Ben
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Re: New Series: Camelot Heroes

Mon Sep 04, 2017 1:41 pm

So it sounds like their skills / aura triggers will have some way to "activate" the on-spawn skill to make the heroes "work" based on the two bolded hints from AvacadoMilk.

I don't really see how this is different from Elf celestial form then, except there's a chance for the hero to randomly start in celestial form.

I feel like what people are concerned about is this, using Arena as an example:
1. Are we going to win or lose the match based on if the on-spawn skill happened or not (RNG)?
2. If not, then are the heroes good enough without it to be useful?
3. If so, isn't the hero OP? If it's just as good as any other unit, but ALSO has a random chance to be super strong on spawn.
4. If they are not good without it, why would anyone use it?

Seems like a weird design choice to me in that way.
 
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Zayler
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Re: New Series: Camelot Heroes

Mon Sep 04, 2017 3:16 pm

Hi everyone! AvocadoMilk here with my debut post! (Please be kind to me >.<)
Nice to see active discussion going on here and rest assured, we are always reading players' comments.
Welcome :) always nice to have more new moderators since all of them seem to go MIA after awhile.
As some of you have guessed, an example of on spawn skill description could be: X% chance to increase attack of this hero by 15% for x turns.
One thing most of you may have misunderstood is that the Camelot heroes rely heavily on their on spawn skill to make them work well.

The Camelot Heroes will have their own strong suit of active and aura skills. Due to balancing concerns, many on-spawn skill effect will not have 100% chance. The % chance will really depend on the nature of the skill as 100% can confer too much of an advantage to some heroes particularly in arena setting. As this on spawn skill will have chance to appear in every new PVE stage, that is also another balancing concern. We are still in the process of reviewing, so thank you all for your feedback :)
Before I start, please note that this is not an attack but rather honest feedback in hopes that this game can continue improving.

Sorry to say this, but i think lowering the % scaling of buff is a very lazy way of addressing the player's concerns. Also regarding your point on they wont really rely on the on-spawn effect + "they will have their own strong suit of active and aura skills", then what's the point of include the on spawn buff in the first place if it's going to be a negligible effect? Isn't this just going to contradict the unique-ness of the Camelot hero series and they would just be the same as regular units?

Let's look at the elves Elves series; Elves seem to have more thought put into their construction and were actually balanced while maintaining their unique aspect. The Action Point mechanic was an ingenious idea on the developers end and made the game more interesting rather than stale and generic.

Why not do something that will increase strategy in the game like 100% on spawn effect to
1) Gain a HP shield based on 10% of DEF for 2 turns
2) or maybe reflect 30% of the damage taken for 2 turns
3) For 2 turns, distribute 25% of the damage taken to allies in aura and heal self by 5% of the taken damage.
4) or even something like increase CRI by 5% of ATK for 6 turns.
5) or perhaps for 7 turns, increase ATK by 30% of missing HP.

This would allow people in arena to either ignore the unit until the effect wears off or bring a debuffer like HD Darrion.

Balancing can be made to the % scaling numbers but making it a RNG activation is what most of the replies above are being concerned about. Regardless of the %scaling being underpowered or overpowered, I believe most of the concern is on it not being a 100% activation effect.
Last edited by Zayler on Mon Sep 04, 2017 4:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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MiloDinosaur
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Re: New Series: Camelot Heroes

Mon Sep 04, 2017 3:47 pm

People come and go man...

But I'm here to serve ;)

Please treat AvocadoMilk well! You guys can throw the abuse on me :D
 
duskaco
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Re: New Series: Camelot Heroes

Tue Sep 05, 2017 10:04 am

Hi everyone! AvocadoMilk here with my debut post! (Please be kind to me >.<)
Nice to see active discussion going on here and rest assured, we are always reading players' comments.

The first post was meant as a brief overview of the heroes, quite surprised that it spun off so much speculation and concerns. But here is some clarification on the on-spawn skill: As some of you have guessed, an example of on spawn skill description could be: X% chance to increase attack of this hero by 15% for x turns.
One thing most of you may have misunderstood is that the Camelot heroes rely heavily on their on spawn skill to make them work well.

