General Curved Stacking

[grayswandir]

Basically, there's a lot of bonuses that I think would benefit from being curved. It lets you have a single source of a value actually be useful, and not have multiple sources be overpowered. I'm thinking of two main examples:

• First, there's infravision and heightened senses. They both do the exact same thing, but don't stack because otherwise it would be way too easy to get ridiculously high values, and low values of them aren't terribly useful by themselves. Some sort of curve would let us get rid of this distinction and let them stack, and also make a single source of them somewhat more useful.
• When I pointed out that you could theoretically get up to 100% projectile evasion, DarkGod set it so that the values didn't stack, you only get the benefit of the highest value. Again, I think a curve here would probably be a better way to handle it

I suggest we add a few 'curved' stacking modes to the game. The main point here is that we wouldn't need to mess with any existing values (for halfway decent balance, anyway), and can just add a line saying that this value follows a curved mode instead.

Example: Make a 'curved100' stacking mode that follows the same curve that saves do. Say we did this for projectile evasion - you have a deflecting shield (+10% projectile evasion), the emblem of evasion (+15%), and wind's whisper (+25%). These would all be converted to the actual numbers needed to get that much (10, 15, 30), added together (55), and then run through the saves curve to get the final result (37.5%)


This'd be pretty easy to code up, I'm just wondering if it's a good idea.

[Sradac]

I think it would be really confusing for people who dont know that it runs on a curve. I've loved ToMEs transparency, I would hate it if 30+20=40 for example. I know mind/phys/mag power are on a curve / diminishing returns already, but I can see it really confusing new players. I would say taking the highest value for (some) things would make sense anyways, how can something thats worse than something else at a particular thing somehow make me better? That'd be along the same lines of logic as "Well, I have 4 good cylinders in this car, and 2 bad. But those add up and make it all work out OK!"

[marshmallowpeep]

Some things stacking and some things not stacking is more confusing than diminishing returns. When I was new to this game I was far more confused by the interaction (or lack thereof) between heightened senses and infravision than I was by the diminishing returns on the various sorts of powers. Playing video game RPGs you come to expect things to stack, and since most things in this game do stack it took me a while to notice that my miner's helm wasn't stacking with my heightened senses talent.

[HousePet]

The confusing bit is lack of documentation in good places, not the method of balancing values.

[Dracos]

Seconded. I've certainly thought things were bugging out when 30 + 15 = 40. Sure, once you know that the formual being used is (1-x) * (1-x) it makes sense, but that's not clearly made obvious anywhere within the game and ToME is certainly a complicated enough entity that when things are opaque, they're very distracting.

[0player]

Most importantly, the values on items show up as "+value", which usually means they add up to something! Also, egos like low-level miner's, giving +1 infravision, are completely worthless for everyone - guys who care about stealth have heightened senses, guys who do not have a lite.

[Doctornull]

Love this idea.

We'd want some kind of way to display the current rescaled value ("if you equipped this right now, the scaled benefit would be +X for a total of Y").

[0player]

Well, the code for "effective value" tooltips is already on git.

[Doctornull]

Well, the code for "effective value" tooltips is already on git.

Awesome, thanks!

[Delmuir]

I whole-heartedly endorse the premise but there would need to be a means to make it less opaque… like a stat calculator or something.

What this game REALLY needs is something to guide the player in determining how a skill functions so that they can make rational choices. Your solution is good, there just needs to be a way to make it transparent and CLEAR.