- April 18, 2024, 09:57
- Welcome, Guest
Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
1
Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« on: April 06, 2024, 06:47 »
Been a while, but I thought up of some more changes:
*Change Gunrunner's prerequisite of Juggler to Finesse 2
Gunrunner being allowed Whizkid in the betas has proven to be a big help and it can now be decent with a very high potential ceiling, though it still has the major flaw of requiring so many ancillary traits before it can really get going; for Gunrunner's shooting while running effect to be actually useful, you practically need to get Shottyman, requiring three more levels beyond the six you already need to get Gunrunner. But you also really want Whizkid, but because of the prerequisites and direly needing Shottyman, you can't get WK1 until level 11 at earliest and WK2 not until level 12! By making Fin2 a prerequisite instead of Juggler, it would allow Gunrunner to spec into WK a level earlier, giving it a slight buff to make that heavy investment it requires a bit less painful. I also think firing faster instead of juggling your weapons is a more thematically fitting prerequisite for Gunrunner too.
*Give Fireangel some sort of additional offensive perk, one possible idea being whenever they use a weapon that shoots rockets, give them a +2 dice bonus to such weapons.
The big weakness of Fireangel that holds it back is its terrible offense without it investing in sidearming melee, and while the explosion immunity from indirect hits is a nice defensive bonus, it's not so strong as to be worth having no offensive boon at all. A simple and thematically fitting idea is to simply have them hit harder with rocket launchers, which wouldn't be that significant of a buff but would be something that could help and would farther establish Fireangel as the "rocket launcher build". This would also help the ammo efficiency problem that holds using rocket launchers back as weapons (actually trying to make heavy offensive use of rocket launchers with Fireangel will run into ammo problems without making a Nanomachic Rocket Launcher), and even farther no-damage rocket jumps from these stronger rockets would be a nice bonus too. The bug I noted in the beta thread of direct hit explosions doing less or no damage would need to be fixed though, or else this change could backfire. You could instead give it some offensive bonus to shotguns if you want to emphasize it being a shotgun mastery and make it an actually viable pick for Angel Of Shotgunnery, but I don't know what you could do for it (Shottyhead already has the faster shotguns down and Army Of The Dead has the harder-hitting shotguns down).
*Change Gun Kata to have an instant pistol attack after a successful dodge instead of it being 90% faster, and give it the defensive perk to apply Dodgemaster to all attacks between moves.
I don't ever really recall seeing Gun Kata brought up often among the bad masteries, but I always been very underwhelmed by it, and after farther playing around with it, I'm firmly of the stance now that it's a crappy mastery. One big problem similar to Gunrunner is that it requires so many ancillary traits; it technically only requires SoG2, but in all practicality you need SoG3 or else you're just going to be too slow and too weak when late Phobos and Deimos comes, so it may as well as be a mastery that requires 8 levels. However, unless you're lucky enough to find one of the Unique pistols early, you also really need Whizkid to buff your weakass pistols, which requires two levels of Finesse that you don't really care much for as a Pistol build and then those two levels of Whizkid, at which point that's already 12 levels. But there's still SoG 4 and SoG5 after that! And you would also really like a level of Eagle Eye or two because pistols miss a lot at far range (especially if the proposed Magnum gets added)! And if you want Intuition, you wouldn't even be able to fit all that in on any difficulty below Nightmare outside of A100! You get an early game that is slightly less hard than the other Pistol masteries, but compared to other builds, you're just going to always be behind them at every stage of the game, while Sharpshooter at least offers a very strong midgame and still strong lategame.
But for the actual bonuses Gun Kata grants? Not very good either. The "near instant" attack dodging bonus may as well be worthless; one, you often won't be able to utilize this bonus when against hordes, rapid-firing enemies, and the VMR, and two, pistols will eventually come close to or hit the minimum firing speed, at which point this bonus is completely worthless. The other perk is you automatically reload your pistols when you kill an enemy, which can be very handy when fighting hordes, but still has problems that makes it not all that great compared to what other masteries offer; aside from often ending up in situations where you can't pick off an enemy to get that reload in (I find myself much preferring to have the reliability of one pistol + ammo box instead for this reason), if you get a bulk-modded Combat Pistol, Blaster, and/or Nanomachic Pistols, this bonus ends up pointless. You could very well argue you're better off going masterless for a Scout Pistol build, or using Pistols as Cateye instead!
