[Announcement] Action Combat System Revamp
Hello, Chasers!
Thank you for all your feedback and continued support of KurtzPel.
We are happy to bring you this revamp that will hopefully make the gameplay even more fun and polish up the current combat system.
We read through your feedback and analyzed statistics to bring you this revamp that will take effect in the game during the Pre-Season that will happen after the July 8th 2020 maintenance.
We strongly encourage everyone to give us feedback about this new revamp during the pre-season so we have time to polish it up before Season 5 starts.
[h3]Our goal was to keep the fun of combos while trying to lessen the power gap between new and experienced players as well as making KurtzPel more approachable and easier to play for new players.[/h3]
KurtzPel has been in Early Access for just over a year now and just like other fighting games, we are facing the same problem as them.
That is the huge power gap between new and existing players due to skill and knowledge.
Fighting Games require a good matchmaking system and constant flow of new players but because of this huge power gap, new players are having a difficult time understanding and enjoying KurtzPel.
One of the biggest aspects of KurtzPel is to use a variety of Karma combinations to execute your own unique and stylish combos.
Also, because the combo-based nature of KurtzPel, it is harder to pick up and play like FPS games.
[h3]A New System that will lessen the power gap between new and experienced players[/h3]
New Attacked Status: Blow System
In order to make it easier for new players to execute combos, we've added a new Attacked Status called Blow.
Melee Weapon's Left Mouse Button (LMB) Combo and Aerial LMB combo's last attack will make the enemy enter a Blow Status.
While in this status, you can simply execute the LMB combo to continue your combo.
We are hoping this new Blow System will create a variety of different and unique combos.
Target Karma: Great Sword, Dual Sword, Gauntlet, Giant Hammer, Scythe
Stamina Cost removed for Command Attacks
Managing Stamina was put in place to increase the depth of gameplay but it ended up becoming something that stressed out new players.
Command attacks will no longer consume stamina and because of this change, it will be much easier to create unique combos. We also hope this will lessen the stress of managing a resource.
From this point on, Stamina will be used for players that are constantly dashing or evading to stop them from frequently running from fights and we are also reviewing the possibility of completely removing stamina.
Veteran players might be worried about the possibility of infinite combos due to command attacks no longer requiring stamina but we will be preventing that with our new Combo Limit system.
Combo Limit System
A new system that puts a limit on the length of your combo.
When you can perform a 100 to 0 combo on an opponent, it can feel awesome and rewarding.
However, when you are on the receiving end, it is very stressful, especially if there is no counter play.
We've determined that being in a helpless position where all you can do is sit and watch your character die is something that brings great fatigue and stress.
We've tried to create an escape for players by providing the Rage Break system.
But the same problem was still there and it actually didn't help much since players had to sacrifice their full rage in order to execute their Rage Break. This in turn made it even harder for a losing team to recover from their position.
This is why we are going to try and remedy this situation with the Combo Limit system.
When you are attacked and stuck in the enemy's combo, your combo gauge will increase and when it hits 100%, your emergency dodge will be activated.
Emergency Dodge is similar to Rage Break but it does not consume your rage and will be activated automatically.
Emergency Dodge will push you back less than the Season 4 Rage Break and will not knockback your enemies.
Accumulative Combo Damage Reduction System
When the combo damage accumulates to a certain number, damage that is delivered after that point will be decreased.
The combo limit system is in place to stop the infinite combos but certain Karmas have high enough DPS that can still dish out massive damage without the help of infinite combos. We will try to remedy this with the Accumulative Combo Damage Reduction.
This system will stop players from dying from 1 combo and also lessen the stress for players stuck in helpless situations.
We believe this will make Slayers play more aggressively as they are no longer exposed to being defeated from 1 combo due to their weak defense.
Removal of Pause Commands
Commands like Great Sword's spinning slash that requires players to pause in between LMB will no longer require pauses and instead, can be activated by simply holding down LMB.
We added the pause commands to encourage skilled gameplay but this was something that was hard to execute reliably for new players. Also, this combo wouldn't activate at times due to network issues even for veterans.
This new Hold LMB method will now make it easier and more reliable for players to activate the commands when they want to.
