Spiral Knights - Making reaching Vanguard rank more rewarding.

Making reaching Vanguard rank more rewarding.

5 replies [Last post]

Tue, 05/26/2015 - 12:14

Moonlight-Traveler

You've done it. You've slain the dreaded lord of the firestorm citadel, bested the snarbolax, the vicious royal jelly, and the near indestructable roarmulus twins. And for what? A fancy symbol next to your name and a pat on the back?

This has most likely been brought up many times before, but I believe obtaining the rank of vanguard should be more rewarding, for example:
You know all those trinkets they gave you as rewards for completing the various missions? You can't benefit from having them without a trinket slot; which is why I think when you become a vanguard, you should receive clearance to a permanent, soulbound trinket slot. It wouldn't subtract much from the income of OOO rings, as there's a second trinket slot to be opened and 2 weapon slots, alongside people being able to buy them off the supply depot. Alongside all of this, it would require hardly any dev time. If all goes well and this is added, more people might get into lockdown as it's hard to play against people with double elite quick strike gauntlets, snarbolax gear, and a gran faust (AKA the generic lockdown player), where at least you can endure them if you have a heart pendant.

There are plenty of other options to make vanguard rank more rewarding, this is just my opinion.

Tue, 05/26/2015 - 12:43

Fangel

Hmm.

I don't think a permanent trinket slot would be the best idea, especially since our battle sprites already fulfill that role in the clockworks, however I do think you're looking the right way.

Reaching vanguard rank really doesn't have the be the trigger. At vanguard rank you will gain enough prestige for the first prestige rank. Thus, this sort of thing could be linked to prestige, therefore any player could technically use it with a high enough time investment.

I would say that every rank of prestige opens up a "prestige slot" on your player. These could be in the costume tab. What these slots do is provide any tier 1 perk of a battle sprite. This means you can have bonus damage vs certain enemies of low, status resists of low, damage resists of low, and also +1 HP. Since there are five of these medals, you could thus have +5 HP, +5 status resist, +5 to normal resistance, etc.
Since prestige cannot be earned through lots of money (except for arms appropriation), it makes the game less pay to win, and more play to win. It also means all vanguards essentially have a 0* or 1* trinket always.

Now how to potentially balance this?

I can already see some unbalanced stuff happening, so let's get it figured out quickly.
+5 HP might not seem that bad, but for fully geared players, that could make a striker have more health than a guardian in tier 3.
For each strata, a perk is enabled. In stratum 1, all prestige perks are disabled. At stratum 2, the first slot unlocks. At stratum 3, the second one unlocks, etc. Since all the unlocks are technically 1*, this system would have to do as a scaling one simply wouldn't work.

Now with this in mind, this balances all potential complaints about PvP, since all PvP games take place at certain depths. Tier 1 PvP you only can have 1 slot, tier 2 you can have 3, tier 3 you have all 5. But this still makes some unbalance happen in the still unbalanced tier 3 PvP, sooo...
+ Add criteria to certain slots. Potentially in loadouts marked for PvP (or just in general), you cannot have more than 2 of each type of upgrade. That means you can have +2 HP, +2 shock, +1 curse. Alternatively you could even prevent more than 2 of the same type of thing, such as not allowing shock and curse(because both are statuses), but instead you can choose to have +2 to a status and then finally have to chose what damage type to slightly resist. This allows for a lot of specialization, but you can't just specialize in one area.

Tying a reward into prestige instead of vanguard seems a lot more rewarding as it keeps players around longer... Plus if you've never done a prestige mission you'll still unlock your first slot for just becoming vanguard!

Tue, 05/26/2015 - 21:48

Blandaxt

i like..

I like your view fangel. Prestige has been around for too long and has no purpose besides a cosmeti sign above your head. Giving some rewards and direct gameplay connections to prestige would really give it more value to players eyes cause some players have over 300k prestige and have no reward to show for thier effort.

Wed, 05/27/2015 - 13:38

Fangel

Well yeah...

This could also open up an avenue for potentially higher prestige badges. Seeing as they stop at 45k, we might be able to add one to like, 150k (or higher!) as well. If that's the case then we could bump the numbers down one so that 0* has the first slot open instead of no slots open.
If that's also the case, perhaps the final prestige reward would give one low sprite 4* perk, such as the weapon related ones. This has a lot more potential to be OP seeing as adding another source of MSI would be pretty bad, but being able to fine-tune yourself would be neat.

If it does seem a bit too OP, then the sixth slot would have the same restrictions as the other 5 slots. This also means that you would have an additional slot per PvP tier.

