Balance Commentary | Patreon Weekly #171

Hey Patrons!

Firstly, here are the results from Patreon Poll #33:
New Hero: Duelist: 72%
New Hero: Cleric:  62%
Ambitious Imp Quest Rework:  56%
Shop Rework and Expansion: 44%
Blacksmith Quest Rework: 28%
It’s not surprising to me that the new heroes did so well, but I am really surprised by how poorly the blacksmith quest did! It still needs to get done relatively soon, but especially as we’re well into 2022, I am considering shifting priorities to one of the new heroes, before circling back to working on the blacksmith’s quest a little later.

For the rest of this weekly, I’m going to share my process for coming up with some of the smaller mechanics adjustments in v1.4.0.

Smaller Mechanics Tweaks

Empowered Strike (damage bonus lowered, now gives an on-hit effect bonus): With the Ring of Arcana being added, Shattered now has a built-in system for powering up enchantment effects. Using that system seemed like an easy way to make Empowered Strike more interesting without fundamentally changing it. I really like the simple gameplay of zap -> whack that the talent encourages, now the effect just varies a bit based on your wand.

Excess Charge (now triggers when zapping at full charge, barrier buffed): Speaking of encouraging gamelay, excess charge has been on my list to change for a while now. It was meant to provide value in cases where you wouldn’t normally get bonus charge from melee but ended up more rewarding builds that dedicated themselves to ignoring zapping with the staff. The new mechanics still depend on full charge, but now require you to actually use the magic in your staff.

Bounty Hunter (now boosts drop rates, no longer drops straight gold): I’ve agreed with most players for a while now that this talent’s effect is pretty boring. Now bounty hunter gives the Assassin a more varied farming bonus, rather than just some extra gold. I toyed with making the talent reward killing the same enemy type multiple times (as if you were hunting a bounty), but this ended up being too complex and gameplay-altering for a talent.

Ring of Wealth (consumable droprate and equip drop levels boosted): Wealth is quite popular but surprisingly weak in terms of winrate. The change here mildly buffs the ring at all levels, but mostly buffs it at high levels by giving players more consistent access to upgraded consumable drops and guaranteed levels on gear drops. With a bit of luck it’s now possible for a highly upgraded ring of wealth to completely pay your SoU back over two other equip drops.

Blocking (now gives a barrier sometimes, instead of a little armor always): An enchantment that isn’t actually weak, but always felt weak as the benefit was purely passive. I don’t expect the actual value of blocking will change, but now that it has a chance to grant a barrier, the effect it gives should be more noticeable.