Why skill cooldowns?

[SneakyErvin]

20 hours ago, xombob89 said:

I dont mind that ONE warframe out of 40+ has cooldowns, its his gimmick and can be useful sometimes when energy is a problem. Opens up new modding possibilities too since he doesnt need any energy related mods or arcanes. 

As long as it doesnt become a habbit.

He will never be more useful than Inaros, Grendel or Hildryn when it comes to avoiding energy punishment scenarios. And while he may not need energy mods or arcanes, he was still supposed to benefit greatly from efficiency, DE just failed at making it so in his current iteration due to his 3 being such a piss poor CD management skill. My Grendel/Inaros has more reliable skill uptime than my Lavos, even in the thick of it among infested leeches and disruptor buffed units. They also dont need to stop mowing through the enemies in order to get full benefit from a skill to reduce the CD of another. And if you want some frame in between with the tanky potential of Lavos and far higher damage output you can just pick Wukong and a good AoE gun for his clone.

[EmberStar]

On 2021-01-21 at 9:52 AM, Loza03 said:

- the suggestion that limiting the player is fundamentally anti-game is genuinely ludicrous.

 

It seems to me like some of the "best" and most highly regarded games are *defined* by how they limit the player.  In Dark Souls games, even common enemies are stronger than the player.  The little I've seen of combat in that game is knowing what an enemy will do so that when they attack you can be already blocking or rolling out of the way.  Because if they hit you, they'll probably kill you.

Monster Hunter:  World apparently places heavy limits on the player.  Fighting is all about positioning and timing, to the point that just blindly attacking enemies will result in the player stunlocking *themself* as their weapon rebounds off of the impenetrable armor that protects most of the bosses.

Doom (2016) is designed entirely around having limited ammo and health pickups, and requiring the player to figure out when to use the chainsaw and Glory Kills to generate health and ammo, and balance that against the limited fuel for the chainsaw.  I'm pretty sure the chainsaw doesn't generate ammo for *itself.*  It's also a weapon that can one-shot any enemy that's vulnerable to it at all, so there's also the tactical choice of saving it until you need ammo and *also* are fighting something strong enough that you really, really want to kill it instantly.  Ammo for the BFG is also really limited, so you have to choose between utterly wasting it by shooting a handful of enemies (but damn it looks cool!) or saving it for when you're facing a massive horde, or a boss-class enemy where being able to vaporize half their enormous health pool in a single shot is probably a good idea.

I also play Ark:  Survival Evolved, at least in singleplayer mode.  And that game is also defined by the massive limitations it puts on the player.  In that game you can gain up to 155 levels, but the default is 105.  The extra 50 levels are a reward for defeating a selection of the game's ultimate bosses at the highest difficulty where they have the most health and do the most damage.  (The player is rewarded with +5 levels for each difficulty tier, Gamma Beta Alpha.  But if you fight the boss at the hardest tier you'll also get all the rewards for the lower tiers, because if you can beat Broodmother Lystrix when she has a million HP then obviously you could have taken her when she had less than half that.)  The other five levels comes from fighting hordes of Alpha mini-boss creatures to level up a little cosmetic pet.  Which seems to require a total of about two million Alpha XP.

Even if you dump all 155 levels into health, the player character will never have a fraction of the HP of even a weak, low level dinosaur.  Because it's a freaking dinosaur and it's six times bigger than you.  "Progression" in that game is all about building a base to store raw materials and enable you to focus on more efficient crafting, and on finding and taming the most powerful creatures you can find.  (And probably also learning how to breed them to get the best stats, and then mass producing an army of the best fighting monsters you can.)  But even when your character has defeated the Alpha King Titan, a pack of mid-level raptors is still going to gnaw your face off if they catch you by surprise when you're not riding something bigger than they are.

