The Balance Thread

[jureidinim]

Originally Posted by Bluddy

I've also made a few cosmetic changes. The shaders for things like frost and undead were too strong, removing the features of the original monsters, so I fixed those up. I've also slowed down the animation of the zombies digging their way out of the ground as it was happening insanely fast.

One thing I've just started paying attention to is lighting. The default light intensity you get in the game is a little too much, giving you no incentive to get any gear with extra light intensity bonuses. I've reduced the default a little and I may reduce it some more. I've also made lamps a much more powerful light source, so that you really want to light those lamps to see what's going on around you. I feel like this really adds to the 'feel' of the game, as being underground in a dark cave/dungeon and depending on lamps for visibility gives the right vibe. It's especially annoying/fun now when imps or screes turn out the lights.

I've also increased the lighting from fire effects, which I didn't feel was strong enough. I've got some more work to do there, but it's already much cooler throwing a fireball and seeing it light up the surrounding walls. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any way to make lightning light up the surroundings

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Great work as usual :-) Will be testing this out soon.

On the shader change - I'm not understanding what that does. Does it change the way they look? (Maybe i will understand better when i actually try the new version out...)

For the lighting changes - making the dungeons darker - that was something i wondered myself. The torches didn't have any use and the "Light" buff on equipment was meaningless. Really looking forward to trying this version to see the new light/dark effects play out.
I assume then that if you have altered the base values for dungeon lighting, that a Darkness Machine is now truly scary? :-)

Again - great work.

[desophos]

Earlier, you mentioned fixing the rylor bomb so that it's not insanely powerful. I was planning on doing that myself, but I'll just get your mod instead. Did you follow through with that fix? How about reducing the range? I like the bomb idea, but the range is just so huge that I never know if I'm far enough away. Also, how well do your skill changes work with already-existing characters? Will my points get screwed up?

The work you've done with this mod is really impressive. I look forward to trying it out.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by jureidinim

Great work as usual :-) Will be testing this out soon.

On the shader change - I'm not understanding what that does. Does it change the way they look? (Maybe i will understand better when i actually try the new version out...)

If you look at esp. undead monsters or ones with stone skin in vanilla, you'll notice that they look entirely like the texture that was placed on them, which isn't great. It looks like their skin was removed and they only have the effect skin, making undead creatures for example have a low-res stony texture. This isn't the way it's supposed to be AFAIK -- that's why those textures have alpha values. It turns out that the values were a little off, and alpha values are really sensitive so if you're even a little bit off, you lose the original texture of the monsters. I think I've made these effects a lot more appealing with just a few tweaks.

For the lighting changes - making the dungeons darker - that was something i wondered myself. The torches didn't have any use and the "Light" buff on equipment was meaningless. Really looking forward to trying this version to see the new light/dark effects play out.
I assume then that if you have altered the base values for dungeon lighting, that a Darkness Machine is now truly scary? :-)

I experimented with a really dark version where you start with 30 light intensity stat (rather than the vanilla 60), but for now I only reduced it a little (to 50). I didn't want to make too big of a jump right away because there's some variability between the dungeon types. The lights, however, are much more effective at lighting up the dungeon. And I've always wanted fireballs to light up the dungeon more, so I'm happy about that. I'm just disappointed I couldn't find any way to make lightning really brighten up the surroundings. I tried thinking of tricks to light up either the PC, or the targets, or both, but nothing worked without sacrificing important stuff like the stun effect on lightning targets.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by desophos

Earlier, you mentioned fixing the rylor bomb so that it's not insanely powerful. I was planning on doing that myself, but I'll just get your mod instead. Did you follow through with that fix? How about reducing the range? I like the bomb idea, but the range is just so huge that I never know if I'm far enough away. Also, how well do your skill changes work with already-existing characters? Will my points get screwed up?

The problem with reducing the range is that you have to change the animation too. Not a huge deal, but I didn't feel it was necessary. The main thing is reducing the insane damage it was causing.

