I think what will probably make more of a difference is the reduced potential number of monsters on a given floor.
Thanks, that makes sense. Kepa, sorry if you've been asked this already, I haven't read the thread yet, but would it hurt to put a chance of hats dropping from the furniture breaking? Its sad that you made every object destructable for no apparent reason.
This is a wonderful suggestion. I love breaking stuff. But the occasional copper or silver seems lame. Maybe there is something you could do? If not hats, something...
I think breaking stuff is fine how it is. Tons of games have inessential items to break to get a little extra cash like this.
Coins come out sometimes, as a middle ground. In our previous game, Mage Gauntlet, coins wouldn't come out ever, there truly was no reason to break stuff for the most part. I don't think I'd ever put in a good reason to destroy furniture, because I don't want give incentive to breaking every single thing you see. Huge experimental change I'm considering and have been testing (it took like 2 minutes to do): Buffing dagger damage so it's the same as the other weapons. Slowing them down very slightly, so they attack every 0.3 seconds instead of every 0.25 (for reference, shortswords are 0.35 seconds). Backstabs still do the same damage. This greatly helps Rogue not suck against situations where she can't reliably backstab enemies. This includes enemies that don't really have a consistent "back", ones that are too fast to get behind, or just when you're facing a huge group of enemies like you constantly will in the fourth dungeon. The downside: It kind of makes the Rogue more like the Spellsword. The Spellsword becomes less "special" since they can both be used as in-your-face fighters. Not sure what to do about that, really, or if it's good enough that they get different items and forge upgrades.
If you're looking for feedback/opinions, I'd go against slowing her attack down and boosting her damage. Her speed is what defines her. Also, having her weapon do the same damage as other classes' doesn't give too much of an inscentive to master the backastab ability. That being said, I have no easy idea on how you'd balance her otherwise.
I always thought a rogue should have high damage low health. Ultimately doing more damage than a warrior but being more fragile (fra•jee•lay must be Italian).
No no no no! Stuck behind chest on 9th floor! A cloaked mob in the pre-boss mob room on the 9th floor pushed me behind a chest. Happened when I shielded and clipped me right through it. Now I'm all loaded with 2 hourglasses, 2 flame potions, skullhack, and stone slab shield II - and unable to get out from behind this chest Unstuck option please? Or "make empty chests disappear from this room" option could be less apt for abuse. Screenshot included - be sad along with me. Screenshot:
I don't really like the sound of that, I think you should leave rogue alone. The speed and dash more than make up for the low attack damage.
Need to do something with Rogue though. You'll see why in the new dungeon. When you're facing huge amounts of enemies, it becomes truly difficult to use backstabs. And if you can't, the speed is meaningless because you need to attack twice as much. You end up having less DPS than the 2-hander characters, while having a tiny portion of the range. Could always push the experimental change this update so people can test it for themselves, then maybe revert it in update 2 (when we revamp Fake Out and such). Is it just characters with two swipe types that you have problems with? I mean, do you find it difficult to register dashing swipes as the Rogue and Spellsword? I think you said you were on iPhone, not iPad... Magebane gives you some passive magic damage protection I think, and the axes themselves destroy any magic projectiles they pass through. Tome of Storms is one of my favorites, it's a 100% chance to stun and also does huge amounts of damage. Level II does 30 damage (normal sword attacks are 10). Point of Atta's Bite is that Toadskin Cowters only work for things that hit you, so Atta's can apply poison with no health loss on your part. Mirage Poniard would be super overpowered if it always worked, but I am looking into buffing this in Update 2. Mostly we haven't really looked into Adventurer, Cultist, and Spellsword yet for balancing. I'll take a look in Update 2 for those. They got some little tweaks in this first update, though. Zephyr Boots are bugged right now, fixing that in Update 2 I think. The point of both Akuma's Scrollshell and Deathguard is that both can 100% prevent incoming damage, if you use them before getting hit. May look into Orcfist. Brilliant Purple was limited to 2 or 3 foes because it's not just the damage they do, it's also that you can backstab for another 20 damage to stunned targets. Chaos Girdle actually used to grant stealth too, that was removed because it was hands down the best upgrade by far for Cultist (and it maybe still is).
@kepa If it is completed, have you beaten the diamond dungeon with the ver 1.00 Rogue? If it's doable I'd like to try it, but if it's near impossible you might as well put in your alternative Rogue in update 1 to see peoples responses to the changes.
