Shrine of War

[Ponni]

1 hour ago, Danol said:

Yep, you're absolutely right. With 2 SoW in a game, the void power mechanic might as well not exist at all. The same applies if other void power shrines get buffed to the level of SoW. Void power was meant to impose a delay on power reusage, that is obviously not working if you can get your void power back nearly instantaneous.

A simple comparison: Without any buffs, the void power regeneration is 1% per second, so to regenerate 99% of void power you need 459s. With Shrine of Memory constantly up it takes 152s. With SoW, it's 21 units killed. 5.25 kills per player on a 4 player map. How long does it take 4 players to kill 21 units on average, while on t3? Even if it took 30s it's still 5 times as powerful as Shrine of Memory. Even if you have only 1 SoW it totaly outperforms Shrine of Memory. It does not require the attention of Furnace + Cultist Master, it does not require specific cards/playstyles like Shrine of Martyrs, but also outperforms both and can be splashed easier. That's just insane. All that for a meager 300 energy, the cost of one (!) Great Wyrm.

But, of course, there are always those people who think too much is not enough.

Oh btw: Buffing the other void power refund options is not power creep, that's a power avalanche. It would be easier to just remove the whole void power mechanic, reduce spell cost by 90% and make units refund 90% of their power immediately upon death, because that's basically the same effect.

Because they serve the same purpose: Void power management.

Please stop it now. This void manipulation has been there from the start of the game, I guess it was developed as a feature. Funny then 12-ish years later we found this to be a problem...

// Ponni

Edited April 7, 2021 by Ponni
Slight clarification...

[Danol]

The original game lasted for only 4 years, all the time in between then and now is meaningless. Btw. there was a SoW discussion back then but, as you might remember, there were a bunch of balancing issues that the original devs did not care about for ages. Wheel of Gift stacking, for example. Past ignorance is no excuse for current ignorance.

Btw. yes, void power management was developed as a feature - not complete void power negation. That's why none of the other void power management tools is nearly as powerful as SoW.

 

[DieToPlay]

13 minutes ago, Danol said:

The original game lasted for only 4 years, all the time in between then and now is meaningless. Btw. there was a SoW discussion back then but, as you might remember, there were a bunch of balancing issues that the original devs did not care about for ages. Wheel of Gift stacking, for example. Past ignorance is no excuse for current ignorance.

Btw. yes, void power management was developed as a feature - not complete void power negation. That's why none of the other void power management tools is nearly as powerful as SoW.

 

Explain to me what are the bonuses of nerfing the void manipulation system.

[Danol]

10 hours ago, Kapo said:

I guess the smartest thing to do would be to

a) Bring it in line with the other shrines in regard of orb requirement (FFX)
b) Slightly reduce the return to bring it closer to the other shrines

Even under those conditions it can still be the strongest of the shrines but not THAT far off anymore.

Somehow I did not notice this comment before, so my response is a bit late. Whatever ...

Just slightly reducing the return (without further changes to the buff) would not bring it in line with the others. Goind with the 15% refund per kill, you can still get 100% refund every 30s.

Take a look at what would happen if all my suggestions were implemented and only one player with SoW is on the map (basically the worst case for SoW). Everyone still gets a 100% return of void power every 60s for the cost of 150 energy (you'd need 28 kills for that, which is doable in 30s, especially in a 4 player map - just 7 kills per player). Shrine of Memory gives one player 84% return in 60s for 200 energy. Shrine of Greed gives everyone 75% over 60s for 200 energy. (For comparison: Without any of these, you'll get back 45% of void power over 60s.) SoW would still give the most void power for the least energy cost of these 3 shrines, for every player on the map.

Shrine of Martyrs could yield more, but also restricts your playstyle more, so I'm okay with that - opportunity costs are significantly higher, so it should yield more.

[Ponni]

4 minutes ago, Danol said:

Somehow I did not notice this comment before, so my response is a bit late. Whatever ...

Just slightly reducing the return (without further changes to the buff) would not bring it in line with the others. Goind with the 15% refund per kill, you can still get 100% refund every 30s.

Take a look at what would happen if all my suggestions were implemented and only one player with SoW is on the map (basically the worst case for SoW). Everyone still gets a 100% return of void power every 60s for the cost of 150 energy (you'd need 28 kills for that, which is doable in 30s, especially in a 4 player map - just 7 kills per player). Shrine of Memory gives one player 84% return in 60s for 200 energy. Shrine of Greed gives everyone 75% over 60s for 200 energy. (For comparison: Without any of these, you'll get back 45% of void power over 60s.) SoW would still give the most void power for the least energy cost of these 3 shrines, for every player on the map.

Shrine of Martyrs could yield more, but also restricts your playstyle more, so I'm okay with that - opportunity costs are significantly higher, so it should yield more.

Can you do something for me? Prove to me that you can, consistently and not like every 10th try, beat a 4p rPvE level 10 map without current SoW (or for that matter a team of 4 players doing FoF + Cultists). Once you prove that it actually can be done consistently, lets continue this discussion.

// Ponni

[Danol]

I don't even see how this is relevant to the discussion? If a map is impossible to beat without one specific card, then thats a problem with the map. A card being mandatory would be a proof that it's op, because it explicitly shows that no other card has comparable power. So even if you're right you'd just proven yourself wrong about SoW.

