Grueling event. Anyway these past 9 days really put into sharp relief some of the QoL issues mobile users face. My right middle fingertip literally feels like it's on fire. Towards the end, it actually HURTS to play the game.
The first thing that attracted me to this game was the gesture based game interface. I thought it was very intuitive and a vast improvement over the more typical joypad implementations. Now that I have swiped/gestured millions of times in the past week, I'm starting to feel differently. Don't get me wrong, the interface setup is still natural and a step above. But swiping the same symbol over and over and over until the finger is about the fall off can quickly salt away any fun factor. To this end, I have three QoL Mobile interface suggestions which coincidentally could close some of the mobile/pc gap that currently exists as well.
1) Suggestion: Toggleable skill autocast
PC's skill spamming advantage is well known. That stems from the very low cost of triggering a skill whereas mobile user needs to draw symbol, be blinded to the area of action etc, much higher cost for skill triggering. I know a short skill queue and global skill cooldown is coming to shrink this gap. However those two solutions don't address the other issue that I now feel represents a greater burden on mobile users -- finger fatigue. ANB style event necessarily means long hours of time investment, the accumulative damage of drawing the same symbols over and over show itself towards the end. To fundamentally address this issue, some kind of skill autocast system is the necessary next step. The idea is reduce the number of symbols one has to draw over a prolong period of gaming session.
2) Suggestion: Within setting, a checkbox for Toggleable Skill Autocast in Combat.
How it functions: While in combat (this status is already in the game as certain skills can't be triggered while out of combat), if one draws the skill symbol before the cooldown is finished, then the skill toggles to autocast mode. This is indicated by a circulating border around the skill symbol on the left. The skill will autocast whenever CD is finished using some form of smart targetting if a target is required. This autocast status can be turned off even while in combat by drawing the skill symbol again before CD is finished. Once out of combat, all autocast status gets set to off. To enable a skill for autocast quickly, just draw the symbol quickly twice in a row.
I think this is a much more intuitive solution and a significant QoL improvement for mobile users while granting them no advantage compared to a PC user.
Suggestion: Auto Quaffing of potion and apple
Within setting, have slider bar control to set the % of hp that will auto quaff potion or eat an apple. For example I want the apple automatically consumed when hp falls to 50% or lower. Or auto quaff potion when HP falls below 25%. This doesn't make the player immortal as both apple and potion have cooldowns. So the system could trigger auto consumption, but if the CD isn't finished, the command will simply be ignored. Again a much needed QoL improvement as we all have stories about misclicked or pressed potion attempts that ended a promising trial run. This suggestion is actual an extension to a major game mechanic idea below. Read on to see how this will interact with that idea.
3) Suggestion: Improved normal attack switching
To optimize damage, mage and warrior has to alternate between normal attacks. However switching between the two during stressful combat situation is less than ideal. I know some changes are coming, but I want to re-bring up the old idea of assigning normal attack pattern instead of normal attack skills. Basically normal attack one and two actually describes two attack patterns. In the simplest form, an attack pattern is the % chance of using one of two pre-assigned normal attacks. For example, pattern one could be 30% Frenzy and 70% Rendering Slash. This pattern will be good for mobbing phase where you want Frenzy to keep the attack speed buff high and RS for the bleed stacks. Pattern two could be 70% Frenzy, 30% RS, more of a bossing attack pattern where you are more concerned about the single target damage and the occasional SW. This method is purposefully imprecise as to allow the RNG to produce less than true optimal results. This is a fair trade off for the ease of use. As a mobile user, I would gladly accept 90% efficiency while gaining significant ease of use.
All three suggestions are meant to reduce the number of mobile user inputs per time period in order to still produce acceptable results; therefore, combined it will provide a large increase in QoL for mobile users. None of the suggestion will introduce undue hardships to PC users while effectively narrowing the current yawning gap between the performances of these two platforms.