Don't Starve is another game that seems to be almost defined by how limited the player is - you start out alone and with nothing, in a strange land where food is scarce and most things are hostile and more than capable of killing you.  Oh, and if you die without having *crafted* a respawn mannequin or found one of the incredibly rare reincarnation touchstones then the game is simply and immediately *over.*  Thanks for playing, please come again!  When you start out you're desperately searching for anything edible and also trying to avoid spiders, hounds, cranky beefalo, and *also* find enough firewood and stones to build a campfire and keep it burning all night.  Did I mention that the darkness will kill you?  Because the darkness will kill you.  Probably almost everyone who has ever played that game has watched Winston die in a day or two on their first try.  (Unless they did a massive amount of cheaty homework by watching Let's Plays, in which case they learned from watching someone *else* get Winston killed over and over.)

Even abstract games like Chess or Checkers are defined by rules that limit how pieces can move.  Each chess piece can only move in very specific ways.  You can't make any move that would place the King in danger (including moving other pieces if their absence would expose the King to attack, which is how a stalemate can happen.)

Many games *do* have modes where there's no limits on what the player can build and either no enemies or they're unable to harm the player.  It's usually called Creative mode, and it's less about playing the game than using whatever creative tools the program provides as an artistic medium.  People *do* use Creative mode for building tutorials and stuff, in the sense of "here's how to assemble the parts to make an awesome looking fortress/spaceship.  I did this in Creative because no one wants to watch a fifteen hour video of me smashing rocks to get building materials every single time I make one of these.  Building this in Survival mode will take *slightly* longer than it does in this video."

[SneakyErvin]

19 hours ago, EmberStar said:

It seems to me like some of the "best" and most highly regarded games are *defined* by how they limit the player. 

Limits are all good to have, they should however fit in with the system they try to limit. Lavos for instance would likely fit well in with a more tactical game in his current iteration, but WF just isnt a tactical game. He'd also make a wonderful Overwatch hero with his current kit and limitations, his 3 would just need to be reworked to build ultimate charge quicker since his 4 would be his ult. But then again WF isnt Overwatch, so the system they gave him doesnt really fit in or work well.

For me Lavos' CD system feels like if they'd add souls like enemies to the game with the current mob density of WF, it just wouldnt work well even if it does in other games.

[rikimaru6811]

6 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

Limits are all good to have, they should however fit in with the system they try to limit. Lavos for instance would likely fit well in with a more tactical game in his current iteration, but WF just isnt a tactical game.

Wrong. Everything you do is tactical. Every energy pad you drop is a tactical decision. Every click, ability cast, the way you prioritize target, is tactical. They are simply challenging the way players adapt to another layer of resource management - energy - which is now CD.

It's simple, Lavos is for people who likes rewards (massive kill potential) from proper timing and resource management (CD). There are frames for people who like to spam energy pads and abilities. Use those frames instead, and leave Lavos for people who likes thinking, even if it's just a little bit more than usual.

11 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

For me Lavos' CD system feels like if they'd add souls like enemies to the game with the current mob density of WF, it just wouldnt work well even if it does in other games.

wtf does that even mean

[Loza03]

3 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

Limits are all good to have, they should however fit in with the system they try to limit. Lavos for instance would likely fit well in with a more tactical game in his current iteration, but WF just isnt a tactical game. He'd also make a wonderful Overwatch hero with his current kit and limitations, his 3 would just need to be reworked to build ultimate charge quicker since his 4 would be his ult. But then again WF isnt Overwatch, so the system they gave him doesnt really fit in or work well.

For me Lavos' CD system feels like if they'd add souls like enemies to the game with the current mob density of WF, it just wouldnt work well even if it does in other games.

What IS Warframe, then?

Is it a horde shooter? Player power makes the 'horde' a non-issue instead of having to rely on the elements of clever crowd control, movement planning and target prioritisation most horde games utilise. Good examples of these would be the likes of Deep Rock Galactic or Left 4 Dead.