I'm not too crazy about the rylor bomb, because I don't think bombs are fun when they don't also hurt the other monsters, when it really seems like they should. The bomb hurts other monsters if it sets things on fire, but otherwise it doesn't do anything to them. I'm considering making it fairly rare and having it hurt all monsters (except rylors -- there's no way to make it hurt rylors).

I've reduced the other annoying attacks from the expansion, which are the rylor bull head-butt that stuns you, and the range of the vortar slam, which is almost impossible to get away from in the vanilla game.

The work you've done with this mod is really impressive. I look forward to trying it out.

Thanks. I hope you like it.

[desophos]

Originally Posted by Bluddy

I'm not too crazy about the rylor bomb, because I don't think bombs are fun when they don't also hurt the other monsters, when it really seems like they should. The bomb hurts other monsters if it sets things on fire, but otherwise it doesn't do anything to them. I'm considering making it fairly rare and having it hurt all monsters (except rylors -- there's no way to make it hurt rylors).

Hmm, I thought the bomb did hurt other monsters. I think making it hurt monsters and be rarer would be great. I like the tactical change that bombs force -- I suddenly have to run away when I see a bomb.

Originally Posted by Bluddy

I've reduced the other annoying attacks from the expansion, which are the rylor bull head-butt that stuns you, and the range of the vortar slam, which is almost impossible to get away from in the vanilla game.

Great. Can you also reduce the Winged Rylor damage reflection? Most of my deaths are due to Rylors: the Rylor bomb, the Rylor Bull stunlock, and the Winged Rylor damage reflection.

Also, can I use your balance mod with my existing characters? I'm worried that the skill changes will mess up my assigned points.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by desophos

Hmm, I thought the bomb did hurt other monsters. I think making it hurt monsters and be rarer would be great. I like the tactical change that bombs force -- I suddenly have to run away when I see a bomb.

Yeah I agree -- that part is good

Great. Can you also reduce the Winged Rylor damage reflection? Most of my deaths are due to Rylors: the Rylor bomb, the Rylor Bull stunlock, and the Winged Rylor damage reflection.

Wow I hadn't noticed how high that attack was. Actually, the higher level you are, the less powerful it is, because the attack doesn't increase at the same ratio that it starts at (relative to the monster's damage). That makes me realize I have to go over all of the monster special area attacks and make sure they make sense in that way. Thanks for pointing it out.

Also, can I use your balance mod with my existing characters? I'm worried that the skill changes will mess up my assigned points.

Yes you can, though I recommend backing up just in case I mess up somewhere. Skill costs are basically the same, with a few minor exceptions. A few (really very few) skills were swapped between skill trees where I thought it was necessary. Also, the cost of passive skills was doubled, so if you invested in passive skills, you'll have higher levels than a character who started with the mod. You might also find that skills that completely kicked butt without the mod (like whirlwind) aren't as powerful with it (e.g. whirlwind is now a 'super skill' and has a long cooldown).

Additionally, item durability is different with the mod. With the vanilla game, items start with very low durability and by the mid game durability never comes up since they're so durable. With the mod, items retain more or less the same durability throughout the game, which is to say they'll break every once in a while. The other change is that armor in the mod will be stronger than without the mod -- not only will the armor be more effective, but it'll spawn with higher values.

Other than these caveats, characters should be fully compatible.

[desophos]

So, I tried it out and took a Conjurer up to the early 20s. A few notes:

• I would suggest making the Saurian regeneration a percentage instead of a flat value. It's extremely high at low levels and, I imagine, rather low at high levels. That is, unless it actually does scale as a percentage and just displays as a flat value. Either way, their regen at low levels is a bit too much.
  
• Playing primarily as a Necromancer, I found the long cooldown on Skeletons to be more of an annoyance than anything. It didn't stop me from resummoning ones that died; the only time I really felt it was when I wanted to summon a bunch at once after a big fight or at the start of a world. I understand the motivation behind lengthening the cooldown, but I suggest shortening it.
  
• I haven't really found any decent items. Nothing above rare, and not even very good rares. I've been primarily using items from my shared stash. The loot find parameters may be a bit low, unless you really want people not to be able to find great stuff without farming. For example, I'm still wearing Ciglio's Robe (from my shared stash) in my early 20s.

