Disappointed With Overcharge
Gurthie
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Is anyone else discouraged by the Overcharge mechanic? I find it extremely counter-productive and hypocritical to impose such a hard "soft" cap on stats while simultaneously allowing players to allocate stats the way they see fit.
Firstly, the diminishing returns applied by this mechanic do not ramp up slowly. Overcharge, on the other hand, resembles a roadblock which gets applied all at once as soon as a stat crosses the Overcharge "threshold". This makes Overcharge feel more like a hard cap than a soft cap which strongly discourages the advancement in a particular stat.
Secondly, every stat (that I know of) can suffer from Overcharge. Only some stats deserve to suffer from diminishing returns. These stats generally have to do with percent based improvements such as damage reduction. Obviously you wouldn't want damage reduction to scale linearly up to 100%. However, other stats should have a linear progression, such as damage and health. These stats should not suffer from diminishing returns ever.
Lastly and most importantly, Overcharge removes an element of character diversity, customization and player choice. Overcharge essentially forces players to play a more well rounded character instead of a specialized one.
If a player wants to stack Health on their Tank and neglect Stamina and Mana then that is their choice. He will be at a disadvantage in the number of abilities he can use compared to a more well rounded tank, but he will have the health pool to soak up more damage. These sorts of choices should be left up to the player, not made by such a harsh, shoehorning mechanic.
Overcharge is a poorly designed mechanic that is hardly reminiscent of the RPG genre and, in my opinion, should be completely redesigned if not removed entirely.
Firstly, the diminishing returns applied by this mechanic do not ramp up slowly. Overcharge, on the other hand, resembles a roadblock which gets applied all at once as soon as a stat crosses the Overcharge "threshold". This makes Overcharge feel more like a hard cap than a soft cap which strongly discourages the advancement in a particular stat.
Secondly, every stat (that I know of) can suffer from Overcharge. Only some stats deserve to suffer from diminishing returns. These stats generally have to do with percent based improvements such as damage reduction. Obviously you wouldn't want damage reduction to scale linearly up to 100%. However, other stats should have a linear progression, such as damage and health. These stats should not suffer from diminishing returns ever.
Lastly and most importantly, Overcharge removes an element of character diversity, customization and player choice. Overcharge essentially forces players to play a more well rounded character instead of a specialized one.
If a player wants to stack Health on their Tank and neglect Stamina and Mana then that is their choice. He will be at a disadvantage in the number of abilities he can use compared to a more well rounded tank, but he will have the health pool to soak up more damage. These sorts of choices should be left up to the player, not made by such a harsh, shoehorning mechanic.
Overcharge is a poorly designed mechanic that is hardly reminiscent of the RPG genre and, in my opinion, should be completely redesigned if not removed entirely.
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Gaudrath✭✭✭Well, it's a necessary evil. Otherwise you could end up with ubertanks in PvP, perfect to just shrug off boiling oil and other such nuisances, or one-shot wonders putting arrows in everyone's knees.
I'm not saying the thing could not be redesigned, but you'd have to redesign a lot of the game to go with it too.0 -
Alyrn_Grey✭✭✭Mechanics of this type are becoming much more common in the newer MMO's. Basically it is designed to reduce the advantage that the min/maxer style player gains from well min/maxing.0