It doesn’t come off as a shock to some people that the endgame of arcane odyssey’s builds would have really huge attacks. You could argue that piercing attacks can be used to counter it but at the face of a thousand nukes, it’s USELESS.
Yeah pvpheads would be able to counter a fatherless aoe demon user with an ego but that’s because they have the time to practice pvp when majority of the playerbase doesn’t have that time, all while majority of the playerbase run high aoe to save their ass from having to learn to pvp in this game.
One of the problems with aoe right now is that people can still spam their attacks while suffering less considering the chances of them fighting a pvphead in the open world are low if we actually look at the player kills per hour of players in your average server. Not to mention, this is even more of an apparent issue with the changes to intensity.
The purpose of this suggestion is to rework attack size itself considering now there will be an issue where aoe demons can spam their attacks by a ton with the changes to intensity.
Option 1 - Complex Method
Changes To Attack Size And Customization
Attack size will be turned into “Energy Efficiency” wherein it reduces the cost of energy used for attacks. Formula should be similar to what is used in attack speed.
Size affinity would also be changed into energy affinity wherein existing smallest size would have the highest energy affinity and vice versa.
In return, customizable attacks will now always have a size option. Max size is increased from 100% to 150%.
Energy drawbacks will be implemented for sizes over 100%, meaning more energy will be consumed as well as dealing less damage. (The purpose of this is that overly huge attacks shouldn’t be able to deal high damage while also being spammable since this doesn’t make sense unless it’s an ultimate.)
Energy conservation will be implemented for sizes below 100%, meaning less energy will be consumed to deal more damage. This is to encourage precision rather than aoe brainrot where all you need is get the cursor close to the player to deal damage.
If a skill customization has a gimmick where the larger it is, the shorter its range, then the same would apply even if the size is increased 150%.
Changes To Weapons/Weapon Builds
Skills with a high base size should also use more energy and vice versa for smallest base size. Energy affinity and energy efficiency can reduce the cost of energy.
Weapon build awakening (such as warriors etc.) would have their attack size boost turned into energy efficiency boost due to their proficiency in using weapons.
Option 2 - Simple Method
Changes To Attack Size
Current attack size system would include an energy drawback wherein it increases the cost of energy according to your attack size stat efficiency. Meaning if you have 100% efficiency, it would cost 100% more energy for every attack you use.
This is to address the obvious meta where people can run high intensity and high aoe to spam a ton of huge attacks.
This change would give more charging times for people who run high aoe and with high intensity, encouraging to use their attacks wisely rather than the brainrot aoe spam.
If the agility change goes through with the exhaustion mechanic, the aoe meta would be too obvious where they could just spam their huge attacks to their enemy’s sides, almost guaranteeing a hit since they can easily predict that people would just dodge in a zig-zag unless they have tier 5 gale potion. This change would be perfect to preventing that.
Reason For The Changes
Again, having attack size as a stat is purely a nightmare for the balancing of the game. You could legit encounter some fatherless aoe demon that deals 200+ damage in a single press every 1 out of 3 servers you join in.
While you could argue people should just get better at pvp but that doesn’t solve the underlying issue that even a skilled pvphead can become disgustingly overpowered when they utilize a high aoe build.
I can agree that this is not perfect since there are obvious issues with the changes but it’s an example on turning attack size completely on customization rather than as a stat, and changing said stat into something that could be utilized for 150% size by lowering the energy cost to keep the pressuring playstyle but with an obvious downside to keep pressuring. Even if it’s kept the same, at the very least this suggestion give it some sort of drawback.
I can’t highlight enough that attack size alone is really unhealthy for the game and of course it isn’t the only stat that’s a problem since there’s also agility, but agility already has a good change for it in the balance server to the point it’s gutted for combat. What doesn’t make sense however is that they aren’t doing the same approach to attack size.
TL;DR
Changes to attack size to fix the obvious high intensity with high attack size spam to make it less-meta while also being viable if you’re forced to use it wisely.
If the balance server already has a better solution then kindly disregard this suggestion, thank you.
