View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0010445 | Valley 2 | Suggestion - Balancing Issues | Jan 23, 2013 3:51 pm | Feb 13, 2013 11:39 am | |
| Reporter | Pepisolo | Assigned To | tigersfan | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 0.717 | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 0.807 | ||||
| Summary | 0010445: Tier 1 Spell Balance Report | ||||
| Description | Thought I would make an attempt at providing feedback on the current spell balance in the game, started a new .717 game and was given the following spell classes. (Forg)ician, (Aqua)urgist, (Draft)lock, (Entro)picist, (Apoth)ekineticist For ease of writing I will be referring to the classes by the shortened name in brackets. The main purpose is not to provide balancing solutions (although some ideas are given) but to show the current state of balancing. Please let me start by comparing the damage levels of the primary attacks. Forg primary damage 55 Aqua primary damage 32 Draft primary damage 24 Entro primary damage 24 Apoth primary damage 24 The first thing that stands out is the fact that Forg has a primary that does over twice the damage of most of the other class primaries. This seems a bit too much for me. The rate of fire seems around about as fast or faster than all the other classes. Aqua has a sloping effect which is interesting tactically, but doesn't really offer too much of an advantage, ditto for Draft which has a bendy effect. Entro primary has slightly better range and significantly better caliber, which helps to balance things somewhat for this class. Apoth seems like the most underpowered. Its primary has a very slow projectile speed which leaves it at a significant disadvantage to the other class primaries. If I had to rate the current primary spells for power and effectiveness I would say: Forg : A Aqua : C Draft: C Entro: B Apoth: D Main recommendation: Buff apoth significantly, probably spread between both power and caliber. Others: slight buff to draft and aqua, possibly a slight caliber or range boost. Maybe forgician should be a weak caliber spell to compensate for its raw power. On to Secondaries. Not really worth focussing on power for the rest of the abilities as they vary so wildly. Forg secondary is a nice arcing shot with tactical/defensive advantages and good power. Aqua secondary is a brief close range punch spell with absolutely pathetic power. Hard to see myself using this skill at all. Only possible use is to be able to punch enemy projectiles out of the air, but even then the caliber is less than the forg secondary. Draftlock secondary is pretty nice. Shot fires two ways. Seems better than the draftlock primary. The primary has that bendy effect and slightly better range, but otherwise this is superior. Entropicist secondary is slow moving, but has more power than the primary. Same caliber. Seems ok, but I'd probably just use the primary over this. The DPS is not much better than the primary. Apothekineticist secondary is a short range touch spell that hits behind. Very weak, similar to the aqua secondary. It does have monstrous caliber and autofires so I could possibly imagine this being useful to protect against rear attacks, but still doesn't seem that useful. Not as bad as the aqua secondary though. Effectiveness: Forgician: B Aquaurgist: E Draftlock: B Entropicist: C Apothekineticist: C (on the surface poor, but maybe it offers some interesting rear defense tactical options) Main recommendation: Buff aquaurgist secondary A LOT! Power should be doubled at least. Other: Slight buff possibly to Entropicist either power or caliber. At the moment the secondary has the same caliber as the primary, despite being a much bigger bullet. On to Special Attacks. Forg special is decent for creating a defensive wall. Minimal power. Cooldown prevents you from effectively creating more than one, so not that powerful, but it's decent. Aquaurgist special is a high arcing shot with good power. Quite useful actually. Draftlock special is a homing shot with mediocre power. Very useful as I recall for killing enemies with weakspots, althought the lack of power and DPS prevents it from being very powerful. Entrop special is similar to the aqua secondary -- and nearly as useless. Marginally better power and caliber doesn't make much of a difference. Apoth special seems pretty pathetic. Supposed to have a detonating effect but doesn't seem to have one. There's almost no radius of effect whatsoever! Effectiveness: Forg: C Aqua: B Draft: B (tactically useful although not that powerful) Entrop: E Apoth: E Main recommendation: Increase the radius of effect of the apoth special MASSIVELY. Doesn't seem to detonate at all. Other: Boost entrop power, at the moment it's pretty worthless. On to Ammo attacks: Forg ammo attack is a bit of an old favourite. Great for cheesing bosses. Big concentrated power. Low ammo cost of 5. Wow! Aqua ammo attack is interesting defensively. Seems hard to cause massive damage with it though. Reasonable ammo cost of 8. Draftlock ammo attack might be useful tactically as it as a unique pattern, but again is hard to cause big damage with. Seems too expensive for what you get out of it. Entrop ammo attack has great AOE. Very useful for swarms of enemies. Ridiculous ammo cost though at 15. Apoth seems decent tactically, especially for vertical areas. Can also be used to cheese bosses to some extent. Fair cost for what you get. Effectiveness: Forg: A Aqua: C (nearly B but too hard to cause damage with) Draftlock: D Entrop: C Apoth: B Main recommendations: Reduce entropy cost to at least 10. 