This provides not a single counterargument to what I said though, at least not from what I understand.
Like I said, a lot of items can be used to be absolutely ridiculously powerful in the right hands. Crossbows can be spammed to basically insta-kill someone; spamming lightning wands, especially in Overpowered; Multiple mob wands to distract and harm the enemy easily; shields. Heck, I even had someone spam like ten slime wands on me to create a deadly ping pong game the enemy walks into. Ultimately, it all comes down to 1) luck, to obtain the items, and 2) skill, to know when to use which items at the right time.
Let me clearly explain how what I was attempting to argue attempts to counter your original argument: “In the end, it is called
Lucky Islands though. Not many people know of the mechanic, and it all depends on luck whether or not you manage to obtain trapped chests. A lot of drops can be broken in the right hands.”
These are the main arguments I noticed:
- It isn’t a problem because obtaining trapped chests is based on luck - (I assume this is why you emphasize the luck element of the game)
- This mechanic isn’t well known - (This wasn’t an argument I was attempting to counter and I don’t really have any way of evaluating how many people know of this mechanic besides my subjective personal experience playing the game)
- Several other items in the game have potential to be overpowered - (The counter argument I made applies to the balance of the game as a whole and I focused on the trapped chest because it’s the topic of this thread.)
My response criticizes your first argument. I established that the primary purpose of luck is to reduce the repetition within the game, not to reduce the amount of control a player has on his winning opportunity or the skill it takes in order to avoid loosing. I was forced to make certain assumptions about the reasoning behind your argument, you did not clearly explain how the fact that trapped chests generally obtained through luck somehow makes up for the fact that they are unbalanced.
As mentioned, my argument suggests that the game as a whole should be reasonably balanced outside of overpowered mode so that skill remains the primary determining factor in the fate of who wins and looses games. Certain drops being extremely overpowered that you aren’t able to do anything about means that the fate of the game is more impacted by the luck of the game, since the quality of items each player gets has a larger amount of variation. In the case of the trapped chest, it’s almost impossible to make sure that your opponent can’t kill you with it especially if you don’t get the few items which can allow you to deal with it.
To make my point even more clear, let me point out the irony in this quote: “Ultimately, it all comes down to 1) luck, to obtain the items, and 2) skill, to know when to use which items at the right time.”
My argument highlights that what you said here should be reflected in lucky islands, that luck should effect which items players obtain (again, keeping the game from getting stale), but skill, not luck, the ability of players to take advantage of the items they are given, this should be the what determines who wins and who looses. But if some drops are relatively overpowered compared to others, this skill is nullified by luck. A better player looses because his opponent happened to get a trapped chest and there was nothing that could be done to prevent the opponent from using it.
Now let me analyze your 3rd argument and the way you expanded upon it in your response. Having an excess of potentially exploitable items in the game is a bad idea because it could establish mutually assured destruction between players, a situation where the rewards for winning a battle and getting the opponent loot is not worth the risk of loosing, which makes the most effective strategy to be never engaging in any conflict to minimize until there is only one player remaining. What is even worse is that players who don’t know how to use these items to their advantage loose initiative to go for these items, which makes incentives these players to camp. There aren’t many items in lucky islands that can’t be refuted with skill though. The examples you listed either favor the defender, being counterable by a skilled opponent, or require several of the same drop in order to be effective. These strategies can be undermined by ensuring that no opponent is able to get such a high amount of loot. This requires you to play aggressively by rushing for the loot at middle immediately and ensuring that no player besides yourself is able to get a lot of melee kills. This minimizes the amount of loot each player is able to obtain and it makes it highly unlikely that the opponent can get a cheap kill off you by spamming with crossbows or mobs. I digress.
In contrast, trapped chests are overpowered on their own and are able to be obtained without lucky blocks anyway so there isn’t a strategy that prevents trapped chests users from being able to use them in an overpowered way. The giga sword and 15 seconds of flight also share this problem and I think that these drops could also need balancing or reworking. Yes, trapped chests are by no means the only overpowered thing in this game, far from it, but such overpowered aspects of the game cause similar problems to this and I have argued against them in the past as well. As I mentioned, overpowered mode should be the place where items being broken is okay.