I don't think it's hard to tell there are certain things in this game that are inexplicably broken beyond use.
Chaos Set, Volcanic Demo Suit, Bombastic Demo, just about every piece of Gunner equipment bar Trinkets. You know, the stuff that's been screwed up for almost an entire year and has had absolutely no attention paid to it.
Well...Doesn't Really make that much of a Difference if you wear the whole Set, which most Bombers do.
Even if you don't, you can Mix Mad Bomber Suit with the Volcanic Demo Helm & get a Decent Bonus.
Not that Noticeable.
I realise this, but it's still broken.
"New guys, always think they're so smart. "
Was that to me?
You know, things like this used to bother me. Yeah, there are some sets that are clearly unbalanced. Yeah, I'd like it if my Sudaruska wasn't demonstrably inferior to every other sword in the game--bar the Triglav, whose users have made such a brazenly poor decision that they can only be applauded for their audacity--but I've long since gotten over it. Yeah, I made a bad weapon, but I knew that going in. The data was easily accessible to tell me "This is a bad weapon," or more broadly "This is bad gear," long before I chose to embark on that path. I chose to get it anyway, because despite not being the optimal choice in most or indeed any situations, it still adds valuable variety to my play experience. And I appreciate that very much, balance or no.
The strongest argument that everything absolutely must be balanced is that shackling newbies to crappy gear early on makes their game experience all the more arduous. Certainly this was valid before the introduction of the mission system; now, however, newbies have access to decently balanced gear right from the start, and with the Hall of Heroes they can easily compare the available weapons and arrive at the choices they wish to make.
Simply put, while it might be nice for its own sake if every piece of gear was balanced against every other, that's a great deal of time and effort that isn't strictly necessary. I for one would appreciate new content more than I would appreciate a great deal of time spent fiddling with existing content.
I'd like the buffs on the volc bomber and/or divine set to match on the armor and helm, since I'd like to mix the two but both have bigger buffs on the helmet.
They just did a bunch of unnecessary balancing, but half of the items in the game are still almost completely useless.
And some of them have now actually become useless because of the update.
I'd rather an item have a niche use than get flat out outclassed by weapons it should never have competed with because of element changes.
And it's the same with armor.
Why have it there if it's useless? Just delete it. It serves absolutely no purpose to have it there and not fix it to the point where it's worth using, replace it with something else if you're not going to use it or just get rid of it. It's a one man job, anyone can change the tooltip to Medium on the Volcanic Demo Suit.
Also, if any new content doesn't conform with old content, you also end up with (more) redundant items. I'd rather them just fix the hundreds of things they have now than add new stuff that makes every other upgrade path obsolete (again).
"I'd rather them just fix the hundreds of things they have now than add new stuff that makes every other upgrade path obsolete (again)."
Son/Daughter, I own a Cautery Sword. Cry me a river.
This thread is now about my ambiguous gender.
Honestly, a lot of the weapons that need to be fixed are really minor tweaks, these don't take much (except cautery sword :D)
Sudaruska - Bring damage in line with a normal damage DA. (For Strata 6: 240, 360, 600) Let's bring back the rocks doing damage, let's also make it the only strong stun weapon
Triglav - Change to good(anything better than slight) chance to freeze, on the charge only
Dread Venom Striker - Make ghost swings reliable, 1/6-1/3 of the damage is lost from missed swings. Bring Poison chance to up 10% for normal attacks, 20% per swing for charge attacks. Keep the current charge attack, but make is at least twice as fast. (Alternatively, replace charge attack with FoV charge attack, bring charge poison chance to 40% per swing)
Wild Hunting blade - similar
Cautery Sword Series - Let's beef this bad boy up. Minerals erupt from the ground, small ones for the 3*, and massive columns for the 5*. We'll call it Gomorrah. Damage versus slimes brought to Acheron levels, charge kills have a chance to leave minerals behind instead of mats. (Killing JK leaves the chance for a special super massive crystal that requires all four member to drag it to the elevator)
Bombastic demo gear - High bomb damage per piece (still no status resist, elemental and normal are in line with volcanic and mad bomber)
Chaos Series - Let's bring the damage back up to med per piece, increase the status penalty one bar. Let's bring in a neutral line for sealed sword that is also chaotic :D
Ancient Plate Armor - Competitively high resistance to everything (Similar to guardian shield) All weapons are slowed instead of swords, status resist to Fire, Shock, Stun. Weak to curse, poison, freeze.
