Purifiers aren't strong enough unless they get into a critical mass. - Idea
Here's the discussion excal and I had on discord today. I thought that it may be good to just copy/paste it here as background context for my post.
thanks for the game and the wonderful thoughts!
oh and for purifiers
we did hit them a bit - what was challenging them that game?
Millea - Today at 6:27 PM
they reached a critical mass before, which is what made them powerful
excal - Today at 6:27 PM
i know there was the one fight where i caught them pre-siege
yep
Millea - Today at 6:28 PM
without a critical mass they aren't that powerful - you never say "i'm going to add in two purifiers to my army to make it better"
because they'll just get killed immediately
excal - Today at 6:28 PM
right
Millea - Today at 6:29 PM
i don't think they're fun to play against in a critical mass though, but they could be made interesting if they were in smaller numbers but more powerful
excal - Today at 6:29 PM
yep, you totally get it
that's exactly where we want to be
Millea - Today at 6:29 PM
like maybe a heavy scrap unit that is really good at zoning
but can't move easily
excal - Today at 6:29 PM
right now it's typically too binary
either it's a literally unencroachable critical mass
or you can just steamroll over it
Now, I just brainstormed something that might change purifiers into a different unit still focused on zone control without being as powerful in direct combat.
First of all, I'd like to make purifiers more scrap heavy with 4 max instead of 12, or something along those lines, and maybe tier 3 instead of the current massable tier 2 purifier. Then let's get to the functional change.
What if they built up energy over time, and their laser was on a very short cooldown but costed energy?
For example (rough numbers), make them build up enough for an attack once every 2 seconds, and able to store 20-ish attacks, and having a super fast attack speed.
This would let them be very good at controlling an area, but they would not be as good as they are currently at damage over a longer period of time.
If you want, make them only charge energy when sieged but make them more powerful! This would let them do things like covering an area for a retreat path, covering a flank, or defending a warp spire against a force that's not prepared with anything like a couple deadeyes, or shadows, or plated warriors, which all would counter purifiers.
Titans would be super effective against them, as you wouldn't be able to stop them from attacking (only able to focus fire on something else), removing some of the worries that may exist about a powerful defender's advantage encouraging turtling.
These purifiers would be less vulnerable to the critical mass issue that currently exists, although there are a couple issues with them.
Just an idea that I had that prompted me to post a thread - This idea does have some issues with it i think, but it would probably be better than the current version of hitting critical mass and killing a team in a battle, or a straight up nerf, which could make a purifier a lackluster unit.
Comments
Hey Millea!
Totally agreed in the general direction of the Purifiers; we want to make sure we're in the sweet middle ground where they're neither too easy to plow over or completely impossible to break.
The charging energy idea is super interesting! We probably won't be making anything but number tweaks to the Purifier for the immediate future, but this is a really clever way to accentuate some of the properties that we're looking for. Even if we can't experiment with something like this for the Purifier now, it's a new tool for us to consider using later (or potentially on a new unit)!
Seriously, thanks for the idea - I'm throwing it on my list of unit mechanics to play with!
Bobby
Have you considered slightly larger maps and more cliffs/terrain features? Purifiers would be more useful in smaller numbers if they could control more space unrelated to mass army fights, but right now the MOBA-esque terrain makes that difficult to arrange outside of specific base fights.
Using 1-2 purifiers to zone around a cliff face would open up more options when using them outside of number or attack-type tweaks, though it would require a slightly different baseline of gameplay to encourage. It seems more in line with the Purifier's intended place in the game, but I think the current map features are what's keeping it from the "siege tank" support role and instead requires mass carpet bombing in order to be relevant.
Just a thought, and I'm not sure it's practical, but my first inkling when I saw the purifier was to attempt this type of gameplay and there weren't really many options for doing so.