The Balance Thread

[Castruccio]

Originally Posted by desophos

My Ice Mage / Ice Mage is up to level 11 now, and I've been extremely lacking in mana. I've put every point in Intelligence, but I can't even spam Arctic Shard for long. The worst part is having to wait around between battles for my mana to regenerate. Maybe you can increase regen when not in combat? I think the current state of mana is perfect for non-pure-mage classes, but as a pure mage my only offensive option is spamming spells, which I can't do with such low mana regen. I'm sure that it won't be a problem at higher levels, once I find mana regen gear and invest in Concentration, but it's been a problem throughout the game so far and probably will be up until around level 20.

I have a 28 ice mage and regen is still a problem at that level. I just spam mana drinks and things usually work out fine. As Bluddy said, however, it's on the to do list so it won't be a long term problem.

[desophos]

A couple problems with negative resistances:

1. I'm not sure, but it seems like having negative resistances makes that element do much more damage to your character. I would expect the formula not to be able to handle negative values well -- is it effectively capped at -0?
2. Negative resistances on items sometimes give those items negative sell prices, in which case you lose money when you sell them.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by desophos

A couple problems with negative resistances:

1. I'm not sure, but it seems like having negative resistances makes that element do much more damage to your character. I would expect the formula not to be able to handle negative values well -- is it effectively capped at -0?
2. Negative resistances on items sometimes give those items negative sell prices, in which case you lose money when you sell them.

- AFAIK negative resistances should cap at 0. The formula can't handle negatives at all. I'll have to check that out.
- Negative resistances shouldn't be a problem on items, because every negative resistance is accompanied by a bigger positive one. The difference between the two values is actually what the old resistance values were like in the mod. If a negative price is caused, something is odd about the way the price is calculated. Also, watch out for worn-out items which subtract the price of fixing the item from the item's selling price.

[Bluddy]

OK so now version 0.79 is available.

This version tries to make mana recharge times somewhat shorter. Basically, from my experience, 100 seconds (which is what was the default) is way too long, 80 seconds to charge the bar feels pretty good, while 60 seconds is around the sweet spot. Below 40 seconds starts to be ridiculous.

The problem is that with regen items, mana regen times are hard to predict. A character could have several mana regen items, and they go up in power up to level 50. Compounding the problem is the fact that I have zero high level (as in 30+) mage characters to test with. It appears that very few mages made it that far in the vanilla game, both because it's very very hard and because it gets monotonous (you have to pick 1-2 spells plus masteries in vanilla).

Even though I don't have high level mages, I've seen youtube videos of high level mages in action: they fire incessantly with high cast speed from items and super high regen rates which are common in the vanilla game. I'd like to avoid this if possible. I want to have a much more nuanced, tactical game with mages (again, if possible).

Mages are a lot about managing your mana, since their main spells have no cooldowns. A few pointers:
- It's useful to have a few spells not at the highest levels and therefore using less mana. Once I balance out the spell damage, it'll only be a level below max or so, but currently you can have a spell 3 levels below optimum and still kill many of the monsters with a few hits, without spending too much mana.
- In the first 10-15 levels, it's ok to use your weapons as well. Maybe even further than that. The weakness due to less STR is not that important in the first levels. Monsters will kill you much more slowly than they will in the vanilla game (in general. At least that's the intent. Though the mod's relative easiness is not apparent in the first 7 levels, which in the vanilla game are a cakewalk and in the mod are more trying).
- Drinks are your best friends

Anyway, give this version a try and see if there's an improvement.

Regarding the new masteries, I myself am kind of liking them so far. I think the best way to think of it is that mages will overpower their spells as much as they can, but only if they have the ability to resist the power of their own spells. For example, in the new versions, sorcerers standing in a pool of water lose a lot of lightning mastery, which when seen from this perspective, makes sense. They have to tone down their power so they don't electrocute themselves. Maybe I should rename the masteries to 'overpower'.

[Castruccio]

Originally Posted by Bluddy

OK so now version 0.79 is available.

This version tries to make mana recharge times somewhat shorter. Basically, from my experience, 100 seconds (which is what was the default) is way too long, 80 seconds to charge the bar feels pretty good, while 60 seconds is around the sweet spot. Below 40 seconds starts to be ridiculous.

