Patreon Poll #7 - June 2020

Hey Patrons!

Before we get into the poll itself, I’d like to share a couple of changes I’m going to make to how these polls work:

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Previously I tried to make each poll about something I’m currently developing, so that you guys can see the results of your votes quickly. This makes it tricky to commit to a specific schedule though, and we’ve consistently had months without polls as a result. So, moving forward I’m going to be a bit more flexible about what is polled, and will ensure that a poll will always go live in the last Monday of each month, just after the weekly.

Regarding timing, I’ll try to make polls about what’s coming in the next update as much as possible, but they may also now cover things that I’m quite sure I will do, but aren’t in the middle of actively developing (soon-ish, if you will).

I’m also going to try and be a bit more lenient on poll subject matter, as not every poll can be about a new game element or a rework. This will have to be judged on a case-by-case basis, but Ideally, I’d like a balance where polls are interesting and have impact, but don’t always take up a large chunk of dev time. I’d love to hear from you guys, if there are specific topics you guys would like to see.

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For this poll though, the question is going to be pretty major, partly as an apology for being late! It’s no secret that some of Shattered’s subclasses are better designed than others, so I’ve pulled together what I think are the three most improvable subclasses and my thoughts on how they could be made better.

The winner of this poll will have these ideas developed on and will receive improvements in a future update! I don’t have a definite plan as to when this may end up ingame, but one of the updates when I’m incrementally rolling up the new gameplay system is a likely candidate. Perhaps the update after 0.8.2, or the one after that.

Gladiator

Currently the Gladiator is very rigid. Only specific builds are able to make strong use of combo, and more often than not the player just has to make do with the basic 2 or 4 attack finishers. I have good reason to believe that most of the subclasses power is coming from clobber.

I’d like to make combo easier to increment and retain, and then adjust the finishers around that. I do still want to emphasize fighting multiple enemies, but this could easily be relaxed to ‘go find a new enemy soon’ instead of ‘fight multiple enemies at once’. I might even like to try making access to specific finishers more flexible as well, so that you’re not always just locked into a single choice.

Battlemage

The core idea of the battlemage is excellent, but most of the actual powers are simpler than they should be. This is partly reflective of when the battlemage came into existence. What basically boils down to enchantment effects worked well in 2015, but nowadays I can do better.

What I’d like to do is examine each battlemage ability and make extensions/tweaks on a case-by-case basis. All of the effects that are just an enchant trigger are obvious candidates for improvements, and in general I’d like to make these on-hit effects more involved. I’ll also probably look into adjusting or removing the charge gain on-hit, as doing so would give me a lot more room to make the various on-hit effects powerful.

Freerunner

The core theme of the freerunner is great, but currently the subclass doesn’t offer much in the way of interactivity. My intention with the subclass was for the freerunner’s power to require constant movement, but currently it’s both more accessible and less noticeably powerful than I’d like.

I’d like to either make the existing momentum system more involved, or ditch it entirely and have some new power that’s based on movement and evasion. Keeping momentum would require changing how its maintained, possibly making the movement requirements much steeper, but granting a bigger benefit. Switching to a new power might involve something that isn’t as persistent as momentum, but which grants a more powerful boost when the player chooses to use it.

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Please vote for as many options as you like, you don't need to vote for just one! I allow multiple votes as it means that a higher proportion of people will end up voting for the winning choice. It also lets me gauge interest and lets polls be a bit more flexible, I might choose to implement the top 2 choices in some polls for example.

All patrons are encouraged to share their opinion by commenting and voting, but currently only the votes from Golden+ Supporters are counted when determining a poll winner. Votes from Shattered Supporters are worth double!