ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This thread I created to separate the arguing over crutches and hard difficulties. Crutches SHOULD be removed completely. Anything currently being used as a crutch to make it through hard difficulties needs to be addressed.

See this thread for some of the common crutch mechanics:
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=41289

Game difficulty obviously is a harder thing to tackle but when you take the crutches out of the equation it makes things less complicated and you can just focus on only the difficulty itself. I personally would like to know with all of the statistics that are tracked by TOME. If it's possible to have a statistic that tracks death % by class under level 10. And a separate stat for race/class death % under level 10. Then equivalents for death % under level 40. For normal, nightmare, and insane. Using statistical truths is one of the easiest ways to identify game balancing.

I personally think Shibari and DG have done a great job so far with what I've seen them change (and anyone else who might contribute). But going through and testing and trying to figure out if you just suck at playing that type of character or if the character is honestly bad is a very hard chore. With Melee classes in general it was pretty obvious it was more difficult then spellcasters in the early game. I think by breaking it down by deaths you'll be able to target exactly what classes need buffs. As well as if they need it early game or late game.

The difficulty in my opinion is where it needs to be. Because some characters can make it through the game just fine. It's just that most characters need to be adjusted up to that standard. Hopefully this is something that can be achieved. Maybe DG you'd care to comment before everyone throws in their own speculation.

I think I'm going to start responding to all "X system that the game is built around needs to be altered because I don't like it" is "Cool! Please code a version so I can give feedback.", at this rate.

Discussion really isn't the problem, at the level of issues we're talking about now. "Just make classes better" to deal with the higher challenges of higher difficulties-which often include insanely dangerous burst damage-is very difficult to do, and even more difficult to do without making every class monotonously similar, or gutting enemy variety, or making higher difficulties less hard(and believe me, there's a dedicated fanbase that would be very unhappy about higher difficulties being made too easy!)...

We're past a point of simple answers. Someone needs to dig in and make an addon that takes dozens of hours of carefully thought work backed up by statistics and skill, that retools classes and enemies to make up for the drop in early-game versatility that not shuffling points provides(and any other similar mechanics).

It's like how infinite scaling was made-easy to discuss, great idea, but someone has to put in the work. In that case, Hachem had the idea and in fact put in the work himself, and it is a really cool addition to the game. But just saying "People need to do this" doesn't do a lot.

No one said anywhere that someone else should do the work? I certainly didn't. I don't think you should bring generalizations into the thread they don't really have any place here (referring to your first sentence). What I mentioned was something that the game is already doing (stat tracking). That might be able to be retooled to statistically track areas, classes, and race/class combos that struggle in early and late game situations. I certainly don't want the higher difficulties to be easy. I play this game because it IS hard. Classes don't have to have their skills changed around to alter their playability. They could have the same skills with damage tweaks the same as classes were literally just balanced in 1.2. I'd even be willing to myself work out new levels for everything AND study the statistics myself to come up with proper values. However, there's no reason not to ask if DG's stat tracker information can track something like what I asked. Death %'s have been used in several games as a means to balance it out.

So please don't come into the conversation with "it's to complicated. you can't use simple math to solve it". Simplicity is exactly how you solve things that seem obtuse.

I must be missing something but I'm not actually sure what you want my opinion on

Sorry if I wasn't clear darkgod. I was wanting to know if the statistics TOME keeps, track what I said in my original post. Basically every time a player dies before a certain level. Based on their class. To help in easily identifying and making future adjustments to any classes.

For instance if the break down of the deaths looked something like this:
52% of Rogues die before level 10
40% of Archmages
30% of Reavers
34% of Brawlers
39% of Alchemists
etc.

You would be able to easily identify odd classes out that are away from an approximate survival rate. And make adjustments to some of their weaker skills. To keep their number closer to the same survival rate as the average survival rate of all classes.

Like that ? http://te4.org/descriptor-statistics/to ... hmage/dead
http://te4.org/descriptor-statistics/tome/class

Yes

This particular table doesnt account for version though; but it could be made easily.

Please use those pages with care, they are a big load on the server and if abused I'll have to disable them :/

Actually yes DG. This is exactly the type of chart I meant. Using something like this it's easy to tell which classes need balancing. And at what stage of the game their faltering. If we add up the total of the chart. Then turn each part of it into a percentage of the total. We will be able to see what percentage of players die and at what level. However, is it possible that it can be separated between difficulty levels? Or another graph I can use to compare? And it would indeed need version specific death totals. Starting with your 1.2 update would be the best. If you do that I'd be happy to create a very large thread containing deaths for each class.

It would look something like this. (fake statistics)

Archmage:
Normal:
Dies before level 10-30% of the time
Dies before level 20-50% of the time
Dies before level 30-75% of the time
Dies before level 40-87% of the time
dies before level 50-96% of the time
Nightmare:
Insane:

And then I'll make up averages. And will be able to tell which classes to expand upon.

SageAcrin wrote: Discussion really isn't the problem, at the level of issues we're talking about now. "Just make classes better" to deal with the higher challenges of higher difficulties-which often include insanely dangerous burst damage-is very difficult to do, and even more difficult to do without making every class monotonously similar, or gutting enemy variety, or making higher difficulties less hard(and believe me, there's a dedicated fanbase that would be very unhappy about higher difficulties being made too easy!)...

Buffing every class to deal with harder difficulties is a circular problem. Rares and Random Bosses seem to be the biggest issue I hear about from harder difficulties. Making every talent in the game 'better' is going to create power creep.

