So, after not playing for a while, I entered a small room with about 4 players. Within 5 minutes, the room was empty except for me and another player who apperantly had been grinding for stars with a friend, because he maneged to buy the first 3 persistent perks; Shield, Flame Sword and Stealth. He was dominating the match without trying, since he could use the perks one by one, making him either invincible, invisible or he would win every offensive strike. In the period he was vulnerable he would either blow himself up, keep his distance or actually got killed. In other words, the only scoring player, balance was completely ruined.

To keep both small and large rooms balanced and more fun for beginning players as well, a different way of gaining those persistent perks ingame is probably nessicary and more logical.

I’ve noticed that the perks can be devided in 3 categories, much like ingame temporary perks:

Offensive perks are the Flaming Sword, Big Bang and Chain Detonation.
Defensive perks are the Shield, Stealth, and Perk Void.
Assisting perks are the Break Lock, Target Decoy and Vacuum Bomb.

Perhaps the Perk Void and Vacuum Bomb could be switched.

So, to gain a perk, you have to do something rather than (run away, camp and) wait for a timer.

Offensive Perks: Kills will gain you ‘points’ to this type of perk. Deaths (Not /Also/Faster with meltdowns?) will decrease your ‘points’.
Defensive Perks: Deaths will gain you points, kills will decrease it. (Longer killing sprees decrease the points faster?)
Assisting Perks could be given a timer, so if you’re not dying a lot but aren’t killing much either, you can still get access to some perks. (Speeds up with stars?)

Doing these things ingame will also gain you Star-points (Green, Red, Blue. Yellow = Global?) toward those types of perks. Assisting perks (or all perks +1, +2 for assist?) can be increased by collecting stars.

I think by doing this, small rooms won’t be dominated by a single player, but instead makes them more balanced. Defensive perks should be gained faster than Offensive perks; You can only die once, but gain multiple kills in a life. This keeps smaller rooms more balanced too: Weaker players will have more chance to kill the dominating player and decrease their offensive perk credits! Newer players have much more chance to fight back.

To keep the difference in perks balanced in a certain theme, a different amount of points could be set per perk. Flaming Sword has much more killing potential than Chain Detonation (in my opinion, of course), and Big Bang is quite deadly, too. Chain Detonation could require less points to gain than the other perks. Another example is the difference between Break Lock and Vacuum Bomb; Break Lock should have a way shorter timer than the Vacuum Bomb.

I think this system would make a lot more sense than collecting stars, since that is not a main goal in a game. It also allows players to play the game normally and still advance in buying persistent perks, instead of having to grind falling stars to keep up with the more frequently playing crowd. They might have less choice, but they can still choose 3 perks soon enough.

I think this system balances out the persistent perks a lot more. It also gives a goal towards the goal of the game: Killing, melting down and score points! I would love to hear feedback on this idea.

I think the more logical idea would be to up the cooldown on them, rather than add in the mass of confusion your post has.

Honestly, your idea reminds me of Modern Warfare 2. “Get X amount of kills to activate your offensive perk” “die X amount of times to activate your defensive perk”

If someone is dominating a game, then people should be trying to gang up on him. Odds are he’s gonna be worth quite a few points. If it’s a one on one fight and you have no perks and he has three, then of course the advantage goes to him. But he’s also put in the time to collect a ton of stars and buy the perks.

If you have a set of three perks and he has a set of three perks, then the fight is even. Have fun.

What the game should do for those newer to it is explain the perk thing a bit better, and then allow you to try out the perks in the tutorial area so they know what they do and which ones they plan on getting. A veteran to a game where you buy things should always have an advantage.

This is like someone in World of Warcraft complaining that their fresh level 80 got destroyed in PVP by someone in full t10 raiding gear. Of course that’s going to happen. In this case, perks are our gear. You have em, you know how to use/time them, then the advantage should be yours.

I guess my post was a bit longwinded, but to break it down;
Kill more to gain offensive perks
Die more to gain defensive perks
Timer for assisting perks

So perhaps the idea seems a lot like the Killstreak rewards and Deathstreak rewards from Modern Warfare 2, the reason is that it is a system that works. The fact is that persistent perks are very powerful, in my opinion it is gamebreaking to hand them out every so often. Players who play often not only have an advantage in skill, and even temporary perks, but even more with persistent perks.

Players who play a lot already have a huge advantage, and adding the persistent perks, the gap becomes so large that gameplay is no fun anymore for any casual players. With this system, you can actually hunt down the stronger players, to prevent them from getting those overly strong perks. This also fixes other problems with this system: camping on the other side of the map to regain perks and gathering stars. In other words, not participating in the game.

