Somewhat reworked slowdown rounds to balance them

[Jakepeng99]

I tried them out i  survival. They are so powerful that they disable alot of bosses. Here is my rework:

Each 

Stack 1: lasts normal amount of time.

Stack 2: The extra slowdown lasts shorter, before turning back to stack 1.

Stack 3 and 4: Same idea as stack 2, it gets shorter each time.

I am unsure if i explained this right, but basically the slowdown effect decays when it is above 1 stack.

[Chewabacca]

Would it be too bad to just straight-up disable the stacking?

[Jakepeng99]

27 minutes ago, Chewabacca said:

Would it be too bad to just straight-up disable the stacking?

Not sure. Before the stacking was added, it was kinda trash.

[Mysterious box]

4 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Not sure. Before the stacking was added, it was kinda trash.

oh I thought you meant the fact the different slowing round types stacked not slowdown rounds specifically

[Jakepeng99]

52 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

oh I thought you meant the fact the different slowing round types stacked not slowdown rounds specifically

Yeah i only meant slowdown rounds.

[Gashzer]

I think everyone forgets that slow down rounds cost a purple gem. Making them very expensive, then on top of that a Walter player needs to gather enough damage dealing rounds to last the entire boss fight.

Every slow down round you craft is one less character swap you could do. Since both cost the same, what you are really comparing here is it more worth while for a Walter player to craft slow down rounds for a boss fight or swap to Wolfgang

I think they are balanced enough considering...

[Steorra]

4 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

I think everyone forgets that slow down rounds cost a purple gem. Making them very expensive, then on top of that a Walter player needs to gather enough damage dealing rounds to last the entire boss fight.

Every slow down round you craft is one less character swap you could do. Since both cost the same, what you are really comparing here is it more worth while for a Walter player to craft slow down rounds for a boss fight or swap to Wolfgang

I think they are balanced enough considering...

I was never imagined that someone would think purple gem is expensive... It could be expensive in early game, but it still would be enough for daily use for helping you open the shadow rift.

And considering Walter now have a 0 cooldown shadow dash, the slowing effect is imbalance ngl. Though this is not a popular argument since most people knew it but they just accept it since Walter was unplayable for a long time.

 

Also I guess I suddenly knew why skill trees prefer to make unplayable character become imbalance - it's just for selling their skins for those who never tried them before.

[Jakepeng99]

8 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

I think everyone forgets that slow down rounds cost a purple gem. Making them very expensive, then on top of that a Walter player needs to gather enough damage dealing rounds to last the entire boss fight.

Every slow down round you craft is one less character swap you could do. Since both cost the same, what you are really comparing here is it more worth while for a Walter player to craft slow down rounds for a boss fight or swap to Wolfgang

I think they are balanced enough considering...

Its not that expensive.

You get 30 per craft with the ammo skill, and you dont use them that often during fights. I did this test in pure survival, so i am considering resource costs with my opinion as well. Maybe early game its a bit pricy, but eventually you will have enough gems passively to afford them easily.

Hounds, the ruins, and spalagmites give you all you need. Varg farms will make them basically free.

Its not like blowdarts where their power is justified by their price, and are even somewhat pricey lategame. Slowdown rounds use resources you will always be collecting and having anyway.

[Debruh]

Honestly, the biggest problems with the expenses of slowdown rounds is more needing a shadow manipulater, not really purple gems.

[Mysterious box]

7 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Its not that expensive.

You get 30 per craft with the ammo skill, and you dont use them that often during fights. I did this test in pure survival, so i am considering resource costs with my opinion as well. Maybe early game its a bit pricy, but eventually you will have enough gems passively to afford them easily.

Hounds, the ruins, and spalagmites give you all you need. Varg farms will make them basically free.

Its not like blowdarts where their power is justified by their price, and are even somewhat pricey lategame. Slowdown rounds use resources you will always be collecting and having anyway.

The thing is most people aren't playing by themselves a group will be using gems making them quite scarce early to somewhat mid game it's something I'm very familiar with and the 30 per craft is also pretty deceptive as you need 3 shots for maximum effectiveness so 30 translates to 10 uses. Varg farms aren't something the average player does or even knows about and the ruins require fuel weaver kills to reset. For most people the best source of gems will be seasonal hounds and ancient trees both of which will take a long time.