Is it a Musou-like? Its objectives are far too underplayed and too focused on being the combat itself, whilst true Musou games use elements of real-time strategy, generally testing your time and organisation rather than your actual combat prowess. Rarely are you actually thrown into a situation where brute force is the only option. Some, like Dynasty Warriors 8, even have light unit commanding in some areas.

Is it a Diabloid? Its loot progression doesn't really seem to support this since it has almost no Randomisation, and it seems to focus on build variety based on known variables over god rolls, with its main element of that being highly controversial. WF's loot bears more similarity to Monster Hunter than Diablo (which I personally prefer, by the way).

Is it a Halo-like or a Boomer Shooter? Its core gameplay loop is nowhere near strong enough since all the game's builds focus on making one individual strategy dominant by eliminating costs whilst bolstering power, as opposed to these games which rely on quick thinking and resource management (although the specifics between them are different).

 

It's all well and good saying that Lavos doesn't fit, but what's he actually trying to fit into?

[EmberStar]

I think Lavos could fit just fine.  His current issues aren't that he can't work in the game mechanically.  At least to me, it feels more like tuning issues.  His third and fourth don't synergize well because his fourth effectively has *two* durations to deal with, and Trasnmutation Probe will only reduce the second one.  I'm not sure the best way to fix that, but it probably is fixable.  (Maybe by letting the fourth "remember" that probe had been cast already and letting it reduce the reset phase cooldown once the "expanding ring" phase ends.)  They also really need to reconsider how his powers interact with Efficiency and Duration mods - Efficiency is pretty useless, and Duration is actually almost counterproductive to increase because it *also* increases the Active phase of his third and fourth powers.  (At least when I tried it, it greatly *reduced* how often you could cast the third because the Active phase was longer, and increased the time where you can't affect the duration of his fourth as the ring expands.)

Transmutation Probe also just needs to be less vulnerable to getting stuck.  It needs to have inherent punchthrough, basically.  Honestly, it should be able to glide through enemies, and railings, and the dreaded inch-high-stick, but it would be fine if it was still blocked by walls and terrain.  Right now it gets stuck on basically everything, so you can't even make full use of it to damage enemies or convert pickups.  Because it often can't *reach* them due to getting stuck on the first enemy or slight obstacle it bumps into.

[S.Dust]

Stuff like this is why this game will never have challenging content. Cooldowns seem like the smartest way they could balance the game at this point without just nerfing all the abilities.

[JackHargreav]

40 minutes ago, S.Dust said:

Stuff like this is why this game will never have challenging content. Cooldowns seem like the smartest way they could balance the game at this point without just nerfing all the abilities.

Oh boy if they would add cooldowns to every ability. The forums would crash.

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

It's been nearly 2 years since Hildryn released, and DE hasn't added another ability that takes shields, so I see no reason to assume that cooldowns will replace energy outside of Lavos. DE barely updates frames anyway, so is it really likely that they'll change 43 other frames to fit the cooldown system if they do 1-2 reworks per year?

[_junguler]

there are games that cd can work for but warframe is not one of them, the whole point of this game is power fantasy and fast paced gameplay and cooldowns are the exact opposite of that.

[Corvid]

6 hours ago, _junguler said:

there are games that cd can work for but warframe is not one of them, the whole point of this game is power fantasy and fast paced gameplay and cooldowns are the exact opposite of that.

Maybe try reading the thread first so you can understand what a load of tripe this is.

[SneakyErvin]

23 hours ago, rikimaru6811 said:

Wrong. Everything you do is tactical. Every energy pad you drop is a tactical decision. Every click, ability cast, the way you prioritize target, is tactical. They are simply challenging the way players adapt to another layer of resource management - energy - which is now CD.

