Thanks for reminding me of the oils / elixirs; that’s an excellent example of the piano issue; and of how the devs have actually addressed the problem before, by limiting characters to use 3 at a time, and making their duration very long (900s = 15mins each). So now it’s easy to make them permanent buffs, unlike what you wrote. It’s great to see that oils are in a much better place, gameplay wise, thanks to recent changes.
My Deceiver example was based on a character that allowed me clear all celestials and reach SR110 (SR44 now) for the first time. Funny that you consider that it “doesn’t work in actual gameplay”. I’m afraid other people have very much made it work.
I only stopped playing it because “playing the piano” became tedious after a while. The build was very powerful though.
Edit: I guess we should wait and see what other potion effects Crate is preparing for us. Maybe not all of them are short duration buffs / or have other interactions and this may not be a big issue.
the oils and elixirs weren’t change because of piano convenience as i understood
but because devs specifically didn’t like us stacking “all” that pots at the same time, allowing builds free res overcap stacking all resist oils, quadruple regen buff stacking, free OA/DA+hp bonuses on multiple
The limiting factor means build actually had to cover most of those stats instead of getting several 400-900sec freebies/with our buff bar full of potion icons for celestial fights
You’re right; and those changes made a lot of sense imo.
I feel like I may not have explained myself clearly enough so let me try with a more abstract example. Imagine 3 different spells (or potions):
Spell A buffs you for 3 sec. Cooldown 20 sec.
Spell B buffs you for 30 sec. Cooldown 20 sec.
Spell C buffs you for 900 sec. Cooldown 20 sec.
When it comes to gameplay mechanics and user interaction, I feel like:
Spell A is great! Much like Ascension, Mirror of Ereoctes, or Tinctures, it’s used as an emergency temporary buff. The player needs “input skills” to master its timing. Knowing that you can fail the timing makes it satisfying when you nail it and survive a difficulty encounter.
Spell C is good. It’s a 100% uptime buff that you don’t have to worry about in the middle of a fight. If this spell is exclusive with other buffs (i.e. Oils and Elixirs), then it takes player “build making skills” to master which buffs to pick for their character.
Spell B is pretty bad. Much like the buffing aspects of Word of Renewal, Blood of Dreeg, and Pneumatic Burst, it serves the same purpose as Spell C (100% uptime), but it requires the player to mindlessly repeat the same inputs over and over again, including in the middle of a fight. This is what people refer to as the piano problem. Sure, one could argue that this is a “skill to be expected of the player”, but I’d find it difficult to argue that this is “fun” or “engaging” (compared to Spell A for example).
So if the new custom potions fall in the categories of Spell A or C, then fantastic! I’m on board.
But if they fall on the category of Spell B, then I’m afraid they might make things less fun for some players; especially those who min-max their builds for endgame.
kinda agree
in either case i hope like others have said there’s going to some sort of, “not freebie”, so builds don’t get just get default made with stacking a +5%tdm brew in mind, since that would be kinda boring’er
so i hope the charge system and counter buff gets interestingly incorporated, aside from cooldown/duration management stuff
Not gonna lie, the thought of FoA / an expansion to effect older locations in such a way (similiar to what happend in devils crossing with AoM (or was it FG? Pretty sure was AoM wasn’t it?) and maybe giving a reason to revisit them is kinda cool.
yep. learn them quick if you try different challenges. the No Class one had me utilizing all sorts of stuff i wouldn’t normally. even managed to beat Krieg at low level. though i got stomped on trying it on Veteran. i need to revisit that one. it has so many permutations on rule-sets and is a good one for studying the game mechanics. all the challenges have proven so so far
Taking a page out of the Half Blood Prince booklet, i see … well that or PoE, which is also fine. These are fun ways to spice up our gameplay and shall be heartily quaffed by all. Very good sir, carry on.
Good. The Conclave is a good hub in theory with all the service NPCs but I have trouble with the layout. The Cult of Solael’s quartermaster is not in the same section as his fellows, the rift gate is off-center and has you walk through variously angled stairs before you reach the NPCs, etc.
Almost all of the town maps have horrible layouts. You need an expert to make good town maps. One must consider gameflow as well as feng shui and uniqueness.
Plz show some love to Ghol’s Malice set, his pet damage bonuses are awful compared to Lost Souls, Beastcaller’s and Bysmiel sets… I created a tanky Ghol Ritualist character but lacks a lot of damage 'cuz the slot for the Necrolord’s Shroud is used by something that gives a couple of resistances… sigh.
Really? I tought the same, but then i tried both and the difference in damage is kinda huge (also lost souls buffs 14 skellies, if you can equip the wendigo gaze), but i still wanted to try to make a very tanky char so i went for a Death Gates Ghol Ritualist (defensive oriented with both behemoth and tree of life)
I just think skellies are so squishy that it’s more a hassle having to resummon them every couple of seconds. I think ghol’s malice is better because you don’t need to care about your pets, just throw them into the enemy and you’re fine.
Agreed, but that’s not the problem since the char works exactly as i wanted, and nothing in the main game is able to scratch me and my pets. The problem comes with superbosses. I can do them just fine (died only once to Ravager of Minds) but it’s very time consuming, maybe i gotta put more points into devouring swarm
