Power Creep vs. Meaningful Leveling

[Fortescue]

HELLO FRIENDS!

Some of the problems I run into while trying to make Berserker and Skirmisher better relate to Power Creep, indirectly. I am not trying to make them MOAR POWERFUL on purpose, but how else do you make spending your points from level 30 to 50 MATTER?

The current state of Berserker is such that you could beat the game with the points you have at level 30, if you had the right gear and made good decisions. It is enough to have all your key talents where they need to be. So, naturally, if I make any abilities more worth putting points in past 30, that is Power Creep by definition.

In my opinion this is inevitable. Either ToME leveling largely stops mattering at 30, or characters over 30 are going to be more powerful because they continue to gain interesting and powerful abilities while leveling all the way to 50. You can't have it both ways. Gaining 5% stun resistance for going 5/5 in Berserker Rage is one of the BETTER options you have in your later level ups, and if you think that is compelling and do fistpumps over 5% stun res, you make me sad, and I will have no more of you.

I believe the lack of fun character customization post 30 directly contributes to the slog that is the last half of the game. There are other factors, but when you take away the joy of getting tangible rewards for leveling up on top of everything else, it just pours salt in the wound. I would like to do work to make Orc Island less repetitive at some point, I hadn't realized how much love it needs until this weekend. Right now though I would like to make Berserker and Skirmisher good examples of dynamic and interesting classes with more room for player specific customization. That means more skill trees with good abilities, which necessarily means more power because there will always be benefits for having 1/5 in any skill, even if the rewards for 3/5 and 5/5 are greater.

How do we solve this? For one, enemies with classes like Berserker and Skirmisher will be more powerful automatically, leading to more interesting fights Popcorn monsters though, are going to be even more popcorn than they are right now. If you think trash fights are a breeze once you have Steamroller...

The only solution is to up the difficulty of regular encounters, especially in Normal mode. Higher difficulties tend to spawn more monsters with classes, and gives them more classes as well, so they should adjust somewhat on their own after these power curve changes.

You may think, what is the point of making players more powerful, then monsters more powerful? What do we stand to gain from this Power Creep? Diversity of builds, meaningful player decisions even in the late game, and a more compelling and individualized ToME experience. Once the groundwork for that is done, the Power Creep will stop, and difficulty can be tuned to make up for it. It is not an endless cycle.

[edge2054]

I plan to go through temporal horrors soon.

Shibari was also talking about ideas to make NPCs more interesting in IRC the other day. But yeah, more interesting monsters would be nice.

Not really sure what this has to do with Power Creep, Meaningful Leveling, or Zerkers/Skirmishers though?

[donkatsu]

If you're really not just trying to make classes MOAR POWERFUL, then tuning down "key talents" is a solution as well, right? I'm looking at you, Unstoppable.

[Grey]

A good game gets harder as it progresses, but with the player afforded more options to deal with those challenges. So more options instead of higher numbers, and more ways abilities can combine with each other in interesting ways. Meanwhile make sure things like stamina actually enforce limits, instead of being cheaply overcome.

And yeah, toning down Unstoppable in some way! Maybe reduce player attack speed whilst it's in effect?

[Suslik]

While I mostly agree with all posts above, here are some things I strongly disagree:

1) There are classes that are powerful/interesting enough: archmage, solipsist, oozemancer, brawler, necromancer, summoner, new sun pa. They're very unlikely to be buffed any further, so buffing other classes to be comparable with those is NOT a power creep.

2) Buffing a class in terms of rising its damage is definitely a movement in wrong direction. Most classes can already 1-shot most regular foes and 90% of fights are like autoexplore->cast 1 ability->autoexplore. It stays the same even for nightmare if your character is good. I strongly suggest adding utility and control synergies without rising damage output anymore. Bad example of this is skirmisher as he is now because rare skirmisher can 1-shot you on nightmare autoexplore before you even see him due to having insane attack range and huge spike damage. Skirmisher needs more options of control, not more damage.