If that seems OP still (original post is more balanced), perhaps there could be potential other rewards after all the slots are reached for prestige, such as +1% chance for forging rewards for every 25K past 50K prestige, maxing out at say, 10%, or access to another sprite harness (costs 264K each from Riley) that has a 5% additional cooldown reduction on sprite perks upon reaching 90K prestige. Maybe even getting a daily 10% discount on a single item in the energy depot per 100K prestige you have (at 200k, you'd get 10% off two items if you chose to take them that day). I don't know, nothing that really makes gameplay any worse for other players, but encourages you to go after prestige missions.

Prestige rewards are really something amazing that we need to put more thought into. Can't be too big (permanent trinket slot) else it will be OP, but can't be too small (+ a low to all damage types always) as it will be overlooked. Something that dedicated players can invest in without it hurting those who hate grinding for prestige would be the best.
Perhaps, to build on my original idea, each slot has a dedicated thing that can be put in it? The first slot could be an HP boost, second could be a status resist, third a damage resist, 4th a family damage boost, 5th a weapon CTR, 6th a weapon damage boost.

I'm on the wall about how it would best be settled. Making every slot able to be customized is great, (+5 or +6 HP!) but at the same time, that means a lockdown striker could have +17/+18 HP by default, and a clockworks delver could have +23/+24 HP as well. Clockworks matters much less in terms of real balance, but I can't shake the thought that it would be better for limits to be placed on things...
I'd love some opinions on that area. I have ideas but I need to balance them accordingly.

Wed, 05/27/2015 - 18:41

Blandaxt

hmmm

For something to make vanguard more rewarding and to make prestige interesting at the same time, we would have too look at the whole avenue of what sk has to offer a player that has reached 5 star gear and at the same time reached the first rank of prestige. I feel maybe this prestige reward should be strictly be kept non-pvp sense pvp is it's own mini game. So prestige will be something that affects the game, but not player vs player wise. Something more along the line where rankings combine with prestige gives a player more benefits besides tier clearance. It's just that right now, the game is too limited in the options a player can do with their time.

Here is a big example of an idea i had a player could do besides pvp, diving clockworks, being a guild master, blast network, and being a merchant. KNIGHT JOBS!

Just by the title, you guys are probably thinking are we gonna get paid hourly? hahha, no this is not your typical job at a kiosk checking people out their orders. What i mean by knight jobs, i mean quests that has different departments.

Like there will be quest for only gunners, sword users, bombers, mineral farmers, monster hunters ect and even create new activities such as cooking, designing accessories, administrative checkers that mantains haven's cleaness and defends against invasions, and so many more. By Cometing these task, we would get payed while some quest would allow us to get payed/ crown intake while completing the task.

Prestige would be able to fit into each of these jobs/responsabilities, there they would boost that specific job functions or make it easier for the knight to perform that job by providing extra back up whether in fire power or materials.

This way, the game will expand from the small amount of options players can choose from to a multitude of options that players can do while experiencing the gameplay they want. This way when a player reaches proper rank, they would be awarded for that with new jobs they can do, new ways they can play like certain mini games that comes with that specific job, and where the prestige awarded will make that job easier.

For each quest completed, players would receive titles that matches to their rank in that sort of quest. This title would not affect gameplay, but display expertice in that field. Like a player can be an apprentice bomber but still be a vanguard, While another player can be knight elite with bomber mastery title. This way there will not be classes, yet the titles will portray that players play style. The more mastery titles are collected, the more closer a player approaches the supreme title jack of all trades.

well what do you think about this idea which could properly award players according to what they love to do best?

Thu, 05/28/2015 - 13:18

Fangel

Hmm.

That sounds very unrelated to prestige honestly.
In fact, a lot of the things you mentioned (killing certain enemies, collecting minerals, etc) are already in the game as prestige missions. Geological surveys and monsterous research do those while keeping the game going.

Again, right now prestige is just a bragging right, but it doesn't really have a purpose. It would be great if there were long-term benefits to doing the prestige missions every day, but perhaps not inherently given to the player. The idea of a supply depot sale for individual players is neat, and might even make more things actually sell, and it has no affect on other players other than potentially being able to sell orbs of alchemy or sparks of life at a slightly lower price every once in a while.
Battle sprites do not affect PvP, neither do shields, so technically would could get a universal shield buff (+2.5% more HP to shields for every 75k prestige), or access to the slightly better harness I suggested (which you still have to buy and have all the prior versions too).

Basically, we have to affect everyone for it to be worthwhile, but we can't affect everyone in a manor that makes people rage more. +2 HP won't be critical, however it will be helpful.
Allowing us to min-max stuff with very low boosts would be wonderful. Essentially prestige should be like a universal punch roll on things that doesn't cost anything but has a very low boost.

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Making reaching Vanguard rank more rewarding.