Spiral Knights - The inherent problem with the game's weapon balance

The inherent problem with the game's weapon balance

21 replies [Last post]

Tue, 03/19/2013 - 15:24

Zeddy

Can we generally agree that Tier 2 is pretty balanced? Let's look at some swords:

There's Calibur, being all-around versatile and good for knocking stuff back with the charge attack or killing turrets fast.
There's Brandish, with fancy specialised damage and status. The charge attack lets off three explosions at 3*. Seems alright compared to Calibur, but there's the chance of status balancing it out and everyone likes special damage. Note that in T2, causing statuses is a rare privilege. You're limited to haze bombs, with tiny radiuses and painful charge times, or alchemers, which are slow and weak.

It's a little bit powerful, but you have to use it smartly. If you use the charge up in a Lumber's face, they'll still be right there, ready to smack you back even if you freeze them or burn them. Calibur is safer (for the user) in that regard.

There's Troika, with tremendous damage and a powerful charge attack. The knockback is very useful for crowd control, and can cause stun. Very useful!
At 3*, you have Sealed Sword. The charge attack is a bit meh, but like Brandish, it has the status thing going on and is an interesting oddball.
And Cutter, with low interruption but lots of utility. I use it to push healers away from other enemies and finish them off. It's a risky sword and you have to compensate for its lack of interruption by paying attention and shielding. The great speed of it lets you do that.
You have Flourish, too. It's got a good bit of reach and decent interruption. The range is narrow on the followup attacks so theoretically it's intended for single-targets, but the initial swipe covers a huge area and honestly this weapon is kinda OP right off the bat. The pure damage balances it out just a little bit in PvE but makes it a killer in Lockdown. It's worth noting that this sword was a late addition, explaining its lack of balance with other weapons. It's powerful, fast and easy to use.
Spur kinda sucks. It's a slow cutter without the ghost strike. OOO never did figure out what they wanted to do with Spur, which is why they never did anything with it.

Pretty balanced! A couple of outliers, not too bad. You can't really point at one or two of these weapons and go "THIS is the best one!" Now, let's look at how these weapons scale:

Calibur

Tempered Calibur: No change.

Ascended Calibur: No change.

Leviathan Blade: No change.

Cold Iron Carver: Reduced power in favour of Undead bonus.

Cold Iron Vanquisher: No change.

Brandish

X-burst Brandish: Elemental damage and status. One extra explosion on the charge increasing damage and range.

X-brand Brandish: Extra explosion leading to increased damage, range and chance of infliction.

Combuster, Glacius and Voltedge: Extra explosion leading to increased damage, range and chance of infliction.

Nightblade: Shadow damage. One extra explosion on the charge increasing damage and range.

Silent NightBlade: Extra explosion leading to increased damage and range.

Acheron: Extra explosion leading to increased damage and range.

Cautery Sword: Slime bonus.

As you can see, every single step of Brandish is an unmistakable upgrade even if not used in its intended stratum. The same cannot be said for Calibur. Let's move on!

Troika

Kamarin: No change.

Khorovod: No change.

Sudaruska: Slightly increased range on the charge attack.

Grintovec: Stun traded for Freeze.

Jalovec: No change..

Triglav: Slightly increased range on the charge attack.

Sealed Sword

Avenger: Elemental damage, random status is replaced by astral blade that penetrates and multihits, greatly increasing damage, range and crowd control.

Divine Avenger: Astral blades multiplied to three, greatly increasing damage and crowd control.

Faust: Shadow damage. Random status is replaced by just Curse which is sort of balanced through self-infliction on just the charge. You can also curse with the regular combo, which carries no risk whatsoever. Additionally, there's an astral blade that penetrates and multihits, greatly increasing damage, range and crowd control.

Gran Faust: Charge time penalized for no benefit compared to Faust other than the marginal damage increase absolutely all weapon upgrades entail, which is only remotely relevant in Stratum 6.

Wat. I'm sure Faust was meant to have Gran Faust's charge time, but they forgot and never bothered fixing it.

Cutter

Striker: No change.

Vile Striker: Poison.

Dread Venom Striker: No change.

Hunting Blade: Beast bonus and greatly increased interruption on the charge in expense of speed.

