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This is going to be long so grab a snack.
Spellbreak is an amazing game we all love that also has a lot of issues. Lets talk about everything and maybe how to make things better.
1.2 update
This was a great update. You gave us 3 new talents and some new consumables to use. Also the prologue, for free. Ambidextrous was a scary thing to me personally. Being able to have the passive of your offhand gauntlet is big value. However there is another talent that makes this value, not worth it and for only 2 points. Recovery still remained unchanged, which was a surprise to a lot of us. Its no secret that Recovery is the best spirit talent. With all 3 scrolls you get 50% of the damage you've taken back to your health in 6 seconds. Even with the passive of your offhand gauntlet AND 25% mana reduction (3 scrolls) Ambidextrous falls short in comparison. Recovery will keep you alive in a fight, having a constant passive healing. While with Ambidextrous you get exiled faster because you don't have Recovery. Recovery is really just that good that it makes a *potentially* OP talent not that viable to use. This made the game feel exactly the same with little variety, with the only variable being knowledge potions..
Knowledge potions are rare. I personally don't use finders keepers but I don't find knowledge potions that often. But when I do I find 2 maybe 3 of them. While this is all in good fun and made for some great clips, the receiving end feels awful to be on. I think this feels worse than it should because of the match making changes allowing the lobby to stay open longer in order to allow more players to join. Its a feeling of "I died to that and now I have to wait 10 minutes for another game"
Ideas to make things better:
A change to recovery is needed to allow more variety of talent builds. Right now its value for 2 points is too great for a lot of other builds to shine. Perhaps increase the time it takes to regenerate the health.
A small change to knowledge potions. Makes it so you can only drink one, but you can still hold them in your inventory if you have already drank one. Perhaps also a visual indicator that someone has a knowledge potion active. Like the head glow we had in alpha.
This may be a little harder to implement but here's an idea for match making. Lower the lobby time by maybe a minute and a half. And if a lobby starts with less than 30 people, instead of filling the rest of the lobby with bots. Make the zone dynamic to how many players are in the lobby. A dynamic zone is one that starts the map with a smaller or larger circle depending on how many players there are. So if the game started with 20 people, you'd start in a smaller circle. But if you had a full lobby the whole map would be available for you to drop from. How would class skills work if we start in a smaller zone? Make the second and third zones short distances from the original circle so you still have that feeling of progressing through a match.
Balance
Its something that's kind of a touchy subject. Some people think this is OP some people think that is OP. What actually makes something "OP"? In my opinion its something that has little, to no counter play against it.
First thing that comes to a lot of players mind is stone. While stone does to large chunk damage, it is very easily avoidable. Although this isn't to say it isn't strong. As the stone hitbox is very questionable, it hits way too far off of the ground. The stone gauntlet is also something that is very easy to use for new players. Which is great! That also means its extremely good at being easy to use against new players. This can lead to bad player retention because it leaves them with a feeling of helplessness against something that you seemingly cant avoid. Don't get me wrong stone is very easy to avoid, this isn't obvious to someone trying the game for the first time.
Combust is something that both rewards bad aim and good aim (ignite) however the blast radius is just too large for so much damage. Meaning you can quite literally not hit someone directly at all and still be able to exile them. Combust should help, but not be a significant help like how it is now.
Toxicologists benefit from invisibility rune and shadowstep because they both trigger outbreak. The level 3 skill that gives them a 75% damage increase to their toxic gauntlet. For a toxicologist there's no reason you shouldn't use shadowstep. The extra outbreak from shadowstep is a safe way to secure the solid damage you're looking for from outbreak. While this seems fine for a lot of people, a class shouldn't benefit from a rune to this extent of having movement, stealth, and a significant damage modification. It feels like a must have on toxicologist not only for the extra outbreaks but because its the only way you can get an outbreak on a pyro because they hard counter your clouds so much. However on the receiving end you feel lost. As your opponent continues to go invisible while dealing 75% more damage than normal. You can use your rune to dodge but they usually have the cloud ready to close that gap and remain unseen.
Conduits have a spell that you cant dodge. Lightning travels so fast you cant actually dodge it, sure they can miss some shots. You cant dodge their whole mana bar though especially when the use power surge (unlimited mana for 4 seconds). Even lightning as an offhand is a very oppressive gauntlet as again, you cant dodge a whole mana bar. Unless the lightning user doesn't have good aim, as long as you're in line of sight, you will be taking damage from them. "Just break line of sight" well you aren't always in a position to have something between you and your enemy. Even if you do have line of sight break if you leave then damage is done to you, this is even more powerful with conduits potential energy.
Ideas to make things better:
Decrease how high the stones hitbox is maybe no higher than 2 meters off the ground, possibly decrease the length of the shockwave.
