Hey yall!
This week we bring you another post from Mat, this time about his direction on designing the passive status effects for heroes.
As we discussed in the last blog post, our first major attempt to improve the longevity and complexity of combat is the creation of passive status effects for each character. Today, I want to talk a bit about where we stand on that and some of our ideas.
We want each passive to address two distinct issues: (1) provide another degree of customization to your loadouts, and (2) modify expected gameplay to a meaningful level. More simply, we want passive effects to make your gameplay a bit different depending on your loadout.
We designed and implemented a few, and they are being tested internally to see if they are good enough for us to show you in the following weeks, accompanied by some extra gameplay/balancing changes we mentioned.
The design model had a rather simple directive: each class has at least 2 ways it can “do its job”, and two of the characters spearhead that effort while the other offers an alternate take. Here are some examples
For the Warrior characters, they are all about being able to pursue and disrupt enemies and survive multiple heavy blows. To do this job correctly, survivability is key. Safir aims for consistency: The Paladin passive allows him to react when he loses all armor points, and restores the use of his defensive skills, giving him a second wind in a complicated situation.
The Rangers are always about damage, but they have many tricks up their sleeves. While some builds for them are oriented towards mobility and good use of cover, Salim’s passive, Measured Shooter, increases his damage every round that he doesn’t move - something that will work well with his base ability, that increases his range.
Mystics are varied, but in general, they make sure their allies are doing the best they can, either by healing, increasing power, or making sure enemies aren’t as effective. Morgan Tudd, ever the dedicated healer, sports the Druid Physician passive, allowing his base attack to heal allies adjacent to his target, making even his damage have a defensive use.
Hopefully, you can see what we are going for! Furthermore, we want to entangle the power of each of these passives with the new meta progression cycles we are designing for, but even then, all the numbers are subject to change and balancing. As long as each character feels better suited to a specific gameplay style, or evokes a different feeling, we know we are going in the right path.
This is all coming in a “major” patch in a couple of weeks.
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