Spiral Knights - Niftier Shields

Niftier Shields

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Sat, 10/14/2017 - 15:25

Ironianknight

Shields... are BORING.

Just wanted to preface my post with that simple statement. I think we all know it, the concept of defense is in general an underplayed aspect of Spiral Knights gameplay. Armor almost feels like an afterthought, and maybe I'll cover that specifically in the future, and shields serve an important purpose, but in such a barebones way that there is no nuance or intrigue to them whatsoever. You press the button, there's a slight pause while you "put it up" and then you're in a tiny impenetrable bubble of protection that will occasionally bump nearby foes back until it is either lowered or broken. Every single shield behaves this way.

Lemme repeat that. Every shield behaves the exact same way. There is no variety, no nuance, no point but to serve a basic necessary function of gameplay. Shielding is the thing you do when you're boxed in with nowhere to dodge, or you can tell you won't avoid the oncoming attack hurtling for your face early enough to successfully deploy it. There is nothing else to it, and it behaves in the exact same way for every shield, from Proto to Almiran.

One of the recent mechanical changes gave us shield bashing, which was kinda sorta a step in vaguely the right direction. Now all the shields continue to function the same way, but you can, if you want to, use some of it to knock enemies around and stun them. There's a single line of shields with the gimmick that this bash is somewhat buffed and channels a turtle ghost.

There are well over 30 different shields in the game-- the wiki is down at the moment so I can't verify this or improve the estimate. But going with that general approximation, we're saying that there are at least thirty different items, serving the same function, with no mechanical variance whatsoever. This is disgraceful.

Now, enough bashing on the system as it is, I'm actually here to be constructive. I suggest an overhaul that'd make shields great.. not again, but for the first bloody time.

Our primary order of business? Give Guardians a reason to exist. By this I mean, that there should be variety in how different shield types function!

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Say you have a classic Striker, they're whipping around their little speed swords and have the Swiftstrike Buckler on one arm. This is not the picture of saftety. A three star shield made specifically to improve your damage output over your defense is not going to have the same defensive capabilities, nor coverage, as an Aegis. I propose we throw the meta on its head and give a bit of risk to the reward of maximizing your offensive capabilities. Striker style shields-- that is, shield lines offering buffs to one's combat proficiency at the cost of statistical defense-- would have different coverage than standard defensive shields.

Instead of a full bubble, you get something more like the Darkfang Thwackers, a partial shield with defined area of vulnerability. There could be variables on how complete the shield coverage is depending on the line of shields and its star level (giving, just by the way, a new reason to care about said star rating beyond passive stats that barely change things). Your low-tier striker shield could have a measly 33% coverage, whereas a five star variant grants an impressive 75% coverage, or perhaps even more! It gives you a reason to care about what gear you're taking out into the field, and a reason to seek out better equipment beyond "playing probably a little better I think."

But just because it has lesser coverage doesn't mean I want them completely debuffed, understand! I think striker shields should actually be given greater defense for what coverage there is. This could be done a couple ways I can think of:

Make striker shields sturdier the less coverage they grant, adding skill to your blocking game. a 33% coverage shield takes huge amounts of punishment, meaning so long as you get it between you and the enemy, you can generally rely on it.
Grant a defensive buff to any hits received while the shield is up. Meaning even if you don't block a hit, you at least take less damage for defending.
Decrease or even eliminate the speed debuff for defending. This improves mobility and therefore the ability to maintain a tactically defensible position.

Each of these options add nuance to the game, which is exactly why I want them in. I think the first option would be easy to do badly, as Strikers are already given a lot of favor in the present form of the game, as have they for most of the game's history. However, it promotes skill over stats, which I think is a really important change to shoot for, so if it COULD be done well I'd prefer it. The second idea seems like it could be easier to implement well, but perhaps makes the gameplay of a dedicated Striker less exciting. The third could be cool, but could also be stupid, I'm honestly not sure and it should be tested thoroughly before any real implementation.

Now I think of it? These could each be a thing. Just for different lines. That'd make the shield meta even more diverse and interesting, which would be great. Just, ambitious and requiring even more coding. Whatever the case, it's food for thought.

One last thing. Shield Bashing; I think it should be spiced up and turned into Shield Abilities. In the case of Striker shields, instead of a sluggish forward charge, your ability could be a lively spinning sweep that knocks back enemies with a low chance of stun. Deals no damage, but acts like an on-command repel, somewhere between the standard shield bump and the spin slash sword charge. This be 360 degree coverage, or just a wide area ahead of the player. It compliments the idea of not getting hit over enduring the hits with rigid defense. A special line such as Swiftstrike could even have no ability at all, instead granting a powered up version of the dash or something. Does the shield bump even stay in under this overhaul? I'm not sure, that's a balance consideration and I'm mostly here to present ideas. And this was mine for Striker shield abilities.

