Weapons & Equip Revamp Reforges/Modifiers

[Yousef the H]

my main issue with this entire rework is balancing, not reforge balancing, but the weapon balancing, the overall game balance.

this rework overall makes weapons slightly stronger than before... which is certainly not needed with the current balance of the game
nerfing every weapon a little bit would just cause some feeling of underpowered-ness until you reforge. This is a creative solution and is sort of effective but i don't know it's just sort of makes the game ever so slightly easier which is weird.

one solution to legendary weapons is making them rarer (what i'm thinking is 10 times less likely), which has been suggested before however i think we could go a little more extra with it

i introduce the Refoge+ option, this one is 10 times more expensive than normal reforging however :
only yields good reforges
has a 10 times higher chance of getting legendary status reforges (original chance)

maybe a little over the board of a change/doesn't feel like it fits but i honestly think it would be balanced, 2 platinum to reforge a terrablade sounds like a fair price if you make legendary extra powerful
maybe playing with the numbers a bit will be needed but this works i believe

 

[worst e-girl]

nerfing every weapon a little bit would just cause some feeling of underpowered-ness until you reforge.

Most weapons already have a modifier when they're first crafted or dropped, this shouldn't be an issue. If it really feels like a problem they could just prevent weapons from spawning without modifiers, but I don't think that's common enough to be a concern. Besides, the chance to find an underpowered version of a weapon is already in the game in the form of negative modifiers. With the rework getting rid of those, the small chance to find a weapon without a modifier basically replaces that.

 

[Esther]

Massive- Increase to +50% size. Its current iteration, +18% size, is pointless. A 50% size increase, while comical with certain weapons, would actually be desirable - a player could feasibly make a large weapon build and would seek out the reforge to use certain weapons. They are choosing not to take a reforge that boosts damage, and it should be potent enough to justify that decision.

While I don't have much to say about everything else, comically large anything is always good and so at least this change gets a proper support from me.
(I have two comically large pencils and one comically large eraser, yes I'm biased towards stupidly large things)

 

[Enumex]

I saw your video on the topic. I respect your views on this, especially since you've been able to articulate some of what I've felt for a while in regards to modifiers. But I wasn't exactly happy with what you proposed. It's taken me a while to think of why. Because I agree that what you propose is better for the game, but it's still off for me.

It hit me when I compared modifiers to perks in Destiny 2. I asked: What is the point of modifiers? Destiny 2 is a looter shooter, perks have a purpose to provide the main reason to grind the game. While I don't want to say that everything needs to be justified, I want it to at least add something. Golf doesn't have a purpose, but it's still appreciated. As it currently is with the ability to make your weapon objectively worse and being randomly applied upon creation, I find it hard to say that modifiers add to Terraria.

Like, as they are, you are just gambling on quality. If you make all modifiers good, then it doesn't really fix the fact that you're going gamblecore to get what you want. I agree with some others that the goblin tinkerer would need a rework along with the system, but I don't want to get into that because the devs will know how to implement a new "reforge" system more naturally than I would.

Without reworking the Goblin Tinkerer, I think modifiers would be best as just being "modifiers": just modifications to the weapon with no intention of it being upgrades. While it may seem useless to make modifiers that would hypothetically make an unmodified weapon as good as a modified weapon, there are cases where you want to exaggerate some properties for better performance. I'd like to make a dummy slow Sniper Rifle to deal with Nailheads. Some people would want knockback over damage to keep enemies away. Rapid-firing water bolts would be cool to fill up a room with more projectiles. I want a bigger army of minions even if every individual is less effective, etc...

Speaking of summoners, I know that some aspects of Terraria may have a bit of spaghetti code. It's not ridiculous spaghetti like Destiny 2, where Italy envies their spaghetti. But this does limit some of what we can do. I'm not sure if projectiles (since minions are complex projectiles if I understand correctly), can be easily scaled. I'd even argue that minion size wouldn't help in many circumstances. I agree that mana cost, velocity, and crit chance (crit is funny, but it generally applies) are useless because minions generally don't crit and you would summon all your minions before any battle. I remember in your video you partially dismissed minion slot count (or at least put it as a low priority). I disagree, minion slot count is something they've modified before (with the Spider Staff having each spider count as 0.75 minions). I feel that more minions would be the equivalent of lower use time for guns. It allows the user to cover a greater area at the cost of single-target damage.