 

[Ponni]

8 minutes ago, Danol said:

I don't even see how this is relevant to the discussion? If a map is impossible to beat without one specific card, then thats a problem with the map. A card being mandatory would be a proof that it's op, because it explicitly shows that no other card has comparable power. So even if you're right you'd just proven yourself wrong about SoW.

 

Wow, I am right but wrong? So, that must mean you are wrong but right?

For the sake of it, as you do not think it is relevant, should we then scrap 4p level 10 or what? Or how do you want to solve it?

// Ponni

[Danol]

If (and thats a big if) this one card is absolutely neccessary for rpve 10, then rpve 10 needs to be rebalanced. That applies even if SoW remains unchanged, because such a design is just a fail.

Btw no I'm not "wrong but right", simply because I never made a claim about rpve 10 that I could even be wrong about.

 

Edited April 7, 2021 by Danol

[Ponni]

39 minutes ago, Danol said:

If (and thats a big if) this one card is absolutely neccessary for rpve 10, then rpve 10 needs to be rebalanced. That applies even if SoW remains unchanged, because such a design is just a fail.

Btw no I'm not "wrong but right", simply because I never made a claim about rpve 10 that I could even be wrong about.

 

Haha, "a big if", "rpve 10 needs to be rebalanced", you can still prove me wrong you know. Heck, I could even join you for a few tries for the sake of it. Ping me ingame and lets try it, then we could learn something perhaps.

Anyhow, discussion is over here for my part, I will trust the Skylords balancing team do have all knowledge required, including 4p level 10. 

// Ponni

Edited April 7, 2021 by Ponni

[Cocofang]

The original game had a business model where the goal was to make people buy BFP to get the powerful cards so they would intentionally tune the game around their existence to give people an incentive to spend money so even Timmy 2-fingers can somewhat reliably do content.

Add to that, that they evidently didn't care about their initial design when it came to making a quick buck while the ship was sinking, so they straight up threw the concept of having a T3 out of the window as well.

So now we are left with a corpse twisted and mangled by the attempts to squeeze some more drops of blood out of it. The corporate tentacles still run deep within the game. Remember, it was entirely built on top of a lootbox scheme. It is a given that the design was influenced by this basis.

As such, a concept like "We will offer them a purchasable way for their convenience to negate a game system we put in place" is absolutely thinkable. So are those remnants still justified in their existence today?

[Draconnor]

For me SoW 20% is "overkill" and used in right moment refunds mana in seconds... but even unupgraded 12% can do that. Nerfing time or % wouldn't change much. Its still all about investing 150-300 power for empty void

Only debate could be about making it more "relaxing" (constant-pasive instead of activation -with 5-10% refund) or much more dynamic - by changing duration below 10s.

[Xamos]

The thing is, in normal cPvE it´s not that much of a Problem, but in rPvE the Power refund is insane, since there are constantly enemies dying.

I propose that it should get a cap - a max Power refund during one activation.

Either:

1. let it not return more than ~500 Power

2. or better dynamically: let it not return more that 70% of your void power (from the timestamp when activated e.g. you have 1000 void at the beggining and it can max. return 700)

3. during one activation your Voidpower can´t go below a certain point (f.e. not lower than 200 Voidpower)

4. let it cap at a certain count of died enemies - a.e. after ~5 enemies died, it wont return any more void when another enemie dies

 

What do you think? Since Shrine of Memories also has a max cap (at +20 pwer-refund as far as i know) it would make sense if other shrines had a cap aswell.

[wanky]

On 4/6/2021 at 2:13 AM, Cocofang said:

 

Shrine of the Martyrs - Demonstrates that 8% return rate is already quite powerful. The most involved option and requires other cards in the deck to work.

Just to know. As example: in Ocean ADv community challange, i decidet to NOT use the Shrine, just cause its not even Worth to use. In this map, like i many otheres, there are just not enough units around to Freeze in a effectiv way. The 8% is maby ok for Rpve, but in cPVE its just not usefull in most cases.

 

if u intrestet, i can show replays after challange is done, with and without this crappy Shrine 

 

/wanky

[SunWu]

Yeah, global stuff in solo is never as strong as in 2 or 4pl. Makes sense.

[shroomion]

two fire orbs one neutral and the effect only works for the player using it. that way it will not interfere with cards that gain power when you have a bigger void pool and it might be a reason for the devs to expand on that possible playstyle instead of killing it off like it was done with shrine of martyrs (which is now admittedly not a bad card at all..i just also liked the mechanic and idea of the old one as well)

[Ponni]

18 hours ago, shroomion said:

two fire orbs one neutral and the effect only works for the player using it. that way it will not interfere with cards that gain power when you have a bigger void pool and it might be a reason for the devs to expand on that possible playstyle instead of killing it off like it was done with shrine of martyrs (which is now admittedly not a bad card at all..i just also liked the mechanic and idea of the old one as well)

Which existing cards today were you thinking on considering a bigger void pool? There arent that many existing today to my knowledge, only Time Vortex (shadow) and Backlash on top of my head...without checking card database details more...

// Ponni

Edited May 1, 2021 by Ponni

[shroomion]

Not gonna look through all the cards again xD I did, but it has already been quite a while ago and i can right now also just remember voidstorm, backlash, time vortex, and the old shrine of martyrs..i had a deck once with these but i honestly can not remember any more cards which build upon a higher voidpool. IIRC there are or there is also a building which does prevent your voidpool from reducing or so...it would be a neat option to get a playstyle like that in the future maybe...versatility etc. but i am not gonna rant about that now haha