The Balance Thread

[Elafar]

I am glad that you finding my smal reporting being helpfull. I will try to stay in that spirit .



Although backuping was probablly mentioned somwhere in some earlier posts, out from my expirience with this particular bug I would very strongly reccommend everyone to do so even with vanila game.

Imagine being very high lvl and sudenly ..bang...all your gold is gone...you can't even pay for potions, food or repair .., that could realy be killer of the fun.

.........

Now I would like to share few opinions about early stages of Mod as I expirienced it.

Please keep in mind that I am commenting only stuff bellow lvl 15 and only mele and bow class game play, because that was only thing I tryed so far.

Although Mod feels quite well ballanced, at some moments it feels a bit boring. There is plenty of skills wich on paper and on early levels completly looks unatractive to pick. Take for exemple skills that adds +3% min / max dmg. Having low dmg on starter weapons means that those 3 % doesn't show or feel as any significant imrovement.
Since I noticed that some gear has some cool skills that is being trigered on chances on proc, and some of those are realy cool and helpfull, especially those with AoE effect, I suggest you buff those early and unused skills with something similar.
Something like 1% add chance to proc (level and /or radius on those skills may be used to fine ballancing )-frost nova per level invested in some of those skills may make them much more atractive, and yet not unballancing a game.
So if you just "biff" unatractive and boring looking skills with diferent and atractive stuff that could be triggered even with low chance, IMHO mele could feel much more dinamic and apealing.

Possible skills that could be triggered on proc and I find preaty atractive are:
Any "Nova" or circle shaped aoe ..one could use different elements for damage

Actually I think there is already plenty of ready to use skills that could be interesting, and as you know much better magic and elemental skills probably you would do choose it much better than me anyway

Confusing for short time (they get blinded, or atacking each other )
Lowering armor or life on mobs for a short time
Mobs get slowed..

Or you could get some positive buffs like:
atack speed
life /mana regeneration
armor / shield
aditional chances to crit or crushing blow

anyway, you got idea.



I hope my observations and sugestion will be seen as a positive and eventualy turn out in even more awesome and enjoyable Mod than is today.

thx for reading

Elafar

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Elafar

Although backuping was probablly mentioned somwhere in some earlier posts, out from my expirience with this particular bug I would very strongly reccommend everyone to do so even with vanila game.

Yeah it's definitely good advice.

Although Mod feels quite well ballanced, at some moments it feels a bit boring. There is plenty of skills wich on paper and on early levels completly looks unatractive to pick. Take for exemple skills that adds +3% min / max dmg. Having low dmg on starter weapons means that those 3 % doesn't show or feel as any significant imrovement.

That's true. Melee combat in general isn't that exciting -- I think that's pretty standard for Diablo-style games. The star of the game isn't the skillset anyway -- it's the random towns and such. While I've tried to improve the balance of the skills, I also realize that people don't play this game for that reason. What I'd like to do though is make the management of the existing mechanics: mana, stamina, cooldowns etc as interesting as possible.

Percentage damage is not so appealing at the low levels. However, it will quickly become very useful as you go up in level. Also, one of the changes I made is that things like Bleed and Critical Hit give you direct percentages though (as opposed to modifying your existing percentages) so that they're worthwhile getting in the early game.

Since I noticed that some gear has some cool skills that is being trigered on chances on proc, and some of those are realy cool and helpfull, especially those with AoE effect, I suggest you buff those early and unused skills with something similar.

I wish there was a way to play around with procs, but there really doesn't seem to be much flexibility in that system. I also agree that procs make combat more interesting.

Something like 1% add chance to proc (level and /or radius on those skills may be used to fine ballancing )-frost nova per level invested in some of those skills may make them much more atractive, and yet not unballancing a game.
So if you just "biff" unatractive and boring looking skills with diferent and atractive stuff that could be triggered even with low chance, IMHO mele could feel much more dinamic and apealing.

That's really a good idea, but I don't think it's possible given the game's system. It would also have been nice to have skills be modified every few levels, for example. Something like the proc you mentioned going up every 4 skill levels or so would have been awesome. But the game only allows the same addition per skill level, and there's no way to increase any chance of a spell occurring.

Another nice thing would have been to produce combos -- following up certain skills with other skills would amplify those other skills. But that's also not possible.

In general also, I've tried not to modify skills too much. There's a pretty good balance of skills in the game, and since there are just so *many* of them, if I start modifying them freely, it becomes a game of playing with too many variables at once. I try to buff up specific skills that are underpowered, but I haven't modified skills en mass.

There is one thing I'd like to do, and that's increase the amount of possible one-use items. I've already thought of the ability to use an empty vial on blobs of mud that mud amorphs would drop when you hit them. Using these vials would spawn a friendly mud amorph. Other consumables (like the ones in Kivi's Underworld) would also be pretty cool. They'd really add some more flavor to the combat. The down side is that any items I add to the game will cause more incompatibility with the vanilla game.

