Spiral Knights - Make the Cryotech series of guns not counteract themselves

Make the Cryotech series of guns not counteract themselves

24 replies [Last post]

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 10:03

Glowing-Ember

Currently, of the Alchemers, the Cryotech series is the only series that actually negates itself, effectively halving its chance of inducing status on a given enemy. Compare this to its bomb equivalent, which not only has no such drawback, but due to its DoT nature it actually refreezes targets quite frequently after they have thawed or been hit.

My suggestion: Assign each volley (set of two bullets + ricochets) an ID. Then, if one freezes an enemy, store that ID in the enemy's instance and do not allow bullets of the same ID to unfreeze it.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 10:07

Orangeo

Ice should take more damage

Ice should take more damage to break. As of now shivermist easialy trumps all ice items due to the ability to re-freeze enemies after the ice is broken.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 10:10

Dzxi

i agree, its annoying that

i agree, its annoying that the ricochets unfreeze right away. or when first bullet freezes and second immediately unfreezes

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 10:31

stupysays

Legacy Username

I think the reason why

I think the reason why shivermist's functionality as a support item for freezing is due to the fact that while the shivermist user is doing his job he isn't contributing to dps (edit: in a significant way), even if it is in the very small amount that the Cryotech series provides.

I do think that perhaps the freeze status should apply more liberally on say, the second shot with a decreased chance on the first. Just that change might make the weapon much more functional than it is.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 11:57

Glowing-Ember

No. The Shivermist can freeze

No. The Shivermist can freeze upward of 20 enemies at a time, and refreeze them repeatedly. And you're forgetting that thaw does massive damage if left unchecked.

In no way is the unintended nerf to Cryo justified in relation to Shivermist.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 12:22

stupysays

Legacy Username

@windowl

You're talking about a functionality that requires charging and no faster way to shield oneself. The thaw damage doesn't come into play if the bombs being used to repeatedly freeze enemies as it should be. That's it's intended use. The Cryodriver was intended to do elemental typed damage with a CHANCE to freeze. By increasing it's ability to do that on the second shot you increase it's usefulness. If a gun could handle nearly the same capability for crowd control as a bomb with a large radius then that would be a fundamental design flaw.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 12:23

Glowing-Ember

Uh... I understand the

Uh... I understand the difference between guns and bombs. All I'm saying is that Cryo doesn't work like it should, and Shivermist works almost better than it should.

Do you disagree with my suggested fix?

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 12:38

stupysays

Legacy Username

@windowl

I agree with you on the gun that it can certainly see some love, I own one and only use it on occasion. However the capabiliites of the shivermist have already been nerfed once to decrease it's radius as well as it's duration. And the pulsing effect doesn't apply as often as it used to. Decrying one thing while comparing it to something that is completely different in terms of application is what you were doing.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 12:49

Glowing-Ember

Well, not about to turn this

Well, not about to turn this into a silly argument.

Mentioning the Shivermist was pretty irrelevant.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 12:52

stupysays

Legacy Username

@windowl

Then I agree with you, as it stands the freeze application does break too often for it to be functional. Either the refracting bullet pieces or the secondary shot should have a higher chance of freezing than the main bullet. That would greatly improve it's utility in your arsenal. As it is now it's only good for a single shot at a time and then waiting to see if the freeze even applied.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 14:34

#10

OverDingle

Legacy Username

If they were to fix this,

If they were to fix this, they'd have to either:

1. Make the freeze rate on the cryotech line 100%, which would ultimately be OP.
2. Attach a new variable to attacks which the freeze status checks before breaking, just for the cryotech series. Maybe for Triglav and Iceburst Brandish too. Depending on how they've made the game, this could be very simple, or very hard.

I definitely don't see 1 happening - a gun that's even better at stopping monsters from ever coming near you than Pulsar, and would be even better for Vanaduke than Shivermist? I mean, making sure he never turns around AND dealing damage - you'd just camp behind him and shoot until he dies...