The Camelot Heroes will have their own strong suit of active and aura skills.
Due to balancing concerns, many on-spawn skill effect will not have 100% chance. The % chance will really depend on the nature of the skill as 100% can confer too much of an advantage to some heroes particularly in arena setting. As this on spawn skill will have chance to appear in every new PVE stage, that is also another balancing concern. We are still in the process of reviewing, so thank you all for your feedback :)
Which is why I mentioned that a specific example is needed. Thanks for bringing it out, as we can now give more accurate feedback.

That being said, Zayler (and many other previous posters) expressed many of my concens, especially the unneeded rng factor, so I only have a few to add.

If the effects wear off over some turns, does that mean that SDD and trigger rangers will heavily benefit these units, as any other team would have to face the problem of the buffs wearing off.

How significant are the buffs? Are they just stat boosts or some normal standard effects (shield, barrier, damage reflect etc) or can they poasibly change how the unit is used? (For example: Ninja's buff allows his attack to jump 1 more time, and removes all damage penalties from jump. Berserker's buff converts 60% of his max hp to Atk and Crit)

The former is both boring and can easily be insignificant while the latter may salvage the mechanic from its inherent weakness, as the units are now interesting to use.

The mentioned weakness lf this mechanic is that buffs that will wear out eventually, and in long battles, they tend to provitde little benefit overall. The team that ignores this weakness the most and can also benefit from a turn based buff the most, however, is SDD and trigger rangers... but do you (the devs) think that they need this indirect buff?

I believe that every idea has its place in a game, but it also heavily depends on the implementation. The on spawn buffs can be great, but there are many inherent weaknesses one would have to solve to make them relevant, but not overpowered.

(Throwing something to cover up weaknesses sloppily can cause the unit to be OP in some other way. Look at my berserker suggestion and think what it could do in an SDD, if you dont get what I mean)
 
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Ferico
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Re: New Series: Camelot Heroes

Tue Sep 05, 2017 3:05 pm

I'm hoping to see the preview or sneak peak of at least half of the camelot heroes and their on spawn effects, skills, and auras by tomorrow so I could personally assess if I still have faith in myself to continue my arathos journey.
 
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Zayler
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Re: New Series: Camelot Heroes

Thu Sep 07, 2017 3:43 pm

The Developers released Arthur with the 75% RNG chance for on spawn skill. So many players have given their opinion on RNG on spawn in this thread and it's just ignored without explanations to the main RNG on-spawn activation concerns. I appreciate the response from AvocadoMilk, however the main issue is not so much on the amounts but rather the Heads or Tails mechanic of RNG on spawn effects.

They also let the on-spawn effect be a 2-turn misdirect which Game Changing in PVE. Yes, game changing, I'm not exaggerating. It's an effect that potentially lets RNG decide the first stage in turn 1 with randomly activating the misdirect or failing to do so.

On the other hand, I don't see why there needs to be a 75% RNG activation rate for the other Arthur's reflect on spawn effect. If making it 100% would make it imbalance, then it should not even exist in the game. Arena is already so dependent on starting coin flips and now the Dev's decide to add on-spawn effect activations at the start of the battle?

On-spawn RNG 75% or 50% or 25% doesn't matter as long as it could decide the match at the start of the game. How is this Strategic in any way?

I'd be surprised if we get an official response to our concerns as it looks like players are once again being ignored.
 
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Zayler
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Re: New Series: Camelot Heroes

Sat Sep 09, 2017 9:09 pm

At this point, I imagine the game developers sitting around a table during a meeting and one of them just goes "Hey guys, wouldn't it be a revolutionary idea to make players restart their app!! Such a unique and interesting game mechanic!!"

I built HD Arthur (75% on spawn redirect) and used him in my master run, here's what i found: 75% chance to give your other units 2 free turns of hitting the enemy or 25% chance of being dead weight. Instead of using HD Arthur, my runs were consistently faster when i was using HD Altima or BK Darrion in my team (same level, training, EQ and runes).

Really goes to show that the On-Spawn mechanic of HD Arthur really is a 75% chance of being useful or 25% chance of being dead weight. I guess this was the exact intention when the RNG on-spawn mechanic was implemented in the game.
 
duskaco
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Re: New Series: Camelot Heroes

Sun Sep 10, 2017 8:36 pm

At this point, I imagine the game developers sitting around a table during a meeting and one of them just goes "Hey guys, wouldn't it be a revolutionary idea to make players restart their app!! Such a unique and interesting game mechanic!!"

