Let's talk combat

[yayswords]

Yes I had to reload a bit for that until I got lucky. But the better question is: Did you beat it with armor on? :P

I hope the improvements have lessened the impact of stat derivation a lot. I don't think you can parse feedback well at all with such a mechanic in place. It's like, you could have a player thinking his (physical) damage output is sufficient, but he's a little squishy. Okay, Vaelis goes tank, buys defense gear. Enemy defense goes up. Hunter is suddenly doing less damage. The physical damage output he had and thought was fine now sucks not because Vaelis' damage went down but because his defense went up. Like, wtf. It should be a nightmare for you to figure out how to tune things under these circumstances.

In fact as long as there is some measure of stat derivation (with defense at least), and the enemy has no archers, I could easily remove my hunter's armor to reduce enemy defense at no risk.

[jack1974]

No worries I've already fixed this. Now it detects if your armor is too low (using average armor values) and if so, balances the defense correctly. I tested with the battle with goblins, and the snow tiger. The "cheat" now is counterproductive since in some cases the enemy defense is even higher

[yayswords]

I just hope you bear in mind I had this idea because I'm disappointed in hunter damage. It wasn't a drunken bet or something

[jack1974]

It's like, you could have a player thinking his (physical) damage output is sufficient, but he's a little squishy. Okay, Vaelis goes tank, buys defense gear. Enemy defense goes up. Hunter is suddenly doing less damage. The physical damage output he had and thought was fine now sucks not because Vaelis' damage went down but because his defense went up. Like, wtf. It should be a nightmare for you to figure out how to tune things under these circumstances.

Yes I understand what you mean. I think I need to fix a bit the weapon:attack/defense ratio.
In practice when you hit the damage is calculated by the weapon you're using, and the attack/defense value. The attack defense SHOULD have an impact, but perhaps I need to tweak it so that the weapon damage is a little more important. Is like a percentage that I can tweak, so that one of the two things has more impact. Giving more impact on the weapon probably should balance things more in favor of the Thief.

I'll have a better idea of this in second act with full party fights!

Also sometimes I wonder if I never said I used this autobalancing trick, how many people would have noticed
I've played the game, and played Loren, and this system seems MUCH MUCH better, no battle feels boring (playing in Hard / Nightmare of course, Normal/Easy is still simple) and I had much more fun with the fights.
But is a good way that I did so players like yayswords can try to find any possible ways to break the system and I can fix it!

[yayswords]

Well on so many playthroughs I'm sure someone would have noticed the starting orcs having different health all the time (unless you are devoted to a certain initial constitution score for every playthrough).

Sure this game is a step up from Loren, but is it so much because of this mechanic? I mean you have paced the leveling pretty well. Nobody's gonna grind their balls off and fight the kodiak at level 25 and say their druid meleed it down, game is too easy. People finish at level 6 quite consistently, don't they. Above all I don't see why mobs can't just be the same level as the party and leave it at that

[jack1974]

I just made some tests, when you say the Hunter damage sucks, DOES IT HAVE SAME ATTACK value as the Ranger? because I just started a new game and put all the attribute points on Strength=Attack. So both char had same attack value. Even with starting weapons, Hunter has 2 short sword 8 +8 damage =16. Ranger has 2h sword = 18 dmg. They were doing more or less same damage, just 1-2 point of difference.
Isn't that your hunter damage sucked because the attack value was much lower than the Ranger ? in this case well is normal

[yayswords]

I don't compare it to the ranger, but yes it does less than the ranger. I compare it to the druid who can zap for like 50 damage at level 1, going up to close to 90 by level 6. The numbers my naked hunter was pulling in that video a druid can do without anyone fighting in underwear.

My ranger can't survive waiting for that terrible hunter damage to take stuff down. I haven't seen it become respectable in any playthrough. I haven't even had a playthrough where a hunter plays as an archer all the way. Either it's been mana battery or I tried to use it as an actual archer but it sucked and it went slow and then a new build came and I had to start over. This was another attempt at doing it. And my damage was so bad I started playing naked to fix it :P

[jack1974]

OK well in this case autoleveling doesn't matter, is a problem of balancing the magic power and the hunter skills though if you have any saves with high level Hunter/Druid (and Hunter/Ranger too maybe) I can make some tests. I think simply in this first act I put a low Magic resistance value to all enemies, perhaps will raise it a bit (or is another bug hidden somewhere).

[jack1974]

I really cannot seem to reproduce your problems here. I put all level up attributes on strength to boost attack (since the intent was to hit a lot with the Hunter), I just got a nice crossbow, attack 18, for the Hunter and in the backrow does 39-44 damage to a Snow Tiger with aimed shot! Vaelis and Ranger do 10-15 with normal attacks. It doesn't seem too bad to me even considering the long delay of the aimed shot.

So I'm not doing any changes right now unless you can send me saves that prove that your WELL EQUIPPED Hunter sucks (of course if has crappy items, won't do much damage ).

[yayswords]

Maybe. Maybe my only playthrough where I got far with an archer hunter is the one I sent you where I couldn't kill the spider, I can't remember. What I can remember is how powerful the druid is at all levels though. But even if the hunter can get respectable at level 5 it doesn't change the situation at level 1. It should be hitting harder than the ranger already at that point. It has no other job. A druid does not need to spend everything (or anything) on arcane to accomplish that.

Yes, I think you could increase magic resistance a bit. Not for actual caster mobs, but the rest yeah.

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?

On a different topic, I believe Troyen raised the point that constitution is a powerful attribute or somesuch. Whatever it was he said, at least I think so too. You start with over a hundred speed, so more agility just doesn't feel so exciting. You can get over a hundred defense... so same about skill. Especially about agility, I think there's like a 30 speed difference between a ranger and a snow tiger. I can't hope to bridge that gap. Attack and magic feel scarce enough that strength/arcane are exciting though, not to mention their defensive benefits. Anyway with over a hundred default speed getting +1 per agility point isn't very exciting.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?