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quote:* Nerfed Vitality regen and added a cooldown
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Jul 5, 2014 18:05
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Smuggins posted:Oh heck I see the old game and I can run it with no issues.
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Jul 5, 2014 18:06
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Kurvi Tasch posted:YES! I got into serious trouble with Bulwark rares in recent runs, and that includes Borfast. Oh man, is that why Borfast has been nigh-invulnerable the last half-dozen times I've tried to kill him? I was even waiting till he was almost at 50% health before dropping all of my heavy attacks on him in hopes of leaving him at less than 100% health in order to whittle him down, but nothing I brought to the fight could do a drat thing to him. This was with a Cursed, a Berserker, a Brawler, a Sun Paladin, an Archmage and a Necromancer if I remember correctly. Each time I just left him alone after a few healing cycles. This was on normal difficulty. E: the Brawler even had the advantage of knocking off all of Borfast's sustained abilities.
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Jul 5, 2014 18:25
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Zereth posted:Have you made sure you're logged into your online profile where all your birth options are stored? Everything indicates I am logged on every time I play (bought it off steam) but now that I look at my profile in-game it doesn't have any of my birthrights listed. Steam is updating my achievements, things SEEM to be all connected. Perhaps a bug. I had very little unlocked so I will just keep playing and see.
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Jul 5, 2014 18:37
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Farewell, Far More Interesting (If Hilariously Unbalanced) Trollmire 
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Jul 5, 2014 18:44
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Pvt.Scott posted:Oh man, is that why Borfast has been nigh-invulnerable the last half-dozen times I've tried to kill him? I was even waiting till he was almost at 50% health before dropping all of my heavy attacks on him in hopes of leaving him at less than 100% health in order to whittle him down, but nothing I brought to the fight could do a drat thing to him. This was with a Cursed, a Berserker, a Brawler, a Sun Paladin, an Archmage and a Necromancer if I remember correctly. Each time I just left him alone after a few healing cycles. This was on normal difficulty. Borfast also has Retch, which gives him some pretty hefty regen.
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Jul 5, 2014 21:05
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Magres posted:The thing I don't like about the point respecs change is that it's going to make it a lot harder to float points in a talent you'll pull them out of eventually, because you have to pull all of your float points out, put a point in what you're actually keeping, then put all your float points back. Now if you want to do that you have to go back to town every time you level, which is kinda lame. Not the end of the world, but lame. The entire point is to discourage obsessive talent floating, which was never the intended function of respec.
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Jul 5, 2014 23:41
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What builds or classes make point floating a necessity rather than a convenience? I'm terrible at the game, so I honestly have no clue. If any of the classes need point juggling to be viable long term, the class needs some loving attention.
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Jul 6, 2014 00:01
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A lot of people like to float points in stopgaps they won't need once their build comes online, like points in weapon mastery and accuracy until they scrounge up the money to buy mindstar mastery. I've always found it obnoxious and never bothered, though, so this is a fine change for me.
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Jul 6, 2014 00:04
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Pvt.Scott posted:What builds or classes make point floating a necessity rather than a convenience? I'm terrible at the game, so I honestly have no clue. If any of the classes need point juggling to be viable long term, the class needs some loving attention. It's not about being necessary, it's just that point floating was objectively more powerful than not point floating. If you're not constantly playing the annoying point reassigning minigame, then you're actively choosing for your character to be a little worse, and that's bad game mechanics.
