donkatsu wrote:A defensive mechanic that makes you untouchable against weak enemies but is worthless against strong enemies, is just worthless.
This is exactly the point I always trying to force since the beginning of time. While there are indeed potent DoT effects like poisons and diseases, they are already easy enough to protect against and spike damage is the worst threat and that's what needs to be protected against. Talents like solipsists' dismissal, antimagic shield and other flat reduction(or % + max flat damage) and this includes armor+hardiness too, they are really terrible in this way. All of them make you invulnerable to weak attacks/foes(good luck trying to beat 80% hardiness/50 armor rare bulwark in trollmire1 as a rogue) and completely worthless against strong. That's NOT good.
I really suggest looking on successful games to see how these may work. Path of exile for example uses very common nowadays mechanics: armor grants % damage reduction with deminishing returns(actually it grants virtual hp linearly) and evasion(our analog of defense) grants evasion in the same way. While evasion works only against physical attacks, PoE has a rather accessible skill that makes your evasion work against spells as well.
Suslik wrote:What if armor worked the same way it does in most other games? Give you % damage reduction with deminishing returns? Like 10 armor will give you 10% resist all, 20 armor give you 18%, 30 armor give you 25%, etc?
Defense may indeed grant evasion for every kind of outside damage(not agains poinsons, burning, etc).
I think that's the only direction melee can be properly buffed to be reasonable comparable to other classes. Tweaking numbers back and forth is not going to help here, something deeper in mechanics needs to be changed to make them more interesting.
Mostly agree.
I do think some damage types should explicitly ignore both armor and shields -- specifically poisons and diseases, which can then be toned down in terms of total damage because they're so good at penetrating defenses.
In terms of balancing armor, IMHO a flat per-round damage cap might be the right mechanic. That way it doesn't compete directly with % res all powers & items, but it does combine very well with them. The per-round limit is so DoT effects and mook attacks aren't totally irrelevant: with some stacking, you can penetrate armor.
Under this model, I'd make Damage Shields just another type of armor, so they'd stack for armored shield-users (i.e. Sun Paladins and Arcane Blades), and not demand a whole different balance mechanism.
@Doctornull
While there are talents that give flat damage reduction and % damage reduction, problem is.. Most classes have only 1 of them. I just love how new mindslayer has % damage reduction from forcefield further augmented by flat damage reduction from shields/antimagic. That's synergetic and good design. Problem is, most classes don't have access to such synergies, because they only have flat damage reduction(usually with % of damage): doomed, all armor-based classes(works only for melee), brawlers, antimagic shield, etc. Only very few classes have access to % damage reduction : only solipsist's resonant field, mindslayer's forcefield, displacement shield and probably 1-2 others.
Suslik wrote:Since there are both physical and magical threats, defense/armor/hardiness/whatever is protecting you ONLY against physical ones, but physical threats are just one type of damage spikes that can kill you. So why bother protecting against only one type when there are mechanics that protect you against multiple/every? And defense is hands down terrible for PC to protect reliably even against melee spike damage.
Well, niche protection mechanics are still useful. Projectile deflection, for example, is pretty nice. If a class has a projectile deflection talent I generally pick it up, even though it only protects me against one type of damage spike. I think there is room in the game for these kinds of things. It's just that right now, defense as a stat has exactly one job, and it fails completely and utterly at that job. It'll be fine if defense actually does let you dodge attacks from beefy enemies.
I mean you won't just be able to throw defense onto a class and say yep, they're survivable now, just like you can't throw projectile evasion onto a class and call it a day, but as part of a package that includes protection against non-melee, I think it can still be a meaningful mechanic.
@donkatsu
I agree that that niche defense mechanics are a good thing to have. But if the only defense some class has is projectile deflection, that's, well. Weird. But! The only defense some classes have is their armor, because, you know, bulwarks are supposed thematically to wear armor, not projectile deflecting cloak. So I see actually 2 problems here:
1) Complete mechanism of melee defenses(armor, hardiness and dodge) fails really badly at what it's trying to accomplish: defending you against physical threats. If some random dude is going to hit you for 800 overpower crit damage even with godlike 70% hardiness/50 armor that's not going to save you(if i understand armor mechanics correctly which's not necessarily so). And defense is just absolutely worthless against foes of higher level than you.