Now I'm not sure how to buff Gun Kata. Changing the Dodgemaster prerequisite to HR2 + SoG3 would help, though no Dodgemaster wouldn't be thematically fitting. The main idea I have is to try making Gun Kata itself better, and we can focus on making that dodging perk not so worthless. The first change would be to make the attack after a dodge actually instant, like how Blademaster gets instant attacks on kills. This still wouldn't that much of a boon, but would be something so that it doesn't become pointless once you get your pistols' firing speed at or near 0.1 seconds, while you would also get assurance that no enemy will get an attack in immediately after you fire (I recently actually got killed by the Shambler in Hell's Armory with Gun Kata during an AoMr run because I went for a shot after a dodge thinking I would be safe, yet the timing ended up with the Shambler still getting its turn right after I shot), and it would let Gun Kata uniquely get a little more mileage out of action-based powerups, as instant actions don't count towards the action counter (and pistols as is benefit from powerups far less than other weapons because of how many more cumulative actions they use to kill things). The second change would be to give Gun Kata a unique boon of having its Dodgemaster being able to apply to all enemy attacks between moves, instead of just the first attack, as aside from getting a unique defensive boon, Gun Kata would now actually be able to more reliably try utilizing the dodging instant attack perk in scenarios beyond one-on-one encounters with single-projectile shooting enemies. I don't think this idea would be remotely broken either; you still need to be able to move in a way to execute a dodge against all incoming attacks from large hordes, you still have to be mindful of walls and obstacles to avoid getting hit by explosions, and it would still be worthless against the VMR. With these changes I think Gun Kata would still only be better than current Bullet Dance and Entrenchment, but it would be something to try making Gun Kata not so underwhelming.
*Give Bullet Dance the additional perk of being able to reload pistols faster.
Bullet Dance no longer having Eagle Eye blocked and the new Marine inherent resistances in the 0.9.9.8 beta has been a much appreciated buff for Bullet Dance, but the mastery is still really bad and I don't think it's viable at all in Angel Of Marksmanship, as much of the problems with it still remain; has the same "requires way too much investment" problem described prior with Gun Kata, still has to pick up a completely dead level in Triggerhappy that exacerbates its problems in late Phobos and early Deimos, and most crippling, that rapid-firing drains the small clips of pistols so fast, while Bullet Dance can do nothing to mitigate that problem without being lucky enough to build Nanomachic Pistols or finding a Combat Pistol and giving it multiple Bulk mods. The buffed Reloader can really help with this, but fitting in Reloader with all the other ancillary traits you desperately need is too much, while the other two Pistol masteries that don't deplete pistols as fast have something to mitigate reloading issues without needing to invest in Reloader (Gun Kata already been explained, and Sharpshooter can easily utilize ammo boxes). As such, Bullet Dance should get an additional perk to reload pistols at half the time or even faster. If reloading wasn't such a major problem for Bullet Dance, it could be halfway functional without the desperate need for Nanomachic Pistols and bulk-modded Combat Pistols.
*To buff Entrenchment, have it give +20% all resistances just from equipping a chain fire weapon in the primary slot, and give +50% all resistances when chain firing. Additionally, give it a second perk to reduce ammo consumption when chain firing.
We all know the fundamental problems with Entrenchment and some ideas have been floated, but nothing definitive has been formally proposed. Applying both my idea of +20% resistances just when equipping a chain firing weapon and Icy's idea of +50% resistances when chain firing would be a start. Another idea I thought of however, after seeing how Entrenchment works in Jupiter Hell, is to also reduce ammo consumption when chain firing (such as by having all subsequent chain firing bursts take 2/3rd of the ammo while still having the increased shots). A big problem with actually trying to utilize extensive chain firing is that unless you got a Nanomachic weapon or a Minigun, your clip will simply run out of ammo after only a few bursts, at which point you're left very vulnerable as you have to reload and then build up your chain firing all over again. Then extensive chain firing is also very wasteful with ammo too, as many of those extra shots will be overkill, and several shots get wasted when you pan from enemy to enemy, so you'll easily find yourself running out of ammo if you actually try to take advantage of Entrenchment without one of the aforementioned rare weapons. Reduced ammo consumption would help a lot here, letting you utilize Entrenchment's chain firing bonus longer before needing to reload, and making you waste a lot less ammo when doing so. Alternatively, if that cribs too much on Ammochain, Entrenchment could instead instantly reload when your clip runs out of ammo, if it can be programmed in a way to not disrupt your chain firing (though that wouldn't help the ammo wasting problem).
