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Fishbus
Aug 30, 2006


"Stuck in an RPG Pro-Tour"

The annoying thing about levelling is that generally it's fast at the start and then it slows down later on, but the slow creaks to a halt because of how the levelling system works.

Skillpoints you earn levels you up, so your level is essentially a total of the skillpoints you earn. If you're playing a certain style, then sure, you focus in some areas, and learn them fast because that's what you are doing in your day to day game.

However, this can lead to a wall where you have skillpoints in areas that you can earn, but don't want to because it's not what you want to do. So then you hit the wall - since you cannot gain any more xp/skill by playing your play style (e.g. you have 150sp limit in one handed, but you have 150 learnt already, you will never gain any more xp or sp to level up)

The only way to break out of it is to start learning areas you don't want to (e.g. you have 30 skill points to learn in double handed, but you've been playing one armed all the time -> so now you have to play two handed until you gain another level so you can then put a focus elsewhere.)

So TLDR; it kinda sucks after a while.

Also, after playing for a little while more, i'd like these QoL things:
- Immediate battle: When i'm at war i want to go straight to fighting a party/army without talking (it's a lot of loading and time wasted), so something like shift+clicking a party should immediately engage them.
- Dialogue number keys: again, want to speed up things, each dialogue option has a numerical hotkey, line 1 is 1, line 2 is 2 and so fourth.

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Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



Yeah. I could never have laid it out the way you have just now, but already during my first playthrough I realized that the leveling system was hosed. If you try to specialize in a few specific skills, you will hit that wall sooner or later, unless you know the system so well that you can min-max in advance. Casual players are almost forced to become a jack of all trades. Reaching max level in any given skill requires a huge investment and careful planning, especially given how scarce attribute points are. Only silver lining is that with most skills it's not really necessary to go past 150-200, but still.

I don't know what the solution is. I actually don't mind that the leveling is slow, or that you learn by doing, makes you feel really good when you gain a level by landing that headshot from across the map, but the quasi-hard cap is a psychological turn-off.

BeAuMaN
Feb 18, 2014

I'M A LEAD FARMER, MOTHERFUCKER!

Parallelwoody posted:

Not trying to come across as a dick but if a game isn't as fun as it can be for you and there's a way to change it then just go for it. Who cares what other people think about how you play your single player game?

I played it on Vanilla until I reached a point where I didn't feel like bothering anymore; I had my own kingdom, I had a decent chunk of land and some lords, and I had seen past the curtain at all the problems with the game as-is. I stuck with it because I wanted to get a feel for the game, and figured next run I'd mod it. Game was still fun but leveling was pretty atrocious near the end, and kingdom management was non-existent. It wasn't as bad as it could have been though since I had put points at the start of the game in things I was going to use.

I'm letting the game sit a bit since while I could do another run modded I imagine we're going to see more updates, and I've been playing Deep Rock Galactic again, along with Sky Rogue which I picked up from that itch.io Racial Justice bundle. Getting my $5 worth from that game alone. The game will probably be waiting for me with... at the very least... marginal improvements (and probably a larger array of mods).

Fishbus
Aug 30, 2006


"Stuck in an RPG Pro-Tour"

Phlegmish posted:

Yeah. I could never have laid it out the way you have just now, but already during my first playthrough I realized that the leveling system was hosed. If you try to specialize in a few specific skills, you will hit that wall sooner or later, unless you know the system so well that you can min-max in advance. Casual players are almost forced to become a jack of all trades. Reaching max level in any given skill requires a huge investment and careful planning, especially given how scarce attribute points are. Only silver lining is that with most skills it's not really necessary to go past 150-200, but still.

I don't know what the solution is. I actually don't mind that the leveling is slow, or that you learn by doing, makes you feel really good when you gain a level by landing that headshot from across the map, but the quasi-hard cap is a psychological turn-off.

Yeah I do like how a lot of the system works, I like learning and levelling up by doing the thing.

The only thing I can think of off the top of the head is that when you reach the 'cap' you can still learn past it but it becomes more difficult (e.g. the learning rate goes much lower) according to how far away from the cap you've left. You'd still want to put points in it to help your learning speed again, but even if you keep at it, you will level up very very slowly over time doing what you enjoy.

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



I agree, there should just be a floor, something like 0.25 learning rate.

Nosre
Apr 16, 2002


Phlegmish posted:

unless you know the system so well that you can min-max in advance. Casual players are almost forced to become a jack of all trades. Reaching max level in any given skill requires a huge investment and careful planning, especially given how scarce attribute points are.