I'll post more feedback if I come up with some. I love the vast majority of the changes you've made. I haven't really experienced the armor changes, because as a Conjurer I can wear only cloth armor. I'll have to try out another character.

Thank you for your dedication to balancing Din's Curse. It's really a better game with your mod installed.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by desophos

So, I tried it out and took a Conjurer up to the early 20s.

Excellent! I need the feedback!

A few notes:

• I would suggest making the Saurian regeneration a percentage instead of a flat value. It's extremely high at low levels and, I imagine, rather low at high levels. That is, unless it actually does scale as a percentage and just displays as a flat value. Either way, their regen at low levels is a bit too much.

• This is something that I actually just switched to a flat (but increasing) value in the last version. See, the problem was that bosses and champions, elites etc use the same regeneration enhancements. When they were percentages, a boss (who has 10x health than a regular monster) got an insane amount of health per second. So I had to reduce it for bosses to a very low percentage (0.2%). But then it hurt the champions and saurians who really gained close to nothing. The solution that made the most sense was to make it a flat value that scales per level of monsters. Now, bosses regenerate at roughly the same rate as regular monsters, making their regeneration tolerable.
  
  However, I know I made the flat value too high. I just got too excited seeing that saurians can finally regenerate properly The next version will have lower regeneration values.
  
  

  Playing primarily as a Necromancer, I found the long cooldown on Skeletons to be more of an annoyance than anything. It didn't stop me from resummoning ones that died; the only time I really felt it was when I wanted to summon a bunch at once after a big fight or at the start of a world. I understand the motivation behind lengthening the cooldown, but I suggest shortening it.

  Hmm.. The skeletons have a 20 second cooldown (not that long) that gives incentive for several things:
  1. Taking care of your skeletons (giving them food, finding health stones for them). If you can just recast, there's no need to do that.
  2. Using other summon spells like skeleton archers too (this is actually much more critical on Raise Dead which tends to dominate in the vanilla game).
  3. Not repeatedly casting when you just want to replace your skeleton to get an elite skeleton.
  
  The question is, is the cooldown legitimately annoying, or is the problem that there's no cooldown in the vanilla game so there's an expectation there? Also, from a narrative perspective, it kinda makes sense that a spell as 'exhausting' as raising the dead would have a cooldown to refocus. I could also reduce the cooldown somewhat, or I could make the skeletons tougher so it's more worthwhile to take care of them.
  
  

  I haven't really found any decent items. Nothing above rare, and not even very good rares. I've been primarily using items from my shared stash. The loot find parameters may be a bit low, unless you really want people not to be able to find great stuff without farming. For example, I'm still wearing Ciglio's Robe (from my shared stash) in my early 20s.

I may have to play around with the item generation parameters. The idea was to spawn less loot when you kill monsters (e.g. killing bosses no longer spawns up to 8 items and killing a regular monster has a lower chance of spawning loot), but I may have to compensate by improving the odds of getting a good item. At the same time, I also don't like how the vanilla game just spews insanely good items at you in huge quantities, though definitely I want you to find a few uniques and maybe even a legendary by level 20. This'll take me some time to figure out though, since the item spawn parameters are difficult to change effectively.

What I can recommend though, is that you try to find more stuff via chests than through killing monsters. I also want to improve the vendors' stuff, but that's more difficult. The emphasis in the mod is on exploring and finding chests as opposed to trying to find good loot by killing mobs.

One thing I didn't fully consider is the fact that there's competition with the shared stash. To be honest, I don't like the shared stash. I think it's a balance-breaking concept. Why would one be excited about being lucky enough to find a new unique (albeit weaker) item when one can have a stronger item waiting in the stash? It homogenizes the games and... ugh, I really don't like it. The only use it really has is
a. helping characters that are doing really badly -- but that should be worked out by good game balance and good gameplay choices, and
b. helping to assemble sets. I think there should be a different mechanism for that though, like a magic spell that allows you to move a set item from one character to another, but only once -- once you've moved it, it ain't coming back.

EDIT: I guess there's no avoiding the stash in a multiplayer game like DC since you can just take 2 characters into a multiplayer game and trade between them... so the stash just simplifies what would be doable but annoying.

