In conclusion, I think the designer just missed assassin interaction.
Let's just say for argument's sake that they had missed it. But what if they had seen it? What's the work around?
"Take damage if you prevent a regen except by assassins mastery or pacify"?? That seems very tacky.
But even more importantly, why? Why should the game design accommodate for a mastery you use?
Contra: Why should game design punish a mastery you use—especially when switching masteries isn’t without cost?
Unlike suicides—which present an explicit trade-off—Assassin and Pacify do not. If forums and chats are any indication, there are more than a few veterans who found themselves wondering why they dropped dead as they were closing out the fight. That’s not because they are poor players—it’s because esoteric game interactions are increasingly a “thing.”
Is it possible this was all intended? Sure, but it’s equally possible the Wounded Animal node interaction with Assassin was just as unforeseen by the game team as were the initial disadvantageous AAR mastery interactions way back when.
But if you’re looking for tacky, Wounded Animal is precisely that—by attempting to exclude a champ like Nimrod, the team cast its net too widely. Perhaps include an anti-robot node and there’s no need to force players to shift masteries out of Assassin…and to what exactly? One of the new masteries promised to be forthcoming?
If the team is going to neuter existing masteries, then give us something worthwhile to put our points into.
Dr. Zola
Nimrod, Shuri and all were already kicked out by the Shock immunity node. Wounded animal probably targets AAR champs.
And there isn't any rule that you wouldn't have to face consequences for your masteries. Especially in an end game fight.
I've had to change masteries for fights depending on the champ I use and whomsoever it is I fight .
Using dexterity has forever been punished by nodes ad nauseum that people used to remove dexterity to do some fights. I've personally taken out dexterity to fight Abyss Dormammu or some AW fights . This isn't new .
Placing an anti-Robot node would remove two great counters. G99 and Viv. That would be an overall negative.
I think the main problem here is that you think masteries should be set in stone and never forced to change(except suicids). Which you can. You may have to pay a price for it is all.
In my opinion, it shouldn't matter at all.masteries are a flexible thing. And as always AAR was always a double edged sword. And it shouldn't be a surprise.
As for the veteran's part. I don't think that once the interaction is pointed out, anyone would have any doubt why it is happening so. But most people usually forget their specific mastery setup and it's interactions. Most use assassins for the damage boost.
No not really. Nimrod can still cheese with omega sentinel synergy. That's why they added wounded animal.
I wish wounded animal punishes you only for removing regen stacks, not preventing them, so it can handle nimrod but aar champs can still work.
Hmm yeah missed that
How? Wasn’t it crystal clear? Like you are saying it was crystal clear assassin would mess with the wounded animal node.
No. I missed the gauntlet factor. Where you could use synergies
In conclusion, I think the designer just missed assassin interaction.
Let's just say for argument's sake that they had missed it. But what if they had seen it? What's the work around?
"Take damage if you prevent a regen except by assassins mastery or pacify"?? That seems very tacky.
But even more importantly, why? Why should the game design accommodate for a mastery you use?
Contra: Why should game design punish a mastery you use—especially when switching masteries isn’t without cost?
Unlike suicides—which present an explicit trade-off—Assassin and Pacify do not. If forums and chats are any indication, there are more than a few veterans who found themselves wondering why they dropped dead as they were closing out the fight. That’s not because they are poor players—it’s because esoteric game interactions are increasingly a “thing.”
Is it possible this was all intended? Sure, but it’s equally possible the Wounded Animal node interaction with Assassin was just as unforeseen by the game team as were the initial disadvantageous AAR mastery interactions way back when.
But if you’re looking for tacky, Wounded Animal is precisely that—by attempting to exclude a champ like Nimrod, the team cast its net too widely. Perhaps include an anti-robot node and there’s no need to force players to shift masteries out of Assassin…and to what exactly? One of the new masteries promised to be forthcoming?
If the team is going to neuter existing masteries, then give us something worthwhile to put our points into.
Dr. Zola
Nimrod, Shuri and all were already kicked out by the Shock immunity node. Wounded animal probably targets AAR champs.