I've been playing this game since 2009 and never actually learned how to do this minmaxing, probably because I've never played one character for long enough to want to max out a skill. What's the trick, if you want to hit say 250+ in vanilla?

bees everywhere
Nov 19, 2002

If I remember correctly the magic number is 7 in the corresponding attribute if you want to reach max rank with 5 skill points.

toasterwarrior
Nov 11, 2011

Fishbus posted:

Yeah I do like how a lot of the system works, I like learning and levelling up by doing the thing.

Speaking of which, Fishbus, if I double down on your mod's changes by increasing the FP gain even more using BL Tweaks, will that retroactively give me the new FPs or do I need to somehow do some save editor fuckery to make it happen?

Fishbus
Aug 30, 2006


"Stuck in an RPG Pro-Tour"

toasterwarrior posted:

Speaking of which, Fishbus, if I double down on your mod's changes by increasing the FP gain even more using BL Tweaks, will that retroactively give me the new FPs or do I need to somehow do some save editor fuckery to make it happen?

Depends on the load order, and giving focus points each level only applies on the event once you gain the level, I don't think it's retroactive as I've not seen it in my own fuckery of the levelling system (My mod gives you an attribute point every 2 levels instead of 4)

toasterwarrior
Nov 11, 2011
Cool, thank you very much! BTW I enjoy your mod, it pretty much covers all the aspects of the game I wanted changed.

Shear Modulus
Jun 9, 2010



The weapon skills seem to level at a nice pace but stuff like trade and leadership take absolutely forever

Enjoy
Apr 18, 2009

Shear Modulus posted:

The weapon skills seem to level at a nice pace but stuff like trade and leadership take absolutely forever

I think if the game took place over a longer timeframe the longer training times for non-combat skills would be fine. Your character would be looking at like 10 years of hard work to get to the very top (whereas you can get a town as a vassal and then split to form a kingdom in under a year right now)

I think the tradeoff between hack and slash arcade adventure vs epic roleplaying campaign is currently falling to hard on the former side thanks to the rapid pace of development of the game (I played like 20 characters for a couple of days each and only stopped doing that recently when the perks started getting implemented so I had more investment in my character)

Fishbus
Aug 30, 2006


"Stuck in an RPG Pro-Tour"

Leadership will only increase if you roll around with armies you've created - which means it doesn't even start levelling up until you're in a kingdom.
Trade is ONLY increased when you make a profit in a trade (by taking trade goods to towns). No other way right now.

I'm going to update my mod tomorrow with some things before taking a look at those things.
I also want to see if I can do something about the whole skill cap thing as well.

LLCoolJD
Dec 8, 2007

Musk threatens the inorganic promotion of left-wing ideology that had been taking place on the platform

Block me for being an unironic DeSantis fan, too!
AI lords escape from captivity and rebuild armies at a frightening speed. It'd be nice if my glorious victory that captures eight enemy lords would cripple an enemy kingdom for a more appreciable length of time. As it is, I feel like I am barely back from fixing a problem on the other side of the kingdom before I see the same people in a massive army laying siege to my town.

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



Fishbus posted:

Leadership will only increase if you roll around with armies you've created - which means it doesn't even start levelling up until you're in a kingdom.

You also get Leadership xp for maintaining high morale and recruiting troops, but it's minuscule compared to just leading an army. Once you do start leading armies, it's really easy to level and the effect ramps up quickly. At a certain point you're basically never going to be below 100 morale because you get a flat modifier of +45.

bird food bathtub
Aug 9, 2003

College Slice

LLCoolJD posted:

AI lords escape from captivity and rebuild armies at a frightening speed. It'd be nice if my glorious victory that captures eight enemy lords would cripple an enemy kingdom for a more appreciable length of time. As it is, I feel like I am barely back from fixing a problem on the other side of the kingdom before I see the same people in a massive army laying siege to my town.

If memory serves AI lords when they escape are instantly teleported to a castle/town and given an army of 70-80 troops. Giving them troops kinda makes sense because otherwise they'd end up in an infinite loop of spawning and getting jacked up the backside of the head by any looter troop of like ten guys walking past. It's just really, really loving annoying in execution because as you said you can have a hard-fought astonishing victory against impossible odds and then a week later all the guys you whooped up and down the field will have escaped imprisonment and are back in your face at another castle romper-stomping around like it ain't no thing.

Hopefully that is all a placeholder at the moment for better mechanics later on. If not I'm just going to use the no-escape mods every single time and never, ever let them recover.

BeAuMaN
Feb 18, 2014

I'M A LEAD FARMER, MOTHERFUCKER!

bird food bathtub posted:

If memory serves AI lords when they escape are instantly teleported to a castle/town and given an army of 70-80 troops. Giving them troops kinda makes sense because otherwise they'd end up in an infinite loop of spawning and getting jacked up the backside of the head by any looter troop of like ten guys walking past. It's just really, really loving annoying in execution because as you said you can have a hard-fought astonishing victory against impossible odds and then a week later all the guys you whooped up and down the field will have escaped imprisonment and are back in your face at another castle romper-stomping around like it ain't no thing.

