Wyrmic Redesign Direction

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Davion Fuxa
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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#16 Post by Davion Fuxa »

SageAcrin wrote:Also, not to put too fine of a point on this;

Ultra-focusing on single elements depresses me as a gameplay decision....
Keep in mind that this is part of the reason Higher's don't make good Wyrmics. I'm not against keeping Wyrmics as they sort of are now where it is hard to focus on a single element, but I think that some fine tuning for single element or dual element specialization should be somewhat possible. Along with perhaps making Equilibrium matter more on Wyrmics with their talents too, we might be able to make Higher's a more credible option when they play as Wyrmics.
HousePet wrote:Slot 2 only requires level 4. Waiting until after your first boss for a utility talent doesn't seem too arduous.
Having to spend an extra talent point is I guess.
Yet again in regards to Races, and not specifically tailored to this reply though it did get my thinking about it - Yeeks ARE currently a viable racial selection for the Wyrmic class because of the initial Wyrmic Talents available to them.

While I'm not against making the Wyrmic classes start somewhat harder, I think that Yeeks deserve some due thought in Wyrmic design since some merit can be found in keeping some options available just for Yeeks to get through their Starter Dungeon . I consider Yeeks right now to be (oddly enough) one of the top tier Race choices for the Wyrmic Class on Normal difficulty, and I think it would terrible to take yet another option away from them in class selection.
edge2054 wrote:Keep in mind that buffs to Wyrmics will result in buffs to drakes. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing for most drakes but after getting spammed by a multi-hued vault drake last night and almost dying just from breath weapons it is something I hope people will keep in mind.
I think this is front and centre in a lot of peoples minds, not the least of which myself being the case. In the first thread I made in regards to the Wyrmic Class and looking at it - Analyzing the Wyrmic Class - one of the the sort of recommendations I was going for was in line to 'buffing Drake and Wyrm enemies, but nerfing Multi-Hued Drakes and Wyrmcs'. Check out my last post in the thread if you sort of want the jist of everything I was touching on in regards to my personal recommendations for redesign.
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edge2054
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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#17 Post by edge2054 »

Davion Fuxa wrote:
edge2054 wrote:Keep in mind that buffs to Wyrmics will result in buffs to drakes. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing for most drakes but after getting spammed by a multi-hued vault drake last night and almost dying just from breath weapons it is something I hope people will keep in mind.
I think this is front and centre in a lot of peoples minds, not the least of which myself being the case. In the first thread I made in regards to the Wyrmic Class and looking at it - Analyzing the Wyrmic Class - one of the the sort of recommendations I was going for was in line to 'buffing Drake and Wyrm enemies, but nerfing Multi-Hued Drakes and Wyrmcs'. Check out my last post in the thread if you sort of want the jist of everything I was touching on in regards to my personal recommendations for redesign.
There's some neat ideas in that post. I like the idea of a wyrm aspect category a lot. :) Still reading the rest of it.

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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#18 Post by Davion Fuxa »

I figure since I'm thinking of dropping another poll eventually that I should drop some ideas on the options I'm thinking of including in such a poll. In regards to the last poll I made, I had made 'Wyrmic Breath Attacks' directly focus on Breath Attacks themselves and their use. As such for a following poll, I'm thinking of making options that 'indirectly' focus on Breath Attacks but related aspects to using them.

What I mean by 'indirectly' focus here is essentially in regards to supporting talents, resources used, and utility exhibited when using Breath Attacks. Some options might look as follows:
  • - Only include Passive Talents that indirectly tie into Breath Attacks
    - Additional Inclusion of Passive Talents that directly tie into Breath Attacks
    - Additional Inclusion of Sustains or Active Talents for Breath Attacks
These thee options here would be in regards to what players want to see from supporting Breath Attacks talents in an overall Wyrmic Class Design.

Right now Wyrmics mostly just have indirect Passive Talents (Elemental Fury and Wyrmic Guile) which play a part in modifying Breath Attacks and their use. That's the status quo.

A little modification could be done to change Wyrmic Guile to centre more on Breath Attacks, but it would still be a passive - such as with SageAcrin broaching the idea of it reducing Breath Attack Cooldowns and what not. It could still centre on doing other things not related to Breath Attacks, but taking it would play a bigger part in the use of Breath Attacks.

In regards to Sustains or an Active talent, I'm thinking personally of the concepts for a 'Spam Button' or a 'Charging Breath Button'. This also begins to talk about some utility type talents that directly augment or change the nature of Breath Attacks and their use - outside of how they can be used by Default. Some of these talents might be more necessary on a Unified Breath Attack layout, but not necessarily - see below on further options I'm thinking about in regards to resources coming into play.