And there isn't any rule that you wouldn't have to face consequences for your masteries. Especially in an end game fight.
I've had to change masteries for fights depending on the champ I use and whomsoever it is I fight .
Using dexterity has forever been punished by nodes ad nauseum that people used to remove dexterity to do some fights. I've personally taken out dexterity to fight Abyss Dormammu or some AW fights . This isn't new .
Placing an anti-Robot node would remove two great counters. G99 and Viv. That would be an overall negative.
I think the main problem here is that you think masteries should be set in stone and never forced to change(except suicids). Which you can. You may have to pay a price for it is all.
In my opinion, it shouldn't matter at all.masteries are a flexible thing. And as always AAR was always a double edged sword. And it shouldn't be a surprise.
As for the veteran's part. I don't think that once the interaction is pointed out, anyone would have any doubt why it is happening so. But most people usually forget their specific mastery setup and it's interactions. Most use assassins for the damage boost.
No not really. Nimrod can still cheese with omega sentinel synergy. That's why they added wounded animal.
I wish wounded animal punishes you only for removing regen stacks, not preventing them, so it can handle nimrod but aar champs can still work.
Synergies aren't all that helpful for a fight where you can only take in one champion...
I agree with Desi that "Wounded Animal" is clearly intended to punish AAR champions; and Pacify/Assassin masteries are caught in the crossfire.
But I think the solution should be smaller costs for Mastery resets: who can't you take points out for the same price as putting them in? If it's five units to add a point in Assassin's mastery, it shouldn't cost you seventy units to reset everything if you want to take that point back out again.
This gets to one of the points underpinning my post: you have to pay to swap out masteries you’ve already paid for at least once.
Dr. Zola
I know there's a @DNA3000 para about why this is the way it is. I wish I could search for it.
In conclusion, I think the designer just missed assassin interaction.
Let's just say for argument's sake that they had missed it. But what if they had seen it? What's the work around?
"Take damage if you prevent a regen except by assassins mastery or pacify"?? That seems very tacky.
But even more importantly, why? Why should the game design accommodate for a mastery you use?
Contra: Why should game design punish a mastery you use—especially when switching masteries isn’t without cost?
Unlike suicides—which present an explicit trade-off—Assassin and Pacify do not. If forums and chats are any indication, there are more than a few veterans who found themselves wondering why they dropped dead as they were closing out the fight. That’s not because they are poor players—it’s because esoteric game interactions are increasingly a “thing.”
Is it possible this was all intended? Sure, but it’s equally possible the Wounded Animal node interaction with Assassin was just as unforeseen by the game team as were the initial disadvantageous AAR mastery interactions way back when.
But if you’re looking for tacky, Wounded Animal is precisely that—by attempting to exclude a champ like Nimrod, the team cast its net too widely. Perhaps include an anti-robot node and there’s no need to force players to shift masteries out of Assassin…and to what exactly? One of the new masteries promised to be forthcoming?
If the team is going to neuter existing masteries, then give us something worthwhile to put our points into.
Dr. Zola
Nimrod, Shuri and all were already kicked out by the Shock immunity node. Wounded animal probably targets AAR champs.
And there isn't any rule that you wouldn't have to face consequences for your masteries. Especially in an end game fight.
I've had to change masteries for fights depending on the champ I use and whomsoever it is I fight .
Using dexterity has forever been punished by nodes ad nauseum that people used to remove dexterity to do some fights. I've personally taken out dexterity to fight Abyss Dormammu or some AW fights . This isn't new .
Placing an anti-Robot node would remove two great counters. G99 and Viv. That would be an overall negative.
I think the main problem here is that you think masteries should be set in stone and never forced to change(except suicids). Which you can. You may have to pay a price for it is all.
In my opinion, it shouldn't matter at all.masteries are a flexible thing. And as always AAR was always a double edged sword. And it shouldn't be a surprise.
As for the veteran's part. I don't think that once the interaction is pointed out, anyone would have any doubt why it is happening so. But most people usually forget their specific mastery setup and it's interactions. Most use assassins for the damage boost.