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Jul 6, 2014 00:12
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Tendales posted:It's not about being necessary, it's just that point floating was objectively more powerful than not point floating. If you're not constantly playing the annoying point reassigning minigame, then you're actively choosing for your character to be a little worse, and that's bad game mechanics. Do people just keep five points free to switch between AoE and single target attacks as the situation dictates or what? I can understand point swapping for the three points in generics until you have all of the trees you want there as I do that, but on the skill side I have no idea what I'd be swapping in and out all of the time.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:13
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Pvt.Scott posted:Do people just keep five points free to switch between AoE and single target attacks as the situation dictates or what? I can understand point swapping for the three points in generics until you have all of the trees you want there as I do that, but on the skill side I have no idea what I'd be swapping in and out all of the time. Every time a spell comes off cooldown you put four points into it, then use it, then take them out
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Jul 6, 2014 01:25
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Use power A. Take the points out of power A and put them in power B. Use power B. Take all the points out of power B, put them in power C. Etc. Now powers A, B, and C are effectively 5 point powers, even though you've only invested 7 total points.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:28
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Pvt.Scott posted:Oh man, is that why Borfast has been nigh-invulnerable the last half-dozen times I've tried to kill him? I was even waiting till he was almost at 50% health before dropping all of my heavy attacks on him in hopes of leaving him at less than 100% health in order to whittle him down, but nothing I brought to the fight could do a drat thing to him. This was with a Cursed, a Berserker, a Brawler, a Sun Paladin, an Archmage and a Necromancer if I remember correctly. Each time I just left him alone after a few healing cycles. This was on normal difficulty. The only thing I can think the respeccing would make annoying is early for characters you plan on sticking mindstars on and Stone Arcane Blades. People actually juggling the points to max out abilities are horrible munchkins and I fully support kicking their asses to the curb.
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Jul 6, 2014 02:46
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theshim posted:The only thing I can think the respeccing would make annoying is early for characters you plan on sticking mindstars on and Stone Arcane Blades. People actually juggling the points to max out abilities are horrible munchkins and I fully support kicking their asses to the curb. Yeah, I only really juggled points with Arcane Blade in order to get to Stone. If I can still "respec" and take points out of Fire to put into Stone at level 10 while in a town, then no worries.
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Jul 6, 2014 05:57
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ProfessorCirno posted:Yeah, I only really juggled points with Arcane Blade in order to get to Stone. If I can still "respec" and take points out of Fire to put into Stone at level 10 while in a town, then no worries. yeah, that is if you go to town every time you level up so that you can get levels in other things, or if you decide that you are going to start leveling flame at level 5 i guess.
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Jul 6, 2014 06:01
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theshim posted:I dunno, I killed Borfast pretty simply with my Insane Archmage, just nuked him down. Of course, he spawned in the same room as the Master and a rare, so I had to break them all off, buuuuut... Part of my problem with Borfast the last number of times is that I've been hitting Dreadfell pretty early (15-18) because even though I play roguelike I was being really impatient. Being underskilled and undergeared and then running into a bulwark vomit heal machine makes for long inconclusive fights.
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Jul 6, 2014 06:13
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Or, for AB, you can just level Flame, take that and your badass area stun and massive area blasting spell that make your earlygame far less horrible, and accept that your endgame damage will be 6k instead of 8k. Such a terrible fate. (I think am a little jaded because I found AB perfectly solid before they got weapon trees. Still think the optimal damage build is lunacy though.)
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Jul 6, 2014 06:17
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jsoh posted:Every time a spell comes off cooldown you put four points into it, then use it, then take them out
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Jul 6, 2014 06:35
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In my experience, for every person that does it, there are five dozen that bitch about the person that does it. It's pretty rare to actually see a player that abuses it, from what I've seen of comments from players on ToME's forums and in the chats, but almost everyone intensely hates that it is optimal play. I'd comment on how this is silly, but I admit I'm one of the people it annoys. 
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Jul 6, 2014 07:41
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The limited respecs are dumb anyway. If you're going to limit them by location go full or go home.
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Jul 6, 2014 07:44
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Lady Morgaga posted:Thats just sounds tedious as gently caress. People actually do it? drat. From my understanding it's mostly a  thing for insane/madness modes.Or at least I'd hope that barring a couple oddball exceptions that no one would do it on normal, because... well, seriously.
