A Deep Dive Into Balance.

[gray hound]

The game is overall very balanced, with most if not all items being viable on the right builds. However there are some outliers that I'd like to talk about.

Starting with weapons, the obvious one is Veilrender. I honestly think the weapon itself is fine. It's above average, but that's more than understandable due to it being unique and hard to obtain.
The issue is the enchantment. Avatar of death is balanced for Veilrender, but the moment it moves to another weapon, it's incredibly overpowered. It deals 50 damage at 0.35 times per second. ~150 dps per hit. Moving this damage to something extremely fast completely breaks the enchantment! Seeing that crafting is on the way, it seems that %damage 0.5 times per second, would make it an acceptable level of strength with faster weapons still making very good use of the freezing abilities, but with less absurd damage.

A weapon that feels underwhelming, is Constellations! The enchantment is very strong with 200% scaling, but also incredibly situational, only being useful on big groups of enemies, with variety between easy to kill targets, and tanky ones to make use of the damage. On top of that, it's damage is pretty bad. It's a fast weapon, with the same base damage as "The Snakes", an extremely fast weapon, also unique! Personally, I think a chance to summon a star on hit would greatly benefit the weapon, making it useful against bosses and groups of high health enemies. It also desperately needs a base damage buff.

Talking about hearts. Mortal Heart it's balanced by itself. Very high HP, very good stats, but a very impactful downside to go with it. Combining it with Alum Heart though, makes it overpowered! No matter what build you're using, nothing beats the Mortal Heart stats. However, Alum Heart completely negates the no healing downside! This one is hard to deal with though... My only idea would be to cut down on the sinnergy. The downside becomes no temp hearts and reduced healing, cutting down the current option, but opening up many other firstborn combinations. As it stands, there's no reason to use anything besides Mortal+Alum Heart.

Now, the Golden Heart on the other hand, feels very bad. It feels like a very watered down version of the Mortal heart, which is never worth In my opinion. Its enchantment is the only thing that matters, with the 1 max hearts, and combining it for sinnergy doesn't work well with its lack of defense. Seems like it belongs on either a meme build or a no hit challenge run.

Moving away from items, there's a small concept that feels off. Not sure if it needs changes, but would like to put it under the radar just in case. The difference between getting hit and taking damage. As it stands, damage to temp hearts, doesn't proc "getting damaged" effects (unless it specifically mentions temp hearts). This makes some items better, like the Iron Claymore, not losing stacks on temp heart damage, and others worse, like the emerald heart not applying revitalise.

A final thing for now are loading zones. When going through to a different area (cathedral to the catacombs for example) all stacks are lost. This affects temp hearts, Death Spiral stacks, Lucky Streak stacks, Heat stacks and any buff or debuff, like Poison, Ablaze or Empowered. Seems like an unintended nerf to many items and mechanics.

I know that nerfs are usually a pretty hot topic, but they're important to prevent power creep and give longevity to the game, so please be reasonable with responses.

[soft plover]

i like wen da funni stuff abilities break da game

thing is, am a roguelike player which uh, roguelike would fix it PLEAAA SOLIDIZARR ADD ROGUELIKEE"

[gray hound]

I feel like the game already has the Roguelike aspect of going into a run, and returning stronger (more items/currency). I've heard of some kind of perk tree being added in the future as well as shop/NPCs which will also add to the feel. Now, full Roguelike with randomly generated maps that link to eachother and offer upgrades for the current run as you go through them? Idk if it's gonna happen, but it sounds cool

[soft plover]

More like, imagine if the loot you attain is temporary for that run

I feel like it'd highly incentivize using different gear based on the current scenario

I hate the general genre discourse but yeah this game has zero Roguelike aspects to it , it's a good game but that tag got me disappointed

[topaz compass]

Enemy encounters are randomized within bounds. Otherwise, the masses were fooled by the "runs" concept.

