Let's talk combat

[jack1974]

However let's look at the situation implied if my druid story and your hunter story are both true. My druid nukes for 50 at level 1 and 90 at level 6. It's very impressive at level 1, but it doesn't even double as you get those levels and that gear. Now look at the hunter's improvement. A hunter should be happy to be aimed shotting for even 10 at level 1, but goes it goes to four times that when "well equipped" - I am guessing you are level 4-5 at least. Don't you think we have a scaling problem here?

No I am level 3 - but only because took me some time to find the powerful weapon.
But works like this in many games. I don't think is the hunter that is underpowered, is the Druid that is overpowered The Hunter with a crossbow/bow with 15 damage even at level 1 should be powerful, IF you increase the damage.
The autoleveling has nothing to do with this, is an issue of balancing the classes (since the other do their jobs). Beside the druid, the Ranger starts with a 2h weapon of damage 18, and with higher attack value. In next update I'm going to provide a better missile weapon to the hunter from the beginning (Longbow attack 15) and that should already improve things. But anyway you can level up from just doing the first quest - is not a big issue, really.

Then again stat derivation is still very much in place for hit points... long before this beta is over there will be a reckoning about this mechanic. Right now I don't know if getting more health will help me survive or not, because it means the enemy will have more health too and thus can hit me for longer. It's really the same deal as with defense, except I can't strip my characters to lower their health. I haven't checked but I would assume getting more SP means that will happen with enemies too and they can use more abilities on me. Why is autoleveling enemies not enough? Actually, I don't even like that. I might for bosses.

Enemies will get more HP, yes. To provide a challenge. If I define a goblin caster as low HP but high Magic, it will still have a very low HP compared to your party. The autoleveling IS NOT THE PROBLEM. Otherwise you get boring battles like Loren, or takes me 2 years to make a new game because I need to test every battle for all difficulty levels.
Is the DEFINITION of the enemy that makes the game fun. Golem slow but with high HP. Fast snow tiger with high attack but low defense. The fact that they start with a "baseline value" for attribute doesn't matter. If a enemy is too tough or too easy is a fault in the definition, I can fix it. Is not a fault of the system.

I think all the problems you are trying to solve are better solved by level pacing, and you have made progress with that; you could grind in Loren, you can't in SotW. I can give you more ideas, for example if you intend for us to be level 6 by the end of the first season, then increase the exp rewards in season 2 but also increase the exp required for levels 7, 8 etc. That way if you sucked at getting exp in season one you will get a fast level 6 from the increased exp rewards in season 2. And conversely, if you really try to milk season 1 for exp, it will only give you like 3 season 2 mob kills worth of exp anyway.

That's exactly what I wanted - stop the pointless grinding. In Loren you can grind as much as you want, then you get people complaining "pfuah, Fost battle was too easy!!" and I ask which level they got it "level 30" when the encounter was designed for a level 15-17 party!!!!!

I don't have much time to play right now but I am noticing a far lower defense on early monsters at least. And bigger hunter numbers. It's better at least. Were your numbers from 0.78 or 0.79 by the way? I could see the hunter being "okay" in 0.79 at least.

Yes numbers were from 0.79 indeed.

Also does it really make sense to give everyone the same traits to choose from. Like my druid has no interest in bonus attack and my ranger no interest in bonus magic. These could be replaced with like a bonus speed trait. I would love to have one of those.

Well I don't know if I can change this right now. Ranger will need bonus magic when starts getting nuked by enemy caster. Not in this act, but later yes

Oh and I never replied to this but lack of enemies in a row is not really the reason I think the druid row nukes suck compared to single target nukes. Let me tell you of the one situation where I actually used a row nuke and didn't regret it. It was one of the very last fights of the season and I was faced with a back row of 3 archers. Their health was low enough that they all died to two row nukes. But if they required three, I would rather just single nuke them down. It has a little more delay and it costs a little more SP but it kills an enemy each time so I don't have to worry about them anymore. And if their health was so high it wouldn't kill them I'd get a nice debuff on them, which is less likely when I use a row nuke. Furthermore the Regenerate spells imported from Loren are so powerful in this first season that I can't fight them with row nukes - talking about the Mormont fight.

Yes there will be many cases of using AOE spells later in the game.

