Alright, I have 2 important observations for y’all:
honestly i think that both barb and illu might suffer from the same problem that witch does, high damage output, at the cost of huge food intake. getting big sweeps in is nice, untill they KO themselves and your main damage dealer is rendered moot
With enough upgrades, that concern is negligible. It’s expensive, but 50 metabolism and 20 capacity are enough to keep Witch going with Priest and Bard in tow.
I agree, with both your points, especially the second.
I do think the Barbarian is cause for concern in regards to balance in much the same way I think Witch continues to be due to how aoe is.
Individual levels ensure that no character is ever useless or always the clear cut best in every level, but I do see trends of usefulness or tiers. I think a lot of the lower tier characters only really shine for really mathing out high scores in specific levels.
Speaking of which, here is my first subjective and wholly pointless tier list based on reliability going in blind to every level.
Top - Witch, Thief
High - Priestess, Bard
Mid - Warrior
Low - Knight, Spellblade
The four you put in top and high tier are my go to picks. I think that the knight is basically a worse priestess, because they have the same attack element and imo defend isn’t that good besides for reducing cool downs and is inferior to heal. Plus, Priestess can attack anywhere on screen, while the knight is limited to the first column
I think the thing that’s shafting balance right now is that gameplay is too simple. Heroes can only ever 2 one thing, maybe 2 if they’re a support hero and you need some of their damage type in a jam. The only variables are damage types and range/AoE potential. There aren’t enough mechanics, enough variables to change to justify having a hero like Spellblade, who can only attack one enemy in melee range at once and provides 2 damage types other heroes are better at offering, in your team.
The meta is Thief-Witch-Priest-Bard, and will only change due to power creep if nothing else in the game changes. Maybe it’d help if we had really tough levels that basically mandated certain mechanics, but you can just grind your way to overpoweredness if you can’t make S-rank. We’re not gonna see a lot of major change until some mechanics are reworked (i.e. single-target heroes get a buff to their mechanics) or we get new mechanics entirely.
I think one way to shake up balance is by giving heroes some kind of special abilities besides just attacking. Like, something on a long CD so they can’t spam it, but also something that makes them genuinely useful in different cases. Just gonna drop an example for what Thief’s ability could be to illustrate my point.
Sneak Attack: Thief enters stealth and cannot be targeted by enemies until she attacks. Her next attack deals 150% damage and breaks stealth, and she can target enemies anywhere on the board. This ability doesn’t go on cooldown or put Thief on her attack cooldown until she attacks.
This could come in handy in certain boss fights, and maybe the enemies could be buffed to compensate. I’m just spitballing here, I know it’s extra programming work, but I don’t think simple changes are gonna put all the heroes on equal ground. If you guys think abilities are a good idea, I can probably drum up some others for the existing cast and/or upcoming heroes.
I think abilities are a cool idea, but I think a simpler solution is to make single damage type and first row only characters more versatile.
Mass aoe and ranged damage are just too good. I think the thief is the exception because she is the only character with sneak damage. Once we start seeing ranged sneak damage she is going to go the way of the dodo in terms of usefulness and drop down to the bottom half of the cast.
I actually think an extra attack element for single target and melee ranged characters would help them stand out and fit better. But I’m not sure.
I think a better and more creative idea is to overhaul the weapons we unlock for good times to be equipped by melee range only characters. It makes sense from a thematic perspective and allows them a little more flexibility without making things too chaotic.
You would for example, equip the Warrior with the 4 sneak damage dagger at the party select screen, still taking up an item slot of course, but it would then give the Warrior a static 4 sneak damage on all her attacks. No damage scaling with power, just something for her to help out with chip, finishing enemies off, just doing more. I want to use characters like the Knight more, but I often feel punished for trying to do so either by lacking an element I need at some point and murdering my clear times.
It makes characters like her more flexible and gives a better use for the weapon items which I either don’t have the time to properly use frequently or get overshadowed by items like the Choco syrup. There isn’t a lot of free time to make use of all 4 items so I think equipping the weapons to the more limited characters would be a cool thing to do at some point.
