Nightmare's End - Discussion Thread

[WindHunter]

Responsible members of the Skylords Reborn team recently met to discuss possible changes to campaign maps. What is outlined here are the proposed changes to the map Nightmare's End. These changes are not final and are only proposed. As a warning, other map projects such as more RPvE presets and Defensive RPvE have a much higher priority for our team. As such, these, or any campaign map changes, may not happen for a very long time. 

Some changes here are firmer than others, all italicized proposals have accompanying explanations for why we are considering them, but they are the most tentative of all the proposals.

Proposed Changes:

1.   Increase number of starter wells from 2 --> 3
2.   Increase capacity of starter and T2 wells from 900 --> 1200
3.   Study current spawn timers for the waves which attack the Amii Elemental Nodes to see if they need changes. 
4.   Add a reason to take and hold the Elemental Nodes during the map's duration and not just at the end by adding global effects for controlling a specific node. Below are some initial ideas for such effects.
   A. Nature Node:
       A1. Immediate effect - Global heal of 1000 to 2000 of all friendly units;
       A2. Long term - Wheel of Gifts healing effect (friendly units regenerate 3% of its maximum life points every 4 second).
   B. Shadow Node:
       B1. Immediate effect - Increase all charges by +1;
       B2. Long term - every 30 seconds all cards gain +1 charge
   C. Frost Node:
       C1. Immediate effect - Global repair of 1000 to 2000 of all structures;
       C2. Long Term - Friendly units receive 20% less damage.
   D. Fire Node: 
       D1. Immediate effect - Fire Sphere around all controlled Elemental Nodes;
       D2. Long Term - All own units deal 20% more damage.

Same reasoning as Nightmare’s Shard. This is a very long and hard map which can also have a lot of wait time at the beginning. This would increase well lifetime from 30 minutes to 40 minutes and substantially speed up the beginning.

[Cocofang]

Destroying the power shrines is the maps objective.

Players are supposed to destroy them, so obviously they will attempt that asap. Grabbing T2 without also destroying the power shrine right next to it is counterintuitive. It's only really a thing that people think of doing once they use the hidden, underlying mechanics of the map to make it easier for themselves. I don't like the idea of leaning into hidden, counterintuitive mechanics at all.

If anything it should be other other way around. Moving the top left shrine into range of the orb so it will inevitably be destroyed once players claim it. Not destroying the shrine is the exact opposite of what the map tells players they should do. And that is supposed to be the optimal approach? Reward players for following the path intended by the map's design instead.

If you want players to build the orbs without destroying the shrines, then move the shrines into the middle part of the map, which is currently only holding wells. But also mark the location of the orbs with some other objective. So players are enticed to first clear the orbs and then go for the shrines separately. Do not obfuscate things unnecessarily and create situations where players are compelled to ask others what they are supposed to do and the answer ends up being that the game basically lied to them and they ought to do the exact opposite of what the game it telling them.

[JarodDempsey]

I generally agree with cocofang but i do not feel strongly either way about the shrine placement. Speaking for the lower difficulties aside from being a long map I do not think it is excessively difficult. On standard the waves are weak enough that defending as you go is doable but by hte time you reach advanced you are able to understand that you do not need to defend until the end which is an acceptable difficulty curve. 

A minor issue I have with this map is how strong the middle edge camps are and yet they only give wells, this makes them pretty much a waste of time to capture. I would suggest putting and orb or two in there or some other bonus effect.

The only other problem i have with this map is lack of space in the central area. It would be nice to open it up a bit especially on the top and bottom sides for easier defensive installations.

[Ultralord]

About the difficulty, I would say its OK. In some cases, a bit too easy - but always depends on you team.

Currently there is no reason to clear the shrine and then hold the node which you have unlocked. (as Moon is telling you)

What I mean, in most run we are clearing (alone or together) all shrines and then go for the nodes with T4 wait 5 sec and then go for the end phase.
I was thinking if that is how the map is “supposed” to be played or if the players should activate the node and hold it…

If holding is the way to go, it had to be attractive to do.
-          Give you something if you do. (energy / a buff / etc.)
-          Make it harder if you don’t (Enemy use the not to spawn attack waves)
Personal I would make it hard 😊

But that’s only how I play the maps, maybe other players to it in another way.

