In 0.35 there were major changes to the spell system in PQ3. I thought I’d give my impressions, thus far.
Class spells can now only be used by their respective class.
I was annoyed by the thought of this. However, after playing for awhile, I must admit I like it. I thought it would be bland and everyone would be forced into a specific spell loadout. But, the result seems the opposite. I’d grade this change an A
Duplicate spells are no longer allowed in a loadout
Again, I was annoyed by the thought of this. My feeling was that this was a backhanded way of addressing unbalanced spells at the expense of player’s creative choices. After playing, I still feel this way. However, I can see how this change helps prevent the problems I thought the first change would cause. I don’t love it, but its not game breaking and I can sort of see the reason. So, I’d grade this one a B
Class spells are no longer awarded for their levels
In my opinion this is just a terrible change, especially when combined with the first two changes. It also makes absolutely no sense. The only thing I can guess is that it has something to do with how easy it is now to evolve a common spell to uncommon. But having to farm for your class spells, besides being incredibly not fun, can lead to becoming too underpowered to effectively continue farming. I’d grade this one an F
A possible fix would be perhaps a series of class specific side quests, that reward the common spell. Obviously, that would take a while to create. Another possible solution would be to have a sort of starter version of each class specific spell. You would get this version at the appropriate level, it would be exactly the same as a common version except that it cannot be evolved. Just a couple of ideas.
General changes to leveling and evolving spells
There are obvious issues right now with materials not dropping. I feel like those issues are already being looked into. I’m going to just judge this one on how it will be when the issues are addressed. I believe that once the materials are available that this change will rate an A
Edit: I forgot to mention regarding the change to how we obtain the class spells…
It also removes those incremental “rewards” for hitting level milestones. That’s actually kind of a big deal. Otherwise its just one slog to 50.
Agreed, this is punitive and entirely unnecessary. The whole point of a system of spells for the class is that the class earns them through progression. Give the common spells out like before. It worked fine.
My assassin was like level 28 when the change went in. Kicking myself for not pushing her through to at least 30 asap. But at least she isn’t stuck with 2 spells. I also have a berserker that is actually in the situation you mention… sort of.
I say sort of because I’ve been playing awhile and have 2 level 50 heroes and have looted a very nice mix of the generic spells. So its annoying but I can at least fill the slots with something.
I’m trying to picture a brand new player trying to chug through without their spells and all I can think is why?
I can’t imagine a brand new player sticking around with this change. You can’t progress with this setup and spells drop infrequently enough that it is extra punitive to new players just trying to play through the story.
Yeah. It looks like the devs moved the first major progression wall in the game from unlocking Auri to unlocking Xione in 0.35.
Moving the wall from Auri was a good move, IMO. Moving the wall to Xione is understandable. Blocking class spells from players until Xione is unlocked… that’s a bit too harsh.
Dungeon 8, where Xione is unlocked, is a level 27 dungeon in story mode.
Let’s meet the devs halfway on this one:
Give players Common copies of class spells through level 20 (players can freely upgrade these spells to Uncommon 15, which will give them a modicrum of power, but hardly be gamebreaking).
At level 20, have an Eveline tutorial pop-up explaining to the player that they need to seek out a mage in order to unlock advance skills of their class.
Stop awarding class after this point to encourage players to invest in Xione.
Biggest issue with spells now that they aren’t used for ascension nor multiple at once is how bad the value is to get the same spell again.
In the case of gear, there are different colors and modifiers for the same gear.
In the case of pets, multiple of the same copy pets are needed for synced chest cycles.
In the case of spells, there is none of that.
Once a person has a specific spell in epic, every epic and lower copy of that spell now becomes useless. Spells currently have a unique problem in that the continued accumulation of the same ones net no value at all.
Once a person has a specific mythic spell, 100% of all future drops of that spell become useless. This is quite a bit different than pets and gear, where having another high rarity same pet helps with chests and having a different colored gear with different modifiers allows the same gear type to be used drastically differently.
I get your point on this. It’s not quite that simple though.
No one is going to have the inventory capacity ever to hold a copy of every possible permutation of every weapon, armor, and pet there is. So, that’s never going to really come into play.
There are no weapon or armor restrictions for each of the classes. Outside of the niche of the restricted and elite PvP tournaments, a single set of mythic gear is all the majority of the player base ever needs. On the other hand, every class needs it’s own set of spells (unless a generic set of spells can cover every class and admittedly, some of them are way too good for what they do/cost currently).
Also, dupes can be salvaged into their appropriate rarity shards. Low value, of course. But that’s not completely worthless.
Ok… I’ll bite, why? If you can convince me that taking away all of the previously level earned common class spells in any way helps the game play experience or the game in general, I am listening. Or, if you can convince me that letting people get their basic class spells, as we all have up to this point, is somehow game breaking or bad, I’m also listening.
Honestly. I really am. As I stated before, the other changes seemed like a bad idea to me before I tested them and I’ve done a full 180 on the class only thing and the no dupes thing makes enough sense to be ok. My mind is open.