As for accessories, I generally agree with the contents of the video. A slight buff to damage & melee speed would be beneficial, movement speed and mana need a bit of a rework and I agree with what you suggested. The only thing I could think of adding would be some accessory modifiers geared towards rangers and summoners just so they don't get lonely. I can see rangers getting a velocity or ammo consumption chance modifier (probably the velocity). Summoners are going to be interesting. The only thing I could think about would be tag damage.

All this being said, I'm thankful you made this post. Having someone share the same underlying idea that modifiers need a rework helped me to articulate my thoughts. I'm pretty happy that there's a discussion about this. Hopefully this gets a bit more traction and they can give modifiers some love. I've thought that there was something "off" about modifiers, but I've struggled to put it into words until now.

 

[SorbetCafe]

The only thing I could think of adding would be some accessory modifiers geared towards rangers and summoners just so they don't get lonely. I can see rangers getting a velocity or ammo consumption chance modifier (probably the velocity). Summoners are going to be interesting. The only thing I could think about would be tag damage

I had considered that, but that's the sort of addition that only sounds good on paper. An ammo consumption reduction would just be bad, flat out. You would never want that. Ammo stacks to 9999 now and it's very easy to get, it's just adding a new quick/arcane modifier. Tag damage on accessories would also be nigh impossible to execute in a way that isn't horrifically unbalanced imo. It'd either be awful, off-brand menacing, or completely busted, because tag damage is such a powerful buff and 7 accessory slots is a lot.

The reforge system is definitely a bit flawed as is, but I also think the more ambitious the suggestion the less likely it is to happen. It would be nice to see a complete rework of the modifier system, but something like that is best left to if a Terraria sequel ever happens. Whereas this suggestion is very simple to implement and requires little work aside from balance testing.

 

[Yousef the H]

Tag damage on accessories would also be nigh impossible to execute in a way that isn't horrifically unbalanced imo. It'd either be awful, off-brand menacing, or completely busted, because tag damage is such a powerful buff and 7 accessory slots is a lot.

that's 28 flat extra damage for each hit on a minion, with something like blade staff it can get out of hand pretty quickly (+availability pre hm is easily gonna powercreep things).

The reforge system is definitely a bit flawed as is, but I also think the more ambitious the suggestion the less likely it is to happen. It would be nice to see a complete rework of the modifier system, but something like that is best left to if a Terraria sequel ever happens. Whereas this suggestion is very simple to implement and requires little work aside from balance testing.

i honestly don't think we can get that good of a system without making it complex in some way.

 

[Enumex]

It'd either be awful, off-brand menacing, or completely busted, because tag damage is such a powerful buff and 7 accessory slots is a lot.

That's a very good argument that I have failed to consider. I was thinking in isolation which I failed to consider that you can have up to 7 slots. Even if we did a maximum of "+1 Summon Tag Damage" Then yeah, accessories alone make more damage than most pre-hardmode whips. I mostly gave accessories a passing glance because they're not that interesting compared to weapon modifiers. They don't change the behaviour of the accessories in any way, just giving passive boosts.

I had considered that, but that's the sort of addition that only sounds good on paper. An ammo consumption reduction would just be bad, flat out. You would never want that. Ammo stacks to 9999 now and it's very easy to get, it's just adding a new quick/arcane modifier.

I've also figured that ammo isn't much of a concern to a ranger. I've only done one ranger run, but I do remember that I could have probably spend more money or effort on the materials to make better ammo. It was cool to not stress about ammo once Hardmode started (endless quiver/bullet pouch), but I could have been doing better. That's why I'm more in favour of velocity if we were to hypothetically add a new "ranger accessory modifier". But even then, it's not as exciting as Melee Speed.

The reforge system is definitely a bit flawed as is, but I also think the more ambitious the suggestion the less likely it is to happen.

I know it's not the best thing to say, but I think this would be something that the developers would have to gauge on how much they can modify. At the minimum, we are asking for number changes. If they wished to add content for this context, they could implement Summoner modifiers. If they wanted to invest more resources into this, we would see the accessories touched up on. If they for some reason decided to re-make the game, then maybe weapons could be designed with custom modifier attributes in mind (more melee weapons could meaningfully make use of Melee Speed, Minions and Sentries could be made more flexible to allow more creativity in modifiers).

I personally ask for the minimum and some love to summoners. It would be interesting to make a meaningful decision other than Ruthless, Mythical, Unreal, and Legendary/Godly.

It would be impractical to re-write a lot of the game so that the Starlight can benefit from Melee Speed. While a touch up to accessories would be appreciated, I figure we should first cover the most flawed parts first. I do admit that I sometimes just throw ideas out there for discussion. Combined with me liking talking about game design, I do tend to digress a little bit. I should probably separate what I want and what I spitball. I want the number tweaks and a bone thrown for summoners.

