The Balance Thread

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Shadow

Just a side note: these are the type of changes that are really hard for developers to make because anything that changes the status quo without having an obvious and direct benefit to the player is not liked by gamers, even if it is best in the long run. Having said that I don't know if this is a good or bad change.

Yeah I expected some backlash I'm not sure if it's a good idea yet either.

While I personally don't repair stuff every time I go to town, there's a strong incentive to do so. It makes sense: you don't want your equipment breaking on you at a bad time, and if all it takes is a little click, it's definitely worth it. As a modder, I want the player to experience the equipment either breaking or near-breaking -- I think that's a good part of the tension, plus it makes durability modifiers worthwhile (otherwise durability is only a factor in towns without smiths or in prolonged Naga fights). I therefore need some incentive for the player to really wear the items down.

The thing is, using player frustration as a counter-incentive is not the greatest idea, which is why I'm really hesitant about this. What I'd really like is a monetary counter-incentive: if you fix your sword when it only has 4 durability damage, you'd pay virtually the same as when it's broken. This would give a strong financial incentive to try and take your equipment to the edge of its durability -- otherwise you're just throwing money down the drain.

With the current situation, no matter how much I raise repair prices, it still makes just as much sense to repair it earlier rather than later because the repair price is a fraction of the total cost, unless the player knows that he's going to be getting rid of certain equipment soon (which he usually doesn't). So I'm hoping that a little clicking frustration will do the trick

[Bluddy]

Version 0.76 is ready for download.

I wanted to get this one out quickly. Thanks to desophos' insight to look at the smiths rather than at the repair functionality itself, the 'repair all' button is back. I figured it wasn't fair to punish people for playing optimally. Ideally, I could put in an incentive to hold off on repairs, but barring that, there should be another mechanism to try make repairs interesting. And the most interesting mechanism is to fall back on DC's strength, which is its randomness. So now, even though there are smiths in town, they won't necessarily be able to fix your stuff, though some will. Eventually I'll add some chat that explains this: some smiths might say they're not good enough to repair things, or that they don't have enough supplies in town to squander them on repairs. The implication is that it's now far more important to pay attention to wandering vendors -wandering smiths will always be able to repair - and that it's actually useful to get another smith in a quest, and to guard the one who can repair from dying. I'm not sure about the percentage chance of having fixing smiths right now -- maybe the town should normally start on average with no ability to repair your equipment, in which case I need to lower some of the probabilities.

I stuck another change in this version about which I've been thinking for a long time. As a rule, resistances are most interesting when they're extremely uneven. It's best when you have very high resistance in say, fire, but minimal cold resistance. This wasn't the case in the game so far -- it was far too easy to build up many resistances, which is why I lowered the item modifiers for resistances. What I did now is change it so that you can get higher resistances from items, at the cost that you lose resistance to the opposite element. So building up fire resistance will make you vulnerable to cold, and building up lightning resistance will make you vulnerable to poison ('earth'). You can also try to balance it out, in which case you'll get lower values in both opposing elements.

The final thing I want to mention here doesn't have to do with this version per se, but with the philosophy I'm taking with the mod in general. Something I've learned from playing another great game called Binding of Isaac is that it's good to start deficient in all major resources. This is the reason I've made the player start with relatively low stamina (in the 60s), low resistance percentages, and minimal light intensity (currently 40). The idea is that as the game goes on, the player can choose his priorities and what to invest in. If you play as a ranged character or want to easily escape monsters, stamina will be a great investment. If you don't want to rely mostly on lamps, or if you don't have attacks that brighten up the environment (like fireballs), you may want to invest a little in light. If you don't want to lose your ability to fight or to keep spending money, weapons with durability boosts are a real advantage. And even a non-mage who wants to take his skills all the way up should need some INT. The point is, it shouldn't be easy to expand in all directions -- there are tough choices about what you want to specialize in, though with 100 levels and re-spec-ing, there's plenty of time to change your mind.

Anyway, let me know what you think of the 2 changes in this version.

[Castruccio]

First town I spawned with this patch had no smiths at all! Lucky me. I'll let you know how the changes feel. Also, if you need a Wizard to test the future mana changes, I've got one near 30 I can send when the time comes.

EDIT: What's the spawn rate on the repairing smiths? I just spawned a new town with a different character and there are 3 smiths, but none have repair. This is not a cause for immediate concern since I'm willing and excited to try out the new mechanic. I'm just curious how likely I am to start a town with a repairing smith.

[jureidinim]

Originally Posted by Bluddy

Version 0.76 is ready for download.

