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Addendum: I am now leaning more with Crashwolf; some skills are decent enough to stay. I only want the OP skills to be taken out/nerfed, which some already have, so that's a good thing.
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With the newly released Divine Mode, I couldn't help but have the feeling that Shaman Skills would drastically reduce the actual overall difficulty of it. When I went to try it out myself, I found out that skills did make it a lot easier than it should be.

Divine mode, which is obviously intended to be a step up difficulty-wise from hardmode, should not have Shaman Skills. I'd really like Divine mode to be like the "ultimate challenge" where you have to do without totem, spirit, yellow/red nails, and skills, essentially making you use your creativity extensively to be successful. I know many people would think this is "too hard," but that's exactly what it should be, a trying challenge. However, some skills are alright to stay, the ones that don't make it 100% easy to be shaman.

I'm not "copying her thread" or "stealing her ideas," I just doubt that Divine Mode will be completely removed and replaced with a different mode, so I am just suggesting a tweak to actually make it a pretty good challenge.

Another valid set of points related to Divine Mode:

Crashwolf a dit :

No support, for several reasons:

1) Many of the skills (i.e. easy victory/cheifs food/stern mouse) were given to the players as a countermeasure to combat trolls. You could say that it is what the ice is for, but you only got two shots with those, and as someone who plays the game everday, there is always a good chance for being more than two trolls on the map, and they arent always easy to kill with cannons.

2) Honestly, I would save the no skills for an even bigger 4th shaman update. That way, they have a chance to add even more variety to the game when this gets old, and people wont be able to complain that there isn't enough to choose from. You have to find ways to keep on the interest of the game, and i think this would be a good way.

3) Double sham maps? Since they are shared across the two shams as far as I know (at least in the vanilla maps they are), you would end up having skills on these maps anyway, so people would just keep dying (in normal rooms at least) until a shaman co-op map comes around and they can use that persons skills and get the saves. Even if I'm wrong about all of this, I'll explain more in my 4th reasons

4) The requirements aren't high enough for this. To me, if you wanted to get rid of skills and everything for a shaman, make the requirements something like 20,000 / 10,000 for easy and hard modes, respectively. That way you know for sure that people are experienced enough with the game, and in the case of a double sham map, you wont get stuck with a virtually useless partner who will do nothing or mess everything up.

5) They already got rid of clouds and totems (and spirit), which were big issues with people using hard mode. On top of getting rid of the c-planks, it already brings about a step-up from hard mode in its own sense.

Yeah, skills are too OP in divine mode. Definitely supporting.

No support, for several reasons:

1) Many of the skills (i.e. easy victory/cheifs food/stern mouse) were given to the players as a countermeasure to combat trolls. You could say that it is what the ice is for, but you only got two shots with those, and as someone who plays the game everday, there is always a good chance for being more than two trolls on the map, and they arent always easy to kill with cannons.

2) Honestly, I would save the no skills for an even bigger 4th shaman update. That way, they have a chance to add even more variety to the game when this gets old, and people wont be able to complain that there isn't enough to choose from. You have to find ways to keep on the interest of the game, and i think this would be a good way.

3) Double sham maps? Since they are shared across the two shams as far as I know (at least in the vanilla maps they are), you would end up having skills on these maps anyway, so people would just keep dying (in normal rooms at least) until a shaman co-op map comes around and they can use that persons skills and get the saves. Even if I'm wrong about all of this, I'll explain more in my 4th reasons

4) The requirements aren't high enough for this. To me, if you wanted to get rid of skills and everything for a shaman, make the requirements something like 20,000 / 10,000 for easy and hard modes, respectively. That way you know for sure that people are experienced enough with the game, and in the case of a double sham map, you wont get stuck with a virtually useless partner who will do nothing or mess everything up.

5) They already got rid of clouds and totems (and spirit), which were big issues with people using hard mode. On top of getting rid of the c-planks, it already brings about a step-up from hard mode in its own sense.

/NOSUPPPORT
if there are no skills on divine mode then it will become a satan mode
imposible to finish the maps :P

Mangkanorxd a dit :

/NOSUPPPORT
if there are no skills on divine mode then it will become a satan mode
imposible to finish the maps :P

no items - super mega satan mode

Partial support:
Having some roots in the shaman community I'll give my opinion here and hope to clarify some things. I don't really know where to start so this might turn into a little rant.

[rantAboutImplementation]
Firstoff, awesome that the devs decided to take the step and incorporate this. However it went pretty much the same way like hard mode was implemented, top down from admins to players instead of an exchange between the two. As a player it seems like the devs noticed the concept of 'no-b' or 'v-only' and think it's a nice idea so they want to give something back to the players and put a feature to support it. However I have the feeling that they don't fully understand the concepts since they didn't play according to them which totally makes sense (no offence).
The totem totally defied the purpose of 'no-b', making a hard mode equally easy as non-hard mode again. However this was in the game for so long, I don't expect to see any change here.
Nonetheless divine mode is really young so I give my most honorable plea to the admins to look into changes because the way it is now is not any different to the hard mode implementation at all. According to the announcement it's supposed to be "the new very hard much difficult mode" and for players who want to save mice with "brio and cleverness".
[/rant]

Let's start with the things that went well in my opinion:
- Far summoning range (You don't need to balance on your wobbly build while construction, smart move)
- No totem
- No cloud