- Leave Breath Attacks only managed by Equilibrium usage and Cooldown
- Tie in a finite Additional Resource to manage Breath Attacks

These options are in regards to the resources that would be used when making Breath Attacks. Right now outside of cooldowns, Breath Attacks are hampered by Equilibrium failure. This means there is a chance that a Breath Attack will fail if one lets their Equilibrium run too high. Cooldown also plays a minor roll - could play a bigger roll too. Under this system, one can use Breath Attacks as much as they wish when Breath Attacks are available for use.

In regards to tying in a finite Resource however (such as Air Capacity or even Housepet's Stamina cost) the idea is to incorporate a hard limit that will comes into play in the number of Breath Attacks that can be made. As a note, with a Unified Breath Attack it could be entirely possible to set the Breath Attack Cooldown TO ZERO BY DEFAULT and just let the finite resource manage Breath Attack spam in its place; this could be a rather abrupt way of satisfying the ability to Spam Breath Attacks without adding an additional button for it - it's just incorporated into the Breath Attack talent itself.

As a note on Additional Resources, some examination would need to be given to Adrenaline Surge, Highborn's Bloom, or other such talents. Additional factors might also need to be included as well.

- Modification of Breath Attack Damage based on Additional Resource for Breath Spam Purposes
- Prevent Modification of Breath Attack Damage based on Additional Resource for Breath Spam Purposes

This is perhaps a very limitly discussed concept, but this is very much based on ideas that led to me forming the 'Charged Breath Attack' concept. This isn't about the idea of draining ones Air Capacity to charge up ones next Breath Attacks, but rather it is about directly draining it to hamper Breath Attacks in general.

The idea, dropped in my Analysis thread, was on making ones Breath Attack Damage tie in to the 'Remaining' Air Capacity Resource. This could be a very good idea to manage Breath Attack Spam - for example, each Breath Attack could take some Air Capacity to use, and then your Breath Attack Damage is modified by the 'Total Percentage of Air Capacity' Remaining; like 47% Air Capacity means you only do 47% of your maximum Damage with a Breath Attack with your next Breath Attack (or we could apply the Damage Reduction AFTER the Breath Attack is made and make it so a player can never inflict a 100% Damaging Breath Attack).

Alternatively, this sort of above concept could only happen after reaching a certain variable - for example, maybe as long as Air Capacity doesn't drop below 50, you inflict 100% Damage with Breath Attacks. Below 50 and Breath Attacks will deal 2% less damage for every Air Capacity Unit below 50.

- Allowing Charging Breath Attacks for Extra Power
- Deny Charging Breath Attacks for Extra Power

Specifically on the concept that I had sort of formed, this is the idea of charging up Breath Attacks so that they are extra powerful and meaningful. Personally I don't think there would be much room for it if Breath Attacks were made more powerful individually to begin with since Dragons could potentially make insane use of it on players - barring appropriate constraints being put in.

Anyhow, that's just some thoughts I had rolling around for the next poll.
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Suslik
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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#19 Post by Suslik »

Currently we have multiple mutually exclusive design aspects that seem to have ~equal amount of supportive community members. Like:
1) Class should have a lot of actives as it does now vs more sustains/passive/skill augmentation talents.
2) Class should be able to concentrate on breaths only which means moving them out of t4 vs oblige the class to use all other abilities even if they are inferior.
3) Spammable/chargeable/free breaths have almost equal amount of adepts. No consensus here either.
4) Should class scaling remaing antisynergetic as it is now vs make all talents scale with max(willpower, strength) vs max(physical power/mindpower).
5) Make going 1 element viable vs oblige going numerous elements as it is now.

Those are very basic design directions community has yet to find a consensus with. Luckily there are at least some redesign aspects we mostly agree on:
1) Add more drake-ey trees/abilities, make those talents augment survavability/melee.
2) Generally make class more capable and unique in melee.

Frankly speaking I don't thing democracy can work here. I support both HousePet's and SageAcrin's approaches of making their own versions of the class how they see it(quite opposite, by the way) so that instead of pondering on singular aspects of the class we(community) have the opportunity to test a fully redisigned whole class as they see it.