 

[Dapling]

Ammo stacks to 9999 now and it's very easy to get, it's just adding a new quick/arcane modifier

I see it having potential with Star Cannon and Coin Gun and literally nothing else, which is better than what Arcane has.

 

[Enumex]

Just thinking out loud about this, would the current Arcane (+20 Mana) have more use if the hard cap of 400 were removed and the mana flower weaker? I know that with current accessories you could reach over 600 max mana, but doing so would require big investment for the reward of higher mana regeneration and greater reserves.
Since I haven't played mage at all, I don't know how effective waiting around for mana to recover is over taking the %50 reduction. This is just some speculation.

 

[Dapling]

Just thinking out loud about this, would the current Arcane (+20 Mana) have more use if the hard cap of 400 were removed and the mana flower weaker? I know that with current accessories you could reach over 600 max mana, but doing so would require big investment for the reward of higher mana regeneration and greater reserves.
Since I haven't played mage at all, I don't know how effective waiting around for mana to recover is over taking the %50 reduction. This is just some speculation.

After 300 max mana, any increases only help at the start of the fight, due to super mana potions restoring only 300 themselves. This means that after burning through all your mana once, you can only recover 300 from a single potion and as a result your max mana is basically reduced to 300.
Waiting for mana is extremely ineffective compared to drinking mana potions in hardmode which is where your max mana is most likely to reach an amount that high. In prehardmode, waiting for mana is similarly underpowered unless you drink a mana regeneration potion which makes it better than mana potions (again, only in prehardmode is this worth it generally)

 

[Asternove]

I may have misunderstood this, but having Quick only working on the ground is a nerf.

Also, if it wasn’t mentioned already, remove +1 and +2, and honestly +3 while you’re at it. They’re pointless.

Lastly, they don’t need to be +4. Warding could be three, Menacing, Violent, and the Crit one can stay, and Quick can be +6%. It doesn’t need to be +4%.

 

[Enumex]

Waiting for mana is extremely ineffective compared to drinking mana potions in hardmode which is where your max mana is most likely to reach an amount that high. In prehardmode, waiting for mana is similarly underpowered unless you drink a mana regeneration potion which makes it better than mana potions (again, only in prehardmode is this worth it generally)

A'ight thanks. I mostly wanted to know this from someone who probably knows more than I do in mage weapons. I've only touched mage weapons when I wore the Forbidden Armor set in my summoner run. I don't know how much waiting for mana was comparable to taking up to %50 reduction from potions.

 

[Dapling]

A'ight thanks. I mostly wanted to know this from someone who probably knows more than I do in mage weapons. I've only touched mage weapons when I wore the Forbidden Armor set in my summoner run. I don't know how much waiting for mana was comparable to taking up to %50 reduction from potions.

When you think about it, waiting for mana is basically a 100% reduction in magic damage for that time as opposed to mana sickness, so it makes sense.

 

[Coleyohley]

I don't know how much waiting for mana was comparable to taking up to %50 reduction from potions.

Just remember that halved damage is better than no damage, and you don't do any damage if you aren't shooting. Additionally, very few weapons are capable of exhausting your mana so fast that you drink another potion before the penalty from the last one has worn off; if you have 300 or more mana and even a  tiny amount of Mana Cost reduction (Crystal Ball + Reforge is generally enough), almost all magic weapons can fire for longer than 5 seconds, which is the duration of the penalty; the penalty only stacks if you need to drink another potion sooner than that.

Furthermore, the penalty loses potency as it expires, linearly decreasing to 0% loss over its duration. If your weapon can outlast the penalty, this averages to a 12.5% damage loss, which is MUCH less than 2-3 seconds of dealing no damage at all.

 

[Enumex]

When you think about it, waiting for mana is basically a 100% reduction in magic damage

I could figure that out. Under my assumption that mana weapons would eventually reach the %50 reduction, my question changed to "if you wait for mana to regenerate, would you be waiting for more than half the time?". Because if you were to fire and not fire in equal timings, that would average out to a %50 reduction in damage. Now I see that the assumption was wrong. On the topic of that…

very few weapons are capable of exhausting your mana so fast that you drink another potion before the penalty from the last one has worn off

I did not know this. I figured that it would be rarer to find a weapon that didn't stack mana sickness. Good to know.

 

[Dapling]

I did not know this. I figured that it would be rarer to find a weapon that didn't stack mana sickness. Good to know.

The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are probably Meteor Staff and Demon Scythe