Target Karma: Great Sword, Longbow, Staff, Dual Sword, Gauntlet, Giant Hammer
Skill Cooldown Increase in order to Adjust the Flow of Combat
It was easy to be out of mana when using 6 skills as they constantly came off cooldown, which made the combat too fast and hectic and we wanted to improve that.
To make it easier for players to have time to strategize and make meaningful decisions, we needed to decrease the frequency of skill use.
Adjusting the Max mana and Skill Cooldown will make players think more about when to use certain skills and encourage strategic gameplay.
[h3]Improvement to Delivery of Combat Related Info[/h3]
We believe it is important to deliver combat info in a simple and consistent manner.
In-game system that displayed indefinite or easily mistakable info were improved.
Base Endurance for Same Roles were Unified
Before, Great Sword and Gauntlet's Base Endurance was different and required different break damage to break them.
From now on, Karmas with the same roles will have the same endurance.
Also, skills with the same endurance rank will require the same amount of break damage to break.
Removal of Normal Passive's RNG
There were certain passive skills that relied on RNG to activate the effects like skill cooldown reset.
We believe that this cooldown reset effect made the gameplay unstable and hard to predict and wanted to move away from it.
In order to make sure opponents can know exactly when certain skills are on cooldown after use, we decided to change this effect and other passive skills.
[h3]Stat Improvement to give Freedom of choosing Weapons[/h3]
We will continue to add new weapons and wanted to give players the freedom to choose the weapon of their choice, which will encourage players to try out different weapon combinations.
We didn't want the game's system or stats on a weapon to discourage players from choosing a certain weapon and wanted to improve that.
Our change to Weapon Movement Speed and Evade consuming Stamina instead of mana in Season 4 was part of the reason why.
In season 5, we wanted to discourage players from choosing Magic Karmas because of their high max mana and instead choose the Karma of their choice based on preference.
Max Mana Different Between Karmas Decreased
- Highest and Lowest Max Mana Different changed from 125 to 65
Main Karma Info UI Display Improved
After the July 8th patch, all Physical and Magic related stats will display the actual stats of your equipped weapon.
We wanted to clear up the confusion some people had on the info that was displayed on the Main Karma Info window and didn't want those confusing stats to deter players from choosing certain weapons.
[h3]Balance[/h3]
The thing we wanted to address and improve this time was players being forced to run a certain meta and the gameplay becoming stale and boring.
Our goal was to have players explore and discover new combinations of Karma, Stats, and Roles. The current meta of always choosing a certain karma, HP Increase Stats or running Two Breakers or Two Slayers was not our intention.
We felt the balance needed a bit more work.
We expect the newly added Damage Adjustment system should decrease the DPS gap between weapons and have a positive effect on the meta.
We are aware that currently, certain magic stone stats like HP Increase is too efficient and outshines all other stats in comparison. We will be analyzing our data and address this in the future.
We are also planning to balance certain Karmas not being picked due to its high difficulty. We will be addressing Elemental Burster, which has the lowest win & pick rate during Season 4 by decreasing the Karma's difficulty and some of the changes will be applied to the game at the start of the Pre-Season.
We feel it is important to build a long-lasting trust between us and you, the Chasers regarding balance.
We're sure some players felt that certain balance points in the past were kind of off or different from the feedback given by the community.
Balance in KurtzPel is not decided by a few people but rather, we listen to the community's feedback and also balance based on data of win rate, pick rate, individual game modes.
In the near future, we will be communicating with you about how we balance the game and inform on the choices we've made for balance based on analyzed statistics.
[h3]In closing,[/h3]
Optimization and providing better network environment are something an online game must continue to improve upon.
At the start of this Pre-Season, we will be implementing and testing the optimization for the frame rate.
We are continuing to look for the source of issues that cause constant frame drops and lag. We are even looking at the possibility of restructuring the backend system in order to improve this aspect of KurtzPel.
It might take some time but we will continue to make improvements and wanted to share with everyone that we are working on it.
We are also preparing a roadmap that will inform everyone on the future content of KurtzPel and will definitely return to you with updates. We would like to ask for a little more patience from everyone until we can deliver this roadmap.
