Principles of design.

[HousePet]

Well you did say you weren't going to respond to me anymore, so I had to bait to ask you question... Duh.

Those examples are about knowledge of the difficulty not the mechanics.

You don't need to understand the mechanics to win on normal, unless you are deliberately doing a non optimal build, which people do.
You don't need to understand the mechanics to win on insane, you can follow a guide.

Playing a specific difficulty is not a good indicator of understanding mechanics, you can learn them on any difficulty.

[grobblewobble]

Lots of people think Ogre should be nerfed but I don't see a way to meaningfully nerf them without completely dumpstering them so I figure races should just be buffed up to that point instead.

There is always, always a way to nerf something without dumpstering it. In the case of Ogre it is even quite easy. So let me use them as an example to show why this is always possible.

Let´s look at their ability to wield a 2-hander as a 1-hander and ignore the other abilities for a moment. That ability already comes with a built-in drawback:

When using a two handed weapon this way you suffer a 20% physical power, spellpower and mindpower penalty, decreasing by 5% per size category above big;

This penalty turns out to be too mild, because two-handers are so much better than one-handers. That is why Grisly Constitution is overpowered. But the penalty can be increased by just a little. It is a number that could have any value. A base penalty of 100% would make the ability worthless, but 20% is not significant enough. You could make it 30%, 25%, 26.66%... whatever is best for balance.

Somewhere in between there must be some value for the penalty that makes Grisly Constitution neither worthless nor overpowered.

Also, nerfing races will probably have the effect you described bpat, everyone will just play the nerfed race less... Or not at all. You remove a race's best talent, like shalore timeless

Same here: nerfing Shalore does not have to mean that it is nerfed into the ground. Removing timeless from the game completely would be an extremely drastic nerf, which is not necessary at all.
There are a thousand possible ways to leave the ability intact, while toning down its power slightly. For example, make it extend durations of buffs by 4 turns rather than 5. Still not enough? Extend durations by 3.

BPat, You said yourself that as it stands, you should always play a Shalore, Thalore, or Ogre. I agree, and it is a bad situation. When a few races are never played because they suck (thinking of undead now), they should be buffed. But when a few races are played the whole time because they dominate, buffing every other race out there is just a massive powercreep. In that case it is much better to just mildly nerf those few dominant races instead.

[Sheila]

Well you did say you weren't going to respond to me anymore, so I had to bait to ask you question... Duh.

Those examples are about knowledge of the difficulty not the mechanics.

You don't need to understand the mechanics to win on normal, unless you are deliberately doing a non optimal build, which people do.
You don't need to understand the mechanics to win on insane, you can follow a guide.

Playing a specific difficulty is not a good indicator of understanding mechanics, you can learn them on any difficulty.

So you deliberately troll and shitpost! Noted. You aren't even trying at this point.
I know by now that it's pointless to talk to you and that it's wrong to feed the trolls, so you can have this reply and that'll be it.

Following a guide won't do you any good if you don't understand the mechanics and difficulty, as player error has nothing to do with builds like bpat said. Unless the guide teaches you how to respond to every single situation that pops up in the game it won't help you win, at which point you may as well have acquired the knowledge and learned yourself! You can also copy builds off of the vault all you want but that doesn't mean you'll win insane/madness in the end.Reading a recipe doesn't mean you know how to cook. Reading a recipe doesn't mean you know how to cook.

Mechanics aren't the same in all difficulties , I can't put it any clearer than this, you'll probably strawman or cherrypick one of my lines anyways. Mechanics/balance/difficulty are all tied together and you need knowledge of all of those to win insane, but it varies depending on the difficulty, as you don't need any higher understanding of the game to win on normal and mechanic usefulness and power fluctuates heavily by difficulty.

I've never read guides and have thousands and thousands of hours on the game, wins on all difficulties sans easier and madness (which I don't consider a real difficulty in general) and with most classes save a few I can't be bothered to win with.
I'm confident that I know a lot about the game and have a solid grasp on these topics, there's more than enough proof certain players always disregard wins but in the end a win is one of the few things that show that you know what you're doing.

Making something with only knowledge of normal is a relatively safe way of making sure half of it will be bad late-game nightmare or at any given time on insane. You can't make something viable and fun with only knowledge of normal adventure unless of course you're just vomiting numbers and hoping for it to be good, or copying something else that works, but in the end that's very limited.

[HousePet]

Eh? What am I not trying?

But fine, if you want to insist that mechanics are different in different difficulty levels, you can. Though that does make it a bit weird to claim that balanced on one difficulty level is balanced on all of them, if the mechanics are different. You sure this isn't a terminology problem?

BTW: Not quoting every line you say and responding to it is not cherry picking. Cherry picking is deliberately ignoring data points that don't support the outcome you want.

Now a strawman; this is where you find some little mistake someone made and then claim that therefore everything they say is invalid.