Game Mechanic Thought -- LoH/HP Pool
After grinding a new character/warrior in this event, one thing became clear to me was the imbalance between recovery and HP pool. Nothing frustrates more than an errant arrow that ends a promising trial run. Before my time, recovery was done via life steal%. Of course as player damage reached millions, even a small % resulted in immortal characters. So the change was made from life steal% to LoH. However it is currently an odd state of affairs. Two range classes (BH and Mage) actually have game mechanics in place that drastically amplify the power of LoH. BH with RF and Mage with Singularity/Shield Bubble both create effective recovery that is an order of magnitude greater than the one close range combat class we have, warrior. So the one class that absolutely NEEDS recovery have the weakest LoH mechanic while the other two shine in this department (sheet recovery drastically understate the effective recovery # for BH and Mage). Hence if you check the Mage and BH LBs, you won't find any investing any gear stat to LoH as the CP investment being wholly sufficient. This contributes to the warrior's lack of competitiveness with the other two classes. However this is merely the symptom of the disease. Due to the BH and Mage recovery mechanics (since we all fight the same mobs), the mob damage has to scale with the effective recovery that's possible, read BH and Mage. As such, in order to provide a challenge, the mob damage was scaled to such level that HP pools have been left in the dust. Literally BH and especially Mage can refill their HP pool multiple times in a second (potentially while that's far from possible for a warrior). This creates a situation where mob damage is way too high for the HP pool to provide anything other than Not to be 1HKO. This makes for a challenge but also a lot of unnecessary frustration. It becomes too hard to tune the encounter to be just right. A little less and the recovery over comes the incoming dmg as to make the encounter a cakewalk. Just a bit more than the recovery can see your character get swamped in seconds. This doesn't make for a good gaming experience as the margin for error becomes too small. All the more frustrating for mobile users where reactions and inputs are all at a premium (cost of doing something is far higher than a PC user).
Previously I thought about attacking this issue by separating LoH and attack speed as the high # of attacks per second contributed to this scenario. But further thoughts on this matter made me realize that the real issues are the mechanics BH and Mage can deploy that amplifies the LoH effects far beyond what was probably originally intended.
Also Life Regeneration is a joke compared to what LoH can do. So instead I want to propose the below system to completely revamp the recovery mechanic in this game.
Life Regeneration becomes a rating. Max CP investment will yield 5% HP pool recovery per second. Gear stat investments can potentially bring this % to 15% in total. This makes HP pool a factor in recovery. More stat interaction is usually a good thing.
LoH becomes Accelerated Metabolism, also a rating. Max CP investment will yield a multiplier of 3 while gear stat investments can potentially bring this multiplier to 6. This multiplier essentially increases the Life Regeneration while in combat. Sort of like a stimpack while fighting.
Additionally like AR, AM rating will also impact the potion and apple cooldown. Meaning high AM cuts down the potion/apple CD, allowing one to use them more frequently. Combined with the auto quaffing above, the recovery mechanics are now made up of two elements, the body regeneration and healing items. With potion/apple stack going to 100 and faster usage of those during the game, this creates an effective gold sink as well.
Finally spells like SW that has a healing component, each casting also removes a set number of seconds from the potion/apple CD, much like alacrity for skill CD. I will leave the fine tuning to the developers. But this system creates a more controllable recovery mechanic that doesn't overwhelm other aspects of the game. With recovery controlled, mob damage can now be scaled down appropriately so the HP pool can actually absorb a few hits, not just a 1HKO buffer. The gaming experience will also improve as the margin for error increases so players can react more to the changing combat situation instead of another perfect run ending prematurely due to a stray arrow.
Warrior Skill Thoughts:
RS, Cleave, Frenzy all do damage plus some secondary effect.
RS: Bleed, Cleave: Damage debuff, slow, Frenzy: MS and AS buff plus a small heal
First I don't get the slow debuff on Cleave. It helps none and probably a negative for what players are trying to do. How about removing that slow debuff entirely and just up the damage debuff to 20%.
Next both devastate and WW are woefully underused. They have been buffed repeatedly and still find few takers near the top of the LB. How about granting those skills the secondary effects of the normal attack that the player is using when casting them? For example if a player is doing RS while casting Devaste, then each Devastate hits will also add that bleed stack to the target. Same thing with WW, affecting each target in the path. This creates a more interesting skill combo and gives players more things to play with.