No not really. Nimrod can still cheese with omega sentinel synergy. That's why they added wounded animal.
I wish wounded animal punishes you only for removing regen stacks, not preventing them, so it can handle nimrod but aar champs can still work.
Synergies aren't all that helpful for a fight where you can only take in one champion...
I agree with Desi that "Wounded Animal" is clearly intended to punish AAR champions; and Pacify/Assassin masteries are caught in the crossfire.
But I think the solution should be smaller costs for Mastery resets: who can't you take points out for the same price as putting them in? If it's five units to add a point in Assassin's mastery, it shouldn't cost you seventy units to reset everything if you want to take that point back out again.
This gets to one of the points underpinning my post: you have to pay to swap out masteries you’ve already paid for at least once.
Dr. Zola
I know there's a @DNA3000 para about why this is the way it is. I wish I could search for it.
Lukewarm take: we should be able to recover mastery points from the end of the tree and moving backward, rather than having to scrap the entirety of every branch of the offensive tree.
If we aren’t going to be able to do that, please don’t do nodes like this. It’s not a core mechanic of the fight imo, esp considering the objectives we were given. It’s just there to punish.
You could’ve done any of the following and maintained the integrity of the fight without creating nonsense:
1) apply the node only to removal of healing 2) use force of will or adamant axiom 3) lock ability accuracy when near a wall
In conclusion, I think the designer just missed assassin interaction.
Let's just say for argument's sake that they had missed it. But what if they had seen it? What's the work around?
"Take damage if you prevent a regen except by assassins mastery or pacify"?? That seems very tacky.
But even more importantly, why? Why should the game design accommodate for a mastery you use?
Contra: Why should game design punish a mastery you use—especially when switching masteries isn’t without cost?
Unlike suicides—which present an explicit trade-off—Assassin and Pacify do not. If forums and chats are any indication, there are more than a few veterans who found themselves wondering why they dropped dead as they were closing out the fight. That’s not because they are poor players—it’s because esoteric game interactions are increasingly a “thing.”
Is it possible this was all intended? Sure, but it’s equally possible the Wounded Animal node interaction with Assassin was just as unforeseen by the game team as were the initial disadvantageous AAR mastery interactions way back when.
But if you’re looking for tacky, Wounded Animal is precisely that—by attempting to exclude a champ like Nimrod, the team cast its net too widely. Perhaps include an anti-robot node and there’s no need to force players to shift masteries out of Assassin…and to what exactly? One of the new masteries promised to be forthcoming?
If the team is going to neuter existing masteries, then give us something worthwhile to put our points into.
Dr. Zola
Nimrod, Shuri and all were already kicked out by the Shock immunity node. Wounded animal probably targets AAR champs.
And there isn't any rule that you wouldn't have to face consequences for your masteries. Especially in an end game fight.
I've had to change masteries for fights depending on the champ I use and whomsoever it is I fight .
Using dexterity has forever been punished by nodes ad nauseum that people used to remove dexterity to do some fights. I've personally taken out dexterity to fight Abyss Dormammu or some AW fights . This isn't new .
Placing an anti-Robot node would remove two great counters. G99 and Viv. That would be an overall negative.
I think the main problem here is that you think masteries should be set in stone and never forced to change(except suicids). Which you can. You may have to pay a price for it is all.
In my opinion, it shouldn't matter at all.masteries are a flexible thing. And as always AAR was always a double edged sword. And it shouldn't be a surprise.
As for the veteran's part. I don't think that once the interaction is pointed out, anyone would have any doubt why it is happening so. But most people usually forget their specific mastery setup and it's interactions. Most use assassins for the damage boost.
No not really. Nimrod can still cheese with omega sentinel synergy. That's why they added wounded animal.
I wish wounded animal punishes you only for removing regen stacks, not preventing them, so it can handle nimrod but aar champs can still work.
Synergies aren't all that helpful for a fight where you can only take in one champion...