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Jul 6, 2014 08:40
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dis astranagant posted:The limited respecs are dumb anyway. If you're going to limit them by location go full or go home. It makes a bit more sense when you realize that (IIRC) they were intended entirely for test driving talents that a tooltip can't really give you an adequate feel for. Everything after that has been entirely emergent  . Wait, I mean emergent gameplay.Still think the world map definitely should be enabled for them, though. The only difference between world map and towns is tedious movement. And I do some respec abuse(well, did, I guess) on Normal because... I'm lazy and like to leave 20 points laying around. If anything, this will probably lower my deaths on Normal, as I'll finally stop doing that and it has a habit of killing me every so often. On Nightmare (And this was before Nightmare got nerfed repeatedly), the only time I can recall using it for more than statusing out a boss (Which I could do easily with this current system) was a very specifically horrible Ruins of Telmur setup involving a Bone Giant dealing over 1k with Archer range. Fortunately that kind of insanity really shouldn't happen now that the new scaling rules for ultra-high level talents are in place, so it should be fine. Though I still kinda like a more lenient system better.
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Jul 6, 2014 09:10
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I think somebody already said this, but it bears repeating -- why not just put abilities on cooldown whenever you put points in or take them out? It cripples combat respeccing, but doesn't impact convenience at all.
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Jul 6, 2014 10:17
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Tendales posted:It's not about being necessary, it's just that point floating was objectively more powerful than not point floating. If you're not constantly playing the annoying point reassigning minigame, then you're actively choosing for your character to be a little worse, and that's bad game mechanics. And now it's still objectively more powerful, but more annoying. "If you give your players two ways to play the game, the easy tedious way and the challenging fun way, they will choose the easy tedious way. And then blame you for it." With this change, it also means that even if you're using the respec for its intended purpose, it sucks -- say you put four points into Ice before leaving town, and then level up halfway through a dungeon. If you have now decided that Ice sucks and you don't want it, you have to either run back to town immediately or sit on that level-up until you finish the dungeon, because spending any points from it will lock you into Ice. Idea: let the player respec anywhere, and possibly even let them respec more points, but limit when: you can only respec when you level up. Maybe give the player one or two extra "free" respecs once they hit 50, to allow a bit of fiddling around with endgame builds without encouraging constant minmaxing of skillpoint allocation between fights.
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Jul 6, 2014 13:24
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ProfessorCirno posted:Farewell, Far More Interesting (If Hilariously Unbalanced) Trollmire Out of everything in this past release or so, this stings as the loss of a most interesting unintended thing---there really SHOULD be some flat chance of each zone having a shot loot a tier or so higher than normal just to add some zing. The whole respec thing is endlessly circular---still say the "best" solution is to let players manipulate their skill lines outright at creation or some such instead. "Wait until level 4 to get my actual Arcane Beam going? But I'm making a Cornac Arcane ArchMage here! Screw it, let's swap the places/reqs with the Spellpower sustain and away we go~" And so on with countless other classes and their builds that you have to "wait" on with such a long game to play as it is already.
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Jul 6, 2014 14:18
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I think somebody already said this, but it bears repeating -- why not just put abilities on cooldown whenever you put points in or take them out? It cripples combat respeccing, but doesn't impact convenience at all. I didn't even know you could swap talents, fire the max one off, etc. back and forth. I just assumed you couldn't. So I support this because it literally doesn't impact my playstyle at all. Hopefully DG sees these posts, I know he reads the thread occasionally.e: vvv This is probably exactly why I just assumed talents did without ever checking. Tsurupettan fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 14:53
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The best part is that inscriptions already work exactly the way I describe.
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Jul 6, 2014 15:29
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ToxicFrog posted:"If you give your players two ways to play the game, the easy tedious way and the challenging fun way, they will choose the easy tedious way. And then blame you for it." This is always the hardest thing for game developers to understand. I mean, literally the entirety of tabletop gaming hasn't clicked on this yet (though they have to grapple with far more toxic fans then even the indiest of video games). There's a reason most video games have learned the importance of "quality of life" improvements.
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Jul 6, 2014 16:41
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Actually, in my experience, they will make a pretty intelligent choice, balanced between effort and reward. Then blame you for it regardless of what they choose, because either they're being robbed of an easier road because they don't like tedium, or they're having to play tediously to win. It's sorta lose/lose for devs. Edit: Also, I believe I've been pushing for the set-actives-on-CD fix to this... gosh, over a year now? It's definitely an answer I prefer to the current one, it's a nice balance of general design consistency and convenience. SageAcrin fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 20:35
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I mean, the actual solution is "don't make an easy yet ultimately tedious method of winning." One of the things MtG has learned was "don't be afraid to ban or re-write un-fun things."
