Wot I think About Gremlins
Thu, 10/21/2010 - 21:06
SO..
As any dev reading suggestion and or bug reports that have come in within the past hour and a half know.
Gremlins. They are broken.
And by broken I mean. I really don't want to play the game with them at the level they are.
Let me run the list and I'll start with my disclaimer - I solo. I primarily solo because health distribution is, in my opinion, busted. Every time I open party with people someone who is new, or just not paying attention ends up slurping up WAAAY too many of the health capsules thus nerfing the rest of the party. Since there is currently no way to redistribute this health, even if you're the party leader, It makes partying a chore at best.
THAT SAID. I've soloed every other core run except for Van. Some of them were BRUTAL, painfully so, even with min maxing defenses. You know, doing the weird gamebreaking BS reserved for other games. I do this because it is A. Fun. B. Helps me find where/what people are going to min max and let the devs know.
With that in mind I just spent 8k in energy attempting to get to floor 25 of the Iron Falcon gate.
Let me repeat that. 8k in Energy.
The most I've ever had to spent getting to a core since you added rezzing in? 1k total, and that's because I was acting greedy and sloppy.
Here I'm being cold, calculating, tactical. Actually attempting use of vials, gun shots, lure ins, vial strike poisoning then switching to Khorovord to finish things off.
But no, can't get past depth 25 and why is that? Let's break it down.
Shield Gremlins:
They have shields, wrenches, and now have an apparently infinite bag of small health capsules so that even if I tactically remove their healer they can be sure to stay standing for far longer than they should if I'm not in their face immediately -
Which I am no longer able to due BECAUSE they now have knockback with every attack that you don't block. At least from what I'm experiencing. So you get in, have to 2 swipe with a Khorovord, then hit em while they're down or they will knock you away, capsule, throw a wrench at you, cause you to be stunned (even if you blocked it!) then capsule again.
They're also fast. Their standard swipes are doing 3-5 bars of health. Their charged 4-6.
So you figure, be tactical, use the vile striker or a poison vial to show they what its like to lack healing - nope. Because they can still pop capsules AND still be healed by any priest gremlin. You can't win.
Speaking of their "squishier" brethren.
Priest Gremlins:
The healers. Also they have magic missile, which tracks worse than a homing missile from a Puppy and does decent dmg, I won't waste time complaining about that because there are far more broken things to talk about.
Their healing range is rather large, nearly triple what a charge shot is with either my Magnus (complete) or my Cryotech Alchemer Mk II (almost complete). So that sucks. But hey, you have to be tactical, lure them in.
If you lure them in the Shield Gremlins defend them (Good AI!) and mercilessly beat the snot out of you. For one they don't seem to be much squishier than their Shield weilding counterparts. I have a maxed out Khorovord with a sword trinket and it still takes two 2-hit combos to kill them. Same as with their Shield Buddies.
The other problem is, if you don't immediately burn them down and only slightly damage them - they bubble. Invincible golden shield that heals all allies, insanely quickly, that are nearby them, also making them invincible if they stay in the bubble, and lets the Priest continue doing Heal (Target) to those that need it. This lasts for, and I timed it multiple times, 10 seconds.
OR dropping the healing circles. Which heal the same as a Heal (Target) spell but instead cover a LARGE area.
And by Heal a large amount this is what I want you all to understand.
The shield heals those nearby for +15 per hit and it happens at roughly 4 times a second.
The area heals are healing for 100-150.
Target heals are for 120-150.
Also they can resurrect fallen Gremlins if they get to the body. Mind you as far as I can tell that gremlin will have full health.
Also when they die they leave a bubble aura for their friends to chill in, get healed, and continue throwing wrenches at you.
Now as I said, I haven't tried with a party of well geared people, but sitting in emberlight while I've written this I've been commiserating with people and everyone is saying the same thing, only that they did it in a party. Floor 22 or 24, gremlin packs just wrecked them. Highly geared, etc.
Now, I'm not one who wants to waltz to the core, but here's the big issue at hand.
This isn't fun.