FoV - hit as fast as the brandish series,
Ionized Salt Bomb - Make it the only strong shock weapon in the game
Vortex Bombs - Increase suction area
FF/BTB series - decrease auto-target range to a blade length
Rigadoon - Increase stun chance to 10% or so.
Mercurial armor - Speed increased from low to med on pieces. (similar to ash tail -> skolver)
Weapons similar to CIV - buff damage to +20% against target, decrease damage 5% for non-target. (instead of the current reversal)
Deconstructor - charge throws smaller bombs at target, potentially stunning
Big Angry bomb - Bring damage in line with FoV 4x charge attack. It's the slowest bomb, and the FoV charge is a lot more intimidating. (why is a sword a better bomb?)
Acheron - Curse that slowly causes the knight to lose their mind, eventually the only knights who can be seen are fellow knights that own acherons/nightblade. Can only be lifted by selling the sword. Special missions are given only to them. Hallucinations in levels contain the swarm.
I already did a thread on an NPC's unclear gender/sex identity before the missions update rolled around rofl
Yeah, it seems weird that there are a lot of items that are utterly useless except unless you want them for aesthetic purposes or something. And it's even weirder OOO seems to change everything else before even thinking of getting around to those things that need changing.
and when they DO make them they make some mildly boneheaded other changes that are kind of out there and then people forget the good changes they finally got around to making
bluh
Yeah, let's get balance for Cautery Sword/ISB/Flamberge/Troika/Blast Bomb offshoots/whatever else I forgot and more gunner/bomber shields that go up to 5* and reskinning of the gunslinger helmet/armour and SL gunner armour and...
/end gunslinger's rant
I think OOO would rather have the shiny new content rather than revamping old weapons, because it's better at keeping players in the game.
Just saying.
Chaos Set: Universal CTR low. With both pieces, two trinkets for separate weapon types and Level 10 weapons, you can have CTR Maximum! in two weapon categories. This is currently impossible without UVs, so I think it will fill a nice niche there for hybrid weapon characters.
Mercurial Armor: Increase the movement speed bonus from Medium to High when wearing the full set. This will stop people picking one part just for PvP. You have to realise that Medium is still a relatively large bonus to have on one item. So putting it to medium for a supplementary stat can lead to abuse of a particular playstyle, especially if you can get the current full set bonus on one piece.
Bombastic Demo: Add Bomb CTR low on both pieces. Then you can get Max CTR or Max Damage with Very High in the other using trinkets and Heat 10 Weapons (No UVs).
Gunslinger requires too many changes to become useful.
Same with weapons. There's just too many that are beyond broken, fixing them is probably the most time consuming part of balancing the equipment.
Edit: I forgot you can go with full Demo Set and Two Focus trinkets from another weapon type to get CTR Maximum in Bombs and something else with heat 10 weapons. If you wanted to do Sword and Gun then Chaos Set would be the only you could get it without UVs.
Chaos Set: CTR reduction does need to be a on a set, but originally the Chaos set was a Med Damage for both pieces to all weapons, and a low status penalty to all status. It was then nerfed to damage bonus low, since everyone was using Chaos+BTS on FSC during the preview. If the status penalty was increased, then players would barely survive FSC and lockdown for that matter, but they would still be heavy hitting. There does need to be a CTR med line of armor, so that players can get CTR bonus without trinkets, but I don't think it would be appropriate for Chaos Set.
Mercurial: Abilities granted by items should not change because of the other items in that series. Yes, it was done in Diablo II, but the set items there were completely outstripped by Hell items. Players shouldn't feel compelled to utilize the whole set to max a bonus. I don't want to feel compelled to utilize a pure Mercurial set when I really want to use mercurial set with my Ancient plate armor. If autotarget was removed from PVP like it is from so many other games, then abuse would be reduced.
Bombastic Demo: Again, don't think about one armor from a trinket perspective and forget about it's relatives. Using your logic we should completely remove the status penalties from Mad bomber, because you are turning bomastic demo into a godly version of mad bomber. Damage bonus is suitable, especially with stronger explosive bombs, like the BAB.
Gunslinger - The only armor that really needs to be fixed is the Shadowsun Stetson, why does it have 2 status penalties and only a low damage bonus? Why doesn't it have resistance to shadow, when that is the obvious direction for it to go?
Weapons in general: a basic balance could probably be done in a weekend, and then further tweaks would be made after release to the preview server.
Not thinking about items from a perspective where they are all relative to each other from their max potential leads to jorrebdously overpowered items. Personally I think you're just arguing with me for the sake of arguing with me because just about everything you've said is straight up WRONG. But I'll bite because other people probably have some inclination to agree with you and they will want to know why.
