Supporter newsletter 73

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This is a copy of Eternal and Diamond Supporter Newsletter #73, published by Grinding Gear Games.

Hello Supporters,

The one month leagues have now started, beginning with both Anarchy and Invasion at once. In a few days, the race will switch to being both Anarchy and Ambush.

This week, I'm going to tell you about the development of Ball Lightning, one of our most anticipated skills.

--Rory

The History of Ball Lightning

Ball Lightning has gone through a lot of changes since we first decided it would become a player skill. Today I'll go through some of the many adjustments that were made to the skill from when it was first set up as a player skill to when it was released in patch 1.1.5.

The skill was originally based entirely on Piety's Ball Lightning. From the start, we knew that Slower Projectiles would be very powerful, so we gave the projectile a duration. This is because projectiles usually have a maximum distance rather than a maximum duration, meaning with greatly reduced projectile speed you could have thousands of balls (of lightning) on the screen at once.

The art was the next thing to change. Piety's own Ball Lightning effect has a light attached (lights cause problems when there are more than four sources), and was too large when the player used it with Multiple Projectiles (multiple orbs overlapped and filled the screen with flashy effects). The effect was modified to better suit having multiple projectiles at once, and became quite similar to the version we have in game today. Our effects artist Russell wasn't entirely happy with it, so the skill was put on hold until we had some new effects tech available.

Carl experimented with the damage of the skill, and gave it a cooldown. At this point, the skill was accidentally released in the form of a quest reward. Players were able to play with the skill in game for a short time, though it was far from balanced. You can see how the skill looked at that time in this video from Ziggy D: http://youtu.be/ZImFVbySAeM. After that, the skill was quickly disabled.

Once we had some new effects available, I took over the balance of the skill with the intent of releasing it in 1.1.5 or 1.2.0. I experimented with the cooldown (which I decided to remove), increasing the projectile speed (which reduced the damage to individual targets, but made the skill a better ranged attack), increased the frequency of damage intervals (From one zap every .8 of a second down to every .2 of a second), and adjusted the mana cost and damage to compensate. The cast time was also reduced to .8 of a second from one second, to make it feel better on characters with low cast speed.

The Multiple Projectile support gems were proving problematic for balance, as the skill always did more damage with more projectiles. Because of this, Carl and Jonathan decided to change the mechanic of the skill so that it couldn't “shotgun”, meaning that multiple projectiles from the same spell cast wouldn't all be able to zap the same target. This made the choice of whether to use Lesser or Greater Multiple Projectiles an interesting one for the player, whether to get increased area of damage in exchange for less damage to each target.

The projectile change and the frequency of damage intervals change also affected many monster varieties that used Ball Lightning, so the monster versions of the skill also had to be rebalanced. The end result is more consistent, less spiky damage from most Ball Lightning-using monsters.

A few more minor tweaks were made to the damage and mana costs after testing the skill on a variety of characters, and then the skill was ready for release.

You can now find the gem in Cruel difficulty on all Intelligence based characters. Enjoy!

-- Rory

Insider Info

This week we have an early concept image of the stone golems first seen in Act 2. These creature are known internally as “Moss Monsters”.

http://i.imgur.com/Yfo3KWB.jpg