Showing Posts For Malvir.1975:
DeathPanel.8362:
That logic doesn’t follow exactly since if you releasing things that are a “steaming pile” in betas you will get a lot of bad PR and people will probably not be as likely to buy your game. Alternatively you would get more anticipation and hype for something more powerful that you can always nerf later after the players have bought your game.
For example for players that haven’t pre-ordered this game yet that are reading the forums they will get the idea that the new class is really bad or have severe design flaws from all the negative feedback and might as a result not buy the game or wait until much later.
So in fact the consequences of what you are saying is almost exactly opposite. Since ANET is going to be now under extra pressure to make fixes or improvements due to the flood of negative forum reviews of the new class so that it doesn’t hurt their profits on release.
I’m not even sure if that’s what’s going on here. It’s just how some designers think. Game designers often think very differently about a problem than gamers do.
To the issue of balance impacting perception/profits – if the balance isn’t right they get negative views either way. If it destabilizes the game it’s a bigger problem than if it doesn’t. So the general idea of “err on the side of underpowered” is not a bad idea. It’s generally a smart idea, as long as it’s not overboard. That isn’t to be confused with intentionally making something terrible. I don’t think they’re doing that.
But my point is that it’s easy to go overboard with that conservative approach and end up there, especially if you aren’t sure exactly how it will all gel together. The revenant is a significant departure from how most of the classes are so I can see how overly conservative turns into really bad.
It’s a not uncommon game design philosophy to err on the side of underpowered and intentionally release something weak.
The idea is that players respond better when you buff things (in general), and the consequences of an overpowered new addition are far more damaging to the game than something that is lackluster.
So by releasing something that’s effectively a steaming pile you haven’t really made the game worse and you can get feedback and there’s no rush in buffing it up to competitive. Alternatively, releasing something too powerful quickly causes a lot of issues and there’s great pressure to fix it as soon as possible.
So they may be simply erring on the side of too-weak and being very conservative in releasing this new class. It’s not a bad approach to take, unless you go over the top and really release something lackluster.
But I don’t think the problems with the revenant are tuning issues…they’re more fundamental problems with the design of the class. In its current state it has those problems + conservative tuning so it is especially crappy.
fundamentally flawed
I found the revenant very disappointing. In short, it feels constrained, gimmicky, and inflexible. Unfortunately I think the issues are fundamental to the class and not something that’s fixable with some tuning or new legends.
The legend stance design locks us out of diversity in the abilities. This is exacerbated by only having one weapon. It feels like I really only have 3 options for half my bar, and only 3 options for the other half. Only each weapon was designed for a specific stance (staff – centaur, hammer – dwarf, macaxe – demon). So instead of having what seems like 6 combinations, I really only have 3, where I have a primary stance that matches the weapon and a secondary stance for some utility.
Stances are designed for different gearsets too.
Demon, conditions, Dwarf tankiness/power?, Centaur healing. If I want a condition build, I’m really stuck with demon and macaxe, with Dwarf or Centaur for support abilities. Both of those cure conditions which sorta defeats the gimmick of the demon stance, so welp. That feels extremely limited. It’s not like I can be a condition dealer, then swap and now I’m good at healing. If I was full celestial maybe I’d be half-kittening each one and kinda sorta making that work.
As if that wasn’t enough, the energy mechanic makes all of my abilities share a common resource, with cooldowns on top of that, which just feels like complexity for the sake of complexity. I get how the energy is necessary to make the whole utility swap thing work but it ends up making the utilities feel watered down the weapon and utilies competing for energy. At the least the weapons shouldn’t have energy costs, that just feels over the top. At least then I could use my weapons abilities on cooldown and the energy is for managing the different utilities and between the stances.
The cherry on top is that it’s also very heavily reliant on teammates to be useful and effective. centaur stance is pretty worthless unless you have other people to heal, and very gimmicky even if you do. Same with demon stance – you really need to have other people around you to take conditions otherwise the ability to copy conditions and deal more confusion and torment damage is kittened. No conditions and it’s just meh.
I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy this class, and that’s OK, I don’t have to like every class. But I’m disappointed because it feels like an over-engineered bad concept, not a class that’s just not my style.
It’s probably too far along to really fundamentally change the class to something that isn’t flawed from the get-go, but here’s some ideas that might help make it passable.
1) Get rid of energy cost on weapons. Just make it a utilities thing. The double cost of cooldown and energy is unnecessary. Timers on the utilities may be useful if you want to make some of the utilities more powerful, since energy alone seems to regenerate too fast to be a strong constraint.
2) Consider a second weapon set. It’s bad enough we’re locked into predefined sets of utilities, heals, and elites, but at least allow some options with the weapons, as limited as they are.
3) Have the stances do stat conversions, or just have flat out bonuses. This is really the one that I think might help the most. When I go into Centaur stance, have 20% of condition damage, 10% power, and 10% of toughness get converted into healing power. And by conversion I mean literal conversion – lower the other stats by that amount and give them to the stat that the stance is supposed to use the most. Same with any other legends. This might give us the ability to do more than one legend decently well without having to have a different gearset for each one or only be good in one while terrible in the others. It also makes gearset choices much more interesting since we have to factor in the conversions.
Maybe the above ideas can be developed or mangled into something that may make it fun and engaging. Thanks for reading!
Good feedback here. Overall I agree it’s very underwhelming. It’s a lot better than it used to be, but it’s still bad.
- Heal Spray
This ability needs a wider cone, something like the flamethrower or fumigate. Feels like it’s difficult to land on targets, but that may also be the animation being poor compared to the actual area it hits. It’s very meh, but I can see wanting to start off conservative with it from a design perspective. Larger cone would go a long way to making it feel better.
The heal is laughably weak on it too. You can buff it quite a bit without risk of problems. It isn’t a self-heal either so that alone makes it safe to buff.
#2-5 Medkits
Agree with OP that these things need a wider trigger range, lot of the time people don’t hit them. If they must stay as-is, they should trigger an AOE heal when used.
But honestly, I think there should only be 2 bandage abilities – #2, a quick AOE toss that’s healing + regen, and #4, that’s a combination of healing & condi cleansing/resistance buff. Having 4 bandage abilities is just plain boring. I appreciate how they all have different styles to them, but it just isn’t fun or engaging. If we only had 2 of these and they were perhaps more impactful than they currently are, had wider triggers and healed AOE then they’d be a lot more interesting. Even so, 4 is too much.
- and #5 should be changed to something different that is healing/support themed. I feel medkit needs at least 1, possibly 2 “elixir” abilities for synergy with Alchemy line.
For #3 I like a pbaoe ability that does effects to teammates, maybe “stimulant spray” that grants swiftness, vigor, and regeneration and cures weakness, cripple, or chill. If not that, then perhaps this could be a mobility/survivability skill instead.
For #5 I like an elixir-type condi-cleanse and buff that’s ground-targeted, could also be a water field for synergy with blasting. Perhaps it could be a targeted movement-impairing condition cleansing – chill/immob/cripple.
I like the theme that the medkit is about healing and stims, things which help your teammates move, cure some conditions, and give some appreciable healing.
Thought for devs – do the same thing with healing power that you did with conditions. Lower base healing, but really buff up the scaling on healing power. Also, consider making regeneration stack intensity.