Thank you.
-Kurtzpel Team
Thank you for all your feedback and continued support of KurtzPel.
We are happy to bring you this revamp that will hopefully make the gameplay even more fun and polish up the current combat system.
We read through your feedback and analyzed statistics to bring you this revamp that will take effect in the game during the Pre-Season that will happen after the July 8th 2020 maintenance.
We strongly encourage everyone to give us feedback about this new revamp during the pre-season so we have time to polish it up before Season 5 starts.
[h3]Our goal was to keep the fun of combos while trying to lessen the power gap between new and experienced players as well as making KurtzPel more approachable and easier to play for new players.[/h3]
KurtzPel has been in Early Access for just over a year now and just like other fighting games, we are facing the same problem as them.
That is the huge power gap between new and existing players due to skill and knowledge.
Fighting Games require a good matchmaking system and constant flow of new players but because of this huge power gap, new players are having a difficult time understanding and enjoying KurtzPel.
One of the biggest aspects of KurtzPel is to use a variety of Karma combinations to execute your own unique and stylish combos.
Also, because the combo-based nature of KurtzPel, it is harder to pick up and play like FPS games.
[h3]A New System that will lessen the power gap between new and experienced players[/h3]
New Attacked Status: Blow System
In order to make it easier for new players to execute combos, we've added a new Attacked Status called Blow.
Melee Weapon's Left Mouse Button (LMB) Combo and Aerial LMB combo's last attack will make the enemy enter a Blow Status.
While in this status, you can simply execute the LMB combo to continue your combo.
We are hoping this new Blow System will create a variety of different and unique combos.
Target Karma: Great Sword, Dual Sword, Gauntlet, Giant Hammer, Scythe
Stamina Cost removed for Command Attacks
Managing Stamina was put in place to increase the depth of gameplay but it ended up becoming something that stressed out new players.
Command attacks will no longer consume stamina and because of this change, it will be much easier to create unique combos. We also hope this will lessen the stress of managing a resource.
From this point on, Stamina will be used for players that are constantly dashing or evading to stop them from frequently running from fights and we are also reviewing the possibility of completely removing stamina.
Veteran players might be worried about the possibility of infinite combos due to command attacks no longer requiring stamina but we will be preventing that with our new Combo Limit system.
Combo Limit System
A new system that puts a limit on the length of your combo.
When you can perform a 100 to 0 combo on an opponent, it can feel awesome and rewarding.
However, when you are on the receiving end, it is very stressful, especially if there is no counter play.
We've determined that being in a helpless position where all you can do is sit and watch your character die is something that brings great fatigue and stress.
We've tried to create an escape for players by providing the Rage Break system.
But the same problem was still there and it actually didn't help much since players had to sacrifice their full rage in order to execute their Rage Break. This in turn made it even harder for a losing team to recover from their position.
This is why we are going to try and remedy this situation with the Combo Limit system.
When you are attacked and stuck in the enemy's combo, your combo gauge will increase and when it hits 100%, your emergency dodge will be activated.
Emergency Dodge is similar to Rage Break but it does not consume your rage and will be activated automatically.
Emergency Dodge will push you back less than the Season 4 Rage Break and will not knockback your enemies.
Accumulative Combo Damage Reduction System
When the combo damage accumulates to a certain number, damage that is delivered after that point will be decreased.
The combo limit system is in place to stop the infinite combos but certain Karmas have high enough DPS that can still dish out massive damage without the help of infinite combos. We will try to remedy this with the Accumulative Combo Damage Reduction.
This system will stop players from dying from 1 combo and also lessen the stress for players stuck in helpless situations.
We believe this will make Slayers play more aggressively as they are no longer exposed to being defeated from 1 combo due to their weak defense.
Removal of Pause Commands
Commands like Great Sword's spinning slash that requires players to pause in between LMB will no longer require pauses and instead, can be activated by simply holding down LMB.
We added the pause commands to encourage skilled gameplay but this was something that was hard to execute reliably for new players. Also, this combo wouldn't activate at times due to network issues even for veterans.
This new Hold LMB method will now make it easier and more reliable for players to activate the commands when they want to.
