Yap yap feedback
My yap feedback for Arkheron. Ok, so a little introduction to the very few unlucky people who don’t know me: I am Mee(bot)/friendly(human). I have around 600 hours on the game now. I have played for around half a year now. This is a rough draft, so I may add more later if I get around to completing the rest of my comments and finishing out some of the current ones. This is not necessarily a list of complaints or wants. More so a list of general observations and thoughts on the game
List of topics
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Mechanical and hard skill expression
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Item value in relation to the risk of picking and sticking with it
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Anchor ability themes
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Map design and addons
5. Eternal completeness
1. Mechanical and hard skill expression
I want to start this section off by first acknowledging the fact that mechanical skill doesn’t have to be a major focus of the game; it doesn’t have to be a hardcore game. It does not have to turn into a sweatfest or be designed with an esports-first mindset. I understand that even if it were designed with any of those things in mind, it would first need a solid base that supports the game, and that base would, more often than not, be casuals. With that disclaimer out of the way, I will state the obvious: the game lacks mechanical and hard skill expression. Now, what do I mean by this? Let’s start with what I mean by the terms mechanical and hard skill. When I say mechanical skill, I mean the specific, accurate, and well-timed act of pressing and clicking buttons. This is separate from hard skill. When I say hard skill, I specifically mean anything that is relatively specific to something that is not easily transferable to other games or situations. Think of the exact timings for parries in different games, or memorizing maps, comps, and sounds in games like Rainbow Six Siege.
There is very little mechanical skill involved in the game. There is also a distinctly separate but related lack of hard skill, the closest being managing your dash pips. There are no hyperspecific timings, or map rotations, or any other specific things that one will only understand and be able to do after pouring hours into the game. A consequence of such an absence is the lack of drive of top-tier players and the overall blandness of a low ceilign comeptitve scene. With this said, there is a significant amount of game sense and team synergy in the game. This is the current primary win factor of every game of Arkheron that is against relatively even players.
A game favoring one type of skill over another isn’t, in and of itself, bad; in fact, it is common across all games. Every game is going to have things that they reward more than others; that’s natural and good for the makers and players. What is not natural or good for everyone is a severe lack of major areas of skill. The pro to making a game have a lower floor is that more people will obviously be able to pick it up and play it, and of course the flip side is the issue: a game where everyone has pretty much mastered and done everything they could want to do in the game in, let’s be generous and say, 6 months to a year.
I have seen this play out multiple times when I have invited multiple different friends to play the game, and have also played with other people’s friends who joined. The vast majority who were good players in other games quickly got very good and then hit a massive plateau that bored them. Sure, there are some minor things to improve on that are impactful to a degree, but the difference between them now and them at complete mastery of the game would be 50-200 hours and 2k-plus hours, all for a very minor benefit. My point in this is that a good player will be a top player in way too short a time, and a top player will stay a top player for way too long. The difference in skill level between a good and top player should be massive, but the limited floor of the game makes this canyon a negligible gap.
Ok, I have yapped about theory for too long so that I will get to the meat of the issue a bit more. The lack of mechanical skill expression can most clearly be seen in the relatively slow projectile speeds, outplay potential in even fights, the lack of any reward for good timing (think parry, counter, etc.), and this can all be most clearly seen in a 1vX scenario. All this theory gets put into practice when you try to put one of the best players in the game against 2 good players. Barring massive situational and build issues, the 2 semi good players should beat a world-class player every time. Everyone who has played the game for a decent amount of time knows this to be true. Same build and scenario, the world-class player should have no chance with the game’s current design. This is not at all healthy for a game.
As someone who plays games exclusively for the competitive PvP side, my opinions are fairly biased and .01% based. However, I know it is a proven constant that the complaints and metas of the higher-tier players often trickle down to the rest of the population, and this will only be incredibly amplified by the low-floor, low-ceiling nature of the game. I firmly believe, as I did so early into my playtime in Arkheron, the game’s population will learn the game too quickly and relatively master it too quickly, and the result of this will be a massive plummet in interest in playing and a subsequent lack of a player base.
I do not know the exact solution for this, and I assume it would need many “fixes” to address it. I think faster, smaller projectiles and a lower TTK would go a long way in addressing this, but I am under no illusions that this would be the magic fix. I could go on about this for a while, but it wouldn’t be as productive as other areas of interest.
2. Item value in relation to risk of picking and sticking with it
This will be a significant shift from my previous topic, so sorry about that.
I want to address something that I am sure everyone is already aware of. The items in the game are obviously put into 2 main categories: echo and eternal. Echo can be bought readily at shops, has higher drop rates, and is unlimited at those shops. At the same time, eternals are obviously limited in shops, can be leveled, have set bonuses, and lead to full eternals with ultimates that, if taken, limit you to that build.
With that introduction said, I want to express an idea you all are already aware of: the risk of picking an item or build, and its value in the short-to-long term. The reason I mention this, while knowing you are already aware of it, is that this concept has fallen by the wayside a little bit in Ascension and is completely obsolete in spires. I will speak more in depth on spires later so that I won’t spend too much time on it here; however, I will say that in spires, due to the curated nature of being able to pick hyper specific shatter builds without any “incubation period” and low-level items, this risk-to-reward balance is heavily disrupted in ways that I want to make sure are being focused on.
