Analysing Lockdown (WOW! bIG $$€$ INsidE)

I think the most important thing about LD are the 3 classes.
But the striker much better in most situations(IE the abbility to run around at the speed of light and dodging 900 bullets), they can kite with guns(try it if you haven't, it's stupid if you can simply dodge) and the ability to use swords better then the other classes(due to the buffs if gives and its raw speed) there isn't Much you can do (against a strikers swords) other then bomb, but everyone under the spiral sun has a gun, and will pull it out with there AA using a lv 3 silver 6 so you can't charge your bomb, and then your dead. Tho they can't bomb(well not as effectively as a recon/guard) and there mobility is there strongest tool, due to the distence It covers and the time it takes to get there. EDIT (more points made): and its that kind of mobility that makes LD so fast paced. Think about it, if you removed the speed of a striker, LD would feel slow and frustrating(due to the 6million recons that u can't see and 6.1 million guards that are slower then a snail that's sleeping) but there not gods(well there really good,) there mobility has a cool down and people can exploit that to its maximum. But there not hopeless when stopped, they do have swords and guns to KIND OF keep you at bay, buuuuuut once u swing you have to wait. And when you waiting your open for the 2ed hit of a GF. And then your dead. But, there's this butten, that let's u, DASH.(unless it's on CD the. Your really boned)

A good recon can be scary, but a 1/2 as good striker can be more spooky, the only benefit with using recon for swordplay is the abbility to hop in and out/ but if you get rushed down Via striker or gun, your usless, with Bombs tho your much better, even though you can get gunned down, you can control zones the best due to the CTR your given. If you shut down a narrow path it's even more frustrating for the other team to push through. Going back to the CTR buffs, since your given them you can get CTR max if your bomb is lv10. Witch means you can focus your armor on defensive or MSI( I go with An anti shock set, for counter bombing) so bombing is the best thing for recon. Guns are not really an option for a recon, you can nothing out of the ability to hide for a few seconds since you can just get rushed. And kiting is non existent. Tho generally (if they can gain some distance 1st) recon has one of the safest excape options since you can just press shield and hide your self. A buff I would LOVE TO SEE is you getting a nice MSI boost when inviz (PS: try using the nitro as a bomber, it's not THAT good but it's super troll)

(EDIT , I showed some A gaurd is your closest thing to a support that you get to a supp you can get. Due to no mobility your kind of forced to take a gun. (Unless there a sheep then in that case bring your proto swords idc) there healing isn't THAT GOOD, but get a friend and good striker/recon and spam /laugh. Also, the shield its self. It's good for tanking some dmg for the team with out accualy tanking dmg. It's highly underrated and I belive all games should have at least one guard on each side. But there Dps isnt there focus. If a guard has about 10-8k dmg. Sure they can help u with dmg, but a striker can dish out 20-30 k( if you wanna try) after all, it IS call guardian after all. But if you can balance tanking for the team and dishing out dmg, you can go a longer way(or deal dmg when your shield brakes, what ever you want to do) though there mobility is there most shinning weekness. And there kind of team baised (unless there focusing on attacking then in that case wtf are u doing not going striker) but it kind of fits there role better being like that. A slow Stronk tank that can well, TANK. A buff I would like to see is eather(or add all 3 witch would be insane)
A: more hp and less dmg taken
B: more hp restored when shealding
C:an attack bonus given when shielding

Well there u go (EDIT#1, made some changes to gaurd, bashed striker a bit, KEEP IN MIND THAT IM TRYING TO THINK THIS GAME IS BEING PLAYED BY GOOD PPL(or someone who can think, im looking at you Lethal-bunduru) cuz one day I hope your LDish game is made. Also point out every grammatical Mistake I make, or something I said that doesn't make sense. Lethal should be able to make some points about recon for me. Sorry for being bad
IGN: username-here

@Username-Here

The LD you know must be different if you think gunner recons are bad. I found recon better than striker actually. Recon gunner + flourish was very easy to use. It was great to avoid AT, and made it easier to read other player's movements.

The mindgames was the best part though. 99.9% of the people who play this game are sheep, laughably easy to outsmart. When you are able to predict striker movements, guardian unshielding, and other reactions, your max damage nova gunshots hurt more.

