reduce most impairing effects duration and remove immunity

[marvalis]

Yes luke, I understand this. There is more than one way to deal with these effects. Frumple kinda already pointed that out... several times.
I never not even once stated that players only have immunity or resistance to those effects.

So, seeing what you say is true, tell me: why is there 60% stun immunity on an armor piece where you would normally expect ~25%?

Given the fact that there are many others ways to deal with stun? Why do we also have these very high resistances AND also artifacts with immunity AND also providence AND also wild infusions?

[Aquillion]

There's also many ways to get complete immunity to most other effects, like poison, blindness, silence, confusion, etc.

And there's plenty of monsters that are totally immune to elements. The only reason players aren't allowed to get total immunity to an element is because many monsters just have one element for their threat and nothing else -- plus, monsters, unlike players, can't retreat to diversify their capabilities or whatever. Even then, there are easy ways to get 50% or more resistance to most elements, which is pretty big.

[lukep]

Yes luke, I understand this. There is more than one way to deal with these effects. Frumple kinda already pointed that out... several times.
I never not even once stated that players only have immunity or resistance to those effects.

Your emphasis on how overpowered they are implies that immunities and effect removal are the only legitimate way of dealing with status effects.

So, seeing what you say is true, tell me: why is there 60% stun immunity on an armor piece where you would normally expect ~25%?

...talk about a loaded question. Effect immunity and damage resistance (which is what I assume you are talking about) are not the same thing, and cannot be directly compared. I would much rather have 100% resist all damage than 100% immunity to all effects. To actually answer your what your question should be: It isn't. I expect armour that gets 60% stun immunity to have 60% stun immunity, and expect 25% from armour that gets 25%.

[marvalis]

But would you rather have 100% immunity versus arcane or 100% immunity versus all effects?
Off-course 100% resistance to _all_ damage would be the best, be a little more modest next time.

[Frumple]

Please, for all our sakes, make the point you're trying to make -- state it outright -- instead of trying to ask leading questions. Socratic questioning (and a fairly poor attempt at it, sorry) isn't the right way to go about this.

100% immunity to a single element versus 100% immunity to all status effects is a false and misleading comparison. It's either one vs one (one element to one status, element wins) or all vs all (resist all vs status immunity, resist all wins). The primary reason for elemental resistance winning out is because they're two different things. Attempting to make a comparison between the two is going to require a great deal of stretching, and I guarantee it's going to weaken whatever argument you're trying to make.

[bricks]

I think this conversation is long over. Marvalis thinks Freeze (and a handful of other effects, but this is where most of the focus has been) is too powerful, some of us agree. All of us (seriously, I don't think there is one person other than Marvalis who supports this) think that changing immobilization abilities to single turns isn't the right way to fix this, and Sus/Edge have put forth a lot of effort to reconcile and rework the current system so players have better/more options.

[lukep]

But would you rather have 100% immunity versus arcane or 100% immunity versus all effects?
Off-course 100% resistance to _all_ damage would be the best, be a little more modest next time.

A more moderate example:
I would much rather have 100% resist physical than 100% stun immunity, heck I would rather have 100% physical resistance than 100% stun, confusion, pin, poison, bleed, knockback, blind, and silence immunities. The first one is a 1:1 comparison of effects that show up on ego items, which is what your 60%/25% comparison was. This shows that they should not be treated equally as they are not the same power.

[edge2054]

I think this conversation is long over. Marvalis thinks Freeze (and a handful of other effects, but this is where most of the focus has been) is too powerful, some of us agree. All of us (seriously, I don't think there is one person other than Marvalis who supports this) think that changing immobilization abilities to single turns isn't the right way to fix this, and Sus/Edge have put forth a lot of effort to reconcile and rework the current system so players have better/more options.

Just Sus and Darkgod as far as I know. I just want to add to the work they already did so we don't end up with a bloat of different timed effects in the future (and Darkgod may decide he doesn't really like the idea, I ran it by him and he was keen on it but his feelings may change after he thinks it over )

[Aquillion]

If Freeze, specifically, is the issue, I think that one solution might be to make more talents work properly while frozen; that way you wouldn't be helpless. Anything that can be targeted through walls; anything that doesn't require targeting and which logically doesn't emanate directly "from" the player (eg. ice storm might be usable in an iceblock, since you can conjure a storm around your general area and have it manifest outside the block. I forget whether it's usable like that already.)

Now, the really big nerf to freeze -- which would be logical but might be too much of a nerf -- would be to let people teleport or phase door out of the iceblock, ending the effect. But again, that would dramatically weaken it, probably too much so.

I like the idea of adding more active 'counters', especially using existing talents or items, since that rewards players by putting thought into their abilities and items in order to build u[ a wide variety of capabilities, and helps ensure that every ability is useful by creating a niche for all of them.

(I also like the idea of fire damage reducing an iceblock faster. Possibly any when-hit fire damage you've got could reduce the iceblock each turn, too, so wearing fiery armor would melt you out sooner. And turning the damage that you take while trying to escape from self-damage into constant cold damage, so cold resistance helps reduce an iceblock's danger -- as it logically should.)

