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Suggestion Nerf Buffing Golems with Ancient Ingots / Healing with Iron Ingots

Kylaz

Member
As it stands, Buffed golems deal 4 hearts of damage (pure damage, meaning they ignore invuln frames, so you can get crit at the same time and take up to 7 hearts of damage if it was a 3 heart crit). We also have the vanilla mechanic where you can heal golems with iron ingots. I think that these 2 mechanics combined are a bit OP. The intention of creating a non PvP Oriented role for conquest is good, but in practice these golems deal too much damage and are too easy to heal. I think Loka expected the cost of AIs to buff a golem to be a steep one but it is quite obvious that active players can afford it easily, which is why we often see golems buffed all the time when enemy players are on the Tgen. Some sort of nerf should be implemented, atleast to buffing golems, to make it a bit easier for the side pushing the enemy building to do so. Possible nerfs include:
  • Decreasing the damage these golems do
  • Making it so they do not do pure damage, or changing how this works to make eating 6.5-7 hearts of damage in a tick a less likely occurrence
  • Add some sort of cooldown (the fact there isn't one on the vanilla healing golems is a bit bizarre, I have seen players hold right click with iron ingots and they keep a golem immortal)
Other ideas are welcome too, it is also worth noting that Cryptite often suggests "drawing aggro" in order to effectively counter these buffed golems, but this is often easier said than done in practice. Golem behavior is sometimes a bit unpredictable. They lock onto someone and completely ignore the other player(s) hitting them to go for that person and so on. Basically, I think Loka should realize that a lot of concepts are good in theory, but might not work so well in practice given the wonky nature of Minecraft. Thanks for reading
TLDR: Golems Buffed with AIs do much damage, very fast, ignore invuln frames, nerf them in some way (ex. cooldown)
 
38 voters
Shards already have a great impact on fights. Poor town often struggle to provide their people with items and pots, and you would sometimes see towns being unable to warp after like 40 minutes of constant fighting, due to them running out of pots. Moreover to the economical factor, AI's are pretty much the only way where shards stop circulating around the entire economy. You also have that 5% tax, but its not that significant. Making people use a crap ton of AI's is good for lokas economy, and it makes some players grind a bit more, making the server more active, and that's what we all want. It's crazy how a silly golem buff can make the server more active, isn't it? Also what what777 said, paying people 50k to teamkill on a fight is way more costly, then buffing golems a bunch of times.
well again as ive said three times now none of those things directly affect conquest mechanics they affect the players warping and potions made
 
The only issue that this new feature represents is how much of a resource sink it is, they should either nerf it to be in line with most other features like iron ingot healing through any of the suggestions that have been provided to give a small but noticeable increase to a teams performance or change the resource from AIs to something else, imagine if webbed bolas instead of being a relatively priceless item that was easily farmable for low costs was instead an incredibly expensive item like 16 diamonds per bola

The price of this feature is an issue because it increases the gap of strength from a broke town (a town which can barely sustain itself on pots like vinovia) versus a town which can burn stacks of AIs every fight to have a noticeable increase

loka has always attempted to the best of their abilities to make sure that In terms of an individual players performance, was equal more or less field. Someone who had been grinding for an hour can have the exact same impact on a fight provided they are as skilled as another player, (Backed up by mending being nerfed for conquest and no skulkers in e chests). With the introduction of locking this feature behind an incredibly expensive wall ( it sets a bad precedent that loka could follow in the future that bodes poorly for the ability of new players to participate in conquest and have the same impact as older and more wealthy towns


Tldr: meta switch up isn’t bad in itself it’s the execution of the method and pay locking it to such a degree which is
 
Shards already have a great impact on fights. Poor town often struggle to provide their people with items and pots, and you would sometimes see towns being unable to warp after like 40 minutes of constant fighting, due to them running out of pots. Moreover to the economical factor, AI's are pretty much the only way where shards stop circulating around the entire economy. You also have that 5% tax, but its not that significant. Making people use a crap ton of AI's is good for lokas economy, and it makes some players grind a bit more, making the server more active, and that's what we all want. It's crazy how a silly golem buff can make the server more active, isn't it? Also what what777 said, paying people 50k to teamkill on a fight is way more costly, then buffing golems a bunch of times.
1. That’s not necessarily a money issue, it’s a resource issue. While pot mats can be bought with money the most effective way of getting it is by grinding (which is pure profit) using AIs on golems instead requires you to spend money which is why even though it’s technically worth less then the shulker of gunpowder you used for the fight it’s much easier to acquire because you don’t have to spend money to get it.


