Spiral Knights - Three Rings and gear balance, it's about time to actually do it properly.

Three Rings and gear balance, it's about time to actually do it properly.

5 replies [Last post]

Wed, 01/30/2013 - 20:36

Kalaina-Elderfall

It's no secret that when it comes to gear balance, Spiral Knights is a travesty. Seriously, it's just that bad.

Now, it's not a COMPLETE travesty. There exist a handful of gear pieces in this game that are roughly equivalent to one another, which is great. But there also exists a rather excessive list of gear that is inferior to the primary gear. A collaborative effort between me and several others had us with upwards of 50 things in the game that we felt were unusable by virtue of being outclassed.

And Three Rings just doesn't do anything about it. We've gotten used to this. We sigh, and move on because we enjoy the game in spite of the fact that it really could be a lot less terrible. Some people get tired of how terrible it is and quit.

There are a lot of things in this game that I feel need balancing, some are more controversial (Lockdown, weapons) than others (spark trinkets, most armor). Some are more ancillary (monster families, status effects). I'm going to talk about armor.

People have sets they like, but when it comes to what is best, it's always been a no-brainer - wolver, gunslinger, and bomber lines outclass pretty much everything else, and bomber is a bit lackluster anyway. A few things, like Divine Veil and perhaps Deadly Virulisk have always stood out as really not that bad but still probably not as good as the sword/gun lines. But all in all, the stats on these sets overvalue hybriding, as most players can do exceptionally well with only one type of weapon (and most probably prefer it).

Two things happened today:

1) Three Rings buffed the Chaos set. They buffed it quite a bit, making it now the only set in the game that does something more than the sword/gun lines. My gut says that this is a great move. Possibly too much, but definitely not something I'm going to complain about until it's been tested. It now strictly outclasses Mad Bomber, which is a first - previously sets like Dread Skelly have had at least SOMETHING that the sword/gun lines don't, even if that something isn't enough that anyone actually notices it. But here, Mad Bomber is strictly outclassed by Chaos.

2) The Black Kat Cowl came into existence. It's far and away the best piece of gear in the game. It's so hilariously better than everything else that we just have to laugh.

So here we are, with the Chaos buff a step in the right direction, yet with Mad Bomber outclassed, and the Black Kat Cowl speaking for itself in terms of poorness of game balance. But what matters here is that Three Rings is thinking about game balance, which is not something they usually do. And that means there's a chance that they can make a lot of things in this game that are otherwise worthless actually shine. Or they can fail miserably. But whichever way they're going to go with this, it should be now. It's been far too long already.

Thu, 01/31/2013 - 00:35

Oneerranttwitch

Chaos didn't need the buff,

Chaos didn't need the buff, it was useful when it got ctr low added.

Buffing a useful item so that it makes another, previously useful item (e.g. Mad Bomber) redundant is pretty much the opposite of balancing.

The Black Kat enemies are a more interesting change, as curse resistance on shadow armors previously seemed useless to me, and curse vulnerability was no big deal. Additions or changes in enemies and environments would probably be better at encouraging arsenal variety than jiggering stats.

Thu, 01/31/2013 - 00:28

Sir-Pandabear

I noticed the other kat hats had slight negative stat resists despite not being better than the main weaponry armour lines. I think this was a good idea and should be copied over to those promptly.

Start with negative shock on skolver, kindly.

Thu, 01/31/2013 - 06:14

Kalaina-Elderfall

Balance is about having

Balance is about having different sets of gear available to allow for different styles of play. Old Chaos did low damage and low CTR. That's two points of offense. Sword and gun armor also do two points of offense. Of the offensive points available, CTR is generally the least useful since half of the weapons in the game are terrible when charged - this is why the Seerus mask, while overpowered, isn't necessarily that much stronger than other gun hats. The only thing Chaos did that the sword/gun/bomb lines didn't is provide global bonuses that work across all three weapon types. And that's just not useful enough to make up for the status weaknesses.

So to bring Chaos in line with the top gear, there are two options. One, buff Chaos. Two, nerf everything else. Sadly, a nerf of the top armor would, by my estimate, piss off roughly 95% of the playerbase of the game.

