, and fellow Travellers:
Just finished watching last week’s Dev-Stream, and didn’t see an open thread to follow up on Mike getting cut off at the end; so here we are!
As I understood it, the thread of conversation was going about like this:
Community(C): “Monsters have x% Critical Hit Avoidance mods feel bad, because they hard-nerf some builds, but not others”
Mike: “That’s by design - though it feels a little less threatening at low levels, which can lure you into a false sense of security”
C: “That’s not what we meant…”
To expand on that, I wanted to highlight the important difference between Build-Breaking Mods and Build-Challenging mods; and then follow up with a few suggestions for other build-challenging mods that our lovely Devs might mull over before throwing out a window
Build-breaking mods are ones where the monsters can simply ignore you - like Critical Avoidance, Damage Immunity, or Avoiding-being-hit (High Dodge chances). These mods will forever feel bad, because a build cannot on-the-fly fix the problem that they’re presented with. A player cannot suddenly get a bunch of extra accuracy, remove an immunity buff, or target something that perpetually runs away.
By contrast, some mods might challenge those same builds without the emotional “I just cannot play this build” feelings - Like Reduced Damage from Critical Strikes, Enhanced Damage Resistances/Reduced Penetration Effect, and Glancing Blows. Allowing our characters to play the way we have designed feels good, even if it doesn’t work as well as we had hoped, and we need to adapt to the situation. In the same breath, the tougher the monsters are at their most basic level, the more important this becomes. Rare mobs, Mini-bosses, and Boss monsters should only sparingly use actions that can hard-counter a build, and mostly for dramatic effect, at that.
The other theme from that conversation, was that it felt like Critical Strikes were being targeted more than other builds - for example, there is no mod that causes enemies to Avoid Ailments (not that I think there should be one - Reduced Damage over Time would be much better) or mods that cause enemies to intentionally avoid Ground-Targeted skills, whether they’re hitting or DoTs. This has the unintended effect of making skills that rely on those mechanics much stronger than intended (looking at Drain Life and Hail of Arrows, here…) and while this can be compensated for by reducing their damage/duration/utility, that also feels like taking a tool away from a player. Why use a low-utility, low-damage skill when you could slot another skill instead?
I promised a list of potential mods the Developers might consider, so just bullet-points from here on out:
Reduced Bonus Damage from Critical Strikes
Reduced Effect of Ailments
Chance to Receive Glancing Blows
Chance to Block (with or without added block effectiveness)
Favors Ranged Attacks (and vice-versa for Melee Attacks)
Note that the general theme is still “play the way you built, but don’t have as much effect as without this mod” - behavior changing mods are fine, so long as they don’t disrupt the engagement between a player and the monsters too frequently.
Kind Regards,
someone designing their own game, but who LOVES playing yours…