Hi, this is Joorji with the Spooktacular survey review. Here is a short summary of some of the answers alongside some commentary and my feedback to everyone's feedback.

Most Popular Classes

• Gladiator
• Lunar Knight
• Abyss Walker
• Reaper
• Blood Phantom
• Saint

These were the most played classes during the event time according to players. There isn't much of a surprise here given that warriors of course would be most popular and then the assassins.

Most Discussed Classes

These were classes that respondants want to talk about the most

• Gladiator
• Light Fury
• Crusader
• Lunar Knight
• Lustre
• Pyromancer
• Shooting Star
• Reaper
• Dark Avenger
• Inquisitor

Text Feedback

Lot's of things to write about here as this was the main meat of the survey. Here are some summarized statements from people with a developer reply indented below it:

• EXAMPLE TEXT FEEDBACK HERE

Example Feedback text from dev here

User Submission Feedback

Some of this stuff is word-for-word copied, the others are summarized or short-handed. I did not include everything since it'd take forever to get through it all. Especially with some of the non-answers or useless responses we got.

• Lustre element swapping was really enjoyable and versatile, and ELM removal was interesting. This is an exciting concept as a rework. The elemental conversion is too free though so it should cost something.

I might have something planned for this in the future. But not for Lustre. Of course Ill have to look into a lot more deeply for balance and other purposes.

• Reaper was really fun and the new bubble system was fun to play around and having more of your skills turn blue was awesome visually.

There is still room for another Reaper rework to implement stuff but Ie don't have any plans to implement things from Spook in particular. If Reaper were to get reworked again, it would not be any time soon.

• Revert Reaper Flare Blitz to Beast Swipe, it sucks.

Kinda agree but also no because Beast Swipe has its own issues with targeting and just more clone noise spam. This is more of an issue of Flare Blitz needs to be fixed to not move your actual position around so dramatically.

• Light Fury was fun but playing around Unseen Art was annoying. Chakra Grip after Quantum Trance was really fun to play with. I really like the strike ring ex changes especially being able to use it after sunshine spark. The change to fan of blade into enhanced strike ring was a nice small two skill combo that added to a more meaningful rotation rather than a priority of most damaging skill. Awakened Full Brightness should never be a thing. The animation is super cool, but it roots you in place. New ultimate was poggers, but I think the visual clarity should be better, I don't think anyone even noticed that I placed it, considering that it gives everyone in the small pale golden circle 50% damage reduction and 15% damage up. Please let us triple-summon all pets.

Light Fury changes were overall positive from everyone I've heard from. We're not sure if these changes would make it in either as we haven't had a proper discussion about them internally. Maybe when we do a revisit on healers we can take a look at Light Fury again (once again, not sure when that will be).

• Crusader was what the class needed. Aura switching was okay but felt like a waste of animation. The spook changes were a lot of quality of life and fixed some of the dumb stuff ED had. Maybe increase the animation time of Divine Hammer or condense its hits. I haven't tried Crusader before the Spooktacular, but I can absolutely say that I've enjoyed the Spooktacular version of Crusader. I'm not sure if it's OP or not but it gets par with other unchanged classes when it comes to dps (considering the same gears and such). Enjoyed playing it and hopefully able to play it more as is even after the event. Would also enjoy maybe a reworked Zap. That skill is pretty lackluster. Maybe if it's already planned to change the Conviction animation might give this animation to Zap and let it do some dmg based on conditions. It definitely fits in the category of classes that are rewarding based on your skills and gets very goofy when you're not using it very well so I can conclude that the changes didn't make it very OP or such unlike the other classes.

Glad to see that mostly everyone liked it. There were a few responses that said that removing the aura swapping took away the class' identity and I kind of agree but don't at the same time. The auras definitely slowed down the gameplay and put a wrench in the smoothness of the rotation. The aura changing class archetype should be somewhere in the game but I haven't figured out a proper place or implementation for it quite yet. The Crusader rework will probably end up being almost exactly like Spook with some visual and qualtiy of life changs to fix some issues brought up by people in here.

• Ruina was interesting but Beast Rush should've been replaced with Mania instead of Rock Fist. The starting part of mania is pretty fun but i'm not sure about the ending, since there is already a skill with a very similar animation. I'd love to try changing that second half to palm strike instead, and making the skill usable in the air. Currently there are no viable ways for ruina to use anything in the air(fkk first kick bugs out if you try), while 2 of her skills(fkk, kb) have the ability to leave you in the air. Tweaking mania this way would add a new animation while also diversifying the gameplay a bit, without really making it any harder. Ideally there should be some sort of benefit to chaining fkk/kb into aerial mania, since you lose the cdr for fkk/kb if you do that. Could make it reduce some other skill's cd instead, or make the benefit depend on whether it was fkk or kb, a million options here.