[soft plover]

Plus

The whole return system

[gray hound]

I wouldn't say it has 0 aspects, but as someone with 6 current fully Roguelikes installed xD you're right, doesn't feel the same

[soft plover]

I genuinely feel incentivizes safe playing

"Oh why would I go to this dangerous place when I can easily lose all my gear"

So I return home, cleanse everything then speedrun back to where I came from

[soft plover]

Nah, that's not much of a justification

Awesome game, it's just not a Roguelike

[gray hound]

Time's the reason. you can clear an area with like 5 enemies in it 5 times, or clear a room with 30 enemies in a fraction of the time it'd take for the safer option

[soft plover]

Or you could return home, satiate and put your nearly drained weapons and upgrade your mirror so you can clear that set of enemies in half the time

[topaz compass]

idk how applicable I am to this argument since my deaths are separated by weeks and my runs average 90 minutes in length. I perform a general exterminatus.

[soft plover]

It's why I strongly support moving the cleansing bells to the world itself

Would make going to the more difficult areas more rewarding

[soft plover]

uh, what games in that genre have you played tbf lul

[topaz compass]

Nothing solidly in the Roguelike genre. Closest fits would be... Warframe, Soulframe, and Legasista. If we're focusing on itemization more, then you can add Borderlands 1, 2, and Pre-Sequel.

[soft plover]

yeah, you uh

Listed nothing in the genre

[topaz compass]

Forgot about pokemon mystery dungeon

[soft plover]

Lul

I guess my point was going in on the Roguelike genre would genuinely fix a lot of the balancing issues

[topaz compass]

I'm not going to argue over community tags. I don't play Roguelikes. But I do have over 300h on my Voin save so I will chime in on balance and experience discussions.

[soft plover]

Thing is, that's also

A bit of...

Not sure if Professionals with hundreds of hours should dictate the balancing of a game that's majority enjoyed by casuals

[topaz compass]

#1360242804504269031 message

[soft plover]

As for balancing though, I think everything is fairly balanced

There could be some outliers here and there ofc

[topaz compass]

Alum Heart

[soft plover]

Do feel that synergies are lacking

[topaz compass]

Before I discredit that statement for having not thought about build crafting, what level of synergy were you expecting?

[soft plover]

I feel fundamentally, this game was designed with a completely different experience in mind, and then got repurposed to a different game loop

But imo, best thing to really say is, let 'em cook

[topaz compass]

It's been in development for at least 7 years and iterated on through playtesting and user feedback

[soft plover]

SOLIDZAR is a good developer

[topaz compass]

Soz is pretty good at parsing user feedback, my one concern is scope creep

[soft plover]

this

All the stuff is insanely well polished

But rapid iterations would be a nightmare

[topaz compass]

Also the only UE5 game I know of that doesn't have performance, stability, and file size issues

[gray hound]

I mean, @topaz compass should have his own Lab in the server with the amount of stuff he tested around. He's the best when it comes to min-maxing builds and interactions between items imo.

[soft plover]

[topaz compass]

I don't find all the interactions, but I do find a lot of them.

[soft plover]

I was uh

I'm not talking about Weapon balancing or changes whoop-

Am talking fundamental core changes

[gray hound]

ye, but that would be borderline a different game

Best I can see is a full Roguelike mode as a DLC after full release

but anyways, @topaz compass thoughts on those suggestions from the post. wdyt?

[topaz compass]

Just OP or whole thread? Because I've been getting DMed about the thread's discussion.

[gray hound]

just the balance part, stuff like veilrender nerf sugestion, the Mortal+Alum Heart stuff. Whatever you feel like its worth talking about

agree or disagree type stuff is enough.

[gray hound]

felt like you were gonna mention something here 4 example

[topaz compass]

A lot of the issues you point out I agree with, though the solutions I'm generally not as keen on. I'll go over each one

[soft plover]

I don't read the names of the weapons and affixes lmao

Just da description so I had ZERO input on it

[topaz compass]

