Suggestions for upcoming patch

I just finished Victor Vran and got couple of nice idea from that game. I didnt grind toward 100% since I rather finish other game instead (really wish have time for it).

1. Gamepad support
Probably not doable without proper input hook and it hard to code for online purpose. The game play nicely with controller with dedicated dodge, weapon switching and jump. Additionally it have auto-aim so wouldnt struggle much to get precise aiming. I tried to do it in median myself, but aiming skill is kinda tricky.

2. Toggle-able difficulty / reward
VV have 5 type hexes which add slight difficulty for player, in return reward player with magic find and exp gain. Median used to have this feature in past called Hard Mode Charm. I believe it was removed because player can abuse it by become hostile with each other since the item grant aura that give bonus stats to hostile.

3. Map Challenges
VV have various map challenges that play around with activating specific hexes combination. Some of them are time-based which required player to kill specific amount of enemy while the hexes on from the start of the game (can reset map in game). Additional other type of challenges are including "killing monster with specific weapon", "killing specific amount of enemies without taking damage", "destroy specific objects" etc

4. Weapon switching and Playstyle
The game doesnt have skill tree like in normal ARPG, so it designed to play around with "suits/armor" and weapons setup (think like dark souls / bloodborne with specific weapon animation). This probably not doable in sigma, but I really wish there are a specific gear that can be powerful but have negative effect that player will switch around depending on their build (like most new chaos RW). Median have weapon switching, but most people used it as pre-buff gear (shamanka on switch) rather than using 2 weapons that different purpose for different encounter

5. Cards / Charm with limited resource
One of median "problems" was bloated amount of charms which seem like the only way to progress in end game. In VV, the destiny cards function are kinda like change-able passive with limited (5 max) slots and you have very limited amount of destiny points. You wouldnt able to wear all powerful cards since it have it own cost and some of unique cards are only allowed 1 in the deck. This feature is the similar one in the game Paladins. Additionally, these cards can be upgraded multiple times and it also have branching part for upgrades like divine (random defensive bonus) and wicked (random offensive bonus)

6. Upgrade ingredient
4 Main ingredient for transmuting in that game are weapons, demon power, destiny cards and power stone. When you want to upgrade specific gear's stats (think like upgrade to max of affix range or new tier affix), you will required tons of specific combination of ingredient. Basically it made your gear not exactly useless since you can cascade upgrade them until you have perfect gear. Upgrading to new tier however, still required some luck though. Basically, if we implement in sigma, it more about collecting specific type of gear with correct rarity to upgrade your gear rather than buying it from vendor.

There are probably more stuff I forgot and didnt managed to explore since I immediately uninstalled it after finished the games.
Thank you for reading.

While those ideas are fine by themselves, Median should stay far, far away from Victor Vran Mechanics. That game is decidedly different, and weapon switching in particular isn't something i'm interested in with Median.

You're basically just saying "turn Median into Victor Vran", while median has enjoyed moderately more success than Victor Vran BECAUSE it's not like Victor Vran. I own the game on steam as well, and I would say that the game is fine for what it does, but definitely isn't comparable to Median.

Crafting cards are so unnecessary, there are already so so many ways to design your character, that cards would just be redundant and pointless.

I'm not shitting on your suggestions man, everyone has their own little ideas.

I'll probs get negs for days for saying this, as there are exceptions and there are situations which suit the build, but having said that;

Summoners are just plain outclassed by direct builds. They aren't terrible, there are exceptions, but I feel unless you have really great gear, they're just too tedious and ineffective to use. I'm no expert, and if you have an alternative stance with reasons, explain them to me. Not to have an epeen contest, but so I can genuinely learn something. Otherwise, summoners are just not very fun for me, and are less effective than manual builds.

"you already voted today, you can vote again in 13 hours"
Totally agree, but it would be hard to balance without making hybrid builds op. Specially necromancer. But I guess they have totems so...
But yeah make summoner barb great again!

Heathen wrote:Summoners are just plain outclassed by direct builds. They aren't terrible, there are exceptions, but I feel unless you have really great gear, they're just too tedious and ineffective to use. I'm no expert, and if you have an alternative stance with reasons, explain them to me. Not to have an epeen contest, but so I can genuinely learn something. Otherwise, summoners are just not very fun for me, and are less effective than manual builds.

