over 3 years ago - /u/CreatureTech-PHX - Direct link

This Dauntless Experimental test is all about Omnicells and Heroic Blaze Escalation and is not under NDA. In case you're not familiar, Dauntless Experimental is a public test realm that we have up and running on Epic. It allows us to share what we are working on before it goes into the live game so that we can hear your feedback early. The goal of this test is to get a better idea of balance for each of these features individually -- but also how they play together. Omnicells should encourage new builds and Heroic Escalation should be a considerable challenge.

Every Dauntless player who has their language set to English and is playing on PC has Dauntless Experimental in their library, but only people who have a test available to them will be able to launch the Dauntless Experimental build. This time around we have invited every Slayer who plays on PC to test out Omnicells and Heroic Blaze Escalation. More detailed instructions can be found in your Dauntless Experimental inbox.

If you are eligible for this test you will have an invite in your Dauntless in-game inbox. Once you download and launch the Dauntless Experimental build you will find more specific test instructions there.

After playtesting: Please feel free to also post thoughts about this experiment in reply to this thread.

As always things in Dauntless Experimental are subject to change. Some features may not make it into the live game, or may look different than what was tested on Dauntless Experimental.

ETR Patch Notes | What's Different in this Build?

Omnicells

Iceborne

Passive Ability:
Increase max health by 100. Grants 1% lifesteal and 5% reduced damage, then again for every 125 missing health. Taking damage reduces cooldown of its ability by 5s (max once every 5s).
Activated Ability:

Throw an ice lance that does 1500 frost damage; double damage if thrown at full health. Grants ice armour for 8 seconds, providing +10% lifesteal and invulnerability. 2 minute cooldown.

Bastion

Passive Ability:

Increase all shields received by 15%. Reduce max health by 25% but this health is replaced by a shield that fills up after 10 seconds (stacking twice).

Activated Ability:
Leap forward and slam the ground, consuming all shields as a blast of energy on impact, doing damage to all nearby targets equal to the strength of the shields consumed. 20 second cooldown.

Discipline

Passive Ability:
Health is limited to 50% of max health and healing received is reduced by 25%. Critical strike damage increased by 15%. Parrying with a Flaming Fist attack grants you 12.5% more critical strike damage, stacks up to 4 times. Reaching 4 stacks makes you Disciplined, increasing your critical strike chance by 50% for 20 seconds. When Disciplined ends, stacks are cleared.

Activated Ability:

Perform a quick parrying punch that deals 400 blaze damage. If you do absorb/parry an attack during this window, you do +300% damage and gain a stack of critical strike damage. 15 second cooldown.

Windfury (more experimental still/later release than the others)

Passive Ability:

Increase damage by 5% for every applied Mobility perk. Every time you dodge through an attack, gain a stack of Wind Fury, which increases attack speed by 5% for 60 seconds. This effect stacks up to 5 times.

Activated Ability:

Consume a stack of Wind Fury to instantly teleport/dash a distance in front of you, dealing 500 damage to nearby targets on exit. Using this ability refreshes the Wind Fury stack cooldown.

Animations, sound effects, and visual effects are not final and some are still just placeholder.

Cells

Power cells

Rage-

Effect is now “Once every 50 / 40 / 30 / 25 / 20 / 15 seconds, when you take damage deal +20% increased damage for 15 seconds”

Technique cells

Wild Frenzy-

Name changed to “Assassin’s Frenzy”

Effect is now “Each time you break or assist in breaking a Behemoth part, gain +15% attack speed for 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 seconds”

Utility cells

Aetherborne-

At rank 4 and higher, effect has “Enter aether rush when you use an aether vent” added

Aetheric Attunement-

Effect is now “Reduces the cooldown of your lantern ability by 10 / 15 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50%”

Aetheric Frenzy-

Name changed to “Aetheric Evasion”

Effect is now “On dodging through an attack, reduce the cooldown of your lantern ability by 5 / 10 / 15 / 25 / 30 / 35%”

Lucent

Effect is now “Your Flask heals over 20 seconds, but for 20% more healing - while this heal is active, increase the recharge rate of your Lantern ability by 15 / 25 / 35 / 40 / 45 / 50%”

Tonics

Aetherdrive Tonic- Increases the cooldown rate of your Lantern ability.