In fact it makes me want to stop playing the game entirely.
It is aggrivating to no end because of one key point - as a player I'm feeling WORLDS lesser than this NPC monster.
What do I mean?
I mean - I can't do anything as fast or as cool as these gremlins. So they're a ridiculously over the top challenging COMMON ENEMY. We aren't even talking a boss.
Which, I can run circles around Horse Knights, Flame Puppies, Large Ghosts, Turtles. They give me a good fight, I will sometimes die. But I know what they can do. They've got a limited bag of tricks and it fits.
Gremlins feel like they have Far too many tricks.
Shield Gremlin:
-Strong Standard Swipe
-Charged Swipe (Causes Stun)
-Dash Behind or Away From Enemy
-Wrench Throw (Causes Stun)
-Self Heal (Seems limitless if no Priest is around)
-Shield Usage
Priest Gremlin
-Magic Missile
-Heal (Target) Fast Rate, High Level of Heal.
-Bubble (Heals Self, Heals Others, Makes Self and Others Invincible, Can continue healing others)
-Revive Ally
-Bubble On Death
-Large Range
I have:
Shoot
Sword
And the charge varieties of each of those. I can use capsules (If I find them, which it seems like healing capsules drop rate got HUGELY nerfed since yesterday) and any debuffs I could potentially put on them don't seem to effect them.
Which let's touch on that.
Poison:
-They can still use capsules
-They can still be healed by priests
-Priests can still heal others and use bubble while poisoned.
-They still do regular damage.
-Big vial and from Vile striker the effect lasts for less than 5 seconds.
Stun:
-They are initially interrupted (Good!)
-They can still dash. (Bad!)
-Their standard movement seems slowed. (Good!)
-Their attacks are seemingly not slowed. (Bad!)
-This also lasts for less than 5 seconds.
Fire:
-Doesn't show me the tick for dmg. It doesn't kill them if they aren't healed, so it cant be that good.
-Lasts for, doesn't matter since it seems to do diddly.
Shock:
-Saw one suffer from the shock status once. Then nothing.
Curse:
-Didn't try because it is so pointless. If fire and poison didn't do anything I don't think the saddest of the ailments is going to have an effect.
Frost:
-This is nice, But since they just heal themselves, or get healed by priests, only good in running away. Which you really can't do.
I've managed to kill a few of the Healer + 2 Shield Gremlin packs. But once I run into a pack of 2 Healers + Shield Gremlins. Game over. Every time. This is what I'm hearing from everyone else too.
That said let me be positive - they're incredibly well designed in terms of AI. They are brutal, they are not glitching or doing anything I don't see as incapable within the game world EXCEPT that they greatly dwarf the players in power.
And as I mentioned I don't mean just power to kill them, I mean in the players view of what the gremlins can do in comparison to their own powers. They blow us out of the water. We just can't compete. It feels like the players are second fiddle to the Gremlins. That we're just the pushover fodder in "Clockwork Gremlins - The MMO!" because they feel like they've had more attention and love than the players.
Which, considering that steamroll well geared individuals with tons of health and energy to spare and well geared groups with the same. I'm left to believe that they are, in their current form - meant for another game. Certainly not this one.
Also, if this was a clever way to get me to stop ranting about demons having their attack item appear when i kill them then sail through the air and hit me for tons of dmg it came CLOSE. But then you had a level with Gremlins AND Demons. So, yeah.
Thu, 10/21/2010 - 21:43
#2
About monsters
I agree that gremlins need some nerfs. The purple ones at least.
The single one I would have, is make healers easier to kill. Currently they dodge your attacks, heal themselves, shield themselves, all while having their aggressive companions hit you in the face.
The goblins can be killed 1 on 1 with no healer, if only because the 3rd sword attack knocks them down, so it stops them from using all their aggressive skills.
Also demos shouldn't throw SO many bombs if they spawn with other mobs.
Also, while speaking of monsters:
Promoted demons need a larger time span between attacks, or a nerf to their damage. Fighting a Fired or Overworker, you dodge his trident/bomb/scythehing, then hit them with your charged sword attack, and they have already thrown another trident at your face, taking away like 5 bars of health.