[Dyzrespect]

I don't understand the purpose of this change, make it more annoying to use the rounds? In what way does this balance Walter, he can still do the same things he could before, just more inconvenient. A lot of the changes you suggest just make the character less fun to play and no more balanced, I don't really understand the methodology. There are also far cheaper ways to "disable" bosses, such as dps checking Dfly, or using boats, or walls, or mob barriers, etc etc cheese. In comparison spending purple gems to kite takes more investment and is more satisfying.

Keep in mind the gameplay you're circumventing by using slowdown rounds is dodging every few seconds, which is often arguably not much more, or possibly even less challenging than kiting and swapping ammos, depending on the boss.

[Steorra]

6 minutes ago, Dyzrespect said:

I don't understand the purpose of this change, make it more annoying to use the rounds? In what way does this balance Walter, he can still do the same things he could before, just more inconvenient. A lot of the changes you suggest just make the character less fun to play and no more balanced, I don't really understand the methodology. There are also far cheaper ways to "disable" bosses, such as dps checking Dfly, or using boats, or walls, or mob barriers, etc etc cheese. In comparison spending purple gems to kite takes more investment and is more satisfying.

Keep in mind the gameplay you're circumventing by using slowdown rounds is dodging every few seconds, which is often arguably not much more, or possibly even less challenging than kiting and swapping ammos, depending on the boss.

Tbh we already have a perfect idea to balance the slowing rounds - someone was mentioned a shot-gun modding parts for slingshot. Just to apply the shot-gun thing and change the slowing effect into "only stackable when hitting enemy by shotgun slingshot". It would encourage people to go close to their target and build a high-risk high-reward gameplay.

[Dyzrespect]

6 minutes ago, Steorra said:

Tbh we already have a perfect idea to balance the slowing rounds - someone was mentioned a shot-gun modding parts for slingshot. Just to apply the shot-gun thing and change the slowing effect into "only stackable when hitting enemy by shotgun slingshot". It would encourage people to go close to their target and build a high-risk high-reward gameplay.

While I'm also a big sponsor for the shotgun slingshot addon, I don't think this really helps balance slowdown. Icker and honey still exist, and again slowdown just replaces other, far more boring forms of cheese. If slowdown becomes a massive problem a few months on, they will likely just have to make bosses immune to slows, but I don't see slowdown becoming that much of an issue (compared to say Maxwell's shadow prison).

Shotgun would really eliminate a lot of the need of slowdown rounds though, you are spot on, as the reason you need to use them in the first place is because hit and run is so little payoff for Walter right now, you NEED to sit there and ramp up your speed or you do very very little damage. If scrappy frame shot 3 rounds, you could charge the shot as they approach (or group of enemies approach), let it fly as they come close, then dodge out of the way with Woby or kite during the hitstun. It's a big ask but I really hope they add a shotgun band addon.

[Jakepeng99]

47 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

The thing is most people aren't playing by themselves a group will be using gems making them quite scarce early to somewhat mid game it's something I'm very familiar with and the 30 per craft is also pretty deceptive as you need 3 shots for maximum effectiveness so 30 translates to 10 uses. Varg farms aren't something the average player does or even knows about and the ruins require fuel weaver kills to reset. For most people the best source of gems will be seasonal hounds and ancient trees both of which will take a long time.

I was actually playing with a group too.

Everyone had all the purple gem rounds they needed. Day 40 no garg farms at the time, lots of Walter’s.

[Mysterious box]

47 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I was actually playing with a group too.

Everyone had all the purple gem rounds they needed. Day 40 no garg farms at the time, lots of Walter’s.

It can happen but it's up to rng some servers there are enough others there's barely enough to go around.

[Walrusst]

3 hours ago, Steorra said:

Also I guess I suddenly knew why skill trees prefer to make unplayable character become imbalance - it's just for selling their skins for those who never tried them before.

Part of why these trees are strong is probably that they plan on having the game become longer and harder in the long run.
Having strong characters means casual people can pick up the basic weak/ROG style part of the game more reliably.

Having a late game which accounts for the absurd weapons and abilities they've added means the people who are upset now can be won back.

[Chewabacca]

On the stacking: do honey rounds, which are way more accessible, stack slowness?

[Mysterious box]

13 minutes ago, Chewabacca said:

On the stacking: do honey rounds, which are way more accessible, stack slowness?