Chaos Set: even without trinkets, CTR med with level 10 heat weapons nets you Maximum CTR in all 3 weapon types, add two tetra heart trinkets and you have the most OP Lockdown setup in the game, regardless of weaknesses. Just like it used to be.
Mercurial Mail: It you think Very High Movespeed is acceptable, you must really enjoy being kited and must love Polaris explosions to the face. Also, the set bonus in question doesnt even have to be visible, they could just make medium Movespeed faster to make the investment more worthwhile, since it's not worth it to wear one piece and mix from another set to get Movespeed low and people who get Movespeed medium need trinkets to supplement the sets lack of offensive bonuses.
Bombastic Demo: Mad Bomber only needs 1 Boom Module to get max damage and CTR, so you can wear a tetra heart trinket and make up for all the defensive shortcomings. Bombastic demo would be a set for people who are beginners to offensive bombing or don't want to be weak to statuses. Defensively it will still be neutral, so it will benefit from UVs, but it will never replace Mad Bomber, just be a worthwhile middle-ground between Mad and Volcanic. Also BAB is bad and you should feel bad for trolling.
Gunslinger: ASI med on Guns is completely unnoticeable. The 5 star sets are the only worthwhile ones and even then, only with trinkets. And Deadshots bonus is still universal. Max damage on guns is incredibly overpowered so Shadowsun should stay at low, but the defences do need a bit of tweaking.
If you think it will take a single weekend to fix years of lacklustre items, I don't know what you're smoking. Some items (winmillion) need 5 star variants or additional paths to help fix/make worthwhile. So no, a weekend is pretty unreasonable.
Chaos set: Aside from the toothpicks in LD, the chaos set who get reamed by shock, to an extent that no one knows.
Mercurial Mail: I really don't have problems with being kited, in fact that's almost never my problem.
BAB: If you even read my post on the necessary buff that it needs, then I wouldn't be reiterating this. BAB is a bomb that has a lot of potential, but falls so flat on it's face that it smacks the back of it's head.
Bombastic: If you own a 5* set of bombing armor you are not a beginner.
Gunslinger: You must get trolled a lot in Lockdown.
Balancing the lackluster: You're right the preview server would have to be run. I would recommend giving all preview players the weapons from the get go, and releasing some more LD maps.
Prior to the update, Spur was one of the best selling mistcraft weapons to make. So I see your complaint about winmillion and wonder where I can get what you're having.
Wow, you guys actually want every weapon to be usable for usual gameplay, don't you? That's.... well, crazy. Though there are some weapons that are completely non-viable due to their nature (wild hunting blade, status flourishes, cautery sword), and should be buffed/modded to have an application, but almost every sword is better than every other sword for a very specific purpose or all around use in an area. Dread vile is good for JK/masks, for example. There are definitely some weapons that are totally useless, but we shouldn't be changing the FoV to be a good all-around sword. Stuff that is useless includes....
- Cautery sword
- Troika lines
- Wild hunting blade
- Status flourishes
- Heavy deconstructor
- Irontech destroyer
There are also a variety of weapons (BAB, Callahan, Winmillion), that HAVE situations that favor them, but are generally not used due to their just plain crappy stats, and said uses are usually so rare and specialized that most do not even consider them as they are a pain to lug through levels for their intended uses. These could use buffs to bring them further into the realm of plausibility.
Weapons such as these deserve to be brought more in to light. It would be nice to see some more diversity and choice, though I am not saying that we should make all swords as good as a DA.
As for other stuff.....
Trinkets - Seriously, defense and status trinkets are lame. I would like to see them made decent.
Shields - Most of these get used and there aren't really any niches that could allow the bad ones to step in.
Armor - Could we make it so that the non-bonus armors are actually decent? There's really no point to them at the moment.
This is going to be slightly off topic, but bear in mind with me. There is a point
One of my favorite games, all time, hands down, would be UT2004. There were 16 weapons, Two were under powered, but were starting gear, and there were two redundant one (The sniper rifle and the lighting gun) Every weapon served a purpose and each one was viable, even in the wrong situation. The differences between the weapons were also incredibly significant. The biorifle was nothing like the shock rifle, but both could be equally dangerous. I knew that a good match was over when I had hoarded every weapon.
Spiral Knights is a lot like UT2004, the developers really wanted to give a variety of weapons to suit a variety of situations and fighting styles. However if you look at the reuse of weapons, you'll see significantly less variety than is being touted. For the sake of argument you have 7 sword types. FoV, Sudaruska, Divine Avenger, BTB, DVS, Brandish, and Calibur - technically 3 if you discount charge attack. There are 5 handguns, and effectively 4 different bombs. You can only bring 2-4 into battle, depending on what you want to spend.
