No Summoner due to balance concerns? :(

So sadly, they are unlikely to put in the (subjectively ) best character, the Summoner, due to balance concerns.

Having his own pool means every minion he adds is potential damage added on top of what you can always do, meaning you will always be better off using him than not if maxing play and hero switching.

But if you think that is a problem to your challenge, why not just choose not to use him in that way?

And since when did that matter? It didn't matter in DD1, the game this is supposed to be similar to due to how well recieved it was, so why now? It's a coop game after all, not competative in any way, so to remove an entire playstyle for balance seems backwards to me.

Honestly, I think balance is important to stop a game from being steamrollered and 'poor' balance can make anything unfair and unfun, but what is fun to play mechanically should really come first. I don't get this modern requirement that players have to have every single aspect of a game balanced as though they are unable to limit themselves or create challenge. By all means have a form of balance, but don't limit everything for fear of min maxing or lack of self control.

I mean, say Summoner was in and you found it OP. What is the difference between it not being in the game or you just not playing it for challenge sake?

Or you can do what I did in the first game. Only use the summoner, ensuring he has to be used in the combat phase removing all standard player DPS potential and converting that to minions. I didn't need to, but I did as it was more fun.

Sure, online makes it a little difficult to follow your own rules if randoms join you and do their own thing, but I would rather even a setting to block a character than not have them in the game.

Or if you must enforce it, make minions only exist when the summoner is in play.

As for the idea that without a focus on balance how much you play would be hindered, such as reaching the end too easily giving less to play for, I kind of agree and disagree. Because that assumes that a player won't play something that is fun to play without a direct goal. I still play DD1, I still return with brand new versions of characters I already have high level versions of just to level them up again and play through those early waves, as they are fun. I play because it is a joy to play rather than because I want to beat another arbitrary new difficulty for a trophy to keep me playing.

I'm also for "bad" characters or underpowered ones. I found Jester (sorry Jester fans) a hinderance more often than a benefit due to their unique randomised playstyle, but I loved that a lot.

I realise I may be a tiny minority here, but I got to say it.

Basically I fear that focusing too much on balance could mean we lose out on some interesting directions they could branch out too.

I'm looking forward to new characters and honestly, prefer the idea of new ones over the same old ones. I'd give up summoner for a good new character any day as I can play DD1 still, but I am a little concerned the new characters will be pretty samey for the sake of balance if summoner was a concern for those reasons. No experimental new playstyles sort of thing.

Edited February 13, 2021 by LemonyNebula

There are some players completely adverse to the Summoner being a thing in DDA especially if part of any paid DLC for the main reason you mentioned - own DU pool. There was some resistance to EV even though being included in the game for free some players still called her P2W and complained heavily about the buff beam (renamed to overclock beam) being a thing. I was a fan of the Summoner in DD1 and liked those master strategist challenges when you could only use minions too. 

One thing people seem to forget or perhaps are not aware that in DDE he shared the main DU pool, so perhaps that might be the way to go if he was to return. Also with Redux made by mostly one dedicated player (who is now a part of CG) IDHC rebalanced all the heroes and the minion walls are a thing of the past, if they bring in the Summoner they could take inspiration from Redux. I am not sure what the best solution would be to avoid resistance to him returning from some players. I wonder if it might just be best to avoid him completely for DDA than tackle him.

The Jester I felt with the "wheel of fortune" ability was more broken and OP and is another hero I would be concerned with if  she was to return. I did like the whole random presents thing and didnt really like the CDT towers they gave her. I felt giving her towers removed some of the uniqueness of the hero. If the Jester was to return I would insist on reworking the hero esp the wheel of fortune ability.

As much as I would like to bring in all the heroes from DD1 even the gender swaps, I would much rather we moved on from DD1 and any new heroes or maps were ones are those we have not seen or perhaps even bringing in stuff from DD2. I was one of those campaigning for a console release of a complete DD1 for PS4 and Xbox1. I understand the desire to see allot of DD1 in DDA since it is so similar, but we need to move away from treating it as a remake of DD1. It was stated from the start DDA was its own game and would be "inspired by DD1", the problem is that even though there are differences and a new difficulty it still seems to many as nothing more than a remake of DD1. DDA to me should be able to stand on its own as a game and I wish as a community we started to treat it as such and not just constantly ask for bringing in DD1 stuff over and over.

Edited February 13, 2021 by dizzydiana

I completely agree dizzydiana.