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Next we come to standard Defenders. The middle of the road kind of player. These guys would have shields most similar to the ones we use today, but with a few changes to make it more interesting.

Being moderate, I think Defender style shields should pull a few traits from each extreme. There could be one line that acts a little more like a Striker shield, and another that behaves more like a Guardian shield. It takes three branches and turns it into a spectrum, which means more options for changing up your play style. Whatever the case, Defender shields would focus on providing thorough coverage for the individual. The way I see it, the earliest Defender shields would have 75% coverage, already establishing them as superior defense to a Striker shield, and the standard shield bash move. At three stars you have 100% coverage like our shields are in the present, and perhaps the shield bash is given more range, faster execution, or both. Four and five star defender shields are where things start to get interesting, providing a multitude of extra functions reminiscent of the so far uncovered Guardian shields.

A few options for extra effects for four and five star Defender shields:

Your shield bash trails a comet tail behind you, which inflicts an AoE effect to enemies it contacts. Hard to connect, but useful if you time it well.

Keeping your shield up long enough generates orbitals that last as long as you keep it up. This could potentially even stack with pet powers or items that grant similar effects.

A small aura of protection that buffs allies' defense or nullifies certain status effects.

The Defender shield would be a companion to one's weapon, not just an accessory to combat. It adds to one's playstyle rather than, as I've said several times already, shifting around a couple stats and vaguely improving your gameplay. This is interesting. This is possibly even fun. Consider the possibilities.

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Finally we come around to the point of this overhaul concept: Guardians. Are they canon? Yes. Do they have sets in the game? Yes. Do they actually exist as a viable option in the game? No they do not! And I won't hear any arguments otherwise, nobody wants to specialize as a Guardian as the game stands now.

So I'm proposing we make Guardian shields worthy not just as companions to a weapon, but as a primary function in gameplay. They're massive, they're cumbersome, they promote a cautious thinker's game, and they are AWESOME. Right from the start we have the lowest tier Guardian shields granting 100% coverage, that's a rule. They straight-up will always give you full protection. Another universal rule, they can use their shield abilities at any time, so long as the shield's condition can accommodate it. Maybe if you break your shield in the process of using an ability that ability will be a bit stronger, give a bit of risk/reward to the idea.

And oh what abilities there will be. For starters, we make most Guardian shield abilities able to exist within their defensive bubble, that means they can combo directly from a guard to an ability, without dropping their protection. The tradeoff is that these monsters take a bit more time to deploy, okay? A longer delay between activating the shield and it actually shielding. You have to be cautious as a Guardian, you gotta be smart and use your team to your advantage should you have one. Possibly we make one or two Guardian shield lines improve their delay to similar levels of reactiveness as a Defender shield, at the cost of some of the cool extra abilities other lines will have. In addition, movement debuffs could be made viable again with this type of shield, as it makes sense such powerful tools would be a bit encumbering, from a lore and gameplay perspective.

As for those extra abilities, there are numerous options I can list off the top of my head. These ideas could be paired and exchanged at will to get unique combinations. Here we go:

Area Denial: Some shields, probably starting at four stars, increase their bubble of protection to beyond the player. This works sort of like it does in Lockdown, in that allies can go in and be protected. Additionally, enemies will not be able to pass through the space. This allows the Guardian to deny areas, save teammates, and generally tip the battlefield tactically in their favor. The drawback is that it can't activate until the space is clear of enemies. A shield line that focuses on this power specifically could have the Shield Slam, which is similar to the Striker shield spin, but beefier, able to clear out the space needed for the area denial power.
Offensive Defense: Remember that Defender shield ability with the orbitals? That's what a three star Guardian shield with this ability would do. With more stars, add additional orbitals. It turns the Guardian into a (slowly) walking arena hazard. The orbitals wouldn't do too much damage on their own, but they would have some light knockback and the chance to inflict status effects. With more orbitals you get a larger orbit, maybe a second "ring" at the highest level.
Shield Slam: One of the signature Guardian shield abilities. The player winds up, and after a small delay slams their shield into the ground, knocking back enemies in a wide radius and dealing damage. Probably fairly costly to the shield's condition, but one of the strongest attacks a shield can manage. Mostly done with the big tower shields, as they look like they could slam the ground pretty well.
AoE Trails: Another suped up version of an ability I talked about in Defender shields. Like the idea of a comet tail trailing behind a shield charge, this ability ramps up the concept by leaving a small patch of AoE effect/s that lingers for a short time, controlling the battlefield. Elemental, damage, it could be several things, and higher levels could offer longer trails or longer lasting ones.
Improved Shield Regeneration: These behemoths may need more than just a standard shield bar to work their magic. That's why you could give some or all of them a faster rate of regeneration! This could either apply to when the shield is down like normal, or perhaps improve the regeneration rate while guarding, so the player could sustain their effects more effectively.
Warding Circle: An alternative of the Area Denial idea that could probably coexist alongside it. Instead of a hard stop region, there is a magic circle of protection, or a sciencey equivalent. Enemies inside the circle could be debuffed, or compelled to leave the circle. They can attack into the space, but standing within it will not be something they wanna do. The debuff route could be like, they are given the Stun condition as soon as they enter the circle, and as soon as they leave they are fine. That could be pretty exploitable though, so meh. I like the idea of working with AI priorities more than using simple condition states and such. Allies meanwhile could have a small defensive buff, maybe. Could be split into its own thing too.
Bastion Guard: So earlier with Striker shields I talked about partial coverage, having directional shields and so on. This is taking that to its extreme playable limit. The idea is that alongside the 100% standard guard, the Guardian shield gets an additional, stronger region of shielding that cuts damage to the shield bar in half. Or another percentage, that's for testing and balancing to handle. This allows a Guardian shield to act like it has a larger HP pool than other shields, without actually changing that value and making the bar take up more of the screen. It gives a bit more of a skill curve to guarding, much like the Striker shields did, but as an asset to gameplay instead of a penalty. Combine with Improved Shield Regeneration for truly intimidating sustainability.