It's simple, Lavos is for people who likes rewards (massive kill potential) from proper timing and resource management (CD). There are frames for people who like to spam energy pads and abilities. Use those frames instead, and leave Lavos for people who likes thinking, even if it's just a little bit more than usual.

wtf does that even mean

I wouldnt call that tactical since there are no real limitaions or tactical battlefield assements/decisions being made. Are you very new in the game? If so I understand your PoV, but when you get far down the line there is no prioritizing of targets anymore, or situations where you rely on tactically deploying energy pads and so on to stay afloat. You get to a point where all of that is just gone.

What massive killing potential reward are you talking about? The skill that needs build up of statuses to do any significant damage compared to other AoE skills? By the time you've applied enough statuses to justify the 30 sec CD the mobs are already long dead, no matter if you run normal content or steel path. The skill looks amazing when you run undergeared in content to show off the skill, but in live combat with proper gearing the skill is utterly pointless and comes with a redundant mechanic. Hence why it looked awesome in the devstream where Lavos was showcased. What I want for Lavos is simply getting him up to par, with restrictions and benefits from his CD mechanics, since currently he has only restrictions. The current CD system of Lavos is bad, that doesnt mean that a CD system properly designed wont work or feel great in WF, Lavos system is however not that system.

And wtf that means? Well read it again if you didnt figure it out.

On 2021-01-23 at 1:54 PM, Loza03 said:

What IS Warframe, then?

Is it a horde shooter? Player power makes the 'horde' a non-issue instead of having to rely on the elements of clever crowd control, movement planning and target prioritisation most horde games utilise. Good examples of these would be the likes of Deep Rock Galactic or Left 4 Dead.

Is it a Musou-like? Its objectives are far too underplayed and too focused on being the combat itself, whilst true Musou games use elements of real-time strategy, generally testing your time and organisation rather than your actual combat prowess. Rarely are you actually thrown into a situation where brute force is the only option. Some, like Dynasty Warriors 8, even have light unit commanding in some areas.

Is it a Diabloid? Its loot progression doesn't really seem to support this since it has almost no Randomisation, and it seems to focus on build variety based on known variables over god rolls, with its main element of that being highly controversial. WF's loot bears more similarity to Monster Hunter than Diablo (which I personally prefer, by the way).

Is it a Halo-like or a Boomer Shooter? Its core gameplay loop is nowhere near strong enough since all the game's builds focus on making one individual strategy dominant by eliminating costs whilst bolstering power, as opposed to these games which rely on quick thinking and resource management (although the specifics between them are different).

 

It's all well and good saying that Lavos doesn't fit, but what's he actually trying to fit into?

WF is unique. I'd say it is a mix between horde shooter and diabolesque hack 'n slash at an extreme pace compared to other games out there. That doesnt mean it is well balanced, good for the game or that it should stay as is. I'm more pointing out that you dont throw a new system mechanic at the pile of mess and hope it sticks, you rework what needs to be reworked first. What I'm saying is that Lavos doesnt work or fit into the current game, since his setup is that of a hero/character/class designed for a far slower type of gameplay where the choice in using abilities would matter far more. Right now he's in competition with 40+ other frames and his abilities arent designed well enough in any way to keep up with those other frames. The game may be trivial and the skill may not really matter, but that isnt an excuse for letting really poor design slip by.

And in all honesty, we shouldnt take loot into consideration since that has absolutely no impact on how the combat of a game works, or how many enemies you face etc. Just looking at pure isometric Diablo-like games you have a multitude of different loot systems and gearing progression etc. They are still Diablo-like in combat.

[Krankbert]

vor 10 Stunden schrieb _junguler:

the whole point of this game is power fantasy

Sometimes I question whether people actually mean anything by that or if it's just something they say because they realize that nobody cares about their personal gameplay preferences.

