Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

[Coolqwerts]

A lot of enemies are currently immune to debuffs they shouldn't. Pretty much any enemy that has universal immunity is immune to debuffs they shouldn't, including Ghosts, Goblin Summoners, and half the Pumpkin Moon enemies. It means they're immune to taking damage from the Star Cell's effect (they visually stick but don't deal damage), and presumably also effects like Midas and Dryad's Bane that nothing should have immunity to.

I also feel that, for an effect inflicted by so few items and weapons, too many enemies are immune to Confused. Over 70% of enemies are immune to Confused, according to the Wiki. Including weak insects found in the cavern layer that really don't need the immunity. There's a lot of inconsistency in which enemies are immune – most flyers are (Vultures, Hornets, Harpies, Ravens), but some aren't (Demon Eyes, Parrots, Alien Hornets). All swimming enemies are also immune. Personally, I think enemies should only be immune to Confused if there's a good reason for it – if they're bosses or elite enemies that are meant to be "unstoppable", if there's a valid thematic reason (enemy doesn't have a brain, like Meteor Heads), or the enemy's mechanics dictate it (worms). For an effect as niche and uncommon as it is, over half the game's enemies shouldn't be immune to it; it should be balanced around the assumption that most things are susceptible to it. This is the reason why the Brain of Confusion was underpowered for so long; it had to have mechanics not related to Confused added before it became worthwhile.

There are also quite a few enemies meant to be mechanical or non-biological (including Scarecrows, Elf Copters, Nutcrackers, and Tesla Turrets) that are currently susceptible to Poison/Venom. (Queen Bee is also susceptible, when all other Jungle insects have immunity to it.) And there are some enemies (Snow Flinxes, Elf Archers, most Pirate Invasion enemies) that don't need the immunity, or don't have a thematic reason for having it.

I have already spoken on how few ice-themed enemies (and enemies in general) have immunity to Frostburn.

Also, it would be really excellent if the Sandstone Slab could be given an accented variant; it only makes sense that both slabs receive variants. After all, the change was only made to these two blocks (I assume). Adding new items is beyond the purview of this thread, but I hope the possibility is at least considered in future.

Again 143 enemies are immune to venom it's immunities need rebalancing as a whole. More enemies should be immune to ichor that are immune to cursed inferno. Confusion should probably have its immunities changed to affect 3/5ths of each biome's enemies so 40% should be immune instead of 70% then the confused debuff can get a few rebalances on top of that to prevent it from becoming too strong.

 

[JohannSimm]

Again 143 enemies are immune to venom it's immunities need rebalancing as a whole. More enemies should be immune to ichor that are immune to cursed inferno. Confusion should probably have its immunities changed to affect 3/5ths of each biome's enemies so 40% should be immune instead of 70% then the confused debuff can get a few rebalances on top of that to prevent it from becoming too strong.

We currently have this system where enemy immunities are balanced as if every weapon dealt some type of elemental damage, whereas in reality the immunities do nothing but make certain classes of underused weapons worse than the multitude of weapons that don't rely on debuffs.

The problem with Poison / Venom is so many enemies in this game are slimes and skeletons, which are immune for thematic reasons. This gives us less wiggle room than is ideal. I wonder if Poison / Venom weapons could be buffed to not be so reliant on the debuff.

 

[JohannSimm]

I wonder if the Ichor debuff could be nerfed by having it wash off in water. Any enemy affected with it would lose it upon entering water, and it couldn't be applied to any enemy submerged in water. This would make all aquatic enemies functionally immune.

Another thing that could be done is make all Crimson enemies naturally immune to Ichor.

 

[EstebanLB]

Make Grub soup a tier 3 food, those critters spawn very rarely and Buggy is a very good bait item. Using them for a tier 2 food is a waste

 

[Eli10293]

Even with the introduction of more summoner weapons, armor, and whips, I still believe there is more to be done with summoner. Many items could easily fit as sentry style weapons such as the Clinger Staff, Nimbus Rod, and Crimson Rod. An item like the Blade Staff doesn't make sense as a drop from the Enchanted Sword and would be much more appropriate as a Hallowed Mimic drop. Changes like these would mean having to make a new magic weapon for the Crimson Hearts and new summoner weapons for the Crimson Mimic and Shadow Orb.

 

[Coolqwerts]

We currently have this system where enemy immunities are balanced as if every weapon dealt some type of elemental damage, whereas in reality the immunities do nothing but make certain classes of underused weapons worse than the multitude of weapons that don't rely on debuffs.

The problem with Poison / Venom is so many enemies in this game are slimes and skeletons, which are immune for thematic reasons. This gives us less wiggle room than is ideal. I wonder if Poison / Venom weapons could be buffed to not be so reliant on the debuff.