That's all the energy I got to spend on this big messy concept, anyways. I feel it prudent to add, before someone calls me on it, that these are just ideas, a brainstorm if you will, and my attempt to sort them into a reasonably cohesive system. I feel the logic of "Minor Defense, Fast / Moderate Defense, Normal / Major Defense, Slow" is a pretty good and logical idea to follow, and these are my examples or achieving that in a more effective and entertaining way than what we have going now.

Now go, discuss! And tell me why this is stupid or not!

Sat, 10/14/2017 - 17:14

Flash-Flire

wow

I'm... just... wow.
I have nothing to say, this is so brilliant.

Sat, 10/14/2017 - 18:51

Nitronicx

More ideas

You're wrong. Proto Shield can't bump enemies, thus it's unique.
You doesn't seem to appreciate shield bumping much. It's handy mechanic you can use to your adventage, pretty much just like you'd want your mechanics to be.
It's funny how perma-shields are used. Try to think about all examples when they wanted to make enemy take damage only from certain direction. It was always solved with half-shield, nothing else. Interesting case are Alpha Wolvers from Maulos fight, which appear to have 2 half-shields from both sides for 100% protection. But enough of off-topic comentary. It was supposed to be a joke, more or less, anyway.

While you were talking about coverage in Striker shields section, I had an idea about actually decresing amount of coverage your shield offers, motivating you to get more skillful in the game. With other buffs you've proposed for small-coverage shields, it allows 5* players to trully excel while allowing lower-ranked knights to slowly getting used to its mechanics. Maybe even some kind of "parry-like" mechanic could be used. I imagine this as debuff of infinite shielding, decreasing time you can hold your shield up forcing you to drop it for a moment after it expires (unrelated to shield health). This could escalate to tapping your shield button for 0.5 second protection and 0.5 second vulnerability after that. Revenge attacks are a possibility, but this can be interesting on its own.

I don't think it's necessary to reduce damage you don't manage to block. But that defensive buff gives me another idea. What if shields can't offer 100% protection at all? This could be done as a special mechanic or decreasing shield HP to a very low value so that shield breaks in a single hit but still blocks some amount of damage from it. To counter this, their recharge time would be very short.

Removing speed debuff isn't necessary either, in my opinion. You're focusing on fighting, so continuous shielding should be at a disadvantage. With that parry-like mechanic above you would hardly notice any speed debuff.

...That reminds me, that there are other things, that should be considered. Strikers use shield canceling very often, so disabling shield for 0.5 second could badly harm common play style. Or maybe not? One solution would be to disable shield for as much time as it was up. Sometimes people also use shield when they need to walk precisely. You can hardly do that with auto-disabling shields. Still, there are solutions, like that you can walk slowly even with disabled shield or simply act as this is disadvantage of that shield. But this has nothing to do with your ideas.

On Shield Ability ideas. Amplified Shield Bump ability isn't that much interesting, when regular Shield Bump can do most the work itself. Oh, yes, there's that knock down part. Still, I think that removing Shield Bumps for it could be interesting. While also requiring you to manage your shield's health carefully (but this would be nice to use anytime with enough health, then). For Dash, instead of powering it up, your shield itself could offer you another Dash, doubling the dashing!

With all these general debuffs, some flat attack buffs could be useful. I focused so much on debuffs that I forgot to talk about something, that could make this all worth it.

For Defender shields, I think they should provide 100% coverage from the very beginning. If reduce something, than maybe 100% damage reduction power (yes, this inspired one my section in Striker shield area). Maybe. I don't have many ideas for these shields, sadly. Ally buffing and orbitals seem to me more fitting for Guardian shields.