I built HD Arthur (75% on spawn redirect) and used him in my master run, here's what i found: 75% chance to give your other units 2 free turns of hitting the enemy or 25% chance of being dead weight. Instead of using HD Arthur, my runs were consistently faster when i was using HD Altima or BK Darrion in my team (same level, training, EQ and runes).

Really goes to show that the On-Spawn mechanic of HD Arthur really is a 75% chance of being useful or 25% chance of being dead weight. I guess this was the exact intention when the RNG on-spawn mechanic was implemented in the game.
This game mechanic would honestly be better if there were more short rounds. The design isnt bad. There is a high chance of the unit being slightly above average, but also some chance the unit being slightly below average, and the players would have to adapt to the situation. The problem I have with this mechanic is that it just... ends after 2 turns, which really sucks. That being said, this is actually closer to a personal gripe?

HD is actually ok in my book. It makes it so that you may make a reckless build, but you cannot rely on it or you might get punished. Or if you rely on it, and the rng fails, you now have to adapt. Altho the game's current system does not provide much ways to adapt... The actual problem is Authur Paladin, i'd say. One, the effect doesn't really change anything about how you plat. It's just as significant as a +30% atk to all units, you know? It kinda falls a little flat. A little more flat than it should because of the RNG. Authur HD's RNG is kinda justified. Authur Paladin is just terrible with the rng. 
 
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Zayler
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Re: New Series: Camelot Heroes

Sun Sep 10, 2017 10:49 pm

This game mechanic would honestly be better if there were more short rounds. The design isnt bad. There is a high chance of the unit being slightly above average, but also some chance the unit being slightly below average, and the players would have to adapt to the situation. The problem I have with this mechanic is that it just... ends after 2 turns, which really sucks. That being said, this is actually closer to a personal gripe?

HD is actually ok in my book. It makes it so that you may make a reckless build, but you cannot rely on it or you might get punished. Or if you rely on it, and the rng fails, you now have to adapt. Altho the game's current system does not provide much ways to adapt... The actual problem is Authur Paladin, i'd say. One, the effect doesn't really change anything about how you plat. It's just as significant as a +30% atk to all units, you know? It kinda falls a little flat. A little more flat than it should because of the RNG. Authur HD's RNG is kinda justified. Authur Paladin is just terrible with the rng. 
The design is bad if the cost of having shorter rounds is making the success of the level inconsistent based purely on RNG. If you want a redirect that last more than 2 turns, it'll be more consistent to use a Royal Huntsman or BK Tristan.

To answer your first question, I did quit a certain game because of the RNG Violent procs (similar to refresh in this game) that were not strategic to the point of being forced to use it everywhere just because there's no strategic alternatives. It's not as bad now because that game listened to player feedback and actually worked to re-balance the violent RNG (1 activation limitations in PVP, made it diminishing chance to activate outside of PVP). That allowed players to once again build strategies rather than relying purely on coin flips.

I believe that certain quantities of RNG are needed to keep a game fun. However, it is unhealthy for a game to be overly reliant on RNG and wouldn't like VF to go in that direction. Usually adding more RNG takes away from the strategic aspects in games.

With this RNG on spawn mechanic, the devs have raised the bar of a stage's potential difficulty. They could make it so you need 4 other non-cleanse non-taunt units in your team plus one HD Arthur to play both cleansing and redirect roles. Since "you cannot rely on it", it would then essentially force players to restart the game and hope it procs. The upper limit of this RNG on spawn mechanic will lead to units either being useful or useless based on turn-1 coin flips which contradicts this being a strategy based game.

Putting aside the upper-limit point for awhile; On your point about adapting to the coin flips, i agree that there are few ways currently in the game to adapt to this for Arthur's case. However, for these turn-1 on-spawn RNG mechanics, you are limited by the 5 unit team limit if you plan to use him for his RNG on-spawn redirect. Having to bring backup plan unit in your team essentially takes up one or two more slots in your formation just in case RNG fails on turn 1.

Back to the upper-limit point. Before these RNG on-spawn mechanic was introduced, generally, you fail a run due to your units and equips not being developed enough or you had to change your team composition/strategy. Now it can be a coinflip that decides if you win or lose especially when you think in terms of the upper-limit difficulty i mentioned.