But some ideas are just flat out bad. If the players have a bad idea, I don’t think the devs should be meeting them halfway. If the devs make a bad change, I don’t think the players should meet them halfway. When we start aiming for “slightly less sucky” its time to move on.
Edit: FYI I’m not anti dev. I have faith that they are working things out and it takes time. But it also takes completely honest input. Really no room for pretending things are ok, if you believe something is in the ditch. That’s all.
To touch on one thing mentioned, about it being hard to get three spells for each class now, we are looking at ways to give out more usable spells at lower levels.
@Salty , thank you…That would be a really good step in the right direction. Could you possibly find out from the team why the automatic class spell gain was removed? We don’t need to know the reasoning behind every change made. In most cases we can just figure that out for ourselves. However, this one is a head scratcher, lol. It would be helpful to just get a sense of the plan here.
Also, is there any plan to replace those lost, leveling milestones? Getting a small reward (like a new spell) at progression intervals, is a really important part of games like this. At this moment, it is now, “Today I’m level 1, someday I’ll be level 50, then I can start to progress.”
We are considering giving players Class spells at certain levels. Please note that I said considering, this may not be how things are implemented in the future.
Great news that it is at least being considered. If there is actually some (design-wise, balance-wise etc) reason that auto class spells can’t be a thing, please consider replacing those incremental level “rewards,” with something else. It doesn’t have to be a new car. It probably shouldn’t be gems, since a leveling character is getting gems consistently, and the idea is to bring back “only one more level and I get ‘the thing’.”
After playing with the changes for a bit and trying a new player experience:
Xione’s chances of crafting a Class spell are too low, as they are competing with the entire assortment of spells dropped over all 15 dungeons. As a result, she is currently not a good source of obtaining new Class spells for players.
In 0.34, generic ruby/diamond chests yielded the most effective ways for players to obtain higher rarity spells for their class (up to Rare). In 0.35, generic chests appear to operate similarly to how Xione functions, as all dungeon spells can now drop from generic chests randomly. So, generic chests are now a poor source for obtaining Class spells.
It literally took me multiple days to realize that the Class spells are now coded to drop from dungeon runs in Easy mode at the approximate level where those spells would have been obtained naturally from leveling up in 0.34.
Ok, this can work, but still requires the player to acquire Ruby/Diamond chests from that dungeon to obtain.
This screams “needs an Eveline tutorial” to explain this game flow behavior to players.
Should Class spells have a higher drop rate compared to dungeon spells to assist new players in obtaining at least a common copy of Class spells?
Also, this brings up the thorny question on whether Class spells are supposed to be superior to dungeon spells (they are specialist spells in 0.35), or if they are really “starter” spells and that dungeon spells are supposed to eventually replace Class spells. Currently, dungeon spells in most situations are vastly superior to class-specific spells in power, general effectiveness, and mana cost (50 mana cost is outright silly; it’s equivalent to a 6 mana spell cost in GoW).
Thankfully I had noted this in the dungeon rewards screens right after the patch, but this knowledge did not really help me for exactly this reason:
I can say that my “new player” experience as it pertained to spells was much less understandable than my previous experience prior to 0.35 when I at least obtained spells by virtue of playing the game and hitting certain levels.
Class spells are very non-synergistic; they are a patchwork of colors and the current spell framework strongly pushes you to mono-color setups to benefit from the superior mana accumulation and increased damage output. As such, class spells are by their nature inferior simply because they compel you to use a multi-color setup that has a range of different effects; dungeon spells allow you to achieve mono-color efficiency and improved mana generation, especially when taking into account the low 50-mana cost spells which allow the most efficient spell setups.
So the question is: why take them away in the first place? Were they too much of a gift to new players allowing them some advantage relative to where the designers wanted to the players to be at early levels? I don’t think anyone is running around with a 4 class-based spell setup so clearly that’s in my view that is not the issue. Was it just to open up another opportunity to sell items to players, perhaps Starter Pack II (2 awesome common spells!). Hardly surprising I guess. But the reality is it feels half-baked, and almost done with some additional thinking in mind that failed to see implementation.
This is why I have been pointedly critical to date and why I continue to think it is well deserved. There are serious issues with design and implementation that go beyond just reconsidering the structure of how a player experiences the game and the various “progression walls” that they might want to employ to either constrain players advancement or encourage the expenditure of money to enhance their game experience. There is too much of a spaghetti-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks feel here. I do sincerely hope that they have a more concrete behind-the-scenes plan but it’s really hard to understand some of the thinking that goes into these decisions.
I’m currently doing a similar thing, just bringing my cast of supporting players through. You’ve articulated everything perfectly here.
I’d like to just add one thing to the list…
While driving myself mad on one hero, trying to get a level 30 class spell, I ended up finding and using a great dungeon spell, to “make do.” It worked so well, that I gave up farming and went back to just playing through. I finally looted both my level 30 and 40 class spells from a single random chest, at level 39. Sounds fine, except that a good 90% of excitement over these spells was lost because I no longer need them.