Wild Hunting Blade: No change.

Spur

Arc Razor: No change.

Winmillion: Projectiles on the regular combo.

I'm not bothering with all the flourish upgrades. I think BTB maybe gets some extra spikes or something? You can see the point here, anyway. All the weapons considered to be underpowered are actually balanced with the overused lines. It's just that those lines get a bunch of upgrades at each craft whereas underpowered weapons are left in or close to their 2* state, leaving them in the dust so to speak. It never had anything to do with normal damage, just a lack of extra effects.

This is where I would start suggesting upgrades for each step of each sword, but... not yet. For now, I'm simply throwing this out there so people can keep it mind when suggesting balances. I might do a followup post about guns. Bltiz and Alchemers are patently ridiculous in the amount of upgrades they get.

Tue, 03/19/2013 - 16:51

Bopp

Not better balanced, but more interesting?

As usual, you've made some good observations. But you've focused on qualitative upgrades, and you've ignored quantitative upgrades (same effect, but just more damage). What if Leviathan offered "no improvement" over Ascended, except that each stroke did 1000 damage? Then it would be overpowered.

So I propose that issues of weapon balance can be solved by tweaking damage numbers. If you accept that idea, then all that remains is to pick the numbers. And arguably the numbers are about right already, because there has to be some incentive to use nonnormal weapons.

I think that you're actually looking for a way to make weapons more interesting. This is hard.

Tue, 03/19/2013 - 18:03

Zeddy

@Bopp

The thing is that weapons currently receive very little damage bonus on upgrades. The main appeal of upgrading a Levi lies in being able to use it in deeper stratums. Ascended Cali and Levi are next to identical in damage at stratum 5, differing only by a handful of points of damage. As far as I know, no weapons make any notable jumps up in damage as they're upgraded. So when I say "no change", I really mean "no change beyond being usable in the next tier."

Do you want to know the difference between Heavy Shard Bomb and Deadly Shard Bomb at depth 23?

2 damage. Meanwhile, Brandishes get a whole extra explosion (with no arbitrary hit limit!), adding an additional 160 damage to the charge on top of the meagre damage bonus inherent to upgrades. Alchemers gain even more ricochets and faster bullets, adding an additional fragton of damage. The qualitative upgrades are also quantitative, is the problem. Extra explosions add more damage. Extra astral blades add more damage. Extra ricochets add more damage. Larger blast radii adds more damage. And, importantly, they do so in interesting, tangible ways.

Also, Brandishes get stronger than Leviathan in pure damage through upgrades going from having a bit less, which is ridiculous.

Damage increases would work, though. Kinda lazy and kinda boring, but they'd work.

Wed, 03/20/2013 - 00:25

Tin-Foil-Hat

Normal damage could use a bit

Normal damage could use a bit of an increase as all normal damage weapons do quite noticeably less damage, as said in previous threads.

I dont know about the Cold Iron Vanquisher one. It does significantly less damage than the brandish lines against undead even when it has a high undead damage UV. I say buff it to very high or maximum, i really dont like the fact that blades like this dont do decent damage when theyre purely made for the sole purpose of being used against a certain type of monster. Yes its normal and can be used against other things with a significant decrease in damage but i still think that it doesnt do enough damage in terms of damage against undead compared to its counterparts. Its also note worthy that this blade only does a very slight amount of damage more against all enemies than it does against strong resistant enemies against elemental pure and split. The gap just isnt there, elemental split definitely is still the better choice over elemental pure against all monsters though because the damage decrease isnt significant enough.

I think they should buff heavy weapons a little bit since the UV proc rate is not only low, but not even strong. Id like to see one of two things. Either a buff to the stun and freeze to be strong, or buff to the weapons that allows all swings to proc the UV instead of just charge swing and 2nd combo hits, much like the Fang of Vog. They arent defensive enough in my opinion for how slow they are.

I cant say much for the other weapons as i dont have a flourish, cutter, or spur line weapon, though i plan on making a Dread Venom Striker in the near future.

Wed, 03/20/2013 - 00:33

Tin-Foil-Hat

@Bop - Theres no incentive to

@Bop - Theres no incentive to use a normal damage weapon if you have 4 weapon slots available.