There are also 4 different types of players. Fighters, Explorers, Social Builders, and Collectors. UT2004 addressed primarily the fighters, but the explorers got vehicles to rapidly explore the map and engage the enemy from afar, builders got the link gun, grenades, and spider mines to defend their installations, and collectors had the privilege of hoarding everything they found. (Always ended with full shields, health, and mininuke)
I like collecting items and weapons, but there really needs to be a reason to do so. Fighters like to kill as efficiently as possible, but that's not always possible with current gear in SK. Social Builders are largely ignored except when they play as a healing guardian - and let's be honest there are people who would kill to redesign the guild hall, and really deck out their mission lobby.
It would be in the best interest of OOO to make their gear as varied as possible, so that players like myself will spend more to collect it, so that fighters want it to be more efficient, and builders will have something to trophy. Right now OOO is only catering to the explorers, (I already was an explorer and found everything that I've wanted or could afford - curses to the SL)
Basically what this argument is devolving into is:
1. Get rid of every weapon that does damage versus family.
2. Get everything in a set in line with each other
Gunners definitely need some status resist and some real shadow defense gunslinger armor. They should also get ASI med per piece like Vog.
Bombers need more than just elemental resist armors. I would suggest changing mercurial demo to shadow and pierce for bombastic.
Chaos set might be better with something like ASI low and Damage low per piece since it seems to me like it was never intended for bombers and universal CTR bonuses are just too good
Out of all of the weapons that I already have a family member to, I still have moderate interest in the WHB and the CIV. Unlike most other weapons, they actually have some great design work done to them; however the way that they do damage is frustrating. Again the damage distribution really needs to be reconsidered, and maybe if they had bonus that were particularly effective against their target. (WHB would be better as at least pierce weapon, or if it caused stun, something to slow the T3 wolvers down. CIV would be better with a stun as well, to slow down the spookats, elemental damage, or at least 20% damage increased to undead and only 5% reduction in other facets)
2. Get everything in a set in line with each other
Yes and no, simply balancing the weapons might even be impossible, because of status effects, and the simple fact that there are basically two games in SK. Let's look at the brandish line.
Combuster - I would contend that in the normal clockworks that combuster is king, anywhere the other swords can be used the combuster can be used, and usually with better results. Even with oilers, the only penalty it receives is a universal "resistance to elemental". In FSC the knockback from the charge blasts makes it even replace the DA. Not ideal for Snarby.
Voltedge - Identical to combuster, but reduces much of the damage, and causes a temporary "stun" effect, great in Lockdown, the stopping effect reduces other knock around effects from causing lots of damage. Extremely hazardous in Lockdown (Shock, Stun and Freeze basically deadstop the target)
Glacius - Same as voltedge, but you have to wait for enemies to thaw for them to receive extra damage. Enemies can also form a frozen wall, which can be fatal in FSC. (It used to be really fatal prior to Zombielol patch)
Acheron - Technically stronger for the JK and Snarby, but worthless down in FSC. No status effect. Having a Combuster ignite the JK makes up for the damage difference.
Obviously with the Acheron, is severely weaker than it's brothers; OOO is fixing that by creating more gremlin zones, again only catering to the explorers. It's still a disappointing sword. A lot of players have been asking to include curse with it. Including curse would require that the charge time is increased significantly, from 3.25s to closer to 5-6 seconds, since curse is extremely powerful. But how would you fix the other Glacius and the Voltedge, the simple and incorrect solution is to change their damage tables. A better solution would be to change how statuses are applied. The best solution would completely rework their charge attacks from the ground up so that they all have something to bring to the table in every situation. If Glacius formed a physical ice wall, causing pierce to anything caught inside and creating a strong area of denial, like with crystal blocks that would be a game changer. (Visually changing the sword would also be nice. IE, the voltedge becomes a Jacob's ladder, the combuster has flames and ice crystals forming on along the blade)
I agree with your gunner's statement. It's not that their weapons are weak, but there really needs to be a noticeable benefit to their perks.
I also agree, bombers need more than elemental. I wouldn't change mercurial demo to shadow though, even though it is from the SL, I would maintain that it does need pierce (Following the lines of the Jelly armors). Bombastic would be a better shadow armor, since it would give a reason for new 5* players to try and end-game it for FSC and SL.
I like your chaos suggestion.
"Chaos Set, Volcanic Demo Suit, Bombastic Demo..."
Since when was Volcanic Demo Unbalanced? It seems fine to me.