A Reconsideration on Enemy Curses?

[phaze]

After my recent demise in the hunting lodge layer, I've given some thought to the play out of that battle and the interaction of enemy curses and the flow of battle.

One, I'm pretty sure I could have survived had I chosen better placement at the beginning of the battle.  The battle is usually won in the first/second turn decisions I've found based purely on placement dynamics.

Having said that, I think multi-curse attacks from the enemy and having Fyona in the party is a major potential issue if the game continues enemy curses.  

This also excludes what the Trese brothers are doing with Willpower and curse bouncing.  But I can't comment on an unreleased feature.

While Kyera has a curse dispel for 1 talent point and 3 AP, Fyona has a single target curse dispel for 4 AP, meaning you will never uncurse more than one person per round.  This immediately makes you reliant on scrolls and tomes of cleansing.  Battlefield devotion is the only active talent that costs 4 AP (Berserk is different I think being a buff).

In that battle, the Orc Shaman hit my entire party for -10% critical, -6 Parry, -14 armor, and -(some amount of fire resistance).  With a party based on critical damage and using parry as a means of defense, the curse basically obliterated my offense and defense simultaneously.  This made uncurling near essential to survive that battle, either to deal enough damage quick enough, or to have sufficient defenses to handle some stray hits from trolls and boars that invaded my party since my damage output was down.

While tomes of cleansing would be helpful, I would have been using about 1000 gold per turn to uncurse my party.  That seems ridiculous.

At this juncture, Fyona's capacity to deal with more than one curse is effectively useless and the alternative is exorbitantly expensive.  While each character is different and should play differently, given that enemy curses can rather obliterate character stats on nightmare, something should give on this either with curses, or a different mechanism to reduce them.

Could Battlefield Devotion be changed?  Maybe instead of the dynamic curse/uncurse, perhaps skills like Piety Ward or Righteous Fervor have an effect to reduce the potency of curses, like extra levels of those skills make curses take effect like from a lower level enemy?

[fallen]

phaze - thanks for the well thought out request. We will take a look at Fyona's uncurse ability, but as with all characters, she is a balancing act of abilities. We will have to take our time to very carefully make some changes to address the issue. The resolution to this is likely also tied into other parts of the system.

We will add Tomes of Cleansing.

Try to spread your party out a little more to avoid getting AoE cursed? Not sure how nasty of a shaman you were dealing with, and I know some of them have some large AoE range.

[phaze]

Good advice and generally what I try for with creating a front, secondary, and back line.

In this case, however, it was during a scripted pincer attack. The canyon walls left no room to maneuver. Once the war trolls, boars, and wolves hit my ranks, things were bad.

I replayed the turn and came out with lucky critical hits and better positioning.

It was a very nasty shaman. I think its curse pattern was a 4 hex at least as my party nearly always got hit. With something like 500 or 600 hp as well, killing it from afar was not possible with this party arrangement.

Also, Selen's advice about taking the canyon sides is misleading. Give me open room any day of the week.

[fallen]

phaze - Thanks for the extra info. We will make progress on this shortly, and the resolution will come from a number of different angles to increase the fun of this part of play!

On Selen's advice, it may be misleading that you have some cramped fights but you can skip 80% of the fights in the region if you use her far sight Talent and stick to the walls.

[CdrPlatypus]

I think the main problem is that curses for enemies are a 1ap cost for the enemy just like their regular attacks. Perhaps enemy curses should be changed to a cost of 2ap for monsters?

[Cory Trese]

Oct 4, 2014 18:45:03 GMT -5 CdrPlatypus said:

I think the main problem is that curses for enemies are a 1ap cost for the enemy just like their regular attacks. Perhaps enemy curses should be changed to a cost of 2ap for monsters?

The 2AP monster curses are much stronger -- I don't think the AP cost balance is the issue, really.

Many PC curses cost less AP than strongest attacks too, part of the balancing act of HoS.

[CdrPlatypus]

What about making the decurse effect of battlefield devotion a cross aoe after xpoints of investment but keep it single target healing?