I hope my observations and sugestion will be seen as a positive and eventualy turn out in even more awesome and enjoyable Mod than is today.

Sure. I definitely appreciate both your observations and suggestions, and keep them coming. Unfortunately my mod is limited by the limitations of the game system -- there's only so much I can do. While increasing procs and proc percentages via skills would be cool, it's just not something that can be done AFAIK.

[Bluddy]

OK, turns out I was wrong. After investigating a similar effect in Kivi's Underworld, it turns out you can have skills that act as procs, and that slowly increase in chance with levels. I do like this idea as a way to enhance skills that are currently undesirable.

Nevertheless, I'm not looking to change skills too much from vanilla, as I stated above. I also don't necessarily think skills like arms mastery etc are too weak -- they're very powerful once you get to level 20+. However, for skills like Focus Rage, Berzerk, Enrage and the Druid's Earth Link, this could be a great solution. I don't think a passive proc is a great idea. A constant chance of proc'ing would become overwhelming as you increased it in a 100 level game.

There's also the matter of which procs to use. In general, the warriors are non-magical in nature. The assassin has Charged Strike for some reason (not sure how he pulls it off) but other than that and the archer's multi-shot, attacks are non-magical. I've really tried to limit the ability of physical, realistic classes to do AOE damage. In the vanilla game, whirlwind quickly becomes an easy way to eliminate every threat. In the Balance Mod, it's considered a 'super-skill' for the warrior since it goes beyond his regular abilities, and as such has a long cooldown. So I don't want to suddenly give warriors and archers procs that override that general principle. I'd rather have their AOE effects (if any) arise from special items and powerups. So a proc that causes confusion (as you've mentioned) is better in my mind than an ice nova.

[Elafar]

Ah, that is a great news indeed .

I also didn't have in mind placing Aoe on all skills, just on those that are a bit boring and dull.

I am apologizing in advance if I already stating something you probably know better than I do, but there could be at least two ways on balancing skills on proc.

One would be to place powerfull spell that trigers only very rare, another would be weaker that procs more often.
The way I see it ( and have also seen it in some other mods in some other ARPG that peoples liked alot), adding appropriate and ballanced proc skills on weeker and undesirable skills would open space to make a much more different builds. It would be shame that peoples only opts for their class ultimate skills at latest stage of game.

There would be also very welcome procs in form of Life / mana leeching for short amount of time, increased speed (this would be my favourite, nothing more fun than mele with increesed speed ), Increased armor / resistance and stuff like that.
So, it doesn't have to be only AoE, although on some mage-like classes that decides to go mele path, I think it would made a perfect sense.

Not sure if this could be also a possibility - to trigger an aura- like effects on proc ? something like slowing down all mobs around you in some radius ?

Anyway, I am fully supporting your deccisions and have a full confidence that you will do great job and keep all this hopefully new changes well ballanced.

Thx again for this great news, it realy made me excited in hope for future changes, however good ballanced they will be

Cheers

Elafar

[Elafar]

After several time I've expirienced already mentioned bug (that one wich depletes all your welth and place you in negative).....After I finaly spoted that this bug only happend while I was selling stuff...rest was pmly question of time and obtaining and testing all items..

It took me some time to finaly discover wich item does this !!!

It is Tumbler of Greater fire resistance.

Not sure if this would be only one but once you chek it's stats you may compare it with other that possibly look similar ?

Elafar

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Elafar

After several time I've expirienced already mentioned bug (that one wich depletes all your welth and place you in negative).....After I finaly spoted that this bug only happend while I was selling stuff...rest was pmly question of time and obtaining and testing all items..

It took me some time to finaly discover wich item does this !!!

It is Tumbler of Greater fire resistance.

Not sure if this would be only one but once you chek it's stats you may compare it with other that possibly look similar ?

Elafar

I'm glad you've had the persistence to look for this issue -- I've had no time to work on the mod recently myself.

I just tested this though and... I'm not sure that's the problem. I sold and bought many Tumblers of Greater Fire Resistance and I couldn't find any problem with them. They have a certain cost, the cost is positive (ie you're not paying when you sell them) and it didn't do anything to me. Also, I think the Tumbler of Greater Fire Resistance is only available at a high level, so it couldn't have been the thing that stole your level 14 character's money.

This could either mean that the problem is just random, or that it's something else, or that this is the problem after all and my test somehow missed it. I did find that selling and buying things that have a negative cost is not working right. Specifically, if you have an item that's worn to the point that selling it would cost you negative money ie. you have to pay to get rid of it... well that part seems ok, but if you then buy the item back (specifically when you buy it from the 'recently sold' area), something screwy happens. Since the item is still worth negative cost, the vendor should pay you to buy it, but instead you pay a huge amount of money to get the item back. This could indicate that other things with negative cost are broken.

