What is power creep?

In games where content is being updated from time to time, there is a tendency that the older characters, no matter how strong they are, become obsolete.  This is usually referred to as power creep.  Although there are occasions too when older stuff are stronger than newer ones (usually on TCGs like Magic: The Gathering), this is not the case with War Robots.

You’ve probably heard stories of old-generation bots being the top dog. Griffins even had different meta builds before they finally became outclassed by stealth-jump and dashbots, which were also pushed aside by pantheons and dragons.

How does power creep affect the game?

Depending on how strong newer-produced game content is, power creep can slowly or rapidly phase out the popular stuff, in case of WR, weapons and bots.  Using the above example, Griffins used to dominate the field with rocket death-button and plasma death-button setups. When dashbots came, some of the Griffin setups were adopted by the usurpers newcomers, pushing them aside from popularity. The same can be said with the dash and stealth-jump bots when even newer bots came later.

I call this the Mjolnir scenario.  This time, you’re owning everyone and their mothers and entire extended family up until the Patch hits the servers. 

One might notice that as newer bots come, their mobility and ability outclasses the older ones.

MOBILITY

Griffin used to be the most mobile heavy robot to ever walk the battlefield.  Well, it was a time when bots used to just walk and there were no dashes.  Running is limited to lighter bots which are combat-limited by durability.  If you wanted mobility, you’d have to sacrifice toughness for it.  Griffin, even though it’s a heavy bot, was squishy for its weight, especially when compared to Leos and Natashas, but this is just a slight drawback for its mobility.

Then came the dashbots. Not only were they mobile, but they were durable as well, especially Bulgasari with physical shield and Haechi with energy shield. They didn’t only replace the Griffin, but the faster, lighter bots as well. 

Let’s take Rhino. Mobility-wise, it used to be one of the fastest bots in shield mode, but at the expense of very limited turn rate and inability to use its top-mounted weapons.  Fast forward to now, Fenrir does what Rhino does, albeit slower.  But ability-wise, they both disable their weapons, activate a shield, and gain a speed boost.  Still, Fenrir is among, if not the strongest tank in the game while the poor Rhino hasn’t seen battle in quite a while.

Some bots have a “better clone.” Griffin has a better version, the Raven, which is good in every way (Griffin has higher HP but this advantage is negligible).  Another example is Stalker.  It was a decent beacon runner and/or assassin. Then came the Pursuer, which is a Stalker with one extra weapon slot, longer ability duration, and tougher hull.  Why would you use Stalker if there is a better version of it.  Now, even the Pursuer could be replaced by Phantom, although they differ in ability and playstyle, but almost the same function.

ABILITY

Again, we will be using the Griffin.  You might wonder I am bias with the bot. Yes, I would admit that I love the bot, but I’m using it an an example as I see it as well-balanced when it was meta.  It has a basic jump with long cooldown good and hardpoints with the drawback of being squishier than other heavies.

Now, Raven gets two jumps with almost the same cooldown as Griffin’s.  Inquisitor and Spectre both got Stealth jumps, with a little longer cooldown than the Griffin’s, but at least they don’t get insta-killed in the air.

In case of Stalker and Pursuer, the latter even has a longer duration Stealth.  Is it sad? Yes.  Is it justifiable? I think so.  Stalker is a 500 gold bot, while the Pursuer is a 10K component bot.   It’s normal to have more features if you have to pay for premium, right?

MODULES

Older bots have lesser passive module slots while others have no slots at all.  With modules being gamechangers, limiting bots to their usage already puts them in a disadvantage.

Why invest on older bots?

I guess some of the older bots would just serve as training hammers wheels.  Both Griffin and Stalkers teach you when to use your abilities, properly timing when you go in and fight, etc.  Leos introduce players to brawling, depending on the build.  These bots can temporarily serve as placeholders while waiting for your workshop to churn out comps for your premium bots. 

I feel it’s OK to have players use them to get a good feel of the game.  The problem is when you end up investing too much on them as they’d end up being resource sinks, which is pretty normal since most of us want to level up our hangars.  Some players would defend them and would say that skills beat meta.  Well, skills are important, but in a fight between two equally skilled players, the one with the better tools would still have the edge.  Also, the cost of making them viable, would probably be too steep, especially for free-to-play players.  You might have to spend a lot of resources upgrading your Golem to turn them into MK2s, but even lower level Ao Juns could dracarys them to heaps of molten iron.

Would you spend on blinging your training wheels?  Personally, I won’t.  But I’m not discrediting older bots.  Actually, I want them to get buffed!

How to make old bots viable in higher leagues?

You just can’t.  Seriously.  Again, I’m not saying that they’re worthless.  There are players who still play in Champions with old bots, but they’re usually head over heels with their pet bots.  They ‘re having fun with their setups.  If you are a competitive player and trying to climb by emulating what they’re doing, things won’t go well for you.  Trust me. Just get a meta bot.  It will save you from a lot of heartache and your silver as well.

So, am I offering a solution or just ranting? If given a chance, what would I do to make old bots viable?

