Game Design The Problem With Intelligence

Spoiler: PreTLDR

meme stolen from @Madkurre

Alright, So I've been doing (bad) builds for a while now, and I've come to the conclusion Intelligence is having a negative effect on the game in its current state, and since I'm bored, I'm going to make a thread about it


So, what does each skill point do, exactly? Well, my uninformed reader, let me copy paste the wiki for you.

Strength (Earth) increases all damage dealt
Dexterity (Thunder) increases the chance to do double damage on a hit
Intelligence (Water) decreases mana cost for spells
Defense (Fire) decreases the amount of damage received
Agility (Air) increase chance to ignore all damage from a hit

At first glance, everything looks alright so far. but if you take time to divide the skill points into groups, you get this:

Offensive: Strength/Dexterity

Defensive: Defense/Air

Spells: Intelligence

And this is where you start to see a problem. Strength and Dexterity compete for your offensive stat, while defense and agility compete for your defensive stat. All of them help your offense/defense in different ways, but they all compete against another skill point. But then you have the subject of this thread, Intelligence. Intel has no competitor in its respective category. If you want a spell focused build, you need to stack a ton of intel into your build, otherwise is not optimal.


Alright, so intelligence rules all in spell builds. So what? Well, let me explain in one sentence.

Most builds are spell or have spell components.

Whether you are spell spam, a member of the cult of hybrid, or even a non-lifesteal tank, you're going to want intelligence to access your sweet sweet spells better and more often. No other element has the raw versatility that intelligence presents.

But intelligence has isn't the end all be all when it comes to using spells, Such as mana regen. However, if you look at many of the endgame items that have mana regen, you realize that most of them have some kind of intelligence requirement. And an element having such a hold on one of, if not the best, ID's in the game (the only thing that makes me hesitate on it being the best ID is attack speed tier), is already one of the most powerful elements of the game, regardless of it's effect.

Spoiler: If you don't think MR is one of the top ID's in the game

Ding Dong your opinion is wrong

So, How do I think it should be fixed? I see a few options.

A̶d̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶l̶l̶ ̶r̶e̶l̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶I̶D̶

Not going to happen and not going to work.

Rework Intelligence.

This sounds good on paper, but the more you think about it the more holes this has. changing it to an offensive/defensive element would harm the balance of the other id's, and this would make spell build's join super slow melee in bad build land, as spells would cost a ton.


Nerf Intel's effect, And make spells slightly cheaper in mana cost.

This is my preferred option. This would let intelligence still keep its identity, but let's other builds that don't stack intelligence shine more, as the spells would be cheaper.



Alright, Hopefully, I did a good job at explaining my thoughts. Have a nice day.



TLDR; Intel is unopposed in it's function, and that function is very important while playing the game

 

what happens when u fall in love with recharge noire: bete noire will whisper lewd things into your ear until youve spent all your skill points into it, then youll have 20 to spend on intelligence which will leave you ineffective and alone and you start hating the base concepts of the game because intelligence is your daddy that you cant leave alone or else any big bad bitch like noire you want to date wont work out because your daddy's mad at your for not paying enough attention to him

the sad story of lemon and his abusive relationship but the abuser is actually his dad who doesnt want his son to date these weirdoes

 

how did you manage to find a problem with intelligence but not with agility, like 80% chance to not take damage isnt op at all

 

Alright typing this on a phone so this may not make any sense. Agility is not OP, due to the fact that when you build around agility, you will typically be very glassy. So while you may Dodge 80 percent of attacks, the ones that do hit will do a lot of damage. it also competes with defense for being a defensive element

 

>:(

 

Archer hybrid is occult

 

I think intelligence is fine as it is. There are plenty of items that counter the effects of intelligence, so I don’t see what you mean by there’s nothing to counter it.

Most of all, I don’t see how this ruins the balance. Sure you could argue that spell builds in general are more viable than melee ones, but why does that matter? Unless it breaks the game by killing an endgame boss like Qira in 10 seconds, or a gimmick is completely useless, then it’s unbalanced. But I never had intelligence ruin the experience of the game. So idk. Maybe I’m looking at it wrong. I just don’t see how it’s much of a problem like say Cactus builds or pre-nerf Cancer Apocs or all Hive builds.

 

Think about it this way.

Practically every spell build (the wide majority of hybrid builds too) tends to stack at least 68 intelligence because stacking intelligence is just that much more effective at building up dps than strength or dexterity.

Intelligence doesn't feel overpowered because it has essentially created the basis for practically every spell build. It's so strong, we become practically blind to it. You have to step back away to see it.

It's not that water builds are op, it's that the skill itself is so op that every elemental spell build, regardless of type stacks 68 int at the very least.

To put it as "Lemon Noire" has, Intel is overcentralizing.

 

Is that a bad thing though? Sure we want most build options to be viable, but I’m not quite sure how much the gameplay would improve if intel was nerfed. Plus the designer’s intent was to have intel focused around spells/mana.

 

The issue lies in spells builds being stronger than those other types of builds, making spell builds the center of the metagame. If spells were say equivalent to melee then sure, it'd be fine. But they're not, and that's due to again intelligence's power as a skill.

 

Eh... I still don’t have strong feelings about it. I don’t think there is a strong reason for them to be completely equal since melee builds are somewhat viable. It seems to me that the developers intended the player to use their spells more since they wanted to make use of their features. Just because something is meta doesn’t mean it breaks the game.

 

Likewise something that is meta can still break the game. Intelligence boosts damage capabilities much more than Dexterity or Strength.

%dmg boosts from Strength and Dex only modify base damage, meaning they don't affect %dmg from gear or armor specials.

Intel on the other hand literally increases the number of spells you can output, meaning it basically multiplies the effect %dmg from gear or armor specials (just like attack speed).

This illustrates why Intel is not just meta, but inherently extremely potent.

The devs also intended each skill to be similarly valuable because they expect you to choose between them, so Intel shouldn't be so powerful.

Yes armor and weapons can balance out a skill point, but only to a certain degree. At some point people will just stack the skill point onto a build with gear of a completely different element.

 

I would just find it kinda annoying to wait much longer for my spells to recharge. And plus even if you did nerf the skill point (which would screw up the trend of the scaling factor of the other skill points), people could still stack a shit ton of mana.

I would just nerf all of the spells damage wise.