Breakdown of Monster weaknesses.

Undead resist shadow damage and are weak to elemental damage.
Constructs resist piercing damage and are weak to elemental damage.

Fiends resist shadow damage and are weak to piercing damage.
Beasts resist elemental damage and are weak to piercing damage.

Slimes resist piercing damage and are weak to shadow damage.
Gremlins resist elemental damage and are weak to shadow damage.

You only need 3 weapon slots to have the advantage against all monsters and not have to worry about decreased damage via normal damage. 1 Elemental, 1 Piercing, 1 Shadow Weapon is all you need. Normal damage has no place unless you have less than 3 weapon slots available to you. Weapon slots are cheap buying three is no problem at all.

Wed, 03/20/2013 - 01:08

Batabii

Calibur and its line are not

Calibur and its line are not SUPPOSED to be good. They're practice weapons for noobs that don't do anything great but just barely scrape by at tier 3. It's the same reason Aegis and Azure Guardian set are terrible.

Wed, 03/20/2013 - 01:08

Breaker-Xd

Not even 3 slots...

With 2 slots, carrying elemental + pierce guarantees neutral at LEAST agains all classes (ex: voltedge and flourish: volt edge for undeads, constructs and slimed, flourish for fiends, beasts, and gremlin)

Same goes for shadow and pierce, or shadow and elemental. In the sense of a pure swordie, 2 weapon slots is enough to guarantee 'perfect coverage' at all times, on all things.

The real point in having normal weapons is for mixed weapon types (gun + sword, sword + bomb). A knight with 2 slots can carry say, a gun and a sword, but which gun and which sword?

Ex: Roarmulus. Since the majority of the enemies are constructs, one of the weapons should be elemental. But then what about gremlin? Elemental is bad on gremlin, so either a piercing or shadow weapon should e carried. Now think realistically: constructs are easy to kill, whereas gremlins dodge like their pants are in fire. Do you REALLY want to being. An umbra or a sentenza? Sure you can, but why not just bring a Gran Faust? A Polaris can easily take care of any constructs. This way, you can keep your gun and sword combo, while still maintaining good coverage.

For the player that doesn't want to think this much, or doesn't know what to expect, normal weapons can be a boon. If you know you want a gun and a sword, just bring a Triglav and a Valiance; don't worry about monster type.

TL;DR Normal weps are pointless if you are familiar with the level. There needs to be a better reason to use normal weapons.

Wed, 03/20/2013 - 02:09

Terra-Necro

Normal weapons are a

Normal weapons are a standard, meant to help new players. When they first begin, they usually won't know what monsters are weak against what damage type (I know I didn't when I first started, which was a long time ago). They are good at allowing players to get the feel of the game before they start focusing on other lines.

and Batabii... try giving a comment that is actually useful please?

@Zeddy Do you feel that the 2nd swing of a Suda/Trig needs more knockback? I feel it does since the swing itself is slower than a DA or GF. I had an asi med khorovod, and it still was slower than my DA.

Wed, 03/20/2013 - 04:31

Fehzor

I feel like this is more a matter of convincing the devs to fix their game than actually finding out what the problem is. I've seen a ton of great looking fixes, and very few of them have seen any consideration. But yes, I would agree. Some items become super powerful when they upgrade, others gain particle effects or lose out on power, which means that the devs would agree that their game is broken in a sense. I could quote them saying that no 4* item should outclass it's 5* counterpart, but ain't no one got time for that.

Wed, 03/20/2013 - 07:13

Zeddy

@Larry
And yet Nitronome is one of the most powerful weapons in the game. Do you know why that is? It's because each step of blast bomb grows substantially stronger through getting increased radius.

@Terra-Necro
I think the knockback on the second swing of Troikas is pretty good. That being said, I certainly wouldn't mind it being a bit stronger.

@Everyone
I'm doing a thing where I'm proposing balancing changes for weapons that are missing out on incremental upgrades. I've started with Cutter. I'll be elaborating in this thread about guns, then bombs, and suggesting changes for those in that other thread.

Wed, 03/20/2013 - 08:37

#10

Bopp

Tin Foil Hat

Tin Foil Hat, you don't need to explain damage types to me. They are the crux of my sword guide and most of the 100s or 1000s of posts that I have made on these forums.