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Jul 6, 2014 20:43
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Yeah, and ToME's been doing a lot of stuff that forbids that(tons upon tons of grinding options that didn't have risk got nerfed into non-existence). It's a good thing to do. This particular thing just got complicated due to Insane/Madness existing, and due to it being intended as less "Test talents" and more "Tedious way to win". Insane/Madness, in turn, being "That difficulty DarkGod never really expected people to beat" and "That difficulty DarkGod offered to make when people complained that Insane was too easy and he offered to make a new difficulty if someone could actually get half the classes in the game cleared on it". Higher difficulties in ToME are a thing. They'll probably be fine, but it's why people argued so much over this topic.
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Jul 6, 2014 20:53
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ProfessorCirno posted:This is always the hardest thing for game developers to understand. I mean, literally the entirety of tabletop gaming hasn't clicked on this yet (though they have to grapple with far more toxic fans then even the indiest of video games). There's a reason most video games have learned the importance of "quality of life" improvements. Assuming you mean pen and paper RPGs - Eh in tabletop you can get around it because you have a game developer at the table actively okaying or vetoing anything and everything. Rule Zero is the best rule. (for anyone who doesn't do tabletop, Rule Zero is "what the DM says is law. Deal with it or quit.")
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Jul 6, 2014 21:00
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Magres posted:Assuming you mean pen and paper RPGs - Eh in tabletop you can get around it because you have a game developer at the table actively okaying or vetoing anything and everything. Rule Zero is the best rule. That's dumb. Why should I as DM have to do their job for them? "Hey don't worry that Bethesda games are cripplingly broken, you can just make a mod to fix them!" This is dumb in the vidya, it's dumb in ttgs. When I DM, I want to make cool encounters and set up interesting challenges and have memorable NPCs to interact with. I'm not there to write the game for them.
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Jul 7, 2014 00:49
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So the best relevant equivalent I can come up with is the Adventurer class. Most classes in ToME have at least a reasonable semblance of balance to them, more or less. There aren't many that are unwinnable, and not many that are just a breeze to blow through the game with (although if you both really know the game and are playing a strong class you'll breeze through, but that's also because most veterans just play well by habit after a while). But when you mix and match random, unrelated things from various classes, everything comes flying apart at the wheels and you can make unbelievably busted stuff. A good example of 'Adventurer Syndrome' in 3.5E DnD (my most familiar system) is a build I know - you play as a Warlock, get the Hellfire Warlock Prestige Class, then cross-class one level into Binder. Warlock lets you shoot beams of energy at people called Eldritch Blasts. They do reasonable damage, nothing special, but are nice because you have no limit on how many times you can shoot them. Hellfire Warlock lets you take a point of Constitution damage (most people have a Con of 10-20) in exchange for hugely powering up a single Eldritch Blast - you burn your lifeforce for more power. Then Binder lets you, at little cost, heal one point of Constitution damage per round. It's stupid as gently caress because suddenly your Warlock is fighting like a Warlock a solid 8 levels above their actual level and will demolish anything level-appropriate the DM throws at you. Except that Binder and Hellfire Warlock are both fine and balanced - they're actually both pretty weak class options. Binder is kind of meh and Hellfire Warlock is goddamned bad unless you pair it with Binder. Hellfire Warlock is fine because, in general, healing Constitution damage is a pain in the rear end and takes forever, and is expensive to do quickly. Binder is fine because sources of Constitution damage are, outside of a couple kinds of Undead, generally really rare. But the interaction between the two is bugfuck crazy as broken as hell. Vetoing unfun and overly optimized builds is part of your job as DM, and it's not that much of a hassle. When building a character, anyone worth their salt is going to keep in mind how fun their character will be for the rest of the party and how fun it will be for the DM. No one likes that guy who plays a CoDzilla and is solo smashing every level-appropriate encounter the DM sends. It's frustrating for the DM because you have to ramp up the encounters to challenge the CoDzilla, at which point no one else in the party can do anything useful in fights. Like learning when to optimize and when to ease off the throttle a little is part of growing as a player  If you want something where everything is super well balanced, play 4th Edition DnD. It's pretty hard to make a broken character in 4E because all of the good stuff you can break the game with has been errata'd. As an aside, this is not me trying to start Edition Wars because that's the last thing I want to do. 4th is a fine and dandy system for people who want to play a more tightly balanced and tuned system. I prefer 3.5E or Pathfinder specifically because the balance is a little more fast and loose, which better lends itself to shenanigans in my experience, and I'm all about the shenanigans in pen and paper RPGs. If you want a more tight and 'game-y' game, you'd like 4E. Magres fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 01:10
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So I just picked up this game. Looking forward to playing with you all, and probably dying horribly!