[bpat]

Atarlost you don't know what you're talking about when you say that Insane difficulty players want unfun changes. If "fun" play is rolling your face on the keyboard and not dying, then maybe play Easy difficulty or something. For the most part, on Insane you can get away with imperfect decisions, on Nightmare you can get away with poor decisions, and on Normal you can get away with horrible decisions. Also it's hilarious that you would say that buffing things is unfun, like I'd understand if I was suggesting nerfs but buffing is way more fun than nerfing lol.

grobblewobble, the problem with Ogre has never been Grizzly Constitution, it's Writ Large. Writ Large is so good that if Ogre just didn't have its first three racials at all it would still be above average. Extra Inscription slot plus faster cooldowns is crazy good. If you can suggest an interesting nerf to Writ Large, I would like to hear it. The only thing I can think of is removing the saturation cleanse but I doubt that's enough.

HousePet I agree that I should have clarified more as to why some prodigies were bad. Some things that I had thought were common sense clearly weren't because most players don't view things through the same lens as I do. I mostly had issue with posts that assume things call me elitist (lol) and offer nothing productive.

You don't need to understand the mechanics to win on normal, unless you are deliberately doing a non optimal build, which people do.
You don't need to understand the mechanics to win on insane, you can follow a guide.

As the person who makes the guides, I completely disagree. You need good game sense and knowledge of game mechanics to make correct decisions otherwise your optimized build won't get you very far.

[grobblewobble]

grobblewobble, the problem with Ogre has never been Grizzly Constitution, it's Writ Large. Writ Large is so good that if Ogre just didn't have its first three racials at all it would still be above average. Extra Inscription slot plus faster cooldowns is crazy good. If you can suggest an interesting nerf to Writ Large, I would like to hear it. The only thing I can think of is removing the saturation cleanse but I doubt that's enough.

There are many possibilities, just one example:

- remove the saturation cleanse effect from Write Large and make it increase the cooldown speed of inscriptions by 150%, rather than 200%
- increase experience penalty from 30% to 40%
- lower the HP factor from 13 to 12

If Ogre remains a top race choice even with these changes, well then it would at least be an improvement for sure. The goal is not to nerf them into the ground, just to lower their power slightly, to bring them a little better in line with the rest.

[astralInferno]

Doon't get me wrong, this may or may not be applicable to shaloren/ogre/ToME in general, but not every mechanic is balancable. Some things are just going to be broken at any fair number and useless at a lower number. League of Legends is infamous for this - they have a handful of champions that they couldn't make balanced and fair with their current abilities, so they nerfed them into the ground until they could alter them completely.

[HammyHamster]

Yes, that's the problem with Ogre: Writ Large.

*But the biggest problem is Shalore: Timeless. This should be reduced to 2 at 5 pts and 1 at 3pts, I think. A 5 turn extention with most skills (such as unstoppable and many others) and prodigies breaks any cooldown balance that the game tries to have. If that makes the 5 pts investment questionable, then that's where it should be: questionable but potentially valuable - yet not a no-brainer 5pts investment overkill.

No one relies on the invisibility, but the speed and critical % boost are also typically two of the most useful characteristics of the game.

And even if the xp% is relatively too low, xp doesn't matter at all if we are talking insane and above. So xp is not a good balance mechanism beyond normal (and even in normal less xp essentially just shortens the amount of grind).

There is a reason this is and has always been the only Tier S race: Timeless.

[grobblewobble]

A 5 turn extention with most skills (such as unstoppable and many others) and prodigies

Timeless has already been changed in one regard, as it stands it has no effect on Unstoppable and Draconic will.

Lowering the duration would have been a much better fix, though. I'd suggest to lower the duration and at the same time make it work again on Unstoppable / Draconic.

[bpat]

While gutting Timeless would be moving in the direction of "balance," it's not a very fun nerf which is why I am against it. Halving its numbers would make Shalore mid-tier or worse since Grace and Magic are decent at best. This is not a particularly popular position but I'm okay with Shalore being better than the other races because it has a higher skill cap and because Timeless allows for lots of fun stuff. I'd much rather see other races improved than Shalore weakened.

[grobblewobble]

We´ll probably have to agree to disagree about this, but I think that you´re shooting yourself in the foot without even realising it, when you keep defending the POV that absolutely nothing must be changed about the strongest races in the name of fun.

It would be great fun if all the races were comparably strong, because that would make the choice of what race to play really interesting. As it stands, it is not an interesting choice, it´s a no-brainer. If you want to win, you pick Shalore, or maybe Ogre. After all the effort that went into designing all those other races. That's sad. And it won't change unless we're willing to nerf, as well as buff.

And one-sided buffing will inevitably make the game easier, even at Insane. Will you end up having more fun? I honestly doubt it.

[Atarlost]

Atarlost you don't know what you're talking about when you say that Insane difficulty players want unfun changes.