• Avater of Undeath being changed to % of physical damage I like. But we also need to account for the cold damage somehow pulling a +30% out of its butt for some reason. If the calcs are fixed, it might suddenly be not OP.
• Constellations suffers from incorrect calculations. It deals your weapon's minimum damage x2, no variance, no boosts, no modifiers, no percent boosts. That's why it's so weak. Again, this needs fixing before further changes are looked at.
• Alum Heart is an issue. And whaddya know, it also has some bugs! This time it's timer related. The 4.2s timer to regen a temp charge isn't reset upon getting hit, so there's instances where you instantly regen a lost charge. It also doesn't trigger Weird Claw's cooldown, so you always get 2 per tick. It'd still be powerful with these issues fixed, but it wouldn't be overpowered.
• Golden Heart I don't see as much of an issue with. Yes, 1 HP is quite the penalty, but you get ~90% Luck from 666, so 150% is quite a lot. You can overcome the penalty with Firstborn. It's true there's little reason to generally use it outside of loot grinding, but that is its purpose.
• That difference between losing a temp charge and a perm charge is indeed an issue worth looking into. The subtle differences in behavior are worth keeping, but they're also causing balance issues. If temp charges become too easy to acquire (e.g. Alum Heart), they defacto become the best defense due to all the other explicit and implicit synergies they have.
• Loading zones wiping effects is a technical thing. I have no ground to oppose your suggestion here other than "can it be done"? Since load screens currently fix a memory leak that may or may not be resolved in the next patch, I'm hesitant to change their behavior until the aforementioned bug is fixed.
• And I'm on nerfs, too. Only buff gets you power creep, which makes games boring and unbalanced. The issue isn't us, but general human psychology lingers on negative events far more than positive ones, hence nerfs have to be deliberate, lest vast negative sentiment be generated.

[soft plover]

Nerfs are AWESOME

[gray hound]

Did not know about the Constellations problem and agree with fixing it before thinking about changes. Still think it might need a bit extra to be good though. mMy problem with it is that basically everything in the game deals AoE damage. Having stuff that happens on death doesn't do much in most cases. If you kill one thing while hitting others around, odds are the rest is already almost dead. The things that are far, and not getting hit by the weapon, wont be in range of the enchantment either..

[topaz compass]

Poison the Blood

It has some synergies, but by itself it ain't much.

[gray hound]

yea I was gonna mention that xD
At least its AoE goes beyond your weapons reach, so it can hit some enemies your weapon didn't and still get some value

[topaz compass]

Here's the bug thread on weapon calcs
#1352109913626771466 message

[gray hound]

damn, that's more than a few

[neon rain]

yeah looking forward to when some of these numbers get fixed. would also be sick if constellations snapshotted your current damage each damaging instance rather than just when the pylon is summoned

[soft plover]

We should triple the base damage of enemies...

[neon rain]

Oh we just killing people now? poison stacks should stack on players, meaning that if you get hit with 9 stacks of poison you just die no matter what

[soft plover]

Yeah!!

Rather than nerfing the weapons we just make the challenge more suitable for them !

[neon rain]

chain lightning should hit the user

real talk the interaction between alum heart and weird claw is probably highest priority fix in terms of balance

real easy to make a build when survivability is just guaranteed

[gray hound]

that's power creep. if we go that direction, everything gets out of control, instead of nerfing stuff, we make every new weapon more op than the last, than the enemies insta die and we need to buff the enemies, then new enemies are just immune to everything and we need a new GIGA op weapon to deal damage to it and everything goes out the window... stuff snowballs if you dont keep it in check.

[neon rain]

yup 100% balance goes both ways

[soft plover]

I mean if we

[neon rain]

inevitably stronger and stronger edgecases will happen regardless

[soft plover]

If we power creep hard enough we can get stealth archers builds into the game

[gray hound]

10/10 skyrim reference

[neon rain]

good reference but also real talk stealth archer=/= lightning imo. Lightning is a lot of things but subtle is definitely not one of them

[gray hound]

But I do get the frustration with nerfs. I remember over a year ago, a massive controversy on Destiny 2 where late game stuff was reserved to the top 1% of players and was inaccessible to most of the player-base cuz perfection was basically a must. Things got out of control the other way around where the player felt very weak, unless he was using the one of the 4 META builds at the time that made difficulty acceptable

It's a very fragile subject, but I giga-trust Soz with it. He's been cooking 3 Michelin star meals for all of us

[topaz compass]

That's where the arena and things like it come in. That was targeted specifically at me and players like me. Soz can keep the main path at a normal difficulty and spike the optional content for the experts.