As for 2, it depends on how they've built the game. If each unique attack has a set of variables attached to it, they can create one that the unfreeze code checks. Simply put in readable terms, "If Attack can unfreeze Then unfreeze, Else do nothing". Then the basic form of attack would have 'canUnfreeze = true;' and cryotech bullets would set that to 'canUnfreeze = false;'. Then the hit code would be changed to something like 'OnHit() {Do [Everything else]; if(Attack.canUnfreeze&&Monster.frozen) {Monster.unfreeze();}. It's a simple enough change... if they've done it the way I think they have. If they haven't, then... it may or may not be harder to do.

Ultimately even if they do 2 they'd have to nerf the freeze rate on the cryotech alchemer for the same reasons as 1 anyways. Keeping a monster frozen forever from a distance while dealing damage is just a little OP. At least shivermist needs the user to go into danger to cause damage because the direct damage effect is only at close range. Because of this, they may just leave it as is, unfortunately.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 14:41

#11

Glowing-Ember

I mean, it would just be a

I mean, it would just be a matter of adding a frozenID to the Monster parent class. Then on hit, it would check if the freeze attack matched the monster's frozenID, and if it does, don't unfreeze.

It's trivial to implement and I'm not sure why you even mentioned 100% freeze because no one wants that.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 14:51

#12

Dzxi

this ^

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 14:58

#13

OverDingle

Legacy Username

I mentioned 100% freeze

I mentioned 100% freeze simply because it's even more trival to implement - I also mentioned why I don't think it'll happen. Don't complain about that.

The change I really suggested would make it so a cryotech shot wouldn't unfreeze monsters frozen by anything other than another cryotech shot, and is still relatively trivial - a global variable that all attacks inherit, set to false manually on 4 guns. As it'd be a boolean, it'd have less memory usage too, at the cost of a couple bytes of data per weapon it's used for. I'd say it's more efficient and allows for cross-weapon freezing.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 16:01

#14

Glowing-Ember

Guns don't kill people.

Guns don't kill people. Bullets kill people. Think about that.

But in any case, this is getting a little ridiculous. OOO are smart people; they don't need us to debate implementation strategies.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 17:14

#15

OverDingle

Legacy Username

I suppose you're right about

I suppose you're right about us not needing that debate, but I'm enjoying the thought excercise all the same. Moving on to my final year in a comp sci course in october and I need to keep in practice.

I suppose the more important debate is whether they'd have to rebalance the alchemer's freeze rate to do this - as it stands it'd probably need a reduction to reduce the possibility a monster will never move again after being hit. I'm tempted to go check the ATH and get some figures to judge the freeze rate by... Edit: Tested with the 2* cryotech. The freeze rate seems low enough on the basic shot, but the charge attack was about a 50% rate and could be fired twice during the freeze time. No idea if the rate or freeze time goes up at higher * ratings though.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 19:19

#16

Glowing-Ember

I'm not sure what the problem

I'm not sure what the problem is?

Other Alchemers get X*2 rate since they fire two shots. Cryo gets X*1, which is the whole issue. And I have no idea what you mean by "never move again after getting hit."

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 19:53

#17

OverDingle

Legacy Username

Locking a monster in place by

Locking a monster in place by never letting the freeze status end; hence, the monster never gets to fight back. If a monster offers no challenge, then the player isn't suffering any risk, but getting the same rewards.

Causing freeze on a permanent basis is relatively OP in terms of gameplay - it's only bearable with the Shivermist because the bomb itself doesn't do much, if any damage, so the user has to free the monster temporarily or have other party members abuse the freeze effect to actually kill it.

Being able to freeze Vanaduke permanently from a safe distance while dealing damage would make the fight so easy it could be done by a macro that spams the attack button - and he's currently supposed to be the hardest thing in the game. If the cryotech line was able to keep him frozen constantly throughout the fight, he'd become a joke.

Freeze is a very powerful status effect in the hands of players because of how much it can reduce the difficulty of even the game's hardest opponents - hence, any change to anything that causes freeze needs balance issues to be considered as well. Changing cryotech's shots to not break freeze means that something else in the gun would need to be changed, because right now when you add up all the ricochets, the chance of freezing with the charge attack on a large target like vanaduke would near 100%.

