Design/Non-technical Feedback

Leave feedback here if it isn't related to the technical details of the project.

Feedback on abilities in playtesting (and proposed changes)

Artificer

Unorthodox Rituals / Excise: I grouped these two together because of how they interact. In use it feels pretty fun (especially getting some proc/attack speed builds), but I have some criticisms of the abilities as they are right now.

The passive is pretty much unusable without Excise, which makes it feel strange and clunky that they are two different abilities. The M1 itself is fun and balanced, but the visuals are definitely a bit too intrusive right now. The blood splatters get a little obnoxious when they splatter off of you at higher attack speeds.

Proposed Changes: Unorthodox Rituals passive should be reworked to contain the natural health regen blocking from the M1, and should be changed to also heal on some other DoT effects Arti uses like burning. That way it can be used for more than just one single build, and still stays very cohesive with Excise. (if that makes it too strong, you can always add an invisible "soft cap" to how fast you can heal with it)

Excise doesn't need healing blocking, and my only real proposed changes are making the blood splatter on impact instead of cast so it's easier to aim in attack speed focused runs. The bolt itself should also be red, but I think that's more because the visuals are a placeholder right now than a design choice.

Snowsculpt: This ability is really cool on paper, but relatively useless in gameplay right now. Comparing it to arti's other special skills as a sidegrade it doesn't really offer anything. You lose on mobility without Ion Surge, and DPS without Flamethrower. Gaining a bunch of temporary HP at the cost of mobility is a cool idea, but you also lose 100% of your DPS.

Proposed Changes: Give some sort of damage to the golem, even just giving it a M1 punch that scales with attack speed (and possibly a M2 laser like the actual stone golems) would make it a lot more fun to use. I can also guarantee there will be arti players who try to exclusively use golem to beat mythrix, which would be kind of funny.

If adding abilities to it is too much work, you could also make the golem explode on death (probably using a similar code to the ice elite death-explosion) and run much faster. Then it could have some movement utility and survivability.

Paladin

Steel Resolve: This ability just kind of feels underwhelming to use. There's not really anything wrong from a coding/design perspective with it, but it just isn't worth it to use in a battle most of the time (Note: Paladin does have abilities like this in his special slot, but they give a lot more reward than +80% one time). It ends up being an ability you use between enemies spawning and it makes your next hit deal extra damage and doesn't stack.

Most of the time it's just easier to attack twice than to buff and then land a successful hit.

Proposed Changes: It should buff your melee attacks for a set time instead, and could have some other small effect like a chance to apply a debuff on a successful hit. Then it can scale well with attack speed builds, and be worthwhile to use in the middle of a fight.

edit: My brother actually likes this ability a lot, his changes he proposes are to just make it stack the +80% damage logarithmically so you can charge a super hit while you're not actively fighting.

I haven't done a lot of testing on some of the other abilities yet, but I plan on doing more testing later.

Mostly thoughts on Void Fiend, as of now, and some questions. I'll format as Bungo did, for easy reading. It might be a lot, but I'm just spitballing ideas.

Love the mod, and can't wait to see where it goes.

Void Fiend

Incessant Infestation: This ability is a super neat idea, but I have some ideas for configs. I'll explain how it'll help both variants (allied and non-allied modes).

When on non-allied mode, it creates a lot of chaos, which is good for keeping enemies busy and clean up some mess while you run around and scavenge. It can get rather nutty, and allow Void Fiend to just blip around unscathed, as he picks off lower health enemies. It seems to balance itself out in this mode, as if you let it get out of hand due to the lack of limitation on how many can be thrown out, it becomes a hindrance to the player.

It could be argued to be a tad overpowered if played correctly, but is overall fine.

When on allied mode however, there are a few balance issues that I think config could remedy. The concept of slowly corrupting a little army is absolutely awesome, and like non-allied mode, creates distraction to let him zip around and let enemies tear each other apart. Obviously, this part of the mod isn't enabled by default as it gets woefully broken. As while the Infestors slowly take damage and die, the corrupted mobs do not it seems.

Proposed Changes: 1) Spawn Amount Config:

Allowing people to tweak how many infestors are spawned could help curb the power ramping, or avoid having things get too chaotic when paired with mods that increase how fast Corruption charges. The former helping allied balance and the latter helping non-allied.

2) Spawn Limit Config:

Allowing people to tweak how many infestors can be spawned could help deal with a few possible issues. Spawn limit and possible performance concerns are obvious ones. However, this can also be another way to remedy it becoming too extreme from mismanagement for people who do not like such, or limiting the allied mode to a fixed count of minions.

While this leaves the issue of: well, what happens when you get to max corruption when you reach cap? Onto 3.