Half of the responses said that Mania was great and should be replacing Rock Fist while the other half said it should've replaced Beast Rush. Ruina is in a really weird situation since people that I know that want changes for it are kinda pushing it in different directions. It's been slated for a rework for some time now but it's been pretty controversial so it's been hard to decide what to do with it.

• Gladiator was super cool and Hacking Stance was fun to play around but it was also annoying because of the amount of distance you moved while using it. Side Dodge into Line Drive felt really good. Ultimate was great to have as another damage option instead of another iframe. Rewarding based on a successful Parry instead of just casting it feels better. The visuals look better than official so I have no complaint on that part. Love the SFX effect when you cast it with max bubbles. The Spook version of 3x slash should not stay though, you can literally hold RMB or LMB spam it endlessly. Way too OP.

Gladiator was a fun experiment and people seemed to really enjoy it. We could probably use some of the stuff from Spook if we were to do a touch-up on the class (although that would not include any changes to make it ice based).

• Chaos Mage Gravity Javelin felt amazing and is better than Summon Comet because of its range and fits the class more. The new Gravity Javelin should stay but make it the same damage as Summon Comet with faster bubble gen but reduced damage to balance it out. I believe getting 1 bubble per skill is fine but perhaps including every other gravity based skill like Gravity Crush, Void Explosion and Gravity Well would make you use your entire skill tree to your fullest outside FF at least.

I had a lot of fun with Gravity Javelin as well and I'm glad that other people liked it. I think there are some grounds for a minor change to Chaos Mage to implement the Javelin but I'll have to give it more thought.

• Sniper was a very fun take with its mobility and more interactive with the range you needed to play around to do damage. None of it should stay though considering this is nothing like how a Sniper should play.

Maybe something something.. in the future... yeah.. maybe... perhaps...  haha...

• Lunar Knight changes were great and made it much more fun to have smoother rotations. Flash Step changes made stacking so much easier and allowed me to use more main damage skills rather than spamming. You should keep Flash Step as it was because it helps DPS but not in a game breaking way.

We could definitely make it easier to stack and that will pretty drastically lower the skill floor of the class which could be a good idea consider since Lunar Knight is kind of the poster child class for the game. Although Flash Step having MoonFall is not the way to go with this.

• Pyromancer's changes pushed the burst narrative to the extreme. Inferno felt awful with how slow it was for bad damage tradeoff. I loved its changes and they were very fun to see even with 9 Self SFX making me blind. Fireball little sparkles were very nice to see and cute. Inferno changed into a volcano cast was pretty interesting but oh my god the casting time + the fact that you had to be melee or it would miss; Firewall idea of it staying on the field seemed nice but sadly it was bugged and was just visual effects; Hot Road just zooming around exploding everything around me, made me like the skill more; I had fun this year and I hope you guys had fun too, must have been a nightmare to do all these changes in few weeks.

I tried to make it as insane looking as possible so that was clearly successful. I think it wouldn't be too bad to have some of these changes implemented (namely Fireball, Firewall, and Hot Rod). Everything else was kinda too meme to consider.

• Shooting Star was very fun. Star Commander and Star Mortar felt very good but I like old Shooting Star more because it focused on just Splash and and AP Launcher which felt strong but boring. New Shooting Star was more fun to play but I felt iffy about Star Blaster because I couldn't figure out where to fit it in my rotation. Otherwise, it played really smooth, and the skill fx that got updated were great. Consdering that a lot of skill points in the tree are dedicated to Alfredo and he's straight-up disabled makes that skill tree extremely weird, like, why would I waste points on all of that if it gives me no benefit whatsoever: I think that this issue should be addressed first. Also, since you can't summon Alfredo anymore, you can't use your own defensive shield that usually would be provided by him, even though the shield is small, it's quite an important ability to have.

The skill tree issue is going to be one we're gonna have to deal with cause it's gonna look reaaaaaaaaaaaal dumb and bad to have all those skills disabled. Shooting Star rework will most likely go in as it was but yea... We're gonna have to look into how the skill tree is gonna look.

• Guardian changes were funny but didn't really do anything. I think in the future, changes for Spook should actually affect the gameplay of the class or don't make any changes at all.

We should probably avoid making changes when they don't do too much in the future yea.

