The Balance Thread

[Bluddy]

OK I've fixed the problem I had. In the current version (18) I've rebalanced the damage, and mana costs are pretty high again, which is as it needs to be. Otherwise you can just cruise along, upgrading spells as much as you like.

I'd rather start out with costs being a little too high and slowly lower them as needed, rather than have a situation where there's no control at all. That situation is much harder to recover from.

So now there's a whole bunch of stuff to test. The healer is done, and I nerfed mana regen items so it should be possible to raise combat regen again without mana going crazy. That's the next step. Then it's time to deal with scaling skills.

[Evander]

Originally Posted by Bluddy

They basically are already (more or less) limited by skill point expense. The problem is that there's a huge jump going from one raised creature to 2 or more. Each creature presents a huge jump in power.

Wasn't that, as it should be? If you would limit that to +1 creature per 5 lvl of skill, that would still slow down that power increase.

As a necro/paladin, you probably don't have as many pets as you could have. What level are you? I need to test higher level necros to figure out the proper way to balance this.

It's low level, around 20. And Like I said, I have problems with revenants usefulness already.

Nice! I'm iffy about giving regen bonuses right now. I'd like to reduce combat regen penalty to 50% instead of 25%, but as I said above, the mana regen items throw everything off once you remove the artificial reduction to 25%. Mana regen items are way too powerful. Really, it's too bad mana regen is measured per second -- it means that the proper values are very low. Even 3 mana per second is a big boost. Mana regen should be measured per 10 seconds.

My point here was to show you the difference in armor, actually
It's around 22% difference, which for vanilla is quite considerable (41 armor difference is huge).

Anyway, I'm glad to see the set effects boosted. At the same time, I'm wary of whole sets being passed to lower classes via that darn stash. I'd like to see Shadow limit set combining per level (say 0-10: 1 item. 10-25: 2 items. 25-40: 3 items. 40-55: 4 items. 55-70: 5 items. 70-100: 6 items.)

Actually, shared stash allow you to collect full sets. Without that, you would never be able to do this, there are simply too many set pieces around.

BTW, this limit would not be good especially for low lvl sets. After all, this is a set, and a reward for collecting an entire set is that you get the set bonuses

Oh, and I don't have an entire Aversion set yet to test the effects - if they are balanced and working properly. Maybe in the future

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Evander

Wasn't that, as it should be? If you would limit that to +1 creature per 5 lvl of skill, that would still slow down that power increase.

Well, I think people want to feel like they can easily get more pets. I don't like having to go through 4 levels to get another pet, so I adjusted it so that you get a pet every 2 levels like the skeletons. I just arranged the skill points so it's the same investment as before.

In any case, once you get another raised monster, their power essentially multiplies. It makes sense to balance that a little with reducing their power a bit. But I'll only do it if I see it's really required for balance. You've convinced me it's not a good idea until I really see that it's worth it.

It's low level, around 20. And Like I said, I have problems with revenants usefulness already.

If you buff them up, they get pretty good, but with a necro/paladin you can't expect to depend on them. A better choice in this case would probably be to get more of the cheaper skeletons. Of course, the skeletons in the vanilla game aren't that great. You probably need to do something like what I did with the skeletons for them to even be a choice.

My point here was to show you the difference in armor, actually
It's around 22% difference, which for vanilla is quite considerable (41 armor difference is huge).

Oh sorry. I focused on regen because that's what I'm dealing with right now. OK that's good. We definitely want to strengthen the sets.

Actually, shared stash allow you to collect full sets. Without that, you would never be able to do this, there are simply too many set pieces around.

BTW, this limit would not be good. After all, this is a set, and a reward for collecting an entire set is that you get the set bonuses

Yeah I like the stash. It just causes some balance issues. If you're able to collect a low level set over time, you can then give it to your lower level character and get awesome bonuses that don't belong at such a low level. That's what I'm saying. It'll just make the lower level game too easy, which isn't such a big deal anyway since the mid to end game is where the challenge is.

[Evander]

Originally Posted by Bluddy

Well, I think people want to feel like they can easily get more pets. I don't like having to go through 4 levels to get another pet, so I adjusted it so that you get a pet every 2 levels like the skeletons. I just arranged the skill points so it's the same investment as before.

In any case, once you get another raised monster, their power essentially multiplies. It makes sense to balance that a little with reducing their power a bit. But I'll only do it if I see it's really required for balance. You've convinced me it's not a good idea until I really see that it's worth it.

If you buff them up, they get pretty good, but with a necro/paladin you can't expect to depend on them. A better choice in this case would probably be to get more of the cheaper skeletons. Of course, the skeletons in the vanilla game aren't that great. You probably need to do something like what I did with the skeletons for them to even be a choice.

Oh, but you are trying to make every skill useful regardless of character level, afair?

Perhaps for a necromancer a different approach would be more appropriate?

Consider.
An adept necromancer on the beginning of his journey would decide to invest his skill points in skeletons in order to raise an army quickly and cheaply.
These would be good for a low to mid level section of game, where he would be able to rush the enemy with his undead horde.

Later however, they would became insufficient, and it may be seen as natural evolution for a necromancer to respec and put skill points into raise dead skill. In order to raise elite death knights if you like, rather than to play with rattling bones.
These would retain their monster abilities but would also get sort of Greater Undead bonuses.

