The Balance Thread

[Evander]

Originally Posted by Bluddy

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Another thing I realized from another thread, is that it's going to be very hard to make mage spells (ie non-scaling skills) worthwhile to invest in when you could invest your points in scaling skills instead. Non-mage characters can get high DPS without even using any skills -- just based on weapons. Their strength amplifies the damage, and their DEX makes them hard to hit and gives them crits. I think I'll have to nerf almost all non-mage skills somewhat to make the mage skills equivalent by comparison. Skills that give 0.4 crit per level are just way too powerful for example.

Maybe they just could cost less to buy and to cast? If they were cheaper, then people could choose two non-scaling skills for a combined effect over costly one.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Evander

Maybe they just could cost less to buy and to cast? If they were cheaper, then people could choose two non-scaling skills for a combined effect over costly one.

Well, I'm going to raise the mana costs of all skills since they're too low. I can't make the skill point cost of non-scaling skill any lower than they are -- they already only go up by 1 point each skill level for the most part. But I think I will make the scaling attack skills more expensive skill-point-wise. Maybe they'll go up by 2 each level.

[Bluddy]

OK I got through the necromancer.

I had the idea of starting out all raise dead monsters with a penalty and then working up from there. After testing it a little, I quickly saw that it was a mistake. The necromancer is a weak character: he needs dead bodies to make his creatures, which means he needs to kill enemies first. Bodies also fade away very fast. Then he has to deal with pets, who don't necessarily do what he wants. And if they die, he's back to square 1, and he has to find a way to kill more creatures.

I realized no pet skills needed nerfing -- instead I boosted the skeletons. Skeletons are always 2 levels below the player, and skeleton archers 1 level below the player. This means you no longer have to play catchup with the skeleton skill just to get a skeleton close to your level. Also, skeletons get much better boosts than raised creatures do.

Another thing I feel I fixed is having to wait 4 levels to get another pet. 4 levels is too long. Instead, all pet skills get another pet every 2 levels. I adjusted the skill costs accordingly.

Next is the warlock. I used to think the warlock was at a disadvantage because his demons couldn't co-exist. I was wrong -- he doesn't need to come up with dead bodies, which is a huge advantage!

After the warlock I'll take a break to play some characters with my adjustments and see if they work. I'm worried about mana costs being too high. If you guys can give me feedback... I'd really appreciate it.

Oh, the other thing I implemented for the necro is that his passive mana ability grows the more skills you buy for him -- yay! I'm not sure it has an impact yet though -- I calculated the values based on the initial mana bonus, which is 6 per kill. That's 10% of your mana at low level. I try to keep it around 10%, but I'm not sure that's enough to matter for the necro, who has a tough time killing creatures in general.

[Evander]

but necro has a lich and dark ritual, both make his pets stronger.

[forevernomad]

Is the most recent version always the link on the first post?

[Bluddy]

Yes -- that link always has the latest version. You can also look inside the zip file for readme.txt. It should say the latest version number, which is currently 15.

The warlock has demon mastery, which is similar to the liche skill. I'm not saying I'm happy with the demons not being able to coexist. I'm just saying the power has an automatic advantage over the necro, who has to find bodies for his pets.

Not having the demons coexist is a big problem. It means you have to choose one demon type to invest in. I'm thinking the only way to make this work is if the skills are linked in their skill point usage. You can then choose how you want this 'super skill' to be expressed: as many screes, a few furies, or one chaos lord. That makes more sense to me.

[derf]

Originally Posted by Bluddy

The necromancer is a weak character: he needs dead bodies to make his creatures, which means he needs to kill enemies first. Bodies also fade away very fast. Then he has to deal with pets, who don't necessarily do what he wants. And if they die, he's back to square 1, and he has to find a way to kill more creatures.

Can it just be changed to not require a dead body, at least for skeletons? Maybe link raise dead to beastiary somehow, select type you want in beastiary, and it will summon one at current player level.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by derf

Can it just be changed to not require a dead body, at least for skeletons? Maybe link raise dead to beastiary somehow, select type you want in beastiary, and it will summon one at current player level.