I’ve been thinking about tinkering with the relative adventurer balance recently, but the thing I want to adjust is the attack timers on everyone.
Already, ranged and aoe characters have slower attack speeds than melee characters, but I don’t think the difference is pronounced enough and the difference is lost as the adventurers get fatter and their relative attack speed converges.
Also I want to give the Knight a light AOE to make her more competetive
This is the list of changes I’m considering:
I think the notion of characters equipping items is interesting, and may be something I consider down the road
That sounds like a smart change. Especially when you take healing and buffing into account already making managing cooldowns for the slower characters pretty easy. Even without heavy investment in speed.
What about the Warrior? She suffers from more or less the same problems, except her damage type is more common.
In any case, improving the speed disparity between heroes should elevate the single-target characters a little more; though I don’t know if that’ll really fix the problem outright. I say go through with those changes and see what happens, except maybe don’t give Knight and Warrior a speed of 1, since the double-target AoE potential coupled with their supportive power might just make them better than Thief and Spellblade in terms of their role unless they’re twice as slow.
I feel the same way. Her more common attack element might actually be a bigger mark on her as time goes on as she has more potential competition.
Plus she has a 2 handed sword and becomes practically a giant in those final weight stages. The size of her hands and arms look perfect for grabbing some dope in the enemy back line lol.
I admit I’m biased though. I’m very much a Warrior mark and wish I could fit her in more party compositions without giving up the sheer utility of the Bard.
As a side question: will adding new heroes be prioritized over adding new weight levels for SB and Knight? I just thought it was a little odd that Knight got in before the full cast got all their levels in the game.
I mean, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a game like this to allow us free waifu usage. I just wish Warrior’s arms didn’t dislocate from their sockets and become twice as long as the rest of her in her final stages, though.
oh hi Mark
That’s kinda how I wanted a theoretical “lancer” class to be, so giving her that makes sense.
well knight is use full on the jawbreakers do to having sweets as favorite food.
The “favorite food” thing doesn’t have nearly as big an impact as you’d think. I totally ignored it and managed to get S-rank on everything with only Priest for holy damage. I don’t remember what enemies the jawbreakers are, but I guarantee they’re not tough enough to mandate Knight in particular.
My witch is fearing that attack speed change >_> sitting at 2 mil weight rn
Capacity is mainly good for the Witch, since it keeps her from getting KO’d when she does massive AoE attacks.If you combine that with a low Metabolism, she can act as a kind of “storage tank” for support characters who can give her extra attacks in exchange for Fullness. It’s really useful in levels where she has to attack several times in a row.
I’m open to giving the Warrior an AOE but I’m not completely decided on it yet
I’m going to be staggering weight levels and new adventures. Right now the future looks like: SB weight, new adventurer, SB and Knight weight, new adventurer, etc…
I might have gone overboard with her lol
I’d really like Favorite Food to be more impactful. I think a big problem is that leveling is too cheap right now. The Favorite Food doesn’t mean anything if you can already one-shot everything
Might finally be time to extract on that one haha
I kind of wonder if leveling seems off balance because levels are so limited in scope
Even if you jack up the price, I can still grind Cakes From Hell over and over to get all the XP I need to faceroll everything. The problem isn’t cheap upgrades, but a lack of restrictions on upgrades. Heroes too slow? Just get more speed. Not enough damage? Just get more power. KO’d too often? Get some capacity and however much metabolism you need. With no cap to stats or a limit on how many upgrades you can buy on any hero, there’s nothing stopping the player from just grinding unto infinity.
If you want to nerf levelling, I think you need a new system. The most direct solution is just to not let the player buy more upgrades on a hero after they buy a certain amount; say, after the price would exceed 1k XP, just to give an arbitrary number. That way, we’re forced to choose where we allocate our upgrades and can’t just give Witch enough speed to attack every .00000001 seconds without any real tradeoff.