I know it's a logical change to make freeze-causing attacks not break freeze, but it does have some balance issues that need to be considered.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 19:57

#18

Geregias

freeze

honestly guys, though the debate and strategies are well and good, overdingles clearly thought this through quite well, freeze is considerably OP compared to the other status's the alchemers can inflict - hence there is no need to change it. if you have to be a little more careful about firing a cryotech than say a firotech, so be it

firotech and voltechs have a chance of inflicting damaging status conditions (k the voltech also interrupts enemies every 2/3 seconds)
cryotech has a chance of inflicting a status condition capable of preventing enemy movement, rotation and deals alot of damage if left to thaw generally damage equivalent to the fire damage inflicted by the firotech, well slightly less but not by all that much
now with the exception of higher tier slimes and missile puppies freeze effectively incapacitates all enemies for its duration, hence why shivermist is a truly impressive bomb

additionally the first hit freeze which you seem to be whinging about, true it is broken immediately afterwards and yet it still stops enemy movement for that 1 second which ALWAYS prevents enemy attacks from reaching you, yes even grievers as they fly after you - i know cause that how i deal with them
if you change it so that crytoech bullets cannot break freeze from enemies, in either way, you will end up a gun which at high level will always freeze, hell at 4* the cryodriver freezes approx. 1/3 of the time, and a gun which can be used to keep enemies frozen permanently(this was the never move after being hit comment btw), and a gun which can be used to continuously attack frozen enemies without chance of freeze being broken - ergo the cryotech becomes the best gun in the game and is completely broken

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 20:21

#19

Glowing-Ember

OK, before I address the

OK, before I address the points above I'd like to make sure there's no misunderstanding.

I do not want to be able to shoot at a frozen enemy with the Cryotech repeatedly without it thawing while having a chance to immediately refreeze it ala Shivermist.

I want bullets in the same volley (that is, up to two actual shots or one charge shot + ricochets) not to affect whether the other has already frozen.

Right now, you have a choice. Severely lower your DPS by having to hitconfirm each bullet, or cut your chance of status by 1/2. No other weapon that I know of, certainly none of the other Alchemers, demand this requirement of the user.

Note that hit confirmation is not actually dependent upon the player's reaction, but more on the speed of the bullet and distance to the enemy. You shouldn't have to use the gun like a sword just to get its advertised effect. Also note that with my proposed change, you still need to hitconfirm between reloads.

And I'm not against balance tweaks. If you want to lower the freeze rate or even the damage rate to balance it, and it's actually necessary, then fine. But the current mechanic of negating your own status infliction just by using the gun is ridiculous to me. Not only that, but ricochets are literally random and the player should not be penalized for hitting with them.

Sat, 08/27/2011 - 21:48

#20

OverDingle

Legacy Username

It appears I somewhat

It appears I somewhat misinterpreted what you were saying (only bullets in a single clip), so my apologies there. I never claimed that you want to keep enemies permanently frozen, however - just that it's a potential side effect of what I thought you wanted to do. I never disagreed that the functionality of the cryotech alchemer is damaged by unfreezing, either; it makes sense to not have the shots immediately unfreeze a monster after freezing it.

Ultimately as it stands, there isn't too much difference between having no shots unfreeze or every shot in the clip - the freeze rate with the basic shots seems to be such that you're unlikely to extend the freeze duration before it thaws even if no shots unfroze monsters, and the reload time if you use the whole volley is enough that you'd only get one, maybe two clips extra before the monster can move. Whereas if you wanted to leave the monster frozen after a single volley, you'd normally either ignore it or use a stronger weapon to hit it while it's defenseless. Rebalancing the gun around never unfreezing but having a lower rate would probably make more sense than only making shots shared in a volley unfreeze (Why, as an in-world explanation, would only shots from the same volley not unfreeze?), and it's still a plausible idea.

On to a few of the issues you have with the gun's gameplay - firstly, the ricochets can be predicted to a degree. The charge attack ricochets of alchemers are always on the same path, and the regular shot's ricochet is always returned to the left - the actual area it can go to is only a 60 degree spread or so, so it can be predicted roughly (It's not purely random). In terms of gameplay, there's an option you haven't mentioned, which is firing each shot at a different enemy so you don't have to worry about unfreezing one wih the second shot - and you can use ricochet prediction to choose the right targets. Your DPS is the same if you're dividing your shots between multiple enemies. Obviously against single targets this doesn't work, but if there's only one enemy there normally isn't a need for freeze in the first place, and if you freeze it as the game is now, you don't really have a choice but to unfreeze it anyways.

