Small Constitution buff

[SageAcrin]

Thick Skin: Talentscale (2, 7, 15 cap)%allres. This roughly halves the base. Additional (0.5, 5)talentstatdamage(con)% boost to your life-so Con boosts your maximum life in a %based way as well, but only on leveling Thick Skin.

No, bad, just get rid of it.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not coding any ideas that just ditch the talent.

Supermini's reasoning-that it gives five free Generic for no cost to most builds in existance-is why. I'd like to take the necessity down somewhat, but ditching it is bad.

'sides, I want to merge Knife Mastery, not ditch Thick Skin, to standardized the category to 4. (And alter Exotic Weapon Mastery to be a one level wonder that just applies your Weapon Mastery to Exotics, so it doesn't have to belong to a category.)

[grayswandir]

I'd like it to give, like, Con/10 points of flat armour per level or something.

[Doctornull]

Supermini's reasoning-that it gives five free Generic for no cost to most builds in existance-is why.

If that's accurate, and "most builds in existance" [sic] are really leaning on it, that's a very persuasive argument that it's not really a choice anymore.

Things that aren't choices should not compete with things that are choices. Boring things make the game more boring. Overly strong boring things crowd out balanced interesting things. This is bad. Keep the interesting things, get rid of the boring things.

I'd like it to give, like, Con/10 points of flat armour per level or something.

How about (Con-10)/5 resist all?

[Red]

That might be nice, Grayswandir, but how well does armor stack up late game? Seems to me that the extra ten points you'd get from 100 Con wouldn't help much, especially not against the more pwoerful foes like Multi-Colored Wyrms or mages of any sort.

[SageAcrin]

Supermini's reasoning-that it gives five free Generic for no cost to most builds in existance-is why.

If that's accurate, and "most builds in existance" [sic] are really leaning on it, that's a very persuasive argument that it's not really a choice anymore.

Things that aren't choices should not compete with things that are choices. Boring things make the game more boring. Overly strong boring things crowd out balanced interesting things. This is bad. Keep the interesting things, get rid of the boring things.

This is a very persuasive argument for cutting its impact down to, say, around half, with compensating effects in various areas.

Which was what I suggested. Making it a high tier but not 100% picked talent is a good idea, I feel, and giving some carefully thought compensation-best granted to Con, probably-is too.

It's not really a good argument for "This talent is conceptual trash, remove it from the game despite any repercussions for that".

[Doctornull]

It's not really a good argument for "This talent is conceptual trash, remove it from the game despite any repercussions for that".

That's actually not my point. I'll repeat my point, with markup to aid comprehension.

Thick Skin is boring.

Strong + boring => bad because it crowds out other, more interesting options.

Weak + boring => bad because it's boring.

You suggest weakening the boring talent without making it interesting. That does change it from Strong & Boring into Weak & Boring, but it does nothing to the other core issue, which is -- and I repeat myself again here -- Thick Skin is boring.

The "repercussions" will be that people put points into more interesting things. Know what? I can live with that. Hell, I'll enjoy it.

[SageAcrin]

There are many talents that are "boring" (simple, non-complicated talents).

Removing them all from the game would gut it, though.

I'm not even saying that you're necessarily wrong-though I like simple effects being a part of things personally. I'm saying that a game... four? years in development can't really support that level of trimming.

Retooling is probably the best you can do there. Gutting Combat Mastery-all simple talents with similar impacts to Thick Skin-is an utter nightmare.

It would change how the entire game is played, nerfing a non-trivial amount of classes into major issues, if not uselessness, and any compensation would end up mirrored in enemies.

The buff to the player side from, say, boosting Strength's impact from 1 to 2 on physical power, to compensate for Weapon Mastery's removal, would boost physical damage on enemies 20% or more on average, for example. Your Thick Skin suggestion is around that level of problem-you're shaking up a lot of balance in a lot of areas for... well, a conceptual gain.

