Tactical AI

[Final Master]

Can they not getting healing? That tends to just be really annoying in most game by artificially increase the length of a fight. I would rather them have more resist and defense then have to deal with healing.

It's not artificial - it's added strategy and difficulty. An npc healing intelligently [as this new AI system DG has created/is finishing up IS - according to Het] - then I see healing as a very important AI aspect. And again, I really do not believe it is artificial - if someone is running around healing those that need it while you cannot get to him - that means you are loosing the fight most likely - which is then a good thing. :)

[yufra]

One of the discussions on IRC was that the addition of better AI and runes/infusions is not to make beating the game impossible, but more challenging and fun. By making NPCs more of an individual challenge it may be necessary to reduce to overall number of NPCs in each level resulting in more tactical and interesting 1 vs 3 fights instead of grinding 1 vs 8 fights. Remember... this is beta!

[Sirrocco]

...and of course, if we're cutting down on the number of enemies because their overall difficulty went up to high, we should also probably bump their individual exp...

It all gets complicated, but is quite doable.

[yufra]

Yup... balancing can be tricky but worth it.

[marchewka]

Might be just me, but it seems the DOT tactic got like cut off from the game. Which is not good, as there's a whole class half of which is DOT-based (reaver). Right now a random heal/regen infusion nullifies most of Reaver's damage dealing abilities. In extreme cases (if all bosses roll the heal infusion) this might make any boss undoable before attaining level 12 (and stun-type technique becomes available).

Maybe the timeout duration on NPC-used infusions/runes should be doubled, if not tripled?

[darkgod]

If this is indeed not working well for reavers (thus we need reaver tests!) then the problem is with the DOTs, not the infusions.
Monsters use the same dots against players, who in turn use the same infusions.
So if a reaver style boss could not kill a player ever, then I doubt the solution would be to double/tripple the cooldown of al infusions for players

I had in mind a poison (could be a disease or a curse I suppose) that prevents healing, it would fit reavers too.

Some other class could get an "overload" talent that force activationg of all runes/infusions on the target but then puts them on cooldown for many more turns.

As for bosses being now harder, it's IMO much more interersting than frying them all in 3 turns without even noticing it's a boss.
Giving the player has the right tools to handle them.
I believe most should have, but comments are always welcome obviously

[darkgod]

(the arena unlock is extremely low level BTW should be quite doable around lvl 4 or so)

I am not striving to make the game impossible, I am a "bad" player myself anyway, but I am striving to make it more entertaining.
More intelligent bosses go into that category, and if they are then overpowered they'll be nerfed in power, not in fun.

The selling change is not to more players poorer, it probably makes them richer in the end since arts & gems sell for much more now.
The change is to remove useless bother of having to pickup stuff you dont want jsut to sell it. My goal has alwasy have been and alwayas will be to make player's go for the fun parts and scrap the cumbersome ones.

[Canderel]

No... I haven't encountered a boss that was seriously tough. I did get a unique warg, who had too much armor for me to damage him... So I led him to some elemental trap. He evetually died because of lightning, and "old-dogs, new tricks" you know.

[greycat]

I'm not sure that anyone considered "hauling all these dwarven-steel ego daggers back to sell for $$$$" to be burdensome. On the other hand, seeing an amazing trinket selling for 30 gold in a store when you only have 10 gold, and can't get more gold quickly because you can't sell anything you find, can be a bit disheartening.

Back to the original topic, I very much applaud a game that gives antagonists the same resources as the protagonist and forces them to use them cleverly, instead of simply cheating.

[Grey]

I'm enjoying the new item liberty with gold restricted. It is painful at the start of the game though. Would be nice if melee types starting with a couple of extra armour items to help them (hat and boots perhaps) or if everyone got 20 gold at the start instead of 10. Still not too much of a bother.

Tactical AI is pretty cool, but I haven't seriously seen it come into force yet. I've seen a few random monsters waste a turn on a useless rune or infusion, and I've had some make clever use of teleportation, but so far it hasn't presented a problem for me. Of course there's a lot of variety in how it affects different classes and playstyles.

Gandolfo, I think getting used to the mouse would help a lot of your keyboard fumble problems. It can be hard at first to adjust, but after a while it feels really natural.

[Gwai]

If we're discussing the selling change, I mourn it because now I don't care about most items I find. It used to be exciting to find a cool dagger or a neat greatmaul, even with my wizard. Now I just sigh sadly.

[yufra]

Tactical AI is pretty cool, but I haven't seriously seen it come into force yet. I've seen a few random monsters waste a turn on a useless rune or infusion, and I've had some make clever use of teleportation, but so far it hasn't presented a problem for me. Of course there's a lot of variety in how it affects different classes and playstyles.

Tactical AI and having runes/infusions do not go hand in hand. The monsters you saw waste turns on runes/infusions are most likely using the dumb_talented AI instead of the tactical AI. One example of this was a rogue in the Maze who used a Sun infusion... the dumb_talented AI saw that he has access to it and randomly used it. The tactical AI would check what the NPC needs and then check if the accessible talents match it, and thus wouldn't have used the infusion.

[edge2054]

I also feel some places like the horrors (h)s in the fortress are very overpowered where before they were horrible but not unkillable.

Which ones specifically and with what class? No horror has AI (yet) and none use infusions either so the tactical AI isn't at fault here. If they're very overpowered though we need to know so they can be balanced to be challenging but not deadly.

[Final Master]

The only problem with some of the horrors is that they do damage that we can not easily gain any amount of resistance to, ie Mind and Temporal damage - other than that I think they are very fair npcs. Not to say that that's an issue with the npcs themselves, it's just that there is a lack of ways to gain those particular resistances still.

[ohioastro]

On reflection I'd recommend that you phase in the infusions/runes/etc at the higher levels, perhaps even having a key event trigger a dialog that clues players in that something is now different. The basic logic is that new players can use a more forgiving entry, that low level characters in games of this genre are abnormally weak, and that vets don't really benefit from episode#5,134 of whacking Bill the Troll. To me the right level would be none to level 10 or so.

I'd also recommend giving the low damage output classes some burst damage options so that they can finish fights.