People are proposing that various normal weapons be buffed. But if you buff them too much, then they will do as much damage as nonnormal weapons, thus making nonnormal weapons pointless. So any proposal to rebalance the weapons must avoid this problem. That's what I meant when I said that there must be some incentive to use nonnormal weapons.

Fri, 03/29/2013 - 07:12

#11

Zeddy

Guns

Heres' the 2* guns:

Blaster is reliable, easy-to use and has an okay amount of knockback. The interruption is low, damage is ehhhhh and, frankly, it's the most boring weapon imaginable. If you're not put off by that, though, it's an alright gun.
Autogun has a lot of damage, but it's balanced out by freezing you in place when being fired. It's got alright knockback going on for the charge attack only, which is necessary for safety should your enemy survive it. The reach is nothing special, either. All in all, pretty well balanced.
X-tech Alchemer has pure elemental damage and three of them can deal a status. The charge attack releases two ricochet bullets. All in all, the gun can do pretty good against crowds and all the advantages are nicely offset through a 2-shot clip and slow-moving bullets.
Pulsar is overpowered. The regular shots are a bit weaker than Blaster's, but after not very long at all, it expands to shots that are as powerful as Magnus', cover more area and does a ton more knockback. Pulsar was added pretty late, but it came at the same time as Catalyzer, which is balanced just fine with other 2* guns.
Catalyzer is kinda neat. The regular shots are weaker than blaster's and the shots travel slower. This is to balance out the charge attack, which is more powerful than Magnus' charge attack but without sending you flying on your butt and charging up a hell of a lot faster.
Magnus has fast-traveling bullets. Faster than Super Blaster's bullets. They're also more powerful than even Prismatech Alchemer MkII's shots. This is balanced out through the gun rooting you in place with each shot. The charge attack carries great power, balanced out through a lengthy animation using it. While technically not as powerful as autogun despite carrying the same risk, the range is a bit farther and all its power is focused into one bullet, making it suited for single targets at a distance.
Antigua is essentially reworked Needle Shot. The damage is the same, the bullets are focused exactly where you aim instead of being spread, and the gun even lets you move while firing and stop during the middle of it. Needle shots lets you fire 12 shots before reloading while Antigua only lets you fire six, however. Antigua also fires its payload slower, meaning Needle still has an advantage in terms of power. Needle's charge is blatantly more powerful, additionally.
Where Needle fires 15 bullets of greatly increased strength, Antigua just fires 5 regular shots followed by 1 of the same strength of Needle's 15. Antigua's charge has the advantage of being focused in a single spot, which can be nice if you're trying to snipe out a priority target.

So, fairly balanced then. Let's look how they upgrade!

Blaster

Super Blaster: No change.

Master Blaster: No change.

Valiance: No change.

Wow. That is incredibly boring. Valiance used to have a greatly increased knockback over Master Blaster, but the bottom end of the line was increased sometime long ago so the whole line is the same now.

Autogun

Pepperbox: Chance to inflict fire.

Fiery Pepperbox: No change.

Volcanic Pepperbox: No change.

Needle Shot: Piercing damage. Regular shots get range increased by one tile. Charged shots get ranged increased by four tiles. Knockback removed, making it easier to inflict the gun's full charge damage on a single target. Travel speed for bullets just about doubled, making the gun capable of expoiting right through barriers and Trojan shields. Damage is also increased. As a tradeoff, the spread is increased.

Strike Needle: Gun unloads faster, increasing damage and safety. Spread is tightened, focusing damage..

Blitz Needle: Gun unloads faster, increasing damage and safety. Spread is tightened, focusing damage.

Toxic Needle: Same as Needle Shot, but instead of increased damage it gets poison.

Blight Needle: Gun unloads faster, spread tightened.

Plague Needle: Gun unloads faster, spread tightened. Status increased to Strong.

It's worth noting that Blitz Needle is Nick's favourite weapon. A lot of its upgrades could've been distributed through the upgrade chain, but it's all just front-loaded as soon as you get to Needle Shot.

X-tech Alchemer

X-tech Alchemer MkII: Bullets become fast and can also ricochet, increasing potential damage and chance of status infliction greatly. The increased travel speed removes an important balancing factor compared to Blaster and Magnus.