Having said that, I have beaten the Iron Falcon gate 2 times, but only with a 3/4 party. While soloing I'd always fail against the Demons. And I'd try to avoid fighting gremlins as much as possible, only killing the ones on the 1st arena.
Thu, 10/21/2010 - 22:11
#3
I agree that they're a bit
I agree that they're a bit over powered. I find them manageable unless there's a healer amongst them or multiple healers. I think it would keep it balanced and ease up the difficulty if the healers had a reduction in their hit points/health. It makes since because they don't have the same armor on as the others. That way you can knock them out with a reasonable amount of effort.
However, with that being said, I'd rather not nerf monsters to make solo play possible on all levels. I'd rather the lower levels require a party to be successful. If the way health is distributed is making that difficult, perhaps we can suggest ways to correct that rather than encouraging people to play solo. I'd suggest that when a new player enters, others can gift them a few bars of health that will remove it from their own. Perhaps the deeper you are, the more you're able to gift. This way they don't die so quickly requiring someone to heal them so often, etc. The bar should remain the color it was previously, so you could gift either your red or clear bars. This way you can't game the system and have people leave and come back and be gifted red bars, essentially manufacturing health. The party as a whole would still have the same number of bars, but the change in distribution should help the entire party survive. In the end, I'd rather people be happy when someone joins rather than annoyed or encouraged to avoid people.
Thu, 10/21/2010 - 22:23
#4
Vitapods
Ah yes, the vitapods, I think the correct system would be to have them "pooled" for the party, and have them either be auto distributed for balance, or have the party leader distribute them.
And if someone leaves, have them go back to the pool.
Also, have them drop at some fixed places, since they can be quite important for survivality.
Thu, 10/21/2010 - 22:43
#5
I have to agree that the
I have to agree that the gremlins are really rough. I like how they're different though. Really, I think the big picture problem is how difficulty is handled in general in the game.
I feel like each enemy should have a specific strategy to be able to master them. The difficulty should be part figuring out the strategy, part executing it. A big problem I see now is that when an area is supposed to be really hard the go-to design is to make a roundish area where the monsters won't get stuck on stuff, and then throw a ton of them in at you. It doesn't matter what it is, gremlins, or a ton of wolvers, or skeletons. It just turns into a cluster**** where the only viable strategy seems to be to run around in a circle along the perimeter and take pot shots into the cluster. I don't think that's a particularly fun strategy, but with so many enemies around that's the only thing to do.
I'd rather see the difficulty be raised by making really tricky enemies. Facing a group of 2-3 gremlins in a decently sized space gives me the opportunity to try to develop a good strategy for dealing with them. The spookats at deeper levels are a good example. They are much much more difficult than they used to be, and when I was first encountering them they owned me. Eventually through trial and error I learned how to handle them. It's still not easy though, and I'll still find myself failing to execute well and losing a good chunk of life, or dying. So very good job on the spookats. Excellent enemy design.
It's harder for me to feel the same way about gremlins because when I see them it's usually in a cluster of other enemies. From what I have seen though I think the biggest problem is that they're really really really fast. If everything they did was at 75% their current speed I think they'd still be really hard, but hopefully not overpowered.
Thu, 10/21/2010 - 23:09
#6
On Gremlins
Your concerns are indeed well founded.
The gremlins got pretty broken this week, and we're working to bring them back in line, at least in the damage department.
After watching some combat data tonight, I've found a handful of really broken things on them. I'll do my best to see them fixed.
I beg your patience as we tune them, or as in this case, we take a sledge hammer to them.
Fri, 10/22/2010 - 00:28
#7
Wow, haven't seen any of
Wow, haven't seen any of those advanced abilities yet. We got murdered by a pack with 2-3 healers in the center, though.
I'm going to use the opportunity to kvetch a little about the stun through blocks. Removing some control from a player is potentially very frustrating under any circumstances. Removing some when they haven't made a mistake is less potentially and more actually.