I agree with Desi that "Wounded Animal" is clearly intended to punish AAR champions; and Pacify/Assassin masteries are caught in the crossfire.
But I think the solution should be smaller costs for Mastery resets: who can't you take points out for the same price as putting them in? If it's five units to add a point in Assassin's mastery, it shouldn't cost you seventy units to reset everything if you want to take that point back out again.
You have to pay to swap out masteries you’ve already paid for at least once.
Dr. Zola
This topic have been covered numerous of times. And pretty sure DNA gave an elaborate opinion on it, which I sort of agree to.
But I do agree taking out points from specific mastery is the way forward! Rogers mentioned, kabam don't plan to design a tech for it, which is true. But I belive the players needs it at this point.
In conclusion, I think the designer just missed assassin interaction.
Let's just say for argument's sake that they had missed it. But what if they had seen it? What's the work around?
"Take damage if you prevent a regen except by assassins mastery or pacify"?? That seems very tacky.
But even more importantly, why? Why should the game design accommodate for a mastery you use?
Contra: Why should game design punish a mastery you use—especially when switching masteries isn’t without cost?
Unlike suicides—which present an explicit trade-off—Assassin and Pacify do not. If forums and chats are any indication, there are more than a few veterans who found themselves wondering why they dropped dead as they were closing out the fight. That’s not because they are poor players—it’s because esoteric game interactions are increasingly a “thing.”
Is it possible this was all intended? Sure, but it’s equally possible the Wounded Animal node interaction with Assassin was just as unforeseen by the game team as were the initial disadvantageous AAR mastery interactions way back when.
But if you’re looking for tacky, Wounded Animal is precisely that—by attempting to exclude a champ like Nimrod, the team cast its net too widely. Perhaps include an anti-robot node and there’s no need to force players to shift masteries out of Assassin…and to what exactly? One of the new masteries promised to be forthcoming?
If the team is going to neuter existing masteries, then give us something worthwhile to put our points into.
Dr. Zola
Nimrod, Shuri and all were already kicked out by the Shock immunity node. Wounded animal probably targets AAR champs.
And there isn't any rule that you wouldn't have to face consequences for your masteries. Especially in an end game fight.
I've had to change masteries for fights depending on the champ I use and whomsoever it is I fight .
Using dexterity has forever been punished by nodes ad nauseum that people used to remove dexterity to do some fights. I've personally taken out dexterity to fight Abyss Dormammu or some AW fights . This isn't new .
Placing an anti-Robot node would remove two great counters. G99 and Viv. That would be an overall negative.
I think the main problem here is that you think masteries should be set in stone and never forced to change(except suicids). Which you can. You may have to pay a price for it is all.
In my opinion, it shouldn't matter at all.masteries are a flexible thing. And as always AAR was always a double edged sword. And it shouldn't be a surprise.
As for the veteran's part. I don't think that once the interaction is pointed out, anyone would have any doubt why it is happening so. But most people usually forget their specific mastery setup and it's interactions. Most use assassins for the damage boost.
No not really. Nimrod can still cheese with omega sentinel synergy. That's why they added wounded animal.
I wish wounded animal punishes you only for removing regen stacks, not preventing them, so it can handle nimrod but aar champs can still work.
Synergies aren't all that helpful for a fight where you can only take in one champion...
I agree with Desi that "Wounded Animal" is clearly intended to punish AAR champions; and Pacify/Assassin masteries are caught in the crossfire.
But I think the solution should be smaller costs for Mastery resets: who can't you take points out for the same price as putting them in? If it's five units to add a point in Assassin's mastery, it shouldn't cost you seventy units to reset everything if you want to take that point back out again.
This gets to one of the points underpinning my post: you have to pay to swap out masteries you’ve already paid for at least once.
Dr. Zola
I know there's a @DNA3000 para about why this is the way it is. I wish I could search for it.
This one is easy. Saying "I paid for the masteries, I should be able to use them however I want without having to pay any additional costs" is literally no different than saying "I paid for those catalysts I should be able to use them where ever I want without paying any additional costs."
