Agree with this wholeheartedly, something that is available as a first tier talent should never, ever be the third trait. I was looking forward to this class, as I ran Stryx early game and Bard class with great results, thought perhaps it would bring something that would breathe new life into Taloca… this on the other hand, will insure that I continue using Bard or Titan when I get the whim to use my Stryx.
Thought I’d revive this topic since there’s been a bit more recent discussion and to avoid derailing and respect the topic of Salty’s Gems of Streaming thread.
Recent relevant context:
16th September 6 30 PM PDT: Stormcaller preview. Weapon, affixes, class, talents, etc etc. <3
Trait #3: Storm Soul
Conjure a random Storm when matching 4 or more Gems.Talent #1 from Storms talent tree (available after 1 fight with that class)
Summon a random storm on 4 or 5 Gem matches.Please, change the 3rd trait. You still have a time to do that. We don’t need that trait - all players will be able to choose it from lvl1 talent if they will need it.
I knew this was going to get brought up. And I’m ready for the heat on stream.
I don’t think people want to give you heat for it; we just want to have slightly more creative go into this 3rd trait, the same creativity that has kept this game afloat for as long as it has.
I knew this was going to get brought up. And I’m ready for the heat on stream.
If you knew people didn’t like it and will complain about it why not change it?
I knew this was going to get brought up. And I’m ready for the heat on stream.
That does sound like pretty awful work conditions. “Yeah, adding the opening to the top and the bottom of the coffee mug is a pretty questionable design decision. Our roadmap gets set in stone half a year ahead though, so there’s no way to possibly get this changed. Not all is lost though, my stream will provide some handy advice on how to dress up as pirate, you’ll be able to use our coffee mug as telescope. Please don’t flame the messenger too much.”
Yikes. I kind of agree. Now I really want to hear what Salty says about it.
I can understand a lot of things about the publisher pushing events but I can’t understand why badly-designed hero classes that are supposed to promote spending in said events are part of that plan. I wish Salty didn’t have to expect heat in her streams.
I think the real reason is the stryx hero must be bad because you hate birds. Does Cyrup know?
In all seriousness, I do hope it gets changed to be storm related in a different way such as a team buff if a storm starts or during a storm.
It could be the champion of (random) storms like Skadi or the Sunspear hero class.
Storm Soul: Create a random storm at the start of every turn.
Unfortunately I wasn’t involved with the design of this class, or any other class! I’d recommend asking Steve and Nim on our next Q & A stream.
Didn’t people try to ask sirrian and nim in the previous Q & A and you answered the question without letting the question reach them?
We’re still talking about Stormcaller right? That was already asked about several times during the last dev Q&A and were given the “No plans to change it at this time.” answer.
The lack of creativity given to hero classes and troops is shocking and the responses to the concerns raised by the community from the devs is disappointing.
Well, there are no changes being made at this time.
I don’t know else you want me to say or do. So yeah, there you go.
I advise everybody not to get the 3rd trait on this class. Remember, once you upgrade it you can’t undo it. Talents can be changed whenever you want but traits can’t.
You’ll need all 3 traits for a hero class to complete kingdom power 13 demands. But as long as you do not have 22 Suncrest troops and any Suncrest pet at level 20, you may postpone buying 3rd trait.
The stream was fun but Salty’s response was disappointing considering she made it sound like she’d prepared a response.
The gist of her response was something like this PARAPHRASE, you can go scrub through the stream if you want the quote:
“Sorry, not my problem. I’m not the person who designs things. I passed along your feedback to this person who I cannot name. They shrugged. That’s the extent of my powers so stop talking to me about it.”
They shrugged.
That’s a very bad sign for me that a person who responsible for game design does not understand players, does not care about players experience and completely ignores reasonable feedback from players.
I care about the game and while I don’t agree with some of the Devs/publishers decisions (e.g. Deeds in flash offers) I can understand their reasons. But I’m completely discouraged how they handled unreleased obvious bad design decision which is not related to any purchases. Even if that class went through QA stage and not in the current pipeline just admit the mistake and promise to fix in the future. But no, despite feedback from players, nothing going to change.
I’m emotionally down after it.
I agree; this sends the message that there’s no point in players providing feedback on upcoming changes.