Looking back at it now, I kind of went to hard on the recons, but I made that post with the mindset of LD being a stand alone game, and the mind set that ppl arn't sheep. So sorry . I'm not saying there the best class, but they are good in the right hands. And yes, 90% of LD players are sheep, but you can abuse those sheep more effectively via striker (in my opinion) not saying that #striker master race (well it kind of looks like it) but that 10% tend to have a brain. I just believe that strikers have more objectively superiority. Not saying there flawless. But you seem to be able to capitalize there flaws more effectively then anyone else( you use guns so there is no gap between you and them, a FF for close quarters)and you've learned to effectively read witch in ANYgame is the difference between a pro and a scrub. So gj on not being the 90%. But I think ppl can't fight you due a good recon being rare in this game. But in a game with more then 200 active players, it might get harder (probs easier due to being more sheep, but when you reach that high elo it might get very hard) since more ppl will pick recon, more ppl get use to recon, more ppl learn to not always dodge to the left. But I think I wish I'd go back and say some advantages of recon O WAIT. I don't see any cuz im bad : (
(Srsly if you could, I'm to narrow minded I'd be gr8 if you could)
BUT THAT A SIDE, since you look like a pro recon, what do you think if you were given MSI when invis?

Alot of people want a straight up dualing mode but it would exclude a lot more players than LD currently does. LD is good because it's not about killing your opponent: it's merely about occupying territory. This is good both because it resembles warfare and because it means crowd control weapons are as good choices as single target damage weapons.

Rewards are granted equally to the whole team so that players supporting can feel equal to players dealing damage. Despite this, a lot of players farm and brag about damage number. My gut instinct says to remove the damage number entirely, but I think that without it, players would get bored and stop playing as soon as they have enough krogmos. It might be better to display a larger variety of stats.

A lot of equipment is rubbish in Lockdown, most of it is also mediocre outside it with Blitz being a notable exception. LD's balance could be benefited by the removal of invinciframes, but that in itself would be broken. A much more intricate system for determining stagger would also be needed to prevent multihit weapons from being overhwelmingly overpowered, as well as giving defensive classes and armours an edge over offensive.

The classes themselves feel mostly fine, but striker's shield feels like it packs far too much punch. I don't think drastic changes are needed, but if striker shields get to instantly replenish all of its tank in the same time it takes guardian shield to start regenerating, it should last a bit shorter than it currently does.

I've noticed that strikers have the same amount of health as a regular knight in T3, so I don't know why the shield says it gives negative health. The amount of health striker has would be fine if not for the existence of penta-heart pendants. In principle, boosting your knight with rewards won through Lockdown is fine, but the problem with them is that the upgrade is flat, and therefore makes a Striker wearing pentas basically better than a Defender wearing pentas. Either that or Strikers and Defenders are unbalanced before pentas are equipped. Damage bonuses are ratio based, why can't health boosts be?

The damage system in Spiral Knights used to mean something, but after every gun came in every damage type, all the depth is gone. Defending against two damage types in LD is literally as good as no defence at all, so whether your defence will help against guns at this point is basically a dice roll. If I was making a competitive game with a damage type system, I would have damage types mean something, and you would be able to defend against, say, specifically explosions or specifically bullets.

Status resistances are mostly fine, but I feel that there should be complete transparency as to which uvs your opponent has. Either that or just allow wearing costumes in LD.

You don't have to change anything, just add some things.
Add leaderboard ranking rewards to make LD more active(Maybe let devs play LD or watch).
New maps would be great !! Another small thing to add is when guardians and recons die they drop more hearts than strikers (just common sense because it takes longer to kill a guardian/recon than a striker) and last but not least if your team has a leaver, you and your teammates get a HP or damage boost depending on how many leavers you have(who knows, Maybe movement speed boost as well).

IGN ~xkitoo

The score table usually doesn’t show the entirety of what happens during a game. Someone could’ve spent 3 full minutes standing on point and feed 10 defends rather than get 10 caps. I’d like to see total time spent on caps, individual point contribution from capping, or people killed on caps at all times rather than flat caps and defends.

