Massive Design Flaw: Combos and HP Gain

[Imp0815]

I like the game and the cool skill tree—it’s really fun. However, there’s a massive oversight when it comes to progression, EXP combos, and HP.

It might not be that impactful in early masteries, but in the later stages, the power curve is highly dependent on level-ups. When you get hit, you lose the combo meter, so naturally, you try to avoid getting hit to stay ahead. But then, why are there HP regeneration abilities like life regen and life steal? It doesn’t add up. Mathematically, losing the combo meter compounds into fewer skill points, which leads to less power, less damage, fewer skill points, and so on.

Basically, you don’t want to get hit, which means HP-regaining abilities and skills are wasted talent points—essentially dead content.

We either need a rework of the combo system, removal of combos entirely, or removal of combo loss. As it stands, the mechanic is detrimental to the game and feels like a trap.

For the moment, I don’t have any constructive feedback on how to make these systems work. Removing the combo meter either makes it too railroaded and RNG-dependent or introduces more RNG in the number of enemies and thus EXP gained, which could result in RNG-bricked runs.

There’s no real skill-based approach with hit-based combos, as most people probably play with auto-attack since it’s more relaxing for these kinds of games.

Maybe we could take a risk-based approach instead. For example, we could have an endless night where the player decides after each wave whether to cash out or keep going, with a penalty to EXP gain after wave 20. This way, a player can stack waves until their current power level isn’t sufficient anymore.

Ok, maybe I do have a constructive idea after all, and there it was...

[KingOfCharge]

If you think life steal is useless you have not played summoner on any high mastery. Combos reward you for not getting hit, but health and healing forgive you if you do get hit (especially life steal).
Really it’s not realistic to expect to NEVER get hit in most runs unless you are playing on a pretty low mastery (see one specific bandit challenge to know what I mean, keep in mind that challenges appear to be based on mastery 0)

[Imp0815]

Originally posted by KingOfCharge:

If you think life steal is useless you have not played summoner on any high mastery. Combos reward you for not getting hit, but health and healing forgive you if you do get hit (especially life steal).
Really it’s not realistic to expect to NEVER get hit in most runs unless you are playing on a pretty low mastery (see one specific bandit challenge to know what I mean, keep in mind that challenges appear to be based on mastery 0)

I don’t think it’s useless—it’s worse than that: it’s contradictory to the fact that the game functions best when you don’t get hit. This means that if you use talents on lifesteal, you are planning to get hit—and you absolutely don’t want to get hit. I indirectly stated that only the Mage and the Ranger feel good to play due to their intrinsic mechanics, which mostly lack any HP generation. This results in more damage and damage-output abilities on their skill trees. Meanwhile, the Summoner with lifesteal, the Warrior with life regen, and the Bandit—which outright doesn’t work for me—are not balanced with the fundamental game design of stacking combos to stay ahead of the difficulty curve.

The Warrior is the only combo-mitigating class I see that somewhat works around getting hit. Otherwise, it would be the hardest class to play. Basically, I view the classes as offering different playstyles, not different difficulty levels. If I wanted that kind of experience, I’d play PoE.

[BadLuckBenny]

I actually wish they'd just make it so getting hit didn't break the combo. I don't see a point on breaking the combo in a game with power that's supposed to snowball.

I would also be alright if they removed the health bar entirely and made it a single hit but buff everything up to compensate, make everything kinda glass canon like. Maybe make the lanes a little longer and improve bass range, I figure a bit more distance for those early rounds would be good.

[SilverLight]

Tell me you haven't played any endless mode without telling me you haven't played any endless mode

[Imp0815]

Originally posted by SilverLight:

Tell me you haven't played any endless mode without telling me you haven't played any endless mode

This is neat but does it include the progression and circumvent the limited round time?

[KingOfCharge]

Originally posted by Imp0815:

Originally posted by KingOfCharge:

If you think life steal is useless you have not played summoner on any high mastery. Combos reward you for not getting hit, but health and healing forgive you if you do get hit (especially life steal).
Really it’s not realistic to expect to NEVER get hit in most runs unless you are playing on a pretty low mastery (see one specific bandit challenge to know what I mean, keep in mind that challenges appear to be based on mastery 0)

I don’t think it’s useless—it’s worse than that: it’s contradictory to the fact that the game functions best when you don’t get hit. This means that if you use talents on lifesteal, you are planning to get hit—and you absolutely don’t want to get hit. I indirectly stated that only the Mage and the Ranger feel good to play due to their intrinsic mechanics, which mostly lack any HP generation. This results in more damage and damage-output abilities on their skill trees. Meanwhile, the Summoner with lifesteal, the Warrior with life regen, and the Bandit—which outright doesn’t work for me—are not balanced with the fundamental game design of stacking combos to stay ahead of the difficulty curve.

The Warrior is the only combo-mitigating class I see that somewhat works around getting hit. Otherwise, it would be the hardest class to play. Basically, I view the classes as offering different playstyles, not different difficulty levels. If I wanted that kind of experience, I’d play PoE.