Or Entrenchment could just be thrown out completely for something new; even if it was buffed to be usable, the idea of it is still arguably the least exciting mastery in the game.
*Make Cacodemons and Nightmare Cacodemons attack more frequently.
I always found it weird how Cacodemons and Hell Knights are offensively equivalent, other than the Hell Knight having a slightly higher accuracy bonus. One idea to help differentiate them more is to have the Cacodemon attack substantially more often, perhaps increasing its attack chance to as high as 60%. Not only would this give Cacodemons a bit more distinct offensive behavior as a more aggressive enemy, it would also be more inline with how they actually function in Doom, where Cacodemons are more aggressive than the Hell Nobles. It would also make Cacodemons over damaging fluids even more of a hassle, when they'll be spending more time shooting at you instead of moving in to make them easier to hit. If this change is implemented, it should naturally be given to Nightmare Cacodemons as well (perhaps increasing their attack frequency all the way to 75%, tying it with the formers and Cyberdemon for most aggressive enemy), especially as Nightmare Cacodemons lost a lot of their uniqueness with all the other nightmare enemies being given fluid immunity. Nightmare Cacodemons could perhaps be made to hit a bit harder too to help better define their role as the single strong projectile enemy of the nightmare ensemble (either increasing their projectile damage to 2d8 or 3d5), as is they hit only slightly harder than regular Cacodemons, Hell Knights, and Nightmare Imps (with their projectile doing only 1 more damage on average and up to 2 more damage max).
*Add Nightmare Demons to Unholy Cathedral on UV and Nightmare difficulties.
Unholy Cathedral is gonna be really easy for melee builds no matter what unless you make it absurd, but it's also really easy for non-melee builds once you learn how to time hits between the Angel Of Death's moves with a fast enough build. So perhaps add a bit more to it by adding the strongest regular melee enemy in the game, that you also won't be able to cheese by luring them into the lava thanks to their newly added fluid immunity (and it's also weird that not even Nightmare has them, when it adds nightmare enemies to many other levels). Now there could be concern that this makes the Cathedral too difficult for builds with no Brute investment, but if you can move and attack fast enough to outspeed the AoD, then you can outspeed Nightmare Demons, so that trick will still work, you just have to be more mindful with your movements with handling a horde of them and avoid getting yourself cornered. Additionally, with Cathedral and Vaults having been swapped, the buffed Ironman giving you inherent melee resistance, and the Ballistic Armor assembly being buffed, you have a much better chance of getting the defenses to reduce all melee hits down to 1 damage before the Cathedral than you did before. Plus, having a horde of Nightmare Demons will dissuade anyone from wasting their time with trying to cheese the AOD on UV and Nightmare with a throwing knife :p
*Allow Firestorm and Sniper mods to be used on melee weapons, with the former changing the weapon's damage type to fire, and the latter giving the weapon autohit. Additionally buff Agility mods to give +2 accuracy to melee weapons.