Everything else you brought up is a culture / non dev side issue and not related at all nor even an “intended” feature.
 
i definitely think AIing a golem every 15 seconds for the entire duration of the fight takes more work than...
Something being more work makes it weaker, I don't see how that means it should be nerfed. Also you never said it was about "conquest mechanics", you said shards should never have impact on a fight.

Ancient Ingots themselves are an addition by Loka to repair armor in a way that fits the Loka conquest gamemode. This is a conquest mechanic that directly takes shards (AIs) to use. Defensive mods are another conquest mechanic that directly takes resources to use. This line of argument is just weak, if buffing the golems is too expensive, argue for making it more affordable. If golems are too strong, argue for nerfing them on the basis of gameplay impact as others have done in the thread. Making the argument about it being unprecedented and not fitting conquest mode is just not true, and detracts from the actual issue.
 
Defensive mods are another conquest mechanic that directly takes resources to use. This line of argument is just weak, if buffing the golems is too expensive, argue for making it more affordable. If golems are too strong, argue for nerfing them on the basis of gameplay impact as others have done in the thread. Making the argument about it being unprecedented and not fitting conquest mode is just not true, and detracts from the actual issue.
Defensive mod resources aren’t shards they have value but they aren’t the value
 
Defensive mod resources aren’t shards they have value but they aren’t the value
AIs aren't shards by that logic, because they are fungible yet not the same. The only difference is that AIs are easier to get than some modding mats because the server sells them, rather than the market, which may not have the material you need for sale. So I'd say physical resources are in fact more restrictive than actual shards.

If you don't like mining to get AIs, you can grind potion materials and sell them for shards. The market makes shards and resources fungible, with resources as explained above being more restrictive to obtain than shards.
There are many more ways to get shards than to get a specific resource in all cases.

If buffing golems instead took the equivalent amount of ores as their worth in shards, the cost would be the same, and it would still be too expensive or too cheap regardless of being a resource instead of shards (ignoring AIs are also a resource, that can be acquired in more ways than a lot of other resources, technically since shrines, golems, drop them unlike for example... coral that only grows in the sea).
 
the way to switchup the meta is not adding something that can randomly result in an instant -7 hearts if your unlucky causing the player to likely just die 👨‍🦲

if i was a new recruit and just got full nuked by a golem id just quit it's not fun
 
instant -7 hearts if your unlucky causing the player to likely just die
This is indeed my main issue with golems, but I believe my suggestion higher up in the thread would solve that issue. Apart from cases where you literally get hit by someone and golem at the exact same tick, I haven't thought of a way to prevent that from happening. The earlier suggestion of instead making it a bleed that delays the damage over a period of time could perhaps fix it.

Ps. Remove Robin hood, if i was a random recruit and take 8 hearts of dmg from one arrow and just died, I'd quit it's just not fun. (This is a joke I don't think robin hood actually should be removed.)
 
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Ps. Remove Robin hood, if i was a random recruit and take 8 hearts of dmg from one arrow and just died, I'd quit it's just not fun.
a rare war where everyone including yourself carries a bow and your expecting to take 8 hearts if you get shot (crusalis rp) is much different than just playing normally going to your average war then just randomly being nuked by a golem and player hitting you at the same time...
 
a rare war where everyone including yourself carries a bow and your expecting to take 8 hearts
I don't think robin hood should be removed, but I do think the burst the golems do is a weak argument to remove them entirely given there are better ways to solve it.

As robin hood being understandable for recruits I very much disagree. They're unlikely to know what a mutator even is, nor will they be able to cope with people flying around on elytras. Even experienced players like Ez2Clutch fully ragequit the server after a robin hood fight, right?

But, that's not a reason for robin hood to be removed. It adds something fun to the game, something different, something that allows players and alliences to specialize, similarly to golems.
 