2) Some classes due to their lore are expected to rely on armor too much and that's not going to protect them against what they want to be protected against as well - everything non-physical.
Okay, just a little convention so we don't get confused.
Could we please refer to the damage that armour blocks as 'weapon' rather than 'physical'?
With regards to armour and defence versus magic, I have suggested before that there could be a magic based version of Armour Training that let's you use your armour against magical sources of damage. A similar one could exist for mental sources.
As for defence, I don't see why it couldn't allow you to dodge magical projectiles and beams as well. You could potentially dodge an area attack if you are on the edge to, but that might be weird to code and explain.
My feedback meter decays into coding. Give me feedback and I make mods.
The discussions in this thread seem to have gone a little off course. I like to keep things simple, so here are my thoughts.
Regarding edge2054's original suggestion, lowering the power given by weapon masteries seems perfectly reasonable. Similar small tweaks and changes could be done for accuracy too, but I don't have a good sense what the best thing would be to do here.
To those who say saves suck, I disagree. They are not always useful, but they don't always suck either, and "Relentless Pursuits" make them even more useful.
I don't think the power/save system needs a total re-haul. Tweaks? Sure. Revisions of equipment bonuses? Okay. But changing the formula or doing a complete rework of the system? I'll pass! ToME has been through this before, and it was a PITA!
I wasn't a fan of the big change to the save system in 2011, but most of the kinks from that change have been worked out, and ToME is a better game from it. ToME was a simpler game when the old system was in place. Have 100 accuracy (or spellpower)? You still felt compelled to raise that to 200 or even 300, because excessive numbers still improved your character. This was fine in early betas, because there wasn't a whole lot more you could do. But, now there is a lot more variety of things you can do, and it is much easier with the new save system to say "I have enough power, now lets focus on something else to improve."
So, I have two more tweaks to suggest:
(1) NPCs should use more variety of powers; specifically, attacks with weaker power should be more common. For example, the mental attacks from the giants in Daikara are relatively weak, and it helps (a lot!) to have mental saves that don't suck!
(2) This one may take more effort to describe and some effort to do well. I would like simple graphics to reflect the relative strengths of NPCs accuracy and powers. For example, small triangular flags hanging off of the health bar of the NPC. Each flag would be a different power. Different powers could be distinguished by different colors, and the relative strength (compared to the PC) would be reflected by the height of each flag. For example, if an NPCs accuracy has 50% chance to succeed vs your defense, the accuracy flag would be at 50% height. I would not show flags below 50% height. I would also not show flags if NPCs have no talents that use the particular power. I am not an artist, or else I would have shared a graphical mockup. If the flags can be large enough, they can show the letters "A", "P", "M", and "S" for accuracy, physical, mental, and spell powers, but the larger the flags are, the more cluttered the screen will become.
(1) NPCs should use more variety of powers; specifically, attacks with weaker power should be more common. For example, the mental attacks from the giants in Daikara are relatively weak, and it helps (a lot!) to have mental saves that don't suck!
Quoting this for emphasis; This is one of the absolute best ways to make saves stand out more from what I've seen.
It's really notable how much saves matter when enemy powers are in the 20-40 range(depending on the point in the game). Enemies should be using off-power status a lot more.
tiger_eye wrote:I wasn't a fan of the big change to the save system in 2011, but most of the kinks from that change have been worked out, and ToME is a better game from it. ToME was a simpler game when the old system was in place. Have 100 accuracy (or spellpower)? You still felt compelled to raise that to 200 or even 300, because excessive numbers still improved your character. This was fine in early betas, because there wasn't a whole lot more you could do. But, now there is a lot more variety of things you can do, and it is much easier with the new save system to say "I have enough power, now lets focus on something else to improve."
You will never say, "I have enough defense/physical save, now lets focus on something else to improve." You instead say, "I can never reach the point where my defense/physical saves will have more than 0 effect, so there is no need to bother with saves at all."
(1) NPCs should use more variety of powers; specifically, attacks with weaker power should be more common. For example, the mental attacks from the giants in Daikara are relatively weak, and it helps (a lot!) to have mental saves that don't suck!
Quoting this for emphasis; This is one of the absolute best ways to make saves stand out more from what I've seen.
It's really notable how much saves matter when enemy powers are in the 20-40 range(depending on the point in the game). Enemies should be using off-power status a lot more.