Afraid to say I disagree. I’ll refrain from giving out ratings until there’s an actual discussion first since you’re assuming intensity+size combo would be busted even before we have a chance to test it out, so the suggestion already comes off in a bad light for me.
First off, intensity would not allow players to “spam” cancerous attacks more than they do now. This is due to the fact that abilities only enter cooldown after their respective endlag ends. Why bother waiting for cooldown when you can initiate another attack of similar destructive nature? Not only that, the cooldown on non-findable attacks aside from Aura are so low, it calls into question whether or not it’s worth it to invest in intensity at this stage of the game since what’s good if you waste one third of your Efficiency Points just to reduce basic abilities downtime when you can already cycle through them, which is more effective when you use Attack Speed instead.
Furthermore, I failed to see your design. For the complex solution, why even bother adding an adjustable energy drawback mechanic if you’re compensating it by changing size to energy cost reduction??. The only merit to it is the +50% size cap on abilities. The simpler version isn’t good either. None of those addresses the problem brought forward in the introduction; if anything, they’d make your average size player more annoying as they’ll just blow all their load, run and recuperate, then pound you again, over and over. Worse yet, it could cockblock intensity from being viable with size playstyle more than what I proposed above.
This is a bad mentality to have. The point of balancing is to make everything viable on equal grounds, not making everything equal by assuming the worst is the standard.
Yeah that’s the point I’m talking about, not just waiting on x attack to use it again. With the intensity changes, it makes cycling faster now meaning it’s possible to do a barrage of nukes. For example, spamming pulsar, javelin, beam repeat and if array comes out it becomes really annoying since you’re constantly on guard for your endlag in case array is about to be launched off to you.
As of now I can cycle between them four times and charge only for 1.5 second or less if I let it passively charge when I have energy jewels while charging for split seconds. Just imagine what it would look like with the reduced cooldowns, which is why I suggested energy drawback. If the current people that are relying solely on spamming attack size right now, they’re forced to run high-intensity/e-efficiency or else they’ll have a longer time charging due to the increased cost as well as reduced damage. At the very least this prevents them from dealing 250+ damage per attack since that doesn’t make sense when they can literally spam them.
It’s so that it’s still viable for a pressure-based playstyle in an era where your cooldowns are reduced at the cost of some other substats, just that the damage and energy cost are now appropriate to their size with the change.
Here’s the problem though, you can’t balance attack size without gutting it which is why I proposed the idea where attack size should only be solely for customization rather than as a stat and this suggestion is just an example of that. Now clearly it’s not perfect since it is gutting the stat itself but there really is no other choice for attack size since clearly even the balance team’s nerfing still exists as a problem when people are still able to spam high damage/size attacks.
Another problem with the balance team is that they’re focusing solely on highly-skilled situations when majority of the playerbase are average in pvp. Legit I could dogpile a server with a high size/damage build when I’m bored until they quit or I encounter some insane pvphead.
The 150% max size customization could mitigate the size issue since it would standardize it, giving your average player actual chance in fighting since they can finally breathe when they aren’t bombarded with nukes.
Considering how the maximum player level is perpetually increasing and that the power of equipments will likely improve with enough time, this suggestion takes into account the future problems that AO will face alongside the ones that it already needs to take care of.
Overall I have only one concern with this, that being how this change will grow more and more irrelevant as the higher level limits will provide players with more and more energy to expand during fights.
while i agree that atk size is a pretty unhealthy stat, i don’t think the solution would be to replace it with a complicated energy system (we have enough complicated systems already) or to add a drawback to it
No. You cycle through abilities faster with Attack Speed. The only meaningful thing intensity would do is reducing Ultimate Arts and Rare abilities, which is not efficient for an autopilot playstyle.
Except for the fact that investing in intensity means you miss out on more damage/defense/speed/agility/whatever for inefficient abilities cycling as the cooldowns for non-findable abilities are already so low. This doesn’t address the problem, more downtime is neligible since
Introducing a whole new mechanic requires thoughtful thinking. Damage-to-size slider is already a fat skill-check we don’t need another contributing factor to the universal hatred for turret mages.