AIs aren't shards by that logic, because they are fungible yet not the same. The only difference is that AIs are easier to get than some modding mats because the server sells them, rather than the market, which may not have the material you need for sale. So I'd say physical resources are in fact more restrictive than actual shards.
you listed multiple fiat currencies and things that only have value because the playerbase only gives it value, the only one of these with a hard and fast value are AIs (Note I do not consider killing golems a way of grinding it because no one does it) 5 years ago Shulkers of GP used to be worth much more but AIs have always remained a shard locked resource

forcing a hard and fast value locks people out of using it which will (obviously) lead to cope threads like this because they aren’t using it to the same degree. When a mechanic is completely untested and disproportionally benefits people based on their alliance wealth it leads to cope like this which is why there’s such a alliance split between the rich HL who can spam it a lot more then the poorer scouts / Kylaz who can’t spam it as much.

Overall the mechanic was released completely broken and Overpowered while giving one a side a clearly major unfair advantage with 0 possibility for community feedback which leads to cope like this l.
 
The mechanic of buffing golems has a massive impact on conquest. Unlike a mutator, this change affects every conquest fight. It is specifically designed to be powerful - and so it is; it provides a real threat, one that can significantly alter the outcome of every fight.

However, the only "balancing" that this mechanic has is an outside-of-conquest detriment: a shard cost. This is just poorly designed: why is the only balancing factor something unrelated to the conquest environment? This provides a literal direct money to outcome line for conquest. It means you can basically just hurl money at the fight and change the outcome.

Furthermore, while things like pots, pearls, gear, etc. cost shards, the usage of these apparatuses require skill. In contrast, what skill is there to right clicking a golem? It's doing the fighting for you. There is no cooldown, no detriment to just right clicking the golem every 15 seconds. This is not a good "role" in conquest. A role should be something you can get better at. The "skill" in this mechanic comes from money, from grinding; from something almost unrelated to conquest (You are also literally just grinding shards, so its about as unrelated as it can get, in contrast to something like pearls, pot mats, or food - specifically for conquest). This is a bad choice for game design. If players cannot get "better" at something, yet continue to do it, it is good for the state of the game? People will spend their time doing something they simply cannot get better at. They will not improve from this mechanic. All they will do is convert playtime - OUTSIDE OF CONQUEST, might I add, - into an outcome by hurling money at golems. This inherently removes the concept of skill from conquest.

Additionally, from a game design perspective, this mechanic is simply unintuitive. A zero-skill mechanic, designed for non-pvp players - seemingly perfect for recruits or new players to pick up. However, in order to use the mechanic, they have to have excess money to burn? That goes against the whole mantra of the mechanic. Not to mention, right clicking golems with AIs to make them overpowered is just completely unintuitive as a mechanic, and feels completely out of place. And, it's just not fun to run around having a no-skill mechanic defend for you.

This mechanic is not good for restructuring charge taking either. Advocates have stated that charge-taking should be a team activity, and buffing golems makes it so. However, it just should not be impossible to take charges. Being able to heal AND buff the prerequisite TO charge taking simply makes it impossible to take charges - you can't kill the golem, and it does insane damage to you when you even try. This is just not a healthy change.

Without being able to buff golems, charge-taking already IS a team activity, and is in fact more balanced than with buffing golems. Buffing golems requires someone to be on defense. However, even without buffing golems, If someone is on defense, then you shouldn't even be able to take a charge, unless the defensive player messes up. That means that defense is a 1. skill based 2. role 3. that makes charge taking a team activity 4. and is intuitive. All of these attributes already seem perfectly sound, game design wise. Why mess up the balance?

The design of the mechanic is just inherently terrible. This mechanic is in a spot where it may be considered "necessary"; it is sustainable to the point that both sides HAVE to use it, or one will gain an inherent advantage over the other - might I add, not by virtue of better skill, but by throwing money. This is because it can only ever exist in 2 states, due to its monetary nature. Either, 1. It is necessary for both sides to sustain buffing golems, so that both sides may remain on an equal playing field.
or 2. It is just too expensive to use, and thus is irrelevant as a mechanic, and pointless to attempt to introduce (similar to totems!). This means that, in the best case, this mechanic FORCES players to grind extensive hours for something that literally has ZERO conquest skill, just to gain even footing.