[WindHunter]

Significant changes to proposals. See initial post for updates. 

[Kapo]

What a great idea to add effects to the nodes.

[Cocofang]

Those effects are incredibly powerful but they also have to justify defending the nodes against the incoming waves, which requires dedicating a good chunk of resources.

How are these effects going to be communicated to the player? Will they know what benefits they would gain to plan around so they can potentially work together to secure the node that is most beneficial to them first?

[Doomdragons]

I do agree with the first point to increase the starter wells to 3 to get a more fluent gameplay right off the bat, which will decrease the waiting and repairing time.

All the other proposed points of modification have no significant effect in my opinion. Here is why:

The enemy raid party attacking and attempting to retake the Amii Elemental Node is so strong (at least on Expert Difficulty) and the space around the Nodes is so restraint, that you would have to bury well over 1'000 points of power to defend and hold one Node. The accumulation of this much power takes time, which in turn results in ever stronger enemy spawns.

And in my point of view through experience the gain in enemy strength outweighs the proposed effects by far. You can test this by playing with the Wheel of Gifts in your deck and see if the effect of the Wheel is worth waiting for the power to play it. In my opinion it is not worth the wait.

Simply being faster both keeps the enemy force smaller and shortens the time you have to deal with all the enemy spawns on this map. A win-win-situation 🙂. I think the mechanics of  the entire map would have to be changed in order to change this situation and make other tactics more interesting. I do not see any reason for making such drastic changes.

I hope this helps. Please let me know.

Have a nice day,

DD

[Lans]

I happened to try this map on expert the other day due to daily quest wanting at least advanced (and I done advanced before that already also due to daily). Double-checking ranks, apparently I managed in ~93mins (~1.5hrs) which feels awfully long but the more amazing thing (to me) is that is in all time top 200 ranks (well, soloing at least); for every other map that shouldn't have been the case.

 

Anyhow, giving the nodes some benefit feels interesting as whenever I did map or of the video/replays I seen, people try to stop short of destroying the shrines (don't talk about defending the nodes). Not sure if it is too much (or too little) but feels like going in direction.

 

 

[WindHunter]

The last time we collected data for map completion times, the average time to complete Nightmare's End was 72 minutes. Nightmare Shard took 48 minutes on average for comparison. Nightmare's End is by far the map with the longest average time to complete.

[Metagross31]

I love the idea of giving the nodes some unique buffs and immediate effects.
However, the current proposals sound too similar to Wheel of gifts imo. Since they probably won't stack, it discourages players to play WOG on this map, which I think would be rather sad, since it is such a unique card in the nature toolset. (I am aware though, that it is usually not optimal to play it)
Thus, I would like to see some more unique effects, such as the shadow one.

An alternative would be to have the nodes constantly do effects in their area to help with the defense (e.g. freeze the attacking waves, heal your units/structures around the node, give out ice shields, deal burst damage)

[WindHunter]

5 hours ago, Metagross31 said:

Since they probably won't stack, it discourages players to play WOG on this map...

We have the ability to make effects count as internal buffs, even when they are applied externally. So allowing stacking is not an issue.

5 hours ago, Metagross31 said:

An alternative would be to have the nodes constantly do effects in their area to help with the defense (e.g. freeze the attacking waves, heal your units/structures around the node, give out ice shields, deal burst damage)

Lebovim and I tried to find the script for the attack waves which spawn to retake the Elemental Nodes as I wanted to reduce their strength, but the map has so many scripts it is like finding a needle in a haystack. In fact, when we did find what seemed to be the relevant files it had no information inside. The reason I am saying this, is that I am in favor of reducing the current strength of these particular attack waves as they are ridiculously strong. As pointed out earlier in this thread, the player is forced to bind way too much power to keep the Node safe, which is part of what encourages the player to just take it at the end. Given it looks like we are currently unable to reduce the attack wave strength directly, I would be in favor of considering localized effects as well (on top of the global buffs) to indirectly nerf the strength of incoming waves. 

[Cocofang]

If bound power is a big concern then making the nodes grant free power, like the Shard in Nightmare Shard, would solve that.

So if players hold the nodes, they are granted all the extra power they need to fortify them without slowing down their progress elsewhere.

[narsegan]

I played this map for the first time, and on expert as well as solo, and personally I would say a big problem with this map is the instant fail in the form of the final objective, it's essentially a cheap death, which would happen on all difficulties.