Lanterns

  • All Lanterns are now set to a default 30 second cooldown. Effects that previously affected lantern hold charge rate now affect lantern cooldown rate in similar ways.
  • All Lanterns no longer have a tap ability. Tap input now activates the Omnicell abilities.
  • All Lanterns have had damage values and general effect amounts increase to accommodate the above changes.

Escalation Amps

  • Spiteful Onslaught now triggers on lantern hold instead of tap
  • Torgadoro's Endurance now triggers on lantern hold instead of tap
  • Violent Eidolon now triggers on a part getting broken instead of lantern hold
  • Zealous Eidolon now triggers on lantern hold instead of lantern tap
  • Elemental Form: Radiant now triggers on Omnicell activation (max once every 30 seconds)

Gear

Volcanic Treads- Now has the Tenacious Perk

Boreal Might- Now has the Tenacious Perk

Dark Marrow- Now has the Tenacious Perk

Skraeving Gloves- Now have the Aetheric Evasion Perk

External link →
over 3 years ago - /u/CreatureTech-PHX - Direct link

Originally posted by LegitimateCopy7

testing is not perfect. you need to be aware who got invited and who didn't.

A skilled grinder can't relate to the frustration and problem of a noob.

Yup, we try to get a diverse set of testers so we can gauge the whole spectrum!

over 3 years ago - /u/CreatureTech-PHX - Direct link

Originally posted by YeastBeast1980

I realize there are a litany of issues getting this in the hands of console players, but at some point it would be a great idea to do so. As you stated earlier this week, your plan is to slow down on dropping content and make sure you have a quality release. There are bugs in the game that impact console players but not PC. Allowing console players to get in and play with the experimental stuff could get you a lot of feedback about things that work or don't work well for us.

There are a lot of certification requirements to get this test realm on consoles that make this impossible. PC is a lot more flexible for rapidly pushing builds.

over 3 years ago - /u/theLegendLarry - Direct link

Originally posted by Serrishtar

What is the benefit of Omnicells to the players? The system is essentially the same but less flexible. Why go from fluid mixing and matching to rigid "choose one playstyle as defined by us" design when you could've just made new regular cells to add to the pool? It just seems like your decisions are centered around streamlining the game to the point where you hold all the power to force players into pre-defined playstyles approved by the devs. No one asked for this. If your idea of making balancing easier for yourself is to remove nuance from the game, you've gotten lost in your own game designer world where the notion of "elegant solutions" comes at the expense of players.

Hi, Serrishtar! Thank you for sharing your thoughts around the new omnicell system. Would you mind expanding on what ways you find the omnicell system to be less flexible and why you feel that way?

over 3 years ago - /u/theLegendLarry - Direct link

Originally posted by TH3-COSMIC-OWL

Initial thoughts. My builds feel more pigeonholed than before which is not a good thing. what I see is we have taken discipline or ice borne out of our builds and put them in a new spot. I would like to comment on the obvious nerf the the current best cells (which I like) but why was the number not just reduced, now we need to jump through more hoops to get a worse feeling build than before

Hi Cosmic Owl! I appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback.

Would you mind expanding on why you feel that your build feels more pigeonholed with the addition of the Omnicells feature? Also, in what ways does omnicells make you feel that your build feels worse than before?

over 3 years ago - /u/Proteus505 - Direct link

Originally posted by kdr-

The 30 sec cooldown to lantern hold will be a massive nerf. Not just for the lantern effect, but for cells like cascade too.

I get you're trying to balance builds but the game is already difficult as is while navigating bugs. These nerfs will just push players away.

I'd rather other builds were buffed over nerfing half life builds for instance.