Hopefully that is all a placeholder at the moment for better mechanics later on. If not I'm just going to use the no-escape mods every single time and never, ever let them recover.

It is a placeholder mechanic that was patched in, or at least intended to be a placeholder afaik; who knows when they'll replace it with another more complete mechanic. The lords used to have to recruit everything from scratch afaik, but this resulted in these lords escaping and forming these huge 500 man armies of just recruits. Almost all of them recruits. They'd get trounced over and over again. They then patched it so they spawn with a mixture of high, mid and lower tier troops, and then they can recruit whoever from the villages.

Shear Modulus
Jun 9, 2010



They should respawn in a settlement of their clan if they have one and have to take troops from the garrison.

Or if they don't have a castle or garrison let them hire a bunch of mercenary troops to start with.

BeAuMaN
Feb 18, 2014

I'M A LEAD FARMER, MOTHERFUCKER!

Ideally there'd be resource drain happening that would influence the desire of the kingdom to settle a peace treaty. That's probably a far time away though, assuming the game is still doing the super simplistic auto-resolve with the huge cavalry bonus.

Shear Modulus
Jun 9, 2010



Oh hey I just booted up steam and saw they put up a big blogpost update that mentions they're planning on changing the leveling system so that your character level is a function of experience points gained rather than skill ups so you don't have to grind skills you don't want to get more level ups

toasterwarrior
Nov 11, 2011
Classic style huh? At least it's more reasons to chase down routers and murder them

LLCoolJD
Dec 8, 2007

Musk threatens the inorganic promotion of left-wing ideology that had been taking place on the platform

Block me for being an unironic DeSantis fan, too!
My faction leader didn't use to be greedy about fiefs, but now he is taking everything. Despite hanging out in the rear and doing nothing for the war effort. Despite majority support for me to get the fiefs. Realistic, I suppose, but I would appreciate a town or two for my heroic efforts for the Western Empire.

Is anyone using a no escape mod? The only one I saw on Nexus Mods had people posting that it crashes their game.

hot cocoa on the couch
Dec 8, 2009

Anyone know what actions may cause an enormous drop in influence? I'm at like -150 somehow despite being the tip of the spear for my faction, have taken multiple castles and cities at this point. Feeling very disrespected :mad:

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Shear Modulus posted:

Oh hey I just booted up steam and saw they put up a big blogpost update that mentions they're planning on changing the leveling system so that your character level is a function of experience points gained rather than skill ups so you don't have to grind skills you don't want to get more level ups

This seems like a good idea.

Greatest Living Man
Jul 22, 2005

ask President Obama

hot cocoa on the couch posted:

Anyone know what actions may cause an enormous drop in influence? I'm at like -150 somehow despite being the tip of the spear for my faction, have taken multiple castles and cities at this point. Feeling very disrespected :mad:

stop executing lords you murderer

Fishbus
Aug 30, 2006


"Stuck in an RPG Pro-Tour"

Also being the unprovoked instigator of wars will drop your influence by about 200 - 500 into the negatives

Fishbus
Aug 30, 2006


"Stuck in an RPG Pro-Tour"

More little updates and tweaks to my PowerUp! vanilla mod.

Download here: PowerUp Mod v7

This is using the current beta branch...

What's new?

Loot Rewards
Reworks how loot is rewarded to the player.
- Better tier troops are more likely to give you better quality items
- There is a chance that loot will be bumped by 10, 20, 40, 80, 160 or 320 times the value (common, uncommon, rare, ultra, legendary, godly)
- This means there should be quality drops that are not all destroyed, tattered, broken trash.
- Added multiple new armour qualities and modifiers (as this is the only properly working system)

Settlement Training
You can now train units by waiting inside castles or towns.
- Training xp starts at 20xp, with +40xp for each level of training facilities
- 3 troops gain this bonus xp, with this amount gaining in relationship to your Leadership skill (e.g. 140 leadership will mean 8 troops get xp)
- Training bonus occurs every hour

Troops
- Added another assassin troop, the Liquidator who has ungodly skills. ( Blade -> Assassin -> Executor -> Liquidator )

Most importantly behold:

Only registered members can see post attachments!

bird food bathtub
Aug 9, 2003

College Slice

Fishbus posted:

More little updates and tweaks to my PowerUp! vanilla mod.

Download here: PowerUp Mod v7

This is using the current beta branch...

What's new?