3) Ally Healing and Enemy Damage Option:

Simply put, when at cap, and reaching max corruption, depending on your mode and if it's enabled, one of two things will happen.

If on Allied Mode, your infested friends will get a pulse of healing, to keep them in the fight. This will make a lot more sense for the fourth, and final suggestion for this ability.

If on Non-Allied Mode, the enemies you infested will take a pulse of damage instead, helping speed up your clean up and free up those slots for other enemies. This helps keep a constant flow if limits are enabled for Non-Allied, without playing the game for you.

4) Infested Damage Ticking Option:

A possible setting to have enemies infested slowly die overtime. While this would namely help balance Allied Mode without caps, or further more with caps, it can simply be a tool to output a little more, albeit small, DPS on Non-Allied Mode.

While this does lead to balance questions on Non-Allied Mode, these are still voidtouched elites after all; if you ignore them, they are still very dangerous. So the game will, even with this, not play itself, as: even a low health enemy still does full damage. However, like with all of these things, having things be configurable is just a godsend for mods, in my opinion.

Tear: This is an interesting ability, though it has some weirdness I wanted to address.

The ability seems to have pushback, which I assume is intentional, but like Void Fiend's main passive, being locked for a few moments to a point is rather flow breaking. I'm imagining this was an attempt for balance, but the being locked for even a fraction of time can feel very out of place in the pacing of everything.

There also seems to be some jank with the portal hitbox. You can appear to go through it, but end up not doing so, requiring you having to wiggle around and jump through it in a few different ways at times, for it to register and send you across. I'm not sure if this a matter of limitation, but it is an oddity.

As for balance, without the pushback and hitbox in thought, it's basically just a direct upgrade movement. Which, to be fair, isn't hard to accomplish as un-corrupted Void Fiend utility isn't the greatest for movement. I think it's fine how it functions, however I do have an idea with conjunction with the final note.

Lastly, it can be a bit hard to position the portal correctly, as you can't entirely see where it's going to land, causing overshooting, undershooting, or even ending up in a completely different place than planned. It makes the ability hard to use effectively.

Finally, a question, rather than a gripe. What does his corrupted Tear do, exactly? I haven't been able to figure it out.

Proposed Changes: Another list running down my thoughts.

Pushback/Movement Lock: I'd personally not have it, as my next thoughts might be a better way to balance it and restore the flow of the character. The pushback alone makes it hard to want to use the ability.

Hitbox: Improvements to the hitbox or detection would be nice, and make the ability far more seemless to use. It's not a massive deal, but it in conjuction with the pushback time causes massive delays that could be better spent sprinting.

Balance: Limit the range of the ability. Obviously, it shouldn't be short, however, having fiend able to just throw himself across the map in an instant can be a little much, speaking he isn't the highest mobility class, at least in scope to others like Loader or Huntress.

Positioning: Being able to hold down the ability for a targeting circle, one like Captain's orbital strikes, could help make the ability far easier to target it, letting you line it up and place it exactly where needed. With a range change, this would be useful to see how far you can place it, as well.

Corrupted Tear: A possible more specific explanation for what it does in it's description. Just so players aren't confused as I am.

Engineer

Field Tinkering: This is less a suggestion and more a question.

Is taking the passive supposed to remove Engineer's sprint or is this a mod compatibility issue?

General

Localization: A small thing, I've noticed some mod abilities have places where there is a comma and no space after it.

Example: "Shoot a projectile that deals 85% and spreads to other enemies,carrying a random debuff from the last target."

It's not a big deal, just a curiosity to point out that I noticed.

Thanks for the feedback,both of you.I'll keep them in mind going forward.

To answer the questions: Tear pushing you backwards was supposed to be part of an animation/vfx effect but stayed around after it got removed,the hitbox thing will be fixed in the next release and is a consequence of the vanilla system it uses. Corrupted Tear is supposed to spawn void fog,there seems to be a compatibility issue that is breaking it but I will patch it to be more resilient to errors I have seen on a few logs I received Filed Tinkering should not affect your ability to sprint at all, if you have any mods that touch sprinting there might be a conflict at hand. I'll fix the commas as I come across them, not really used to leaving spaces after, can't say if it's a programmer thing.

I'm back with some more feedback after testing in multiplayer for a few days.

Bandit

Standoff: This ability is really fun! At first I thought it was weak since you can't reliably trigger it, but after more testing it's actually pretty balanced. Essentially you trade being able to consistently crit for a lot more safety because you can crit from any range/angle and boss attack animations last a really long time. It also synergizes with desperado, which is cool.