Animal pack in Ninim: Just acquired Vaelis. I've restarted that fight over twenty times. My party is on full health at the start. Got two white wolves - they kill my ranger or Vaelis before I can even act. wtf. Reloaded for different pack, leveled up so fully healed. Now bandits are about as hopeless as the white wolves were. I miss my druid. Did you only change monster defense when you tinkered with the numbers?

I don't remember anymore honestly, but that's why I'm stopping the tinkering now. Unless I have 3-4 more people complaining they can't win in Nightmare mode, means that it CAN be beated. Nightmare mode doesn't mean "you can win with any party configuration at any time". Means : PREPARE TO DIE. So in your case, you wanted to do that fight but maybe your party wasn't ready.
I have a problem, if a PLOT BATTLE can't be beaten in Nightmare mode with some decent configuration. But random battles? no, there can be tough ones that you can't win now.

I think I didn't change much in 0.79 regarding enemies, but all the continuous changes probably made the game too hard? Don't know, in 0.78 I had an user send me saves for all combos, so I assume he made it with all.

Will stop now and get feedback and not touch that anymore since is so hard to reach a good balance

[jack1974]

OK I think I know the issue, I raised SLIGHTLY the Attack and Speed of enemies vs some of the earlier version (but some enemies are defined already as fast, so it sums up). Also I tried the battles you mentioned: indeed the enemies hit first and can kill your party with 2 hits, that's bad. Will revert to the old setting and fix this.
To be honest for me is hard because I NEVER manage to win at Nightmare, so when I hear other people do, I always wonder HOW

[yayswords]

But nobody is going to take on a level 17 boss at level 30 here. You have good pacing. But you also added autoleveling (somewhat bad) and stat derivation (really bad). If you can't beat a fight, you should be able to think, I'll come back next level. Well sure you can think that, but that level will not necessarily help you as much as it helps your enemy. And I have a new adventure with stat derivation to relate further down.

As for your comment on my nightmare difficulties. What really bothers me isn't that my ranger/hunter party is struggling like hell. What bothers me is that my most recent druid/hunter party, after picking up Vaelis, licked the map clean of quests and spawns. Didn't rest once, didn't have a meal at the tavern once. Meanwhile the ranger/hunter party needs to pick its battles very carefully and will probably have to pay the bandits gold. One party is on a killing spree and the other is indeed going through a nightmare.

Now let's have another tale about stat derivation. I said earlier that constitution is a great stat. I mean, you devote some points to that and you can easily more than double your starting health. Meanwhile if you take say skill or agility you could maybe see like a 10% increase to speed and defense by level 6. Wow, how dull. I should spam constitution.

Wrong, because of my new best friend whose name begins with s and ends with tat derivation. You see, when it also increases enemy health the only thing it accomplishes is putting bigger numbers on the battlefield. Now if you are running a really tanky lineup and want to outlast, I suppose that is in your best interest. But the outlast lineup would be ranger/hunter and I can tell you that is not tanky... anyway. For this druid/hunter run I tried taking ZERO constitution. Nobody took any. Not a point. Also, I took zero strength. I dared not touch it, what if it increases my opponents' damage too? I actually just checked, it does. My druid will be nuking, I don't need Vaelis and the hunter to hit hard. Screw strength, and screw you for joining with 18 of it Vaelis.

And yes, this is the same party that licks the map clean. They're eager on taking skill and agility, with a little will on hunter/Vaelis, a little more will on the druid and of course a lot of arcane there. Since our health is low, enemy health is also lower, but the druid still has the heavy arcane she usually has. As a result, her spells now oneshot mobs they couldn't oneshot before. My party wins battles not because we spend a lot on skill and agility. I could even not spend those points when I level up if it was possible. Just as long as I don't have to spend them on constitution. In fact the lowered monster health gave me another good time to use a row nuke, 'cause it could just about oneshot a back row minion of Mormont's. My hunter recently dinged 6 and skill/agi were both over 20 and he had 1 point left... he didn't really need more will either, but I suppose I could have taken that. However I was afraid of taking strength or constitution, so I put that point in arcane. Hunter, point in arcane.

You might want to shoot everyone who knows what stat derivation is (me first) and hope nobody discovers it on their own. Because this stupid system makes me think of what stats I don't want my enemies to have more than the stats I want to have.

To be honest for me is hard because I NEVER manage to win at Nightmare, so when I hear other people do, I always wonder HOW

They play druids at least that's an easy way to win

P.S. I would take Elementalist on a ranger if I wanted defense against magic. I should have to be a really hardcore tank to want to take Archwizard.

