Whenever I play SR and die, regardless of whether the build is fast and powerful or squishy and shaky, I find myself having the same thought time and time again: “it’s ok, I can recover…as long as I don’t get a time waster chunk”. In the event of a death in high SR, every second matters. I feel like the special “time waster” chunks introduce a level of RNG that is, frankly, quite unnecessary. Especially since there is such a massive difference between the individual special chunks. The Devourer or Cult of the Mine chunk feels like the gods have blessed your run. Seeker of the Damned (especially with Time-Warped mutator), Gazer or Manifestations of Hunger feel like a kick in the nuts if you’re short on timer. Maggot doesn’t award timer but at least he dies quickly and easily (unless you have any source of Terrify/Confuse, then you’re chasing that damn worm all over the map…maybe he could be immune to these two cc’s?). Splendors of the Shattered Realm (chest room) rely more on you being able to click 7 chests open before the monsters obscure the chests than on actual kill speed. About a minute of lost timer either way.
I’m not asking for all the special chunks to suddenly become timer efficient paradises like Devourers or Mines. But at least make them not be such a massive timer loss. Anything to make it so that a single one of these after a death doesn’t result in almost a guaranteed game over. Because that just feels like getting screwed out of a run the build could easily recover from. Manifestations of Hunger could award 15 s per boss kill. Seeker more like 30 s. Let us get carnage bonuses on Splendors and Maggot. Carnage bonuses and boss kill timer bonus on the lever room and Gazer (that one in particular is both quite dangerous to just run through and extremely costly on timer when cleared carefully). Pretty please?
can’t believe i’m the one asking this and not Res : at what point do we just remove death penalty?
like, the way i’m reading it is “i failed/died; and now the game must ensure i don’t struggle further”,
which as i’m reading it isn’t even about certain theme chunks acting as an additional punishment layer, but has to be able to counter act a “fail state”/has to be able to serve as an assisting layer incase of death/run fail
not saying i’m against them giving timer on principle, but it seems like we’re moving more and more towards SR ensuring basically 0 death penalties
if that’s what we want fine, suppose i’m asking, “is that actually how we want it”?
Then you’re reading it the way you want it to sound rather than reading what I actually wrote.
The devs have set the death penalty values very specifically so that unless you’re playing a very slow build, a single death doesn’t automatically mean your run is over. You can die once and still make it in time. You might need to take some risks if you’re a slow build, or, on the opposite end, you might have to play extra careful if you’re a fast glass cannon. But you’re given an opportunity to recover, that’s a choice the devs have specifically made by setting the timers the way they have. Except, every now and then, completely at random, the game will just decide to take that opportunity away entirely, by giving you a Seeker of the Damned chunk or Gazer Prime that you can’t possibly push through on time on a given build/with given mutators.
SR is already plenty varied in terms of chunk difficulty. Do we really need chunks specifically designed to randomly eat our timer? If these special chunks always came first, that would be one thing. You’d know ahead of time that timer is going to be extra precious in this shard, and could play accordingly on the rest of the shard. But since they can happen at any point, you don’t know you’re being screwed on timer until you’re actually screwed on timer.
This isn’t about giving builds a free pass on dying. It’s about making the punishment for dying consistent. Right now, it isn’t and primarily so because of random time waster chunks.
I think this frames the issue the wrong way, it isn’t about dying or even chuck design, the real issue is that some enemies that are super easy to kill give a lot of souls, like groups of tiny spiders, while others are super tanky like titans, take a lot of time and cause no progress.
I mean, that too, but since monster compositions tend to be fairly varied within a single chunk, this stuff tends to average out. Also, if you find a certain group of enemies not worth fighting, you are given at least some option (I know that often isn’t true) to pick the fights you want. You don’t get a choice in special chunks. You ain’t getting out without wasting at least a minute on Seeker, you can’t opt out of that fight. And in my experience, getting special chunks after a death has a VASTLY greater impact on recovery rate than getting the wrong types of monsters. If anything, I’d rate the order of impact on recovery after death as: getting special chunks > getting bad bosses (Korvaak etc.) > getting bad monster types.
yea, but why is this bad?
like, why must everything be non random; when the death penalty is already so low, why shouldn’t this randomness be allowed to be part of the “penalty” ?
why should you always be able to/“guaranteed” recover from a death “no matter what”
I’m not saying it needs to be non-random. But if you’re operating in an RNG range of 1 to 8 and suddenly you get a 14, might be a good idea to reign that in a bit. Special chunks are a massive outlier in terms of how SR puts pressure on your timer.
