Disable some items in Endurance mode - or lets piss off 90% of the players

[uncut wedge]

first, i would like to say that my favorite mode is Endurance, because it has limited item count and is endless, which allows me to try a lot of new things and push myself further.

problems in the past:

• if players keep using the same team setup over and over, its a problem. it means the balance is off: either one setup is too overpowered, or there is no real reason to try anything else. thats how it used to be when the new hero Pyro was introduced - he was basically unusable and didnt appear on any leaderboard (on YT, because leaderboard didnt exist yet)
• i also remember the time when slashing was way too overpowered. Then the ice build became too strong. even though you could play at least 2–3 team setups, the items were mostly the same. faster slashing ticks and longer duration - the same applied to ice, there was + spreading. basically, no other tags made sense to play because the scaling was too high. and what could be better than % damage or perma freeze that instantly kills enemies?
• finally medic injection heal was nerfed to 100hp instead of 10% + some items were introduced, what can provide good enough replacement

actual problem i see:
almost every build uses the exact same core items: Gold Medal, Silver Padlock, Golden Key, Skin Rope, and Reserve Bench. sometimes players also add Congratulation Letter and Schrödinger’s Cat - but these two are okay

so whats the real issue? out of 9 item slots, 5 are basically just 'mandatory' picks used to optimize endless boosts. that turns them into dead weight in terms of creativity - you rre not really making meaningful choices anymore. this makes the gameplay feel repetitive and boring, because instead of experimenting with different builds, players are pushed into using the same setup over and over again just to stay competitive

my recommendation: lets disable items that modify the required number of military points needed to get a boost, and also disable items that change the frequency of gaining military points.

if there were just one item that increased the drop frequency by, lets say, 10%, that would be completely fine and could replace all of these items. but right now, this setup destroys the fun, because all the top leaderboard spots always use the same five items. players who dont want to copy that build but still want to compete usually cant.

[willow leaf]

this could be said almost about every game. something is always gonna be meta. ur asking for a shakeup of the meta? Reasonable. U dont want the same things being at the top always and always. For example in Overwatch they let the same one meta go stale for 4 years straight and most ppl quit. I'm sure they are gonna tweak some numbers for next big patch/release.
The problem is striking the balance between endless, which scales things to obscene levels, and rest of the game. Nerfing these items would make them useless in 10-20 minute modes or extermination.
That leaves disabling items that scale perpetually in long modes. I wouldn't mind this.
However my personal favorite solution to this would be to just make the difficulty of endless/endurance to outrun the power creep. Make it ramp up substantially faster after the 1 hour mark to the point where if you made it to 2 hours you are a God in human form. The longer you can milk these items the more op they are.

[uncut wedge]

well, balancing in single player games is completely different from multiplayer games. in multiplayer, there are characters that are always weak against some and strong (counters) against others. i think the characters are actually quite well balanced, because people still havent found the best build, and they never will if they keep focusing on the same five items over and over again.

thats the point i was trying to make. i dont want to change it completely. i just want to disable it in endurance mode. i dont care if someone gets an extra advantage from some items in a 20 minute run, but in endurance it doesnt make sense because, as i mentioned, it completely kills creativity. and thats a pity.

milk item was already nerfed (i think, from 3k hp and it was easier to stack), but who cares about milk that gives you just 1.5k hp when you can end up with 12k hp using these five 'mandatory' items? you basically only need those five items. and if you want to optimize it to perfection, you can also pick items that increase your luck. then you will get a nice legendary boost every few seconds. so why would you pick item which gives you +50% damage? when you can have it covered with this build in a few minutes.

increasing the difficulty doesnt really solve anything, because all players eventually hit the same limit = the point where you get one shot. this already happened in previous versions. i actually like the difficulty as it is. record times are just ~4 hours. you can take a look at records from previous versions, its usually number in days, not in hours. i think this version is the most balanced one i have played so far.

[blazing minnow]

Thanks for the suggestion, @uncut wedge. We'll continue to discuss this, but there are two pain points that needs to be taken into account:

• There will always be a META. The thing is, and I see you've noticed it before, removing/nerfing one items makes it so that another one fits into the same spot after some time. And when that second item is nerfed/disabled, yet another one will become "the best one" / "the required one" / "the one in need to be nerfed/disabled". We can, and will, continue to balance things out, but there will always be some fan-favorite setups, the fact of which is pretty much unavoidable.

• As you've noticed looking by the topic's name, this has the potential of angering more people than making them happy, and unfortunately, indie titles like ours often live and die by the user reviews on Steam. Looking what happened only recently with Slay the Spire II being overwhelmingly review-bombed by providing a balance patch is a cautionary tale of following the balance-over-all approach.

Another thing is, that we'll be looking into making the Endurance scale more drastically in the late game, closely to what @willow leaf suggested as well, and possibly adding another layer of depth to itemization with the addition of item upgrades (which will come with another pass of slight item effects adjustments here and there). Also, higher difficulty levels are coming still in due time.

[uncut wedge]

"there will always be a meta" - thats why some items need to be disabled or balanced through caps and/or diminishing returns. this item build doesnt meet either a cap or diminishing returns. it has neither. its essentially an infinite boost with no restrictions, which doesnt fit an endurance mode from my point of view.

"this has the potential of angering more people than making them happy" - but i dont think thats actually true. players on discord want to play on higher difficulty, and this gives them the mode they are looking for. with this kind of scaling, its easy to reach values like 12k hp, 1k armor, 1k movement speed, etc., which turns the game into a 3 hour session without much challenge. however, if you fix this issue, it reduces those values by half, it starts to become a real issue

“Another thing is that we’ll be looking into making Endurance scale more drastically in the late game.” - i think this change would push skilled players very close to the difficulty limits. as I mentioned, it risks turning the game into a one hit = death scenario, where the late game becomes more about luck and kiting rather than meaningful build testing

in my opinion, this would mainly impact leaderboard times rather than improve the overall experience. it reduces fun, limits build experimentation, and doesnt really add meaningful challenge - just harsher punishment.

what is the current meta for team setups? these are the top teams for isolated city on the leaderboard

[blazing minnow]

First of all, I'll confirm, that I understand the issue here, and also agree that some tactics are overused and better than others. What I mean by meta is that disabling some items will make others appear to take the same "must have" spot, which has happened many times already, as min-maxing works that way (unless all items are of a very similar power, which would make the gameplay more boring and decisions less meaningful).

I wonder if increasing the difficulty scaling with time would make players dislike the challenge, if at the same time you suggest that making the challenge greater by disabling content would not. Not, that I disagree, but please remember, that both things can happen, as well as their opposites. Especially that both directions would reduce the run time, ending in player being one-shotted sooner or later. There are many kinds of players, and while we listen to everything everyone says, we often receive different, sometimes contradictory feedback.

This is why we sometimes need to discuss things further and also think of the best course of action. For example, we have already received lots of negative feedback and multiple negative reviews from Chinese players (who make up a large percentage of our playerbase) for nerfing and/or disabling items they love using in the Endless mode in previous versions of the game. These players don't/can't use Discord, so they voice their thoughts in different ways and through different channels.