Long cooldowns alternative: Prerequisites

General Discussion
1

Some people here want their Cooldowns, which is a tool to lower spamming ‘The big guns’ (Ult or just strong skills?).
Some may claim it breaks immersion and just not natural for the setting or RPG games overall (Or just ‘lazy balancing tool’)

While cooldown may fit in with some skills (Hopefully a short cooldown), I would like to introduce another, a more organic, idea for balancing: Prerequisites

For example:
Sorceress: Do enough Lightning damage to unlock Conduit: ( You become lightning incarnate ).

Those prerequisites can be improved/hardened with skill level:
The higher your lightning damage output is, the fewer hits (And time) it’ll take to recharge - but the stronger Conduit is, the more time you’d need to recharge the skill.

I would love to hear your opinion about this mechanic.

I’ve already presented it in 2 other places and tried to take reviews into account before posting it here.

Regards,
nachuo

P.S.
Please keep the tone mature and civil :heart:

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2

That’s a big ask.
I don’t mind cool downs, but long ones, can be a problem.
D3 introduced CDR to help with that, at the cost of another stat.
Not elegant, but functional.
They could just make powerful spells use more mana, or come
at a cost, like a slow down for a player/attack speed.
Whatever they decide on, I prefer shorter cool downs, and I don’t want
potion chugging from D2 either.
Short meaningful cool downs, or make higher level spells be cast at a big cost.

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3

Sounds a lot like the Overwatch ultimate system- the more damage you deal/heal the faster your ultimate becomes available.

I do prefer that system for specific strong ultimate skills but not regular “good” skills that you may want to use a lot- like teleport. I agree with MrLlama when he says you should have to manage your resources and spam most skills that you want but I think it needs to be done really well and honestly I’m not sure if it would fit an ARPG if done well. Realistically, resources would need to function more like Classic WoW (or other older MMOs) than Diablo 2 for you to feel like mana conservation is important. Diablo 2 had a mana system that basically became a non-issue with things like mana leech, mana potions, meditation aura, etc. Classic WoW, every fight you have to consider which spells to use to make sure you don’t go OOM by the end of the fight. If you’re using the Diablo 2 system, they would need to make mana potions very hard to get/use and limit things like resource generation (from mana leech, etc).

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I was thinking about bring back stamina as a resource. Some skills would use stamina too and if don’t have enough, can’t cast them.

Also bring back the idea of skill charges. While one has charges on the skill, can cast them at lower cost, but the cost goes up once the charges are over. This would prevent spam some skills.

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I like the idea.
I dont think it should be instead of cooldowns, but just yet another skill mechanism you can add to some skills.

Also, I’d think I would make a somewhat different version of this. Since having a skill you can only use after doing X, depending what X is of course, could be quite limiting, much more so than mana cost and cooldowns.
Like in the example given, you are making a skill that ONLY works for a build that already has other lightning dmg sources.

Such as (just an example):

Lightning Bolt:
20 mana, 200 dmg, hits one target.
Whenever you deal 5000 lightning dmg from any source your next three Lightning Bolts are enhanced into Lightning Chain:
400 dmg, chaining between up to 10 targets.

That way you still got a base skill you can use whenever, while having that prerequisite mechanism of getting a stronger skill if you do X.
And the skill can trigger its own enhancement, but will of course be much more effective if you have other sources of ligtning dmg in your build.

Actually some cooldown skills could work the same way. Base effect, but every X second, it is a stronger version. Doesnt have to be more dmg (in regards to game balance, it might be better if it is typically not a dmg increase), but could be a CC effect, debuff etc.

D3 kinda already have this mechanism, it is just only tied to stuff like Auras or pets.

Alternatively, all the above could be part of the runeword system instead, since we are talking about triggers and effects here, which is exactly what that system is supposed to be.
In some sense runes would be a better fit, since it would allow way more customization than a single skill can do.
Like you could choose on your own if it was lightning, fire, frost or whatever that should trigger the enhancement.

2 Likes
6

I dislike cooldowns on damage skills, like if they added a cooldown to meteor, that would be a bad idea IMO, let me spam it, run out of mana and handle the issue I created for myself.

I’m okayish with cooldowns on stuff like movement skills and hard CC, just so that they aren’t abused (I’m one that thinks that teleport is the “worst” skill in D2, worst as in the most busted and necessary), but short ones.