Arthur Paladin is on the opposite end of this RNG on-spawn activation mechanic as HD Arthur would be OP if it was 100% activation but Paladin Arthur is underwhelming without 100% activation.
 
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Re: New Series: Camelot Heroes

Mon Sep 11, 2017 12:05 am

The design is bad if the cost of having shorter rounds is making the success of the level inconsistent based purely on RNG. If you want a redirect that last more than 2 turns, it'll be more consistent to use a Royal Huntsman or BK Tristan.

To answer your first question, I did quit a certain game because of the RNG Violent procs (similar to refresh in this game) that were not strategic to the point of being forced to use it everywhere just because there's no strategic alternatives. It's not as bad now because that game listened to player feedback and actually worked to re-balance the violent RNG (1 activation limitations in PVP, made it diminishing chance to activate outside of PVP). That allowed players to once again build strategies rather than relying purely on coin flips.

This is not just a gripe but a serious concern to the possible direction of this game. I do enjoy VF and that's why I'm hoping that VF will learn from other more developed games so that it will not make the same mistakes that it's predecessors did.
Well I have been mentioning that problem for some time, but got no positive replies (or any, regarding that), which led me to believe that it's a problem that only I see (and hence, a personal gripe). I've addressed that multiple times so I wont do it again here. 
I still believe that certain quantities of RNG are needed to keep a game fun. However, it is unhealthy for a game to be overly reliant on RNG and wouldn't like VF to go in that direction. Usually adding more RNG takes away from the strategic aspects in games.

With this RNG on spawn mechanic, the devs have raised the bar of a stage's potential difficulty. They could make it so you need 4 other non-cleanse non-taunt units in your team plus one HD Arthur to play both cleansing and redirect roles. Since "you cannot rely on it", it would then essentially force players to restart the game and hope it procs. The upper limit of this RNG on spawn mechanic will lead to units either being useful or useless based on turn-1 coin flips which contradicts this being a strategy based game.

Putting aside the upper-limit point for awhile; On your point about adapting to the coin flips, i agree that there are few ways currently in the game to adapt to this for Arthur's case. However, for these turn-1 on-spawn RNG mechanics, you are limited by the 5 unit team limit if you plan to use him for his RNG on-spawn redirect. Having to bring backup plan unit in your team essentially takes up one or two more slots in your formation just in case RNG fails on turn 1.

Back to the upper-limit point. Before these RNG on-spawn mechanic was introduced, generally, you fail a run due to your units and equips not being developed enough or you had to change your team composition/strategy. Now it can be a coinflip that decides if you win or lose especially when you think in terms of the upper-limit difficulty i mentioned.

Arthur Paladin is on the opposite end of this RNG on-spawn activation mechanic as HD Arthur would be OP if it was 100% activation but Paladin Arthur is underwhelming without 100% activation.
I agree. Too much RNG is definitely unhealthy to the game. However, it does not mean that RNG will serve no strategic value, or take away from it. (I say that as a player of XCOM)

The ability to restart to try to reroll is a issue of itself. It can probably be fixed somehow by using RNG seeds for battle, but idk how they coded it. 

If you need to rely on the coinflip to win you the battle, it does mean that you are either a really bad commander, you do not have a good fallback, or you are undergeared. (You, as in the player). If you do not have a good fallback, it's your choice to rely on RNG. If you are undergeared, it's good that you even have a chance to win, and again, it's your choice to rely on the RNG.  

That being said, I can't even think of any good fallbacks to rely on if Authur doesnt proc in stage 1 turn 1 lol. 

In fact I would say that HD Authur isnt actually OP. He is right on the curve as an RNG based unit. When his ability procs, he's above the curve. Not by an insane amount, since you only get 2 turns, but quite above. And, according to your wording, when he doesn't proc, he's below the curve. (I feel that he's not as bad as you say even without his on-spawn effect tho). Which is a good position for an RNG based unit...

Again, I'm ignoring the fact that you can restart to reroll the proc because it is an abuse rather than an intended mechanic. They DO HAVE to fix it, though, or the RNG would, of course, serve no purpose. 

I feel that the units would overall be better if they can reproc their on-spawn effects with their skills... but that'll make HD Authur a little OP? Maybe tweak something? It's really annoying to me that their on-spawn effects become irrelevant after 2 turns.