Currently, Firestorm and Sniper mods can not be used on melee weapons, making getting these rare mods as a melee build particularly frustrating. The two proposed armor assemblies utilizing these mods would help partially alleviate this problem, but you could also make these mods usable on melee weapons. For a Firestorm mod, you can have using it on a melee weapon turn its damage type to fire, which would make it less effective against a few enemies (most notably Revenants and Lost Souls), but in turn would make the weapon much more effective at gibbing, that could make it a particularly attractive option on Nightmare difficulty or in Angel Of Darkness (or otherwise just for dealing with Archviles). Not to mention that this could help give the Double Chainsaw some sort of niche that it currently lacks, as a fire Double Chainsaw would be the most effective melee weapon for gibbing if you can't get Azrael's Scythe (which is especially hard to get on Nightmare difficulty/Angel Of Darkness, where you need the gibbing ability most). For a Sniper mod, simply have it give a melee weapon the autohit property; a melee weapon getting autohit from a single Sniper mod doesn't have the overpowered implications that ranged weapons getting it would, while someone paranoid about the always 2% chance to miss even with maxed out accuracy could appreciate the option to guarantee their hits, and otherwise any build that wants to utilize a melee weapon without investing several levels into Brute nor Eagle Eye have an option to make the weapon fully usable at the expense of making the weapon stronger or faster (especially with the Double Chainsaw and Ripper, which require 3 and 4 cumulative levels of Brute/Eagle Eye respectively just to have an over 50% hitrate). On the topic of accuracy, Agility mods should be buffed to give +2 accuracy to melee weapons; since melee weapons can only have 1 mod of each type and three mods total, a measly +1 accuracy from the lone Agility mod you can apply is pretty worthless, as it will be a complete waste if you are investing in Brute/Eagle Eye and still won't make a melee weapon very usable if you aren't investing in Brute/Eagle Eye (as it only bumps the Chainsaw's hitrate from 50% to 62%), nevermind the opportunity cost when Agility mods are much more coveted on armor, boots, and assemblies. At +2, throwing an Agility mod on a Chainsaw instead of just making it hit faster or harder becomes a more attractive proposition for builds with no Brute/Eagle Eye, when the jump from a 50% hitrate to a 74% hitrate is significant (or if you got one level in Brute/Eagle Eye and don't want to invest farther, going from a 74% hitrate to a 91% hitrate is still a substantial improvement that you could find expending an Agility mod for to be worth it).
*Change Gunrunner's prerequisite of Juggler to Finesse 2
Gunrunner being allowed Whizkid in the betas has proven to be a big help and it can now be decent with a very high potential ceiling, though it still has the major flaw of requiring so many ancillary traits before it can really get going; for Gunrunner's shooting while running effect to be actually useful, you practically need to get Shottyman, requiring three more levels beyond the six you already need to get Gunrunner. But you also really want Whizkid, but because of the prerequisites and direly needing Shottyman, you can't get WK1 until level 11 at earliest and WK2 not until level 12! By making Fin2 a prerequisite instead of Juggler, it would allow Gunrunner to spec into WK a level earlier, giving it a slight buff to make that heavy investment it requires a bit less painful. I also think firing faster instead of juggling your weapons is a more thematically fitting prerequisite for Gunrunner too.
*Give Fireangel some sort of additional offensive perk, one possible idea being whenever they use a weapon that shoots rockets, give them a +2 dice bonus to such weapons.
The big weakness of Fireangel that holds it back is its terrible offense without it investing in sidearming melee, and while the explosion immunity from indirect hits is a nice defensive bonus, it's not so strong as to be worth having no offensive boon at all. A simple and thematically fitting idea is to simply have them hit harder with rocket launchers, which wouldn't be that significant of a buff but would be something that could help and would farther establish Fireangel as the "rocket launcher build". This would also help the ammo efficiency problem that holds using rocket launchers back as weapons (actually trying to make heavy offensive use of rocket launchers with Fireangel will run into ammo problems without making a Nanomachic Rocket Launcher), and even farther no-damage rocket jumps from these stronger rockets would be a nice bonus too. The bug I noted in the beta thread of direct hit explosions doing less or no damage would need to be fixed though, or else this change could backfire. You could instead give it some offensive bonus to shotguns if you want to emphasize it being a shotgun mastery and make it an actually viable pick for Angel Of Shotgunnery, but I don't know what you could do for it (Shottyhead already has the faster shotguns down and Army Of The Dead has the harder-hitting shotguns down).
*Change Gun Kata to have an instant pistol attack after a successful dodge instead of it being 90% faster, and give it the defensive perk to apply Dodgemaster to all attacks between moves.
