Hello Heroes!
This is a very special blogpost, one that has been requested quite a while from players.
PREFACE
Today, we want to tell you more about how today's balance changes came to be, and how we used the results of the feedback form from a few month ago.
Before anything, I highly recommend you reading the changelog to see al the changes that were just released today!
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1105670/view/532096041998090593
As you can imagine, analyzing all the results and working on everything took quite a while.
So, today, we want to tell you more about those changes!
Before anything, a little disclaimer : this balance patch is aimed specifically at Weapons and Perks. We have also gathered feedback on things like Buildings, Defenses, Bonepiles, etc… but these aspects of the game are more sensible, so we’re still taking our time to see what the best approach would be.
The first important thing to talk about is our approach to these changes. We’re not in early access anymore, so changing the balance of the game is a bit more touchy than before. This is why we had this question in the form :
An overwhelming majority of players do not want any nerfs, or only to overpowered weapons. It’s what we expected, but it’s a good thing we could confirm it.
Now, our next problem was the discrepancy between the feedback we had been collecting in the Discord server and Steam forums up until now, and the feedback coming from the form. It’s also something we expected : players who take the time to write their thoughts on the game’s balance are often the most invested, and thus the most hardcore players, while a feedback form is open to anyone. I’ll give you two examples of discrepancies:
We have had multiple players on Discord agreeing that the Longbow is one of the worst weapons in the game. However, in the feedback form, the weapon scored slightly above average, with an estimated power level very close the the Power Staff. We even had slightly more players feeling like the Longbow is OP :
As for perks, I’ll take the example of Sadist, who got very mixed reviews in the feedback form, while many players on discord see it as one of the most powerful perks. It scored way less than many other Tier 3 perks :
As a bonus, using feedback from the form, here’s what the « average » weapon tier list would look like:
So, how should we go about these differences ? We couldn’t just listen to the Discord feedback, as that would go against the opinion of the average player in many cases. But on the opposite, some balance problems only appear when playing at the highest levels of challenge. Balancing the game only with the average player in mind would probably end up making the game less balanced for hardcore players.
Taking all of this into account, here’s the approach we went with :
- If something is rated as OP in the feedback form AND in the Discord/Steam forums, we should slightly nerf it.
- Otherwise, no nerfs
- If something is seen as underpowered in the feedback form, we should buff it
- If something is seen as underpowered in the Discord/Steam forums, we should buff it
Now, having talked about our intentions, let’s take a look at two individual cases to tell you how we think about balance changes.
Two-Handed Sword :
The Two-Handed Sword was already on our radar before the survey, as it was considered one of the worst weapons on the discord server. This was confirmed by player responses :
This may seem like just a « slightly under average » result, but players tended to gravitate more heavily towards saying weapons are Strong/Very Strong on average, so this is a pretty bad score, just slightly better than the Rifle. The Two-Handed Sword was also the weapon for which players requested changes the most (nearly 50% of respondants!), with only the Rifle coming close :
When rebalancing a weapon, we have many options available, ranging from simple damage tweaks to reworking skills or even implementing new ones. However, one rule we have is that the « feel » and soul of a weapon should NOT be changed anymore. For example, a weapon focused on single target assassination like the Rifle should not suddenly get a heavy damage dealing AoE, although that would certainly make it more powerful.
The Two-Handed Sword is meant to be a more heavy version of the Sword: a weapon focused on mobility and momentum, but that deals more damage and hits more targets at the cost of more action points, like other two-handed weapons. This is why the changes made to the weapon try to orient it into this direction even more : Heroes now gain movement after using the first skill, making it more worthy of its 2 Action Point cost. The fourth skill is now the first large AoE of the game using Momentum, but comes at the cost of movement. This makes the weapon generally interact more with the movement stat, and gives it a more strategic aspect, while also making it scale better : a Two-Handed sword wielder with a lot of Movement and Momentum should be much stronger and mobile than before.
Hand Crossbow :
The Hand Crossbow is the ONLY weapon that was nerfed in this update, but not without reason, as it was pretty much the only weapon that everyone really agreed on being OP :
This was expected, as we know that the Multi-Hit mechanic scales extremely well, especially in the case of the Hand Crossbow, that only starts with 2 Hits (meaning every additional multi-hit grants +50% damage to the weapon). However, we have no easy solution to the multi-hit balance, so we had to change the weapon.
Now, I’ll go through a few of the options we have tested out for nerfing the weapon, and why we didn’t go for that.
Option 1 : Reducing base damage. This is the easy option, but something we rejeected as it made the weapon absolutely unusable in the earlier nights, before getting more Multi-hit. While we know that some weapons are already pretty weak in the erarly nights, we don’t want to take this too far.
Option 2 : Reducing the base damage but increasing the Multi-hit as compensation. This was the most « balance-friendly » solution, and probably the one we would have taken if this was a competitive game. The damage total of the weapon on night 1 would be unchanged, but each Multi-hit gained would add much less damage than previously. The problem of this is that it made the weapon veeeery slow to play in the early nights, as you would have to choose 4 or five targets for each hit. Generally, the weapon suddenly had a very unpleasant feeling to it, having to shoot an enemy 7 or 8 times to kill it. The « feel » of weapons is very important to us, so we scrapped this option.
Option 3 : Changing the first skill to something else. This option was quickly dismissed, as we want the various weapons of the game to showcase all the different mechanics we have. We want to have a weapon that has Multi-hit on a basic attack, even if it makes it very hard to balance.
In the end, the solution we went for is to reduce the number of uses on the Multi-Hit skill. While the weapon will surely keep being the strongest in the game, this should reduce its strength cap compared to before, as you cannot use the skill more than 6 times in a turn now. In exchange, we have addeda use on the Poison skill, as we don’t want players to run out of actions to do on the first nights.
That’s pretty much it for the balance changes and the feedback form ! Once again, I’d like to sincerely thank all players that answered the survey, as your answers were very helpful to us. We hope you enjoy the free update and the Elves of Amberwald DLC !
And as a little bonus, here’s the score of the BOOM ! perk to the question « How much do you like this perk ? ». Do you think the overkill answers will propagate to adjacent targets ?