[Sradac]

all this is getting quite silly. Every roguelike i have ever played has had aspects of it that were dangerous to lower level characters and meant basically nothing to higher level players.

Adom? Pretty much everything, honestly. Players could get ridiculously powerful if you knew what you were doing. Hunger? May as well not exist once you get to caverns of chaos. Corruption? May as well not exist once you get about half way through said CoC. Stat drain? May as well not exist once you find the big room. Encumberance? May as well not exist once you get strength of atlas. I can go on and on.

Crawl does not have AS many factors, but may as well. Hunger? Another item that may as well not exist. Spell points? Certain race / class /deity combos have literally unlimited mana.

Tome2? Im not even going to comment on that there were so many loopholes to become immortal.

Does that mean you should troll those games forums about how hunger should be removed from the game because players can ignore it at higher levels or any other other mentioned things? no. It just happens. Players get stronger, players get better gear. Should we make it so Higher can not play anorithil? Cause HP is almost a non issue with them if you took 5 healing / regen infusions, focused on healing talents, and reduced the cooldown of gift of the highborn. No, its just another mechanic for that character.

If you dont like stun immunity, then maybe ignore it? Dont like immunities? Ignore them. Go for saves. Saves are great.

[edge2054]

More active counters using existing effects I like. As Aquillion pointed out teleporting out of Iceblocks makes thematic sense and I think it's an interesting way to give freeze a specific counter and also makes phase door runes more valuable early on.

Indomitable, the halfling talent, I'd like to see break existing stuns (but not freeze) and pins.

[bricks]

The healing restriction on ice blocks is another oddity.

[marvalis]

I think this conversation is long over. Marvalis thinks Freeze (and a handful of other effects, but this is where most of the focus has been) is too powerful, some of us agree. All of us (seriously, I don't think there is one person other than Marvalis who supports this) think that changing immobilization abilities to single turns isn't the right way to fix this, and Sus/Edge have put forth a lot of effort to reconcile and rework the current system so players have better/more options.

No, sorry, I never said this and this again proves that I failed to make my point.
Can we just forget about the 1-turn effect? Let me rephrase my original post:
I think we should remove immunity from the game, and then further rebalanced zones and talents to reflect these changes if necessary.
Now, for a moment get over the 1-turn freeze thing ok?

Please, for all our sakes, make the point you're trying to make -- state it outright -- instead of trying to ask leading questions.

Yes, ok fine I will. I just thought it would be easier to see if you understand by asking a question than having to fully explain everything about equipment balancing.

The question is, as I stated: Why are there currently so many items in the game that give very high resistance values against stun, considering the fact that the player has many other ways to deal with these effects?

To answer this question, I tried to explain that stun changed over time from a paralyze effect to what it is today, and freeze also changed completely. The equipment that was implemented in the game to counter the old paralyzing stun did not get rebalanced. In fact, IMHO (but feel free to disagree) stun immunity should be removed. It is still a remnant from an earlier unbalanced beta. Now don't go tell me how stun immunity is really a clever game design feature because many games have it. This is not the point. The question is: why do we have it in the first place? Or even better: Why is it so goddamn easy to get (one item => 100% resist).

I used this question as an example for the picture I drew, that IMHO represents the way balance is developed in TOME historically:

I also said that:

With so many new talent and classes in the new upcoming releases, and when those talents flow over into the monster skills, are we going to face the same cycle we are facing today? Or will we try and balance the game differently? That is IMHO the balance challenge TOME is facing ATM.

Because I feel that soon we will see even more of what in the graph is point D. More resistances, more saves, and more items that let you remove any physical effect, or any magical effect, etc. If TOME follows the same cycle, then the game will probably continue to be unbalanced in the same way we see today (unless you think TOME is completely balanced - then my point is moot.).

The reason why I asked to compare resistance value of - say stun resistance and damage resistance - is equipment balancing. I asked; Why do we such high resistance value on items for stun resistance? The answer I got was: Because that is what it is. 60% stun resistance on a green item is _not_ a balanced piece of equipment (I mean, green is the lowest items type with stats, seriously).

Now let me explain some ideas about
equipment balancing:

a) Max value for each equipment slot

In TOME, there are currently 9 equipment slots:
fingers x2, neck, light, armor, cloak, hands, feet, tool
Two of those give very little bonuses: tool and light. This brings the total relevant to this post to 7 items

Each of these items will get a max value for each possible stat:
At most ~9 of any str/dex/con/mag/cun
For armor ~25 % resistance and for other items ~15% resistance.
etc. etc.

Now for immunities, those should be rare. The player has plenty of other ways to deal with stun/freeze etc. He should not get full immunity by wearing two green items.
What would be reasonable? I'd say two artifacts, or 5 greens, or anything in between.
That means that you would see _at most_ 20% stun resistance on any one single green items, and _at most_ 50% stun resistance on an artifact.

This does not change b) :

b) Each item has a total cumulative value of all stats on that item:

white < green < blue < purple < orange < yellow
A yellow will, on average, have a higher total value of stats than a green item. Most green items will be almost equally as good when we compare the sum of their values.

