Reworking jumpgate... again

[yufra]

Instant transport back to the stairs you say? Well maybe that is a bit overpowered.

A few people on the IRC channel tossed ideas around and I implemented them here. The change basically sets up Jumpgate as a dimensional anchor instead of instant teleport location. You move in a straight line towards the jumpgate (distance increases with talent level) and then find a valid (ie. not a no_teleport or block_move tile) nearby. Thoughts?

[Sirrocco]

Problem is that that kills part of the point. The dimensional anchor effect might drop you in the middle of unpleasant stuff, if you cast it from the wrong place. The whole point of the power is to be able to teleport to somewhere safe, once you have somewhere safe. If you want to limit its power, just require that the jumpgate be set a certain minimum number of tiles from the stairs. That way, you have to travel from the stairs and then clear an area before casting, and once you have jumped back, you're still not at the stairs (though you are, presumably, in a relatively safe place)

[Grey]

Instant transport back to the stairs you say? Well maybe that is a bit overpowered. :D

A few people on the IRC channel tossed ideas around and I implemented them here. The change basically sets up Jumpgate as a dimensional anchor instead of instant teleport location. You move in a straight line towards the jumpgate (distance increases with talent level) and then find a valid (ie. not a no_teleport or block_move tile) nearby. Thoughts?

How about you get to choose which square along this path to jump to? Otherwise it's not worth using.

[edge2054]

The idea is the teleport would move you X tiles towards your jumpgate. If you don't venture to far from your jumpgate it's going to put you on your jumpgate.

If you're on the otherside of the level it's just going to move you X tiles towards it and make sure you have an empty square to land in.

Right now jumpgate is overpowered. You drop one on the stairs when you enter a level and then if you get in trouble you're back to the stairs and if you want, down on the level below in a single turn.

I would have fixed this when I worked on Anorithil before but honestly I wasn't comfortable enough with the targeting code to attempt it and yufra offered to help in IRC last night so he took a crack at it.

I think it's a good change, it'll make investing more then one point in jumpgate worthwhile and will give the talent some tactical use besides, hey, I'm in trouble, I have some negative energy, oh... now I'm not in trouble. Glad I remembered to hit '5' when I came down the stairs.

Sorry, that's not engrossing gameplay and it's certainly not balanced.

[Sirrocco]

I'd still go with Grey's idea. Give the player a beam back however many spaces towards their jumpgate, and let them pick where on the beam to go. If they pick a spot that's not legal (due to being solid, or noteleport, or whatever) then they go the max. That way, you don't have the situation of a characters jumping into a mess of trouble because they weren't precisely counting the number of squares between themselves and the jumpgate and short-jumped into a pack of enemies.

It may still be appropriate to mandate some minimum distance to the stairs. A bit tricky to justify, but it would be a limitation that would make the power somewhat more interesting.

[yufra]

Here is an alternative change: have jumpgate teleport work only when you are within a certain range of the jumpgate. This is apparently how DG originally envisioned it, but it never was done. The diff is here and tested. The range of the first jumpgate increases as 10 + 3*TLVL, the second jumpgate stays at the base 13. When you are too far away the jumpgate teleport talent simply greys out (as if you didn't have enough resources), so no lost rounds there. The descriptions tell you the range, too. Thoughts?

EDIT: Oh, and it is possible to do Grey's method, I am not ignoring it.

[Sirrocco]

I have no trouble with that one, except to note that getting the ranges right potentially gets a bit tricky. It encourages the player to set down a new jumpgate in newly-cleared rooms from time to time, and that's no bad thing. The tricky bit is that if you set the range too short, it's near-useless as a strategic flee button, and if you set it too long, it's back to its original form. Seems like it might work pretty well if range were tied to talent level, though - at 5, have it cover most or all of most dungeons, and at 1 have it cover about 1-2 rooms away.

[edge2054]

Honestly as it sounds from your discussion here, I would not even be tempted to use it at all. It was barely useful to me at level 1 (though the few times I did use it, it was safer than the random teleporting/phase door jumping. I used it once when I found a cavern that was hard to get into and free of mobs and that helped me explore a fairly dangerous demon infested area without dying. Other than that I never felt the need to use it. I did set it up a few times but never ended up jumping back. The problem being that I'd forget about it until I was out of danger or would never be in serious trouble until I forgot to set a jump point. Phase Door/Teleport runes were just easier to use.

Not using a valuable tool doesn't lower it's value, it just means you didn't find value in it.

Jumpgate in it's current form is the best get of jail free card in the game. Next beta a similar spell will be introduced that will have a permanent hit point cost attached to it and will reload the level. Jumpgate in it's current form is nearly as good as that without the inherent disadvantages of having to reclear or lose permanent life. It's also available eight levels earlier.

I like yufra's proposal but I also discussed it with him on IRC while he was putting it together. It'll encourage the player to invest more then one talent point to use the jumpgate and will make having the back up jumpgate more meaningful. Keep in mind too that the cooldown on the primary jumpgate goes down as you invest in it. So even though the range is limited it's pretty easy to move at higher talent levels.

Yes it requires forethought but to me that makes for interesting gameplay.

[Grey]

I suggest letting the player choose the point along the line back to the jumpgate because without any control a short range spell would be useless or even dangerous. Player control is important.

Having it work as now but only within a short range can only be useful if the cooldown on laying them is completely removed. Even in it's current powerful state it's annoying as hell to move between levels. If one wants to move it around the dungeon then it will be an exercise in tedium as you wait around for the cooldowns - this especially works poorly with the Anorithil playstyle, as their main resource bar dwindles rapidly. With zero cooldown it'll be worth using at low ranges and worth investing in for longer ranges - the ranges shouldn't get too long though, to prevent it being overpowered.

[Sirrocco]

I don't know that you'd want to make it zero cooldown, but a relatively short cooldown (perhaps 20 or so) might be appropriate for the limited-distance version.

[edge2054]

The second jumpgate is cooldown 20 the primary should be cooldown 4 at TL 5.