[jack1974]

OK will think about it, might be able to use my same system without stat derivation. I can just define a "standard group" to use as base, and my current system will work, with the difference that enemies stats will be fixed (if your party raises HP, enemies won't raise HP, unless they're of higher level).
I don't think autoleveling is bad at all since keeps up the challenge. Stat derivation could work for bosses, but perhaps you're right, using the party as base sucks mainly for what you said, you come to think what stat you don't want the enemy to raise.

I'll give at try using the other system, though I still think that the issues you find with druid are a problem in class balancing mostly, so even not using derivation the problem could still be there

[yayswords]

Put it this way. I have two targeting circles on my wall. One is called stat derivation and the other is called autoleveling. I throw 30 knives at the first for every knife I throw at the second. Autoleveling doesn't bother me nearly as much

[jack1974]

OK tried it, seems works well. Note that I can also add a SMALL random variant in the enemy template definition, so that's why you could still see different number. But I did some tests with two parties: one level 2-3, another level 5-6 against the two bandits encounter (so a fixed enemy). The second party of course had much an easier job now, since the enemy HP and stats remained the same no matter my party attributes.

Hope you're ready to retest 0.8 from scratch (I'll upload it later today or tomorrow) - I'm not sure if I made things too easy, but once again, this first part is not needed to be too hard after all

[Troyen]

I think the auto-leveling is fine because (at least on 0.7.7) character power started going up significantly when there were more skill options available and a bigger SP pool. I'm less thrilled about stat derivation, but haven't experimented that much with it (I honestly thought the mobs were just bugged rocking 50 defense and 15 attack at level 3 or something). I think it would be worse for bosses, just tune the boss stats at each level assuming players have stats comparable to X% of the best gear or something (though the random shop/drop thing might make this more difficult - I had 700g I couldn't spend at the shop because nothing was actually a notable upgrade). That way skilled players can still beat it with less by using creative strategies and everyone else can overcome it by finding better gear. Gear should be a progression, not a handicap.

I still stand by my Con strategy for rangers because A. my ranger isn't doing much damage, but he needs to live long enough for the druid to finish them off and B. putting points in Con means I wasn't putting points into strength, which apparently would be a bad move (and probably why my original ranger/hunter combo had so much trouble - when I was going for a more balanced mix of stats). Putting points into Will isn't too bad either because enemies will usually have enough skill points to use all the special attacks they want or some BS skill like Energy that lets them regen a bunch of SP for no SP anyway. (Honestly, I think that's the skill preventing the ratmen fight from being beatable without resorting to weird crazy stuff like naked runs or no Con since if you kill anything else the cleric can just revive all which heals and resurrects, but the Cleric has effectively infinite SP with one round of downtime.) I don't know what the benefit of speed is since I rarely go first (or second, or third), even when I dump a bunch of points into speed (this is probably related to stat derivation, in retrospect).

The class balance does seem off, but my numbers are out of date, so I'll need to retest on 0.8.0 first.

[jack1974]

Yes please test again with 0.8, since removing the stats derivation will have a big impact. At least this way, everyone plays the same enemies so will be easier to test if a battle is really too hard/easy, or if a class sucks. I tested a bit this morning and the hunter now seems to be doing fine. Worse case I'll lower the druid spells damage if is too much powerful

[jack1974]

Another change I'm considering doing in next update is to reduce the effectiveness of attributes on the HP/SP stats, and make HP/SP based on class / level up more. This way should probably be also more balanced ?

[yayswords]

Hope you're ready to retest 0.8 from scratch

Yes, but I can't promise I will be sober when posting the feedback. My finest champagne is gonna be popped to celebrate the removal of stat derivation.

Another change I'm considering doing in next update is to reduce the effectiveness of attributes on the HP/SP stats, and make HP/SP based on class / level up more. This way should probably be also more balanced ?

If anything is a big problem with con and will it's that they automatically improve the efficiency of heals and Invigorating Prayer. Other than that I don't think I would say they are even in the same boat. Your abilities don't cost more mana as the game goes on, but enemies hit harder. There is a certain mana pool and regen you want, after that every time you get +5 mana for a level up you might be thinking, aw man why did I waste that last point in will. Health however is a universal survivability stat and it's hard to have too much of it.