In conclusion, buffing golems should NOT be linked to money. Defense is already skill-based, and makes charge taking difficult. Players can already seek protection at their building, because it is far away from the enemy building and will inherently be surrounded by allied players. There is no reason to introduce this change.

So, at least nerf it, or PLEASE just remove the mechanic entirely. Introduce something that is more "role" oriented. Like, maybe make bows more usable (more damage or something). This is fun, skill based, and creates an active role that can be played from the backline. Something that steroid golems fails to do entirely.
 
I can agree with people coping over going from over half health to dead as un-fun gameplay. But most examples I've seen have been people in a mosh pit of players critting each other directly near a golem, or where a golem is initially aggro'ed onto a teammate who then runs/pearls away out of the golem's range and the golem turns to tap the unsuspecting player next to them.

How many players complaining about the shard cost have played as a defense main and buffed golems for a full fight? Because it is not as unsustainable as everyone is making it seem - even for newer players. It just feels very expensive when a singular player (or maybe 2) are the only ones grinding to supply their town.

Pvpers who are out tanking damage need to repair and go through copious amounts of AIs in a long conquest fight - eldritch logs show 1115 (17+ stacks) used in a recent 93 player, 35 min garama fight and 3143 (49+ stacks) in the 248 player, 55 min balak reins from last month - these numbers don't include AIs used to buff golems. Compare that to someone like me who stays on defense and on average spends 2 stacks of AIs buffing golems (most I used was 4 stacks in the 55 min long balak reins). Keep in mind that number includes a lot of wasted AIs from buffing the golems when no enemies are around. Yes, it's a lot of AIs, but a quick 30min ri run can get you 10k shards easily - or 20k if you spend 1.5h mining.

This mechanic is not good for restructuring charge taking either. Advocates have stated that charge-taking should be a team activity, and buffing golems makes it so. However, it just should not be impossible to take charges. Being able to heal AND buff the prerequisite TO charge taking simply makes it impossible to take charges - you can't kill the golem, and it does insane damage to you when you even try. This is just not a healthy change.
I genuinely ask if you have tried taking charges against buffed golems while working as a team. Because I have seen you this month try to take charges. Solo. Maybe with a few other teammates in a push that gets blocked by enemies playing on their building. A golem being buffed does not make the defender immortal. They can still get crit out, they still need to refill, if you work with your team you CAN (and usually will) kill the defender. I keep referring back to the reins on balak from last month, but those were fights where the attackers made successful pushes together, kept defenders busy potting for their lives and away from golems, killed defenders or pushed them entirely off building, and got charges.


The main change that would "nerf" buffed golems without even changing how the golems work is to fix being able to repair golems with vanilla cooldown when offhanding iron. That cooldown still does not apply if multiple people are healing the golem, but it'll nerf single defense players.

Also agree with the point that this mechanic should probably be removed on rivina fights. 4 mods were considered overpowered and got reduced to 2 on rivina. 4 buffed golems when it's already a small 10v10 fight also seems overpowered lol
 
I can agree with people coping over going from over half health to dead as un-fun gameplay. But most examples I've seen have been people in a mosh pit of players critting each other directly near a golem, or where a golem is initially aggro'ed onto a teammate who then runs/pearls away out of the golem's range and the golem turns to tap the unsuspecting player next to them.

How many players complaining about the shard cost have played as a defense main and buffed golems for a full fight? Because it is not as unsustainable as everyone is making it seem - even for newer players. It just feels very expensive when a singular player (or maybe 2) are the only ones grinding to supply their town.

Pvpers who are out tanking damage need to repair and go through copious amounts of AIs in a long conquest fight - eldritch logs show 1115 (17+ stacks) used in a recent 93 player, 35 min garama fight and 3143 (49+ stacks) in the 248 player, 55 min balak reins from last month - these numbers don't include AIs used to buff golems. Compare that to someone like me who stays on defense and on average spends 2 stacks of AIs buffing golems (most I used was 4 stacks in the 55 min long balak reins). Keep in mind that number includes a lot of wasted AIs from buffing the golems when no enemies are around. Yes, it's a lot of AIs, but a quick 30min ri run can get you 10k shards easily - or 20k if you spend 1.5h mining.