Fri, 10/22/2010 - 05:44
#8
You haven't even seen the
You haven't even seen the most fun part if you've been soloing them.
My party of 3 got wiped out on level 28 by a group of three shield gremlins and two mages. We did manage to kill one of them, but the other mage revived him instantly. They were healing each other for 220hp at a rate of probably faster than once per second. No weapon I have can do damage that fast. I can't use charge attacks even against an isolated mage because of their perfect-aim rapidfire magic missiles.
And then one of us died, and this happened. So uhh......
They rezzed the first of us to fall, and from that point it was all over. There's no limit to how many mecha knights they can raise from a single corpse. They weren't doing it super fast; we just stayed there for a long time to see what would break, like good little beta testers. But still, they were probably raising them faster than we'd be able to take them down, even if we didn't have to deal with all their other shenanigans.
We really just wanted some random person to join the party and be traumatised :P
This is the only time I've ever seen the 'special effect' of the shock status - two shocked units in close proximity will damage each other. It was fun to watch little shock waves propogate between the knights. Never saw one die, though; two mages were more than enough to keep 60+ units at full health.
Fri, 10/22/2010 - 09:39
#9
Robots reproduce asexually
Party up in there!
Fri, 10/22/2010 - 11:36
#10
man i thought i was the only one
My wife and I got destroyed in the second phase of arena the last night, the new hawk gate, in the arena right before emberlight. And its the healer gremlins, combined with the turbo demo gremlins that did us in finally (after her revive was up to 640 or 1280, i cant recall). Matter of fact, I can recall the first time we faced gremlins (just basic ones, sans healers) and while we prevaled, they still melted our faces a good bit. They definately seem like spoiler monsters to me.
Fri, 10/22/2010 - 13:01
#11
One of my personal pet peeves
One of my personal pet peeves with Gremlins is their dashing attack. It's startup is very tiny and not visible until it's too late, and they have a tendency to throw it out immediately after a charged attack. But sometimes they don't, so I never know whether to attack them after dodging a hammer blow or to keep blocking. And when there's a bunch of them, they have the habit of going at slightly different times so at least one is always performing an attack.
Fri, 10/22/2010 - 15:32
#12
Just tried a solo run, and in
Just tried a solo run, and in the arena just under emberlight, four mages and one shield gremlin spawned at once in the second room.
Four.
All of whom were capable of casting all spells, including Raise Dead.
Aaaaaahahahaahahahaha.
Fri, 10/22/2010 - 23:37
#13
Ran into a bunch of gremlins
Ran into a bunch of gremlins in a solo run a little bit ago (after the update). Despite fighting a number of them simultaneously, I was not ravaged. Actually, they were quite manageable - I got hit maybe once or twice in the course of taking them all out. This is a drastic improvement from before, when (at worst) I might die multiple times from their far-reaching dash attacks.
Didn't see any mages in the mix, just shields, so I wouldn't know as far as whether or not they have been terribly nerfed. Also, it's worth noting that since the last time I faced gremlins, I have since gotten better equipment and a better idea about how not to get hurt.
Sat, 10/23/2010 - 00:02
#14
The Gremlin Bomber is still
The Gremlin Bomber is still ridiculously hard to get a hit on.
I lost half my health bar trying to take out one because after he dashed he would drop 7 bombs...
Sat, 10/23/2010 - 08:26
#15
Yeah, that Bomber is deadly.
Yeah, that Bomber is deadly. He is fast and drops bombs in great quantity - when one of the lesser goblins stuns you it feels like a great combo on the part of the AI.
Having said that, I do think the bomber feels overpowered - the first few times I encountered him I felt like I was facing the powered up version of a lesser Gremlin Bomber. It would feel a little more natural that way.
Yes.
I completely agree that gremlins have long been disproportionately powerful. The counter argument here is that they are much easier when you have friends with you. I've tried it both ways, and that is true, but even in groups they feel disproportionally difficult to the point of not being fun.
I remember being able to lay bombs that fast...