Battle Sprites - Harnesses, Reskins, Future
Mié, 07/15/2015 - 18:51
Look at all these ridiculous reskins.
I would like to have any battle sprite be able to wear any harness. The logic behind the restriction system was along the lines of "well these sprites have this and this but not this, and they all fit together with each other! Plus it doesn't make sense for such a creature to have such a typing. Like a seraphynx, such a pure spirit, with shadow? Ridiculous! Drakon doesn't look like it can deal piercing. Blah blah."
Well, considering reskins, I could legitimately argue that any harness makes sense nowadays. Before, I just scratched my head and wondered "but what about blue/green? How will the harness patterns work then? Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock?!"
That black kat seraphynx certainly looks capable of dabbling in the dark. The volc/freeze masker look capable of wielding the elemental. Now, I'm not saying let just the reskins have the odd harnesses, that would just complicate things further and I would be 100% against that option. Just get rid of the restriction alltogether, let any sprite wear any harness.
This has generally been a desire for some time now, actually. If only for costume purposes. Really! Look how bootyfull these could be. Please read the words of the artist and desire ^.^
That's just a basic desire for a simple change that I feel would benefit the game in general. What good comes from the restriction, anyway? A bit of balance/diversity? Making players think? With the massive cooldowns and the way many abilities don't even work with damage being the intent, I don't think balance is truly a valid point, but, it is a point.
I'd like to have a harness costume option for any tier harness. I know elite is the best and all that, but sometimes I want a certain look. And once you go Elite you never go back, it replaces the weaker one preceeding it. Just let me have all that I've bought for the costume option, and really, the functional slot as well, if I want to nerf myself. This is the end of the basic idea, I am going to go into some details now.
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MOAR
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There are three empty slots on the battle sprite window interface between the sprite/harness/perk icons and the skill icons. I wish to fill these with things, and bump the perk up under the sprite icon for general organization purposes.
So the new screen would be (Left --> Right = Top --> Down):
Sprite, Perk, Harness, Disc, Chip, Mien, Skill A/B/C
What the heck are these chip/disc/mien things? Small modifiers you are presumed to stick into your sprite's harness to program/change it - like USB drives, discs, apps, whatever. They incorporate other ideas posted in the forums before, I just wanted to sort of bump them here again. Most discs/chips could be available from Riley for whatever amount.
Harness - they damage type your sprite deals, of course. Elemental, Normal, Piercing, Shadow.
Disc - the status type of your sprite. I want users to think of sprites as utility entities with innate, but adjustable, abilities. Sprites are meant to be utility, not mindless damage dealers. With these recent reskins (volcanic maskeraith = fire, do I need to go into it?), this makes more sense than it would have in the past. But still, I'd like for things to be uniform, not restricted to certain reskins and complicating things. Here is a recent idea with similar flavor. I would like these to be discs instead of harnesses is all. There might have to be some major tweaks to a few skill ultimates, feel free to discuss. Here's another older yet relevant thread. Please no necromancy. EDIT: for visibility on sprite, I was thinking this would just sorta be like trinkets (we don't see trinks on our knights, just get effects), but I suppose the sprite could get a nice, OPTIONAL, aura effect or something.
Here is a potential disc interface.
Chip - the behavior of your sprite during cooldown and/or in general. Autotarget, autocasting included here. Here are my ideas regarding chips. EDIT: appearances again. Hmm.
Here is a potential chip look (from previous thread 109509).
Mien - OOO releases some new sprite look. It's a very rare box drop, craftable, or whatever. Congratulations, you obtained a Mien. Where did it go? Choose a Mien from a mostly invisible inventory (like how your harnesses work) to change your sprite's appearance. Whatever tier/ultimates you have chosen will sync up to the Mien, as if you "equipped Drakon (Gun Pup) as Drakon Costume." I hope this makes sense. You can equip and unequip a mien as easily as you can costumes over your armor. Miens could have icons that look like a weird combination of a screen+mirror. If you change your sprite with a reset star, the mien will pop off into your weird invisible inventory, and the default mien (your original sprite's look) will be shown. I would prefer having this sort of mien thing, allowing me to change the color/looks of the sprite I worked hard to raise and love dearly, instead of raising an entirely new reskin, but I think we all know OOO won't do things this way - and I guess raising new sprites brings players back for a good while. But reskins make me feel...I don't know. Like I have less of "An Eternal Bond" with my sprites. There's a huge difference between raising sprites that resonate with a mineral color once, and having a ton of them just sitting there like costumes. Makes me feel...idk...weird. I guess it lets me have different combinations of ultimates at the ready. But down the road...? Yeah. Problems.
