SOTW 0.8.9 - First Act Beta preview!

[jack1974]

I actually tried to remove that cap completely and just reduce the overall damage to test (both on melee/magic) and the battles were OK to me (I can't win the Nightmare but that was the same even before so doesn't matter). So I am tempted to keep it this way, since testing a few of the next act battles seems to be fine too.
If anyone has saves before Kodiak/Spider/Ratmen and want to send them to me to do a quick test, I think I could use this new version, even for the act2 battles is working fine so far

[yayswords]

Yes well I am trying not to get mathy, my real crux is it's not fun whenever more +magic does nothing I am fine with the general damage cap though, or rather I understand that with 1-2 devs we can't have the awesomest system possible. I'm just not fine with a lower one against the mage, however exactly it comes to happen. Against a target with high magic and high resistance the cap should be harder to achieve, not mathematically impossible to achieve

[renke_]

it is not a cap, just an unfortunate artefact of the damage calculation (the range where the modified damage is higher than the base damage) :)

and I was not that happy when Jack revealed it - my own approach (damage weight derived from enemy HP) failed miserably as the battles in act 1 are balanced around this sweet spot side-effect of 49+dmg*.3

[jack1974]

Yaysword, how much magic your druid has? I found a save you sent me for Mormont battle, and I removed completely the damage cap, but still I'm unable to do max damage to the mage
I might try to remove the damage reduction completely and see if people can finish 1st act. I can't finish the first act in Nightmare and most battles are difficult in Hard now (but I didn't equip myself well), but I don't think the damage values are particularly different. I guess I can just upload this version without damage reduction and see if people think is too hard. For Act 2 with another team member works fine, I can win the battles in Hard (I never play in Nightmare...).

[renke_]

I found a save you sent me for Mormont battle, and I removed completely the damage cap, but still I'm unable to do max damage to the mage :lol:

with "cap" you mean the "49-algorithm"?

if so I have a different idea: The Mormont fight on nightmare is only winnable with one instakill (archer or mage) - currently one-shot-K.O.ing of the archer works because of the "inverse cap" (modified dmg above base dmg). It is not mandatory that the mage drops on the first attack, only that one of the backrow mob dies with the first party action.

ergo: remove the 49-thingy and lower the HP of skeletons by ~ 10 % (at the Mormont fight 50 dmg should be possible for the party, and the unfortunate gain of the current system is up to 28 % (50 dmg are counted as 64), but this is the relative peak). with the lowered HP the archer should be down with one shot and the fight works similar like now.

[jack1974]

OK will try that, because I made some tweaks that in act2 with a full party works much better. Obviously I need to tweak the game that works well with a full party, so in case I need to change battles in 1st act that are too hard with only 3 members.
I also tweaked the resistance impact. Before was too low, for example: 50% fire resistance, 05% Water and the difference in a spell was like 8-9 dmg with dmg around 50. That was too low. Now the impact when there's such a high resistance difference is much bigger.

[renke_]

to put it this way: currently it's impossible to do elemental damage between 50 and 63 (if not for random variance), the "forbidden zone" for other types are 40-51.

another enemy balanced around the "49-conspiracy" are the small spiders: damage of 60-something for druid nukes are the norm, without the sweet spot it would be 50-something.

Melee attacks against ratmen thiefs also need a look, at least my parties make most of the damage either slightly below 40 or somewhere between 50 and close to 60, and the HP of ratmen are a few points above the impossible damage range.

[jack1974]

I uploaded the 0.8.7h, if you have saves ready before the battles you mention and if you can still win them, there is no need to tweak those battles
Some battles might be hard because of the resistances, but now they behave as they should (otherwise raising 90% against Fire and then still get a lot of damage against fire magic makes no sense).
For non-normal damage the minimum damage you can do is still HALF damage, so this shouldn't break anything - 90% resistance doesn't mean the mage won't do any damage, just little more than half of that skill normal damage.

[yayswords]

I had 46 magic. What was this build supposed to do again? You made all my damage worse (against Mormont)

I beat him reliably but I don't like what you're doing with the magic system. If I have a gazillion attack, I will do max damage with an attack if I understand you correctly. If I have a gazillion magic, resistances will still fuck me.

What I want is:
- If I have "high" magic, I will do max damage to a 0 resistance target
- With the same "high" magic, I will get a damage variance against a target with some resistance
- With even higher magic, I will do max damage to a target with resistance too

Conversely it's also extremely effective as a defensive strategy to just get resistance gear and ignore magic altogether on a non-mage. And with the numbers I'm seeing I may as well ignore magic on mages too and let them buff and heal fighters instead of entertaining dreams of doing respectable damage in the face of resistances

[renke_]

What was this build supposed to do again? You made all my damage worse :( (against Mormont)

this release is a measure against the bumps. your former damage was in the sweet spot, now the curve is linear. and as Mormont has a high magic your not hitting the factor 2 cap of the magic resistance system (at least if I understood the model correctly).