The problem is that with regen items, mana regen times are hard to predict. A character could have several mana regen items, and they go up in power up to level 50. Compounding the problem is the fact that I have zero high level (as in 30+) mage characters to test with. It appears that very few mages made it that far in the vanilla game, both because it's very very hard and because it gets monotonous (you have to pick 1-2 spells plus masteries in vanilla).

Even though I don't have high level mages, I've seen youtube videos of high level mages in action: they fire incessantly with high cast speed from items and super high regen rates which are common in the vanilla game. I'd like to avoid this if possible. I want to have a much more nuanced, tactical game with mages (again, if possible).

I will send you a 28 mage. I can get him to 30 first if you would like.

EDIT: Sent.

[Castruccio]

Also, if fire shield is supposed to resemble ice armor then you will want to change both tool tips to say that fire protects from ice damage and ice protects from fire damage (right now the numbers section of the skill info has it right, but the tool tips that describe the skills don't).

Second, after installing the new patch my fire mastery has one skill point in it even though I don't recall ever putting a point in it. This appears to be some kind of bug because when I install an older version of the mod the skill point in fire mastery goes away. In the new version of the mod, fire mastery also has both the plus and minus signs next to the skill, whereas ice mastery only has the minus sign (presumably because fire mastery has a free skill point in it).

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Castruccio

Also, if fire shield is supposed to resemble ice armor then you will want to change both tool tips to say that fire protects from ice damage and ice protects from fire damage (right now the numbers section of the skill info has it right, but the tool tips that describe the skills don't).

Yes -- thanks for reminding me!

Second, after installing the new patch my fire mastery has one skill point in it even though I don't recall ever putting a point in it. This appears to be some kind of bug because when I install an older version of the mod the skill point in fire mastery goes away. In the new version of the mod, fire mastery also has both the plus and minus signs next to the skill, whereas ice mastery only has the minus sign (presumably because fire mastery has a free skill point in it).

I'm confused... are you saying that when you take off the mod, there's an extra skill level in fire mastery? Or that fire mastery doesn't directly match your fire resistance level?

[Castruccio]

Originally Posted by Bluddy

I'm confused... are you saying that when you take off the mod, there's an extra skill level in fire mastery? Or that fire mastery doesn't directly match your fire resistance level?

Never mind on this. I figured out what I was doing. I had some fire resistance equipment on that I didn't know I had and this added the level to fire mastery in the latest version of the mod. This was confusing me because I am an ice mage (I don't have any ice resistance equipment).

[desophos]

Originally Posted by Bluddy

If a negative price is caused, something is odd about the way the price is calculated. Also, watch out for worn-out items which subtract the price of fixing the item from the item's selling price.

My mistake -- this is what must be causing negative sell values. Since repair is now more costly, items can have repair costs greater than their sell costs.

[Bluddy]

Version 0.800 is up now.

Yep, you read that right. I decided that I need more room to breathe in terms of versions before hitting '1.0', so as of 0.8, the mod has graduated to 3 decimal places. I never expected to release so many versions back when I started the mod, so 2 places seemed reasonable back then...

This version doesn't have too many exciting things. It's mostly part of the process of tweaking to get the balancing where I want it to be. I've redone the potions completely so they work in a different way than in the vanilla game. This allows me more flexibility, and at the same time allows the potions not to grow too much in power between the start of the game and the endgame. (It also means more work any time I want to modify the potions' power, but that's a different story).

Also, I've redone the way the amorphs and plaguebringer spawn skills are done so that it should be much easier to redo their monster levels. Without this preparation, it would be very hard to change their levels as I'm planning to do.

Other than that, there are a couple of cosmetic tweaks -- for example, mousing over the different special hits in your character sheet will bring up a definition of that type of blow. This should help clarify a little which monsters should be less and which should be more sensitive to certain special hits (note that much of this is not in place yet).

Between more pressure at work and at home, the slow pace of testing with different characters, and the fact that I've started messing around with the UI to try get it to be more efficient, expect work on the mod to be on the slower side for now.

BTW I could really use more high level (40+) chars for testing. I have a pretty good selection at this point, but they tend to skew towards specific types (mostly ranger-y types for some reason). If anyone has a high level character, I'd appreciate it if they could post it/PM it to me.