Maybe buff these omnicells a bit more to make up for the lost dps.

Our goal is to land in the same DPS range as the live game right now. We have increased lantern damage significantly to account for longer cooldowns, and the omnicell abilities are quite powerful.

over 3 years ago - /u/Proteus505 - Direct link

Originally posted by recc113

I tried out bastion a little, just putting it in my full life crit chainblades build that I use to hard carry all escalations currently and it felt terrible. Mostly the tap ability eating all my shields felt really bad. I've been playing since closed beta and I have muscle memory for hitting the tap quite often and trying to keep the hold up as much as possible, so i found myself just instinctually tapping and eating all my shields.

Honestly I'd rather no tap over a tap that eats all my shields, but maybe that's just not how I'm meant to run a full life build. I was kind of hoping bonded skarn full life crit would have been the way to go with the shield spamming omnicell. I get wanting to spend shields for damage tho, maybe my mindset is just backwards using the shields mostly to be super tank and infinite crit.

Mobility looked like it could be interesting after the rework of mobility cells I read about somewhere here; until then I'm not really interested in it.

To me iceborne and discipline seem kinda more 'meh' without the rage/wild frenzy interactions. New wild frenzy seems solid, but rage seems counter-intuitive encouraging getting hit. I'll probably end up leaning more into berserk and stuff later, still kinda bummed by bastion tho.

Yeah the muscle memory issue is a downside when we change inputs.

over 3 years ago - /u/theLegendLarry - Direct link

Originally posted by Open_Marzipan_455

It's simple. Omnicells seem to become a building defining primary perk, while the perks from cells now only support that primary perk instead so it removed the feeling of coming up with a own build. Instead it now feels like we're given the choice of premade perks and we gotta make the best out of that coice instead of inventing own combinations.

Ah! Interesting.

So what I'm reading is that the concern is, as currently designed, Omnicells are going to introduce this idea of "there's only one right way to play this build" instead of encouraging different options or opporutnties to combine different omnicells with different cells.

over 3 years ago - /u/theLegendLarry - Direct link

Originally posted by Serrishtar

I'm not the one who has to explain himself, you are. I have nothing much to add until you shed some much needed light on your thought process. People are starving for content and you're busy reinventing the wheel of every game system in a way that adds nothing or makes it worse. When you write something like "Omnicells should encourage new builds" when the way you're encouraging new builds is by making old builds impossible, are you aware of what you're doing? What's stopping you from just adding new cells and nerfing overperformers? Why are you busying yourself with redesigning the wallpaper when your house is missing basic furniture? For example, I've done hundreds of low level, speed and challenge runs on games like Dark Souls. I would never dream of regularly playing a high risk, high reward build in Dauntless because this game is grindy and repetitive, and games like this demand consistency above all else, which I can't have if your game is full of broken hitboxes, bad (or nonexistent) tells and (at least on console) constant lag spikes that make flawless play an exercise in frustration (and yes, this lag is specific to this game, it's not present anywhere else and is not caused by my good internet). If I really pay attention to my gameplay, I notice that at least half my decisions are based on anticipating moves I know are probably coming based on hundreds of hours of experience, not because of an actual tell by the boss. And yet you somehow see it fit to promote flawless builds in this environment instead of providing an environment where that makes sense. You pay lip service to the idea of supporting your hardcore player base by having a flawless omnicell, but they wouldn't need it in the first place if you hadn't decided to redesign the cell system for no good reason I can see. And yet, I would have no problem overlooking all of that if you actually prioritized regularly adding to the thing people play this game for, which is fighting new bosses. Just the idea of timing a parry in this game when you can't even interrupt a boss without getting hit is giving me a headache.