X Driver: Charge attack can ricochet twice, increased damage and rate of infliction.

XX Driver: Charge attack splits up into four bullets, increasing damage and rate of inflcition.

This is ridiculous.

Pulsar

Heavy Pulsar: No change.

Radiant Pulsar: No change.

Supernova: No change.

Kilowatt Pulsar: Reduced damage on expanded shots in favour of shock infliction and elemental damage.

Gigawatt Pulsar: No change.

Polaris: No change.

Pulsar doesn't get much in the way of upgrades, but the gun was overpowered to begin with, essentially being 5* in its 2* form.

Catalyzer

Industrial Catalyzer: No change.

Volatile Catalyzer: No change.

Neutralizer: No change.

Toxic Catalyzer: Reduced damage on charge attack in favour of poison infliction and shadow damage..

Virulent Catalyzer: No change.

Biohazard: No change.

I'm thinking when OOO released these guns they figured everyone would only care about the end-product anyway, so they stopped bothering with incremental upgrades altogether.

Magnus

Mega Magnus: No change.

Callahan: No change.

Iron Slug: Stun removed. Piercing damage replaced by Normal.

So not only does Magnus not get any upgrades, one of its branches can be considered objectively worse.

Antigua

Silversix: Damage type change to elemental. Final shot changed to a piercing, multihitting bullet. Undead bonus.

Argent Peacemaker: No change.

Blackhawk: Damage type change to shadow. Final shot changed to a piercing, multihitting bullet. Gremlin bonus. Range lowered for no reason.

Sentenza: Range fixed.

Not too shabby. Maybe the piercing bullet could've been held off until the 5* form? Anyone who's actually used these guns, I haven't because they look utterly boring, could perhaps tell me if there's any functional difference between the eagle and the giant piercing bullet on the 4* guns. Maybe the hitbox is larger?

Thu, 08/29/2013 - 06:53

#12

Zeddy

Let's hammer down the point with bombs

Let's go over the T2 bombs.

Blast Bomb is, like its cousins Calibur and Blaster, reliable, easy-to use and has a decent amount of knockback. It behaves exactly how you expect a bomb to act. Good power, good knockback, good charge time. It's the Mario of bombs.
X Vaporizer excels at inflicting statuses. It's balanced out with alchemers and brandishes by doing low damage over time and having the actual inflicted status be the weakest possible. This is more than made up for by allowing you to leave a lingering mist of status that your enemy can walk into.
Because of its mechanics, mist bombs are extremely safe to use. There is never a need to get close to the enemy if you don't want to, but doing so you can inflict extra damage with the detonation. The complete lack of knockback makes them ideal for blindly supporting teammates without worrying about coordination. Compared to blast bombs, it usually won't be able to kill things as fast.
Shard Bombs explode twice. They have an initial detonation that is smaller and weaker than blast bomb, but emit six shards that are even smalller but a bit stronger. The shards are almost as strong as a blast bomb against a weak target (super dark matter dos 60 damage to a jelly cube, while super blast bomb does 70), and if you can multihit with the core and a shard or two you'll outperform blast bomb by far at the expense of some safety. Alternatively, the long fuse lets you damage enemies very far away from you at very low risk. I won't be talking about buggy behaviour here, but it seems like disappearing shards close to walls was intended, as was the arbitrary hit limits that are in no way applied to other multihit weapons.
2* shards are pretty balanced with 2* blast bombs. The Shards are spread as such that they reach out a bit further than blast bombs do, and the long fuse adds a layer of safety in that you can use it without ever getting close to your enemies. The old Crystal Bomb had a range longer than any gun and technically, these do too. By placing them and running away before they detonate, you are able to hurt things very far from where you are standing.