The final objective shows up when you claimed the final elemental tower, several waves spawn and they will march towards the shard, however the problem is that at no point in the game does it make you aware that you actually need to defend the shard, this resulted in me losing the game as my army was at the top left of the map and I of course did not have enough card charges to stave off that absolute massive wave of enemies as I only had a single charge left on all of my cards, this is in my eyes a surprise instant fail objective and bad game design, since the only way to know about this, is to die to it first, this is one of the ''sins'' of video games, as this takes away the skill of the players and forces them to die to a ''cheap death'' and only then they would know how to avoid the cheap death next time.

As players naturally you play to complete the objectives you're given, yet if you do exactly as the objective says you will find yourself losing the first time as it does not give enough time to move your army to the shard in order to defend it. This can be solved by either making the player more aware of this happening, as it can be easy to forget about if you haven't played the map in a while or have been playing on the map for nearly an hour and when you're playing for that long you tend to only focus on the objectives. Or by including a countdown timer, you have x minutes to get back to the shard and set up defences. Though I believe it is better to make the player aware of it during the game as that way they have more time to setup their defences. Furthermore I would also find it counter intuitive that the best way to play the map is to ignore the objectives for a certain amount of time, though you would of course only know to ignore the sole objective of the map if you have already played and lost to it before.

The other map I can think of that has a surprise mega wave like that is Crusade, however the important difference there is that you already have defences setup as that is naturally part of the objective, not the case with nightmare's end. I therefore wonder if perhaps another way to encourage players to setup defences around it is to just make it similar to the previous mission and have the shard give power(description says it gives power on nightmare's end but I'm not noticing it) and send enemies at it now and then. This will encourage players to defend it as they gain bonus power from it. Or alternatively if that wouldn't fit in with the lore place power wells there.

A player should never be punished for doing what the game tells them to do, nor should they have to die first to know how to avoid that death., theoretically if one is skilled enough they could avoid any death, yet this could never be this case with this mechanic as it completely surprises the player. One could argue I wouldn't have lost if I tried the map on standard first, however the problem still persists on standard, no matter what difficulty you play it on for the first time there will be a very large surprise monster wave at the end which you will lose to if you're not aware of it, be it on standard, advanced or expert. At the end of the day this will be a problem for everyone who plays the map for the first time, or everyone who hasn't played the map in so long that they forget about it.

There were some rather rude people on Discord not open to discussion, so I will simply leave my feedback here and leave this forum, do with it what you want.

[Lans]

Hi, welcome to forums! 🙂

5 hours ago, narsegan said:

I played this map for the first time, and on expert as well as solo, and personally I would say a big problem with this map is the instant fail in the form of the final objective, it's essentially a cheap death, which would happen on all difficulties.

In many ways I agree with what you said and would not mind more hint of the massive wave that comes after but I do want to provide this counter point:

Map starts with Moon stating that you need power of the 4 nodes to begin ritual to destroy the shard and based on other maps, I think is reason players should expect map won't end for at least another couple minutes after taking the 4 nodes for the said ritual.

 

I do feel the quests for activating and holding nodes aren't the best are hinting how massive the end waves are.

 

I do also feel that if you were doing the map with 2 players as intended then it shouldn't be as much a shell shock.

 

Finally, while I am at it, I usually do this map solo with lots of buildings at choke points so it takes me a very long time. One problem I seen with this approach is when the massive waves at the end comes (or dies trying to get close to shard), the game grinds to a halt for a few minutes probably because large waves at many spawn point are being killed simultaneously and triggers loops of respawn?

 

[WatcherOfSky]

6 hours ago, narsegan said:

There were some rather rude people on Discord not open to discussion, so I will simply leave my feedback here and leave this forum, do with it what you want.

I was keeping up with that conversation, and I didn't see anyone be outwardly rude to you. Everyone just had their own point of view on your predicament.

 

With that said, I do agree that all this could be pretty much fixed if there was a way to add an extra bullet point to defend the shard at the end, although it could also be said that it's supposed to be a sneak attack in design and story, even if it's cheap for players trying it blind for the first time.

[Volin]

8 hours ago, narsegan said:

I played this map for the first time, and on expert as well as solo, and personally I would say a big problem with this map is the instant fail in the form of the final objective, it's essentially a cheap death, which would happen on all difficulties.