If Raise Dead skill would add some more bonuses, like static -10% attack speed, +def +health and some hp regen, hi lvl necromancer would choose carefully as to which monster he should raise. Sure, a cost in money for this skill should be increased.

Perhaps a class evolution from one skill to another is better in this case

Oh sorry. I focused on regen because that's what I'm dealing with right now. OK that's good. We definitely want to strengthen the sets.

I think that ForceQuality would do it. One would expect set items to always be the same, rather than to see 6 different version of some set gloves.

Yeah I like the stash. It just causes some balance issues. If you're able to collect a low level set over time, you can then give it to your lower level character and get awesome bonuses that don't belong at such a low level. That's what I'm saying. It'll just make the lower level game too easy, which isn't such a big deal anyway since the mid to end game is where the challenge is.

Well, no point in making low lvl game too hard, anyway.
Consider this as a contribution to DC replayability

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Evander

Oh, but you are trying to make every skill useful regardless of character level, afair?

Basically, yes. But I can't make every skill equally useful to every class combo. It's all about how many points a character is willing to invest.

A weaponmaster/necro hybrid may want to put a ton of points in weaponmaster because that'll make him very strong. But then he can't expect the remaining points he puts into necro to give him strong pets. They'll just be distractions while he cuts down the enemies with his sword.

If he decides to go the other way, he can sink most of his points into necro and only a few into weaponmaster. Then his pets should kick butt so long as he invests in INT, and his weaponmaster skills will remain weaker.

At least, that should be the way it is. And just saying that makes me realize that I have to make sure the necro gets strong enough as a class choice.

[Bluddy]

Now that mana costs are somewhat high, I want to start reducing them gradually. First, this is a great opportunity to get rid of the combat regen reduction. As Crisses said, it doesn't really make much sense. For example, suppose you're a mage being chased by a monster, waiting for your mana to fill up enough to fire a spell. With the current reduction during combat, you'll wait forever. You have to use a potion. If you manage to get far enough away from the monster that you're no longer considered 'in combat', then suddenly your mana will fill up. It's too arbitrary.

Another thing I started thinking about before I adjust mana costs down is the damage spread of spells. I work with averages in my excel book -- it's much easier to consider. But it turns out that my spells damage values were a ratio of 5 between max and min damage, which is ridiculous. That means a spell could do either 100 damage or 500 damage. So looking at the averages, everything seemed fine, but in reality the spell could turn out to be too weak or too strong depending on the luck of the mage. There was actually a weird bug that caused me to focus on this.

Finally, I'm thinking of doubling all mana costs and bonuses. The reason is that I hate the huge difference between the amount of mana a full mage has, and the amount of mana a half-mage has. Even if you buy only mage skills, a half-mage will have around half as much mana. It's unfair, and it makes balancing very very hard. For example, suppose a mage should be able to fire off 9 fiery blasts before running out of mana. A half-mage will only be able to shoot 4 of them, forcing him to use a much lower power fiery blast to compensate. He's tremendously disadvantaged just because he's a half-mage. So I'm going to change the mana figures per INT and SPR to make the advantage to full mages smaller. In order to be able to have mana regen bonuses work too, I'll need to roughly double all mana values.

EDIT: I redid the math. The problem is not the mage's mana bonus, but the half-mage's reluctance to spend too much on mana, whereas the full mage has little else to spend on except for vitality. That's what causes the disparity. So mana costs stay as they are, and I'll have to figure out the balancing.[/EDIT]

This is BTW similar to the problem with warriors. Warriors get boosts to their damage from STR. Each tree contributes a little to the bonus, and the full bonus is very large. What this means is that full warriors can have ridiculous DPS if they invest in STR. It gives them an advantage that the half-warriors (or the monsters) can't ever catch up with. I've lowered this bonus a little, and when I get to it again, I may lower it some more.

[alstein]

I'd say all you need to do is lower all the .2 bonuses to .1, except for the Reaver.

BTW Reaver you may want to check Wampir Blood, it scales horribly (and is undervalued as is, even after the buff)

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by alstein

I'd say all you need to do is lower all the .2 bonuses to .1, except for the Reaver.

I've lowered it to 0.15 for the warriors, but I think you're right -- I'll probably set it to 0.1 when I get to it again.

BTW Reaver you may want to check Wampir Blood, it scales horribly (and is undervalued as is, even after the buff)

Yep it's on my list of non-scaling skills. The only reason I haven't touched it yet is because it requires another mod file to go in the expansion directory, so I left it for now.

[Bluddy]

I think I've figured out the solution to a certain problem. The problem was, how do I prevent the mage who just stocks up on INT from becoming extremely OP. He doesn't need DEX or STR since he doesn't plan on hitting monsters. But then his game will become boring since he'll have so much mana, he'll be able to upgrade a few spells to the point that they'll kill anything that moves.

Solution: item requirements. This mage doesn't want items for their armor value -- he only wants them for their bonuses. But the biggest bonuses will be on higher level items. If he wants to get those bonuses, he'll have to invest a little bit in STR and DEX. The narrative reason for this is that heavy, protective cloth armor requires STR and DEX in order to be able to use it and still be able to cast spells.

Now the super mage can choose: do I only buy INT and some VIT, or do I invest a little (and I'll make sure it's just a little) in DEX and STR to be able to afford the bonuses from items?

[Evander]

Level requirements for Cloth/Leather items were weird already.
Adding stat requirement may complicate things some more, but maybe thats the right way?

Perhaps a lvl requirement should be then lowered a bit?