You wrote many interesting ideas for Guardian shields. But almost none of them is about protecting your teammates. Guardian is in game described as someone, who takes hits so others don't have to. Shields for this purpose could draw some inspiration from Lockdown Guardian class shield. Apart from straight mimicing, there could be also variant which creates "defense links" between your shield and any teammate it touches, breaking when you drop down your shield. I imagine this to fully transfer all damage to your shield, but so far it sounds like worse version of Lockdown shield, because you have to have it up all the time. Maybe it could give temporary shield on touch (including one for you) instead?

I would redirect death effects to Defender section. They are a nice idea, but Guardian shields shouldn't be designed for breaking in my opinion.

What I'd add to Guardian shields would be protection from hits stopping you, so you can walk even when enemies attack you. Shield shakes, but you don't. Also, some shields with effects could be "charged" a bit when shield is up for long enough, so that their effects last a while even after dropping shield down, maybe for some even the bubble itself!

Last idea I have is a "pushing shield" (inspired from how I interpreted your Area Denial shield idea initially), with which you can slowly push enemies anywhere you want. It could possibly cost you some shield HP, and more if you're trying to push them somewhere where they can't go. It would be bigger than regular personal shield. Oh, I also came with an ability for it now! It would move all enemies close to it in front of itself giving it similiar purpose as have Vortex bombs. With more enemies it would cost more shield energy.

So, these were my ideas and/or objections. You've made lots of good ideas too in my opinion, but generally I can't be very critical. Lastly, sorry if some parts are written badly and are hard to understand as a result.

Sat, 10/14/2017 - 21:22

Ironianknight

I like your style Nitro, good

I like your style Nitro, good thoughts. On defending allies as a Guardian, I believe I mentioned in the Warding Circle description that there could be a defense buffing aura, either in that mechanic or as its own thing. I also meant to imply with the Area Denial that your allies could actually pass through the barrier, allowing them to hide behind your shield bubble. Forgot to mention it specifically, that was my bad.

I like the concept of being immune or resistant to hindrances while shielding, forgot about that aspect until now. I played mostly in Beta and the early post-release time, and since then have mostly gone on to shuck a bit of disposable income off, support the devs and such haha. At any rate it would be very useful to, say, move at a slowed rate but be an unstoppable juggernaut that walks through blows and explosions like they're nothing. I could see that being used in armor as easily as shields, actually, but that's a whole other can of worms.

I can see some problems with the pushing shield concept, alas. It seems like a very interesting mechanic, but would probably be very exploitable for, say, shoving a strong enemy into the corner while teammates take on the smaller ones, or keeping that one last enemy fromt he last wave of the arena battle alive so they don't trigger the next wave. If it were done right, it could probably work well! But it'd take a lot of testing I feel, to get it right.

As for Striker shields, I think you have some valid criticisms. I completely neglected to consider shield canceling for example. I do feel the need to defend the idea of the shield spin or whatever. Shield bumps can be kind of inconsistent when you're trying to use them actively against a group. Sometimes they haven't cooled down when you need them, and sometimes their effect isn't strong enough to break through. The shield spin on the other hand would be an easy crowd breaking initiator, which could then be followed by a shield bump if necessary to break them up even further. If said bumps were still a thing, of course.

I might like what you're saying about a parry style mechanic more than the idea I came up with. It compliments the striker mindset very well, relying on reflexes and agility to see one through. The only thing I can see being an issue beyond the things you mentioned is server lag. Lag is bad for anything of course, but none so much as timing related mechanics. Shields as they are are good for handling lag because you can throw them up and pray, but if blocking is reduced to a timed action rather than a toggle, well that might be a bad time. It could be a cool addition though, maybe a specific parrying shield line that functions like that, with fast regeneration and timed guards, perhaps without knockback or something similar to sweeten the deal.

Generally I'm of the opinion that Strikers don't need any more advantages when the game already panders to them in the present meta. So I focused mainly on sidegrades and debuffs for their shields, things that would make them a little more fair to other classes without making them less viable or fun.

Sun, 10/15/2017 - 07:32

Disgr-Ace

Shield costumes

I would also like to add the idea of shield costumes right now you have armours that have costumes to go over them so why not shields? I understand that they are weapons but they are also another form of look when I wear vog I equip dragon scale shield for the fire effect when I equip my gold wolver costume I equip my lionheart shield over my snarby shield just because it looks better with the costume. I think this should be a thing that would add to the variety of character design.

Sun, 10/15/2017 - 09:37

Ironianknight

That's certainly a fun idea,

That's certainly a fun idea, but not really what I'm talking about here. This is mostly about mechanical additions and alterations, rather than yet another cosmetic feature

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