Target Karma: Great Sword, Longbow, Staff, Dual Sword, Gauntlet, Giant Hammer
Skill Cooldown Increase in order to Adjust the Flow of Combat
It was easy to be out of mana when using 6 skills as they constantly came off cooldown, which made the combat too fast and hectic and we wanted to improve that.
To make it easier for players to have time to strategize and make meaningful decisions, we needed to decrease the frequency of skill use.
Adjusting the Max mana and Skill Cooldown will make players think more about when to use certain skills and encourage strategic gameplay.
[h3]Improvement to Delivery of Combat Related Info[/h3]
We believe it is important to deliver combat info in a simple and consistent manner.
In-game system that displayed indefinite or easily mistakable info were improved.
Base Endurance for Same Roles were Unified
Before, Great Sword and Gauntlet's Base Endurance was different and required different break damage to break them.
From now on, Karmas with the same roles will have the same endurance.
Also, skills with the same endurance rank will require the same amount of break damage to break.
Removal of Normal Passive's RNG
There were certain passive skills that relied on RNG to activate the effects like skill cooldown reset.
We believe that this cooldown reset effect made the gameplay unstable and hard to predict and wanted to move away from it.
In order to make sure opponents can know exactly when certain skills are on cooldown after use, we decided to change this effect and other passive skills.
[h3]Stat Improvement to give Freedom of choosing Weapons[/h3]
We will continue to add new weapons and wanted to give players the freedom to choose the weapon of their choice, which will encourage players to try out different weapon combinations.
We didn't want the game's system or stats on a weapon to discourage players from choosing a certain weapon and wanted to improve that.
Our change to Weapon Movement Speed and Evade consuming Stamina instead of mana in Season 4 was part of the reason why.
In season 5, we wanted to discourage players from choosing Magic Karmas because of their high max mana and instead choose the Karma of their choice based on preference.
Max Mana Different Between Karmas Decreased
- Highest and Lowest Max Mana Different changed from 125 to 65
Main Karma Info UI Display Improved
After the July 8th patch, all Physical and Magic related stats will display the actual stats of your equipped weapon.
We wanted to clear up the confusion some people had on the info that was displayed on the Main Karma Info window and didn't want those confusing stats to deter players from choosing certain weapons.
[h3]Balance[/h3]
The thing we wanted to address and improve this time was players being forced to run a certain meta and the gameplay becoming stale and boring.
Our goal was to have players explore and discover new combinations of Karma, Stats, and Roles. The current meta of always choosing a certain karma, HP Increase Stats or running Two Breakers or Two Slayers was not our intention.
We felt the balance needed a bit more work.
We expect the newly added Damage Adjustment system should decrease the DPS gap between weapons and have a positive effect on the meta.
We are aware that currently, certain magic stone stats like HP Increase is too efficient and outshines all other stats in comparison. We will be analyzing our data and address this in the future.
We are also planning to balance certain Karmas not being picked due to its high difficulty. We will be addressing Elemental Burster, which has the lowest win & pick rate during Season 4 by decreasing the Karma's difficulty and some of the changes will be applied to the game at the start of the Pre-Season.
We feel it is important to build a long-lasting trust between us and you, the Chasers regarding balance.
We're sure some players felt that certain balance points in the past were kind of off or different from the feedback given by the community.
Balance in KurtzPel is not decided by a few people but rather, we listen to the community's feedback and also balance based on data of win rate, pick rate, individual game modes.
In the near future, we will be communicating with you about how we balance the game and inform on the choices we've made for balance based on analyzed statistics.
[h3]In closing,[/h3]
Optimization and providing better network environment are something an online game must continue to improve upon.
At the start of this Pre-Season, we will be implementing and testing the optimization for the frame rate.
We are continuing to look for the source of issues that cause constant frame drops and lag. We are even looking at the possibility of restructuring the backend system in order to improve this aspect of KurtzPel.
It might take some time but we will continue to make improvements and wanted to share with everyone that we are working on it.
We are also preparing a roadmap that will inform everyone on the future content of KurtzPel and will definitely return to you with updates. We would like to ask for a little more patience from everyone until we can deliver this roadmap.
Thank you.
-Kurtzpel Team