The final objective shows up when you claimed the final elemental tower, several waves spawn and they will march towards the shard, however the problem is that at no point in the game does it make you aware that you actually need to defend the shard, this resulted in me losing the game as my army was at the top left of the map and I of course did not have enough card charges to stave off that absolute massive wave of enemies as I only had a single charge left on all of my cards, this is in my eyes a surprise instant fail objective and bad game design, since the only way to know about this, is to die to it first, this is one of the ''sins'' of video games, as this takes away the skill of the players and forces them to die to a ''cheap death'' and only then they would know how to avoid the cheap death next time.

As players naturally you play to complete the objectives you're given, yet if you do exactly as the objective says you will find yourself losing the first time as it does not give enough time to move your army to the shard in order to defend it. This can be solved by either making the player more aware of this happening, as it can be easy to forget about if you haven't played the map in a while or have been playing on the map for nearly an hour and when you're playing for that long you tend to only focus on the objectives. Or by including a countdown timer, you have x minutes to get back to the shard and set up defences. Though I believe it is better to make the player aware of it during the game as that way they have more time to setup their defences. Furthermore I would also find it counter intuitive that the best way to play the map is to ignore the objectives for a certain amount of time, though you would of course only know to ignore the sole objective of the map if you have already played and lost to it before.

The other map I can think of that has a surprise mega wave like that is Crusade, however the important difference there is that you already have defences setup as that is naturally part of the objective, not the case with nightmare's end. I therefore wonder if perhaps another way to encourage players to setup defences around it is to just make it similar to the previous mission and have the shard give power(description says it gives power on nightmare's end but I'm not noticing it) and send enemies at it now and then. This will encourage players to defend it as they gain bonus power from it. Or alternatively if that wouldn't fit in with the lore place power wells there.

A player should never be punished for doing what the game tells them to do, nor should they have to die first to know how to avoid that death., theoretically if one is skilled enough they could avoid any death, yet this could never be this case with this mechanic as it completely surprises the player. One could argue I wouldn't have lost if I tried the map on standard first, however the problem still persists on standard, no matter what difficulty you play it on for the first time there will be a very large surprise monster wave at the end which you will lose to if you're not aware of it, be it on standard, advanced or expert. At the end of the day this will be a problem for everyone who plays the map for the first time, or everyone who hasn't played the map in so long that they forget about it.

There were some rather rude people on Discord not open to discussion, so I will simply leave my feedback here and leave this forum, do with it what you want.

I agree with the most people from the discord discussion:

If you played it in a team on standard you would have had no problems at all.

 

You decide to go solo and expert for your first try, no point in blaming the game design or even the people from that discord conversation.

In the time you were now complaining about this map you could have played it on all 3 difficulties

 

 

[WindHunter]

Nightmare's End - Proposed Changes - Iteration 2

A major issue with Nightmare's End is that the map requires the player to defend a substantial amount of locations, but almost none of these locations are capable of being fortified. This encourages players to fight back against the map, warping its mechanics in an attempt to reduce the defensive load on the player. Our goal with these proposed changes is to improve the experience of playing the map in the way intended by the original designers, without impacting the creative approaches to conquering the map that have emerged over the years.  

All changes mentioned here are proposals. Some, all, or none of the proposed changes might make it into the game depending on the results of community feedback and map testing.

Elemental Node Changes

• All nodes have been moved to the back of their respective area, freeing up more space for buildings and maneuvering units
• All nodes now have buildable walls behind the Amii Gates, allowing players to fortify their position and defend the nodes more easily.
  • Note: the walls in the pictures below are not pre-built, they are only shown that way for illustrative purposes.

Shadow Node

Nature Node

Fire Node

Frost Node

Shard of the Forge Changes

• Add buildable walls to the left and right side of the Shard of the Forge. This will help to foreshadow the final defense for new players and give everyone a more stable defensive location. This is particularly important because the final attack adds a major point of failure to a map that exceeds 40 minutes in average playtime. 
• Move the final wave spawn caves to prevent the attack waves from instantly aggroing onto the new walls surrounding the Shard.