New heroes are the best way to go. The only reason I mostly bring up the Summoner is because of how clearly that character was designed to shake up the formula. I mean to actually bring an RTS style of play to Dungeon Defenders was so out their and different, that you could tell the developers enjoyed testing out new things and adding interesting gameplay mechanics that are well outside the box.

If they did re add the summoner and wanted to make tweaks I will still be happy with it. As it is more the play style that I loved. It is also why I never made the most of Summoner as I always had them out during the wave to control units, removing my DPS, rather than using it as another source of towers. As I suggested, just making it so Summoner has to be in play for minions to do anything would still be a way to balancing it a bit as the lack of any attack from the character, makes them less useful at damage beyond 'towers' and removes the dps potential of another fighter. There are likely ways, but it's not really the point as another interesting character could take their place.

But my problem really, is with the fact they are concerned enough about how Summoner is implemented balance wise that they are 'unlikely' to appear, at least any time soon, and has me concerned about whether the new characters are going to add as unique content as they attempted back then. Or wether the concern of balance would hold them back too.

It really does need new content, I too am a little dissapointed with how DD1 it is in regards to it's over reliance on old content. I mean when the switch version comes, at least I will have a portable DD1 in a way, but I did expect more. Which is probably why I care so much about unique content and playstyles being added after.

Truth is, we have no way of actually knowing what any new character may be like, and I would hope my fear is proven wrong. But I have seen so many games focus on min maxing and balance so much that they have ruined what made them fun in the first place.

 

Magicka is a great example of that, the first game had you being able to technically be strong enough to kill everything from the start of the game, including yourself. The overpowered spells still didn't ruin the game, but instead made it more fun and could also be a detriment to your survival which was also... fun.

The second one and especially the PVP version (which is a little more understandable) lost most of that because they wanted to balance it more and honestly, it felt like they forgot what the game was about.

 

Basically, I don't really care if summoner does or doesn't come back so much, as long as there are more interesting ways to play and more "out there" characters introduced. But the balance focus has me questioning the possibility of that happening.

I share your concerns as well when it comes to introduction of hew heroes. I feel its more complicated than just a balance issue. trying to bring any new hero will be difficult if not impossible if we look at current game it will become either OP or totally useless. I find it difficult to see where a new hero would even fit in? Any new hero will have to fit in with Rift Mode or it will be outright ignored. It will have to see some usefulness to a point that one defence can be used instead of any of the few currently being used atm. I really struggle to see how with the current game where any would be replaced by a different fusion defence and if we did get some defence better than DST can you imagine?  "I farmed x hours for perfect DST fusion gear and now y tower made it pointless". I am unsure where DDa goes from here hero wise, but I do not envy the Devs trying to sort out this mess.

Edited February 13, 2021 by dizzydiana

Yeah. Personally, I am even fine with them OP or useless. It's really additional and I know I could easily not use an OP one, or use a useless one when I want a challenge. As long as they are fun to play, their helpfulness becomes less of a concern to me.

Key word being fun. If something plays generically and is underpowerd/overpowered then they risk either being wasted as a character you find no point in playing, or one that overwrites other characters to the point they become useless to play as you gain no benefit to doing so.

If they are different enough, then no matter how powerful or weak they are, there is reason to play them, as well as continue with the others.

But again, that concerns me, because if they are concerned too much about balance, then I'm a little worried that perhaps the playstyle alone won't warrant their existence enough.

1 hour ago, LemonyNebula said:

Yeah. Personally, I am even fine with them OP or useless. It's really additional and I know I could easily not use an OP one, or use a useless one when I want a challenge. As long as they are fun to play, their helpfulness becomes less of a concern to me.

I make the same post every few months, but i'd like more achievements and more tropies in the tavern, like 'beat all maps without  using <op hero>' or 'beat all maps using only jester (or whatever) hero'. This way, you get to replay the game with different challenges. You can decide to make challenges for yourself, but it'd be better with trophies. I think.

3 minutes ago, Ryzours said:

I make the same post every few months, but i'd like more achievements and more tropies in the tavern, like 'beat all maps without  using <op hero>' or 'beat all maps using only jester (or whatever) hero'. This way, you get to replay the game with different challenges. You can decide to make challenges for yourself, but it'd be better with trophies. I think.

Yeah I agree, trophies when done right can be great, as you can use them to get people to try new things or something out of the ordinary. It's what they originally were designed for.

