Feedback Request: Tempest League

I find Tempest to be mostly counter-intuitive to this style of game. Being forced to stand still for 5 seconds to receive an 8 second buff is pointless. At this stage i ignore all tempests because they slow progression too much and offer little benefit.
The problem is, i can't see a way of addressing the shortcomings of this mechanic without creating new problems. If you make it so buff/de-buff tempests trigger as soon as you touch them, it makes mob management impossible as they too can instantly receive the buff. Damage effect tempests: i dont think the player receives credit for mobs killed by tempests. So now you're actively trying to get mob packs to avoid them (i may be wrong on this one). If you increase the buff/debuff duration of tempests then mobs, particularly rare/uniques could be affected too long.
There's also the issue of spawn rate indoors compared to open outdoor zones. In the mines you can have tempest after tempest rapid-fire spawning on top of you and a mobs. I had an issue where i had regen tempests stacking up under a rare in the mines that dragged the fight out forever. In areas like Daresso's dream, if damage buff tempests spawn in those fighting pits, insta-rip. Then you move to an outdoor zone like prisoner's gate or The Old Fields and you can largely ignore them.

I can't speak for later difficulties because im ripping in A4 at the moment but I can say i was somewhat disappointed when i saw that softcucks were getting warbands.
Actually you know what would make tempests a little bit better? If there was some sort of item drop/rarity tempests in normal. The items drops at the moment are horrible (maybe my rng) but after 3 toons thus far, im stilling killing Dominus in blue gear with almost no resists because i just cant find anything. Not even a single unique. Were drops nerfd or something?

My feedback after normal difficulty:

Im sorry to say this but tempest league is nothing special. Im not saying its terrible because beyond was terrible(I quit the game because of it) with mechanic punishing players who like to fast clear monsters. Tempest is... whatever. Its like patch of burning/chilling grounds but with new effects.

Its absolutely not scary, challenging or interesting. Invasion was fun after little nerf. Lot of my friends miss it despite of being very challenging. You really need to be more creative in next leagues. It must be fun to play and balanced(not easy on normal/cruel difficulty but not to hard too. Merciless should be hard).

ALthough Im really happy that tempest isnt broken like beyond :) You could screw the game again but you didnt.


Cheers.

Boring league and extremely annoying. For example, I was fighting Kaom with tempest HP/Mana regen on cruel and couldn't kill him, he would just step on the pink circle, restore his HP back to 100%. The arena is so small there was no way to kite him away from those tempests, I would get him below 30% hp and out of nowhere tempest appears right nearby him and it's back to 100%. Such a bad design. All you can do in that case, just to farm another zone for an hour and wait until that tempest is gone, so it slows down to progress. Also, it feels absolutely unrewarding, there are no drop bonuses, no quantity bonuses, no extra mobs, it's just there to annoy a player and nothing else. I really hope(actually pretty sure) this isn't going to the core game as it has nothing special to give to the game. Besides that, the Arctic Tempest just instantly kills players with summons such as SRS. I was on full hp and instantly went to Standard after that one vaal ice nova. Utter failure league, not looking forward to play it and hoping it will end in 3 months, not 4.

For the record, I am now in Act 1 Merciless.

Are the Tempests impactful?

Yes, in a negative way. As already stated, the pools are either dodged or the zones ignored. It is difficult to maneuver enemies into them in time, and if I do find myself passing through one that may buff me, I am not going to stop and wait 2 or 3 seconds. The payoff isn't worth the time waiting. I completely skip some altogether. I won't go into detail as it's already been touched on in this thread.

Are they scary?

I would have said no, until watching the video of the Arctic one-shot. Ridiculous mechanic. Overall though, no real threat while being nothing more than an annoyance.

Do the ones that affect items feel rewarding?

No. I have better luck with wisdom scrolls + rares, and trading. Perhaps it is different for self found players.

Are they better at higher or lower levels?

Haven't noticed much of a change. However, I do not pay much attention to them and avoid when possible (either the zone, or the tempest pools themselves).

Do people share information about what Tempests are running right now?

The tempest pools are the annoying mosquito that you can't see, buzzing around your head at night while you are trying to sleep. The boss fights are a jet engine crashing through your roof and killing you while you sleep. I think you can guess what people are talking about and more concerned about, at the moment.