It gets to the question of why masteries even exist at all. They exist to offer players choices. Those choices have to have consequences, or the choices are meaningless. If we could change masteries however we wanted whenever we wanted, they might as well not exist at all.
The question of whether we should even be allowed to change masteries *at all* is the real question. And that gets to the question of informed choice. The game is so large now and changes so often now that it would be difficult to argue that any player could set their masteries once and for all time with any inkling of what the decision's consequences would be. If you couldn't change them at all, you could lock a player into a permanently bad place. So we can change them.
But those changes have to have significant friction, or we're back to them not offering any meaningful choices. So they have a cost. The cost isn't there to make money, it is there to ensure that when players make a choice, they actually think carefully about the choice they make, and they understand that they will either have to live with the downside of those choices, or pay to get out from under them. Either way, they take the pros with the cons in every mastery set up decision.
I have long been an advocate for mastery profiles under the same theory. I even stated during the (closed) Battlegrounds beta that BG *needed* mastery profiles because there was no way to make an informed choice about mastery set up in a game mode that was going to be changing its meta constantly and dramatically. Mastery choices that would be good for one season could be disastrous for the next. This could seriously hurt participation, and make high level competition far more random and unsatisfying.
Mode-specific mastery set ups and mastery profiles in general are compromises between two game design requirements. The first is that players should have to consider pros and cons in mastery choices, and have to live with those consequences, for the mastery choices to be meaningful. But players have to have the flexibility to deal with different game modes that make completely different demands on their mastery choices. What we have now is the current compromise between those two opposing forces.
If we aren’t going to be able to do that, please don’t do nodes like this. It’s not a core mechanic of the fight imo, esp considering the objectives we were given. It’s just there to punish.
First of all, going back to something that was said earlier in the thread, I think attacking the mechanics as being "wrong" is itself wrong. It is clear the fight was explicitly intended to punish AAR, and it is equally clear that Assassins is explicitly intended to grant AAR. That means the fight will punish Assassins. The idea that this is somehow "wrong" and should be somehow hacked away is nonsense. You don't dispel gravity when it doesn't work in your favor.
However, having said that, I do think there is some truth to this sentiment from this perspective. Most "RPG-like" mechanics are there to act as roster checks. The fight penalizes this, so don't bring a champ that does that. The fight enhances that, so do bring champs that possess that. But when the mechanics attack something granted in a mastery, that affects the player's entire roster. You can't bring something without AAR if you have Assassins, because your entire roster now has AAR.
I think there is a compromise here that honors the idea that mastery set ups should come with pros and cons that cannot freely be ignored and the fact that in a more complex world we're going to have situations like this where a fight is designed to punish the champs that possess a particular ability, and a mastery ends up making the player's entire roster problematic. The compromise I am most in favor of is a simple toggle on all active mastery abilities, that would allow a player to simply turn a mastery off. In that case, all the points in that mastery are simply temporarily inactive. You can't use them anywhere else, so you can't benefit form them. All the benefits of that mastery are also gone, you don't get them anymore. But you also do not get any of the deleterious side effects of that mastery while it is turned off. You're still paying the (opportunity) cost of that mastery, but it isn't crippling your entire roster during a particular fight.
I don't know how the devs would feel about such an option, but to me that strikes the right balance between the mastery set up being the set up and you can't just change it, but acknowledging that because masteries affect *all* champs, they grant both all of their pluses and all of their minuses to a player's entire roster, which makes fights that penalize certain abilities problematic to use as a roster check.
If we aren’t going to be able to do that, please don’t do nodes like this. It’s not a core mechanic of the fight imo, esp considering the objectives we were given. It’s just there to punish.
First of all, going back to something that was said earlier in the thread, I think attacking the mechanics as being "wrong" is itself wrong. It is clear the fight was explicitly intended to punish AAR, and it is equally clear that Assassins is explicitly intended to grant AAR. That means the fight will punish Assassins. The idea that this is somehow "wrong" and should be somehow hacked away is nonsense. You don't dispel gravity when it doesn't work in your favor.