Now the things to be critisized:
- Arrow anchors allow the shaman to make their build just as stable as with yellow anchors. The purpose of v-only is that every object is able to rotate freely.
- The demolition worker and architect skills don't work on objects that are connected with a blue anchor. I think they would be very handy in divine mode in case you make a mistake. Right now you just cannot use them.
- Several skills don't just make the mode 'not hard enough' but just as easy as normal mode, here is a list of them with a short explanation/scenario:
* Springs and speed boosts. Makes maps not "very hard much difficult" but solvable with one or two springs.
* Apple, chief's food and personal teleporter. The shaman puts an apple at the hole, teleports to cheese and gives every mouse at the hole a cheese without having to build one object. Not "very hard much difficult" but very easy.
* I'm on the edge with easy victory but would prefer if shams would not be able to use it, otherwise you might tend to create a one-way building which should not be the intention of a good shaman.
* Teleporter is pretty similar to easy victory I think, luring shamans into building one-way solutions.

So my suggestions are the following:
- Fix arrow anchors. [Important]
- Disable the skills I listed. [Important]
- Fix demolition worker and architect skills for blue anchors.

The ones with [Important] are the ones to save divine mode from the same destiny that hard mode followed which is implementing a nice feature with too much inconsistency to make it reasonable at all and be a disappointment to the shaman community again.

We should end up with a divine mode that indeed has the intention of being a challenge to the shaman instead of being popular for red coloured saves on your profile.


More suggestions which I suppose to be wishes for my utopia and which therefore will never even be considered I guess:
- Give divine mode shamans a different map rotation with maps that require building, instead of conjuration or bomb maps.
- Remove divine mode titles so people don't play in the mode for "I want the titles".

Another MAJOR gameplay change wish of me would be the following: Let every shaman start with all skills and objects (including totem and spirit and cloud etc) and let the shaman choose what to play. If they only use blue anchors in their build, they will get divine mode saves. If they use their totem they will get hard mode saves and the b anchor and spirit will be disabled. If they use a b anchor at any point the totem will be disabled and they get normal saves. (In contrary to what I said before, this would be my utopia.) I think this would provide the best solution for everybody.

I suppose that I forgot to mention several things, maybe I'll post them later.

Regarding things that have been said earlier:
"Honestly, I would save the no skills for an even bigger 4th shaman update."
What's the point of divine mode right now if you can "solve" maps just as easy with the springs as you can in easy mode?

"Double sham maps?"
Just take skills out completely from double shaman maps. I hate to have the other shaman's friction on my feet anyway. And divine mode vs easy mode on these is just not fair.

"The requirements aren't high enough for this."
I'll risk sounding like an asshole now but to be honest I consider myself to be one of the best no-b builders on transformice and a reasonably good v-only builder. However I hate hardmode and therefore have only about 3500 hard mode saves. I would hate them to raise requirements. On the other hand, you can never "know for sure that people are experienced enough with the game" according to their stats. Most shamans with that many saves that I see have horrible techniques (risking to sound like an asshole again).

"On top of getting rid of the c-planks, it already brings about a step-up from hard mode in its own sense."
It's not a step up at all if you can use the skill techniques I listed above.

I'm sorry to say for me each of your listed points is not a valid reason, crashwolf.

I feel like you only read one sentence of each of my points, but each to his own I guess. I know springs are a bit out of hand, but i would like to see at least /some/ skills included here. You also have to remember that these were only my opinions on the matter, and I don't intend for my posts to have a lasting effect on anything. I was just speaking as someone who's been playing for nearly four years and has gradually eased into each update without too many complaints.

I didn't want to copypaste your whole post so I only took a sentence each. I think my arguments hold for the whole post though. I just felt that your arguments are no valid reasons against completely taking out skills, no hard feelings for me here.
I also suppose that I didn't make it clear that I don't want all skills to be gone but only the ones I mentioned. The rest does not actively influence the intention of divine mode.

Epifistu a dit :

I didn't want to copypaste your whole post so I only took a sentence each. I think my arguments hold for the whole post though. I just felt that your arguments are no valid reasons against completely taking out skills, no hard feelings for me here.
I also suppose that I didn't make it clear that I don't want all skills to be gone but only the ones I mentioned. The rest does not actively influence the intention of divine mode.

oh, well all you have to do is click my name or avatar and it does a quote thing for you like this ^

but yeah, i wouldnt mind things like springs being toned down at all, i only use them as a last resort if my build is a lost cause. but this thread was created saying remove ALL skills, so i showed my no support for that. so i guess i would technically be half support, since some things like springs and the like can be changed/removed for all i care.

./support *-*

But it'll be cool if we're given a limited amount of c-anchors (like 5?)

hmmm idk

/nosupport Maybe limit some and only remove some though? I thought skills were designed to make shamming a little easier - and that is what they're doing in this situation. Of course, I think it's appropriate to limit the number of springs and chief's food, but I wouldn't remove skills altogether from this mode.

Mrredcp a dit :

/I thought skills were designed to make shamming a little easier - and that is what they're doing in this situation.

And divine mode is designed to make shamaning the hardest challenge you can get which is not the case anymore with skills.

Epifistu a dit :

And divine mode is designed to make shamaning the hardest challenge you can get which is not the case anymore with skills.

actually, nowhere in the update does it say its the "hardest challenge you can get." all it says is that the bar was raised.

support

well, i'd bet that tons of people like divine mode how it is, instead of changing it up, make a new "bat country" mode or something, for people who want the most frustrating challenge of their lives
i don't know whether to support or not, because i like the idea, bot not the impossibility. /halfsupport