[neon rain]

the idea is to balance around the midpoint, not the extreme yeah. helldivers had a whole saga about this, its just that right now the fear of dying really doesnt exist even on max difficulties. Soz is def cooking but I honestly think that the only things that are overtuned right now are alum heart synergies and veilrender synergies. Veilrender is less of a pressing issue because right now its a one time item, but as it becomes more replaceable its gonna spiral a bit. Alum heart is just way to strong right now though. Any build without it feels like you have paper bones and glass skin compared to builds with it

yup

couple of things just lack the usability of other items, but trying to balance things around super edge case builds is how you force people to use super edge case builds. Edge case builds should be terrifyingly strong compared to normal builds at what they do, but lack overall utility. likewise, normal builds should be usable regardless. Soz seems to have this down, but those 2 items are kinda the biggest offenders

[topaz compass]

The pattern I've noticed and Soz has just about confirmed is "let them be OP if it requires sufficient effort"

[neon rain]

exactly, which is why giving the ability to make an absoulute unit build with 1 heart passive is insanity

[gray hound]

I also love the arena (sad that is not reparable in the same save though) but it "alienates" more casual players. I'm personally in favor of "Get Gud" content, (but it's not good for games to go that route)

[topaz compass]

Voin has such variable difficulty settings I'm OK with letting content be hard and letting players tune it down

[neon rain]

I mean if were talking about get gud content lets talk about the prime example

Fromsoftware games like elden ring

[gray hound]

I rote the last part (like this) because that's what I was going for, but honestly, if we want to increase difficulty, this is the time, before release

[gray hound]

kinda like this, yea

[neon rain]

Those games are honestly not that hard, but require you to pay attention

you are never given a fight you lack the tools to beat

but you might lack the tools to make it easier

allow people to get their tools, but make it doable without them

you can oneshot promised consort radahn, but most players will struggle on him, and thats ok

we have more levels in the future, I think that were trying to balance endgame gear to midgame fights

So be patient, but alum heart is just too strong right now regardless

[gray hound]

There's also another thing... One extra difficulty, one-upping 666. Obviously optional, maybe an achievement locked behind it at most. No real incentive besides the challenge. Make it Incredibly hard, make Daric sweat playing it.

I'm thinking Terraria Calamity-Infernum type stuff, if y'all know what im talking about

[neon rain]

new difficulty, 666-666-666. just instantly crashes your game because of enemy density

real talk tho, leave the difficulty sliders at 6-6-6 because it fits thematically. Start adding in modifiers

like double damage taken/extreme measures

regenless mode, double enemy speed that type of stuff

how to make difficulty increases more interesting than just it has higher health now

[gray hound]

nah, 2x health and damage is the boring way to do difficulty. but imagine ranged enemies spamming attacks, but with less accuracy. more speed on the enemies, maybe special unique attacks on some enemies

[gray hound]

I wrote those before this message xD we thinking exactly the same

[gray hound]

I had EM4 from Hades in mind 2!

[neon rain]

yeah I do think the hades approach to difficulty would be novel here

Rogrog just starts throwing anvils at you

[gray hound]

There's also something that i think it would fit this game, is fun, and very few games do it. Positive modifiers! Imagine stuff like ablaze reducing healing instead of cutting it out completely, but you get -luck -ichor for using it. Or reduce the weakened debuff time, but make it 15% instead of 10% per stack.

It goes the complete opposite way of the "make things harder" we were going for, but once again it's optional!

[gray hound]

I was thinking something above the 666, like a single big skull overlooking the ones underneath. maybe something that appears only when you activate all negative modifiers and none of the positive. A secret Hell difficulty, red skies, blood rains, an ultimate challenge feel

With real downsides to it. you lose all the equipped gear, no matter if it's cleansed. (I have now entered evil/masochist mode)

[neon rain]

very specifically needs to be equipped gear in that case, and still leaves people open to reclaim their cleansed gear

honestly imagine having to fight a clone of yourself with the gear you died with

[topaz compass]

Sozidar's mentioned 2 difficulties above 666

• After completing a level, 12-12-12 is unlocked for said level
• Random modifiers, like map is flooded with lava, shadow vipers spawn constantly, no healing, etc.

