Stamina, Gold Chaining solutions and Mastery suggestion.
Open Letter to Sloclap
As a student of game design, I applaud you, this game is simple and elegant and lacks the clutter I’m familiar with in MMO’s.
I do have some suggestions that I hope you’ll listen to and maybe take inspiration from.
Currently in your game there is a hated group of players called Spammers who build decks with fast infinite combos, they are frustrating and ruin the fun for a lot people.
Please understand, I’m not against fast style players, but right now the current mechanics of the game over-rewards this style of play and has become a bit of an aberration of the current game design.
1) Stamina:
Solution 1.A)
What I would like to suggest is that the stamina cost of moves increase the longer a combo lasts, the penalty would be cumulative and eventually make them need to wait for their stamina to recover.
Solution 1.B)
The next level of this, is to apply a penalty to stamina recovery speed for each time a player completes 3-4 string combo.
2) Gold Chaining:
Solution 2.A)
The window for gold chaining should not be tied to each move individually, instead, decide upon a base for the gold window, and then have it shrink the longer a player manages to hit that gold chain, right now the fixed model rewards fast styles that build decks specifically for easy gold chaining. If I have misunderstood how this work, please ignore this.
3) Style Mastery:
Suggestion 3.A)
Now there is only one way I would do this within your system, keeping it simple, when a player unlocks all moves within a style subset (barehanded or sword) And it is the style they chose at the start of the game, then the strength, dexterity and mobility gradings on that styles moves all go up by 1 step.
As a student of game design, I applaud you, this game is simple and elegant and lacks the clutter I’m familiar with in MMO’s.
I do have some suggestions that I hope you’ll listen to and maybe take inspiration from.
Currently in your game there is a hated group of players called Spammers who build decks with fast infinite combos, they are frustrating and ruin the fun for a lot people.
Please understand, I’m not against fast style players, but right now the current mechanics of the game over-rewards this style of play and has become a bit of an aberration of the current game design.
1) Stamina:
Solution 1.A)
What I would like to suggest is that the stamina cost of moves increase the longer a combo lasts, the penalty would be cumulative and eventually make them need to wait for their stamina to recover.
Solution 1.B)
The next level of this, is to apply a penalty to stamina recovery speed for each time a player completes 3-4 string combo.
2) Gold Chaining:
Solution 2.A)
The window for gold chaining should not be tied to each move individually, instead, decide upon a base for the gold window, and then have it shrink the longer a player manages to hit that gold chain, right now the fixed model rewards fast styles that build decks specifically for easy gold chaining. If I have misunderstood how this work, please ignore this.
3) Style Mastery:
Suggestion 3.A)
Now there is only one way I would do this within your system, keeping it simple, when a player unlocks all moves within a style subset (barehanded or sword) And it is the style they chose at the start of the game, then the strength, dexterity and mobility gradings on that styles moves all go up by 1 step.
Comments
Thanks for your appreciation of the game and your ideas how to improve it. I'm passing your letter with suggestions to the dev. team.
Thank you for taking the time to read my letter! I tried to be as objective as possible and make suggestions that affect player balance across the board instead of targeting a minority.
If at all possible, would you be able to share with me the Dev's thoughts on my letter?
I wish but I can't guarantee that.
I like the idea of a progressively increasing stamina cost based on number of successful gold chained attacks. It would force players to be more strategic about how they face an opponent.
It sucks when the winner of a match is determined by who can start a chain combo first, which tbh in CT is also the first hit
I'm gonna be starting a new thread based on some recent observations.