3) Always consider that rare mobs have the same talents as regular classes do, BUT they have way more HP and resources on higher difficulties. That's why rare npc skirmisher can spam extremely stamina-consuming abilities on nightmare+ dealing huge damage which player will never be able to afford. Same goes to corruptors that have way more vim than player and they can enprison you in fearscape as long as they want while player with all sustains up will have like 10 vim left with fearscape active.

On the side note, strongly agree that most critters(regular non-rares) should be made way, way more interesting. More interesting not in terms of "give all the mice 10x damage boost", instead we want most fights to be longer and more varied. I find current horrors to be perfect examples of how interesting fights go: every horror has their strong and weak points, every horror requires personal approach.

[Salo]

Why don't you just make the talents worse at level 1? I mean, the scaling issue with skirmisher's isn't that their skills don't get better by putting points into it, it's that they're so ridiculously good at talent level 1 that there's no reason to invest more. For example kneecapper deals 170% weapon damage already at level 1 besides the pin, that's ridiculous. If you made it do, say 110% weapon damage at level 1 (it's still useful due to the pin) and keep the 190% weapon damage at level 5 it currently has it would be much more interesting to invest into it. It's a huge problem with many skirmisher skills and some berserker skills.

Important note: make sure the scaling beyond level 5 doesn't get out of hand though if you change it like that. FOr example: an enemy boss did 1100 physical damage with kneecapper against me today with the skill so it really shouldn't get better at high levels.

edit: also, if you run out of things to invest points by level 30, it's also a sign that the class doesn't have enough talent trees.

[Davion Fuxa]

Most of the One Point Wonders in the Skirmisher are fine. Kneecaper gets a stronger Pin and Slow effect from increasing Talent Level - that in itself is worth leveling for on a Skirmisher for keeping out of Melee of enemies. Kill Shot should probably have it's damage reduced though since it is quite high at higher levels and getting sniped by a Skirmisher rare from long range is certainly not fun; especially when you aren't aware that the Skirmisher is around or just exit autoexplore.

[Fortescue]

I've talked to DarkGod about lowering Unstoppable max turns to 5, and he seemed OK with that at the time. It did not go through for some reason. I'm not overly concerned about that now though.

I agree more utility is a better answer than more damage when trying to design additional categories, but that is a different kind of Power Creep, a "what CAN'T this class handle?" kind of Power Creep where you never really feel threatened any more because you have an answer for everything.

Have a sneak peak at Berserkergeddon before I give it a post of its own:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14B1 ... 6iaqbinjkv

More utility, more damage skills, more emphasis on Constitution and Cunning as your secondary stats. I had to hold myself back from also adding Dexterity trees; I figured adding OPTIONAL 4th stat reqs might be too much for new players. I'm not 100% happy with what is in that document at the moment so of course it is subject to change. Also, unlike the last round of Berserker changes I am going to code these myself and play test them as an Addon to make sure I really want what I'm wishing for

[donkatsu]

I think it's actually alright for classes to be able to handle anything. A lot of classes already have this, it's just traditionally the melee classes that have been boned by 300 armor or 100% evasion or 100% resist all or disarm or limited resources or having no escapes or permastealth or whatever. In fact, it's more interesting to have the ability to deal with certain threats, than to just be shut down with no recourse.

[Suslik]

I think it's actually alright for classes to be able to handle anything. A lot of classes already have this, it's just traditionally the melee classes that have been boned by 300 armor or 100% evasion or 100% resist all or disarm or limited resources or having no escapes or permastealth or whatever. In fact, it's more interesting to have the ability to deal with certain threats, than to just be shut down with no recourse.

And again I agree with you. Hell just give this dude the steering wheel and let him decide things : D

There are classes already that can handle any situation. Hello, it's actually normal. Not "faceroll everything", just "handle any situation via proper strategic and tactical play". It's design fault that some classes at some point have no way to survive. Like nm Dark Crypt on a cursed when you have pretty much no way to survive double-crit for 700dmg each.

[HousePet]

Power creep is not inevitable or necessary.
If a class peaks at level 30 and doesn't need to spend its points after that, then it is in need of balancing.
That sort of thing tends to happen when individual talents are too powerful by themselves.
The solution is to move some of the power away from individual talents and put it into synergies.