I don't ever really recall seeing Gun Kata brought up often among the bad masteries, but I always been very underwhelmed by it, and after farther playing around with it, I'm firmly of the stance now that it's a crappy mastery. One big problem similar to Gunrunner is that it requires so many ancillary traits; it technically only requires SoG2, but in all practicality you need SoG3 or else you're just going to be too slow and too weak when late Phobos and Deimos comes, so it may as well as be a mastery that requires 8 levels. However, unless you're lucky enough to find one of the Unique pistols early, you also really need Whizkid to buff your weakass pistols, which requires two levels of Finesse that you don't really care much for as a Pistol build and then those two levels of Whizkid, at which point that's already 12 levels. But there's still SoG 4 and SoG5 after that! And you would also really like a level of Eagle Eye or two because pistols miss a lot at far range (especially if the proposed Magnum gets added)! And if you want Intuition, you wouldn't even be able to fit all that in on any difficulty below Nightmare outside of A100! You get an early game that is slightly less hard than the other Pistol masteries, but compared to other builds, you're just going to always be behind them at every stage of the game, while Sharpshooter at least offers a very strong midgame and still strong lategame.
But for the actual bonuses Gun Kata grants? Not very good either. The "near instant" attack dodging bonus may as well be worthless; one, you often won't be able to utilize this bonus when against hordes, rapid-firing enemies, and the VMR, and two, pistols will eventually come close to or hit the minimum firing speed, at which point this bonus is completely worthless. The other perk is you automatically reload your pistols when you kill an enemy, which can be very handy when fighting hordes, but still has problems that makes it not all that great compared to what other masteries offer; aside from often ending up in situations where you can't pick off an enemy to get that reload in (I find myself much preferring to have the reliability of one pistol + ammo box instead for this reason), if you get a bulk-modded Combat Pistol, Blaster, and/or Nanomachic Pistols, this bonus ends up pointless. You could very well argue you're better off going masterless for a Scout Pistol build, or using Pistols as Cateye instead!
Now I'm not sure how to buff Gun Kata. Changing the Dodgemaster prerequisite to HR2 + SoG3 would help, though no Dodgemaster wouldn't be thematically fitting. The main idea I have is to try making Gun Kata itself better, and we can focus on making that dodging perk not so worthless. The first change would be to make the attack after a dodge actually instant, like how Blademaster gets instant attacks on kills. This still wouldn't that much of a boon, but would be something so that it doesn't become pointless once you get your pistols' firing speed at or near 0.1 seconds, while you would also get assurance that no enemy will get an attack in immediately after you fire (I recently actually got killed by the Shambler in Hell's Armory with Gun Kata during an AoMr run because I went for a shot after a dodge thinking I would be safe, yet the timing ended up with the Shambler still getting its turn right after I shot), and it would let Gun Kata uniquely get a little more mileage out of action-based powerups, as instant actions don't count towards the action counter (and pistols as is benefit from powerups far less than other weapons because of how many more cumulative actions they use to kill things). The second change would be to give Gun Kata a unique boon of having its Dodgemaster being able to apply to all enemy attacks between moves, instead of just the first attack, as aside from getting a unique defensive boon, Gun Kata would now actually be able to more reliably try utilizing the dodging instant attack perk in scenarios beyond one-on-one encounters with single-projectile shooting enemies. I don't think this idea would be remotely broken either; you still need to be able to move in a way to execute a dodge against all incoming attacks from large hordes, you still have to be mindful of walls and obstacles to avoid getting hit by explosions, and it would still be worthless against the VMR. With these changes I think Gun Kata would still only be better than current Bullet Dance and Entrenchment, but it would be something to try making Gun Kata not so underwhelming.
*Give Bullet Dance the additional perk of being able to reload pistols faster.