It’s actually easy to say to just buff old bots. But then, if they become too strong, who would spend on newer content?  If I’m Pixonic, of course I’d see things from a business perspective, I won’t just directly buff the old bots.  I’d probably fiddle around with MK2. Yes, MK2.

MK2ing a bot like Griffin only gives it 20% more HP, which is probably just a single burst from a full shotgun setup, so it’s not a lot.  Still, you can see players going that direction just because they like the bot.  So, why not reward them?  What if when you upgrade an old bot to MK2, you unlock module slot(s)?  I’m sure Leo would welcome that extra space for another HAK.  At max level, they can even add a little something to their skills?

Would you like to see a Cossack having 1-second phase shift in the air? Or the Griffin having energy shield on jump or just an extra boost of speed upon landing?  How about the Rhino being more Rhino-esque, with ramming damage depending on the distance it ran? 

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’m not expecting Pixo to go with my suggestions.  (Actually, I even had ridiculous what if thoughts of having faction-based specialties at max level using old factions, like Brit bots having shield repair; Russian bots having an extra active slot, but doubles all powercell usage; Wild West bots having innate bonus damage upon Quickdraw instead of pilot skill; German bots having an extra slot for HAK only, etc.)  I do hope though that they revisit older bots as it feels it’s a waste to just let them collect dust or be just training wheels.  Of course, I’m not expecting them to be at par with the newer ones, but at least give them some fighting chance. Or at least throw a bone for those who devoted time and resources for a bot that they love.

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What’s your worst BR experience?

Mine’s probably when I had a Zenith Fury teammate who spent the first minutes of the game standing next to an uncapped beacon.

I noticed an uncapped one at the beacon score and I searched for the uncapped one. Lo and behold, I found it next to a teammate and I ended up capping it myself.  The Fury must have thought he’s a planet-killer and can’t be disturbed, even though he’s firing a Nerf gun.

With the titans coming to the game, I’ve noticed the increasing importance of having a good beacon lead early on.  Back then, without the titans, if the enemy team has no tank in their lineup, they’ll be forced to hold and defend their beacons with whatever bots they have.

Now, every player has a giant defender. Imagine if you’re four beacons behind and you decided to do a mid or late game beacon run.  It’s more than likely that the enemy has a titan fully charged to defend.  Titans might be slow but they can just stand on top of a beacon and you won’t be able to get it. And if ever you try to 1v1 the said titan, its tons of HP would probably be enough to buy time for its teammates to spawn on that said beacon. 

This is what I’ve experienced in most of my games. It’s harder to get a comeback beacon run since most players have titans up their sleeves.  I guess this is just one of the ways titans could impact the meta.

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While searching for ways to get a skin for my Gareth, I found some links that might be useful for newer players. Most of these I found in Meet Arnold YouTube channel. I tested them out if they work and luckily, they do. The only catch is you can only use one link to get a reward. So, you must choose wisely. I added screencaps of my tests for evidence. Unfortunately, I was not able to save one for Aero Patton. I’m certain I got it once, but I was not able to screencap it for reasons still unbeknownst to me. I tried it again and again to no avail. Now, I’m not even sure if I really did it or I was imagining stuff. LOL.

Anyway, the links are in the video descriptions. The vid links are shown below with the screencaps.

Why didn’t I just put the link directly? Well, I spent time skimming through the vids to find out what the rewards are. Put on some effort at least, you lazy bag of bones! 😀

Aero Patton + Punishers – As mentioned, I don’t have a screencap for this and I’m not sure now if this even works.

Vermilion Boa + Thunder and Punisher T

Leo + Kangdae and Molots. Found two links for this. One from Meet Arnold and another from Reigarw Comparisons.

RDB Griffin. There is another link from Crimz0n Ragersaures

Vityaz + Pinata and Thunder

Vermilion Patton + Punishers

Another link for Vermilion Patton

Vermilion Golem + Tulumbas, Pins, Kangdae

Vermilion Destrier

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For new players who want to maximize this, I would suggest the Leo or the Griffin. Both can carry you to higher leagues (a level 6 RDB Griffin got me to Expert while a Leo could be built as your first brawler). Personally, I wanted the Vermilion Boa since they’re out of the market and I want to keep one as a souvenir. Unfortunately, I got the Vermilion Patton for my account and was not able to get Boa.

Anyway, I hope this helps the new as well as the old players (100 Au and 400,000 Ag ain’t that bad after all).

Modules (and powercells), since they’ve been introduced to the game, had impacted War Robots (well, I guess Yan-Di is to be blamed for this according to WR lore) in a lot of ways. Shieldbreaker has just been recently added, leading to the god of war’s downfall.  Still, I believe that nothing is more game-warping than Phase Shift. It’s just annoying when you’re about to deal the death blow to your target only to see it go into incorporeal state. It’s not just a get out of jail card, but an outplay tool. It serves as a sort of virtual ability extender, especially on Leech. Coupled with Foolhardy Quartermaster and Last Stand, it adds a lot of invulnerability to the game, which in my opinion, shouldn’t exist in multiple forms, especially for a shooter game.