For the next version, I'll try to remove this negative cost thing. It's a bit of a shame -- the vendor deducts the cost of the repair, which severely limits the range of prices you can have for repair and selling. This doesn't really makes sense since the vendor presumably can repair the items for himself at almost no cost -- he's only charging you for it because it's a service. He certainly shouldn't deduct the full repair amount.

Anyway, I really appreciate your effort. You may be right about the Tumbler and I may have to test it with another character -- it just doesn't seem like it's the problem specifically after the single test I just did. Hopefully I'll have time to get back to the mod soon when things calm down a little at work.

[Elafar]

Tbh I am confused a bit....

I will try to share a few thoughts but those are still only speculations.

100 % of time when it happend , it happend while selling items to Vendors.

90 % of times happend after I saved town. Sadlly, remaining 10 % blures whole picture, and almost certainly removes that as an decissive factor.

I am also 90 % sure that it happends only with certain elixiers and potions. Also it doesnt happend always , neither with all of them.
I also noticed that their selling tag price states zero, and it is shown as an red colored number, it's kind of minus zero, like -0.

that also confused me a bit - arent we supposed to get some money also for selling those ? Maybe if you intended to regullate the prices as you described, you unintentionaly made those totaly unworthy of selling to vendors....and in a some way, because they apear to be negative numbers ??? they sometimes mess with whole process ?

You are also right about the Tumbler of Greater Fire Resistance apearing only later in the game ( now I am lvl 35...), so this couldn't be the one that bugged the game earlyer. So, this makes me think that this is not the only one that causes problems.
I will continue to monitor stuff, and this time I will save the game just before the selling process.
If it happends again, than I will repeat the whole thing few times again and if it always repeats on one particullar item... than I could even e-mail you a saved char files if you want ?

Regarding the time you are spending on this Mod, you already have spent so much that nobody should have a right to put a pressure on you. Actually nobody should be entitled to criticise any amount of work you've done so far, it is your gift to people and as a such we all should be gratefull (I know at least I am )

Take your priorities the way you feel it's best for you and your life and don't worry if you don't answer or do modding right away after someone complain or suggest something. .

Sending you my best wishes

Elafar
------------------------------------
Edit,

I have some realy interesting new info...

After I cleared a level and delivered few quests I went to vendor to identifie and repair stuff....
Than I payed attention to all flask I may have to sell.
I had a flask of minor cold resistance. I noticed that Price tag was writen in Red color and its stated minus zero ( -0).

So to test it and retest it I first saved a game and made a backup. But, when I resumed the game, the prace tag of the same flask was changed into normal color ( kind of gold color). No minus at all. And selling it doesn't caused any problem.

So, I could do screen save once I notice red color price....but this hardly could help you to analize the problem.
No wonder that you couldn't spot the problem after retesting.

What could be done is intentionaly try to play and focus on gathering different flasks and than selling them (if they have a red colored minus zero tag) there would be a big chance that bug will apear.

[Elafar]

I made a hybrid Deffender / tief, and only after I hitted lvl 24 I discovered that no skills -spells works from right mouse button slot.

They work well from all other slots when activating them by using keyboard though.

So I have done some testing...

I made an another hybrid, this time I've choosen Tief as a primary and deffender as a secondary.

All worked well.

I also tested a few other combos.

Made an Deffender / assassin
This combo also could use skills on RMB without problems.

Tested even Deffender / Archer
and that worked well too.

Not sure if all other Hybrid builds that uses Deffender as a primary works, but if someone discovers anything like I described above, it will be most likely caused by the same bug.

Hopefully this will be easy to discover-fix ?

No hurry though, take your time

Elafar

[Roswitha]

Originally Posted by Elafar

I made a hybrid Deffender / tief, and only after I hitted lvl 24 I discovered that no skills -spells works from right mouse button slot.

They work well from all other slots when activating them by using keyboard though.

In the bottom right corner of the screen, there are three boxes stacked vertically where you can put skills for the right mouse button. The active attack is the one at the bottom. Sometimes an empty skill ends up there, so nothing happens when you click the right mouse button. Use the up and down arrow keys to see if that helps.

[Elafar]

Originally Posted by Roswitha

In the bottom right corner of the screen, there are three boxes stacked vertically where you can put skills for the right mouse button. The active attack is the one at the bottom. Sometimes an empty skill ends up there, so nothing happens when you click the right mouse button. Use the up and down arrow keys to see if that helps.

Oh I did experiment with those alot , unfortunately nothing helped.
The same skills worked perfect when I tryed other combinations of classes. As I've mentioned, even Tief / Deffender as opposed to Deffender/Tief didn't caused any problem.

Thx for advice thogh