However, having said that, I do think there is some truth to this sentiment from this perspective. Most "RPG-like" mechanics are there to act as roster checks. The fight penalizes this, so don't bring a champ that does that. The fight enhances that, so do bring champs that possess that. But when the mechanics attack something granted in a mastery, that affects the player's entire roster. You can't bring something without AAR if you have Assassins, because your entire roster now has AAR.
I think there is a compromise here that honors the idea that mastery set ups should come with pros and cons that cannot freely be ignored and the fact that in a more complex world we're going to have situations like this where a fight is designed to punish the champs that possess a particular ability, and a mastery ends up making the player's entire roster problematic. The compromise I am most in favor of is a simple toggle on all active mastery abilities, that would allow a player to simply turn a mastery off. In that case, all the points in that mastery are simply temporarily inactive. You can't use them anywhere else, so you can't benefit form them. All the benefits of that mastery are also gone, you don't get them anymore. But you also do not get any of the deleterious side effects of that mastery while it is turned off. You're still paying the (opportunity) cost of that mastery, but it isn't crippling your entire roster during a particular fight.
I don't know how the devs would feel about such an option, but to me that strikes the right balance between the mastery set up being the set up and you can't just change it, but acknowledging that because masteries affect *all* champs, they grant both all of their pluses and all of their minuses to a player's entire roster, which makes fights that penalize certain abilities problematic to use as a roster check.
I do quite like this idea in principle, but I feel like there’s one significant outlier here that throws a wrench in that plan: recoil. That mastery is, from my understanding, basically never worth it and would pretty much never be run by anyone if given the choice. 5% health loss from using sp1 or 2 is not worth the extra attack rating during specials (I don’t run recoils, so maybe someone else can chime in and tell me I’m wrong). People run it because it’s a prerequisite for double edge and liquid courage, which very much is good enough to be worth it even with the straitjacket that is recoil. I feel like those two masteries are kinda balanced around recoil being a requirement, and if you could simply disable recoil but keep them that balance sorta flies out the window.
Of course there is a simple solution to that: disabling a mastery also disables all masteries higher in the tree that depend on it. There’s probably a few knock-on effects to that, but I don’t think it’s unfeasible or that it’s unfair. I’d certainly be down with something like your system if only because having to spend units to disable and reenable willpower for each Fintech CCP challenge for Warlock was annoying.
Dr zola you should sign up to be a forum guardian. If i compare your acc to theirs. You also post a lot and the amount of agrees to dissagrees is very good. + the insightfulls. Also i find your posts really helpfull most times
@DNA3000 So am I to believe the design team thought “aha—let’s throw an additional wrinkle into this fight with 18% health remaining that will make it extra fun and engaging?”
@DNA3000 So am I to believe the design team thought “aha—let’s throw an additional wrinkle into this fight with 18% health remaining that will make it extra fun and engaging?”
Dr. Zola
There's explicit design intent, and there's implicit design intent.
I doubt the devs sat around and said "let's punish everyone that has Assassins." But they also didn't all sit around and say "let's punish everyone that brings Falcon" either. They did not look at the list of champs with AAR and explicitly take vote and say yes, we want that one to be punished. Every champ that eats a fail on that fight is doing so because the devs *implicitly* intended for that champ to take that damage, not because they explicitly decided to hate that champ on that day.
Besides, that's an unfair one and you know it. The design team doesn't say "let's have the defender kill the attacker because that will be more fun." But defenders kill attackers all the time. Is it a design mistake that defenders kill attackers, or deliberate masochism? Or is there another alternative between those two extremes?
The designers have to play by their own rules, and their own rules says Assassins works this way. Now, that doesn't mean in extreme cases the devs can't decide that the rules do not properly express their overall intent, which is why I said it is entirely possible there are escape hatches possible to mitigate this the devs could consider. But even when they do such things, they should still try to implement them with some logic besides "didn't wanna, so don't gotta."
Dr zola you should sign up to be a forum guardian. If i compare your acc to theirs. You also post a lot and the amount of agrees to dissagrees is very good. + the insightfulls. Also i find your posts really helpfull most times
Zola would probably chew off his own arm to escape his keyboard before he allows someone to make him a Forum Guardian.