I’ve been lurking around WWR subreddit and FB groups and  have read a lot of posts regarding phase shifts and powercells and how they tend to warp the game. Personally, I believe the Phase Shift should at least be toned down.  Disabling reloads is one step to at least decrease its overall power. I think I’ve seen some suggestions like allowing a phaseshifted bot to attack another phaseshifted, which kind of makes sense as they’re probably in a same spiritual plane of sorts.

What I have in mind is inspired by my enthusiasm for Mechwarrior. In the Battletech universe, there exists the concept of heat.  Running, for example, or using energy weapons generate heat which can then slowly build up.  When a mech overheats, it needs to shutdown in order to cool up or use a coolant to reduce heat. Heat buildup can also be mitigated by adding lots of heatsinks to your mech, although I won’t be suggesting the addition of  coolants and heatsinks to WR. I will be focusing more on heat.

I’m thinking more about gating the usage of powercells by making it heat up a bot. Also, some weapons would be able to inflict “heat damage” to enemy bots, thereby limiting their usage of powercells. The concept is shown in the image below.

As per the image, getting to 100% heat will temporarily shutdown weapon systems, while going over that would disable both weapon and bot ability systems temporarily. I said before that weapons also cause heat damage, right? Heat damage is maxed out at 75%, so that they can’t disable enemy bots by themselves. 

Let us think of a scenario. A red bot gets attacked by a blue bot with flamer weapons and got its heat to 75%. The moment it uses Phase Shift, its heat reaches critical levels. It’s still able to shift out but once it’s back, critical overheat causes its weapons and abilities to malfunction for a short duration.

Now, let’s talk about weapons. The image below shows weapons that deal heat damage.

Why did I choose these weapons? Well, you’ll notice that these weapons have 350 and 300 ranges. I just thought that it would be good to incentivize them at least for going into that range. The 350 range plasma weapons deal low but significant heat damage. I haven’t assigned any values yet, but let’s just imagine that emptying a clip could cause 10% heat. I didn’t include Redeemer because it’s strong enough on its own. But then it’s OK too to add, I guess. Well, we’re just pooping up crazy ideas anyway.

For medium heat damage (around 20% per emptied clip), I put the Flamer weapons. Originally, I placed them at high, but thought that they have higher range than the explosive rockets. I think that giving them heat damage is also rewarding since they’re tricky to aim with.

Explosive rockets deal high (close to 30% per clip emptied perhaps) heat damage. I guess they could be some sort of incendiary rockets. My thought here is their splash got nerfed, so giving them high heat damage would somehow give them some sort of value. And since the addition of cryo, I even thought of having them deal some DOT since they’ll be the fire rockets in contrast to the ice ones. I’m thinking along the lines of reducing impact damage but transferring it to a damage resist-ignoring DOT. Although that would be bad for the burst. I don’t know. LOL. I am just making things up anyway.

Cryo rockets would be the weird ones. Instead of dealing heat damage, they lower it. Hitting your teammates too would reduce their heat damage. But what would be the incentive for using them? I thought of having them equipped reduces the amount of heat damage that the bot is going to take. In this way, those who want to go heavy on powercells would choose them.

How about other weapons, you say? Energy shotguns are already popular. I just thought that this might help other weapons stay relevant at least.

With regard to module heat generation, refer to the image below.

I haven’t assigned values yet, but I guess ARU and Phase Shift could cause 50% heat, Death Mark, Lockdown ammo, and Shieldbreaker 30%, and Repair Unit and Quantum Radar at 20%. Last Stand and Anti-Control would generate heat upon triggering. Anyway, the values I assigned on weapons were just pulled out of nowhere.

How about Foolhardy Quartermaster and other module-related pilot skills? Well, for FQ, I’m thinking of having it reduce hit A BIT when triggered. 

Other ways to reduce heat

The only thing that I thought of is standing still for a while and not firing weapons would make heat levels to gradually decrease. Well, Pixonic can also add heatsink modules to reduce heat generation probably.

How will this affect the meta?

Actually, I’m not really sure. LOL. I’m wondering Tarans and Magnums might make it back at least. Same with Orkans and Pinatas. We’ll probably see more Cryo Leeches. Not really sure. I just feel this will add another layer of complexity to the game. 

How will this benefit Pixonic? This is actually a tricky question. Powercell consumption will be drastically reduced, I guess, so it wouldn’t be a benefit at all. But at least, reducing invincibility stacking would reduce the one-sided game scenarios. I don’t think invincibility is bad. It’s just that too much of it can be frustrating to most players. Yes, we can all say GIT GUD and bait abilities, blah-blah, but that doesn’t take away the fact that stacked invincibility is ridiculous.

Anyway, I’m just another player speaking out my thoughts. I still believe that Phase Shift should at least be toned down a bit as games tend to be a powercell race instead of a strategic shooter that it should be.

I guess this is it for now. Thanks for bearing with my toilet thoughts and again, see y’all in the battlefield.