I think it's ok that the necromancer uses a dead body -- that is what the player expects. Even though the necromancer isn't particularly powerful, he does grow in power as he gets more and more creatures. More importantly, it's cool to play a necromancer. I may balance him some more later on, but for now I think the solution I've found is good. The main issue was that you had to constantly invest in skeletons just to keep them at a decent level relative to your own level, and that's not required anymore. This is important because skeletons that are 20 levels lower than you are completely useless, even if they have strength boosts: they'll just get wiped out by the creatures on your current level. So this issue has been resolved, and now I'm trying to figure out how to do the warlock.

As I said previously, the warlock's summoned creatures' inability to coexist is a big problem. I almost want to take that limitation away. If I invest my points in furies, I have no reason to ever invest in screes or chaos lords. Nowhere else do you have conflicting skills. Actually, there are other conflicting skills: the concentrations for example can only be active one at a time. And because nobody would want to invest in conflicting skills that don't work with each other, those were linked together. So I'm pretty sure I'll have to do that here as well.

[Bluddy]

I'm trying a new tactic for coming up with good mana values. It's a little difficult what's proper mana graphically, as I have been doing so far. Instead, I added 4 rows in the SpellValues and FixSpVal pages that allow me to see how many spells I can fire off with full mana at the start of the game, and how many at the end. Just as an example, a half-mage can fire off 7 fiery blasts at the start of the game (not accounting for regen) and 29 by the end, assuming a fully developed fiery blast at level 22. A full mage starts with 9 fiery blasts and ends with 51. These amounts are definitely high, and they show how difficult it can be to balance things properly. You probably don't need to fire 51 fireballs in a row, even with cast time gloves.

Looking at the heavy duty spells makes you realize how problematic these values are. A half mage can fire 4 maelstroms initially, and eventually 19 maelstroms. A full mage can fire 6 maelstroms when he starts out, and he ends with around 37 maelstroms. But maelstroms are super powerful, and they have a 10 second cooldown period! Within those 10 seconds, you'll recharge enough to fire another 3 maelstroms or more. So really, you'll never need to use your mana for maelstroms.

What these values make me realize is that I should allow mana costs to rise slowly enough that I can fire more in the later game, even with a half-mage, rather than less. This ratio of how many times one can fire a spell is hard to see in the graphs. For example, my mana values start similarly to Shadow's: I allow the half-mage 7 fiery blasts initially. But right now, upgrading all the way will allow the half-mage only 6 fiery blasts, which is probably not right. The full mage will go from 9 to 11, which is ok but not amazing.

Anyway, now I have the proper perspective to make these things work well, so I'm hoping to fix up the old mana values as I balance the warlock.

BTW mana costs should work very differently for the warriors and thieves. This is a way to make scaling skills equivalent to non-scaling skills. A warrior doesn't need many levels of his scaling skill to be powerful. Often, 1-5 levels are enough per skill. In contrast, a mage must take his spells all the way up for them to be effective. To even this out, the mana cost for warriors needs to increase faster than their mana producing ability. The more you enhance your scaling skill, the more mana it takes, and the less you can use it -- but it will become significantly more powerful. Therefore, while non-scaling skills should increase in mana costs a little slower than the amount of mana their owner has, scaling skills should increase in cost a little faster.

[Bluddy]

Does anyone ever use the warlock's curse of stammer? It seems like a wasted spell. The reason is that enemy mages are generally weak, so why do I need to slow down their spellcasting?

I also started thinking about the druid class, even though it'll be a while before I get to it. I think that of all the subclasses, the druid is the one that fails to live up to its potential the most (I've said this before elsewhere). The reason is that the main attraction is the shape-shifting skills, but those skills are simply not worth investing in. Why? Because you get stuck too long without the ability to use your other skills. The way this skill should work is, that you should have the ability to turn the change shape back and forth. If you try to be a kodiak for more than the maximum amount of time, you change back automatically. For this to work though, I need the ability to disable all skills except for a certain skill. Right now I believe the shape-changers disable all skills. I also need the ability to cancel an OnlyOne skill (only one shapeshifting status effect can be active at a time). Unfortunately, both of these are not currently possible.