[gray hound]

I like this

[topaz compass]

Discussed as a potential self-revive implementation

[gray hound]

And this

[topaz compass]

#🏰𝐄𝐍│voin-chat message

[gray hound]

Still compatible with Soz's plans! make it unlock after the entire game has been beaten in 12-12-12

[neon rain]

missed oppritunity to call it 11 11 11 because its cranking the difficulty up to 11

[gray hound]

damn, u right

[topaz compass]

Which reminds me, the sliders in Helldivers 2 go up to 11

[neon rain]

explain?

[topaz compass]

The settings sliders for things like volume

[neon rain]

did they drop diff 11 yet?

ah

[soft plover]

omg borderlands

[twin vault]

Isn't Allum hearth supposed to work this way?

[gray hound]

Not really. I think that it's coded to give a temp heart every 4.2 seconds. That time keeps looping in the background. So if you lose a temp heart when the timer is on like 3.9secs, it will heal you right away, instead starting of the 4.2 countdown when you get hit.

on top of that, the weird Claw has a longer cooldown (7 secs) than the Alum Heart, so it should activate every other Alum heart proc, not every single one. should be a 150% buff and its working as 200% basically.

[twin vault]

Weirdly this is how it works for me, I don't regenerate 2 hearts per alum hearth recharge rate but rather 2 then 1, then 2 (depends on item rarity).

But yeah, mortal hearth and alum is an insane combination.

[topaz compass]

Wierd Claw can bypass Alum Heart's cap.

[twin vault]

That it does

But I've been testing it and sometimes and have alum + claw 3 hearts and other times the number is 4

[topaz compass]

Is your Alum Heart +7 or lower?

[twin vault]

I don't think u can go higher then +7, no? but yeah, it's 6 or 7

7 prolly

[topaz compass]

Going by how it's sometimes 3, sometimes 4, 6 is more likely.

[twin vault]

IMO one way to fix it is giving PC hearts equal to the lowest out of combined

that way if ur barrage of temporary hearts is broken u insta-die instead of having 4 normal ones

[topaz compass]

That's a steep blanket nerf to fix one edge case

[twin vault]

even with the nerf this combination will be incredibly strong

or mortal hearth should not have an effect which allows PC to regenerate temporary hearts

or temporary hearts take twice the ammount of dmg but do not overcap

[topaz compass]

All this instead of fix/nerf Alum Heart

[twin vault]

Ho would u nerf it?

[topaz compass]

First I'd fix the timers.

Regen timer resets on losing a temp heart, Weird Claw cooldown is triggered properly

If it's still too strong then, I'd consider a few avenues and leave it to Sozidar to playtest on the dev build

• Increase regen timer
• Reduce cap
• Switch to regen on X hits rather than X seconds

[twin vault]

IMO this is a solo-game so I think it's fine to have some broken stuff, but I do think that reseting CD on hearth loss will be a good change

but then again u can slap hearth recharge trinket and still be tanky as hell

I do think that frost alum heart is somewhat unskilled playstyle, PC can't basically die and does insane amount of dmg...but every single game has broken builds like that

[gray hound]

The problem with broken builds is that they make the game feel stale. They feel better than anything else, so when you use other stuff, it inherently feels worse and makes you go back to the OP build, Always playing the same builds will end up not being fun

I rather have a weaker power ceiling, with more room for variety, even at the strongest level

for example, Imagine making a build around fire damage. You'd probably use Obsidian heart for the fire damage buff! Not in this meta, cuz that would be saying no to either 30% flat damage with Mortal or immortality with Alum. Not worth.