They come in every damage variant, a unique benefit not found in other weapons.
Spine Cone is a piercing variant of blast bomb. It has very little knockback. A lot of people find this lack of knockback to be a benefit, as the user don't have to worry about what their teammates are doing when using it.
Dark Reprisal is a unique, shadow-type damage bomb. Two orbs spin in an orbit around the explosion center doing the damage of a regular autogun shot. Unlike autogun, you're not rooted in place at all while using. It has no knockback and very little interruption power. In essence, it can be through of a more focused, stackable Ash of Agni.
X charge sucks in enemies for a while before exploding. It's a crowd-control weapon that works on any enemy not nailed to the ground no matter what their status affiliation is. At 3*, it isn't strong enough to handle every enemy. Large ones such as Lumbers will go unaffected. The charge time is just as long as those of haze bombs, and you move very slowly while using it. This make it a very risky bomb to use in the middle of the fray, and it should instead be used at the edge of battlefields or charged ahead of time when you're expecting waves.
You can chain enemies from vortex to vortex, but since you move slowly and nothing stops the enemy from just turning to you and slamming you to death if you get too close, this is risky. It's a very powerful, very fun bomb. Fantastic if you can get your allies to coordinate with you.

Seems alright, don't you think? We'll look at upgrade lines again.

Blast Bomb

Super Blast Bomb: Increased radius and knockback, improving potential damage through being able to affect more enemies as well as adding safety.

Master Blast Bomb: Increased radius and knockback.

Nitronome: Increased radius and knockback.
Big Angry Bomb: Increased radius, greatly increased damage and ridiculously increased knockback at the expense of charge time, movement speed, and fuse time.

Irontech Bomb: Greatly increased radius, increased damage and somewhat increased knockback at the expense of movement speed and fuse time.

Irontech Destroyer: Increased knockback and fuse time.

Deconstructor: Increased radius and knockback, construct bonus at the expense of general damage.

Heavy deconstructor: Increased radius and knockback.

Compared to the lackluster Leviathan and Blaster, this is something else! I think it very adequately proves my point with this thread that when someone goes "Normal weapons suck, nobody uses (list of normal swords and guns) and Nitronome!", any bomber worth their salt will step in and point out that Nitro is easily a top-tier weapon, normal damage or no. Not a soul would defend Nitro if it had its 2* radius and knockback at 5*.

X Vaporizer

X Vaporizer MkII: Increased radius, improving potential status infliction. I think duration increases a bit, too. 5* vaporizer has a bit more duration than 2* so it happens somewhere down the line.

X Atomizer: Increased radius..

5* hazes: Increased radius.

All in all, pretty good. It's worth noting that while the damage on fire, shock and freeze thawing scales up with tiers just like general weapon damage, radius and blast damage are the only benefits for upgrading Toxic Vaporizer and Haze Bomb. This could be part of the reason why their end products are less favoured amongst the mist bombs.

Shard Bomb

Super Shard Bomb: No change.

Heavy Shard Bomb: Two extra shards. Since this only leads to covering the same area a bit tighter and there's an arbitrary hit limit in place, this has close to zero practical benefit.

Deadly Shard Bomb: No change. It's worth noting that at this point, Nitronome has a lot more damage than Shard Bomb, possibly due to enemies having a lot more defence. Where'd the balance go?

Sun Shards/Salt Bomb: Reduced damage in favour of status.

Radiant/Ionized: Two extra shards. Since this only leads to covering the same area a bit tighter and there's an arbitrary hit limit in place, this has close to zero practical benefit. Status gained.

Scintillating/Shocking: No change.

Not quite nothing, but close to nothing.

Spine Cone: See Nitronome sans the knockback.

X-ton Charge

X-ton Bomb: Increased radius and suction power, greatly increasing potential damage.

X-Ton Vortex: Increased radius and suction power. At this stage, it's strong enough to affect even Vanaduke.

There's no question that the Vortex-lines get better with upgrades. Some say they're useless before 5*, but few question they're top-tier stuff once there.

Dark Reprisal

Dark Reprisal MkII: One extra orb added, increasing potential damage by 50%.

Dark Retribution: One extra orb added, increasing potential damage by over 30% as wel as covering more area.

And whaddya know, DR happens to be the most directly damaging bomb there is, while shard bombs are nearly universally hated.

Sun, 03/24/2013 - 18:52

#13

Zephyrgon

Uh nope

Bomber has no damage in T2. Striker is at it's most powerful. NOPE.

Mon, 03/25/2013 - 10:23

#14

Aureate

couple of points

- Shard bombs only get status at 4*
- Drivers only get four-way-split charge at 5*; at 4* they have a chance to ricochet twice

My OCD may now rest in peace.