What I would prefer would be some sort of negative effects on skills:

  • Using a AOE fear caused the affected enemies to become immune to the effect for a while after recovering, so no cooldown needed.
  • Teleport having an effect that punished spam, a short (4s) stacking debuff that reduced your teleport range by half, so you would have to really plan if you wanted to dive into a pile of mobs with teleport.
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7

Just like Diablo Immortal where your character can use ultimate skill the moment they filled their meter by damaging enemies.

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8

They could create an “overload” state. It could work like this: once the player uses the a skill x amount of times (could be marked with charges), the skill start to cost more resources if want to keep using it without stop. This could be increase by a fixed amount or make it a progresive thing that the more you use it the more it cost.

The skill would recover from the overload state when the player stop to use it: could recover charges over time, or by using other skills.

I like that for the big skills, the ones that requiere more CD.

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9

Reading this thread again I kinda like the idea of build-ups for the ultimates, having to deal damage to charge a barbarian WotB or the druid Cataclysm. They could also make so that one could use said skills before a full charge with an reduced effect/duration.

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10

In general, I’ve never been a fan of cooldowns over 10s. I don’t think they’re without place like some vehemently assert, but I do think play where you just spam your strongest attack while relying on leech/regen/whatever is also problematic.

So, as alternatives you can see things like a generator/spender system. Probably my biggest issue with D3’s implementation here was that generators didn’t do enough in all regards. Some spenders also didn’t feel satisfying due to their cost or output. In a sense, this functions as a shorter term, yet active cooldown since you could figure 2-4 attacks before you could use your big guns, but this also put an undue need on attack speed since slower weapons were a sharp detriment most of the time.

Another option is combos. Sure, you might be able to spam your “best” ability, but without taking steps to prime that attack, you could be depriving yourself of serious output. The main concern here would be forcing a rotation-like feel, but combos could almost function like legendary powers in their own way doing all sorts of skill mods depending on your set up. A basic two-step could be something like casting a water spell on a mob before using lighting to do additional lightning damage. Another could involve alternating fire and ice, lowering the enemy’s defense for a short time. You can have skills that do knock-ups where later abilities in the combo do more damage to airborne enemies, knock them away, and so on.

Charges are another option, with gains coming over time, kills, crits, or whatever. An alternative is also a negative consequence for using a skill too much in succession. Teleport would be an easy example here. First time you go exactly where you click, but if you use it again with 5s or whatever, you wind up off the mark maybe 1/4th the screen in some direction. Repeat again and the gap is greater and greater until you hit a point where you really shouldn’t be teleporting at all until the “sickness” wears off. Unpopular opinion, but I also believe mobile channels should be subject to a mechanic like this where you may be able to invest to mitigate, but never eliminate it.

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This Company's Obsession with Cooldowns?
11

Lets hope this stays as cooldown discussion instead of cooldown vs no cooldown.

Some points:
The soft cooldowns where you punish the player for overusing a skill is a good idea. I’ve used this myself in a game design and it has some strong pros.

  • easy to implement
  • very resistant to abuse
  • self balancing
  • attracts variable gameplay (lots of different skills per player character)

The major con it has is its build limiting nature. CDR becomes very limited tool and can no longer really adjust the skills potential (you are left with damage). The “growth” of the skill (we like to cast more stuff as we progress) has to be done by giving the player more charges or less penalties. This in turn works against the very principles the system was implemented in the first place. Still it’s a simple and robust system, far better than many out there already .

I’m not too fond of the damage treshold charges. The very least make them player controlled, and not automatically activated when a threshold is met. Automatic activations usually end up being just randomly generated damage boosts. Also, I personally dislike momentum based bonuses (+something on kill), as this usually dictates the player in to a playstyle where you want to grind weak mobs that can be easily dispacthed. This in turn just kills the game for me because it kills the challenge.

I think the most interesting way to implement these threshold kind of skills, are to also tie the bonus to opposite actions. Attacks give you defensive skills and vice versa. (Yes, it makes rotation I know). This gives atleast some variance to builds and not make the players just always unload their number one arsenal pressing damage boost+damage amp + damage skill.

Wolcen, though I havent played it, uses two resources and consuming the other increases the other. This, if nothing else, atleast makes the players spam two skills instead of one. :wink: There might be alot to experiment with this kind of system.

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