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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#20 Post by Suslik »

@astreoth
Regarding charging breaths. Note that if you can charge a breath before battle it will get extremely tedious because optimal strategy would be to always do so. And the whole gameplay is going to be very similar to what shadowblades do(did?) with illuminate and stealth: you either kill everyone with spike damage from 1 backstab(or whatever the spell hit from stealth is called) of illuminate or retreat and cooldown it. That was as effective as it was unfun because either 1-shotting stuff or retreating from it is a really bad design.

astreoth
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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#21 Post by astreoth »

@suslik
huh did not think of that you have a very good point their do not want this class to be a fire and away blitzkrieg.

yeah I got nothing for how to address that issue.

and I agree
democracy's done about all it can for now mostly feels like people are burnt out on polls and their just to give coders an idea what the people want so results shouldn't be taken as absolute anyway.

at this point what we need is design and code getting done.

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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#22 Post by HousePet »

Yep, I've got no problem with making Drakes and Wyrms harder.
Multihued are only scary because they can spam breaths.
Dragons should be much stronger at melee than they are now.

My experience with polls, is not to get too specific about game mechanics.
Most players don't consider more than just how powerful their character would be. (eg. spammable super powered breath attacks)
I've found it is best to ask more about what the final result should be. Like what sort of builds should be viable. Those question have got clear results. Such as players wanting flexibility about what weapons they use.
Direct questions about implementation don't work because most players don't have experience with the coding, design or balancing of classes.

As to my design:
Its going more actives. The generic melee and ranged categories are now all offensive actives.
The element based categories are now movement based talent first, then a defensive sustain, then a semi synergistic active utilityish talent, finishing with a flavourful passive support talent.
I left the details at home though. :lol:
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Davion Fuxa
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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#23 Post by Davion Fuxa »

HousePet wrote:Yep, I've got no problem with making Drakes and Wyrms harder.
Multihued are only scary because they can spam breaths.
Dragons should be much stronger at melee than they are now.
I don't necessarily think Dragons should be much stronger in Melee, but they should have stronger talents outside of their Breath Attacks to make use of in combat.

Anyhow, guess it's time to give coder's some time to push out some more samples before doing anything else with Wyrmics for now.
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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#24 Post by anonymous000 »

Bump. It seems that people are now quite burnt-out by the discussions, and are starting to forget/ignore about the wyrmic redesign. It is painful to see so many lengthy discussions and good ideas do not materialize into anything.

I feel the discussions were too focused on detailed mechanics (like how to rework the breaths) rather than high-level class designs (like how to make specialization viable); and too focused on compromising between various options rather than just be bold and experiment.

Also, too much attentions were paid to the Breaths. Why are the Breaths so central to Wyrmics that they warrant so much discussions? Mechanism-wise they are just cone elemental attacks with disables, a good offensive talent but nothing special. Instead of discussing how to make Breaths itself more fun, we discussed lame things which centered around spammability and made the Breaths become the bottleneck of redesign. It seems to me the need for Breaths is more out of thematical need rather than because it is so goddamn fun that it is indispensable. If it becomes a bottleneck that hinders the redesign, why don't we experiment by just coding something we like and make sense? Or why don't we screw the Breaths and have some crazy ass spells (like filling the entire screen with fire/sand/etc) to take their place? Who says the dragons in ToME need to breath elements like the D&D ones do anyway?

And assuming that we indeed want a redesign, I don't know why nobody provide more comments to HousePet regarding his new redesign idea (Is it because people are still mistaken that the redesign is based on the alchemist style?). I feel his is a good idea that warrants a try. The melee can flesh out a little bit but overall I feel he is heading towards a good direction

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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#25 Post by Davion Fuxa »

Burnt-out is certainly an attribute to why discussion on Wyrmics died out. Outside of that though is just devotion to other things - I spent a good deal of time with the Ogre Discussion, churning out ideas for new Areas, and all this time pushing out my Let's Learn series. I also was playing a Yeek Wyrmic in the background as well.

Breaths took centre stage quite a bit because they are the elephant in the room. They also share importance with Dragon enemies, which are the mammoths standing outside of the room. It would be rather hard to really make a discussion that avoids talking about Breaths for Wyrmics because they are very well much like Unstoppable for Berserkers, Timeless for Shaloran, or many of the other major eye-catchers in game.

In regards to Housepets or SageAcrins, or any other Wyrmic mod I've missed; I just assume that the big update has still held interest of a lot of players. I still haven't played Celestial Classes for example since the last update - something that I should look into so I can think about at least providing a suggestion for what Celestial type enemies for my Brainstorming in Areas might use.
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anonymous000
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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#26 Post by anonymous000 »

Davion Fuxa wrote:Breaths took centre stage quite a bit because they are the elephant in the room.
My point exactly questions your statement: People consider the Breaths being the elephant in the room, but why is that so when the Breaths are nothing special?

