Changes I'd Like to See to the Current Game (Patreon)

So, thanks to you all, we fed back a massive amount of information to APG for them to walk through, over three full emails with a load of broken combos, typos, potential errors and areas of the game which were underpowered to the point that they don't get used. This was sent to Adam and he passed them all onto the APG Design/Balance team so they can walk through everything and decide what they're happy with and what they want to change.

Of course, when the new stuff comes out, there are going to be a whole bunch of busted, broken and crazy things which they have almost no chance of catching*1 and we'll cross that bridge when it happens. But right now, the design team has a window to make KD: Monster the best version of the game it could possibly be, there was an opportunity when 1.5 was made, but that didn't turn out as well as it could have, because right then the focus was not fully on smoothing out the issues and improving the play experience. The focus was mostly on updating the lore and fitting in the GSK, and one can draw their own conclusions about how successful that was, mine are in note *2 below.

So with the Gambler's Chest, Card Pack and Campaigns of Death coming, we have a whole bunch of opportunities to really fix the experience and make sure that Monster holds up somewhat against the lean, tuned, sleek competitors which are coming along and seeking to grab a large share of the market. Some of the upcoming stuff is really innovative, clean and has a wider appeal, so making sure that Monster is the best version of Monster it could be, matters.

I have absolutely zero influence on what's going to happen, but I want to take this opportunity to walk through the most problematic areas of the current experience and list them with a short paragraph of what the issue is, and a second one summarising what I personally would do to change this. My aim with any suggested changes is always to preserve the original design as much as possible (where possible) and bring things closer together in power.

So, lets go.

1. Rawhide's Dominance of the Game

There is no way that the first armor set you craft should be still used all the way through to the very final boss, but if you look, time and time again you'll see one or even two survivors wearing Rawhide for an exceptionally long time. The reasons for this are the Rawhide Headband ability and the massive survival pool this set gives. 

I would alter this by increasing the base cost of a full Rawhide set by around 50-60%, this would make the early game slower, while also increasing the value of the Node 1 monster armor sets. Rawhide should cost about 7-8 resources, not 5. I would also decouple the Rawhide Headband and make it a separate item in the Skinnery. It's a fun, useful tool, but it should fill up its own slot, not be tied to the part of an exceptionally powerful and cost efficient armor set.

2. The Counterweighted Axe

I don't think I need to say more about this weapon at this point, its activated ability is utterly busted. It should work the same as the Acid-Tooth Daggers.  

3. Silk Armor Needs a Complete Rehaul

This Node 2 Armor set costs 17... Yes 17! Resources to craft and its head piece is locked behind the L3 Spidicules. On top of that the armor has only 2 pieces of note (Head, Legs), a terrible affinity layout, no focus and a set bonus that doesn't work with anything the individual pieces of the armor set is trying to do.

This one has been confirmed to be happening, and everything apart from the head and legs needs to be rebalanced, including the costs (especially the costs). And the head piece should be locked behind a L2 Spidicules at the most, but the truth is I think it shouldn't be locked at all and...

3b. The Silk Body Suit needs repricing

This absolutely absurd beast of a gear card is too easy to make. This is the item which should be locked behind the level 3 Spidicules.

4. Gorment Armor needs buffs

There are three issues with Gorment Armor:

a) It needs better affinities on the Boots & Regeneration Suit

b) Guard needs to scale with shields other than Block 1 ones

c) The armor set isn't good enough to use for more than a few years, and it's expensive for that.

I would add a right and/or left facing red affinity to the boots, rotate the regeneration suit affinities so they are up/left/right. Change Guard so it reads 'activate a shield in your gear grid' (which has the added bonus of allowing one to combo it with Shielderang) and have the complete 5 piece set bonus add 3 armor points to all locations, not 2.

Yeah, that's a lot of buffs, but if Cycloid Scale Armor is fine to be improved in campaigns of death, so should this set.

5. White Lion Armor needs buffs

Just like Gorment above, WLA needs some improvements to make it worth while. It is too expensive, has a terrible affinity layout and lacks any decent support abilities. 

I would rehaul its affinity layout, fix the gloves so they have a more useful ability for both White Lion  & Brawler Armor and give the armor set an additional armor point to all locations. 4 Armor is an important number to reach for mid game offensive armor sets. That's why currently Screaming & Leather are the choices people make.

