3.20 Balance Manifesto: Monster Mods and Archnemesis

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Moethelion wrote:

Please give some clarification, how the loot conversion is changed.

Will there still be MF groups farming loot goblins that drop 80+ divines? Because if so, let me tell you that this is completely destroying your loot table ecosystem, because it causes massive inflation.

Does it? These groups were farming just as much currency previous leagues. Only difference is the loot isnt as spread out between the maps.

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eldest-bike4 wrote:

DEATH TO MF AND LOOT GOBLIN !!!

hope new system is not the same with just diferent name :D

Death to mf? Now theres acutally a reason to mf lol

The game was annoyingly difficult with all the mods on mobs that had nothing TO DO WITH KNOWING what those mods were. They were made too ridiculously overpowerful. Think the racoon on infinity wars mentioned the word when thanos destroyed the stones..... an explosion of ridiculously proportions.

GGG made the game really hard for some builds. You vision of retaining numbers kinds went the wrong way. Let's see what the new iteration of your dream will be like.

#MakeWraeclastGreatAgain

Im happy to read that.

Now please adjust skill power to increase build diversity and uber power.

A. Words mean nothing right now. After the last few patch notes, manifestos, and live streams, GGG has little to no credibility with regards to delivering what they say or write.

B. This is only being done because of horrific retention and clearly a negative impact to their bottom line. These changes may sound decent to a degree, but I'd be wary it's just lip service and they're going to be in the same boat as they were with AN (inability to balance mods in combination).

C. AN wasn't horrible, it was combinations of AN mods that was horrible and they failed to understand this as well as failed to balance this, though to be fair, trying to balance that many combination possibilities seems like a Herculean task.

D. So they finally admit to loot goblins after denying it vehemently. Interesting, and now every rare has to potential to be a loot goblin. All of this because they decided to de-itemize prior league content. Another example of creating problems where one didn't really exist.

E. If you're super stoked you are either in denial of GGG's actions of the past or are a streamer that needs this game for your livelihood. At this point, I can't believe more skeptics aren't popping up. Hopium must be on sale right now.

Not interested in starting day 1 or even week 1. I think I'll wait to see if GGG has actually decided to respect their player base.

sounds good !

Attention GGG, I got a point to make here (To be fair, I haven't read the preceding 69 pages, so someone else has probably already said most of this, because I really think it's pretty obvious tbh).

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GGG wrote:

Mods do one specific thing
Mods say what they do rather than having a thematic name you must learn and remember

[...]

Mods do one specific thing
Here's an example: The Magma Barrier Archnemesis mod did a whole lot of stuff. It started by putting a magma barrier around the monster, but it didn't stop there. It converted some of the monster's physical damage to fire damage, it added some extra fire damage on top, it granted fire resistance to the monster and it gave some physical damage reduction for good measure. It also spawned volatile flamebloods to follow you.

So, right here I'm thinking: "Okay great, it sounds like you've understood that a mod called something like "Magma Barrier" really doesn't tell me a lot about what it does. I mean, I know it's probably fire based, but what are its actual effects?"

And then I read the next line:

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GGG wrote:

The new equivalent modifier just puts a magma barrier around the monster and does nothing else.

Oh. Bother. You know, I still don't know what magma barrier actually does? Is it an explosion after a certain amount of damage prevented? dealt? Does the damage have to be dealt by hits? Is it basically just molten shell but for monsters? How does the damage prevention, if there is any, work? I think that you think that the name is a lot more explanatory than it actually is. Here, let me show you an example of a mod that says what it does:

"Deals Extra Fire Damage".

See what I did there?

For "magma barrier" to say what it does, it would probably have to be called something like "Prevents x amount of physical damage before exploding after a short delay" or "Reduces physical damage taken by 30% until it has prevented 3000 physical damage and then explodes after a short delay"

So, to summarise, by the sounds of it, from what I can tell we're not here:

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GGG wrote:

Mods say what they do rather than having a thematic name you must learn and remember.

yet.

Also

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GGG wrote:

clearer and easier to understand in the heat of combat

is not a thing for monster mods. Nobody reads mods when combat is scary and dangerous. They're busy running away. People read the mods either when they're powerful enough to not have to worry about the monster, or when they're reviewing their death video.

Okay, one more point:

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GGG wrote:

You encounter more complex fights less frequently. But interesting and challenging emergent behaviour from overlapping mods can still happen, just less often.

A reduction in frequency of spikes is not a reduction in spikyness if the spikes are still just as spiky (towering over the average just as much). If anything, this will make the spikes seem *MORE* spiky than they were before because they will STAND OUT against the more consistently "average" background than when these spikes were relatively frequent.

When the spikes are frequent enough, players are incentivised to gear their character to be prepared for them, because they know they're going to have to deal with them fairly regularly. Moreover, the regularity of the spikes means that players have enough opportunities to experience the spikes so that they gain an idea of what it is that they need to prepare for. If they become too rare, then players will be less inclined to build their characters to be able to cope with them, and they really will just occur as unreasonable spikes in monster menace that nobody is ever really prepared for.

A good level of damage spiking is like orgasm edging. You want the player to be brought right to the edge of death, but without actually going over. This is engaging and exciting. This can happen with relatively high frequency and it's a good thing. Of course, eventually they will go over the edge, unless they've gotten to a power level that just trivialises everything, but I'm sure that's one of your design goals anyway.

Unsatisfying sex is when everything is samey samey bland average all the time and then all of a sudden with no warning "OH SHIT COMING" and it's over. That's not the experience you should want your players to have as you penetrate them with your big spikes of damage.

Nice changes that actually make sense and will make the game feel good again to play for me. Also:
Magma Barrier as Molten Shell mtx when?
alternatively:
Magma Barrier as a Player Skill when?

i so have not a single amount of confidence left that whatever you type in the manifesto probably is a huge nerf to something whatsoever, and the confidence is so low that it probably means a nerf to player fun. Whatever you do, you make it even more worse each league anyways.

MAKE MELEE GREAT AGAIN!