You are planning for both “getting hit” and “not getting hit”. If you don’t get hit, that’s great. If you do get hit, then you’re glad you can recover.
And you will usually get hit sometimes before you can snowball into unkillability. I will admit that the only time I’m going to specifically search for a pure defense talent is summoner lifesteal, because it’s honestly broken and summoner honestly kinda needs that variety of broken to compete for unreliably crowd control.
I do also seek out health talents for warrior, but mostly to power other talents like the impaler and the core talent largening.

[lebeststratege]

I agree with OP on his stance "defence is wasting points".
And I also agree on the "combo should not reset" mainly because if you are combo broken, you suddenly lose the xp which would have allowed you to not get hit the following wave, and that's leading to lose from 2 to 4 levels every wave... which adds up pretty fast.

I can imagine a mecanic to counter that though : what if there were evolution and nodes to grant you xp when you get hit? not a small trickle, but something significant and worth the risk. Greed at your own peril. THAT would be fun. Could be cumulated with damage resistance and the whole bunch.

Mana classes could have access to "mana shield" and taking hits in it wouldn't break combo.

If gaining combo was a way to gather ingredients for the alchemist, I could see myself letting get hit to reset combo and then going up again for the easier levels of combo (but alchemist being what it is I'm not sure that would be enough).

Wanna get money? rob the ennemies as they hit you.

The game right doesn't want you to lose life. 1 because it's how you lose. 2 it's because how you stop winning enough. While the first one is understandable (you get hit too much, you die), the second just prevent you from salvaging your situation : enemies are gonna be tougher next wave no matter what, and you just got weaker (next level up is less powerful than intended) while you were weak enough to get hit. IF the player was one choice away from a game defining passive, it can be ok for him to continue (like pink arrows). Any other case he will save time by using alt+f4 because he know next wave he's gonna fall farther behind in the power curve.

[KingOfCharge]

You are blowing the consequences of getting hit once way out of proportion. It’s very possible to win after taking a few hits earlier on, I’m not resetting after getting hit once. Getting hit doesn’t reduce combo to zero, it cuts 1 level off it. So if you had gifted, you’d have skilled. You still don’t want to get hit but it’s not alt f4 worthy, maybe if you took like 10 hits and have no power spike nearby but the result is dying next round so what’s the point of quitting anyway.

[katabatic]

It's weird to suggest an endless mode in a game with two separate existing endless modes, one of which is the game played infinitely (I've made it to wave 41). In the other endless mode, I just survived for 5 straight minutes thanks to maxing Summoner's lifesteal, which multiple other people mentioned as crucial. On top of all of that, nearly all common nodes are filler past the start of the run, so it rarely matters that some are more filler-y than others-- and if you're picking the rare health-focused talent package when there's 5 other options to choose from, I'm not sure what to tell you. Why not settle down and play some more before making grand sweeping claims about the game's design or lack thereof?

Originally posted by KingOfCharge:

You are blowing the consequences of getting hit once way out of proportion. It’s very possible to win after taking a few hits earlier on, I’m not resetting after getting hit once. Getting hit doesn’t reduce combo to zero, it cuts 1 level off it. So if you had gifted, you’d have skilled. You still don’t want to get hit but it’s not alt f4 worthy, maybe if you took like 10 hits and have no power spike nearby but the result is dying next round so what’s the point of quitting anyway.

Originally posted by KingOfCharge:

You are planning for both “getting hit” and “not getting hit”. If you don’t get hit, that’s great. If you do get hit, then you’re glad you can recover.
And you will usually get hit sometimes before you can snowball into unkillability. I will admit that the only time I’m going to specifically search for a pure defense talent is summoner lifesteal, because it’s honestly broken and summoner honestly kinda needs that variety of broken to compete for unreliably crowd control.
I do also seek out health talents for warrior, but mostly to power other talents like the impaler and the core talent largening.

+1 to these as well.

[lebeststratege]

Originally posted by katabatic:

if you're picking the rare health-focused talent package when there's 5 other options to choose from, I'm not sure what to tell you. Why not settle down and play some more before making grand sweeping claims about the game's design or lack thereof?

I strangely feel like you are defeating your own argument of "don't critic the game saying survivability is suboptimal every-time" with saying you should not HAVE to pick because you can pick any other of the 5 picks available. While what you say is true... it also gives credit to the subpar usefulness of survivability.

[Zelxios]

gamer god with skill issue?

[katabatic]

Originally posted by lebeststratege:

Originally posted by katabatic:

if you're picking the rare health-focused talent package when there's 5 other options to choose from, I'm not sure what to tell you. Why not settle down and play some more before making grand sweeping claims about the game's design or lack thereof?

I strangely feel like you are defeating your own argument of "don't critic the game saying survivability is suboptimal every-time" with saying you should not HAVE to pick because you can pick any other of the 5 picks available. While what you say is true... it also gives credit to the subpar usefulness of survivability.

I mean, I still pick survivability-focused packages (depending on build). I'm just saying that if this guy doesn't want to, he never has to.