The problem with the star system is, that if you do not ‘abandon’ the main goal of the game and search for stars on the side of the map, you won’t gain those persistent perks. Litarally you have a disadvantage for playing the game how it should be. This is what I want to prevent, too.

Right now, the balance of the game is so off, I don’t feel like coming back. It’s not worth it right now, and my attention is more drawn to other games. The idea and gameplay are great, the balance is just way off now.

I appreciate your feedback but I’m trying to keep the rules simple and accessible to everyone. I thought the star collection system was we’ll suited as players could avoid combat and collect stars in order to get new perks and enable them to get into that dominating position in the server. I think the reward for spending the time to collect stars should be something cool - like being more able to fight in a server.

I’d be willing to tweak the numbers and make the shield cost less, making it easier to get. However as the flame sword and shield cancel each other out, it may not be an advantage for very long.

to be honest, you just need to get perks and practice with them. go with a star runner build to get more stars. if you have enough, i recommend stealth, shield, break lock. for persistent perks. and upgrade in the following manner early game:

lv1 jump
lv1 detector
lv2 jump
lv1 meltdown speed

just run around collecting stars, break lock when you’re targeted, when you’re attracting attention, ninja or shield. blow up when necessary. important skills include skimming, which is hold q and mash charge on the ground to move quickly across, judging your fall with shift so that you fall near the stars as close as possible, and slingshotting yourself across edges.

a star running build doesn’t necessary fall behind that much, and since stars reduce global cooldown by 10 seconds, you can pretty much spam those persistent perks.

also don’t abandon this game so quickly, we need more players!

BlackIce - 02 September 2010 07:44 AM

I guess my post was a bit longwinded, but to break it down;
Kill more to gain offensive perks
Die more to gain defensive perks
Timer for assisting perks

So perhaps the idea seems a lot like the Killstreak rewards and Deathstreak rewards from Modern Warfare 2, the reason is that it is a system that works. The fact is that persistent perks are very powerful, in my opinion it is gamebreaking to hand them out every so often. Players who play often not only have an advantage in skill, and even temporary perks, but even more with persistent perks.

No. It doesn’t. It just lets those that are really good get really powerful. Once you get a giant killstreak in MW2 you become so hard to kill because you’re dropping choppers and planes on everyone. It’s ridiculous. As soon as new players get their persistent perks, they have the exact same advantages as everyone else.

Penalizing those that play this game more than others is a terrible business practice.

Players who play a lot already have a huge advantage, and adding the persistent perks, the gap becomes so large that gameplay is no fun anymore for any casual players. With this system, you can actually hunt down the stronger players, to prevent them from getting those overly strong perks. This also fixes other problems with this system: camping on the other side of the map to regain perks and gathering stars. In other words, not participating in the game.

I really thought I’d gotten away from the casual player entitlement once I quit playing World of Warcraft. But here we are, the same arguments. “I’m a casual player, I don’t want to get all the persistent perks or play long enough to get good at the game. Nerf everyone else.”

And you can already hunt down the stronger players. It’s actually really easy. They get all big and glow a different color.

And how bad is camping, really? If you join a semi full server nobody is going to be just waiting around for their perks to come off. And if they are, then go kill them. I’ve yet to have this problem while playing this game, but I try to join populated servers.

The problem with the star system is, that if you do not ‘abandon’ the main goal of the game and search for stars on the side of the map, you won’t gain those persistent perks. Litarally you have a disadvantage for playing the game how it should be. This is what I want to prevent, too.

Right now, the balance of the game is so off, I don’t feel like coming back. It’s not worth it right now, and my attention is more drawn to other games. The idea and gameplay are great, the balance is just way off now.

Star system is fine. It’s not hard to collect stars and kill people. Only once did I do nothing but collect stars in a game, and I’ve gotten four persistent perks. Just go for ones that aren’t out of the way (or camp near one and kill someone as they try to take it.)

The balance of this game is fine, it just has a very steep learning curve.

Once you get some perks, it gets a lot better (assuming you know when and how to use them correctly)

So I guess we can’t seem to agree on the fact wether or not the game is balanced here. As an alternative, implement the option to turn off persistent perks on your server?

Thanks for the tip, Adrian, but a long star-hunt isn’t really what I’m looking for in an Arena game… I’ll join again when I feel like it, I won’t be gone completely.

BlackIce - 02 September 2010 04:15 PM

So I guess we can’t seem to agree on the fact wether or not the game is balanced here. As an alternative, implement the option to turn off persistent perks on your server?