Bullet Dance no longer having Eagle Eye blocked and the new Marine inherent resistances in the 0.9.9.8 beta has been a much appreciated buff for Bullet Dance, but the mastery is still really bad and I don't think it's viable at all in Angel Of Marksmanship, as much of the problems with it still remain; has the same "requires way too much investment" problem described prior with Gun Kata, still has to pick up a completely dead level in Triggerhappy that exacerbates its problems in late Phobos and early Deimos, and most crippling, that rapid-firing drains the small clips of pistols so fast, while Bullet Dance can do nothing to mitigate that problem without being lucky enough to build Nanomachic Pistols or finding a Combat Pistol and giving it multiple Bulk mods. The buffed Reloader can really help with this, but fitting in Reloader with all the other ancillary traits you desperately need is too much, while the other two Pistol masteries that don't deplete pistols as fast have something to mitigate reloading issues without needing to invest in Reloader (Gun Kata already been explained, and Sharpshooter can easily utilize ammo boxes). As such, Bullet Dance should get an additional perk to reload pistols at half the time or even faster. If reloading wasn't such a major problem for Bullet Dance, it could be halfway functional without the desperate need for Nanomachic Pistols and bulk-modded Combat Pistols.
*To buff Entrenchment, have it give +20% all resistances just from equipping a chain fire weapon in the primary slot, and give +50% all resistances when chain firing. Additionally, give it a second perk to reduce ammo consumption when chain firing.
We all know the fundamental problems with Entrenchment and some ideas have been floated, but nothing definitive has been formally proposed. Applying both my idea of +20% resistances just when equipping a chain firing weapon and Icy's idea of +50% resistances when chain firing would be a start. Another idea I thought of however, after seeing how Entrenchment works in Jupiter Hell, is to also reduce ammo consumption when chain firing (such as by having all subsequent chain firing bursts take 2/3rd of the ammo while still having the increased shots). A big problem with actually trying to utilize extensive chain firing is that unless you got a Nanomachic weapon or a Minigun, your clip will simply run out of ammo after only a few bursts, at which point you're left very vulnerable as you have to reload and then build up your chain firing all over again. Then extensive chain firing is also very wasteful with ammo too, as many of those extra shots will be overkill, and several shots get wasted when you pan from enemy to enemy, so you'll easily find yourself running out of ammo if you actually try to take advantage of Entrenchment without one of the aforementioned rare weapons. Reduced ammo consumption would help a lot here, letting you utilize Entrenchment's chain firing bonus longer before needing to reload, and making you waste a lot less ammo when doing so. Alternatively, if that cribs too much on Ammochain, Entrenchment could instead instantly reload when your clip runs out of ammo, if it can be programmed in a way to not disrupt your chain firing (though that wouldn't help the ammo wasting problem).
Or Entrenchment could just be thrown out completely for something new; even if it was buffed to be usable, the idea of it is still arguably the least exciting mastery in the game.
*Make Cacodemons and Nightmare Cacodemons attack more frequently.
I always found it weird how Cacodemons and Hell Knights are offensively equivalent, other than the Hell Knight having a slightly higher accuracy bonus. One idea to help differentiate them more is to have the Cacodemon attack substantially more often, perhaps increasing its attack chance to as high as 60%. Not only would this give Cacodemons a bit more distinct offensive behavior as a more aggressive enemy, it would also be more inline with how they actually function in Doom, where Cacodemons are more aggressive than the Hell Nobles. It would also make Cacodemons over damaging fluids even more of a hassle, when they'll be spending more time shooting at you instead of moving in to make them easier to hit. If this change is implemented, it should naturally be given to Nightmare Cacodemons as well (perhaps increasing their attack frequency all the way to 75%, tying it with the formers and Cyberdemon for most aggressive enemy), especially as Nightmare Cacodemons lost a lot of their uniqueness with all the other nightmare enemies being given fluid immunity. Nightmare Cacodemons could perhaps be made to hit a bit harder too to help better define their role as the single strong projectile enemy of the nightmare ensemble (either increasing their projectile damage to 2d8 or 3d5), as is they hit only slightly harder than regular Cacodemons, Hell Knights, and Nightmare Imps (with their projectile doing only 1 more damage on average and up to 2 more damage max).
*Add Nightmare Demons to Unholy Cathedral on UV and Nightmare difficulties.