For example, a build that is strong in early game- fall-off in mid; bad in late game- would be something like dagger reset. At the same time, the opposite would be something like old Irena that revolved around getting level 3 items to be good. With nuances and exceptions in mind, some/multiple level 3 full eternal(s) should always be the strongest option in the game. To be a full eternal, you have to perma-lock yourself into that build, as well as having the lowest odds of giving that specific item not only 4 times, but 12 times in total. This is a significant commitment and risk that requires you to dominate the map and other teams. As such, there should always be multiple full eternals that are the strongest build option in the game. This should be followed closely by shatter builds that spike at level 3. It requires commitment and risk but is less slow than full eternals that have late-game power spikes.
There are 2 main issues I would like to focus on that would be created by a world where this is not true. First, if all items are equal from level 3 eternal to 50 shard echo, why would I try and play the game? If I am in a competitive, equally skilled lobby where every fight has a high% chance to lose: what in the world would motivate me to fight? This hypothetical world would be very boring for me and would take a lot of the skill out of the game, as most fights would turn into onyl at forced time slike beacon fights. Beacon fights, while very fun, should be the lowest chance to win and show individual skill expression, as they have the most uncontrollable variables. 2nd is the simple risk to build variety. Why would I risk building a hyperspecific build if I can hop off the bus and buy a comparable build in 15 seconds?
This concept should also take into account how much synergy there is for the build before its peak, how long it takes to reach its peak, how long it takes to last, and how comparable it is to other good builds of each stage.
For example, when looking at something like Rynshi Hollow. This shatter build has low initial synergy in some combo variations, like, let’s say you get the crown first, then Rynshi amu, and then hollow snek. This build in its incomplete form lacks any good melee or mobility. Normally, this is fixed with Rynshi Cleaver. Cleaver gives survivability in both its passive and its mobility on RMB. When we look at a specific build like this, we can clearly see a very incomplete build that has hyper-specific requirements to work, and has no item other than the Cleaver that can complete this build. For these reasons, you should expect to see this build, in an ideal world, perform very well once it is complete, but be very risky to work towards in an equally skilled lobby. This concept does not have to be a strict hard rule that must be abided by at all times and perfected endlessly, but it is something that should be heavily scrutinized and reviewed.
To this end, I’d like to note a growing concern of some shatter builds, full eternlas, and echo items being significantly more versatile than their counterparts, and how this creates ripple effects on what you are allowed to see late game.
This looks like me picking Tsubo amulet but never dog while on the first floor or 2 because the crown is just worse in a shatter build than grabbing another one like resilience crown, reset, hollow crown, dahla, etc. I say this while not counting Tsushi as a thing because that’s a whole different issue. Similarly, I would pick Dahla crown but not the amulet in a real competitive game because the necklace is much, much harder to get value out of in the fast-paced and high pressure of the first few floors. Because I am scared to pick the bad items of an Eternal, the likelihood of me picking any of that build or committing to it is significantly lowered. The consequences of this will inevitably lead to a significant reduction in seeing this build in a future floor, much less at a level 3 state.
This problem can be seen when looking at Eternals that currently exist that don’t have a current bad item on any floor. I am talking about your Leos, your current Irenas, your current Ravahs. Their whole kit is very good for a lot of builds and even standalone. I can justify grabbing any 2 random pieces of Leo but would hesitate on something like Tsubo, where Bolas and crown may feel weak in the first beacons. Again, I say this while living in fantasy land where Tsushi passives don’t stack. Because they obviously shouldn’t.
Keep in mind when I write this, I am thinking of current and future high-skill equal lobbies. A team that is purely trying to win an otherwise equal game would likely never risk grabbing 2 items that have such significant weaknesses early game and don’t have good synergy with other shatter builds. This leads to no one ever grabbing them, then no one dropping them on death, and finally no one risking swapping from their full build to test the waters later on at floor 3.
I am not saying that the game should be, or is, in a state where every game is the same Eternals, or the same echo/shatter builds. However, it does tend to end this way when we had strong competitive lobbies in the past. You saw Leo, Dahla, and Tsushi play every game with slide amulet and res crown, seeing playtime up until the last floor. Then, as soon as Irenna no longer had its strength tied to level 3 items, it saw massive playtime.
3. Anchor ability themes
I heavily dislike the theme of the anchors revolving solely around heals. A very promising avenue for the game would be to add varying anchor abilities that do other things. I liked seeing the idea of a pulse anchor, but that was clearly a bit half-baked. Things like a pierce, a shot, teleport, swap places, and anything else under the sun would be very fun and interesting to try. So much can change in the game from tweaks on anchors, and it’s a shame that they have been so, for lack of a better phrase, uncreative.
4. Map design and addons
Another tragedy to me is the complete lack of change in the actual style of the Ascension map. If I were asked a few months ago, “what will the devs add and test in the experimental test?” I would have surely said changes to the main game mode. I find it quite sad that we haven’t gotten to test any content in this regard. There is so much potential for unique quests, hot spots to fight over, hazards, etc. I know we aren’t seeing the full breadth of what is being worked on or what is in the plans, but I do hope this is an area that is being seriously worked on. The game is fun for me, don’t get me wrong, but even a game with as many item variations as there are gets bland after a very basic gameplay loop of loot-beacon-loot-beacon.
This can be something as simple as: complete a quest for a specific buff, but the map gets notified if you take it. Kill x mobs on the map to unlock something. Create new mobs and hot spots with items. Some mini macro on the map to collect, like wisps or something. Things to increase both the variety of things I, as a player, have to accomplish, and something to have me perfect and feel good about becoming better at.
5. Eternal completeness
On to a more positive note. Most of the Eternals feel really good. They have really strong, complete identities both in relation to each other and standalone. I think my sole dislike is that I don’t think Tsubo’s build makes much sense. I think his kit seems very mismatched with each other, and his passive doesn’t even remotely fit his items.