[Loza03]

5 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

WF is unique. I'd say it is a mix between horde shooter and diabolesque hack 'n slash at an extreme pace compared to other games out there. That doesnt mean it is well balanced, good for the game or that it should stay as is. I'm more pointing out that you dont throw a new system mechanic at the pile of mess and hope it sticks, you rework what needs to be reworked first. What I'm saying is that Lavos doesnt work or fit into the current game, since his setup is that of a hero/character/class designed for a far slower type of gameplay where the choice in using abilities would matter far more. Right now he's in competition with 40+ other frames and his abilities arent designed well enough in any way to keep up with those other frames. The game may be trivial and the skill may not really matter, but that isnt an excuse for letting really poor design slip by.

And in all honesty, we shouldnt take loot into consideration since that has absolutely no impact on how the combat of a game works, or how many enemies you face etc. Just looking at pure isometric Diablo-like games you have a multitude of different loot systems and gearing progression etc. They are still Diablo-like in combat.

Is Warframe fast paced?

No, really, is Warframe actually fast-paced?

People say it is, but, seriously, let's genuinely analyse that claim for a second. What is pacing? Well, speed. How fast are you going, how often do you need to do something, how much input do you have to do. This is why individual moments can be faster or slower paced than others - a section of gameplay with less happening is slower paced.

 

Spoiler

 

Is the above, where the POV player doesn't need to move, cast abilities or fire their weapon for half-minutes at a time, fast paced gameplay? Not 'cannot' - doesn't need to. No inputs are happening no matter how many are actually available.

By contrast, let's look at a game with cooldowns: Monster Hunter Rise. MHRise has actually tied facets of its mobility into cooldowns shared with attacks, and of course you move much more slowly.

Spoiler

 

Consider the difference. In the second video, the player is always doing something. They're always moving, they're always attacking, always doing something. They have to, to succeed. Plus it's usually a number of different things based on the circumstances.

Ok, maybe that's not fair, one's a speedrun, one's endurance. So let's look at something more related - an Orphix Venom high-score run.

Spoiler

 

Even here, in something roughly equivalent (speedrunning isn't really a thing in OV, but it's something that encourages maximum engagement and getting things done quickly and efficiently), the player is: Moving to a place, sitting down with a power and then turning their camera around holding left trigger. Not to bash on the player in question, because they're clearly as dedicated as the above to finding the optimal strategies and certainly to getting the good RNG needed to achieve this. It's still a lot of work and I respect them for that much. All my criticism is levelled at the game.

 

So why am I saying this? Cooldowns mean absolutely nothing about the pace of the game. And Warframe's 'uniqueness' is built primarily on illusions and lots of stuff visually happening, but not necessarily actually happening. Warframe is quite often a very slow-paced game.

In so many words, Lavos not fitting in because he takes more effort than everything else in the game is a good thing. He's the standard that everything else should be living up to.

 

Also, if loot isn't affecting how you experience the game, then loot shouldn't be in the game to begin with. It's just stats for no reason. Fortunately, this is not the case with Warframe, clearly, since we're discussing how a piece of loot fundamentally affects how we experience the game.

[Psianide73]

OP posts something controversial/daft, then vanishes...

[STUVash]

Le 18/01/2021 à 08:07, genuvine a dit :

Blocking players up to 10 secs for using skills they love to use?

serious answers please. 

1) It's just Lavos.

2) Since you're specifically talking about 10 seconds cooldown, you must be referring to Helminth-infused abilities. If instead of picking a spammable one, you'd have taken a long duration one, you wouldn't even notice the cooldown.

3) Let's assume there would have been no cooldown, there would have been Energy I suppose, right ?
-You'd be able to Vial Rush constantly, which takes so much space on the map and the screen, that part is horrible. God bless cooldown for that ability.

-You'd be able to spam an ability which deal more damage per status which can ramp up to higher than x1024 damage...? This is without counting the multipliers from Magnetic or Viral status effect so in practice it's even higher than that. Repeat that process maybe 2 or 3 times. And then consume that long Heat DoT damage instantly with Thermal Sunder for even more instant damage, which can work on most bosses of the game ? 
I already felt bad when Protea got buffed but this is even more damage just from abilities, surely cooldown are quite justified there right ? It's like a Heavy Attack but for abilities if you wish, where status are the combos.