BTW how are you finding the cash situation? And what do you think of item durability so far?

I'll post more feedback if I come up with some. I love the vast majority of the changes you've made. I haven't really experienced the armor changes, because as a Conjurer I can wear only cloth armor. I'll have to try out another character.

Yeah only mail and plate armor are really affected -- I had to change those because of the specifics of the armor absorption formula.

Thank you for your dedication to balancing Din's Curse. It's really a better game with your mod installed.

Thanks for the encouragement! I love the game and I really want the balance to be as good as I can get it to be.

[desophos]

Originally Posted by Bluddy

This is something that I actually just switched to a flat (but increasing) value in the last version. See, the problem was that bosses and champions, elites etc use the same regeneration enhancements. When they were percentages, a boss (who has 10x health than a regular monster) got an insane amount of health per second. So I had to reduce it for bosses to a very low percentage (0.2%). But then it hurt the champions and saurians who really gained close to nothing. The solution that made the most sense was to make it a flat value that scales per level of monsters. Now, bosses regenerate at roughly the same rate as regular monsters, making their regeneration tolerable.

However, I know I made the flat value too high. I just got too excited seeing that saurians can finally regenerate properly The next version will have lower regeneration values.

Great, I understand. And lower regeneration values sound perfect.

Originally Posted by Bluddy

Hmm.. The skeletons have a 20 second cooldown (not that long) that gives incentive for several things:
1. Taking care of your skeletons (giving them food, finding health stones for them). If you can just recast, there's no need to do that.
2. Using other summon spells like skeleton archers too (this is actually much more critical on Raise Dead which tends to dominate in the vanilla game).
3. Not repeatedly casting when you just want to replace your skeleton to get an elite skeleton.

The question is, is the cooldown legitimately annoying, or is the problem that there's no cooldown in the vanilla game so there's an expectation there? Also, from a narrative perspective, it kinda makes sense that a spell as 'exhausting' as raising the dead would have a cooldown to refocus. I could also reduce the cooldown somewhat, or I could make the skeletons tougher so it's more worthwhile to take care of them.

I hadn't played a vanilla Necromancer, so I didn't have an expectation about cooldowns. I actually expected there to be just a shorter cooldown in vanilla and was surprised when I found that there wasn't. I think that if skeletons were tougher, there would be more incentive to take care of them and the cooldown could be even longer. As it is, however, being able to get a lot of skeletons fairly easily means they would be OP if they were too strong.

Originally Posted by Bluddy

What I can recommend though, is that you try to find more stuff via chests than through killing monsters. I also want to improve the vendors' stuff, but that's more difficult. The emphasis in the mod is on exploring and finding chests as opposed to trying to find good loot by killing mobs.

I was actually going to suggest that you improve the drops from chests. As it is now, chests are still as underwhelming as they were in vanilla. I really like the idea of getting loot primarily from chests -- it makes Disarm Trap and especially Pick Lock much more worthwhile.

Originally Posted by Bluddy

To be honest, I don't like the shared stash. I think it's a balance-breaking concept.

Well, I don't have much more waiting for me in the stash, so I'll probably be mostly using drops.

Originally Posted by Bluddy

BTW how are you finding the cash situation?

Cash is fantastic. Inflation is so low that I find myself actually caring about how much cash I have and trying to conserve it. However, leprechauns no longer drop money -- is that intentional?

Originally Posted by Bluddy

And what do you think of item durability so far?

I haven't noticed it that much. I've only had one item worn so far, because I just repair all every time I go back to town.

Originally Posted by Bluddy

Thanks for the encouragement! I love the game and I really want the balance to be as good as I can get it to be.

Me too. I'd be glad to test this mod as much as you need. I could even help develop the mod if you'd like.

[Castruccio]

I think that the new monster speed may be such that characters who have slow spells (like ice bolt, etc) can't use those spells to slow certain monsters enough to run away from them anymore. In other words, now that the monsters are faster the effect of "slow" is drastically negated for many monsters (thus decreasing incentive to get "slow" spells).