Idea for Rogue change: Give her an actual combo (not like the other characters who have a 1-2 slash).Something like stab, stab, stab, lunge slash/stab (short short lunge to not force you to leap into the thorny arms of death) lunge slash could do slight knockback and do triple damage, but be unable to backstab; In other words, you can choose when you need to backstab spam, combo for more or "aoe" damage or preemptively start a combo in front of a mob or something. It would make her less button-mashy, (which btw I LOVE when you get a string of backstabs on an enemy like a boss or the morning star knight captains) and allow you to have something to fiddle with till she feels right. Could even have different combo attacks per weapon! (Atta's could do aoe poison cloud on fourth hit, but with a delay so use carefully! poison cloud would do like 1 direct damage, but leave a DoT) Really this would open up cool stuff you could do with Renee! (hell, make it a toggle on her hero description page: Stiletto-style (current) or Cinquedea-style (new combo system thing) Alternately, you could give her a special attack after a charge attack/kick. When you do your charge attack, tapping to attack right afterward would do a special spin slash or something similar. Also, you could give her stealth if she dashes while near a wall. After dashing while next to a wall (not towards it from far away, but like dash start *and* stop near a wall) she would gain invisibility while near the wall, which drains stamina over time. Would allow you to deal with groups if you are smart, and offer a radically different take on her gameplay. Another take on the issue of larger or more dangerous mobs would be give her a charm ability. Could be a hero upgrade/ability taking the place of your least favorite one (Varoisian Moxie becomes 2%,4%,6%,8%,10% or so to charm upon backstab or charge attack, numbers aren't my thing), or a weapon/item upgrade or even a new consumable which is frequently found. When used it would charm one/some enemies into fighting on your side for a few moments. Gives you a chance to backstab for free (I would recommend it *not* breaking on damage), or let them live to help you take on a swarm. Also, idea from earlier: New forge upgrade which removes backstab, but allows instant kills on crit. Huge reward for huge cost, synergizes awesomely with other crit items, but since you aren't guaranteed to get one of those not TOO broken, even a downgrade if you are unlucky/not careful .....lol but that's just a random side thought. Another Side Note: Could you make one of the gifts (paladin one maybe?) give the player a free shield buff each floor? Upon entering the floor, you gain the shield buff thing from mage gauntlet when you pick up a heart at full health. Would be awesome, significant and worth the effort to unlock! ......whatever you change for Renee, if its a big change, please put that toggle in! I would love it! Not many games offer the ability to choose to play as a pre-change version of a character. :0 Thanks again Kepa! ^_^ (Btw, Renee is my favorite character, if you couldn't tell, heh. Mage is a close second. '_' )
She's completely awful in there, compared to all the other classes. She's always had that weakness to groups, but the new dungeon makes it blatant. Second weakest is probably Adventurer, but he's still leaps and bounds better. I really don't like combo systems, as they're kind of autopilot-y. The above ideas are cool but none of them address her glaring weakness: She's awful against large groups. Well, except for the stealth one, but that would be insanely powerful. The cultist has limited stealth for that reason. Oh and the no backstab, but instant-kills would help if the chance was really high, but I don't think I want to replace any of her daggers at the moment. Also I'd rather all her daggers not have a glaring weakness against groups. Paladin gift: Not sure yet, may end up being +max health. The Saint Statues are getting fixed though, they're supposed to have a chance to show up on any level instead of only showing up on the second level of the Mines and then never again. We're also planning on making their buffs last between floors, but that's in Update 2.
Kepa do you have access to the Game Center Achievements and could tell us a breakdown of how many people have achieved the Golden Rogue relative to the other characters? That would give us a good idea how difficult the Rogue actually is for the average player. It sounds like you definitely have to buff the Rogue somehow for the diamond dungeon so I'd say go for it since it seems like the easiest buff to do. Oh can you add diamond achievements for each character? The only other easy alternative I can think of is give the Rogue the Slick Kicks as her starting boots (for everybody else those are the ones that "Lets you slide under and trip up enemies, stunning those you pass by"). Especially since with the update you'll be able to fire off two of those in a row, that is an alternative way you could deal with large crowds. Although you may need to increase the stun time a bit? That might be a strong enough buff and let her keep her play style be unique from the Spellsword? That sucks! I have never had that happen to me though, so I assume it's a pretty rare occurrence. What a terrible time for it to happen though you definitely would have crushed the boss. Once you are skilled enough to make it that far once though, it probably won't be that hard to get there again?