What I don't get is how there are just as many enemies immune to Venom as there are immune to Poison all of which coincidentally are the same enemies.

 

[Flubman]

If this isn't already a thing, I'd like to be able to search through my inventory through text like how you can search things on Google.

 

[Coolqwerts]

I think a fix to the Brain of Confusion is renaming it to the Brain of blank(word for slow) and making it inflict the slowness debuff which no enemies are currently immune.

 

[Leinfors]

Slowness is not a viable solution to just about anything. The amount of dev work that would be required to bug fix all of the consequences of a Slowness buff applied to NPCs (not to mention the impending batch of Immunities that WOULD need to be assigned) would far outstrip any level of balance improvement made to the accessory at all.

Efficiency is a really important goal in balancing. Its not worth a 3-week-bug-fix/QA nightmare when a 30-second stat change will suffice.

 

[Coolqwerts]

Slowness is not a viable solution to just about anything. The amount of dev work that would be required to bug fix all of the consequences of a Slowness buff applied to NPCs (not to mention the impending batch of Immunities that WOULD need to be assigned) would far outstrip any level of balance improvement made to the accessory at all.

Efficiency is a really important goal in balancing. Its not worth a 3-week-bug-fix/QA nightmare when a 30-second stat change will suffice.

Well what's wrong with making only bosses immune. Anything logically should be able to slowdown as a result of friction.

 

[Leinfors]

What's wrong is that Terraria's enemies come in a variety of shapes and behaviors and you can't just slap a "slow" on their code and have it work. Every AI type would need custom adjustment, heavy QA, and likely substantial bug finding and fixing, which would be a pretty substantial amount of effort for a Debuff.

Any sort of "impacts their AI behavior" Debuff is a nightmare to work with, which is part of why Confuse (which is a perfect example of this very problem) has so many immune AI types, and we'd be back to square one but minus a heck of a lot of time. No enemies immune to Slow? That's only because its not used. If we did use it, I can guarantee tons of enemies would be immune to it, and for far more than balance reasons.

Its taking the longest possible route to solving a problem.

EDIT: I guess its possible that I may have made an assumption here. To clarify, there IS no Slowness debuff, not for enemies. There is no code for it. Its a debuff that only has code for the player. If you "applied" it to an enemy, nothing would happen, its completely non-existent in that regard. So its not some . . . "unused functionality, just waiting to be utilized". Its just a name and a piece of Debuff icon art. It would be a from-the-ground up debuff, but it would probably be the most time consuming, bug prone enemy debuff ever added to Terraria (except for maybe Confusion itself, which is already water under the bridge).

 

[JohannSimm]

What's wrong is that Terraria's enemies come in a variety of shapes and behaviors and you can't just slap a "slow" on their code and have it work. Every AI type would need custom adjustment, heavy QA, and likely substantial bug finding and fixing, which would be a pretty substantial amount of effort for a Debuff.

Any sort of "impacts their AI behavior" Debuff is a nightmare to work with, which is part of why Confuse (which is a perfect example of this very problem) has so many immune AI types, and we'd be back to square one but minus a heck of a lot of time. No enemies immune to Slow? That's only because its not used. If we did use it, I can guarantee tons of enemies would be immune to it, and for far more than balance reasons.

Its taking the longest possible route to solving a problem.

Which enemies are the ones that are required to be immune to Confused? Worms, I assume. But what about fish, jellyfish, Eater of Souls-style enemies, and other flyers? Which enemy types have difficult AIs in regards to that?

I was looking through various enemies, trying to see which ones could safely have Confused immunity removed. I was planning to submit some suggestions about immunities sometime after the bug fixing period is done. I certainly don't want to waste anybody's time making impossible suggestions.

 

[Coolqwerts]

Okay Wha

What's wrong is that Terraria's enemies come in a variety of shapes and behaviors and you can't just slap a "slow" on their code and have it work. Every AI type would need custom adjustment, heavy QA, and likely substantial bug finding and fixing, which would be a pretty substantial amount of effort for a Debuff.

Any sort of "impacts their AI behavior" Debuff is a nightmare to work with, which is part of why Confuse (which is a perfect example of this very problem) has so many immune AI types, and we'd be back to square one but minus a heck of a lot of time. No enemies immune to Slow? That's only because its not used. If we did use it, I can guarantee tons of enemies would be immune to it, and for far more than balance reasons.

Its taking the longest possible route to solving a problem.