I wanted to get this one out quickly. Thanks to desophos' insight to look at the smiths rather than at the repair functionality itself, the 'repair all' button is back. I figured it wasn't fair to punish people for playing optimally. Ideally, I could put in an incentive to hold off on repairs, but barring that, there should be another mechanism to try make repairs interesting. And the most interesting mechanism is to fall back on DC's strength, which is its randomness. So now, even though there are smiths in town, they won't necessarily be able to fix your stuff, though some will. Eventually I'll add some chat that explains this: some smiths might say they're not good enough to repair things, or that they don't have enough supplies in town to squander them on repairs. The implication is that it's now far more important to pay attention to wandering vendors -wandering smiths will always be able to repair - and that it's actually useful to get another smith in a quest, and to guard the one who can repair from dying. I'm not sure about the percentage chance of having fixing smiths right now -- maybe the town should normally start on average with no ability to repair your equipment, in which case I need to lower some of the probabilities.

Haven't tried this yet but was just wondering:
1) Would it be possible to restrict the repairs of smiths? So an Armorsmith wouldn't be able to repair weapons, and vice versa? Something along those lines.


2) I dont remember how exactly you adjusted damage to armor pieces or weapons, but (if its not there already) maybe different damage types can do different damage - or criticals do double.. Basically something to mix up the RATE of damage taken to armor / weapon durability. So even if a player has been repairing all in regular intervals, it would only take one bad fight with some crits or special attacks to rack up a lot of armor/weapon degradation and maybe even breakage.

Looking forward to trying the changes though :-)

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by jureidinim

Haven't tried this yet but was just wondering:
1) Would it be possible to restrict the repairs of smiths? So an Armorsmith wouldn't be able to repair weapons, and vice versa? Something along those lines.

I wish -- this is something I was hoping for a while ago, only to be disappointed. If I had that and the ability to make repairing a little damage = repairing a lot of damage cost wise, I'd have everything the way I wanted it repair-wise.

2) I dont remember how exactly you adjusted damage to armor pieces or weapons, but (if its not there already) maybe different damage types can do different damage - or criticals do double.. Basically something to mix up the RATE of damage taken to armor / weapon durability. So even if a player has been repairing all in regular intervals, it would only take one bad fight with some crits or special attacks to rack up a lot of armor/weapon degradation and maybe even breakage.

This does exist in the game -- special hits by monsters do more damage to your armor, and being blocked by monsters damages your weapon more. But while the latter is interesting, since monster block rate varies based on different attack and defense values, the former is pretty boring. Monsters generally have a certain percentage of crits they do. It used to increase per level, but that makes them overly powerful (as if they don't do enough damage as is) so now it's just constant. So in general it doesn't vary the durability damage rate that much. Fighting nagas is a different story -- those slimy monsters destroy your armor in no time, which I think is really going to make them much more of a threat when you don't have a repairing smith. It turns them from below-average enemies to formidable threats on a situational basis, which is the coolest thing possible

[Castruccio]

I have spawned 3-4 towns now on the new patch and not a single one has had a vendor who could repair. This has posed a particular problem for my Hardcore character. Repair is still in the game right?

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Castruccio

I have spawned 3-4 towns now on the new patch and not a single one has had a vendor who could repair. This has posed a particular problem for my Hardcore character. Repair is still in the game right?

Yep. Different smiths have different chances of being able to repair stuff -- tailors have the lowest chances. I'll raise it a little in the next patch and we'll see if you get some better odds. How many smiths have you had per town?

[Castruccio]

One with none, and a few with 2 and even 3. Also, I can tell you made the loot drops a bit better. This is a welcome change. I think it might be the sweet spot. The new darkness level is also just right.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Castruccio

One with none, and a few with 2 and even 3. Also, I can tell you made the loot drops a bit better. This is a welcome change. I think it might be the sweet spot. The new darkness level is also just right.

Wow awesome. I just raised one loot variable a little and I've also noticed quite a difference. That's why I was afraid to mess with that stuff -- it's really sensitive. I'm happy to hear it looks better now. And I'm pretty happy with the darkness too. I'm considering maybe making the lights a bit brighter, but I definitely don't want to drop player light intensity to 30 (from the current 40). That makes things way too dark.

Right now the chance of getting a repairing vendor is 1/3. I'll raise it a little bit in the next update (coming right up) and we'll see how it goes from there.

[Bluddy]

Version 0.77 is a small revision with some more big changes.

I've increased the chance for smiths to know how to fix items. But that's the small change. The big change is an experimental one, and it concerns fire, ice and lightning mages. The masteries are now no longer present as regular skills -- they rely on fire/cold/lightning resistance to go up in level. Since mages are currently the least balanced class, I feel that this is the time to try experiment to get them to be more interesting. One of the problems of the mages is that they're so detached from items. By making mastery rely on resistance, it makes items much more valuable for mages, or at least I hope it will. Please try out a fire mage/ice mage/sorcerer even though it's not balanced yet and let me know if this new mastery seems like a good idea.

Also, I couldn't get rid of the little plus buttons on the mastery skills, even though you can't click on them. Sorry.