All I am hearing from everyone who supports the change is that it’s “not that broken” and “not that costly”. All it does is force people who aren’t already hoarding wealth into grinding extra hours, and burn money that could be used for better things. This doesn’t address the main question: why does this mechanic even exist in the first place?

It seemingly exists because golems are “weak” and don’t protect their structure well, and also to “provide a role for players”. Well, I already stated that this is not a healthy role, so that goes out the window. The only reason to keep this change is so golems can get some kills, which is kind of a bad consideration; why should golems be strong in the first place? And, if they are meant to be inherently strong, should it not be applied to the base golem directly, without player interference? Again, this mechanic is unintuitive and thoughtless.

I genuinely ask if you have tried taking charges against buffed golems while working as a team. Because I have seen you this month try to take charges. Solo. Maybe with a few other teammates in a push that gets blocked by enemies playing on their building. A golem being buffed does not make the defender immortal. They can still get crit out, they still need to refill, if you work with your team you CAN (and usually will) kill the defender. I keep referring back to the reins on balak from last month, but those were fights where the attackers made successful pushes together, kept defenders busy potting for their lives and away from golems, killed defenders or pushed them entirely off building, and got charges.
Charge taking is already a team based activity. As it is, defending works fine without golems. It’s more skill based, more balanced, and more fun. Buffing golems turns defenders into lame ducks holding down right click, having a golem do the fighting for them. All the while, gaining a benefit from not skill or strategy, but playtime.

I’ve only tried charge taking solo when our gen is overrun - ie, there is no better play to do. Is it supposed to be intuitive, game design wise, to punish the best possible play I can make, and say that I should do it with a team?

Before this change, sneaking was difficult. Now, it’s literally not possible. Sneaking offers counterplay when a team gets run over. If it can be fully countered by PLAYTIME, how is that balanced? Again, what is the need for this change?


The main change that would "nerf" buffed golems without even changing how the golems work is to fix being able to repair golems with vanilla cooldown when offhanding iron. That cooldown still does not apply if multiple people are healing the golem, but it'll nerf single defense players.
Funny because WE certainly haven’t been off handing, so you guys are just saying golems are easy to handle while being the only ones bug abusing. It seems more than a little bit unreasonable to say that golems aren’t overpowered when both sides aren’t on equal footing regarding golems.

anyways i typed this on phone so the formatting might be bad or unreadable ill fix it later
 
being able to repair golems with vanilla cooldown when offhanding iron.
Bruh. That probably explains the confusion around there being a cooldown or not :l
4 mods were considered overpowered and got reduced to 2 on rivina. 4 buffed golems when it's already a small 10v10 fight also seems overpowered lol
Yeah the mechanic should be disabled entirely in rivina fights IMO, but some tweaks in general should be considered for regular fights as well that go beyond fixing bugs.
The main change that would "nerf" buffed golems without even changing how the golems work is to fix being able to repair golems with vanilla cooldown when offhanding iron.
That’s not a “nerf” because you should not have been able to do that in the first place. It’s a bug that should be fixed.
 
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Yeah the mechanic should be disabled entirely in rivina fights IMO, but some tweaks in general should be considered for regular fights as well that go beyond fixing bugs.
Yes please remove from rivina its just horrible too many reasons to remove from rivina to list
 
For what it's worth, healing golems is a completely vanilla mechanic that we haven't touched. If it apparently has no cd when off-handing the iron, that is not an oversight on our end.

But I do enjoy the intensity of this debate.
 
Before this change, sneaking was difficult. Now, it’s literally not possible. Sneaking offers counterplay when a team gets run over. If it can be fully countered by PLAYTIME, how is that balanced? Again, what is the need for this change?
Not taking sides here, but just want to point out that if someone is at the gen to buff the golems that "make it impossible to sneak," then you are not sneaking to begin with. There is a big difference between sneaking charges (doing it while there is no one defending) and trying to solo charges (taking charges alone while there is someone defending). Soloing before the golem buffs were added was already nearly impossible, because if your gen is overrun then the enemy team has enough players to keep some at defense to prevent charges being taken. AIing golems does not prevent sneaking, it prevent soloing, something that was already impossible before this feature was added.
 
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