Making fixed deck competitive with random deck: how would YOU do it?

Hmmm, all these talk about auto stacking sounds interesting.

What if locked combat bar skills auto stacked up to 3 (at a slower rate than the random bars)?

That being said, I agree with some of the posters above that the strength of the random draw decks isn't having a wide variety of skills since you really want to keep the pool small if you want to consistently draw the same few cards.

So...
Random decks:

• Auto stack up to 5 cards.
• Quicker auto stacking based on draw.

Fixed decks:

• Skills not on cooldown auto "stacks" up to a lower level (maybe 3 or so?).
• Stacks build up slower as well.
• Gains a few extra hot bar slots for additional utility for every 5 locked skills, granting a maximum of 12 for a fully locked bar.

Or, random decks gets quicker lower stacks, while focusing on using the smaller number glyphs of and locked decks gets more glyphs to work with but can use them less often. There are too many variables for me to know know which would be more balanced.

 

Except people have been saying this is bad since they first implemented. And even with the majority of players who LEFT because of it (read outside sources and one of the MAJOR complaints is this combat system) its still at a 50% approval rating tops.
Meaning, fixing the overlaying issue isnt making static decks competitive, its having a better combat system.

Which 4 months ish before release, is unrealistic.

 

I have only started a dialogue based on what Chris has already said: that he wishes to make the fixed decks competitive and compelling with the random decks.

I would think that (as you have stated) this being an issue since it was introduced, causing a majority of players to leave, and being a large source of complaint makes this scenario warrant at the slightest an open, harmless banter on hypothetical "what would you do" considerations.

 

Perhaps allow a locked slot to generate more than one 'cooldown' - IE, if you wait the normal length of time, you have one use of the glyph. If you wait twice that long, you can spam it twice.

The downside is that you have to stay in combat for this to be of benefit. There would also need to be some upper limit to how many cooldowns you're allowed to have.

 

I like this idea. In fact, why not take locked combat bar auto stacking to 5? If there is a cool down (which is in effect no different than a waiting period for something to power up) similar to what the cool downs are now, it wouldn't imbalance things: it would include locked combat bars in auto stacking but wouldn't give anything time and damage-wise that unlocked decks don't already have.

In the above scenario, the only area of difference in auto stacking between locked and unlocked states would be that the unlocked decks speed would be greater as their auto stacking would be dependent on the draw rather than the cool down.

 

It's not just during combat that the glyph system is a pain. The short duration of buffs means that, for tough fights, I have to use a buff deck to stack buff glyphs so that I get 10 minutes of protection. A secondary fixed buff bar is almost a must because 2 minutes of annoying prep for 10 minutes of fun is not a good ratio.

 

I have tried to think of a system that could completely remove the glyph bar from the screen, while remaining compatible with the existing skill trees, etc. Here is my suggestion.

To get a feel for what I'm suggesting, think of the many classic FPS games that have a fixed mapping between a number key and a weapon type. For example you press 2, you get a handgun. Press 4 for a rifle. Hold down 2 and you get to switch between default handgun types, hold down 4 and you get to switch between default rifle types. The player quickly learns which number selects which weapon type, and does not need to look it up.

Now imagine a similar such mapping in SotA, with the difference that the player gets to set up their own mappings based on their skill set. For example, they could set it up so that pressing 2 launches an arrow, pressing 5 applies a heal and pressing 6 applies a buf. Holding down 2 results in a pop-up that lets you switch to a different default type of arrow, holding down 5 lets you switch to a different type of heal and holding down 6 lets you switch to a different type of buf. (Not unlike the drop-downs in Half Life 2.)

The player can optionally display this mapping somewhere on the screen until they learn it, but after that they can choose not to display it - in which case there would be no glyph bar on the screen at all, and the player could concentrate on what is happening in the scene.

For the sake of balance there should be a limit to the number of skills that the player can place in their skill mapping. Also for reasons of balance there would have to be a limit on the rate of use of any skill (as is now the case with cool downs), so to avoid forcing the player to keep switching skills, if a skill is in cool down the game should automatically switch to the next available skill of that type, or if none is available, to the next available skill of some other type, and automatically cycle back to the original choice when it becomes available. It is up to the player to organise their skill mapping so that this automatic advance to the next skill makes sense.

As used in Half Life 2:

 

That sounds like a lot of fun. I like the idea.