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Jul 7, 2014 01:14
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Here's the thing in your example: the adventurer is one class, that you get on beating the game, that is intentionally pushed to the side and mostly ignored. It's not the foundation of the entire system. I mean, we just walked in on a patch that majorly improved paladins and mindslayers specifically because they were seen as not working. Which is a good thing! That's something basically all video games do, because players won't put up with that poo poo. Toxic players not only will put up with that poo poo, they'll demand it, because it ensures the "wrong kind of person" doesn't enter the hobby. Which is a bad thing! And thus most video games have learned not to listen to them. Like, I don't think anyone is angry because "well paladins SHOULD be crappy, it's your fault for not playing a better class." But that's precisely what toxic players preach.
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Jul 7, 2014 01:41
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You're right about Toxic grognards, and gently caress them forever. When it comes to option bloat and minmaxing I think it's less listening to the lovely, toxic players and more 'we need to write books to sell books to pay the bills' and the game becoming impossible to keep balanced when there are 40 different rule expansion books that aren't written to be used together. Which is what I meant by the Adventurer thing, except in pen and paper you can't really gate Adventurer behind having won the game already. And if you can convince grognards that 'Adventurer-mode' minmaxing is not how the game is supposed to be played, you've already won the fight. Again though gently caress people who think DnD should be some exclusive club only for people who want to read dozens of rulebooks. I hate that kind of attitude so badly. I love teaching newbies the ropes and holding their hands until they find their footing. It's so satisfying to teach someone how to play something and watch them become comfortable in the system and be able to really enjoy it on their own without your help.
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Jul 7, 2014 02:04
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quote:Toxic players not only will put up with that poo poo, they'll demand it, because it ensures the "wrong kind of person" doesn't enter the hobby. Which is a bad thing! And thus most video games have learned not to listen to them. Like, I don't think anyone is angry because "well paladins SHOULD be crappy, it's your fault for not playing a better class." But that's precisely what toxic players preach. I have to note this is, basically, why there's some Roguelikes I'm just not interested in, in part. Too many Roguelikes (I really do not want to start some inane flamewar by naming names, put your own here) have a fanbase that supports obtuse elements of the game that they themselves blithely Wiki/FAQ/codedive for, or horridly useless unfun imbalance. (Which is different from a challenge race or class, or a purposefully overpowered one like Adventurer! A well designed challenge should play both differently and harder. "This dude but worse" is dull, you can do that yourself by using your own play style limitations.) I mean, in a Roguelike, classes/races should not be evenly good either, it's a nice little difficulty slider to a degree as well. And really, perfect balance is a dream. But it feels like you ought to try, you know? And there's literally no point to useless gear that no one will use, except to water RNG tables down. Coders need to get off their asses, cut it (or, better, make it niche build gear), and move on. The number of Roguelike fans like that do support such things feels like it's going down, though.
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Jul 7, 2014 02:10
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Five posted:So I just picked up this game. Looking forward to playing with you all, and probably dying horribly! Currently my Nightmare Sun Paladin is clearing Reknor, haven't died yet! The jackass merchant is selling the Blood of Life again this run but I'm not paying the 2400 gold this time 
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Jul 7, 2014 03:10
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