Unholy Cathedral is gonna be really easy for melee builds no matter what unless you make it absurd, but it's also really easy for non-melee builds once you learn how to time hits between the Angel Of Death's moves with a fast enough build. So perhaps add a bit more to it by adding the strongest regular melee enemy in the game, that you also won't be able to cheese by luring them into the lava thanks to their newly added fluid immunity (and it's also weird that not even Nightmare has them, when it adds nightmare enemies to many other levels). Now there could be concern that this makes the Cathedral too difficult for builds with no Brute investment, but if you can move and attack fast enough to outspeed the AoD, then you can outspeed Nightmare Demons, so that trick will still work, you just have to be more mindful with your movements with handling a horde of them and avoid getting yourself cornered. Additionally, with Cathedral and Vaults having been swapped, the buffed Ironman giving you inherent melee resistance, and the Ballistic Armor assembly being buffed, you have a much better chance of getting the defenses to reduce all melee hits down to 1 damage before the Cathedral than you did before. Plus, having a horde of Nightmare Demons will dissuade anyone from wasting their time with trying to cheese the AOD on UV and Nightmare with a throwing knife :p
*Allow Firestorm and Sniper mods to be used on melee weapons, with the former changing the weapon's damage type to fire, and the latter giving the weapon autohit. Additionally buff Agility mods to give +2 accuracy to melee weapons.
Currently, Firestorm and Sniper mods can not be used on melee weapons, making getting these rare mods as a melee build particularly frustrating. The two proposed armor assemblies utilizing these mods would help partially alleviate this problem, but you could also make these mods usable on melee weapons. For a Firestorm mod, you can have using it on a melee weapon turn its damage type to fire, which would make it less effective against a few enemies (most notably Revenants and Lost Souls), but in turn would make the weapon much more effective at gibbing, that could make it a particularly attractive option on Nightmare difficulty or in Angel Of Darkness (or otherwise just for dealing with Archviles). Not to mention that this could help give the Double Chainsaw some sort of niche that it currently lacks, as a fire Double Chainsaw would be the most effective melee weapon for gibbing if you can't get Azrael's Scythe (which is especially hard to get on Nightmare difficulty/Angel Of Darkness, where you need the gibbing ability most). For a Sniper mod, simply have it give a melee weapon the autohit property; a melee weapon getting autohit from a single Sniper mod doesn't have the overpowered implications that ranged weapons getting it would, while someone paranoid about the always 2% chance to miss even with maxed out accuracy could appreciate the option to guarantee their hits, and otherwise any build that wants to utilize a melee weapon without investing several levels into Brute nor Eagle Eye have an option to make the weapon fully usable at the expense of making the weapon stronger or faster (especially with the Double Chainsaw and Ripper, which require 3 and 4 cumulative levels of Brute/Eagle Eye respectively just to have an over 50% hitrate). On the topic of accuracy, Agility mods should be buffed to give +2 accuracy to melee weapons; since melee weapons can only have 1 mod of each type and three mods total, a measly +1 accuracy from the lone Agility mod you can apply is pretty worthless, as it will be a complete waste if you are investing in Brute/Eagle Eye and still won't make a melee weapon very usable if you aren't investing in Brute/Eagle Eye (as it only bumps the Chainsaw's hitrate from 50% to 62%), nevermind the opportunity cost when Agility mods are much more coveted on armor, boots, and assemblies. At +2, throwing an Agility mod on a Chainsaw instead of just making it hit faster or harder becomes a more attractive proposition for builds with no Brute/Eagle Eye, when the jump from a 50% hitrate to a 74% hitrate is significant (or if you got one level in Brute/Eagle Eye and don't want to invest farther, going from a 74% hitrate to a 91% hitrate is still a substantial improvement that you could find expending an Agility mod for to be worth it).
2
Requests For Features / Re: DoomRL 0.9.9.8 BETA 3
« on: April 06, 2024, 03:27 »
To ensure they don't get buried in the Discord channel, I'm gonna compile a list of bugs here:
BUG #1
The "repeat level feeling" command still does not work for me. Is it a file pathway issue or from me modifying my keybindings? (though I'll note I did not modify the default keybinding for this command):
The error code is:
BUG #2
The error messages from enemies killing themselves seems to have been mostly fixed, but I still occasionally get them when an enemy kills itself with a barrel (from what I recall it has been Shotgunners):
The error code is:
Also got this error code that I believe was from another one of these instances:
BUG #3
When trying to assemble the new Mother-In-Law, the assembly didn't work and I got this error:
You can also apply seven mods to this failed Mother-In-Law:
The error code is:
BUG #4
Similarly, the Environmental Boots assembly, which also had its assembly requirements changed, results in an error too:
You can also repeatedly try to make the assembly, which results in this funny naming error. Note too that the movespeed penalty of Environmental Boots was still applied to the failed assembly, but the resistances weren't:
Here is the error code:
BUG #5
The Medical Powerarmor still only recovers health to 25%, despite the normal Medical Armor having been buffed to heal to 50%. Don't know if this is a bug or if you forgot to apply that buff to the Medical Powerarmor, but noting it here to be fixed for either case.