That's all for now. Looking forward to the balancing patch. Plus I do hope for one cheater above me in the event... LOL
The first thing that attracted me to this game was the gesture based game interface. I thought it was very intuitive and a vast improvement over the more typical joypad implementations. Now that I have swiped/gestured millions of times in the past week, I'm starting to feel differently. Don't get me wrong, the interface setup is still natural and a step above. But swiping the same symbol over and over and over until the finger is about the fall off can quickly salt away any fun factor. To this end, I have three QoL Mobile interface suggestions which coincidentally could close some of the mobile/pc gap that currently exists as well.
1) Suggestion: Toggleable skill autocast
PC's skill spamming advantage is well known. That stems from the very low cost of triggering a skill whereas mobile user needs to draw symbol, be blinded to the area of action etc, much higher cost for skill triggering. I know a short skill queue and global skill cooldown is coming to shrink this gap. However those two solutions don't address the other issue that I now feel represents a greater burden on mobile users -- finger fatigue. ANB style event necessarily means long hours of time investment, the accumulative damage of drawing the same symbols over and over show itself towards the end. To fundamentally address this issue, some kind of skill autocast system is the necessary next step. The idea is reduce the number of symbols one has to draw over a prolong period of gaming session.
2) Suggestion: Within setting, a checkbox for Toggleable Skill Autocast in Combat.
How it functions: While in combat (this status is already in the game as certain skills can't be triggered while out of combat), if one draws the skill symbol before the cooldown is finished, then the skill toggles to autocast mode. This is indicated by a circulating border around the skill symbol on the left. The skill will autocast whenever CD is finished using some form of smart targetting if a target is required. This autocast status can be turned off even while in combat by drawing the skill symbol again before CD is finished. Once out of combat, all autocast status gets set to off. To enable a skill for autocast quickly, just draw the symbol quickly twice in a row.
I think this is a much more intuitive solution and a significant QoL improvement for mobile users while granting them no advantage compared to a PC user.
Suggestion: Auto Quaffing of potion and apple
Within setting, have slider bar control to set the % of hp that will auto quaff potion or eat an apple. For example I want the apple automatically consumed when hp falls to 50% or lower. Or auto quaff potion when HP falls below 25%. This doesn't make the player immortal as both apple and potion have cooldowns. So the system could trigger auto consumption, but if the CD isn't finished, the command will simply be ignored. Again a much needed QoL improvement as we all have stories about misclicked or pressed potion attempts that ended a promising trial run. This suggestion is actual an extension to a major game mechanic idea below. Read on to see how this will interact with that idea.
3) Suggestion: Improved normal attack switching
To optimize damage, mage and warrior has to alternate between normal attacks. However switching between the two during stressful combat situation is less than ideal. I know some changes are coming, but I want to re-bring up the old idea of assigning normal attack pattern instead of normal attack skills. Basically normal attack one and two actually describes two attack patterns. In the simplest form, an attack pattern is the % chance of using one of two pre-assigned normal attacks. For example, pattern one could be 30% Frenzy and 70% Rendering Slash. This pattern will be good for mobbing phase where you want Frenzy to keep the attack speed buff high and RS for the bleed stacks. Pattern two could be 70% Frenzy, 30% RS, more of a bossing attack pattern where you are more concerned about the single target damage and the occasional SW. This method is purposefully imprecise as to allow the RNG to produce less than true optimal results. This is a fair trade off for the ease of use. As a mobile user, I would gladly accept 90% efficiency while gaining significant ease of use.
All three suggestions are meant to reduce the number of mobile user inputs per time period in order to still produce acceptable results; therefore, combined it will provide a large increase in QoL for mobile users. None of the suggestion will introduce undue hardships to PC users while effectively narrowing the current yawning gap between the performances of these two platforms.