[Cory Trese]

Oct 4, 2014 18:59:31 GMT -5 CdrPlatypus said:

What about making the decurse effect of battlefield devotion a cross aoe after xpoints of investment but keep it single target healing?

The engine doesn't support that currently and it would the one and only spell that worked that way -- a recipe for user confusion and bad ratings.

We've got a few things in the works that I think will help here, but enemy curses will definitely remain a potent threat, especially as we unleash the undead monster catalog =)

[plunk]

Then why not just make it an AoE uncurse without any extra effect. It's not like anyone is ever going to pick a 4AP single target healing spell for the healing.

[CdrPlatypus]

I think the 4ap single target healing could work well if fyona is the main tank of the group

[plunk]

Except nearly all her defensive buffing skills focus on making the entire group tougher. And Kincaid is range 3 at best.

[Cory Trese]

Thanks for the feedback, we're working on it.

[phaze]

Well, skipping fights is not my operating style, so I make it a point to ignore that in game advice Leaderboard scoring and all that.

However, I think it is misleading in that taking the sides forces you into narrow tunnels that are tremendously dangerous if enemies come in from behind to hit your mage/archer. With boars/wolves and other enemies increasingly doing so in episode 2 over episode 1, this becomes more and more threatening. Single character tunnels are absolutely the worst battles as you cannot easily rearrange party formation to meet the battle situation.

Maybe change the text so that Selen's advice says that you'll avoid more monsters near the canyon walls but face cramped fighting spaces? Give players a choice to pick their danger type.

Regarding curses, I am rather nervous at the fact of hearing about 2 AP curses. That bit of news makes me value decursing strategies even more.

Do enemy curses take effect instantly like player character curses? That is one frustrating aspect at the moment, since your party can go from solidly expecting to handle the battle to being woefully underprepared with one curse that you can't do anything about until the next turn. I realize this is equivalent with player curses and balanced in a sense, but ultimately players are not programs and it has to be enjoyable at the end.

Are you considering mechanisms with curses other than the curse/decurse loop? Could you implement something that provides resistance to curses i.e. reduces the penalties that makes curses manageable if a player chooses to use specific equipment?

It is easy to forget that this game is still developing with only 50% of the content released, and we, the players, do not know the whole arc being planned out.

As the game progresses, I find myself using more and more variety of equipment to meet various challenges. Once dice pools grow large enough, it is of less value to add one parry if you already have a pool of 30-40 strong die, so I have found the capacity to substitute about 1 piece of equipment per character based on if I want more accuracy/damage, defense, or other attributes.

[Cory Trese]

Curses all take effect immediately, and that's pretty critical in the overall balance of the game -- and over 10,000 or so contact points it isn't an issue that's been brought up (beyond this thread) as a negative point. We've had many people complain about many things, but curse application cycles are not a common issue.

Thanks you the feedback, we're working on new features and balancing elements for Episode 3.

[phaze]

It is less about the instant effect and more about dramatic swings in battle flow.

Prior, I either played through the effects of curses, or made quick decision to decurse. Largely enemy curses were a fine dynamic in battle.

Up until this point though, where in this battle, I stated mental "WTF" at that curse and how it changed battle dynamics completely. It was a good challenge and the later episodes likely will have some crazy epic battles as the story progresses.

I love the challenge and tweaking parties to progress with more success. A game with no surprises is dull, but gameplay should allow characters to make informed decisions about risk.

Maybe in the transition of curses from annoyance to difficult to run away in terror, the player learning curve could be smoother? The glacial caverns and hunting lodge are logical back to back story elements but I can't even recall the shaman curses in the glacial caverns.

Likely, I got too comfortable with battles and this really jumped out at me.

We do not get to replay any battles outside of starting a new game, so the learning curve and ability of players to respond is important to different enemy abilities is important.

These are just thoughts/observations from me. Rarely do we ever get to interact with game developers, so it is fun to think about the design process with responses from you in real time.

Now to start a new ironman party and rise from the ashes of my old.