• Warden changes allowed it to have damage sources outside of Fatal Guided Missiles. Skill-wise, the only skill I didn't know when to use was stunning shot, since it originally gave stacks for Fatal Guided Missiles but did not do so with the update. I'd keep the Guided Missiles change since it allows it to be used without needing a target with-in range. The three-in-one Detonating Arrow made it a lot easier to keep the damage consistent as well.  My only issue was that the class got disabled for the majority of the update because of damage values being off the charts. I like the concept of having a variety of skills to do damage with instead of just one, just hopefully having it balanced next time to be able to use it to its fullest extent.

This was secretly also a semi-prototype for a Warden rework too although it wasn't stated on the doc since it wasn't tested or implemented to its full extent unlike Shooting Star and Crusader. I think it's a step in the right direction and we'll have to give it more thought and changes for a proper rework. I think the idea was there but it wasn't quite right. As for the disabling of the class, it was just something I didn't want to deal with. I worked with the class for a long enough time trying to fix the bugs with it before and during Spooktacular and I didn't want to think about it anymore. Sorry to the people who wanted to actually play it and try what could've been a semi-prototype for a rework but people like to abuse damage bugs and the game like to be annoying to fix so I just disabled it to quit giving myself a headache.

• Inquisitor having a guaranteed double Detonate proc felt great. Unfortunately only half of the kit really worked because of the end lag on Chain Lightning and Lightning Fury made it impossible to detonate them. It felt good when you could detonate it though. It felt like a more relaxed version of Valk where you have to keep track of the projectile's lifetime. The major difference means you don't have to keep track of milking individual ticks and can just detonate it when you're ready. The fact that detonate cannot be used during the waiting period of LS introduced some interesting considerations regarding when detonable skills can be used. I feel like there's potential for a fun archetype.

This was definitely something I wanted to look into for a potential revisit to Inquisitor rework. Although I wouldn't necessarily do it the way that it was implemented here.

• Valkyrie Champagne buff applying without the circle and animation but would prolly need balancing.

Eventually maybe

• BigHealth (Saint) was a very fun and enjoyable class to play during spook, it is way more forgiving and more consistent bursts, we get to reposition relics way more often and enhanced antiphona is so satisfying to use. I'll actually like the 2 charges holy burst or lightning relics to stay because I get to use 1 of the charges and save the other one for more relic burst or it is less punishing when you missed the burst. Not too sure if it will be too broken for a healer class and I understand balancing the skill will be tough, it was really fun and enjoyable playstyle for saint.

It's pretty broken and we aren't gonna keep this in any way most likely lmao.

• Avalanche new ult felt great and animation was really good but it didn't have an iframe like the existing ult felt really bad. The buff duration of crystal shooter from 20sec to 900sec is a nice QoL change. It allows us to not worry about keeping it up all the time. Sure it might be a way to differentiate good avalanche from bad avalanche players but honestly I don't think it's the smartest way of showing a players' skill expression.

Something to consider, sure.

• War Mage Ray Horizon was cool but the range of it meant that you had to cast it real close to the boss. Spectrum Shower felt really good and snappy but it ghosted too much on the damage. Energy Blast was perfect. Beam Tempest felt too boring now that it lost interaction. The Laser Energy changes felt awful. Disintegrate during Fast Forward didn't feel good. Laser Ray felt useless with no cooldown and low damage and not kit interaction.

Glad that Ray Horizon, Spectrum Shower, and Energy Blast turned out so good. That's something we can do in the near future. A bigger overarching rework needs more thought put into it.

• Randgrid damage on Counter Flare feels rather inconsistent due to the hit distribution. I would like to see a rework on this.

We didn't even do anything to this class during Spook.

• Ricardo was interesting. Playing an ice sin was always a dream of mine and I'm really glad y'all released Ricardo as a playable class this year. Probably one of my favorite surprises that came with spook. I would love to see an ice sin. Visual clarity was absolute dogshit though. The fact that the party can get wiped from not being able to see anything thanks to the dragon sucks.

Don't worry about this ever being a thing. We wouldn't ever do anything like this.

• "Abyss Walker to Sasuke. Honestly. Just keep the skill and animation as it is. Im pretty sure abyss walker player will rose up. because the playstyle is epic hahaha."

No.

Conclusion

Some good responses, some bad ones as usual. I'll start working on figuring out who is gonna get some survey QC. Thanks to everyone who decided to put in some brain cells into their answers.

I'm not sure if I'll do Spooktacular again next year considering how much time it takes and how much shit we get for it.

We'll be taking some of this feedback and implementing it and the other feedback will go straight into the trash can.