6. Phoenix Armor needs more Affinities

It's the Rainbow monster, and yet every single other Node 3 monster's armor is way more colourful. The Head and Body are absolutely fine, but the other three pieces need more affinities, like a lot more. I feel this armor set should be giving 1-2 of each affinity colour.

Outside of that, I have come to rather enjoy the set's charge bonus, I prefer the overall reliability of the Dragon Armor's leap most of the time, but the combination of Harvestman and Charge is something that cannot be understated in how powerful it is.

We know the Phoenix Weapons are getting some love, so I will not give them their own segment.

7. Whips & Daggers Need an Increase in Depth and Width

Daggers got a lot of loving from the promotional series, but that doesn't help people who do not own those hard to find & seasonal items. Whips on the other hand have 3 options and one campaign specific upgrade.

Also, the statline and design on both weapon types needs revision from the ground up. They just do not work as it stands right now, with the (non-promotional) Acid-Tooth Daggers and Silk Whip being the only well balanced (non-campaign specific, non-promo) options at the moment.

More whips, more daggers, more options, more power. Please. 

8. Vagabond + Black Sword should not exist as a combo

Individually, I love these two things. But together they just should not work.  I've written about this recently so I won't go into massive detail here.

9. Cycloid Scale Armor 

This set needs a bit of a rebalance, it's an absurdly powerful set of DPS options with a whole bunch of other bonuses as well. It makes every single non-ranged, non-sharp weapon way more powerful, and apparently it is due to get a buff to its armor in Campaigns of Death. Which is mindboggling - because that armor set's only weakness is its low armor.

I feel that it should disallow certain weapon types from being equipped in the gear grid, perhaps denying any weapon with 4+ base strength from being in the gear grid (or not letting them work with the sleeves). This would allow the CSA to boost up weaker weapons, without making powerful ones overwhelming.

10. Spidicules

There are so many issues with this expansion in general, many of them game breaking or just unpalatable. Which is a shame, because the showdown itself is one of the best ones in the game. The monster's programming, the layout of the terrain there and the balling mechanics are amongst the best in the entire game.

It's just the rest surrounding it that's a mess, there's so much work that needs to be done on this one; and to detail everything would be its own post in full. So I'll just list the problematic areas.

Young Rivals

Taken

All the Rings

Silk Body Suit

Silk Surgeon unlock route

Removal of Barber Surgeon Location

Amber Poleaxe

Silk Bomb

This expansion is one of two that needs the most work to repair it. It's very frustrating because it is so, SO close to being a must have. As a quick bit of praise before ending, I love the rare gear, the katars, the whip and the Scimitar - they're all amazing.

11. The Lion Knight Expansion

In a bizarre flip of the previous entry, the problems with the Lion Knight mostly revolve around the showdown experience. The Showdown is massively broken, with the AI having a flaw that can result in the Lion Knight doing almost nothing on its turns and the results of the showdown are just pure, unpleasant punishment. 

Also the post showdown "rewards" are absolutely obnoxious, with the retinue punishing the survivor who beats the Lion Knight in a ridiculous fashion. While I get that the idea of this expansion is to have survivors 'give in' to the Lion Knight's ridiculous power trip fantasy, the scenario fails to do this in its Victory/Defeat section.

I'm also interested to see how APG plan to get the Hideous Disguise calcified given that it's cursed. Based on the obnoxious nature of the current Lion Knight expansion it'll probably require you to bury the cursed survivor during the black harvest and have them die.

As a fun aside, did you know you can dismantle the Stoic Statue (aka the Lion Knight) via something like Gorm Climate and then re-innovate it once you've gotten past the events that are supposed to archive it. Keeping (a copy) of the Lion Knight in your settlement forever? It's not powerful, but it is weird as heck to do.

12. Thrown Weapons (Including Bombs)

Outside of the Bone Darts and the Beetle Bomb this entire weapon class is in need of a massive rehash. We deserve a thrown weapon proficiency, bomb should be relevant weapons with Ammo X that have debuffing effects 'on hit' (and terrible strength to compensate) and the entire roster should be expanded on with multiple additional entries to provide a meaningful progression and alternative ranged choice over bows. 