So what I'm reading isn't so much that the omnicells themselves are what's bothering you, more that the introduction of them are exacerbating your frustration with other elements of the game that directly impact your abilit to enjoy it. Which are fair points by the way. I think having more readable tells around combat would be great.

over 3 years ago - /u/theLegendLarry - Direct link

Originally posted by TH3-COSMIC-OWL

This is just my initial thoughts and looking back it feels as restricted as before and regarding to what makes my builds feel worse it's not the omnicells it's the nerf to cells, now we need to jump through hoops to get a worse output. I'm fine with nerfing certain cells but some of the conditions are a little silly. I cant even log in now as the experimental version is crashing on start up tried for the past 10 mins nothing

Oh no! It looks like there are some other people having trouble with crashes as well and the team is looking into it.

I hope you get play soon! I'd be interested to hear your thoughts after playing with the different omnicells.

over 3 years ago - /u/theLegendLarry - Direct link

Originally posted by professorlitwick

Initial thoughts: This is a lot of changes that make it difficult for me to actually plan out a build. It seems as though your intention was that Omnicells were meant to encourage build versatility and variety, but now it just feels like i need to design a build solely to work off of my omnicell, which very much limits playstyle. Also, all of the separate nerfs to attack speed makes everything feel very sluggish, even on faster hitting weapons.
Ultimately I like the concept but as of right now they don't feel as fun to me.

Excellent feedback. Thank you!

Would you mind me asking me how you'd want to see Omnicells adjusted to open up build diviserity instead of making them feel like they're funneling you into a specific build?

over 3 years ago - /u/theLegendLarry - Direct link

Originally posted by Serrishtar

My first post, other replies to your first reply and a dozen other posts in this thread state very clearly what's bothering us about omnicells. Your process of selectively interpreting feedback to fit the narrative in your head is exactly what got us to where we are now. Do you have no cost-benefit analysis process? What are you hoping to get out of this semi-redesign if it isn't control over how people play?

Just trying to make sure I understand your thoughts on Omnicells so that we can make sure we don't misinterpret or misrepresent it during our review of the feedback we get. Since I seemed to have missed your point then you did the right thing in letting me know I missed it and pointed me back towards the other thoughts that better align to your own thoughts.

The other replies in this thread seem to boil down to omnicells will encourage "a right way to play" or "a single right build".

Is that reflective of your feedback as well?

edit: grammar correction

over 3 years ago - /u/Proteus505 - Direct link

Originally posted by srcoo

So just so i get this right, you buffed pangar lantern from 960 dmg -> 3000 dmg. With a cool down of 30 secs that means you assume we only use our lantern once every 10 seconds since "Our goal is to land in the same DPS range as the live game right now."

Does this look like once every 10 seconds to you? https://youtu.be/1QHYMAdj8ek

I dont see how this is anything besides a huge nerf.

I was referring to the entire build as a whole. We aren't trying to keep lantern DPS consistent before/after this release. We want to keep overall DPS about the same.

over 3 years ago - /u/Proteus505 - Direct link

Originally posted by GreatMadWombat

Would there be a way to just tack some default bonus attack speed onto stuff? The DPS might be the same, but the lack of wild frenzy is gonna feel baaaaad for slow weapons.

It's certainly a frequent suggestion, so we'll be chatting about that in the next week after this ETR concludes.

over 3 years ago - /u/Proteus505 - Direct link

Originally posted by Fantasorry

I think it would be a good idea to include the old tap abilities into the hold abilities like with Koshai and Skarn lanterns. For example, Embermane lantern (deal exploding fire ball that deal 3k dmg, and gain 10% attack speed ((or 10% crit rate)) for 15s).

Also, instead of Assassin's Frenzy proccing on part breaks - what about damage thresholds? Like similar to Rage, “Once every 50 / 40 / 30 / 25 / 20 / 15, dealing 5k dmg procs, 15% atspd for 15s".

Yeah we realize some of the lanterns aren't feeling great right now, so we'll adjust as necessary, and hopefully we have time to tune all the lanterns so they're in a great spot for 1.7.0. We want to release more lanterns over time too, so this tightening of the design of each will help with that, but not opposed to adding something to lanterns that aren't great.