This is so obviously a mistake/bad design, was pointed out months in advance, and could be fixed so easily - just paste in any third trait that already exists on another troop. Something like +1 mana when matching X gems would be fine. If a situation that’s so black and white doesn’t warrant a change or explanation, more subjective things like delve issues (+50% to hoard stats doesn’t change underlying problems) are a lost cause.
I think it’s important to not single out any one dev here. It seems likely that fixing this just wasn’t specifically any person’s job, and so it kept getting overlooked as everyone worked on assigned deadlines. That happens all the time when teams work on projects, especially ones that release continuously as a service.
Disdain…
I think the name ‘stormcaller’ and storms is the issue here though. It’s going to have some storm scenario.
I’m probably going to trait it, just not using it in pvp or gw, unless it’s got other things going for it, prolly be levelled in challenges or delves.
Basically IP2 is becoming like Bethesda.
They feel their players enjoy the game enough that they won’t care about bugs to a certain extent nor poor design choices.
Basically they just expect you’ll complain, but continue to play and/or pay.
(That’s clear to me now given the stubborn choice not to alter Storm Caller.)
How about “Gain 1 to all stats each turn while a storm is active”?
How about “Gain 1 to all stats each turn while a storm is active”?
Or hell, what every type needs…
Stryx start battle with 50% Mana.
I think it just comes down to laziness. They wanted a storm related trait (which is a nice idea) but instead of creating a new one which would take some time and coding, just did a copy/paste.
I think it just comes down to laziness. They wanted a storm related trait (which is a nice idea) but instead of creating a new one which would take some time and coding, just did a copy/paste.
“Thundersnow”
All Stryx start with 75% Mana
(Stryx will still be worthless, but may make Phoenicia an okay Mythic.)
King of the flock
Deal 5 damage to a ramdom enemy on 4 or 5 matches, boosted by ally and enemies stryx x1.
Or make it true damage hehe
The absolute most bare minimum change they’d need to do that isn’t just a copy/paste job:
Trait #3: Storm Soul
Conjure a random Storm at the start of every turn.
Is it an ideal trait? no
Is it at least something unique? yes
Match THREE or more gems, summon a storm of that color.
With cascades, it’d still be random But at least it’d be funny.
So a question to Salty: what would it take for this to actually change? Is there any feedback, actions, or anything that we as players can do or say?
We know that Salty didn’t design this, or has actual influence over a change, but we know that she knows the people who do.
According to the latest spoiler, the 3rd trait was changed to “Storm Soul: Conjure a Lightstorm when my turn begins”.
Historically speaking, there’s only been two things that get something changed.
The first is a forum thread with 500+ posts that spans six months or longer. These are long and laborious. They’re where at least half the reason I apparently can’t not be an asshole on the forums come from. It doesn’t matter if you’re fighting to get a game crash fixed, a handful of people are going to appear and violently oppose you with nothing but ad hominem and never stop.
The second is new, we’ve only done it once, and I worry it’s got an even heavier price. It involves completely hijacking the hype for a new version. We did this for 4.4.5. When Salty’s preview stream ended, the very first posts started the campaign to address old weapons. Half a dozen spin-off threads were spawned. I still meet people who aren’t aware of features that 4.4.5 brought because nobody had any chance to see the release.
There are a lot of bad feelings that come out of either approach. It’d be so much nicer if the devs and players had a constructive relationship built out of early previews and iterative feedback cycles. Stormcaller didn’t need to be an OP class. We just needed some dev to tell us, “We don’t intend for this to be a powerhouse class so yes, we picked bad talents for it. Keep in mind sometimes things just exist to be a resource sink. We’re working on some new and cool hero talents for some future classes, but for now expect moderately disappointing ones.”
We rarely get thoughtful comments about game design like that. We just get vague gestures at things like “long pipelines” or “the difficulty of supporting multiple platforms”. Those aren’t things I asked for as a player, so I don’t like hearing them. Something I’ve learned about working with people is they deal with “no” better if instead of outright saying it, you present a good alternative instead. That’s what I did above. “Stormcaller’s a dud, but I promise this quarter there’s a class you’re going to be excited about.”
(The trick there is you HAVE to deliver once you make the statement.)
Third trait has been changed
It got changed? Oh, and I was coming here with the best idea but I guess I am late! (though I’m happy it got changed)
Third trait: if a storm is active, give all allies that match the color of the storm +1 to all stats