The game needs to be balanced around spell slots

[Mindtroverted]

I've played the game on hard from the beginning and in the beginning up until I unlocked Talent Points, the game was a challenge. Not Dark Souls level of hard, but I had to try and did get a game over here and there. However, as soon as I unlocked a bunch of spells and additional spell slots, any and every fight turned into a joke.

The game seems to be balanced around people using only 4 spells and then waiting for their cooldowns. With 3 spell slots unlocked you can easily put all purple, yellow and red spells on their own slot. If you start out any fight by just using 4 red spells, you'll clear out most of the enemies that way and then you can just levitate and smash the rest into the floor, freeze them, juggle them and by that time your red spells are off cooldown again.

While I do understand difficult games aren't for everyone, that's why we have difficulty settings and hard should remain hard regardless of your progression. I believe in order to make the game balanced regarding spell slots, they need to implement something to battle the spell spam you can do late. Here are my suggestions:

1) Whenever you use a spell of a certain color, all spells of the same color will go on a short, 2-3s cooldown. This makes it so you can still spam, but not start out fights with just 4 red spells and kill 80% of enemies.

2) Hitting an enemy with a colored shield with a spell of the wrong type will reflect the spell back at you or you will be hit by a mini-stun. This makes AoE spells more dangerous to cast and less universally efficient. This would also help prevent ability spam.

3) You should not be able to use healing potions while knocked down and drinking a potion should require a short animation which can be interrupted, preventing you from healing. As it stands, you can't be one-shot and being able to heal at almost any moment makes it almost impossible for you to get a game over unless you run out of potions.

4) Trying to use a spell that is still on cooldown will reset its cooldown back to maximum. Again, a measure to prevent players from leisurely just spamming abilities.

Do note that I don't think all of these changes need to be universal, but I do think they would be a step in the right direction for the hardest difficulty. If you have any of your own suggestions, post them below.

[N1C3 (C)RY!]

I agree that the game was quite easy on hard, BUT...

4) is just a terrible idea, I think. Just hurts the fun and flow of combat. The best I can think of would be a shared mana as in "Spells per time". Then again: If you're juggling your spell slots properly, you are already doing a perfect play. Isn't the game supposed to be easy when you play perfectly?

2) If the camera would be better, then maaaybe. The spells of wrong colour are already beeing deflected in random directions and could hit you. Wonky camera and too punishing fail mechanics lead to frustration and a sense of "unfair" rather than a hard game. The big fights are just too messy and you *cannot* do anything about it -> don't punish that

The dark souls games are super hard, but in a fair way. That's why they're fun.



In my opinion: Reducing the number of enemies in parallel, removing the glowing dodge or block now tells above your head, reducing the enemies cast cooldown would be far better options, to make the game harder in a actual fun way. Now you'd have to read the movements / listen to spell chants instead of just reacting to red or yellow lights above your head :D. (Only in hard mode tho.. )

[Mindtroverted]

Originally posted by N1C3 (C)RY!:

I agree that the game was quite easy on hard, BUT...

4) is just a terrible idea, I think. Just hurts the fun and flow of combat. The best I can think of would be a shared mana as in "Spells per time". Then again: If you're juggling your spell slots properly, you are already doing a perfect play. Isn't the game supposed to be easy when you play perfectly?

If they made spells on cooldown grey and they regained color when they are up then this wouldn't be an issue. As it is, even I sometimes cast a spell that looks like it's not on cooldown, but it actually was for half a second longer, lol.

Originally posted by N1C3 (C)RY!:

2) If the camera would be better, then maaaybe. The spells of wrong colour are already beeing deflected in random directions and could hit you.

Well I think the lock-on needs to be improved and also not just randomly stop working when an enemy is directly behind you, but yeah, the camera's definitely one of the strongest bosses in the game.

Originally posted by N1C3 (C)RY!:

In my opinion: Reducing the number of enemies in parallel, removing the glowing dodge or block now tells above your head, reducing the enemies cast cooldown would be far better options, to make the game harder in a actual fun way.

Removing the indicators completely would probably make people just always dodge - after all, dodge works on everything so you don't have to think whether you should block or not. I agree about enemy cast cooldowns, some seem to just stand there practicing their Lumos cast or sth.