EXPLANATION: Glass Cannon Mentality

[GodEmperorFlam 3447]

The Glass Cannon Mentality

This thread explains the stance taken on glass cannons and the mentality it creates.

A glass cannon is a term used in MMOs and other game settings such as tabletops where someone has a character created that is very strong when it comes to dealing damage, but the downside is that they can’t take much damage themselves. “Glass cannon” as glass shatters easily while cannons can destroy a fair bit. When it comes to LotC, we are not playing against NPCs like in most games nor do we have a well crafted game at our disposal that does most of the balancing for us when it comes to PvP abilities that utilize lore/magic related abilities. Due to years of seeing how one sided magics that can stomp out others leads to issues, a decision has been made to try and keep things balanced against everyone else and move things in a non-combative direction for lore.

 

This decision includes the culling of the glass cannon mentality. What does this mean for lore writers? You shouldn’t design a lore piece that allows players to act as glass cannons. Putting a bunch of weaknesses on a person does not justify allowing them to do a crazy amount of damage. Instead, focus on fleshing out your lore in a non-combative manner or ensuring the combat side of things is not too wild.

 

Lore ideas, such as empowerment, is thus frowned upon. You should not be designing abilities that allow you to do multiple attacks in one emote or allow them to be large nuke abilities, regardless of the charge up time.