There could also be class-specific categories, such as damage blocked/healed my guards or seconds of death-mark inflicted. Strikers don’t have specific team oriented abilities, but we’ll find something :<

I think the minimum effort solution regarding custom games would be to just add class and team modules to the training hall. At the minimum we could do tests for science, have duels, or practice alone, but full on custom games would probably need a UI revamp among other things.

I'd like to think like that the classes are an attempt at a rock-paper-scissors model, and I think they should be balanced around it, both mechanically and strategically (eg strikers are superior combat-wise, but shouldn't be able to walk into a recon's haze bomb; guards should be hard for recons to ambush, but otherwise won't get kills unless the recon overstays). I’m interested why you think recon is unviable. Deathmark is insane. @_@ I’m still working on my own recon, but I just think not enough people have tapped into the class for us to know. I do feel like a few strikers have maphax that goes beyond prediction even on non-snowy maps, which would neuter most of a recon’s advantages.

I’m still working on my preferred way to fix class and gear balance, but at the very least I want for such influential bugs to be fixed (eg recon footsteps or striker health). Another good example involves guards and haze bombs. When you tank an enemy haze, whether or not your shield takes damage from other enemies seems to be entirely up to chance (although if someone has managed to find a specific rhythm to consistently break shields, that’d be a very interesting matter to study).

This unnecessarily increases the risk of dashing in to try and stop a 5 man cap, when the haze bomber can simply stop bombing anyway and have the lonely guard get pummeled by an army of strikers. Actions like these involve a strategic mindset as well as weighing consequences and should be awarded as such.

RNG is also unfavorable in the form of status. I’d like if status was based on a system of stacks rather than chance. Attacks could generate some 2/4/5 stacks on a struck enemy based on status strength, and at 10 stacks the next attack inflicts said status. Stacks would decay over some arbitrary time.

An alternative system would have the user gain stacks instead of hit enemies. It’d be interesting if people could farm stacks off of map-specific hazards, like rock jellies or the gun puppy in Avenue, and have them at the start of a fight. At the same time, people seem to not like these kinds of advantages before a fight starts.

I think the camera angle issue is an interesting feature to play around and should be kept in. Each class is affected by it by about the same extent in which they can abuse it. Losing half your health before a fight begins is a major setback, but can and should be prevented through strategic prediction: not charging in dangerous locations, watching the mini-map, ally movement and health, capture points, and enemy respawn timers.

TLDR
Showing your mechanical prowess is fun, but I’d like for LD to draw and expand upon its strategic depth. Remove RNG based mechanics and bugs. Reward the player for both their mechanics and decisions as if LD was actually a capture point game, and change the scoreboard to reflect as such.

The problem with stacking status is that in LD you die in 2-3 hits. Only dual pentas with elemental defence would ever get shocked by polaris.

I think the AT system needs more AT.

I used to enjoy lockdown. I like that it's objective based. Fast paced arcade game play which requires execution skill. I like that there are elements to the game such as fast switching/ aim/ movement that require practice to master.

Things I didn't like.

You need a good connection to play at a high level. If your connection is unstable you end up having inconsistent hit reg which leads to a frustrating experience. Personally I felt having a solid connection with good hitreg is the most important thing. Im not talking about the number of bars here. There are people who have less than 4 bars that still have stable connections with consistent hitreg. If your connection is stable and hitreg consistent then things like uv's and trinkets become less important and you are able to succeed with less optmized builds (eg no uvs or playing in 1 star armour, no AT etc). This is the main reason why I stopped playing lockdown.

Auto target. Auto target reduces some of the execution error and the requirement to aim as much. Playing with AT generates a lot of toxicity in the community. Fair enough people with bad connections can use it to make the game playable but the flip side is people with good connections can use it to improve there performance to very high levels. A lot of people develop playing styles which solely depend on abusing AT to perform well ( stand still gunning / brandish line / flourish triple swing etc).

Having to pay for trinkets and weapon slots. trinket slots are necessary to be competitive. Extra health, extra weapon bonuses. Trinket slots aren't super expensive and are obtainable by the majority. I don't really play sk much now. Having to pay for trinkets puts me off in the sense if im not playing much then I don't want to spend ce on trinkets. When I do pay for trinkets I feel I have to play alot just to get the value from them. It makes it so lockdown doesn't become something you can pick up and play for a few games every now and then.