Honestly, I feel like the change I suggested is bad enough(lowering damage to a bunch of enemies notably and making penetration even better than it already is isn't great) for widespread impact, but the gains might outweigh the cost. Also, Thick Skin bugs me, as does Con's weird impact. So, you get threads like this.

Giving people a more interesting choice in one small area of the game doesn't outweigh the huge amount of rebalance work needed. The payoff to effort is just horribly uselessly mismatched.

Worst of all, you don't even seem to care that there would be reprecussions, because you think the payoff is so important. That's always something you should double check yourself on, in my opinion.

Honestly, any changes I feel like that about end up getting threads like this, where I double check myself with feedback-I sure as hell don't trust myself when I start thinking "Ehn it's worth it, though." without a lot of thought!

(Incidentally, my main thought about Constitution buffs, after reading this thread a lot, is "I don't think anyone is ever going to agree on this, and it's probably not worth the effort to change as a statistic.". But see above about how things bother me enough to keep trying. )

[Red]

So just as a question, what would happen if Constitution was flat-out removed? I do think that if the effect is minimal, it needs serious work, though more along the lines of a complete rewrite of the stat (probably for 1.4 at this point, considering that 1.3 is just about ready to come out).

If the impact would be big, if it'd seriously change the game for the worse, then maybe it doesn't need a change. Personally though, I'd agree that Constitution is, at the moment, lackluster both in terms of raw power and utility.

[SageAcrin]

Given that some trees do use the stat-not just the obvious ones, but strange ones like Summoners using it to up the durability on pets-it would in fact be a fairly bad idea to remove directly.

I'm not saying it doesn't need work. The issue is, I've seen such incredibly variable views on how much work that it needs when requesting feedback. I have no idea how much work it needs, and half the time suggested boosts for it equate to straight, and often massive, buffs.

To me, there's multiple issues with that. The obvious one of either powercreeping the player or enemies is there, but there's also a huge one, where that could make players feel like Constitution is a god stat.

Players will, very often, do anything possible to raise durability in a simple way, in a Roguelike. Complicated durability tricks tend to end up more effective and less used, but simple and strong durability tricks tend to end up the abused ones. So tons of people will start picking up tons of Constitution if it ends up really, really effective.

Making Constitution feel essential to people will cause huge backlash against other parts of the system-namely against any class that runs three stats. Considering how much of a problem MAD was for the few classes that ran four stats-and how many classes run three stats-this strikes me as a developmental nightmare.

So straight up buffing Constitution much at all has repercussions that are, to me, seriously undesirable. That's why I basically said I don't see any real good in making it a "core" stat that people want to buff a ton-because, basically, people instantly will.

(A small buff would hopefully avoid that. Emphasis on hopefully.)

Honestly, I think how much it bothers people that there's a defensive stat, and that it's not very good, tends to back up my opinion on that.

Optimally, I'd really like to just make Con buff, say, physical power, so it just sidesteps this and is no longer pure defensive, but I'm totally hazy on how to go about it precisely, without being another form of power creep. How much physical power would it take, and how would you make it have parity with, say, Magic?

(I did have this idea; Make Willpower grant 0.7/0.4 Mind/Magic Power, Cunning grant 0.7 Mindpower, Con grant 0.4 Physical power, and Defense grant 1 Defense/1 Accuracy. It's a bit of power creep in all of those directions, but it does create some interesting boosts to weaker statistics.

Having said that, the test group I suggested it to disliked it. Another possibility I considered was to change Magic to "Discipline", have it grant 0.4 Mindpower, and lower Willpower's to 0.6, then do the rest-the test group hated that it buffed Mindpower classes statistically, when they already largely just need two stats-but I disliked the amount of careful find/replace I'd have to do to code it. )

[Doctornull]

There are many talents that are "boring" (simple, non-complicated talents).

That's not what I said or meant.

Simple, non-complicated can be interesting.

Passive talent-taxes though? Those are boring.

The examples so far in this thread have been: Combat Veteran (the first three), and Thick Skin. Does that help you understand?

Removing them all from the game would gut it, though.