EDIT: I guess its possible that I may have made an assumption here. To clarify, there IS no Slowness debuff, not for enemies. There is no code for it. Its a debuff that only has code for the player. If you "applied" it to an enemy, nothing would happen, its completely non-existent in that regard. So its not some . . . "unused functionality, just waiting to be utilized". Its just a name and a piece of Debuff icon art. It would be a from-the-ground up debuff, but it would probably be the most time consuming, bug prone enemy debuff ever added to Terraria (except for maybe Confusion itself, which is already water under the bridge).

I guess that makes sense its only been coded for players. Is Midas and option?

 

[Coolqwerts]

Which enemies are the ones that are required to be immune to Confused? Worms, I assume. But what about fish, jellyfish, Eater of Souls-style enemies, and other flyers? Which enemy types have difficult AIs in regards to that?

You should be asking which enemies are not immune to Confused cause there are that many enemies immune to confusion.

 

[JohannSimm]

You should be asking which enemies are not immune to Confused cause there are that many enemies immune to confusion.

What I meant to ask was which enemy types absolutely couldn't have their immunity to Confused removed. For example, would it be too difficult to have Piranhas and Sharks be susceptible to it because of AI issues? That kind of thing.

 

[Leinfors]

Which enemies are the ones that are required to be immune to Confused? Worms, I assume. But what about fish, jellyfish, Eater of Souls-style enemies, and other flyers? Which enemy types have difficult AIs in regards to that?

I was looking through various enemies, trying to see which ones could safely have Confused immunity removed. I was planning to submit some suggestions about immunities sometime after the bug fixing period is done. I certainly don't want to waste anybody's time making impossible suggestions.

I don’t know, as I’ve virtually never worked on enemy AI. Basic walker type enemies could probably be changed fairly safely.

I would have to do a review of enemy debuff immunities, which as I’ve mentioned, is something I have not done. And I wouldn’t be making any changes there until I’ve finished said review, which will come when I have more time per day to spare for that.

 

[Banmei]

Here goes, too much to cover with one post so I'll get the major ones out.

BALANCING OPPORTUNITIES

Expert Mode - My only way of play pre 1.4. Problem previously was that 80% of most weapons were useless in this mode primarily due to their lack of knockback. Things balanced out as you progressed towards end of regular mode and into hard mode. Some classes were nearly obsolete pre-hardmode in Expert mode with the exception of:

Throwing = Fossil Armor combined with Bone Glove or Javelin. I don't feel as though 1.4 improved this so much as made it worse. Granted throwing became Ranged but the suit bonuses plus their individual bonuses are close to non-existent now.

Summoning = Once you get imps. I still have yet to dig into the new summoner items but knockback still seems to be a problem here.

Wizard = Very tough until you get a Amethyst or better wand or magic missile.


Knockback improvement would help. The fix to how summons deal damage has improved greatly in 1.4 Previously I intentionally did not use summons during some boss fights because I did more damage without them. Many Magic items could use a reduction in Mana Cost. There is Mana Flower but when you get the -20% nerf things go downhill pretty quickly.

BOSSES

What makes some bosses in Expert Mode so difficult is the lack of appropriate weapons that are available when you first fight them. I find the Brain Of Chulthu to be the most difficult pre-hardmode boss, and in Hard Mode the first Mechanical Bosses. So the order of difficulty of bosses is not linear in the game, in the way that you go A to B to C to D, etc.

CRAFTABLE WEAPONS

Primarily the basic ones from ores that you mine, with the exception of bows. I never craft these for use as weapons as they are just not worthwhile. This extends even into hardmode when you get Palladium, Hallowed, Titanium, etc. There are far better weapons easily available beyond these.

ORB/HEART WEAPONS

Not good in expert mode.

I now play in Master mode so all of the above is even more apparent. Expert/Master is supposed to be greater difficulty, and it is, but the lack of variety with weapons in some stages of the game can get repetitve.

There's more but i'm done typing. I've got things to kill.

 

[JohannSimm]

I don’t know, as I’ve virtually never worked on enemy AI. Basic walker type enemies could probably be changed fairly safely.

I would have to do a review of enemy debuff immunities, which as I’ve mentioned, is something I have not done. And I wouldn’t be making any changes there until I’ve finished said review, which will come when I have more time per day to spare for that.

I myself have looked over all the enemy immunity information on the Wiki and created a spreadsheet; sometime after the bug fixing period is over I will send my suggestions to you, which should hopefully save you some time if you decide to review the enemy immunities.

 

[Leinfors]

Could help! Though I personally like to verify my information from the code, as the wiki is prone to occasional errors

Might be a nice reference sheet though!

 

[JohannSimm]

Could help! Though I personally like to verify my information from the code, as the wiki is prone to occasional errors

Might be a nice reference sheet though!

Indeed, I would have preferably viewed the code itself, but not knowing how to access it I used the next best thing. Anything that doesn't line up with the information in the code can be disregarded.