Well, that's because:
1. You can't command your summons to attack 1 target all at once (except when you teleport directly onto a single enemy. But even then as soon as other monsters come, the damage spreads and is thus divided). The point is: reliable Splash damage is rare on summons and nearly every skilltree can dash out lots of AoE dmg within a short amount of time. Summons most of the time can't.
2. You have to focus more on minion life and resistances than on minion dmg because you need the summons to survive (or you'll end up being unable to reposition yourself if you have to resummon your minions constantly and you'll die before you know it).
3. There are too many 1-hit mechanics that will simply wreck all of your minions within seconds. (except for hoplites that survive nearly anything with 1 point)
4. attack animations of minions are very slow compared to melee builds. UHM hits every 4-5 frames while 1 minions takes at least 1 second for 1 hit.
5. minions aren't smart. Rampagors for example will hit 1 target until it's dead. Even though the enemy is poisoned for 2 seconds or longer. Smart minions could use that time to spread the poison and simply attack other monsters around them.
6. most minions block each other (except for lamias). Just look at maggot lair. I hated that level as a summoner in cLoD.

This could be cured by:
- giving minions more life in general and a set %avoid like hoplites but with a lower %. I think they already have some avoid, but I can't say for sure because server lagg may display my minions wrong.
- getting rid of 1-hit mechanics in some ubers
- giving minions a faster attack animation
- reworking VK in general because it is OP as long as it survives, but its side effect on death sucks too much for it to be useful in ubers
- giving minions a smarter KI (which is most likely not possible)
- giving minions more reliable AoE attacks (which can get imba very fast)
- make all minions like lamias (unable to block each other) (or reduce number of summons and increase stats)
- adding more skills to make use of minions positions like the necromancers barrage that you cast on minions. A caster version would be nice.

EDIT:
another solution:
- make minions walk in front of you, so you don't have to wait until they finally sneak towards your enemies.
- make minions walkspeed variable depending on your own, so you don't have to wait for them to teleport near you or walk slowly towards your enemies.

You broke that down pretty impressively. Cookie when I can. It's nice that someone gets it.

Heathen wrote:Summoners are just plain outclassed by direct builds. They aren't terrible, there are exceptions, but I feel unless you have really great gear, they're just too tedious and ineffective to use. I'm no expert, and if you have an alternative stance with reasons, explain them to me. Not to have an epeen contest, but so I can genuinely learn something. Otherwise, summoners are just not very fun for me, and are less effective than manual builds.

Batstrike is a very fun summoner alternative* - I would like to see more crazy summon ideas and a viably way for veil king.

*but summoning an army takes ages since everything dies so fast

HechtHeftig wrote:- make minions walk in front of you, so you don't have to wait until they finally sneak towards your enemies.

I feel like this single improvement would improve summoners substantially. I think it's a pretty neat fix I haven't considered before.

Summoners was losing their useful since early of ultimative since Marco add some much power creep that made them fall behind quite fast compared to other build. Last time the build was treat differently since it have powerful tools in early game compared to caster / WDM which lead to their nerf (I believe this was during Laz time).

It is still useful for new player to build around them, then switching gear toward hybrid making the summon toward a meatshield rather than source of damage. Teleport + tons of Minions strategy still work in old ubers but fail greatly at higher difficulty uber. Pure caster / WDM have more easier time with high dmg and reanimate proc than hybrid summoners.

..... I was about to write essay about their problems but I already did it long time ago, link below :
http://www.medianxl.com/t952-what-about-summon

krimid wrote:Make goodberry a passive skill. Keeping up a supply of goodberries takes no skill, it is just tedious. Also sometimes I fuck up my rare items and turn them into berries.

- Along this same line, Symbol of Esu is very tedious to use. Having it be a unique item that goes in your belt that doesn't get used up but has a very short timer between uses would be cool.

kiki22vu wrote:There i no problem in "good" players being good and the fact they get stuff done rather quickly and then get bored fast. I have easy solution for them and for any other cuz its tested and proven = play the game selffound and dont trade for su or misc.

The problem is the "good" players dont only make themself bored they make any other player aswell wich buys stuff off from them, cuz those guys who buy charms dont need to gear up for specific uber and get those charms they can keep farming or whatever they do, but farming and running same places over and over again gets u bored.

So its important to slow down those charm sellers (only charm no items) cuz it has impact on whole realm.

In the end im fine with few "good" guys being bored after first week vs. whole realm being bored after 1 month.

- You can't trade for charms that you have to cube with swirlies on you. So make all ubers require cube with swirlies. Problem would be dying after you kill the uber, so maybe if there is a way to keep the swirlies going after death? Though I guess there would have to be a way to prevent charm buyers from just joining your game while you kill the uber and also getting the swirlies.

- Other than the Heroic shield issues, most heroic bosses are basically just summoning bosses that take a long time to summon. Would make more sense to consolidate them into summon or dungeons depending on whether or not it would make sense for them to always spawn or not.

- A permanent TP item would be cool. In realm you can get friend/multi-window with an alt to make a TP and you use it permanently. An item that does effectively the same thing would be cool.