Unstoppable is a fun tactical choice and it provides the sorely needed life for Berserker, and thus is certainly a key talent for Berserkers. Timeless works very well with buffs (think about an old TW with Haste+Fire Elemental Harmony+Eternal Grace+Invigorate+Timeless) and it means that Shaloran suits those classes which has a lot of buffs, thus defining the positioning of Shaloran.

But how do the Breaths define Wyrmics? A class which has strong cone-based attacks? If so, then what? A class which is good at delivering AOE, but by then I have 3 problems
1. Is it really one of our objective, to make the class good at AOE?
2. If 1 is true, how does this objective contribute to our overall goal for Wyrmics (a high-level image of "What the Wyrmics should be in gameplay-wise")? Is it critical?
3. With whatever objective in mind, are the Breaths the only way to achieve that objective? Is there any better alternative?

As I see it, people put a lot of attention to the Breaths because 1. Other talents were too shitty 2. It suits the dragon theme, rather than they have a clear high-level image in mind and cascade that goal into different objectives and work out the relevant details. The discussion about the high-level image had been sorely omitted, and everyone just jump in discussing the detail without questioning the assumptions, limiting the redesign to the original framework.

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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#27 Post by SageAcrin »

As I see it, thematically, the big things that define Wyrmic are parity with enemies(They are, essentially, defined by having a bunch of talents that are enemy talents. Sort of like how a Blue Mage in a few Final Fantasy games is defined by having enemy talents. Just a narrower width here.) and what people see as "standard" dragon attacks.

And there really is nothing more standard, thematically, for a dragon, than a breath weapon of some form.

Of course, if that's a big limiter, you're not thinking far enough with breath weapons. Check out how many different kinds exist in various D&D dragon types alone. If you made an Abundance Dragon that had a breath weapon of various fruits and vegetables, I think you could set it up so that people wouldn't bat an eye at the concept.

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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#28 Post by Suslik »

anonymous000 wrote: Also, too much attentions were paid to the Breaths. Why are the Breaths so central to Wyrmics that they warrant so much discussions? Mechanism-wise they are just cone elemental attacks with disables, a good offensive talent but nothing special.
No idea about others but for me breaths is a central wyrmic mechanic because there's no other class that has a spammable huge-aoe talent using which feels like a blast. You can rework the class into something absolutely different, work on any other dragon-ey aspect like melee or stuff but spamming AoE's just feels great for me. And I'm doubtly the only one on this.

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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#29 Post by joebobjoe »

Perhaps have breaths cost air to use and have power based on the amount of air you currently have ranging from 50-150% of current damage? Gets odd combined with the Fortress and Yeek levels but otherwise should work reasonably well.

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Re: Wyrmic Redesign Direction

#30 Post by anonymous000 »

SageAcrin wrote:As I see it, thematically, the big things that define Wyrmic are parity with enemies(They are, essentially, defined by having a bunch of talents that are enemy talents. Sort of like how a Blue Mage in a few Final Fantasy games is defined by having enemy talents. Just a narrower width here.)
Yes, but the parity is not our top priority. When the high-level image has not been there and mechanics are not suggested according to the high-level image, talking about parity is a waste of time. We can finetune the balance/parity later. Actually, in the “Analyzing the Wyrmic Class” thread, Davion Fuxa and I had posted some thoughts about the high-level image, but as time goes on everyone just talk about the breaths.
SageAcrin wrote:And there really is nothing more standard, thematically, for a dragon, than a breath weapon of some form
The point is that the dragons in ToME are not D&D dragons, and they are not obliged to breathe stuff. If the Breaths become the limiter, why don’t we change it to something else more epic, and make them the standard talents for ToME dragons? Why don’t we make the ToME dragons so attuned to nature that they could manipulate their surroundings in great extent, say, to have a sustain which rearranges the terrain in the whole screen as they please, or fill the entire screen with Fire/Sand/etc? (I am not preaching my ideas here, just to suggest a possibility)
SageAcrin wrote:Of course, if that's a big limiter, you're not thinking far enough with breath weapons. Check out how many different kinds exist in various D&D dragon types alone
My point exactly. I am not really proposing to remove Breaths (unless they become our limiter), but my point is, instead of discussing how to make Breaths itself more fun (like what you said for the Abundance Dragon), we discussed lame things which centered around spammability.
Suslik wrote:Spamming AoE's just feels great for me
1.Are Breaths the only tools the achieve that? We already have Quake/Wing Buffet/Bellowing Roar for AoE
2.Besides spamming the Breaths, can we make the Breaths themselves more fun? This discussion was sorely missed

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