Removing the tree Combat Veteran and the talent Thick Skin would not "gut" the game. C'mon. That's just an absurd stance to take.

It would change how the entire game is played, nerfing a non-trivial amount of classes into major issues, if not uselessness

Name three.

Weapon Mastery's removal

I didn't suggest that. Are you sure you're arguing with the right person about that?

[Red]

I personally love passive buffs. (And sustains, but those are different.) It's a relic from days when I flat out refused to use active skills (totally different games) but it's stuck with me.

As for classes affected... Well, Weapon Mastery and Combat Accuracy are a big deal to any melee class, so:
Beserker
Bulwark
Arcane Blade
Rogue
Shadowblade
Marauder
Wyrmic (Not totally dead, but a lot of skills are a ton less useful. Breath only would work fine, though.)
Reaver
Doombringer
Cursed
Temporal Warden (Unless played as pure caster.)
And possibly Demonolgist, Mindslayer, and Solipsist. I don't know much about them and have unlocked none of those three.

However, rereading your post it seems you were talking about the Combat Veteran tree, not Combat Training. Then again, you argued against Thick Skin as boring because it's a simple, passive buff. That is exactly what Weapon Mastery and COmbat Accuracy are. So if we got rid of all "boring" skills... Well, just looking at one tree, there goes about a dozen classes.

[Doctornull]

However, rereading your post it seems you were talking about the Combat Veteran tree, not Combat Training. Then again, you argued against Thick Skin as boring because it's a simple, passive buff. That is exactly what Weapon Mastery and COmbat Accuracy are.

Nope. Those can be turned into a halfway interesting choice. Look at what Nulltweaks does with those for one example of how to do that.

Please don't use strawman arguments. I'm suggesting the removal of Combat Veteran and Thick Skin, not some other passives.

If your arguments pertain to Combat Veteran, Thick Skin and Constitution, I'm eager to hear them.

But that whole thing was ... not related to the actual subject under discussion.

[Red]

Then please better define a boring skill. What I saw was you considered completely passive stat buffs boring-which is exactly what basically all of the Combat Training tree is.

Though this is making me think that perhaps Constitution could relate to Combat Training mastery, and perhaps other "Warrior" categories. It makes sense that you'd have to be strong enough to make it through your training, and something like Combat Veteran would obviously need to be tough to be a veteran and not a corpse. This does have a lot of potential for power creep, but if it could be balanced out it'd help make Constitution an important stat for pure warriors, like Beserkers or Bulwarks, since they rely so heavily on weapons, a helpful but less important stat to people like Wyrmics or Reavers, who've got a good amount of non-weapon skills and could take the hits to damage and accuracy, and still remain largely irrelevant to Archmages who have very little use for Combat trees. (Excepting Thick Skin.) It fits thematically-a wizard needs a strong mind, not a strong body, whereas a warrior needs a strong body.

[Doctornull]

Then please better define a boring skill.

If you're responding to me, then the talents under discussion are the Combat Veteran tree and Thick Skin.

Is that clear enough?

[Red]

I was addressing what you said were boring skills. But you have a point, wrong topic to discuss here. So I made a new thread to discuss that. http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=42893

As for Combat Veteran and Thick Skin...

Though this is making me think that perhaps Constitution could relate to Combat Training mastery, and perhaps other "Warrior" categories. It makes sense that you'd have to be strong enough to make it through your training, and something like Combat Veteran would obviously need to be tough to be a veteran and not a corpse. This does have a lot of potential for power creep, but if it could be balanced out it'd help make Constitution an important stat for pure warriors, like Beserkers or Bulwarks, since they rely so heavily on weapons, a helpful but less important stat to people like Wyrmics or Reavers, who've got a good amount of non-weapon skills and could take the hits to damage and accuracy, and still remain largely irrelevant to Archmages who have very little use for Combat trees. (Excepting Thick Skin.) It fits thematically-a wizard needs a strong mind, not a strong body, whereas a warrior needs a strong body.