Proposed Changes: None, it works perfectly :)

Starch Bomb: This ability is less fun. It's a neat idea, and cleansing debuffs is actually pretty useful with a purity, but it is very weak right now. My biggest issue I have with it is the lack of survivability it has. It does almost no damage, has (seemingly?) very low range, and doesn't provide a speed boost. These are all very big downsides to the one upside of removing debuffs.

Proposed Changes: increase cooldown to 8 seconds, increase the range to somewhere around 8 meters , and provide a small speed boost on use. That way it can be somewhat useful in the early game while still having that lategame utility of essentially equipping ben's raincoat as your utility.

Acrid

Carrier Pathogen: This ability is once again a really interesting idea, but in game underperforms compared to the other slots Acrid has right now. The biggest issue it runs into right now is how badly it synergizes with all of your other skills, because a lot of the time it pulls your poison/blight from the target and is just a worse version of Pandemic.

You have to get very specific builds in order to make it good, and there's a lot of debuff items that just hurt the DPS of the ability. (The biggest offenders being chrono bauble, frost relic, and mired urn.)

Proposed Changes: Make it spread either two different debuffs every time, or have a chance (possibly affected by luck) to spread anwhere between one to three debuffs. If those changes make it too strong in testing, reduce the amount of times it can spread in total to 5 or 10.

Mando

Stim Shot: This ability is pretty fun. Not much to say... I like it and the StarCraft reference. It feels a tad weak right now, but I haven't tested it enough to be sure.

Proposed Changes: Making the cooldown longer and increasing the attack/movement speed buff to 50% (and possibly making the heal over time) would make it feel a bit more noticeable when you use it. That's not really a suggestion I feel strongly about though, I quite like this ability either way.

Your abilities have some seriously cool design, looking forward to where this mod goes!

Finally tested every ability and passive, here's my final thoughts.

Artificer

Excise: After playing a lot more arti, this ability is probably too strong. I still stand by everything I said before, but 100% bleed with fast attack speed is really good.

Proposed Changes: In addition to my previous suggestions, it should take 1% max hp to fire a bolt instead of the current regen blocking passive.

Engineer

Field Tinkering: It's a neat ability. It feels kind of weird that there isn't some sort of trade-off, but the effect is small enough that it's fine.

Suggested Changes: None I can think of.

Loader

Power Pack Discharge: The skill is fun to use and cool, but it feels a little weak. While 1400% is good, losing all of your barrier is a pretty big price for it. Thunderslam does 2000% and only requires that you be in melee range. Even though discharging can be done at range, it is still quite limited overall.

Proposed Changes: (Easiest Option) More damage / scaling. (Harder Option) Keep everything the same, add a secondary effect where lighting arcs off the electrocuted target that deals half damage to up to 4 enemies within 12 meters of the target.

Railgunner

Micro Missile Foundry: I like this ability a lot. It does it's job well and is a fun alternative to a boring damage up.

Proposed Changes: Nothing.

Void Fiend

After a fair amount of testing, I agree with 100% of what Fooshcookie said.

Enforcer/Miner:

I don't play these characters enough to have an informed opinion, but from my basic understanding of them both abilities seem fine.

I'm finally done testing everything. Sorry if my thoughts are a lot to read through, I really like this mod and want to see it improve.

A minor addition id love to see is being able to change where the camera sits per-character, as ive noticed its often slightly above where it should be.

A major addition I think would be cool but dont expect to see be implemented is rendering everything except the head of the player character, for a little extra immersion. I dont know how the models are put together or how possible this is; less of a request and more "hey this would be neat, no pressure"

Thanks for the feedback. There is a wip branch sitting on my computer that tries to put the camera on the character's head bone but it didn't seem like it was succeeding in the effect I wanted so it wasn't included in the release. Viewmodel would need to be handmade,sadly.The vanilla models aren't made to accomodate partial rendering like that.(Engi doesn't even have a "head',funnily enough,he is all neck and torso.)

in the first person mod, there use to be height adjustment, will that be added to the new one as well?

For Powerfully Slow Moon, it'd be nice if the Glass Frog spawned in the center of the arena after beating Mithrix so it's possible to go to Voidling from there.

@Moffein I had not thought about the frog because it is there in the old moon by default too,but it's probably still worth doing since it's unintuitive to dodge the zone that triggers the ending when going towards it.Thanks for the suggestion.

@Naskue the first person mod lacks a lot of the settings in the old one because it was done mostly as a 'might as well' thing while I was figuring out the update's changes to the camera, while I might add more settings to it eventually it is not a priority at the moment. Other mods that change camera settings are compatible with the method I used and can be used as a stopgap.

yekoc / Risk-Of-Rain-2-Mods

Design/Non-technical Feedback #3