Edit: Also, Plague's status is bumped up to Strong at 5*.

Mon, 03/25/2013 - 10:06

#15

Zeddy

Fixed

Thanks for the corrections.

@Zephyrgon:
I wasn't talking about Lockdown. LD is unbalanced beyond simply gear and is its own can of worms you can open somewhere away from my face.

Tue, 03/26/2013 - 23:33

#16

Windsickle

Correct me if I'm wrong, but

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the Catalyzers' projectile flight speed among others, begins to increase between upgrades.

-Windsickle

Wed, 03/27/2013 - 01:39

#17

Etharaes

@Windsickle

Catalyzer bullets (and charges) don't speed up between upgrades. However, you may view another's bullets as faster than yours due to latency. This affects all guns if you lag.

Fri, 03/29/2013 - 07:13

#18

Zeddy

It has come to my attention that Blitz gets incremental upgrades in the form of tightened spread and increased rate of fire. This has been added.

Sat, 03/30/2013 - 12:30

#19

Diamondshreddie

Wait a second...

Zeddy, I believe this;

Shard bombs were seen too gun-like and unfair being able to OHKO certain enemies. ok fine, then this:

-Miscommunication happens in the dev team.

-Team A implememts a hit-limit intended for the OLD SHARDS

-Team B reworks the bomb into something with interesting potential

-Both chunks of code are added and, TADA, new shard bombs lose their max potential.

_________

I'm actually going to be sending in a bug report covering this... I really think they overthought balance, and for anyone who plays TF2 will know what I mean when I say CM5K Disease.

Sun, 03/31/2013 - 10:22

#20

Lukehandkooler

@Zeddy

It has come to my attention that Blitz gets incremental upgrades in the form of tightened spread and increased rate of fire. This has been added.

Tighter spread could be argued as a side-grade or a push because the weapon has the inherent power to one shot just about anything and in as much as you cannot shoot thru a corpse there are probably an equal amount of situations for arguments sake that a larger spread would be more effective for the given interaction.

~Luke

Sun, 03/31/2013 - 17:28

#21

Geosmin

Needlers get increased range

Needlers get increased range over the Pepperbox path, apparently due to faster projectiles. The range increase is so much that the volley still might get wider at max range despite the spread being tighter. (I find it hard to tell since the skewy perspective makes such perceptions deceptive...) I agree that the optimal spread is situational, but in general tighter is better compared to the Normal Autogun's spread since it's wide enough to be very specialised to the point of being a hindrance in most situations.

The width at max range _might_ be the same so far as I know, in which case the most likely explanation might be that outward velocity is increased while spread is determined by a separately defined lateral component which is left the same; it's probably the simplest way to implement the peculiar observed combination of similarities and differences. Oddly, the Pepperbox charge attack gets reduced range while both Piercing paths get increased range for the charge attack. Considering the reversal of the knock direction, I almost suspect that a projectile lifespan adjustment on the same projectile class that was meant to mirror that of the Needlers also got applied backwards. Maybe we should study and compare the charge attacks of the two weapons to see if anything else supports this hilarious idea.

Er, anyway, back to our regularly scheculed topic.

I don't feel that things are well-balanced at T2 relative to T3, but that might have a lot to do with the boombs being the most late-blooming weapons, and my being a derpnugget with those weapons so I'll just assume I don't have enough experience to form a meaningful opinion yet, so I can blissfully ignore that subthread aside from this disclaimer. :D I do agree that the dramatic differences in growth rates are a balance issue, and that it seems to be due to skewed-up qualitative improvements with star-level upgrades and no quantitative adjustments for weapons without such "bonus" upgrades, I just haven't gotten an impression that there's a star level or even Tier where they're on much more even footing than elsewhere, and I am not sure it's much of a problem except for crotchety peops like myself. Now, I personally much prefer a totally different ideal, but I understand that there is some great value for some people in having our toys be diverse on such spectra as "newb" vs. "pro," "hipster" vs. "clone," T1 through T3, etc. that end up having little to do directly with mechanics or strategy. I can't complain, since I rather like the idea of consciously bothering to implement diversity across my own favourite "pointless" spectra such as mundane vs. fantastic, simple vs. complex, or predictable vs. chaotic. (or maybe all 3 of those spectra are just proxies for "boring" vs. "confusing?") I do suspect it's more by accident than by design here, given how the game seems to be still under perpetual construction more or less like WoW, but I don't think accident is inherently less good than design. (*grumble* Autogun charges *grumblegrumble*)