Here is a potential mien interface.
So there's that. What would happen to all the reskins we've raised already? Oh sheesh. This is the sort of thing that would be a painful change. It just should have been like this from the start, imo.
While we're at this, please, for the love of Vog, add a preview option for when ultimates are selected.
All images are modified screenshots from in-game using Jasc PSP 8 and my mouse clicks, as well as a few generic images sometimes. Yes, ancient stuff.
Jue, 07/16/2015 - 04:12
#2
1st part:
Right now I got only one sprite (maskeraith) with only one elite harness: Normal. I see it as emergency when I end up with the wrong weapons to have at least my maskeraith with normal damage to help me out there. I also go more for his ability to poision things rather than dealing damage.
Soooo, I care very less whether it has elemental or not.
Downgrading would be nice. Since when I upgraded it and couldnt Change back i did feel like blasted Money away.
I also would like to see blue and green crystals eating sprites, but there are more important things i would like to see/have/get fixed first. But in future i am sure they will develope it.
2. MOAR-part:
here i like the chip and disc ideas of beeing able to deal different statuses and i like EXSPECIALLY an auto-attack function.
When sprites got released, it happened almost always in a deapth and started to re-activating the last sprite skill after cd is ready. It was annoying back then, but if i see now how less i am using my sprite while concentrating on dodging, I would greet it to have implemented properly with a selectable sprite skill and adding certain additional Parameters like distance to closest Monster or user's health.
Closing sentence:
I do not care much about reskins. it is nice to have but there are more important things for me hrhr.
Jue, 07/16/2015 - 05:51
#3
+1
Pierce on the Seraphynx is nigh useless since all it could ever really do is chip damage since pierce weak enemies are so fast. Shadow would be SOOOO nice since it would be able to hit the slow jellies and midspeed gremlins much more.
Jue, 07/16/2015 - 11:37
#4
Agreed.
Some things with the harnesses are set to be balancing features, such as drakon's firebolt not doing piercing (that's not even helpful, they'll dodge out of the way), or maskeraith with elemental (RIP, FSC). However seraphynx needs a shadow harness for its full potential.
Not against full sprite harnesses now though. It might make things a little imbalanced but then again, they're battle sprite. Half of us forget they even exist, especially in the panic situations we should be using them in.
As for status chips, would they be additive or replacing? If you replace a drakon with fire, do they get a stronger fire? Or are the statuses an "override", thus a drakon comes with a built-in fire one?
Sprite appearances and whatnot are fun to dabble in. I would say, to make things fair, all Miens released would be released after they are announced, and all sprites prior remain as sprites. This means you won't get a gun puppy mien (/cry Eurydice), but it does mean any future reskins can be applied to your current sprite, so long as you have said sprite.
I would also say all sprites that are craftable remain standalone-sprites, not a mien.
Sáb, 07/18/2015 - 18:50
#5
Extensive Thoughts
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Discs (status)
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For Discs (not chips, chips are their own class of BS modifier): most of the conversation in Holy-Nightmare's idea (in that thread, they're more harnesses, I'd just have them be Discs in addition to one of the four harnesses) discusses the fine points with more perspectives. I would be in favor of having certain sprites come with a disc installed already, like drakon would have a Fire disc when you take it out of its crate, mask would have poison. Sort of like getting a new computer with all its backup discs/preferences/OS preinstalled at the Best Buy or wherever. If you take out the fire disc, but have a normal harness on (you can never completely take off a harness, it will always be iron or something else, same with discs and "blank") you'd be able to take your drakon into Oiler territory without the derps. Each sprite would have this "hidden" sort of "no status" disc, which is always an option. Why is it so weird to describe interface defaults sometimes? Like perks, the icon for the disc in use would look like the disc chosen in the interface. (the drive slot, if you will), while the menu would have various discs, like so: (why do these remind me of TMs from pokemon all of a sudden?):
Here is what it could look like in general.
I've added a few indicators to the interface I'd like to see, like the thicker yellow outline of the icon that's connected to the menu you're currently looking at. Something like this would be nice if the interface has more options like these.
