Magicka Developer Diary
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 1334
We considered several different approaches to modifying ice shards, discussing different ways to balance them out. During this process, we revisited their damage formula, to see how ice shard damage was calculated. We found that the original formula spawned more and more ice shards the more ice you had charged up, and applied the same damage to all of them. For example, using 4x ice and 1x arcane would give you 12 shards, each of which would do the same damage as if you had 1x ice and 1x arcane. Now, this might sound good in theory, but experience showed that these ice shards were a little too powerful.
The solution was to divide the damage based on the number of ice shards not in a 1:1 way, but gradually, to even out the damage. This lowered the damage somewhat, and eliminated the scaling problem. But it didn't solve the issue of ice spamming. Spamming was still effective, especially in close range, and this compromised the gameplay. After all, we don't want every encounter determined by a competition of which player can spam faster.
