There's a few ideas I have to make the next event more fun and balanced. Some are my own and some I've picked up from chatting with other players.
1: Spike buffs for enemies are based on which tier of spike they pick up.... huge spikes give 100% of the current buff... but each size smaller gives 1/6th less boost for HP, damage, and speed
This is largely to make it much easier for new players to acclimate to the mechanic change without overwhelming them. Currently a spiked enemy can take them out too fast in what should be an easy part of the Clockworks
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2: More spike sources and more reason to fully explore... Mineral Deposits can sometimes be replaced by spike collections, you break them the same way and just like Minerals it can drop 1 to 4 units, and each mineral deposit has a chance to be replaced with one of these so lucky players can potentially get ~20 extra Spikes for free. On top of this you can have Yellow Loot boxes which drop the current tier's spike as well as CR or Heat (but it always drops a spike)
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3: A daily prestige mission or even multiple ones that cycle in and out like the Black Kat event which has different daily prestige. At the end of the floor you get a small room with several of the aforementioned Yellow Loot Boxes, and as reward for completing the mission you get a small number of each type of spike. Since the mission levels will also be in a spike storm it can be a good extra boost.
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4: Lastly it would be very nice to have more items to work towards. As it stands I could see various other items based off spikes as the weapon or energy source...
For example: An original Shard Bomb, with Elemental and Stun. For those who don't know/remember, the original Shard bombs would shoot projectiles in 8 directions rather than the short range clusterbomb we have now, and placing the bomb down right would spawn all the projectiles inside the enemy hitbox for large single target damage.
Things that have been annoying this far:
- Needing to stop for each individual spike for 1.5s, this makes solo player's time investment worse because they have to stop and collect each spike individually.
- The fact enemies have priority pick-up. I can't see any solution for this, it makes sense why they have priority pick-up, but with the new system it makes it gameplay wise worse.
- Bomber only knights have to choose between charging their bombs or picking up a spike in arenas or hoards of enemies. This makes their chosen gameplay style from challenging to impossible.
Suggestions for improving the event:
- The new way of collecting spikes makes me feel less likely to playing the event for fun, I rather have the spikes be a reward of completing the depth than a material I can pick off the ground, just give it the properties of minerals.
- Add back the Spike slot, the ones that said they find it pointless, did it because it had no purpose, you could give it some purpose by integrating it as a new usable slot. With the integration of this new throwable spike mechanism, it could be added just as an useable and it could be connected to the spikes you have collected through out the level. ( this could be done if the spikes become a reward upon going down the elevator )
- A lot of people have been asking for spikes to give their knights a boost, I was thinking about it and you could introduced something like: An attack damage bonus and attack speed bonus that got similar stat boost like the Frenzied Firestorm from Drakon's 3rd ability for 7-8 seconds with the downside of taking 25% damage from the knight's maximum amount of health on each spike consumption, this damage could be a progressive damage that is taken during the boosts duration or it could be instant damage upon the boosts ending. ( this to be at the choice of each knight in the party )
- Make a separated Gate for this event. There is the 5th empty slot in the Arcade selection UI, this gate could just be a event temporary gate that just matches the monster family theme of the event, it could also be randomized but with it's depths shuffled every 1-2 days so knights feel like there is something new to explore.
- Also on the note of when to run the event: The event could alternate with slime casino having 7-10 days every 2 months, this could be one of the ways of running the event consistently.
I actually like the new ideas, but the execution of these ideas wasn't there to deliver.