You'd eventually get the discs relatively painlessly, no RNG involved please. Perhaps they could simply be bought from Riley, or a new NPC (Riley could just stay the Harness guy, the new NPC could be the Disc guy, yeah?), or be special lower rank mission rewards, and so on. Of course, if your sprite already had the status disc, you won't be able to buy it again, like a harness. If you buy a disc then get a sprite which comes with that disc later, instead of the disc + sprite, you'd get a few pieces of pet food maybe? Curse...idk. That's...a bit...maybe a random bound box/T2+phantom drop from arcade graveyards? Once you get it, it will never drop again? And is at least guaranteed to drop on your 100th phantom kill if it hasn't already? I really. Hate RNG. Lol. It's a weird status...and one that is either useless or devastating. Not a pvp issue since it's a sprite item. You'd probably not use it as often as other status discs, or more often than you'd use a curse vial. Also...sleep disc? LOL. Probably just wouldn't be a thing, like there's just not a sleep perk. Anyway...
@Vanaduke-Destroyer: for visibility on sprite, I was thinking this would just sorta be like trinkets (we don't see trinks on our knights, just get combat effects), but I suppose the sprite could get a nice, OPTIONAL, aura effect or something. Then people could put Freeze on their volcanic maskeraith mien and be like "whut?"
Part of the appearances thing is so other players know what you're using. But does that reeeeeeally matter?
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Miens
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A potential Mien interface.
The dials below the mirror/screen let you select ultimates. Click a dial 3x, drag to rotate it, or click the tiny squares to scroll through/select ultimate appearances (either none, one ultimate, or the other ultimate), whichever is easier. I'd be more in favor of having yet more computer-floppy related slotables for the actual skills and those ultimates, instead of a reset star...Anyway: select the tier button to have your sprite look like its adorable baby form if you want it to. The icon might change to match the tier too. I'm always sad I can never go back to tier 1/2 look, unless I get a new sprite, and again, that makes me feel weird!
I think you could craft/randomly unbox miens, they'd just have to be balanced economically and relatively rare, since you're getting a huge range of possibilities with a single mien - all tiers and ultimate combinations (or lack of ultimates+some ultimates) would be possible with a single mien. And that's a significant amount of coding per mien. I have a feeling OOO largely puts effort into new sprite reskins that have different ultimate looks (not just reskins+effects like the volc masker etc, more like punkin) because they know that players will be raising them for a good while, if only to see what they look like in-game without spiral spy.
Would we be able to have any mien work with any sprite? Like have Dark Matter (maskeraith) mechanics with a Drakon mien? I don't see why not really. This would let silly things like Spiralhorn make more sense too, imo.
It should be simple...one set of mechanics per mineral that looks like a sprite that you work hard to get to 100, extremely adaptable to our needs (for example, sera's ray/HA/aura is a set of mechanics for luminite, or if you prefer, a set of moves that a species can learn, sorta like...oh no, not TMs/moves and pokemon again). Programmable, to a great extent, in relation to exposure on cradle - both knight and sprite exposure. These mechanics could be augmented with dmg type (harnesses) and discs (status), with general sprite behavior adjustable as well (chips), and perhaps even more ultimates with idk, Toggles...but that would complicate the Mien interface proposed above. But if we get more moves per sprite, and can only choose three, and isolate the moves from the appearance, we'd only need to adjust the proposed mien interface and release more miens with similar names that aren't controlled by dials, and are more like costumes I think. But I'm getting into weird stuff there I guess.
I look forward to seeing what skillset the green and blue sprites might have.
To introduce miens (anything that's a reskin atm), players could have the minimum food requirements, reset star, and evo cats returned to them bound. This is reminiscent of that shard bomb nonsense, but less spam-able without crafts, and you'd be getting back what you put in directly, not some barely related UV ticket. Alas, I know not how to reimburse time spent raising reskins. What would be fair? The sheer dynamics of the miens comes close imo. Companion Prize Boxes could be seen again to commemorate the changes.
We are waaaaay far down the road of "OOO will not have done this in most universes that even have a game called spiral knights nor ever will." Just talking whimsically, since I'm at that point.
Sáb, 07/18/2015 - 13:35
#6
....
"OOO will not have done this in most universes that even have a game called spiral knights nor ever will."
(Please make this statement false and make all of this happen)
Sáb, 07/18/2015 - 18:30
#7
Shhhh.
Shhh. Reverse psychology. Shhhhh.
Make this happen right now.
Though, one question. Where would discs be shown on the sprite?