Let us suppose we put all stats in a bag, and then randomly pick or deliberately select a few to make a piece of armor:
I pick strength, dex, fire resistance, stun resistance and light.

Now I have to give a value to these things. First we look at the max value of each of these stats (see point a) ):
* STR / DEX : not more than 10
* fire resistance : not more than 25
* stun resistance: not more than 40% (two artifacts with 40% will give you 80% stun resistance, that seems very reasonable to me)
* light: probably not more than +2 even for artifacts

Since we are making a green item, lets lower the stats accordingly:
green heavy armor
str+ 3 dex +2
fire resistance 13%
stun resistance 20%
light +1

Let us draw again from our bag of stats: I draw str and stun resistance
Now just because I only draw stun resistance and str, does not mean I can just tripple increase their values. However, to compensate for the fact that this piece only drew two items, we will increase that stats a little bit:
green heavy armor
str+5
stun resistance+30%

When I try to make balanced armor, I never end up with stun resistance values of 60%!!!!!! Especially on green items!

To explain further why a) and b) is better for game balance:

An artifact with 40% stun value will have the same item value as an artifact with 100% stun value, since they are both yellow-quality items.
So why add a resistance cap per item?

Situation a)
However, suppose we have 10 artifacts, and two items with 100% stun resistance. The player gets two artifacts:
2/10 chance to get 100% stun resistance

Situation b)
10 artifacts, 2 items with 50% stun resistance, player gets two:
2/10 chance for first, 1/9 chance to also get the second one = ~2/10 chance of getting both.
But his artifacts are still equally as good! He didn't get worse artifact just because they have lower stun resistance. It is simply harder to get 100% stun resistance because you need at least two items to get 100%.


So again I ask, why do we have green items with 60% stun resistance? (rhetorical question)

[marvalis]

Adom? Pretty much everything, honestly. Players could get ridiculously powerful if you knew what you were doing. Hunger? May as well not exist once you get to caverns of chaos. Corruption? May as well not exist once you get about half way through said CoC. Stat drain? May as well not exist once you find the big room. Encumberance? May as well not exist once you get strength of atlas. I can go on and on.

Elemental damage is not that important in ADOM (except in the fire temple and against dragon vaults). To get fire immunity you need 3 sources of fire resistance in ADOM. In tome, you just need two green items, or one artifact ring.
Yes, adom had rings of immunity etc etc.
More importatnly, ADOM has no freeze/stun/daze mechanics as far as I can remember.
Hunger is also a bad example. Put it in TOME if you like it, but I do not think it would add much to the game-play of the game.

But the point I also tried to make is that effects are game-play elements that interfere with positioning on the battlefield, while damage is not. God, I don't know how to explain this better but:
If I want to tell the player: You will be pinned to the ground for 4 turns, then I use a talent that causes immobility right? Now if this player is immune, then I can't do that. But in this specific encounter for whatever reason I want to add this game-play element. So I can go and make a new effect called 'pinned', that would be exactly the same as immobilized except the player is not immune. I could do this for every effect in the game, but then we would simply have two of each unscalable game-play effect.
There are only a limited number of game-play effect a map maker can make use of. Giving immunities to the player against such effects only limits gameplay but does not enhance it.

Not all effects are what i call 'unscalable game-play effects'. Poisson damage over time effects, for example, are just damage and do not interfere with positioning in the battle.

/edit
I changed the title in the hope that it will now be less offensive to some people.

/edit again
You make a good point about ADOM though: The game is a real challenge until you beat the fire temple. After this the game becomes easy because at this point the character is very powerful. The game post-fire temple is not nearly as exciting as post-fire temple. I think it would be best to avoid this so we can keep the game challenging all the way to the final battle. I would also like to see most characters die during this battle, but not because they got 1-hit killed.

[Frumple]

So again I ask, why do we have green items with 60% stun resistance? (rhetorical question)

So, trying one last time for clarity and precision. We've had this entire discussion so that you can try to make the point that you'd like to see the maximum status resistance on individual pieces of kit reduced? That's your balance point of contention? That you believe it's too easy to get status immunity via kit?

The way to suggest fixing this isn't getting rid of immunity. You want to present a case for reducing the numbers on equipment -- which you're trying! That's good.

Most wholehearted suggestion: Make a thread specifically for that (reducing status resistances per piece of kit), and don't try to be roundabout in making your point. Conciseness in argument and discussion is a virtue -- possibly the prime virtue. We don't need equipment construction theory. We need, "I think the status resistance numbers on equipment is too high. This is why: Present 60% resistance green, glory of the prides, or whatever your preferred example is. This is my suggestion for correcting this: Present either precise numbers per piece of equipment to be considered or a general heuristic (Let's half the current numbers, ferex, or have no single item with more than X%) for change. This is why I think it will improve the game: Insert reason."

If there's another point (perhaps you wish for more differentiation between, say, daze and flameshock paralyze), try to address that one separately, in yet another thread. Again: Thesis ("This is my point"), example of problem, suggestion for change, why this is good. The more precise you can be, the better.