Don't get me wrong, I'm behind revising classes. But revising them so they compete on nightmare and insane isn't a good reason to me. Revising them so they're more interesting, more fun, and better balanced on normal yes. But the hard difficulties are unfair and hard and simply buffing classes so they can play on those difficulties is only going to add fuel to the fire.

*edit* And I wrote this before having my morning coffee so if it's not adding to the conversation I apologize.

With nightmare and insane being changed (toned down) for 1.2 I'd give it some time before I pass judgement.

RaginCajun wrote:This thread I created to separate the arguing over crutches and hard difficulties. Crutches SHOULD be removed completely. Anything currently being used as a crutch to make it through hard difficulties needs to be addressed.

See this thread for some of the common crutch mechanics:
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=41289

Game difficulty obviously is a harder thing to tackle but when you take the crutches out of the equation it makes things less complicated and you can just focus on only the difficulty itself. I personally would like to know with all of the statistics that are tracked by TOME. If it's possible to have a statistic that tracks death % by class under level 10. And a separate stat for race/class death % under level 10. Then equivalents for death % under level 40. For normal, nightmare, and insane. Using statistical truths is one of the easiest ways to identify game balancing.

I personally think Shibari and DG have done a great job so far with what I've seen them change (and anyone else who might contribute). But going through and testing and trying to figure out if you just suck at playing that type of character or if the character is honestly bad is a very hard chore. With Melee classes in general it was pretty obvious it was more difficult then spellcasters in the early game. I think by breaking it down by deaths you'll be able to target exactly what classes need buffs. As well as if they need it early game or late game.

The difficulty in my opinion is where it needs to be. Because some characters can make it through the game just fine. It's just that most characters need to be adjusted up to that standard. Hopefully this is something that can be achieved. Maybe DG you'd care to comment before everyone throws in their own speculation.

I very much agree with this post. Clutches should be removed completely, most classes left as is and weak classes tuned up. I also proposed add a choise of runes/infusions on lower levels(not every berserker would prefer manasurge over movement lol) that would help a Lot.

I understand the mechanics of power creep. And this isn't the only thing to do to balance the game. But its part of the problem. And a great solution. Give me time to make the thread. When 1.2 is out and you'll see what I mean. If you can make all classes equally as fun and not frustrating to play. And somewhat balanced. Then you can adjust difficulty. After we try 1.2 difficulty people can decide where they want it to go from there. But you can't adjust difficulty based on a few classes finding it very hard and some not at all. The ones who aren't finding it hard will just get easier and easier. Things have to be around a certain point.

My thread will contain a fair amount of stats. Look at the weakest classes. And then I'll make a thread about them. And ask for suggestions on what people would like to see in them. Change values of some but not all current skills. Maybe make it into a mod with help. And then see what DG thinks.

Edit: I'd like to add a small point to those who think this will make harder difficulties easier. That is not specifically the case. It MAY make really hard classes to play easier to play on said harder difficulty. Agreed. But, If everyone is around the same point. You'd be able to actually scale the difficulty UP. Currently you can't at all scale the difficulty up because the classes that are currently hard will become impossible where as some classes will still compete just fine.

I stopped playing the game because it got too annoying to get wiped by overpowered random rares, even on normal difficulty. I have winners across most classes and the remaining ones (which are the ones that interest me) are either weaker or simply ones I don't have the feel for. So I am curious about whether this was addressed in 1.2 (there was a longish thread on the subject, if memory serves.)

supermini wrote:With nightmare and insane being changed (toned down) for 1.2 I'd give it some time before I pass judgement.

From my experience with the 1.2.0 betas, the NM and Insane balance is much more fun. Fewer one-shot deaths, more "interesting" deaths.

The farthest I got in NM before 1.2 was clearing Dreadfell. Now that the balance fixes are in, I'm going to try to clear NM, and kick around more on Insane.

Ya I think everyone should definitely try out the new balances. If DG is able to get me the type of data I was asking for. After everyone's played around enough times with the new balance of difficulties. I'll be able to come up with some good things for future updates.

SageAcrin wrote:I think I'm going to start responding to all "X system that the game is built around needs to be altered because I don't like it" is "Cool! Please code a version so I can give feedback.", at this rate.

Discussion really isn't the problem, at the level of issues we're talking about now. "Just make classes better" to deal with the higher challenges of higher difficulties-which often include insanely dangerous burst damage-is very difficult to do, and even more difficult to do without making every class monotonously similar, or gutting enemy variety, or making higher difficulties less hard(and believe me, there's a dedicated fanbase that would be very unhappy about higher difficulties being made too easy!)...

We're past a point of simple answers. Someone needs to dig in and make an addon that takes dozens of hours of carefully thought work backed up by statistics and skill, that retools classes and enemies to make up for the drop in early-game versatility that not shuffling points provides(and any other similar mechanics).

It's like how infinite scaling was made-easy to discuss, great idea, but someone has to put in the work. In that case, Hachem had the idea and in fact put in the work himself, and it is a really cool addition to the game. But just saying "People need to do this" doesn't do a lot.

The game isn't built around crutches. If it's a permanent deliberate feature of the game it's by definition not a crutch. Removing all the crutches and playtesting is the easiest way to pinpoint the problems the crutches are hiding.


This is a forum for ideas about the game. People point out things they have problems with, discuss the shape of those problems and how they might be fixed. Obviously someone has to code it, but whoever that is might find a clarifying explanation or a particular idea in one of those discussions, or decide to code it in the first place in response to people's theories and complaints.

"Shut up if you don't have an offering to gesture your good will with, P.S. Work good, talk bad" is ten times as useless as a bunch of hot air and two or three good ideas. If discussions just confuse you unless they're really high quality, don't read them.