Loot Rewards
Reworks how loot is rewarded to the player.
- Better tier troops are more likely to give you better quality items
- There is a chance that loot will be bumped by 10, 20, 40, 80, 160 or 320 times the value (common, uncommon, rare, ultra, legendary, godly)
- This means there should be quality drops that are not all destroyed, tattered, broken trash.
- Added multiple new armour qualities and modifiers (as this is the only properly working system)

Settlement Training
You can now train units by waiting inside castles or towns.
- Training xp starts at 20xp, with +40xp for each level of training facilities
- 3 troops gain this bonus xp, with this amount gaining in relationship to your Leadership skill (e.g. 140 leadership will mean 8 troops get xp)
- Training bonus occurs every hour

Troops
- Added another assassin troop, the Liquidator who has ungodly skills. ( Blade -> Assassin -> Executor -> Liquidator )

Most importantly behold:



Does this mean I can loot goon jorts?

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



Do you now need to be physically close to your wife to get children? I remember a few patches ago she was just getting pregnant and popping out children while she was on the other side of the map.

How is babby formed

How girl get pragnent

buglord
Jul 31, 2010

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Buglord

Phlegmish posted:

Do you now need to be physically close to your wife to get children? I remember a few patches ago she was just getting pregnant and popping out children while she was on the other side of the map.

How is babby formed

How girl get pragnent

my pary are wir the father who lost his chriden

1.4.2 for what it’s worth but my spouse has been popping out kids on the conveyor line without me ever visiting.

I married some frigid wraith of a woman who is Cruel and Deceitful and it seems like a few of the children take after their mother’s traits which is upsetting yet charming.

Buller
Nov 6, 2010

Phlegmish posted:

Do you now need to be physically close to your wife to get children? I remember a few patches ago she was just getting pregnant and popping out children while she was on the other side of the map.

How is babby formed

How girl get pragnent

Have her in party and then use the "spend time in city" option when in a settlement.

FLIPADELPHIA
Apr 27, 2007

Heavy Shit
Grimey Drawer

Fishbus posted:

More little updates and tweaks to my PowerUp! vanilla mod.



Is this save game compatible i.e I was running an earlier version of your mod, can I just switch to this one on the same save and have it work?

Thanks!

Fishbus
Aug 30, 2006


"Stuck in an RPG Pro-Tour"

Midgetskydiver posted:

Is this save game compatible i.e I was running an earlier version of your mod, can I just switch to this one on the same save and have it work?

Thanks!

yes it should, but just make a new save first just in case.

FrickenMoron
May 6, 2009

Good game!
So I got the game because of a youtube video series. Loving it so far but making money seems... very difficult? Caravans and workshops seem to make almost no profit at all. Also how important are skills like trade, blacksmith, steward etc for the player character? I'm getting conflicting info from googling and I'd rather have some direct feedback.

I know you can get companions to learn any skill to accompany yours but they need to level up first after all.

toasterwarrior
Nov 11, 2011
Finally reached the vassal stage (still feel like the mercenary phase is way too short, maybe vassalage should be an option in clan tier 3 instead of 2), and while you no longer get the shittiest village in the realm as your first fief, getting a castle and two villages far the gently caress away from Vlandia proper and surrounded by angry Vikings and Celts might be a bit too much for me. Ah well. Maybe there's a way to give it away?

Fishbus
Aug 30, 2006


"Stuck in an RPG Pro-Tour"

bird food bathtub posted:

Does this mean I can loot goon jorts?

Yes you will be able to find "Stained Baggy Trunks"

FrickenMoron
May 6, 2009

Good game!

FrickenMoron posted:

So I got the game because of a youtube video series. Loving it so far but making money seems... very difficult? Caravans and workshops seem to make almost no profit at all. Also how important are skills like trade, blacksmith, steward etc for the player character? I'm getting conflicting info from googling and I'd rather have some direct feedback.

I know you can get companions to learn any skill to accompany yours but they need to level up first after all.

Anyone?
Also how does the game decide which troops to take with you on those "ambush" missions?

downout
Jul 6, 2009

FrickenMoron posted:

Anyone?
Also how does the game decide which troops to take with you on those "ambush" missions?

The ambush troop selection seems like a random cross section of your army. I just modded to increase the limit because it was so annoying

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



I'm mid-game now and I still have no idea how you're supposed to take out a well-stocked forest bandit base in one go without most of your troops dying, except maybe with skilled/tedious micromanagement. Usually when (if) I make it to the boss cutscene, I'm the only one left standing.

Yeah I'll do the duel if you don't mind, thank you for being so honorable, I definitely wouldn't be

Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Jun 20, 2020

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FrickenMoron
May 6, 2009

Good game!
Any way to support a faction in the early game? I pledged to one in a mercenary contract and theyre getting their rear end kicked for whatever reason by just one enemy nation.

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