Where are our Rope Knives (Thrown/Dagger hybrid)? Where are shuriken? Javelins? Throwing Axes? Boomerangs? Thrown Clubs? Fei Cha? Slings? Staff Slings? Bolas? Dragon Beard Hook? Kestros? Kunai? Falarica? Valari? Swiss Arrows? Plumbata?  Kusarigama? 

There's such a huge wealth of interesting weapons here, but we have virtually nothing other than a few options that are hardly ever used. That sucks. All of this should be around and it needs to be supported by a fun weapon specialisation/mastery to provide the carrot to encourage players to experiment and use them. 

The decision to not have thrown weapons be a real category in KDM is one of the biggest things I lament and regret.

13. Nuclear Weapons & Cores

Something needs to be done to make this package more enjoyable and powerful because it is a lot of work to build these weapons (which can potentially kill survivors when they gather them) and when you do have them the two cores are very problematic to use because of the gear slot pressure they cause. These cores require killing a L2 and an L3 Dragon King to get, that's nothing to sneeze at, and you end up getting access to Sharp for the Red core and Deadly 2 for the Blue core, but only with the nuclear weapons themselves.  Deadly 2 is worth the slot for sure, but when you consider that it's only twice as good as a Lucky Charm, but (approx) a magnitude more expensive to build, that's not enough. The Red Core might only need a L2 Dragon King, but Sharp isn't as powerful an ability, especially when you consider that the Sunstalker's armor gives this out and the Blacksmith weapons come with it as standard. Both cores need to take up less space, or add more affinities.

The Nuclear (and all the Dragon King) weapons themselves are also in a bit of a bad space, no Node 3 monster should be dropping out weapons with less than 4 strength, and really they should be starting at 5 strength in order to let players use those weapons to progress to the level 2 (and higher) versions of the monsters.

14. Black Harvest & Vermin Obsession

Back in 1.31, the Underground Sowing portion of the Black Harvest was a tricky but manageable situation, all the farmers and the departing survivors would gain Vermin Obsession. Which meant that if you arrived at a showdown with a bug patch one would have to send everyone rushing over to the patch and pick that before they could fight the monster. It was a tense and somewhat funny moment.

However the 1.5 Doomed changes now mean that if you hit a bug patch post Underground Sow with a 15+ result; the entire hunt party is dead because they will be completely unable to move. APG seem to be happy with this, but I can't see how that is interesting or acceptable game play mechanics. It's not something players can interact with at all or even control. So Vermin Obsession should be changed to say something like.

"While there is a bug patch on the board you may not only spend your [activation] except to active it."

But worded in a more technical minded fashion. Still you get the picture, the survivor cannot attack or activate any form of gear as long as that bug patch is there, taunting them. As such they, or someone else will have to head over to the patch and activate it until it archives itself. 

They could also future proof the disorder at this point by giving it some additional interaction with the bug based quarry monsters (Dung Beetle Knight, Oblivion Mosquito, Spiral Knight) at this point. If they wanted.

So, what things do YOU want to see changed in between the Card Pack, Campaigns of Death and the Gambler's Chest? Let us know in the comments below!

Footnotes:

*1 This is because they currently only use internal playtesters, internal playtesting is influenced by the design environment and the other people in/around the workplace - both overtly and indirectly. It's one of the main the reasons that professional external playtesting exists at all (hello, that's me, but not for this game) - they come at things with a fresh set of eyes and can spot/find/do stuff that you could never imagine. One of the biggest things they do is read your stuff and discover that external interpretations of cards result in confusion or different understandings. This caused by the overriding issue of 'I know what this card is supposed to do' that the designer and internal testers are inflicted with.

*2 There's no doubt in my mind that the GSK addition was not a well executed one, the extension of the campaign by 5 years along with forced combat vs. L3s bogs the experience down a great deal. And while the idea of oxidization is excellent, little was done to improve the experiences of fighting The King's Man, Hand, Watcher or Phoenix and we were left with large gaps in certain weapon rosters. 

This means the core game content is lacking a lot of depth and variety (especially the early game, which needs 3+ different monsters in order to keep things fresh for newer players). Also the lack of a Timeline Event to introduce the looming threat of the GSK makes this titanic, important entity feel less like the final boss and more like a random dude turning up at the wrestling ring for his first match. He needs to feel weighty and as important as his place at the center of the ecosystem deserves.