With themselves no but with other slowing rounds yes however their slowing is a lot higher than a single slowdown round at the cost of a very short duration.

[Steorra]

1 hour ago, Walrusst said:

Having strong characters means casual people can pick up the basic weak/ROG style part of the game more reliably

The only thing which strange and funny is that people here tend to tolerate imbalance of Walter (and Wortox) but have no tolerance to any power creeping of Wendy.

[Gashzer]

1 hour ago, Steorra said:

The only thing which strange and funny is that people here tend to tolerate imbalance of Walter (and Wortox) but have no tolerance to any power creeping of Wendy.

Wendy was and still is, very powerful. 

Spawns in with the most convenient form of AOE damage that completely eliminates hound waves/spiders. Allowing new players to survive and learn other mechanics.

Experienced players can hit very high levels of dps with ornery beefalo and abigail strats while retaining all that convenient AoE. This is with pre-skilltree Wendy as well... new Wendy is wicked strong.

So how is Wendy weak or being power creeped?

[Steorra]

3 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Wendy was and still is, very powerful. 

Spawns in with the most convenient form of AOE damage that completely eliminates hound waves/spiders. Allowing new players to survive and learn other mechanics

Then you should say Wendy is powerful for new players

And we already knew AoE is not a privilege of Wendy now. Since almost half characters have AoE ability.

5 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Experienced players can hit very high levels of dps with ornery beefalo and abigail strats while retaining all that convenient AoE. This is with pre-skilltree Wendy as well... new Wendy is wicked strong.

We did have the calculation to prove that Wendy still weaker than Wolfgang right? Both of them is damage dealer characters.

Wolfgang has bonus for resource collecting from his skill tree. Wendy only has two line of MG for compensate her own old outdated broken Elixir base kit.

And I don't want to say how the DPS of Wolfgang cheap.

Experienced players means not "your skills should give no reward but only makes your upper limit of your character is not such worse than others."

[Walrusst]

1 hour ago, Steorra said:

The only thing which strange and funny is that people here tend to tolerate imbalance of Walter (and Wortox) but have no tolerance to any power creeping of Wendy.

There are still things that worry me with walter (Icher and the two zero windup goo grips.)

Walter without slowdowns using a grip that needs to wind up firing on the enemy, and using charged shots to make openings is an interesting character since your greed runs parallel to your risk of being obliterated by the enemy/getting bucked/needing to evade shadow creatures while also facing the original threat.
Walter which is unconditionally at full power while fighting an enemy with crippled reactions makes me a little scared. 

Still its not like I'm forced to rush queen bee and spam rift ammo to shadow prison people. They even made the default windup grip pretty solid all things considered. Not optimal, but solid enough that I can be glad I can skip the grips skill and pick something fun and utility focused.

With wortox, its sort of like. They did just wendify the dude with how even nice wortox can kill hordes of most enemies while unarmed now if you balance the skills right. if we are fine not yeeting wendy out an airlock its hard to complain.

Wendy on the other hand... Its harder to express my feelings regarding her fully because its a mix of: She already was where a lot of maxed out skill trees put you. Minus the affinity skills being lopsided and bothering you to high hell as to why it is that way with everyone else.
She now has the affinity skills that are annoyingly lopsided, some interesting utility skills for making farms, some good crafting QoL's and storage abilities.  So its not that different from everyone else's experience.

Where she started and where she needed to be weren't as far from each other, and the big picture skills were still fun enough that I can enjoy her about as much as any other character where i spawn in day one at 80% power. Sure high level play is annoying for her, but with 40ms of delay thats honestly true with every character.

[aidankocherhans]

7 hours ago, Chewabacca said:

Would it be too bad to just straight-up disable the stacking?

One stack is barely noticable or helpful in my experience

[Walrusst]

 

2 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

One stack is barely noticable or helpful in my experience

This is sort of why I would like for a lot of the cheap slow ammo to be re-lored to damage vulnerability stuff that instead buffs up characters that like doing elemental damage.
Take the two slows and stack them and the games over.  (Icher ammo.)

Give walter reasons to play with fire and lighting as a damage source and suddenly its on. Creative plays and teamplay become options for days.

[Chewabacca]

31 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

One stack is barely noticable or helpful in my experience

Thanks. If stacking the effect is necessary, for slow-down rounds I think Klei should just beef up the magic tab so that we have more non-character-specific things to regularly spend purple gems on.