Print

Please login or register.

1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever

Login with username, password and session length

[Evilpotatoe]

I agree with this

RL just should have "a proper way to response to RNG". To build wise and uneasy plans to solve situations RNG creates, always possible but never easy. No nano? OK, we'll not disassemble this item because it's sorta ammo-saving. And there must be no methods which ALWAYS lead to victory. There must always be place to suddenly change your plans because of bad surprise.

but not with this part

Too much balance is good for RPG

I said the game had to be balanced, not that it should give you guarantees, or be repetitive. (As I said somewhere, I'm tired of assembling tactical boots at every game)
If you played Blood bowl, it's kinda representative of how I expect a RL to be : the omnipresent randomness may screw the best situations without giving you any chance, but most of the time, you'll be able to recover if you play correctly. Generating different situations, needing "proper responses to the RNG" is a pillar of the RL gameplay, and shouldn't be removed, of course.

The nuance might not be obvious. To make things a little more clear :
-I'd like to see ammochain nerfed for this kind of reasons : it ensures you you'll always have plasma ammo... way too easy for me. I'd like it to be "more reasonable". Also, the way it combines with some spider's lair's reward looks to me like the worse munchkin examples in doomRL.
-I'd also like to see most other non-random aspects reworked. I love "Inferno"'s mod special level's rewards : only a few guaranteed items. No free missile launchers, BFGs, backpack, or nuclear weapons, just big bunch of stuff... sure, you may get unlucky, but usually, you'll always get some useful toys, including mods, ammo boxes, and exotics or uniques.
-On the other hand, some guaranteed items are needed. e.g., at least a nuke and the lava element at every game, so that if you aim for full win, you won't have to rely on drops. Same for a good melee weapon... playing melee build with only knives would be quite frustrating when you're not hunting badges. I guess simple items like HA's armors and ammo boxes are not a problem, either.

The problem with firestorm is that it stands in place of a great mod. Which, in HA, is currently supposed to be guaranteed. It's like if my backpack was replaced with a schematic... or when I get acid proof boots at the end of the arena, as AoHu : it justs makes me wants to suicide (and I sometime did it :p)
Having some mods more useful than the other is not a big deal (well, I think leveling things a little would do good.. currently, nano is way above the other), but trying to get 4 mods of "equal" power wouldn't make much sense... your needs have to vary from one game to another, anyway.

Not using a BFG when you play a shotgun game is a choice (pre-game choice, if you play AoSh, but still a choice), but not using your rare mod because it sucks isn't one. It's just bad luck.
I sometimes find a 2nd (unneeded) onyx mod in the dungeon... I'm always glad to, and will often keep it, even if I already got good stuff to wear, just because it's great.
But firestorm in armory ? I sometimes don't even bother to grab it...
See the difference : in both cases, I won't use the mod, but in the first, I feel like the RNG gave me something great, while in the second, I feel fooled, since I was expecting the usual reward... and got this instead.

[skarczew]

QFT.

And I disagree.

Atm we have balance of "useful Nano mod vs 'useful' Firestorm mod".
Balance of "almost always made tactical shoes vs almost never made grappling shoes".
And so ...

I am not saying that we should make everything equal, like in some wicked kind of socialism.
I am saying that we should make the game more interesting, by introducing more choices, options, variety - call it whatever you want.
I prefer to have 10 different options for playing the game rather than having "super optimal option" and 9 trash ones.

Too much balance is good for RPG, not for RL. (...) And there must be no methods which ALWAYS lead to victory.

And this is silly and contradicting. Bad balance = there is ALWAYS the best method, which leads to victory FAR more often than the other ones.

[thelaptop]

Is it me or am I starting to think that Assemblies are the bane of all that is RL?  I mean, giving control to the player to figure out what thing to make?  Maybe we can re-introduce the colour mechanic of potions here -- limit the number of assemblies, but make their construction based on random mods per run.  The reward of course is that the built assembly is highly OP, but no one will complain because it requires luck, right?

That way, you don't need to worry about the boredom of assembling tactical boots every time.

[MaiZure]

Is it me or am I starting to think that Assemblies are the bane of all that is RL?  I mean, giving control to the player to figure out what thing to make?  Maybe we can re-introduce the colour mechanic of potions here -- limit the number of assemblies, but make their construction based on random mods per run.  The reward of course is that the built assembly is highly OP, but no one will complain because it requires luck, right?