More on-topic, "balance" is a very loaded word and I've seen plenty of misunderstanding and even heated head-buttery caused directly by differing unquestioned assumptions as to what the goal, the target, of "balance" is in the first place. A common definition of that target that I see is that each option (which could be an equipment piece, skill point allocation, stat point, or whatever- any choice meant to be gameplay-influencing) has about the same amount of weeping and gnashing of teeth over how it's overpowered/cheap/lame/[happy] as over how it's underpowered/worthless/dumb/[jovial]. Another ideal I've seen is that one or both of those two metrics be about the same across the board. One of my favourite definitions is twofold; that each option have some significant amount of users enjoying it, (not necessarily close to even in number, just enough that you're not terribly surprised to see it) and that each option has a roughly similarly success rate for its users at a given matchmaking rating level. To my knowledge, Three Rings has not shared with us precisely what their intended "balance" goal is, or for that matter very much else about their grand vision for the game, (to be fair, our culture very strongly discourages that sort of sharing and inclusion with real financial threats) so we're mostly left stabbing around in the dark with suggestions for "improvements" to the game. For a simple example, is the "hipster-clone" axis a desired thing for allowing us to articulate a personal taste/style preference kinda like all the cosmetic stuff, or is it a painful mistake resulting in beautiful work languishing relatively unappreciated? Guessing wrong as to the developers' opinion on that can be the difference between a suggestion being brilliant and exactly bass ackwards. OTOH, there's almost surely definable axes on which there's no developer-defined preferred heading yet, and so it will be decided by their perception, whether spot-on or backwards, of what most of us prefer.

...er, hehe. Yeah, um... New Shards are an insult to Spiral values, bring back Shards Classic with real cane sugar? ... *waves fist nervously*

Okay, I guess by now many of youse want to pin me to a corkboard and get an actual opinion outta me as to what might constitute an improvement, so: I feel the balance between bombs and other classes in solo play at T1 and T2 is not where I would like, and extrapolating from those two into what I expect T3 to be like I expect bombs to feel a bit more powerful than I'd like, but I'm okay with this unevenness since all 3 classes are still pretty viable once one knows how to use them. More irksome IMO is how some status-inflicting weapons feel like they're overshadowed by counterparts with bonus damage instead of the status effect; for example, the DoT of Fire on the Alchemer and Flourish is too small in total, too unreliable, too small in total, to delayed, too small in total, too easy to "waste" due to not stacking, and too small in total to really feel as appealing as the strait-up per-hit bonus damage of the more common alternatives. More irksome still is how the Blaze-Blizz-Blitz status effect trio, as interesting as it is, gets so much prominence while Stun and Poison are present on maybe half as many 5-star weapons and none of the "standard" DPS weapons like Brandishes and Alchemers. Speaking of star levels, really the biggest "balance" issue for me, the one that I'm most tempted to gripe about by far, is that the starting melee weapons show a wonderful variety, with a mining pick-type thing, a wonderful-looking giant hammer/axe thingy, a few weaponised adjustable wrenches, one clenching a sharp glowing jewel thing, and the most glorious melee weapon of all, a D-handle digging spade, with a tassel for cleaning up the "slime" that would otherwise compromise one's grip on it. That's just ...terriblific, for lack of a better word, but all of it becomes obsolete in the clockworks almost right off the bat. Even if some of the melee weapons for "endgame" are still pretty terrificible, the fact that all of them can be described as "swords" feels like a downgrade after the stuff we're introduced to much more awefulsome stuff at the beginning of the game. :( In this game as in most others, the player is introduced to toys one might think are the bee's knees, then told, "Okay, now forget about that, this new toy is better. In case you have different ideas as to what is cool or fun, we've implemented power creep to enforce this gear hierarchy."

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The inherent problem with the game's weapon balance