Is Magic Shield becoming an essential skill a good thing?
*I know it is not the time for Mr. Raptis to do balancing skills and stats but I think it wouldn't hurt to discuss some balance issues within the old solomon game for now.
The main reason why we must have magic shield is that the some attacks are impossible to dodge. In the late game, enemies' damage become so high that you can just die by two shot. If all attacks are dodge-able in some way, you can just believe in your skill or get phasing and completely ignore magic shield. However, some attacks like lightning, Unholy's charge attack, and first few seconds of laser attack, are 100% impossible to dodge what so ever. Also, because poison damage becomes so powerful that one hit completely reduce health into 1 no matter how much health you have. Because of these two problems, magic shield have become the necessity for beating late game levels.
So, is this phenomenon wrong? In my opinion, yes. Solomon games are about the random choices given each run and how to overcome the obstacle given by the gods of random number generators. If for some "series of unfortunate events" you get no magic shield, you can never overcome your fate because things like Unholy and mass lightning mages will kill you not matter what you do. Of course if stoneskin was in the Keep you would have a slight chance with at least lightning mages but due to the terribly long cooldown of stoneskin, it would still be impossible to beat the game. My general philosophy of randomly generated dungeon crawl game is this: no matter how unlucky you are, there must be at least a chance to overcome the obstacle. The current Solomon game, by forcing players to get Magic Shield, is not only fixing the builds but also making the game un-fun in some way.
Then how can we solve this thing in SKHD? Here are the list of things can be done to deal this phenomenon:
1. All attacks by enemies has to be dodge-able in some way. The best example of this would be bullet hell games like Touhou project or Binding of Issac: Rebirth (it sort of is when you fight final bosses). In these game, you get overwhelmed by shower of projectiles that it seems almost impossible to dodge. However, if you look closely and understand the attack pattern, you can learn how to maneuver through the stream of projectiles and even complete the game unharmed if you are good enough. Solomon games, on the other hand, are not like that. It just send enemies with simple movement and simple attack patterns that has little to no solutions other than just soaking the damage with Magic Shield. It is possible to use walls and objects to block some but certain attacks like lightning are completely impossible to dodge. To make all the attacks dodge-able in some way, lightning mages must be shooting lightning like Dire Aliss does (no homing, straight line) and Unholy series' charge skill must be replaced with something more dodge-able. Though I am not really liking the monotony of most enemies attack pattern, they are all manageable in some way and decent for now.
2. Poison damage system needs change. There are two ways to fix poison damage. First is to make Resist poison not only reduce % of poison damgage but also deduct fixed amount of damage as well. For example, if you have level 3 resist poison and get posion damage of 50 per second, you will reduce 10(20% of 50) and 15(fixed amount) thus resulting 25 damage per second. This way, you can make resist poison more useful and make a way to counter poison without the need of Magic Shield. The another way to fix poison damage is fixing how poison work. Instead of poison damage dealing x amount of damage per second, you can change it to deal x% of max health per second. This way, you make sure that the poison damage to be a threatening in some way but not as devastating as it is right now (turning full health into 1 hp in a second is too much).
3. There should be more defensive options for other mages except frost mage. I know mages are suppose to be a glass cannon of some sort but there has to be some sort of defensive ability to deal with tough situations. Frost has no problem with that for its defensive nature and lightning is sort of okay with it too. The problem is the earth, fire, and ether users. Other than Magic Shield and stoneskin, they have no ways to protect themselves what so ever. Of course, I have an idea for each of them having unique defensive ability.
Fire should have a life steal(regain health as you deal damage). Because fire is a very aggressive element and require skill to hit enemies, it would be very fitting to have a life steal passive skill for fire attacks. This way, not only we make fire element more reliable but also remove their dependency for Magic Shield. This can also promote more use of health up. How would a fire mage get life steal? You basically consume the heat of enemies and use it to your own health.
Ether should have a skill that give you x% chance to become invulnerable for 1 second when hit by an attack. Considering the fact that ether is involved with phasing and portals, we can say that you instinctively transform into an ethereal form for a short period of time when you feel danger.
Earth should make the boulder to block projectiles and magic at the cost of it's durability. First, it just make sense. Second, if you know how to use earth mage, you know that your secondary spells are more important than your primary spell. So having weaker boulder as a result would be fine.
What are your thoughts about Magic Shield being essential skill in game? Is this a serious problem that must be fixed in SKHD? Or is this just fine as it is right now? Let me know you guys think about this phenomenon on the comment section.
And as always
Live long and prosper Mr. Raptis
Comments
Many RPGs suffer from this. It's one of the problems with an action RPG. Probably the only one I've played that dealt with it pretty well was Titan Quest.
In SKHD I am looking to mediate this a bit. Now, a wizard WILL always be a frail creature. Withstanding damage is for Paladins. Dodging is for Rogues. The nature of the wizard is to be a siege engine, all about widespread damage but is always at serious risk.
But simply for variety, yes I don't intend Magic Shield to be an absolute must-have. This problem is known to me, and I will be working to eliminate the need.
1, All attacks by enemies has to be dodge-able in some way: Again, more the domain of the rogue. But since it is a video game, yes, many attacks should be dodgeable (not all) but not all, and not even most-- being vulnerable is the trade off of playing a mage (early game, hard, late game easy). The previous SK didn't have multiple classes, so the wizard kinda takes on a lot of the other classes' attributes, but it won't be quite the same in SKHD. I prefer another solution.
2. Poison damage system needs change: I'll probably tweak it a little, but that'll be a "play it and see" situation. I won't reduce both poison damage AND time with resistance-- it'll be one or the other.
3. There should be more defensive options for other mages except frost mage: Yes, frost is a bit unbalanced. There was stoneskin in Dark, and that'll be back in SKHD, but in general the defensive properties of the mages will be reduced in SKHD in favor of more offense, since beginner players should play the Paladin, and wizard would be considered "expert." That presence of other classes kinda changes things. But since original SK was wizard ONLY, it had to be accessible for all users.
In general, my philosophy on classes goes like this:
Warrior: Low difficulty in early game, high difficulty in late game
Rogue: Balanced difficulty across the entire game
Mage: High difficulty in early game, low difficulty in late game
Thus, I just go with a general idea and find the specifics when I play through the game, which I typically do over two hundred times before I show it to anyone else. :)
I know it's hard to imagine that such a domino effect is possible, but in original Keep, you cannot push back against monsters at all. In Solomon Dark, you can slightly, and in SKHD there's actually a strength factor involved. These miniscule differences have a huge butterfly effect on gameplay that just can't be predicted. I've done this many a time-- it results from tiny changes are so chaotic that anything more than general planning is worthless. And by "general" I mean as general as "let's try not to make Magic shield so incredibly necessary."
Incidentally, original Keep didn't originally have multiple difficulties. It was balanced for a single run at Solomon and added difficulties were added lated. The student difficulty of original keep can DEFINITELY be won without Magic Shield.
The new code is going to be so different that a lot of these issues could just resolve "naturally."
While up against the 3rd Unholy, he will do so litter damage to you that Magic Shield becomes negligible and I didn't even turn it on. Generally the orbs will be more than sufficient for you to recover your health.
Downside during that run was my Dmg wasn't enough and i spent more than an hour killing that Unholy. The imps will also STOP dropping any kind of loot including orbs after an hour or so.