That way, you don't need to worry about the boredom of assembling tactical boots every time.

Agree - assemblies allow players to micromanage outcomes to suit the situation: One size fits all. Sounds very intriguing in theory - in practice it's boring as hell :(

EDIT: Now if the mods were somehow used like a tickets to a lottery type system...that could make RNG reign supreme! :P

[skarczew]

That way, you don't need to worry about the boredom of assembling tactical boots every time.

So, you do want to change the variety of one optimal assembly into the variety of one possible assembly? What an interesting idea you got there.

[singalen]

Maybe the right answer will be to nerf the tactical boots.
Say, to remove the speed bonus and only leave dodge and (spoiler).
Three great bonuses feels like too much for a basic assembly.

edit: other idea: Leave assemblies' mod requirements as is, but make bonus SIZE randomly variable.
Like, dungeon can generate +3 sword or +5 sword - you can assemble +5% speed tactical boots, or +15% tactical boots (and +0% or even -5% dodge).

[skarczew]

Maybe the right answer will be to nerf the tactical boots.

It is not only about nerfing one thing. It is also about making other stuff more useful :) .

[MaiZure]

I would also argue that it's not about the use(ful)(less) quality of the options but the lack of use of Agility mods in general.
"Hey I found an A-mod I'll just dump in to tact boots/armor because I don't have an accuracy problem"

Buff everything else or nerf tact boots and you know what I'll do? I'll still make tact boots

Anyway the whole mod system is a case-study in systems dynamics and decision theory - it's difficult to balance it without starting over completely

[Uitë]

I feel these two episodes of Extra Credits are very relevant to this discussion. It may well be worth your time to watch them. They're only 6-7 minutes long, but contain a wealth of information.

Depth vs. Complexity

Perfect Imbalance

[skarczew]

I would also argue that it's not about the use(ful)(less) quality of the options but the lack of use of Agility mods in general.
"Hey I found an A-mod I'll just dump in to tact boots/armor because I don't have an accuracy problem"

Buff everything else or nerf tact boots and you know what I'll do? I'll still make tact boots

Anyway the whole mod system is a case-study in systems dynamics and decision theory - it's difficult to balance it without starting over completely

Maybe speed is too overwhelmingly important in this game, just to simply ignore it?

And A-mods are quite useful for Ammochain, for example.

[Nick]

Tactical Boots are not the problem. Lava/Acid protection is the problem. You don't need it often enough to make other parameters of boots as important as the speed/dodge bonus is. You encounter impassable areas you have to walk on very rarely, and when you do, they cause too much damage to use boots anyway -- you have to use an envirosuit pack or a homing phase device.

Don't concentrate your attention on symptoms and look deeper: it's never lupus.

[skarczew]

Tactical Boots are not the problem. Lava/Acid protection is the problem. You don't need it often enough to make other parameters of boots as important as the speed/dodge bonus is. You encounter impassable areas you have to walk on very rarely, and when you do, they cause too much damage to use boots anyway -- you have to use an envirosuit pack or a homing phase device.

Don't concentrate your attention on symptoms and look deeper: it's never lupus.

Well, the most problems I had with lava were due to level-flooding levers. Aside from that, there were not many cases in which I died to lava. Most of my deaths were due to Mancubi blasts I bet...

[AlterAsc]

Pretty simple solution would be adding part of boots protections to your torso protection. And nullyfying all protections for anti-grav assembly.
Suggested values are somewhat like +(10+2*protection) to acid for protective boots, same for fire for plasteel and twice that for acid for plasteel.

[Nick]

I thought about splitting all damage to areas. A=5d2, body_damage=damage*A/10, feet_damage=damage*(10-A)/10. Too much importance of feet resistance will probably make tactical and nerfed antigrav boots useless.
Wait, what? Agravboots require NANO!!! Nerfing it means nobody will waste nano on it ever. Even through their excellent parameters, I never make them. Never got surplus nano packs, lol.

[AlterAsc]

Moving 2 (or 2.5 with additional A) times faster is never useless. Even if protection and resistances would be zero. To be honest, would it be my choice i would remove this assembly for it's too game-changing (read it as game-breaking).