Blight is overly complex, towers require too much micromanagement, Pokemon "net" league 2.0

Pretty much in the subject line.

The charm wore off on blight. Before it goes core, it needs a re-work so it isn't so micro-intensive.

The tower management has started to feel like a much more complex version of the "net" league that so many players hated; trying to nail the intended tower "upgrade" button with namelock melee when the screen is busy, and not miss and get a mob instead, is not fun. In broader terms, tower management disadvantages namelock melee, self-casting, and any other build that relies on player activity to be effective.

Regarding tower management and why it feels overly complex, think back to the "net" league and how there were ten different kinds of nets, rather than just one; that was complexity for the sake of complexity. Blight is more of the same. There are several different upgrades for several different kinds of towers. All that complexity adds in a pointless and annoying way to the micromanagement needed for towers.

The level of complexity of the oils is another barrier to having fun with blight content. But, that at least could be fixable with a better developed UI, unlike the towers, which need a major overhaul to become anything other than annoying.

I like the diversity of towers, but what would you suggest to address this issue?

I think a great deal of your problem would be solved if the monsters came in actual waves, like 10 seconds or so of nothing before more come through portals to give you a little time to bounce around and tag towers for building or upgrading.

Sure it would add a little more time to blight encounters, but it would allow players who aren't running meta and AoE nuke builds to be able to manage the towers.

The simplest change would be to have less upgrades per tower. One or two upgrades, max, would make the encounters noticeably less micro-intensive. Give us the different "forms" for particular towers up front (ie: meteor vs fireballs, etc) as the first choice, then one, perhaps two possible upgrades from there. Also, don't give players "lousy damage / insignificant status effects" as the default, basically requiring more clicks.

Another simple change would be to have less towers and to let them attack more often, at greater range. Again, less mid-stream upgrades.

Another simple change would be to front-load the bonuses for upgrading towers in some way. So, instead of needing to upgrade towers with mobs all over the place, we'd get to make the upgrades earlier in the blight encounters. That would make the micro-intensive phase less troublesome than when mobs are everywhere and mis-clicks are all too easy to make.

The rationale for this last change could be that Sister Cassia can help with turning bodies into usable resources. But, later in the encounter when the screen is busy, well, she's also busy (just like the player) and it takes her longer to generate resources from bodies.

Either:

(1) Play OP flavour of the league, which is necro. Your minions kills stuff, you build towers.

or.

(2) Play OP build for Blight/exploitative game mechanic build (posted on subreddit and YT (eg mbXtreme posted one just today) where you do not need to build towers.


I agree, that with an "average" build, you have to

(1) make your damage

(2) keep yourself alive

(3) build towers and keep an eye on the mini map

= Lots to do at the same time. GGG DID use the word "hectic" in their post writing about Blight, so they are aware of the demands put to players.

How players solve it ... see above: play Necro or OP build for Blight/exploitative game mechanic build.

I don't think it is "net 2.0" league. There are few issues with towers and some other things atm, but league mechanics feels totally different from what bestiary was in 3.2 league. Actually, blighted maps is the best thing GGG invented so far.

Its not complex at all. Its just have bad design. Tower icons are not even working 30% of the clicks on them, you can easy see it on streamers.. they quite frequent try to click on icon of tower and it just not responding at all. So player try to click again and again until it think its time to work. lol really

Also it is nightmare for attacking builds.
You need t move and attack, not to click every 3 sec on somth is not your attack target.

Also it is not having waves, not having time to set new set of towers and think about strategy. Let them skippable ofc. With key, not with click again!

Design.
Always good design wins.

"

EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

trying to nail the intended tower "upgrade" button with namelock melee

There's your problem right there. And they gave us a hint, hell, they gave us more than a hint.

How is it considered hard to click on a symbol on scree. While I agree that the pathing of monsters and available towers on the road is a bit buggy and sometimes undoable, the overall mechanic is fine.

Beastiary wasn´t hard either, I never had any issues there, except for the targeting. We had much worse leagues likes Synthesis or Legion.

"

EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

Spoiler

Pretty much in the subject line.

The charm wore off on blight. Before it goes core, it needs a re-work so it isn't so micro-intensive.

The tower management has started to feel like a much more complex version of the "net" league that so many players hated; trying to nail the intended tower "upgrade" button with namelock melee when the screen is busy, and not miss and get a mob instead, is not fun. In broader terms, tower management disadvantages namelock melee, self-casting, and any other build that relies on player activity to be effective.

Regarding tower management and why it feels overly complex, think back to the "net" league and how there were ten different kinds of nets, rather than just one; that was complexity for the sake of complexity. Blight is more of the same. There are several different upgrades for several different kinds of towers. All that complexity adds in a pointless and annoying way to the micromanagement needed for towers.

The level of complexity of the oils is another barrier to having fun with blight content. But, that at least could be fixable with a better developed UI, unlike the towers, which need a major overhaul to become anything other than annoying.

TL;DR
Anything other than Breach = "overly complex"

"

DarkJen wrote:

Its not complex at all. Its just have bad design. Tower icons are not even working 30% of the clicks on them, you can easy see it on streamers.. they quite frequent try to click on icon of tower and it just not responding at all. So player try to click again and again until it think its time to work. lol really

This aspect of the design is frustrating as fuck, agreed. Why do I have to click multiple times for an upgrade to "take?"

"

Design.
Always good design wins.

Just so.

If the dynamic were genuinely tactical, it would be far more engaging.

I happen to think it's awesome that GGG is branching out and trying to integrate new genre and gameplay types into their game. But at the same time I have to wonder how many of the designers of this league actually spent a significant amount of time playing TD games and understanding where their appeal lies.

Let alone how to integrate that appeal into an ARPG.

I mean, come on, guys. I'm not saying it's easy to do so; it obviously isn't. But if you're not up to the challenge, then don't just make a token effort and call it a day. Let people who like TD games test it and give you advice on how to make it a compelling gameplay loop.

And next time do this BEFORE asking all your fans to beta-test it for you without pay or compensation. Cause that is, and always will be, a dick move.