I say this not to discredit your argument (again, I agree with you that the way it is now isn't right) but to help you play around the weaknesses slightly better; after all, OOO may never change it, so you may as well learn to make the best of the gun as it is now.

Heck, another global solution to the problem - minimum freeze duration one second. Enough time for both shots in a volley/all ricochets from acharge attack, less likely to be screwed up by a team member straight away.

Sun, 08/28/2011 - 05:33

#21

Glowing-Ember

Rebalancing the gun around

Rebalancing the gun around never unfreezing but having a lower rate would probably make more sense than only making shots shared in a volley unfreeze (Why, as an in-world explanation, would only shots from the same volley not unfreeze?), and it's still a plausible idea.

But you just said it would be broken and stupid against bosses, which I agree with. As for why it makes sense, it just makes it so you can use the gun like the other Alchemers without having to go into specific and unreliable strategies. I could start listing things that lack in-world consistency for the sake of balance, but let's not go there, please.

About the ricochets being literally random, I should have clarified that. On the 3- and 4* versions, each bullet ricochets randomly either zero or one times. On the 5* version, it ricochets randomly either once or twice. I agree, the angles are predictable and skilled users know how to predict them, but you cannot predict the number. And again, I want to say that no other Alchemer actually punishes you for hitting with the ricochet..

That's a good point about splitting between targets, except that a lot of the time in order to maximize DPS you want to hit two or more monsters with each bullet and depending on position this is often only possible on one clump at a time. Furthermore, while as you mentioned, there's little point in freezing if there's only one enemy, Cryo users usually want to target specific enemies (and want the implied ×2 status chance that comes with it). For example, there could be only a single turret but a huge mob, and the Cryo user wants to focus their freezing efforts only on the turret. Again, I reiterate, if a Storm- or Magma Driver user wants to shock or burn it, they get a ×2 chance of doing so and because this goes more quickly they can move on to more threatening targets than a shocked Gun Puppy or a terminally flaming Lumber. Also consider that, especially while kiting in an Arena, you only get two or so shots at a given target before you have to move out of its range, especially in the case of healers and turrets.

The problem with minimum freeze duration is when you take into consideration party members. With the Cryo, since it shouldn't refreeze, you should have to pick targets that won't be whacked out of freeze immediately by your teammates. It's a limitation of the gun that I agree with, because it logically follows the status effect description. Also keep in mind that one second minimum is more than enough time for one or more teammates to execute a (pre-charged) charge attack or a full sword combo while the monster remains frozen, and that the more you decrease the minimum, the less helpful it actually is for the gun (picture strafing backward from an enemy at decent range without gunslinger gear).

Fri, 09/09/2011 - 09:26

#22

Glowing-Ember

Bump.

After switching to the Kilowatt Pulsar line for a while, I got out my trusty old Cryootech Alchemer Mk II for a Twins run to try it out now that I know a lot more about the game.

My god. This gun is horrible.

Each bullet does less damage than an UNEXPANDED Pulsar of the same rating. The range is pathetic. It has a two-shot clip. And it counteracts itself.

OOO, please fix this gun.

Fri, 09/09/2011 - 13:43

#23

Ethyce

just an idea

I don't know if anyone suggested something like it yet, but...
...what if they would change the effect from a 'single-target freeze proc' into a mist-style one with a very small radius?

something around the size of the mist cloud an Ice Cube jelly leaves on the ground when it dies while being "frozen", cut the mist duration to ~2-3 seconds and keep the chance for the mist cloud to appear roughly the same as the current freeze proc. the radius from the T2/T3 mist clouds might be too large, but something inbetween the size of the T1/T2 ones seems to be reasonable.

with a bit of fine tuning, this could counteract the 'selfcanceling' (= abusing the refreeze from the SMB) and provide an additional bonus, since the mist could freeze other close-by targets.

Fri, 09/09/2011 - 15:44

#24

Glowing-Ember

I like that idea. Do it, OOO.

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Make the Cryotech series of guns not counteract themselves