Which was pretty much my point with this thread. The physical power you can get from Weapon Mastery is way way more than corresponding Physical Save talents give. I realize the game is balanced towards resolution but it's really excessive right now.
Accuracy vs. Defense has the same issue. I don't believe any defense talent gives anywhere close to 10 points a pop.
Granted, melee will lose some damage from this but they will also gain some survivability as many melee monsters will lose damage too.
If melees will lose physical power, rangeds will roflstomp the beginning with even more ease and start melees will be even weaker than they are now. There is imbalance already - melees are way weaker in the beginning than casters. They were progressively buffed in the recent versions and that's still not enough. That's not my opinion, it's just the way things are.
If defense is nowhere close to being enough, why not give extra to talents/artifacts instead of nerfing what's weak already?
Suggestion: adding light leather armor mastery may help building viable defense substantially.
Here is an idea I had for a full generic armour category:
Heavy Armour Mastery: Increases armour from all equipment and armour hardiness. Requires strength.
Mobility: Increases movement speed and chance to dodge projectiles. Requires dexterity.
Thick Build: Increases resist all and decreases fatigue. Requires constitution.
Magic Resistance: Allows you to use a fraction of your armour as reduction against all sources of spell based damage and gives a chance to avoid dispel.
Character Armour: Allows you to use a fraction of you armour as reduction against all sources of mind based damage and gives resistance to resource drain. Requires willpower.
Light Armour Mastery: Increases defence from all equipment and crit resistance. Requires cunning.
My feedback meter decays into coding. Give me feedback and I make mods.
Again, I think many/most suggestions in this thread fail to keep the balance between classes that use bump attacks and those that don't. If you make defenses/physical saves better or easier to get and/or physical power worse or harder to get then you nerf all classes that rely on it, period. That some enemies also becomes weaker in no way solves this. Honestly, I think the result of many suggestions here would be that weak enemies that are hardly dangerous already will be even weaker in the future (because they rely on bump attacks/attack talents) while the more dangerous enemies will become even more difficult (because they're now harder to kill/inflict a status effect upon since they rely on talents/spells/etc). This seems to me the opposite of what you'd want.
That said, I do like the suggestion of making a light armor generic talent. I'd really like it to give stamina regeneration as well (besides any other bonuses) since rogue classes tend to have huge difficulties regenerating stamina so they'd benefit from it a lot.
Salo wrote:Again, I think many/most suggestions in this thread fail to keep the balance between classes that use bump attacks and those that don't. If you make defenses/physical saves better or easier to get and/or physical power worse or harder to get then you nerf all classes that rely on it, period.
It is inevitable that allowing players to actually dodge things will also make it harder for players to hit things. It is inevitable that allowing players to actually save against physical effects will also make it harder for players to land physical effects. Melee is a problem that will need to be addressed (they already need early game buffs regardless), but this is more of a tautology and not really a valid criticism against the suggestion.
Salo wrote:That some enemies also becomes weaker in no way solves this. Honestly, I think the result of many suggestions here would be that weak enemies that are hardly dangerous already will be even weaker in the future (because they rely on bump attacks/attack talents) while the more dangerous enemies will become even more difficult (because they're now harder to kill/inflict a status effect upon since they rely on talents/spells/etc). This seems to me the opposite of what you'd want.
This is a blanket statement of a lot of diverse suggestions, but I'm going to assume that you at least think that it applies to the suggested change in the OP. It does not. Weak enemies do not have weapon mastery or combat accuracy, so they will not be affected. Dangerous enemies, on the other hand, have like 17 levels of weapon mastery/combat accuracy, so they will very much be affected. For various reasons, most of the other suggestions do not suffer from this problem either.
I really don't want to nerf melee starts and if they need some small buffs to keep early game viable I'm fine with that. (This is being addressed anyway as Shibari, myself, and others are looking at melee classes and how to give them more viable early games).
But nerfing a few problem talents that are causing a large disparity between their respective counterparts is going to be much easier than going through and buffing every defense and physical save effect in the game, changing monsters so they have lower talent levels or use off-power talents, or rewriting, and ultimately, rebalancing the hit code (though I'm kinda in favor of a larger spread, but that's really a different subject imo and one that deserves its own thread).
Three pages and many derails later, I stand by my original post as the simplest solution to this problem.