You and other elitists frequently call for changing the nature of options that are fun but not good enough for madness. Your crusade against shield mechanics is one example. There's also a lot of push against reactive or passive stuff that works for people with a small screen or who use autoexplore. There was a suggestion to boost the prodigy used by champions of ur-rok that already makes them really annoying to fight with some classes.

You don't even think about these things because you're used to the game being played with extreme deliberation. For you it's not a hack and slash. For most everyone who plays normal that isn't a dev and probably many on nightmare it is.

[Davion Fuxa]

Nerfing has its place, but one has to be mindful when doing it. Some of the 'weaker' races just aren't fun at all to play and not just because they are weak. A while back bpat started a thread about improving Ghouls and I subsequently followed up with one regarding Skeletons. Part of the reason for me starting my thread was the same with bpats - the gap between the good and bad races and addressing it; however, personally a big reason was also to move the discussion towards making the undead races fun to play.

If it comes down to it that after we buff the weaker races that they are still underpowered or that the difficulty of the game is starting to come into question, then nerfing the better/redone races starts to make some sense - but personally I would say leave the better races alone until after changing around the weaker races.

[bpat]

Atarlost you don't know what you're talking about when you say that Insane difficulty players want unfun changes.

You and other elitists frequently call for changing the nature of options that are fun but not good enough for madness. Your crusade against shield mechanics is one example. There's also a lot of push against reactive or passive stuff that works for people with a small screen or who use autoexplore. There was a suggestion to boost the prodigy used by champions of ur-rok that already makes them really annoying to fight with some classes.

You don't even think about these things because you're used to the game being played with extreme deliberation. For you it's not a hack and slash. For most everyone who plays normal that isn't a dev and probably many on nightmare it is.

I wasn't originally planning on calling out people by name, but at this point you have directly attacked me with a bunch of falsehoods so I may as well get it out of the way and clear things up in case anyone actually believes the things you just made up about me. You, Atarlost, are one of the few people who consistently disagrees for the sake of disagreeing. You regularly make up things that you think I believe or do and then attack me for them. I am 100% convinced you did not read the prodigies thread or really any of my suggestions because if you had you'd know that entire post you just made is complete nonsense and fiction. Literally nothing you said in that post about me is true, and I will address every false claim you just made.

1) I'm elitist. I didn't play Insane at all until I had been playing for about a year and a half so I know what it's like to play on all difficulties from Normal to Insane and I take this into account. I suppose elitism can be subjective and if expecting people to put some thought into their play before button mashing is elitist then I guess I'm elitist lol.
2) I try to change fun stuff to be less fun. Almost all my suggestions are buffs because I believe buffing things is more fun than nerfing things because it opens up new possibilities.
3) I try to change stuff that's not good enough for Madness. This is false and also hilarious that you think that because I have never made a Madness character.
4) I have a crusade against shield mechanics. I mostly just want Block buffed to scale better. I called Eternal Guard and Spectral Shield unsalvageable because I believe Block isn't good enough to make them worthwhile, even though the prodigies themselves are fine, so the appropriate fix for them would be to buff Block. Heck I haven't even posted anything on these forums about how I would change Block so I don't know where you got that from.
5) I am against passive and reactive stuff. Exactly zero passive prodigies I suggested changing to an active. I have no idea where you got this idea from.
6) I don't autoexplore and balance around not autoexploring. I autoexplore until High Peak every game. I have never suggested anything that would make autoexploring more dangerous.
7) I suggested to buff Spell Feedback despite it potentially being too good on enemies. I presented a buff idea then immediately explained that I didn't think it should actually be buffed, pointing out that specific concern. If you had actually read my post you would have known that.
I don't even think about how people play on Normal because I play with extreme deliberation. I don't play with as much deliberation as you'd think, and I dislike excessively tedious mechanics. If you watch my Insane TW recordings, you'll see that I make a ton of mistakes, and that was when I was being more careful than usual since I was recording. I don't assume people will play perfectly, but I also don't assume people will play completely mindlessly which somehow some people think is elitist.
9) I don't play this like a hack and slash like most people. I actually don't play it like a hack and slash, but that's because it's a roguelike so pretty much no one does. If you want a hack and slash, go play Torchlight or Diablo or something, because roguelike games are not for you. I expect people to treat this as a tactical RPG rather than an action game.

I actually find it hilarious that people like you think I'm going to mess up Normal mode when almost all my suggestions are minor buffs to underpowered stuff. I always try to not buff things past upper-mid tier to avoid power creep. Despite this, people like you think I'm going to destroy the game's balance when you only play on a difficulty where balance has next to no impact. I haven't been posting my ideas here as much recently because I expect people like you to call me elitist, ignore my suggestions, and derail my threads because I have committed the horrible sins of not playing on Normal and expecting people to put more thought into their play than they would when playing Space Invaders.

I completely agree with Davion Fuxa about race balancing, he said what I was trying to say but worded better.

[HousePet]

Well you did just say that balance on Normal is irrelevant, so I think its kind of obvious why people are concerned.
You keep telling people that you haven't considered it and don't care.