However, even if the boss fights weren't a hot topic, I still believe the tempest zones would go largely ignored. In all honesty, they are very boring.

Did you play Tempest because you thought it was more interesting than Warbands?

At this point, Warbands is looking very tempting. Unfortunately, I only play hardcore.

Did you play Warbands when you normally would have played Tempest?

NA

"

Chris wrote:

I worked closely on the Tempest League (with our designer Dan) and have been looking for feedback!

Are the Tempests impactful?
Are they scary?
Do the ones that affect items feel rewarding?
Are they better at higher or lower levels?
Do people share information about what Tempests are running right now?
Did you play Tempest because you thought it was more interesting than Warbands?
Did you play Warbands when you normally would have played Tempest?

Maybe it's just that I am still only on normal, but I find the league really underwhelming and I would love to see the tempests to be really REALLY more impactfull and scarier. Again still on normal so I don't know what it look like on Cruel and merciless (Ripped my scion at Malachai during an EPIC last boss fight)

So I think the tempest should not be Negative to monsters, and sometime positive to players. It should be really scary and ALWAY BAD for the players, and never hurting the monsters, I dont like seeing the tempest spawning a totem or a golem that will attack the monsters. It should feel like you would be targeted by mother nature and runing for your life while she try to kill you. What I would like to have in mind playing this league is: Should I go to the next area to progress or wait an hour and keep farming other zones until the storm end? It should be really more risky than what it is at the moment


P.S. act 4 is AMAZING the whole thing is just perfect. I love the challenge it add to the game, the variety of new monsters, the new zones etc... That's a ton of new things to learn a master. It's good for new players I guess, but it's also good for olds players like me, the game feel new and fresh it feel like the very first time I've been in the Lunaris temple getting scared by Kole.

It's boring and bad design. The timing mechanic means you have to sit and wait to get the buff, it seems like they will never activate on you if you just want to run without stopping. EVERYONE hates waiting and therefore everyone just ignores the tempest 95% of the time. The only impact tempest has is in boss rooms where it becomes just stupid because of the small spaces. This league might as well not even have this tempest theme, it's one of the worst hardcore league designs you guys have put out recently.

Are the Tempests impactful?

Yes


Are they scary?

Yes

Do the ones that affect items feel rewarding?

Not really , my whole gripe is that all the tempests dont feel rewarding just tediously annoying , they should all give an quantity or rarity buff if on map


Are they better at higher or lower levels?

Better? They seemed sub-par from level 1 to level 78 , they just get increasingly more dangerous but i guess its a good rip mechanic if thats what you guys were going for

Do people share information about what Tempests are running right now?

I havent seen many people talk this league at all so far , most are in small tight knit groups , pretty poor idea for a solo player like me , maybe you can list them on the website and update them when the timer switches :)

Did you play Tempest because you thought it was more interesting than Warbands?

No , i mostly play the hardcore leagues

Did you play Warbands when you normally would have played Tempest?

No , havent been on warbands yet , maybe next month

The idea behind Tempests is pretty interesting. I think it's a good idea for a minor gameplay addition.
There aren't nearly enough kinds of tempests though, or if there are more, then I'm not seeing them for some reason.
Also, it's really really rare that I ever see any monsters affected by the positive tempests, making them stronger, and when they do, it really doesn't matter unless they're rare/unique mobs.

I think it's quite a boring league for Hardcore, though. It really doesn't change much for me, if anything at all. Compared to what the Standard league is, it's pretty dwarfed in comparison I think. I understand that Standard gets more players, so it makes sense.

They're cool, but needs more variety.

Are the Tempests impactful?
Very slightly.

Are they scary?
Not at all.

Do the ones that affect items feel rewarding?
The only one I've seen so far that affects items is the IIQ one, and that was actually quite enjoyable, being able to farm an area for IIQ for a while. That felt rewarding.

Are they better at higher or lower levels?
I'm taking my time and at 33 right now, so I can't really say. I wouldn't consider 33 high, but differentiating between how they are now and how they were around 1-10, they definitely made more of an impact for me at 1-10. At 33 now, the crit strike one is fun, but I'm already doing tons of crit strikes anyways with ice spear and PCoC and all the passives i've taken. I've also taken EE, so I tend to just ignore the added elemental damage ones too, since they throw off my damage rhythm. Once again, for me, at 1-10 they were more impactful since they just generally added to my power, and also the power of enemies when it actually mattered, before I had much resistance and stuff.