Dr zola you should sign up to be a forum guardian. If i compare your acc to theirs. You also post a lot and the amount of agrees to dissagrees is very good. + the insightfulls. Also i find your posts really helpfull most times
Zola would probably chew off his own arm to escape his keyboard before he allows someone to make him a Forum Guardian.
Of course there is a simple solution to that: disabling a mastery also disables all masteries higher in the tree that depend on it. There’s probably a few knock-on effects to that, but I don’t think it’s unfeasible or that it’s unfair. I’d certainly be down with something like your system if only because having to spend units to disable and reenable willpower for each Fintech CCP challenge for Warlock was annoying.
That sounds extremely straight forward and logical to me.
“Implicit design intent” sounds like the fancy developer equivalent of retconning. But I guess it’s better than saying “we aren’t exactly sure how our game works.”
Of course there is a simple solution to that: disabling a mastery also disables all masteries higher in the tree that depend on it. There’s probably a few knock-on effects to that, but I don’t think it’s unfeasible or that it’s unfair. I’d certainly be down with something like your system if only because having to spend units to disable and reenable willpower for each Fintech CCP challenge for Warlock was annoying.
That sounds extremely straight forward and logical to me.
I really like this kind of compromise suggestion of yours, @DNA3000
Try and work it into a conversation with the Devs some time... 😉
“Implicit design intent” sounds like the fancy developer equivalent of retconning. But I guess it’s better than saying “we aren’t exactly sure how our game works.”
Dr. Zola
To the degree that those two things are synonymous, no designer knows how anything works, in any design field. There is nothing I’ve ever designed of any consequence, for which I could honestly say much of the design wasn’t employing implicit design intent.
Every time a designer makes a champ that is bleed immune, I’ll bet money they don’t actually know, with completeness, every champ that deals bleed, every node that inflicts bleed, and everywhere they are encountered in game content. They aren’t explicitly saying I want this champ to reduce incoming damage from this champ by this much, that champ by that much, and so on. That would be explicit design intent. Implicit design intent would be where they decide this champ should avoid taking bleed damage from all sources of bleed, whatever they are.
Games have rules for the same reason we have building codes. No one can possibly explicitly know everything about everything all of the time, so we design according to the rules and we presume the rules will ensure our design intent properly propagates throughout the design.
Comments
If we aren’t going to be able to do that, please don’t do nodes like this. It’s not a core mechanic of the fight imo, esp considering the objectives we were given. It’s just there to punish.
You could’ve done any of the following and maintained the integrity of the fight without creating nonsense:
1) apply the node only to removal of healing
2) use force of will or adamant axiom
3) lock ability accuracy when near a wall
But I do agree taking out points from specific mastery is the way forward! Rogers mentioned, kabam don't plan to design a tech for it, which is true. But I belive the players needs it at this point.
It gets to the question of why masteries even exist at all. They exist to offer players choices. Those choices have to have consequences, or the choices are meaningless. If we could change masteries however we wanted whenever we wanted, they might as well not exist at all.
The question of whether we should even be allowed to change masteries *at all* is the real question. And that gets to the question of informed choice. The game is so large now and changes so often now that it would be difficult to argue that any player could set their masteries once and for all time with any inkling of what the decision's consequences would be. If you couldn't change them at all, you could lock a player into a permanently bad place. So we can change them.
But those changes have to have significant friction, or we're back to them not offering any meaningful choices. So they have a cost. The cost isn't there to make money, it is there to ensure that when players make a choice, they actually think carefully about the choice they make, and they understand that they will either have to live with the downside of those choices, or pay to get out from under them. Either way, they take the pros with the cons in every mastery set up decision.
I have long been an advocate for mastery profiles under the same theory. I even stated during the (closed) Battlegrounds beta that BG *needed* mastery profiles because there was no way to make an informed choice about mastery set up in a game mode that was going to be changing its meta constantly and dramatically. Mastery choices that would be good for one season could be disastrous for the next. This could seriously hurt participation, and make high level competition far more random and unsatisfying.