That’s actually a fairly good idea. In my wishing-well topic I asked for more control on the dedicated server or, failing that, making it open source to modify it myself. This is exactly one of the things I would want to control. I’m not a real star hunter, barely past my first perk, but already it feels overpowered in games against people without them.

Ah well, here’s to wishing..

Yeah, I noticed that some players already possessed three perks. I joined a match from start today with a 30 minute timer. In the last 5 minutes, a player joined and using his 3 perks, he racked up over 120 points, coming in second when the match ended. Well, I guess I’ll see if the game has changed after a while. For now I’ll stick to other Steam games.

His strategy was easy, really. First activate the Stealth, get some kills, activate the Flaming Sword to grow larger, and then the Shield to get some final kills. Blow yourself up, get a massive multiplier and top the board in 1 explosion. No one had the perks to counter him yet, so it was a free match for him. The game was fun during the start of the match, no one had a perk yet.

I think I was in that match too. I wasn’t doing particularly well myself (grind being my arch-nemesis, I haven’t collected nearly enough stars to get a perk yet), but it did become noticeably one-sided when that guy joined in.

It’s not so much the perks which give players the real advantage but instead the actual upgrades when you’re in a game. Usually the first to get a few kills, detonate (optimally detonate and draw a few suckers into the explosion with you) gets a really good start to boost all the important offensive or defensive upgrades. Once they have level 2 run/jump/charge/whatever while you’re still at level zero or just have 1 in shield, you’re still very vulnerable as they can quickly fly around a map while you have a slightly difficult time boosting off one platform to the next. What I’ve noticed is that the player with the largest head start will often remain in the lead even with perks disabled, whether they’re just better at the game or just managed to get the most upgrades quickly, it tends to quickly unbalance a DM/TDM game and cause a few rage quits.

No, the game worked fine and was fun with the temporary perk system. I really had no problem playing the game so far. You gain points for upgrading, even if you die a lot and don’t gain much banked points.
The permanent perks, however, have a much bigger impact to the game. Shield grants Godmode, forcing you to run away, Flaming Sword smashes through both parries and Shields, leaving you with no defence whatsoever.
Added dash speed, you can’t get away either. The game has become quite the ‘counter or die’ game now. Enemy activates Flaming Sword? Use the shield. And vice versa.

Every other permanent perk seems less game-breaking, imo. Therefore I proposed a system so that players will have to do something rather wait for it. More combat, less camp, more fun. But that’s just my vision.
The original game seemed more fun, therefore I ask for a Permanent Perk Off option.

I did propose something like a custom setup or complete ban of temporary perks in another thread, too. A completely even game seems to be the most fun game in the end.

I don’t know, but I haven’t really had much of an issue with the perks system as you’re experiencing so obviously between us the game is very different. And either way I probably wouldn’t miss persistent perks if they were completely removed in the next big update.

While I’m not a really big fan of the flaming sword/shield as a perk to begin with, I would rather see the effects of certain perks reflected in the actual upgrades as a visual indicator of how potentially lethal an opponent is rather than simply using it as a quick 1-up feature. For example having a maximum boost/attack could cause the sword to upgrade from glowing red at lower levels to being on fire when the stats are maxed out. Somewhat like the jamming ability when you purchase the mega perk for those sets of stats.

I’m still very new to the title having just purchased it in the big 1.2 $2 sale, so I can’t speak from experience as I don’t know what the game was like before the perks came into play.

Although, using what I outlined above as an example, it could prove interesting if instead of having persistent perks you could instead choose from one of three to four mega perks. Since you’ve already pretty well outlined their nature as being either offensive or defensive I’m fairly certain that robin, sherif and the other beatniks could find a way to balance them out as mega perks. I’m pretty sure if given the option some players may opt to have stealth over the shield or a multiple explosions instead of the vacuum detonation ability and vice-versa.

Gearing it that way might deliver a bit of variety across games as each player will no doubt have a different build each map, and as such games would be a bit more unpredictable. The stars could then server as either simple bonus point multipliers or be reserved for a new type of gameplay all together where collecting stars and not exploding is a focus or something. Or if one hit kills are disabled they could server as a form of health pack.

Making the permanent perks a part of Megaperks sounds like an interesting idea.
Probably the main reason why I don’t enjoy the persistent perks is the way of gaining them. Why am I forced into a long stargrind, as Sarky called it, instead of gaining them in combat? I did try grabbing them when they fell near but that system is so slow that it’ll take a while to gain any perk.

And actually, I think the Shield needs to be increased in cost. It’s extremely powerful against players who have no counter in the form of a No Perk Zone or Flaming Sword yet. You can only run away…