Do people share information about what Tempests are running right now?
Not that I've seen. No one really bothers to because there's only a few tempests that are in-game currently.
I tried telling people about the IIQ one I saw while it was up, but no one really seemed to care.

Did you play Tempest because you thought it was more interesting than Warbands?
No, I played it because I felt like playing Hardcore rather than Standard.

Did you play Warbands when you normally would have played Tempest?
I actually have not played it yet. It seems a lot more interesting though.

It feel like It's a Hardcore League with the occasional mod that you "some-what" have to pay attention to here and there.

Compare this to Bloodlines and Beyond for a example(wont use leagues before that cause most people haven't played back in that day and age) - Bloodlines was annoying, however that was cause there was so much shit you had to pay attention to. Bearers, Obelisks, CB, Necro, Plink, all of them were stuff that was scary and you had to pay attention to. On beyond(pre-nerf) everything was scary, you'd run for your life if you saw the Nadoshot archers. After the nerf the hype died down, but it was still fun with the bosses. So far in maps the only thing that's scary is poison on hit, that shit trucks.

While levelling I felt like nothing really changed, nothing piqued my interest, again It feels like an Non-mod hardcore league.

I honestly felt like Wardbands should of been the HC league, with some crazy Warband bosses.

When a tempest spawns nearby while I'm fighting a pack I never feel the urge to run into it because I need to wait a few seconds for it to affect me, and I know it runs out by the time I get to the next pack. So why bother.

Suggestions (possibly the worst)

-Add movement speed to all Tempests to give a some-what incentive to actually run into them. Even though this may affect map-clearing/levelling too much.
-Have positive Tempests lay there, waiting for a person to run in to them, when picked up it affects you instantly. While negative Tempests can spawn anywhere and go off at any time.
-Don't spawn them in boss rooms.
-Have Tempests that spawn Exiles / Beyond packs / Torment Ghosts
-Increase the duration of Tempests when picked up.
-Implement more Tempests in a map/zone, make them rain all over the place, spawning at a higher speed.


There's more stuff I can think off but so far those are things that may some-what revive the fun in this league.

"

Mastodonic wrote:

I find Tempest to be mostly counter-intuitive to this style of game. Being forced to stand still for 5 seconds to receive an 8 second buff is pointless. At this stage i ignore all tempests because they slow progression too much and offer little benefit.
The problem is, i can't see a way of addressing the shortcomings of this mechanic without creating new problems. If you make it so buff/de-buff tempests trigger as soon as you touch them, it makes mob management impossible as they too can instantly receive the buff. Damage effect tempests: i dont think the player receives credit for mobs killed by tempests. So now you're actively trying to get mob packs to avoid them (i may be wrong on this one). If you increase the buff/debuff duration of tempests then mobs, particularly rare/uniques could be affected too long.
There's also the issue of spawn rate indoors compared to open outdoor zones. In the mines you can have tempest after tempest rapid-fire spawning on top of you and a mobs. I had an issue where i had regen tempests stacking up under a rare in the mines that dragged the fight out forever. In areas like Daresso's dream, if damage buff tempests spawn in those fighting pits, insta-rip. Then you move to an outdoor zone like prisoner's gate or The Old Fields and you can largely ignore them.

I can't speak for later difficulties because im ripping in A4 at the moment but I can say i was somewhat disappointed when i saw that softcucks were getting warbands.
Actually you know what would make tempests a little bit better? If there was some sort of item drop/rarity tempests in normal. The items drops at the moment are horrible (maybe my rng) but after 3 toons thus far, im stilling killing Dominus in blue gear with almost no resists because i just cant find anything. Not even a single unique. Were drops nerfd or something?

while Im not playing tempest, I've been watching a lot of streams and I think the problem is best described in this post. it really is counterintuitive and no real incentive to do anything with tempests. ghost gave you phat loot, so did strongboxes so there was an incentive to stop the clear and spend a few seconds on them. shrines are touch-and-go for a decent shrine duration.
tempests really do seem counterintuitive in their implementation.

again, I have zero time logged in tempest, so dont take my opinion too seriously, as its mostly second hand observation.