Shard Defensive Walls

Final Attack Wave Spawn Locations

Southwest Spawn & Monument Changes

• Move the Monument + 3 Power Wells in the southwest to the right to create more space to place defenses and lengthen the time between when attack waves arrive.
• Move the spawn cave north to see if we can redirect the waves to attack the western player's T1 location which has defensive walls to aid the player in defending.
  • This change is experimental and will require testing to see if it works. 

Southwest Monument + Well Location

Southwest Spawn Cave

[Bini Inibitor]

Mostly good changes. However to me those small walls at the nodes look terrible.

[Cocofang]

Previous patch notes:

Quote

Nightmare Shard: increased initial power wells from 2 to 3 and increased the capacity of the T2 & T3 power wells from 600 (20 min) to 900 (30 min). Once the goal is activated to destroy the infected Twilight spawns (which occurs either after the player has reached the Shard or the first Twilight Witch spawns, whichever is first) the fog of war over each infected camp is cleared in a 35m radius.

The new proposal is a good direction. But it leaves several issues unaddressed:

• Asymmetry of the northern orbs. One can be taken without destroying the shrine, the other one cannot.
• Power requirement to defend the nodes. It is a long map and binding power into fortifications would slow you down further.
• No incentive or benefit to holding the nodes other than the game telling you to do so.

I do not like the respawn timer change, it's unnecessary. The pressure is high and that's fine. That such a change apparently takes a lot of effort just makes it seem even less attractive.
The focus should be on somehow salvaging the design of the map so the game at the very least not totally lies to the player and sets them up for a harder time. Meaning, there should be a benefit to actually holding and defending the nodes.

The intended design of the map is made clear by what the callouts tell you to do. But it's so horrendously designed that it turns out just ignoring the directions is much better. The game wants you to destroy the shrines. But it's better to leave them standing when possible so you won't get attacked. The game wants you to defend the nodes. But it's better to ignore them completely and only tap them at the very end. It's a total design failure and essentially amounts to nothing more than a bunch of traps.

Still think simply giving the nodes the effect of granting energy would reward players for holding them. Or let them create a strong construction-hut aura so you could build actual fortifications there without massively slowing you down elsewhere.

Right now it's just plain bad to do what the game tells you to do. Defensible walls at the nodes won't change that.

[Venomlord]

I think that are good changes on top of the energy well chances that are already implemented. The additionall walls are an good idea and optional if the player wants to defend the nodes easier (aswell as the middle which should help really).

[Hrdina_Imperia]

I do like the idea the Nodes giving power/Construction Hut aura, so the defense is actually feasible.

As for the proposed changes, they seem helpful and fine. Maybe the walls at nodes are a bit too much, don't think it's gonna be that useful and may look out of place. I would rather go for the route of captured Nodes giving worthwhile benefits. 

[Metagross31]

What if each node would give a small but noticeable Wheel of Gifts-like buff to all friendly units of that element?

[Bini Inibitor]

Moving the southwest spawn location up slightly is already quite big, as it can happen that you get in a sort of respawn loop where all units constantly attack your southern Monument.
I believe it would already come a long way, if captured and held nodes granted vision around the area. (Like in the image for example)
Vision is such an underestimated tool and being able to predict and see incoming waves of enemies may make it noticeably easier to defend at respective locations.
The wall segments look completely off and adding wells at the nodes I feel like is more of a trap, as you're likely to lose them when having to keep an eye out at multiple spots.
Also you have quite a lot of power by the time you reach T3.

What I consider much more of an issue is the fact that Nightmare's End has terrible difficulty scaling.

On Advanced your T3 (north) does not get attacked at any point, your T1 does not get attacked at any point by pushing T4 (south). It barely prepares you about anything Expert might throw at you. You pretty much never have to divert your attention towards any of your monuments and can just focus on the current task ahead, where as Expert requires you to keep attention at multiple spots at once, while having to spend a good amount of resources, since the waves get quite strong, which makes advancing so frustrating for many. You clear one spot and get shit on at another. You can play the map several times on Expert and still get overwhelmed, because Advanced does a horrendous job at showing you what Expert might be like.

I like Nightmare's End, it's challenging and I have a good time playing it. Probably my favourite map.

I am actually for making Advanced a little bit more difficult by introducing the mechanics Expert has on a tame level. Like getting attacked by 2 Archers and 2 Slavers at T1 and T3 respectively after doing aforementioned tasks.