So they've buffed Chaos. They want a glass cannon playstyle that shakes up our wolver/gunslinger game, so they made one. Is it too much? Maybe, but too much is better than not doing anything about gear balance forever.

The Black Kat Cowl provides three points of damage offense. This pretty much outclasses the Snarby and Shadowsun, which are already some of the best sets in the game. Unlike Chaos, a Cowl wearer does not have to split the buffs between damage and CTR. Three points of anything damage is quite good, but three points of global damage that also provides an MSI point for lulz at the cost of slight negative resists to three statuses... yeah. I'm sorry, but curse resistance on armor is negligible and cannot be used to balance gear.

Everything in Spiral Knights is usable if you're good, and people often confuse that with gear balance. Sure you can beat Vanaduke in Azure Guardian while wielding a Callahan, but that doesn't mean it's easier than using something better.

There are other things that I feel need a strong look in terms of game balance:

Monster families - it's okay for beasts and slimes to be complete pushovers in Tier 1, but T3 beasts, particularly wolvers are so hilariously bad... a friend of mine went afk in a T3 wolver den to go use the bathroom and when he got back to the game his knight still had half health left.

Weapons - there are people who like Callahan, but I've never been able to figure out why. But Callahan isn't the close to worst weapon in the game. Look to its cousin, the Iron Slug, and the shard bombs for that. People complained about losing an actually useful RSS, but standing on their own merits the new shard bombs are terrible. Cutters and winmillion, and nearly every normal damage weapon in the game.

Lockdown - while I feel there's a pretty good balance between the game's best weapons, heart pendants are all a Striker needs to not have their primary class weakness of frailty.

Spark Trinkets - every single trinket you get from Brinks is inferior. They could be doubled in effectiveness and still probably be inferior, but at least then they'd be worth considering.

Status effects - on knights, shock is much stronger than poison and, save for a few select situations, freeze. On enemies, shock is lackluster and freeze is very powerful. Poison is pretty bad all around.

But armor is where I look for the most obvious issues with game balance. Anyone who can look me in the eye and say they believe Dread Skelly, Royal Jelly, Arcane Salamander, Volcanic Plate, Azure Guardian, Almirian Crusader, and Ironmight Plate are worthy of being in the same game as Snarby, Skolver, Seerus, Shadowsun, Vog, Justifier, Nameless, Divine Veil, and Volcanic Demo... that person has obviously never actually played this game.

Thu, 01/31/2013 - 09:24

Tsubasa-No-Me

Now see...

I have it, and It feels pretty nice to have Armor that makes me Hit like a Tank, and be able to charge spam anything. But as long as you watch out for Status problems, you're fine.

Hit with a Status = You will probably die soon.

I mean, I almost died to a Freeze Grate because I could not escape it in the amount of time in between trap activation. That's pretty harsh, especially if you're playing alone. Fire will eat you alive... But it doesn't feel all that Dangerous to play in, because I can still not worry about Gun puppy attacks, and other elemental dangers. I personally think that Removing some of the defenses would go a long way to Balancing it. Or, you know, throwing Status weakness onto the Big Three Armors.

BUT ANYWAYS, I suggest things too much.

What I really want is for OOO to either balance things, and get Feedback from knights about it, or just Go on their merry way and Throw things into the game for the lulz of it. Just for the fact of knowing whether I can Abandon this game completely, or actually have good gameplay. Finally.

I really like the feel, and the playstyle of this game. But if there's no variety... Well, SK's just been off my radar for months and months.

It does not help that my tendancy to want to help the game along the best I can as a Player.... I don't get much response from the people who do stuff. Makes it a Little hard to keep suggesting things.

Aggro mechanics, Plate balances... All of these things should be done. But I kinda wanna know when to drop SK.

Thu, 01/31/2013 - 11:00

Poopsie

...

Disagree on the CTR part. CTR is not the least useful. True, some weapons have terrible charge but I could say it's the most useful on weapons that benefit the most. CTR max could do significantly 2 - 3x more damage per time than CTR med (level 10).
ASI max would not get you that far, neither damage max.

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Three Rings and gear balance, it's about time to actually do it properly.