Game Mechanic Thought -- LoH/HP Pool
After grinding a new character/warrior in this event, one thing became clear to me was the imbalance between recovery and HP pool. Nothing frustrates more than an errant arrow that ends a promising trial run. Before my time, recovery was done via life steal%. Of course as player damage reached millions, even a small % resulted in immortal characters. So the change was made from life steal% to LoH. However it is currently an odd state of affairs. Two range classes (BH and Mage) actually have game mechanics in place that drastically amplify the power of LoH. BH with RF and Mage with Singularity/Shield Bubble both create effective recovery that is an order of magnitude greater than the one close range combat class we have, warrior. So the one class that absolutely NEEDS recovery have the weakest LoH mechanic while the other two shine in this department (sheet recovery drastically understate the effective recovery # for BH and Mage). Hence if you check the Mage and BH LBs, you won't find any investing any gear stat to LoH as the CP investment being wholly sufficient. This contributes to the warrior's lack of competitiveness with the other two classes. However this is merely the symptom of the disease. Due to the BH and Mage recovery mechanics (since we all fight the same mobs), the mob damage has to scale with the effective recovery that's possible, read BH and Mage. As such, in order to provide a challenge, the mob damage was scaled to such level that HP pools have been left in the dust. Literally BH and especially Mage can refill their HP pool multiple times in a second (potentially while that's far from possible for a warrior). This creates a situation where mob damage is way too high for the HP pool to provide anything other than Not to be 1HKO. This makes for a challenge but also a lot of unnecessary frustration. It becomes too hard to tune the encounter to be just right. A little less and the recovery over comes the incoming dmg as to make the encounter a cakewalk. Just a bit more than the recovery can see your character get swamped in seconds. This doesn't make for a good gaming experience as the margin for error becomes too small. All the more frustrating for mobile users where reactions and inputs are all at a premium (cost of doing something is far higher than a PC user).
Previously I thought about attacking this issue by separating LoH and attack speed as the high # of attacks per second contributed to this scenario. But further thoughts on this matter made me realize that the real issues are the mechanics BH and Mage can deploy that amplifies the LoH effects far beyond what was probably originally intended.
Also Life Regeneration is a joke compared to what LoH can do. So instead I want to propose the below system to completely revamp the recovery mechanic in this game.
Life Regeneration becomes a rating. Max CP investment will yield 5% HP pool recovery per second. Gear stat investments can potentially bring this % to 15% in total. This makes HP pool a factor in recovery. More stat interaction is usually a good thing.
LoH becomes Accelerated Metabolism, also a rating. Max CP investment will yield a multiplier of 3 while gear stat investments can potentially bring this multiplier to 6. This multiplier essentially increases the Life Regeneration while in combat. Sort of like a stimpack while fighting.
Additionally like AR, AM rating will also impact the potion and apple cooldown. Meaning high AM cuts down the potion/apple CD, allowing one to use them more frequently. Combined with the auto quaffing above, the recovery mechanics are now made up of two elements, the body regeneration and healing items. With potion/apple stack going to 100 and faster usage of those during the game, this creates an effective gold sink as well.
Finally spells like SW that has a healing component, each casting also removes a set number of seconds from the potion/apple CD, much like alacrity for skill CD. I will leave the fine tuning to the developers. But this system creates a more controllable recovery mechanic that doesn't overwhelm other aspects of the game. With recovery controlled, mob damage can now be scaled down appropriately so the HP pool can actually absorb a few hits, not just a 1HKO buffer. The gaming experience will also improve as the margin for error increases so players can react more to the changing combat situation instead of another perfect run ending prematurely due to a stray arrow.
Warrior Skill Thoughts:
RS, Cleave, Frenzy all do damage plus some secondary effect.
RS: Bleed, Cleave: Damage debuff, slow, Frenzy: MS and AS buff plus a small heal
First I don't get the slow debuff on Cleave. It helps none and probably a negative for what players are trying to do. How about removing that slow debuff entirely and just up the damage debuff to 20%.
Next both devastate and WW are woefully underused. They have been buffed repeatedly and still find few takers near the top of the LB. How about granting those skills the secondary effects of the normal attack that the player is using when casting them? For example if a player is doing RS while casting Devaste, then each Devastate hits will also add that bleed stack to the target. Same thing with WW, affecting each target in the path. This creates a more interesting skill combo and gives players more things to play with.
That's all for now. Looking forward to the balancing patch. Plus I do hope for one cheater above me in the event... LOL
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