15 is obscene. Other: Maybe increase aqua duration so that it can be used even more effectively defensively or up Forg cost to at least 10. That's my rough thoughts on each individual spell, but really it's the class as whole that's the most important. So let's create an overall score by assigning 5 points for an A and 1 for an E. (This system is rough, hopefully it works ok) Overall Class Usability Scores: Forg: 17 A Aqua: 11 C Draft: 13 B Entrop: 11 C Apoth: 10 C As you can see the class of choice certainly seems to be Forgician. It's by far the most powerful and also pretty versatile. Draftlock comes out reasonably well. Mainly let down by a not very useful Ammo attack. Aqua and Entrop are suffering from both having pretty awful short range punch attacks which are practically worthless. Apoth has a few problems, the primary being underpowered and the detonating bomb attack not seeming to have any range on its explosion. Slightly saved by a useful and cheesable ammo attack. That's about it actually. As I said the main purpose of this report was to point out imbalances rather than provide solutions as I can probably mostly leave that to Tigersfan. If this report has proven useful, I'm perfectly willing to do a few more. Just let me know whether it's helpful or not. There's actually some fun in toying around with the various attacks. If I've missed the point of some of the attacks and under/overrated anything please let me know. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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I like this report. Can you make a couple other chars and get the other tier 1 spell classes in your report? Also, in the AVWW2 folder, in the RuntimeData subfolder, there's a file called AttackInfo.csv that seems to have all the spells and stats in it. You might be interested to look there too. |
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"I like this report. Can you make a couple other chars and get the other tier 1 spell classes in your report?" If it seemed like the report was actually helpful, I was planning on doing the other tier 1 spells, yes. I'm not sure about whether to open a new report for the other spells or just extend this report, though? I suppose an extension might work fine, although it would mean the report getting very dense. "Also, in the AVWW2 folder, in the RuntimeData subfolder, there's a file called AttackInfo.csv that seems to have all the spells and stats in it. You might be interested to look there too. " Cool, didn't know that. Thanks for the tip! |
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The fire-mans special wall defence spell can be help up forever. It also stops pretty much all spells I've seen so far in the game. That makes it far better than the other classes variants since it is an impenetrable shield against projectiles. |
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Thanks LayZboy, I might have slightly underestimated the defensive potential of that particular spell. Could be worth a B, making the Forgician class even more useful. |
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This is helpful, if you are interested in doing more, please do. But, keep them in separate reports though, so that it will be easier for me to keep track of what I've been through. |
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Ok, cool. I'll do a Tier 1 spells part two some time soon as a different report. |
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I made a thread specifically about mines in the forums, in that basically they're unusable. They are way too hard to hit with, a couple of ideas (some likely harder to implement than others) on how to improve them are: 1. Change them into proximity mines, detonated on enemy contact (might need a limit on how many can be out at a time). 2. Change them into remote mines. One can be out at a time, using the fire button after one is out detonates it (or detonates while dropping another one). 3. Change them into grenades which are throwable (arc like meteor throw, then explode as per the timer). Firing down would let you drop them 4. Just increase the blast radius. |
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Thanks madcow. I actually did see your post there, and I've been discussing exactly what to do with them with Chris. |
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I've not been through all of this, but, this is pretty old now. So hopefully fi there is anything really out of balance in Tier I, someone will tell me. :) |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 23, 2013 3:51 pm | Pepisolo | New Issue | |
| Jan 23, 2013 8:22 pm | Pepisolo | Description Updated | |
| Jan 23, 2013 10:34 pm | theqmann | Note Added: 0030146 | |
| Jan 24, 2013 7:50 am | Pepisolo | Note Added: 0030151 | |
| Jan 24, 2013 9:34 am | LayZboy | Note Added: 0030152 | |
| Jan 24, 2013 9:53 am | Pepisolo | Note Added: 0030153 | |
| Jan 24, 2013 11:39 am | tigersfan | Note Added: 0030158 | |
| Jan 24, 2013 11:40 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Jan 24, 2013 11:40 am | tigersfan | Assigned To | => tigersfan |
| Jan 24, 2013 11:40 am | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Jan 24, 2013 11:58 am | Pepisolo | Note Added: 0030159 | |
| Jan 24, 2013 12:43 pm | madcow | Note Added: 0030160 | |
| Jan 24, 2013 1:06 pm | tigersfan | Note Added: 0030162 | |
| Feb 13, 2013 11:39 am | tigersfan | Note Added: 0030731 | |
| Feb 13, 2013 11:39 am | tigersfan | Status | considering => resolved |
| Feb 13, 2013 11:39 am | tigersfan | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Feb 13, 2013 11:39 am | tigersfan | Fixed in Version | => 0.807 |