You’re not guaranteed to recover though. I’ve failed plenty of runs with no special chunks in sight, cause even on a good build with good piloting you can get tough bosses/hero groups and run out of time. Or you can die again. It’s not like we’re actively choosing to die in a chunk. Deaths will just happen, sometimes even outside of your control. If you then also lose all control over whether or not you even get to have a shot at recovering, that just feels like cheap difficulty.
totally, but again, why is this bad?
and more so why is it then additionally bad that it emphasises death penalty
“when timer/death penalty is so low” ?
if this was a crucible 60% reward dropoff i could totally see it might feel impactful
but SR penalty is basically non existent is my point, so why can’t it just be swallowed?
but chunks should be roughly comparable in time it takes, because then you can easier verify if a time difference means your build really improved or if your build did a better job with cadence or righteous fervor to name one example.
disagree, because it would completely remove variety, and we’d basically turn SR into a 1:1 crucible format, there is a reason all runs are made on 1 singular map
then use the fixed SR room test trick the others are using
imo it’s fine that it’s possible, but it should by no means be the default format
in any case i don’t see how this attacks variety, for example I’m not in favor of removing the manifestations of hunger, but if they had a little less health it would keep variety and also keep runs more comparable.
Because it just makes a bad gameplay experience and screws with the delicate timer balance the devs specifically implemented. Like I said, dying is meant to squeeze you on timer, not end your run. And then special chunks just completely wreck that. And it feels pretty damn disheartening when you die in chunk 1 and then work your damn ass off on the rest of chunk 1 and the whole of chunk 2, only to then enter the rift and see a Time-Warped Seeker of the Damned. Turns out, you were screwed the whole time and shouldn’t have bothered, you just didn’t know.
That is true if you’re looking at it from the purely materialistic perspective. I get players like us are going to be massive outliers, far removed from the average player. But I don’t know about you, but I don’t play for loot anymore. I’ve found everything there is to find in the game multiple times over. My rewards for playing are non-material. Just the feeling of putting in the better part of an hour into a hard run and succeeding. Or getting to put a +1 down in my builds document/Build Overview. And from that perspective the difference between a successful run and a failed one isn’t 40 % less loot, it’s all or nothing.
Anyway, we’ve both made our points several times over and clearly disagree. Z will make of this thread what he will.
i mean, that would literally take variety out
because if all rooms take the same 30secs to clear then what enemy you’re fighting or what “map” you’re in doesn’t matter, is my point,
you’re “guaranteed” on avg an SR clear of X, and there will be no break in pace or threat or even “thinking”, and as consequence less build impact
sort of, it’s an altered SR map file some from the chinese community provided back during a debate
tho i’m legit unsure if it alters game changes too now the way this file was made
which imo is the only perspective that matters from a balancing perspective
because
which imo the current approach emphasises: you didn’t “truly” succeed,
and it’s not the fault of the gimmick room for not extra compensating you on timer for that
you could say i’m like you, in that i (obv) don’t actually need loot anymore, i just want “something” for my time spent since i’m not a purely challenge based/incentivised person, (same reason why i didn’t advocate for scaled loot on SR 90, just a smidgen on loot)
so when i take a char through sr, and dies, i consider that a failed run
the timer doesn’t matter to me - possibly because the death penalty being so low actually ends up emphasising timer being unimportant to me, and in terms of fail state it’s then more directly death/struggle based
the “only” shard i tolerate deaths is sr 80 for the cheese unlock,
(or if i get utter BS rooms like the cave with traps littered every 5milimetres that just overlap 1shot you )
Exhausted timer doesn’t cost that much.
: at what point do we just remove death penalty?
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