Home » Member News » Dev Diary: Chris Matz on the Supernatural Review
Powers designer Chris "Ame" Matz checks in with a dev diary about the power review process, as well as some updates on the Supernatural power set.
Dear Dev Diary,
Sometimes I feel like you're the only one who really GETS me, you know?
*Ahem* Hi everyone! We're wrapping up work on the Supernatural framework review and decided this would be a good opportunity to give you some insight into how these changes get made.
It starts with two information gathering steps: The first is a very thorough review of the current implementation of the powers in the game, and the second is reading through and compiling a list of all of the feedback from players in the feedback threads on the forums.
Poking at the Powers
In the first step, I go through every power in the framework at every rank, and check every field to make sure they're correct. Cost, range, AoE, duration, description, tagging, is it applying the correct diminishing returns, etc. - all of these and more get looked at. "Correct" in these reviews is usually defined as "matching the intended design."
Your feedbacks, let me has them
The second step involves a lot of reading the forums and trying to understand the core problems players are experiencing. I read through the entire feedback thread and make a long list of issues that players bring up. I note how issues affect players and which issues are brought up in multiple ways - I take note of the "I agree with Poster X" posts, but good explanations as to why a player feels a power isn't working properly, could be better or just isn't useful definitely get more attention.
I also take a look at our data-mined power numbers, which tell me how many characters (at any given level) have each power. This lets me know a handful of things - if a power is well liked, if it is being taken largely by people playing "in framework" or if it is frequently taken as a cross-framework choice, if it is a power that is picked rarely at low level but becomes popular at high level, etc.
In the best case, players are telling me something the data has already told me, like "this power doesn't do enough damage." In some cases, there are multiple small data discrepancies that cause a larger problem that players will identify as one big issue, and I'll be able to address that big concern by fixing the many small issues. In the most difficult case, player feedback is something very emotional ("Power Y sucks, man!") and may be very accurate, but the actual cause of the problem is difficult to pin down. These kinds of fixes usually involve some initial review of the design and then a proposal to the rest of the Systems Team about how to resolve the issue.
Ch-ch-ch-changes
After those two informational phases, I write out my action plan. This is basically a step-by-step list of instructions for me about how I am going to address all of the issues for the entire framework. This includes listing issues we won't be addressing with the review (in this case, Command Animals and Regeneration) and why we aren't addressing those issues with the review. I then send that document off to various leads and other designers for feedback, making sure any changes I've proposed get a final review.
Shortly after that is sent out, I get started on doing the actual changes. Ideally, the instructions I wrote for myself just work perfectly, and it is a fairly easy process. Occasionally, something doesn't work out right, though. For example, the way Power X interacts with Power Y will cause a problem we didn't consider and I'll need to rethink how we go about solving the problem.
The actual fixing process is usually the most enjoyable, as I get to see all of that work finally get put into action. The powers wind up in a better state and frequently get more powerful and more fun to use.
Closing time
Here are some details on the review, which will be heading to the PTS soon. We read through the looong feedback thread on Supernatural, and have made some of our biggest framework changes yet to get Supernatural to where it should be.
Let me give a couple of clarifications about what this review meant. First, Regeneration was not part of this review; we handled it separately as part of the Passive Defense review, which is currently on Live. Second, Command Animals is not being reviewed here as it will be handled by the much larger pet review. Third, we had several options for where to go with some of our changes, and we went with the solution that we felt best addressed as many concerns as possible.
We made one major change: We split the Supernatural set into two sets: Bestial Supernatural and Infernal Supernatural. This split is similar to the way the Sorcery sets are split up, meaning that some powers are shared, while many are not. In the case of Supernatural, five powers are common to each set: Regeneration, Supernatural Power, Resurgence, Soul Mesmerism and the newly renamed Pestilence (previously Cloud of Flies). As part of these changes, we're also introducing several new powers: a new ranged energy builder for Infernal and five new powers that helped fill out the Bestial set. Those five new powers are:
Shred: A melee hit with a chance to make your target Bleed.
Pounce: A ranged lunge that knocks down your opponent.
Frenzy: A melee cone 3 hit combo that Enrages you on the third strike.
Howl: A PBAoE Enrage buff and Fear debuff.
Massacre: A hard hitting strike that knocks down your foe.
We'll be providing more details when these changes make it to the PTS. With that out of the way, here are a handful of the other changes you can expect:
Condemn: This power had an error its damage calculations that caused it to do far less damage than it should have been doing. This error reduced the base (tap) damage of the power, and the new tap damage is greatly increased. As charge damage includes tap damage, the total possible damage of this power has increased as well.
Venomous Breath: A few changes were made to bring this more in line with other cone attacks. Maximum targets has increased from 3 to 5, cone angle was reduced from 90° to 45°. As a result of the angle change, the cost was reduced and the damage was increased.
Devour Essence: This power got a fair amount of work. It was using the incorrect tables for the heal it did, and fixing this caused a roughly 17% reduction to the amount of healing it does. However, the damage it deals has been increased by 10%, it now lasts a maximum of 8 ticks instead of 6, and the 15 second recharge has been removed. A handful of other minor changes were also made.
Iron Cyclone: Got a handful of minor adjustments, including the recharge being removed and the maximum periods increasing from 4 to 6.
Bite: Charge time reduced from 1.33 to 0.83 seconds.
Pestilence: (previously Cloud of Flies) No longer requires targets to be below 80% health.
Pestilence: Range increased to 10 feet.
Pestilence: Damage dealt by this power now increases as the targets health decreases.
In addition to the changes to power functionality, several powers have received FX updates.
As usual, this list is subject to change. While this is a fairly large list of changes, it is only a portion of the full list, which is already over 50 items long. The full change list will be posted when the Supernatural changes make it to the PTS. As with our previous Framework reviews, we'd like to request that as many interested people as possible get on to the PTS and test these changes and give us feedback when they go up. We'll make sure to post on the PTS forums when they are ready.