-Lastly, Lavos doesn't jut have abilities, he also has powerful passives. You may have cooldowns as a downside but you have other passives allowing for lot more build variety. I personally prefer it that way.

PS: I really like playing Lavos too, 6 formas 6 config slots. I'm thinking about crafting a 2nd one just to have more builds.

[SneakyErvin]

5 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Is Warframe fast paced?

No, really, is Warframe actually fast-paced?

People say it is, but, seriously, let's genuinely analyse that claim for a second. What is pacing? Well, speed. How fast are you going, how often do you need to do something, how much input do you have to do. This is why individual moments can be faster or slower paced than others - a section of gameplay with less happening is slower paced.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Is the above, where the POV player doesn't need to move, cast abilities or fire their weapon for half-minutes at a time, fast paced gameplay? Not 'cannot' - doesn't need to. No inputs are happening no matter how many are actually available.

By contrast, let's look at a game with cooldowns: Monster Hunter Rise. MHRise has actually tied facets of its mobility into cooldowns shared with attacks, and of course you move much more slowly.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Consider the difference. In the second video, the player is always doing something. They're always moving, they're always attacking, always doing something. They have to, to succeed. Plus it's usually a number of different things based on the circumstances.

Ok, maybe that's not fair, one's a speedrun, one's endurance. So let's look at something more related - an Orphix Venom high-score run.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Even here, in something roughly equivalent (speedrunning isn't really a thing in OV, but it's something that encourages maximum engagement and getting things done quickly and efficiently), the player is: Moving to a place, sitting down with a power and then turning their camera around holding left trigger. Not to bash on the player in question, because they're clearly as dedicated as the above to finding the optimal strategies and certainly to getting the good RNG needed to achieve this. It's still a lot of work and I respect them for that much. All my criticism is levelled at the game.

 

So why am I saying this? Cooldowns mean absolutely nothing about the pace of the game. And Warframe's 'uniqueness' is built primarily on illusions and lots of stuff visually happening, but not necessarily actually happening. Warframe is quite often a very slow-paced game.

In so many words, Lavos not fitting in because he takes more effort than everything else in the game is a good thing. He's the standard that everything else should be living up to.

 

Also, if loot isn't affecting how you experience the game, then loot shouldn't be in the game to begin with. It's just stats for no reason. Fortunately, this is not the case with Warframe, clearly, since we're discussing how a piece of loot fundamentally affects how we experience the game.

Like I said "That doesnt mean it is well balanced, good for the game or that it should stay as is". WF is still a game with fast paced combat, not all frame equal the handful of AoE frames that can just stand there and kill. Even though, them killing fast also equals a fast pace since things die instantly all around. We dont stop to think about tactical engagement. And cooldowns mean alot for the pace of the game, that however doesnt mean that cooldowns dont fit in a fast paced game, it all depends on the length of the CDs and the system it is applied to. Lavos simply has too much behind very lengthy CDs. I mean, his shortest CD is 5 seconds long, which tends to be seen as long CD's in most games for normal skills. Now take into account how easy it is to manage energy in WF and it ends up like a massive punishment in the end with such lengthy CDs as the minimum. And ontop of it we should add the fact that the skills have no innate benefits either for being locked to those CD lengths. This because WF lacks an actual item budget in the design process and goes by a "this would be cool" system instead.

And of course loot affects how we experience a game, it still doesnt alter the combat system of the game, which is what we talk about. Like I said, there is no universal "diablo" loot system out there that is the same in all similar games. It ranges from drop rules, stat distribution and itemization slots as a whole between the games. You have everything from homogenous D3 to the very RNG heavy nature of PoE, Grim Dawn and Borderlands, aswell as the massive itemization loadout of Marvel Heroes, that both had the more homogenized D3 "class" based RNG, along with far more total items in the itemization progression, plus RNG stats ranges on gear, with the old D2 system of skill ranks on items aswell. Not only that but it was also a game with several different layers of critical damage.