Before games began putting easy achievements on things like "Started the game for the first time", they always were used to guide people to try weird things you may not have thought of, like "Defeat the boss with just a chicken" leading you to figure out things like a) how can you kill the boss with a chicken and b) There's a chicken?!.

But yeah even with trophies, the reward should also be in the playing itself, so you should be able to want to try things regardless if there is a trophy as well.

On 2/13/2021 at 8:00 AM, LemonyNebula said:

I'm also for "bad" characters or underpowered ones. I found Jester (sorry Jester fans) a hinderance more often than a benefit due to their unique randomised playstyle, but I loved that a lot.

Just like to drop in to say that I used Jester as my main frontal DPS (Harpoon/FB replacement, not DST/ET replacement) and found their tower to be much more versatile than the Squire's harpoon due to it's low DU requirements and similar DPS. So yea I disagree with you saying they were underpowered, in fact I believe if they were added to DDA with all it's glory (none of this DD1 ET vs DDA ET bs) they would likely be apart of the meta even if Genie Upgrade Farms are no longer a thing.

Edited February 15, 2021 by Fatheredpuma81

Can't say that any of this makes particular sense.  I've been hoping for more "content" for a long time rather than just gear or weapon or stat revamping such as what Rift mode gave us.  Rift in all it's glory was similar to a reset rendering a lot of our time and gear seriously outdated and left us having to go backwards to farm bits and pieces to get back to playing maps we were before only now the mode has made everything one build dst to deal with dark elf warriors.

Every character they introduce at this point if it's not new meta is going to end up being pointlessly unusable, since we only have limited options with where rift went.

A lot of people want summoner and I certainly hope that CG realize that content like new more challenging maps will be an easy balancing fix that moves everything forward while giving us a character we really love. Similar to how it would be impossible to beat certain maps without ev, Having the summoner is just another integral part of completing certain difficulty on maps.

Also multiplayer is completely broken.  Sure if you wanna play survival all the time solo then summoner might make maps easier, but right now even with really good stats it's impossible to play with friends.  I have 5 kids that all play DDA and we can't play together in rift survival. Adding in Summoner doesn't make the game OP it would probably balance multiplayer.  We've all quit playing the game because the only thing that works is playing 1 or two of the maps together and since gear farming is now locked, playing together and losing gets old really fast when you can only get a piece of gear you want by finishing wave 25.  Right now the game is broken, not the summoner.

Edited February 16, 2021 by pressdelight

Support this. I support adding pretty much any heroes at this point. Summoner definitely is the most silly one to resist when EV was welcomed so warmly.  Adding EV to the game was a cop out for CG to avoid doing real balancing work.
 

Clearly there are no intentions of any scaling uniqueness to DDA so summoner almost has to be added to the game from my perspective. 
 

may as well just add in barb and jester, honestly..

 

The game absolutely needs more diversity in strategies, no matter what way you spin it. Really feels so underwhelming to just repeat the same builds we did in DD1. 
 

refusing to add summoner is where we are going to take a stand against following the DD1 train tracks? How ridiculous. At some point just make up your minds and create a game CG can stand behind. 

 

TL;DR: Summoner seems like a no brainer to me since they are repeating DD1 anyway. 

On 2/17/2021 at 3:13 AM, UncrownedData said:

Support this. I support adding pretty much any heroes at this point. Summoner definitely is the most silly one to resist when EV was welcomed so warmly.  Adding EV to the game was a cop out for CG to avoid doing real balancing work.
 

Clearly there are no intentions of any scaling uniqueness to DDA so summoner almost has to be added to the game from my perspective. 
 

may as well just add in barb and jester, honestly..

 

The game absolutely needs more diversity in strategies, no matter what way you spin it. Really feels so underwhelming to just repeat the same builds we did in DD1. 
 

refusing to add summoner is where we are going to take a stand against following the DD1 train tracks? How ridiculous. At some point just make up your minds and create a game CG can stand behind. 

 

TL;DR: Summoner seems like a no brainer to me since they are repeating DD1 anyway. 

Exactly.

The game will never surpass DD1 with out him. Saying that the summoner is hard to balance is BS and shows how incompetent this company is. Let’s see you reimagined him in DDE and he worked out fine. Besides his archers having machine gun projectile speed and sharing DU he was fine. Him and Demoness were so fun to play as your current heroes are zzzzz. 
 

Hopefully you come to your senses or actually employ capable people to turn this massive misdirection around. Yes let’s omit fun from Dungeon Defenders in this new remake, brilliant!