Mode-specific mastery set ups and mastery profiles in general are compromises between two game design requirements. The first is that players should have to consider pros and cons in mastery choices, and have to live with those consequences, for the mastery choices to be meaningful. But players have to have the flexibility to deal with different game modes that make completely different demands on their mastery choices. What we have now is the current compromise between those two opposing forces.
However, having said that, I do think there is some truth to this sentiment from this perspective. Most "RPG-like" mechanics are there to act as roster checks. The fight penalizes this, so don't bring a champ that does that. The fight enhances that, so do bring champs that possess that. But when the mechanics attack something granted in a mastery, that affects the player's entire roster. You can't bring something without AAR if you have Assassins, because your entire roster now has AAR.
I think there is a compromise here that honors the idea that mastery set ups should come with pros and cons that cannot freely be ignored and the fact that in a more complex world we're going to have situations like this where a fight is designed to punish the champs that possess a particular ability, and a mastery ends up making the player's entire roster problematic. The compromise I am most in favor of is a simple toggle on all active mastery abilities, that would allow a player to simply turn a mastery off. In that case, all the points in that mastery are simply temporarily inactive. You can't use them anywhere else, so you can't benefit form them. All the benefits of that mastery are also gone, you don't get them anymore. But you also do not get any of the deleterious side effects of that mastery while it is turned off. You're still paying the (opportunity) cost of that mastery, but it isn't crippling your entire roster during a particular fight.
I don't know how the devs would feel about such an option, but to me that strikes the right balance between the mastery set up being the set up and you can't just change it, but acknowledging that because masteries affect *all* champs, they grant both all of their pluses and all of their minuses to a player's entire roster, which makes fights that penalize certain abilities problematic to use as a roster check.
Of course there is a simple solution to that: disabling a mastery also disables all masteries higher in the tree that depend on it. There’s probably a few knock-on effects to that, but I don’t think it’s unfeasible or that it’s unfair. I’d certainly be down with something like your system if only because having to spend units to disable and reenable willpower for each Fintech CCP challenge for Warlock was annoying.
So am I to believe the design team thought “aha—let’s throw an additional wrinkle into this fight with 18% health remaining that will make it extra fun and engaging?”
Dr. Zola
I doubt the devs sat around and said "let's punish everyone that has Assassins." But they also didn't all sit around and say "let's punish everyone that brings Falcon" either. They did not look at the list of champs with AAR and explicitly take vote and say yes, we want that one to be punished. Every champ that eats a fail on that fight is doing so because the devs *implicitly* intended for that champ to take that damage, not because they explicitly decided to hate that champ on that day.
Besides, that's an unfair one and you know it. The design team doesn't say "let's have the defender kill the attacker because that will be more fun." But defenders kill attackers all the time. Is it a design mistake that defenders kill attackers, or deliberate masochism? Or is there another alternative between those two extremes?
The designers have to play by their own rules, and their own rules says Assassins works this way. Now, that doesn't mean in extreme cases the devs can't decide that the rules do not properly express their overall intent, which is why I said it is entirely possible there are escape hatches possible to mitigate this the devs could consider. But even when they do such things, they should still try to implement them with some logic besides "didn't wanna, so don't gotta."
Dr. Zola
Dr. Zola
Try and work it into a conversation with the Devs some time... 😉
Every time a designer makes a champ that is bleed immune, I’ll bet money they don’t actually know, with completeness, every champ that deals bleed, every node that inflicts bleed, and everywhere they are encountered in game content. They aren’t explicitly saying I want this champ to reduce incoming damage from this champ by this much, that champ by that much, and so on. That would be explicit design intent. Implicit design intent would be where they decide this champ should avoid taking bleed damage from all sources of bleed, whatever they are.
Games have rules for the same reason we have building codes. No one can possibly explicitly know everything about everything all of the time, so we design according to the rules and we presume the rules will ensure our design intent properly propagates throughout the design.