The cost and time it takes to get gear. It takes too long to craft and heat weapons to 5 star. This makes lockdown less accessible to newer players. It also makes it too much effort if you want to make a new weapon to mess around with in lockdown. It was better before the forge update. It is even worse if you want to get uv's. I feel asi very high uvs are unobtainable for the general casual player unless they are super dedicated to grinding or get into trading to make ce. I feel ASI med uv is enough to be viable in lockdown. ASI med is the best in terms of price to performance. UV's provide a significant advantage versus people who don't have uvs generating more toxicity in the community.

Chaos and Black Kat sets. I don't like how these sets allow people to have hybrid setups that have max damage in everything with minimal sacrifice. Before the update there was balance in the sense that if you wanted to be a hybrid then you would generally have lower stats for sword and guns versus people who were dedicated to one or the other.
The negatives of using these sets ( less defense and negative status penalty isn't a significant enough trade off to justify using different sets over these.
The only real benefit I feel now is if your new to the game all you need to do is craft a chaos set and then you can use all weapons with some good stats behind them. This makes lockdown more accessible for beginners because they don't need to craft so much gear.

Pulsar line weapons. IMO polaris is over powered. It is easy to defend a point by spamming polaris. The slow moving large area of effect with knockback and status make it exceptional for this, especially when there are multiple people doing it at the same time. You don't need to have any stats behind it like damage or asi to make it effective making it something that can be added to every build.

Scoreboard. The scoreboard doesn't give a true reflection on how good a player is and how much they contribute to a team. Support classes are undervalued. The inflated damage scores give new players the impression that damage is the only thing that is praised and is what is required to be successful. "I want to play striker and put up big numbers then everyone will respect me." Even when it comes to caps. The number of caps doesn't necessarily indicate how much time you spent on a point.

Unbalanced teams. A lot of the time matches become heavily one sided resulting in the winning team camping outside the enemy teams spawn until the match is over. This can be due to a variety of reasons. Having a leaver, one team having new players who have under leveled gear so they can't contribute much. The other team being full of lockdown veterans who all have loadouts tailored to achieve max potential etc. Since the community is small you can tell which side is going to win 90% of the time in the lobby before the match even starts.

If I was going to make a lockdown style game here is what I would do to make it.
I would have dedicated servers that can be hosted by people, like in cs. This is so people aren't forced to play with high latency due to no other option. This is on the assumption the game is popular enough to have enough players to support this.

As far as classes go. Weapon damage/ asi/ ctr wouldn't be tied to classes. Health would be tied to which class you play Guardian > Recon> Striker. NO AT or trinkets.
All weapons would be available from the start. There would be no armour sets.
There are 3 defense types (elemental / shadow and piercing)
With armor you would have a set amount of points (eg 6) You would be able to assign them to each defense. (Each level of defense would have 4points for max) so you could max one and have half defense on another and none of the third or you can allocate it however you want. The point being if you max one the other two would be less. (Max defense would require 12 points but this won't be possible)

Weapons (Sword Guns Bombs)
Swords
There are 4 sword categorys
1 : Arc swing/fast/low damage (Flourish)
2: Arc swing /slow/high damage (Gran Faust)
3: Point click/ fast swing/ low damage (Brandish)
4: Point click/ slow swing/ high damage (Can't think of a sk equivalent but you get the idea)

Guns (5 types)
1: Multishot / fast bullet speed/ low damage (Blaster line)
2: Multishot / slow bullet speed / high damage (Alchemer line)

3: Single shot / fast bullet speed /low damage (Callahan but with higher rate of fire)
4: Single shot / slow bullet speed/high damage (Pulsar)

1 - 4 you can move and shoot at the same time.

5: Single shot / very fast bullet speed / high damage (long reload between shots and you have to stand still when you shoot, like a railgun)

Each weapon you can customise. You assign which damage type it does (Elemental / Shadow / Piercing)
You can assign attributes Damage (1 - 4), ASI (1-4), CTR(1-4)
You have 6 points to attribute how you wish. (12 points are required to max the weapon but this isn't possible).

