Hi, I'm not a common forum-goer, but due to the recent addition of mini enemies, I thought I'd express my dissatisfaction with their general function and balancing. For the record, I'm a knight owning nothing lower than 4 star, with 3 sets of just about everything for maximum adaptation to all the harsh surprises the clockworks can throw at you, but with the addition of minis, I see continuous issues that make their balancing extremely poor and they are overall somewhat buggy.
Breakdown:
Minis attack in large packs, relying on long-range melee combos and sheer numbers to dish heavy damage and become a threat, but some aspects make them insurmountable to many equipment sets or even just based on the level archetype they spawn in (which aren't very diverse at some points)
Pros:
-Add variety
-Are very simple to fight
-Aren't tough and can be easily predicted in smaller numbers
Cons:
-Arcade generation often produces their home, compounds, in excessive numbers. Some portals will carry a compound for 2/3 of every depth or so for an entire tier's length.
-Their long attack vollies can often rack up extremely long combos, allowing a single bad placed mini to continuously shred a knight, even through very well adapted armor.
-Compounds appear to occasionally produce memory leaks.
-Most mini types, except dust bunnies, never drop any form of loot, including health. As these compounds are produced often and the majority of their enemies and threat come from minis, this can easily stack up to a suicidal raid requiring 1 or 2 energy revives per floor.
-Minis are not fought equally between weapon types, sometimes producing a bit of unnecessary difficulty that seems discriminatory vs certain playstyles.
-Areas that hold minis can include excessive diversity levels previously unseen in the clockworks, with as many as 5/6 monster families encountered per floor.
-The quarters in which you encounter minis are extremely small and may leave you literally buried in an undodgable avalanche of ever-attacking enemy, with shield bumping being extremely ineffective due to the continuous DPS they dish and how tightly packed they are.
-Forcefields are often emplaced to stop minis from stalking you everywhere, but often (especially with scarabs) they can bypass these forcefields and maul you in the end zones and other "safe" places.
-Every compound seems to end in the exact same chunk, which is extremely close quarters and produces 12-15 minis infinitely, with several considerable ambushes placed simultaniously, leaving the entire area a massive deathtrap.
These are probably biased points I admit, but I have personal suggestions I think might tone this down a bit so it's well balanced and becomes a more enjoyable experience.
-In mini-generation points, perhaps lower the spawn rate some so its not so non-stop slaughter.
-Modify minis to stop combos after 1 hit so they don't eviscerate players single-handedly.
-Give them a chance to drop hearts, or maybe even pickups, so it's not just an endless suicidal gauntlet and more of a rational fight.
-Look into how various weapon types handle the fight and adapt the surroundings accordingly to reduce playstyle discrimination.
-Add more variety (I'm sure you guys are already on this one) to the compound's terrain. They seem fairly lazy in design and very un-randomized compared to more "normal" clockworks levels.
-Figure out why they bypass forcefields and solve the issue (once again, I'm the OOO team is slaving away on this already) I honestly don't know how this got past beta testing in the first place, especially with the extremely un-diverse terrain that emphasizes force fields on every floor.
-Reduce ambush intensities in compound archetypes. The current level is just plain ridiculous, often ending with you being chased by a hundred enemies that've spawned in less than a minutes time. Either scale down the mini ambushes to not be batches of 15+, or reduce everything else that spawns with them, often making them an iron wall of near-sudden death.
Once again, biased rant, personal suggestions. Your game, your move, OOO.
Lower the spawnrate? I say increase it :) Minis are supposed to be "swarm" enemies, but in that final room you only get around 10 at a time, and in ambushes probably nudging 20. Due to the nature of AoE in this game (Brandishes, bombs, Pulsars) Minis aren't really a big challenge. If you're complaining about not being able to beat them with every armor set and every weapon combination, that's good - no set should be able to do everything. Would you try to use a non-automatic gun against a pack of 50 rabid dogs? No. You'd either use a machine gun, an explosive, or maybe a melee weapon like a big axe. But you definitely wouldn't use a pistol.
On the level design, I agree that the ambushes are broken, but in a different way. Enemies often spawn in big clustered groups behind bushes, only to get stuck behind them and eventually come at you piecemeal. They should adjust the level design to have better placed ambushes, so you get that real “swarmed!” effect.
Excessive generation is probably for testing purposes, since minis only spawn in these areas and they wanted everyone to be able to get a quick chance to experience them. When minis get introduced to missions and the rest of the Clockworks levels, they’ll probably scale back on the compounds a little. As for the memory leaks, that’s just an optimization problem.
The only mini with long combos is the Scarab. Possibly the Drop, but that’s only if you stand still. And Scarabs are definitely buggy, not to mention they seem to like running into bushes. I suggested somewhere that maybe they should be able to break/tunnel through bushes?
What rooms have 5 families? Which families? The most I’ve seen is 3 (gremlin mender, gun puppy, bunnies)
Other than that, I agree. Stop Scarab flight attacks when they hit a knight (or when they get hit), and fix them being able to get around barriers. And drops of some kind are a must. Also, keep in mind that battle sprites are supposed to help us combat these (probably), so they won’t be too hard for too long.