I don't think I can look up cheevo completion. Rogue can do Gold dungeon fine enough, but Diamond is a new matter entirely. We might be able to squeeze in Diamond achievements as I try to track down this room door problem. They are very large crowds sometimes in Diamond. Problem with buffing the kicks is that you still have to chase the enemies down after, which can be really difficult when there's tons. The only thing I can see working is a MASSIVE buff to Fake Out, at which point we could look into reverting the "daggers do 10 damage" change if people don't like it. Fake Out is going to be changed so that it makes a little decoy of yourself, like Walwin's Frock that the Mage gets. Except it's used automatically, every time you dash through an enemy you never dashed through before. We could then adjust the time the decoy lasts, until it feels balanced. Probably lower than Walwin's, since you can use it so often. Walwin's Frock is 1.8/2.5 seconds of decoy time in the update. Right now the Mage's version is actually pretty overpowered, at 2/4 seconds.
I agree the Rogue needs changes in order to better handle crowds, but I think your instincts are right in that this set of changes makes the Rogue less distinct, and hopefully other options can be explored. The faster attack is core to what makes the Rogue fun to to play- it's downright cathartic to stun-lock thorned magus' or carmine demons. If only the temerators were more vulnerable to such tactics and it might cure my Gold Dungeon fatigue. At times it feels that the Rogue was designed for a very different game than what Wayward Souls became. She's designed for stealth in a game where you have to kill everybody anyways- there's no real sneaking around after the first reveal. In many respects, she's really the toughest character in the game- everybody else enters the tower with either heavy weapons and/or tremendous magical capabilities, and she shows up with a dagger and a pair of heavy boots. The array of forge upgrades and items available to her suggests a desire to have her rely on her dagger, but backstab is of limited use, especially in crowds. In fact, I've abandoned in most cases the slide-and-backstab move with her. Mostly, I only slide to avoid projectiles. I charge attack when I can, but mostly it's really only once (or at most) twice per room, except when I'm shield breaking. Generally, I just run around and pound on the stab button until everybody is dead, which takes awhile but preserves health. Trying to maneuver in order to backstab invariably leads to trading blows, especially in crowds. Here are some things I've thought of. I tried to limit them to smaller changes, something that could make an update or at least could be easier to test out to see if they are things that could work. I also wanted to keep the changes in the spirit of what I understand a rogue to be in this gaming universe: 1. Make the item that grants poison for the next dagger attack much more powerful, maybe even instant kill for regular enemies. Since it can hit more than one character, that might give a shot to clear out some enemies in a pack. 2. Give her the drake grease as an item drop. I found it effective with the warrior in rooms with lots of small, annoying enemies. I don't know what the 4th dungeon has in store, but if it's rooms full of bats, pigs, or thorned insidiators maybe this can help. She uses poison already, this seems something she'd take advantage of. 3. Give her "Ebonshards" and "Summon Shadow" as item drops. I think these items could be considered in-character for her, as she already appears to be at least a limited practioner of the shadow arts. Summon shadow isn't terribly strong, but ebonshards was useful in crowded rooms for the cultist. 4. Bring back "Ultralucky" from Mage Gauntlet, if it's still hanging out somewhere in the code base. For those who are not familiar with that game, was an item that basically gave the player a 100% critical rate for a limited amount of time. With this item, the Rogue can cut through a crowded room quicker and take less damage as a result. 5. Remove the blind bomb item and give her the cultists' blind ability as an upswipe. It doesn't need forge upgrades. Maybe even re-use the blind bomb's icon for it. This way, the rogue has more ammo to blind large crowds with, but still has to backstab them all. 6. Have the Stun Bomb item also do damage, maybe even significant damage since it's a fairly rare drop. 7. Deploy automatic backstab on poisoned enemies, equivalent to stunned or blinded ones. 8. Give her the ability to interrupt all attacks, even charges (bull slime, big drudge, temerator) and projectile attacks (thorned visio) that other characters can't interrupt.
This may help, depending on the various rules on who gets faked out. Is it only the enemy you dash through or do all enemies in the room focus on the decoy? If the latter, then I feel it becomes functionally similar to blinding but with much more (for lack of better term) ammo. You will still have to go around backstabbing everyone, which is more productive for the cultist due to higher critical rate that character enjoys. Also, Walwin's Frock produces a decoy? I thought it just gave the mage a reverse dash capability.
Ah, too bad. This is just a thought, but if the revamped Fake Out doesn't balance the Rogue, you could try making her also invincible to physical attacks during her dash. This would allow her to get to the back of a massive mob without too much fear of getting struck, thus making her backstab ability useful against swarms. It might also make her over powered as well.