Bombs (2 types)
1: Haze bomb (does damage over time as long as the enemy is standing within range) Enemys within range have movement slightly slowed down. If enemy has max defense to that element they are immune to the damage over time of the bomb but not the slight slowdown) You have 6 points to attribute how you wish. (12 points are required to max the weapon but this isn't possible).
Each weapon you can customize. You assign which damage type it does (Elemental / Shadow / Piercing)

2: Nitronome style bomb ( Explodes causes instant damage to anyone in the area / slight knockback)

Each weapon you can customize. You assign which damage type it does (Elemental / Shadow / Piercing)
You can assign attributes (Damage 1- 4), Area of effect (1-4), CTR (1-4)
You have 6 points to attribute how you wish. (12 points are required to max the weapon but this isn't possible).

Each person has 30 points to make a build (6 x 4 weapons + 6 for defense). This makes it fair in the sense no one has a statistical advantage over another but still encourages build diversity and variety. You would be able to see everyone's stats unlike in sk where inspect is turned off. There would be some way to indicate mid fight what element players are mostly resistant to and what element weapon damage they are doing.

There are no status effects. Recon initial mark will cause enemies within range to lose 2 points to each weapon and 2 points to defense. If they are deathmarked they will lose a total of 4 points to each weapon and 4 defense.

I would add another class which acts as a support. It would have a "shield" which would apply a buff to teammates. The buff would increase movement speed (by a reasonable amount) and increased all weapon stats (+1 damage , +1 asi, +1 ctr) (+2 defense stats).
The increase in movement speed would be enough to compensate for the msi reduction in a haze bomb and still be slightly faster than normal. It doesn't stack with striker dash.
The buff would be like the medic in tf2 in that it can only be applied to one person at a time not an area of effect. The support will constantly have to buff someone. When he switchs target the buff will last for a few seconds on the target before going off.

Characters can equip costumes and accessories. There will also be weapon skins (maybe weapon accessories)

In the game when you play matches you generate crowns. Winning team generate more crowns than losing team. With the crowns you can buy boxes. When you open a box you get a random costume / accessory/ weapon skin. It will be like sk where certain skins are more valuable than others based on drop chance etc. To open a box you need a key. Keys can be purchased using real money. Keys can also be purchased in exchange for crowns the rate is set by players (supply and demand like sk). You can also donate keys in the lobby before a match. If a certain amount of keys get donated there will be special prize for the winning team like triple crowns or special unique costumes / accessories.
There would also be an auction house where people can buy costumes, accessories, weapon skins using crowns like in sk.

I agree with everything except the dash part.

4: Point click/ slow swing/ high damage (Can't think of a sk equivalent but you get the idea)

This is Acheron. Same damage as Gran Faust. Combuster is not far behind.

Except for the slow swing part, of course.

Prize goes to Rthree. Thank you all for participating! Sorry for forgetting about this whole thing, lots going on lately.

Something I was looking for, which I should probably have made more clear, is that I was looking for thoughts on LD's inherent design, not just balance issues and whatnot, as these would easily* be eliminated even in a game close to a 1:1 clone of LD.

* Actually not very easy beyond doing the most agreed upon changes.

"Guns (5 types)
1 - 4 you can move and shoot at the same time.

1: Multishot / fast bullet speed/ low damage (Blaster line)
2: Multishot / slow bullet speed / high damage (Alchemer line)

3: Single shot / fast bullet speed /low damage (Callahan but with higher rate of fire)
4: Single shot / slow bullet speed/high damage (Pulsar)

5: Single shot / very fast bullet speed / high damage (long reload between shots and you have to stand still when you shoot, like a railgun)"

This example list doesn't seem right, let me fix that for you:

"Guns (5 types)
1 - 4 you can move and shoot at the same time.

1: Multishot / fast bullet speed/ low damage (Antigua line)
2: Multishot / slow bullet speed / high damage (Mixmaster line)

3: Single shot / fast bullet speed /low damage (Blaster line)
4: Single shot / slow bullet speed/high damage (Alchemer line)

5: Single shot / very fast bullet speed / high damage (Magnus line)"