Lower combusts range to 150% or increase damage drop off
Make outbreak not trigger with runes and increase outbreak damage back to 100% (from 75%) or maybe Make it so there's a 7-10 second cool down (runes still trigger outbreak), or decrease the damage of outbreak when triggered by a rune to 20%. (Leggy tox would do 55 with outbreak)
Increase the mana cost of lightning by 10-15 mana for each bolt, this will reduce the amount of unavoidable spam from being in line of sight. Will also balance out power surge giving conduits temporary unlimited mana.
Content
The game is lacking a proper progression system. While we do have the chapters system more specifically the prologue currently. This was a VERY quick thing to progress through. While it was free and we thank you for that, it should have taken more time to earn the rewards. Many people have been done with their prologue for some time now, assuming chapters will be longer. But that doesn't solve the lack of real progression in the game. There is nothing to grind for which a lot of players look for in a game. No reason to actually keep playing outside of just liking the game. You can level up your class and get some great free cosmetics but after you get the afterglow there is nothing to look forward to. You get a legendary emote at level 20, while it is something to be proud of. Its something that is very rarely used in game besides the pregame lobby. Not something that is worth the grind outside of the hardcore players that love the game already. This is where the class skins should've taken place in my opinion, with the base outfit being given at level 20. Then you unlock a set of challenges in the mastery. For example: "as pyromancer get 50 exiles with pyrolysis" and several other challenges similar to that before unlocking the next tier. This was the kind of content a lot of us want to grind for. Would be a nice challenge to get one let alone all 6. A reason to keep playing is what that would be.
Mage rank is something that has a sort of progression to it however it doesn't make sense. you get badges every 10 levels or so to show off on your player card. only thing is those badges represent your level, which is also stated on your player card. The gold is very nice addition, however the XP to level is exponential. While you do give us a lot of gold from level 1-100, after level 30 things get very very slow, and they only get slower and slower. No feeling of progression more so like you got this 50 gold for playing this long. Being level 47 myself, its been a long time since I was level 46. I can only imagine what going from 70 to 71 feels like. Let alone level 99-100.
Ideas how to make things better:
Cant change things that are already given from the classes, that's okay. An idea for progression is making weekly set of challenges (separate from the chapter system) these challenges would not go away if you didn't complete them by the next week. For this you would complete 4 weeks worth of challenges to get a free rare (blue) skin. Not saying this specifically should be in the game, just some sort of thing like this to be able to work for something.
As for mage rank, here's an idea from SirDapper. Make it so XP for each level is 7500xp (not exponential) and give gold every 5 levels. (amount tbd). Add simple cosmetics that level up through out mage rank. such as cloud bursts or artifacts. OR, tie mage rank level to chapters level each season, and add exclusive rewards for reaching milestones such as 50-100-150 etc.
Game modes
Clash was a nice addition for the game. Great for newer players to get a real hold on the combat without being punished so hard in battle royale. With the current player base it made sense to close the duos mode. While I love BR it seems most of the player base wants something else. I'm sure you're aware of this. Clash should've been temporary (maybe it is idk) And had a game mode with more depth than just throwing DF everywhere to rotate in after that we could actually make content out of.
We know game modes are coming, but this gets to my next point.
Communication
This above all is the most important thing out of all of this. I'm not saying you don't communicate, its how. The community live streams are wonderful and always a great time with Andy and Andrew. All though the cant answer many questions as most of the stuff people want to know is still hush hush. The reddit post addressing serious issues are also very good. Mistakes happen. Anyway, going long periods of time in the dark while watching the player base and viewership slowly going down. We have nothing to be excited about the next update because we know nothing about it. Is it going to be balance? content? optimization? We know we get chapters, but chapters are something I'm kind of worried about judging by how quickly I completed the prologue.
We need you guys to talk about the game to us. You do a great job engaging with the community and content creators. But we need to know about the game. Just a simple "Hey we know you guys are looking forward to a new game mode, cant tell you anything yet. But we ARE working on one. Stay tuned" or "were aware of *insert bug here* and preparing to fix" I know not everything can be hot fixed, but even telling us that it cant be hot fixed it good communication. These types of things can really help the relationship between you the developers and us the consumers.
We always hear you guys say "were in this for the long run." We need to know what exactly that means. Right now with the state of the game its very worrying. We need to know what you guys have planned and are planning and are actively working on. (I know we have the road map) We need things to look forward to that aren't months and months away, something more than just a "wait for it"
TLDR. Go get a snack and read the whole thing. <3
We're all kind of nervous for the game. The initial launch hype is completely gone, along with the players and the viewers. We're all wondering what's your next move but its been very quiet from you guys. Which makes us more nervous. We love you guys and we trust you. From our side we cant help but think "what are they going to do?" as we watch the game we love slowly fizzle out..
We love you guys. We love this game.
<3
-talkohsss
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