If Alum gets nerf, it'll inherently nerf Mortal, because of the synergy, and open up actual build options

rn, doesn't matter if you build for ice+lightning, full poison, fire+crit, weaken+crit, high dmg+cleave, on hit effects, etc. The best option, no matter the build, is Alum+Mortal Heart. So many different builds in the game, and yet out of the 6 item slots, one stays ALWAYS the same

[gray hound]

Ok, this is more of a personal opinion. A weapon that doesn't feel weak, but could feel a bit stronger, and wouldn't be a problem.
Howling Reavers. I have one small (ironic) problem with them... the size! They're way too big, and feel especially bad to use when the ablaze effect is active. It covers well half the screen and genuinely made me stop using them. Second, its a Rage weapon, with no effect during the rage, making rage duration just a cooldown effectively. After using other weapons with the intent of applying weaken to enemies, Howling Reavers feel underwhelming. I have 2 propositions.

• Lower the Rage duration, so the effect procs multiple times per fight more consistently;
• Keep the duration, but add a very small amount of psychic damage on hit (basically just so it triggers Screeching Necklace effect)

[topaz compass]

Ah, but you do get an effect during the rage!
+25% attack speed

I do agree they take up too much screenspace, but that's also an aspect of balancing... if Soz wants to go that route.

[gray hound]

U right, I forgot the attack speed 😅
About the size, it's cool if it's part of the weapon, but doesn't feel like it had Ablaze into account. It feels like playing blindfolded. Might be asking for too much, but some kind of interface option to take away screen effects would do a lot for some builds

We already have icons for all the status effects that come with "on screen representation". It's nice for normal play, where you get an extra indicator that you just got hit by a debuff. But for debuff builds, you already know. And honestly, getting a bit tired of having my screen pulse green every 3 seconds xD

[neon rain]

Man I didnt even know about the +25%, I just noticed if I swapped off and back onto them I could scream more

[rare phoenix]

Now that you mentioned that, that is exactly what Deep Rock Galactic is doing, except what was going to be a DLC/expansion is being turned into a full game that is still cooking in the oven. Their game is nothing like a rogue like game, but the new one they're working on is exactly that.

[rare phoenix]

Maybe make it so that the screen effects cease appearing once you've been constantly debuffed by something for a short while, say... like for 30 straight seconds or something?

So the only way to get that effect to appear on screen again is removing that debuff and being afflicted with it again

[solemn acorn]

yeah like an option in settings where you can turn it off

[gray hound]

IDK if I should consider this a balance issue, but since somewhere else, the subject of crafting not being a good idea came up, I guess it can be considered balance.
I mostly agree that crafting would probably be overpowered, but I also think we'll need some kind of RNG bending mechanic. Things will get out of control quick without anything to manipulate drops. Here's what I mean.
After getting a specific primeval item, the odds of it being exactly something are:
1/3 +7 first enchantment
1/3 +7 second enchantment
1/11 (I think) satiety stat
which comes down to ~1% chance of getting an exact roll of an item. Dividing this 1% chance by EVERY item in the game, the chance of getting one specific roll on one specific item are abysmally low (around 1/10000 assuming there are ~100 items in the game)

Here are a couple of suggestions.

• Stat re-rolls (costs the same as upgrading the item to primeval and rolls the levels of enchantments and the satiety stat)

• Same Item Combination (when 2 of the same item are combined, transfers satiety stat from bottom item to top item and/or +1 to the enchantment when both items have the same enchantment level)

[topaz compass]

Then you must surely recall the mention of NPC vendors.

[gray hound]

I do! Was there a mention of them helping directly with this? Or just buying items = more drops = more chances of getting what you want?

[topaz compass]

More along the latter is what I discussed. Sozidar hasn't mentioned anything more than the concept.

What they have in stock is the determining factor.

[gray hound]

I'm gonna admit, I wrote that 50% out of concern, 50% out of salt 😅. I'm working on 5 builds simultaneously (all fire, all poison, max crit damage, 1k stings spam and Flamekeeper's blades all Influx primeval) In around 4 hours, I got 0 out of the 9 (+2) items for any of the builds! Many near perfect, but always missing something crucial! With more items surely being added in the future, odds only get worse...

[topaz compass]

I'm fairly sure Sozidar is aware of that concern. He hasn't spoken on it directly, but it's been mentioned several times before by others and we know he reads here.

The new exploration system can alleviate this to some extent.

[rare phoenix]

I suppose NPC vendors selling the lowest rarity of each weapon could be a way to fix it without needing to touch loot tables