[Loza03]

5 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Like I said "That doesnt mean it is well balanced, good for the game or that it should stay as is". WF is still a game with fast paced combat, not all frame equal the handful of AoE frames that can just stand there and kill. Even though, them killing fast also equals a fast pace since things die instantly all around. We dont stop to think about tactical engagement. And cooldowns mean alot for the pace of the game, that however doesnt mean that cooldowns dont fit in a fast paced game, it all depends on the length of the CDs and the system it is applied to. Lavos simply has too much behind very lengthy CDs. I mean, his shortest CD is 5 seconds long, which tends to be seen as long CD's in most games for normal skills. Now take into account how easy it is to manage energy in WF and it ends up like a massive punishment in the end with such lengthy CDs as the minimum. And ontop of it we should add the fact that the skills have no innate benefits either for being locked to those CD lengths. This because WF lacks an actual item budget in the design process and goes by a "this would be cool" system instead.

And of course loot affects how we experience a game, it still doesnt alter the combat system of the game, which is what we talk about. Like I said, there is no universal "diablo" loot system out there that is the same in all similar games. It ranges from drop rules, stat distribution and itemization slots as a whole between the games. You have everything from homogenous D3 to the very RNG heavy nature of PoE, Grim Dawn and Borderlands, aswell as the massive itemization loadout of Marvel Heroes, that both had the more homogenized D3 "class" based RNG, along with far more total items in the itemization progression, plus RNG stats ranges on gear, with the old D2 system of skill ranks on items aswell. Not only that but it was also a game with several different layers of critical damage.

You're right. We don't think about tactics, there is no opportunity costs, and it's way too easy to just spam out abilities all day. As you say, it isn't well balanced, good for the game, and it shouldn't stay as-is.

 

So, when a frame comes along where this isn't the case, where their immense power is counterbalanced by their costs of using it (with sub-par damage per second, but huge burst damage) and so forth, why would you complain that they don't fit in? Why request that they fit in with something you acknowledge is bad for the game?

[SneakyErvin]

10 hours ago, Loza03 said:

You're right. We don't think about tactics, there is no opportunity costs, and it's way too easy to just spam out abilities all day. As you say, it isn't well balanced, good for the game, and it shouldn't stay as-is.

 

So, when a frame comes along where this isn't the case, where their immense power is counterbalanced by their costs of using it (with sub-par damage per second, but huge burst damage) and so forth, why would you complain that they don't fit in? Why request that they fit in with something you acknowledge is bad for the game?

I already answered that "The game may be trivial and the skill may not really matter, but that isnt an excuse for letting really poor design slip by.". Which sums up Lavos since he fits into a completely different system. He doesnt have an actual counter balance or any immense power since the burst he has the potential to bring is pointless in the game since things are dead before he reaches that point. DE should have designed him to fit the current system, then reworked all of it if that is their intent. One frame more or less to rework doesnt change much in the longrun, however, having a frame that is out of place until an gamewide overhaul is made is just a bad decision. And Lavos doesnt come with natural on demand burst either to compensate the long CDs and low dps, he comes with mediocre damage that needs support from prolonged skill use or weapons already. If his 4 was a massive on demand nuke that he could use each 35 sec as standard it would be a different thing, since he would be rewarded with a nuke-it-from-orbit free card. Like how very long CD nuke skills tend to work in games.

Even when Gaz were about to rework the whole system for Marvel Heroes they still released new heroes under the old system while adjusting them later to the new. That is a correct design approach. Lavos is just throwing more to the crap pile in hope that something sticks. They also had the right idea around ult skills, if they had a long CD they would bring massive damage with no real set up required first. Lavos should follow such a philosophy imo with his extremely long ult CD, it should not hit like a skill that can be spammed.