BUG #6
This is a bug I think still remains from older versions, where it appears when either the player or an enemy is hit directly by an explosive attack, damage calculation occurs after knockback. This results in explosive attacks doing less damage than they should on direct hits as the entity is knocked into the weaker edges of the explosion before damage calculation, or they can even take no damage at all if knocked far enough out of the explosion radius. An easy way to observe this to have Phaseshift Armor on and when an Archvile is about to attack you, stay still so you get hit directly by the center of the blast, where you then take no damage as it knocks you out of the explosion radius, while conversely, if you are moving around and so get hit by the sides of the Archvile zap, damage still occurs as normal since this error seems to apply to direct hits only. Another way to observe this is to use a powerful explosive weapon with a small explosion radius like the Tactical Rocket Launcher or Napalm Launcher, where often when they hit an enemy directly, the enemy will be sent flying far back but take no damage, especially if you power-modded them, got substantial SoB investment, or are playing in Angel Of Max Carnage. Unfortunately got no screenshots on hand to demonstrate this at the moment, but I could get some the next time I find a Phaseshift Armor if needed.
BUG #7?
Killing the Apostle in A100 doesn't immediately end the game. Don't know if this is a bug or a deliberate change, but will note it in case this isn't intended.
BUG #1
The "repeat level feeling" command still does not work for me. Is it a file pathway issue or from me modifying my keybindings? (though I'll note I did not modify the default keybinding for this command):
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The error code is:
Code: [Select]
Timestamp : 2/6/2024 18:11:20
Error level : CRITICAL
Message : Player action exception!
Error message : ...0\Downloads\doomrl-win-0998-beta3-lq\keybindings.lua:74: attempt to call field 'repeat_feel' (a nil value)BUG #2
The error messages from enemies killing themselves seems to have been mostly fixed, but I still occasionally get them when an enemy kills itself with a barrel (from what I recall it has been Shotgunners):
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The error code is:
Code: [Select]
Timestamp : 2/8/2024 13:36:55
Error level : ERROR
Message : Lua hook OnAttacked caught ELuaStateException!
Call path : beings[soldier].OnAttacked
Call params : (<object>,<object>)
Error message : Lua error : attempt to call a table valueAlso got this error code that I believe was from another one of these instances:
Code: [Select]
Timestamp : 2/9/2024 15:31:36
Error level : ERROR
Message : Lua hook OnAttacked caught EAccessViolation!
Call path : beings[soldier].OnAttacked
Call params : (<object>,<object>)
Error message : Access violationBUG #3
When trying to assemble the new Mother-In-Law, the assembly didn't work and I got this error:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
You can also apply seven mods to this failed Mother-In-Law:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The error code is:
Code: [Select]
Timestamp : 2/25/2024 20:31:01
Error level : ERROR
Message : Lua hook OnUseCheck caught EPropertyError!
Call path : items[mod_power].OnUseCheck
Call params : (<object>)
Error message : Cannot write to property "Desc".BUG #4
Similarly, the Environmental Boots assembly, which also had its assembly requirements changed, results in an error too:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
You can also repeatedly try to make the assembly, which results in this funny naming error. Note too that the movespeed penalty of Environmental Boots was still applied to the failed assembly, but the resistances weren't:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Here is the error code:
Code: [Select]
Timestamp : 3/30/2024 5:41:53
Error level : ERROR
Message : Lua hook OnUseCheck caught ELuaStateException!
Call path : items[mod_bulk].OnUseCheck
Call params : (<object>)
Error message : Lua error : lua\\mod_arrays.lua:514: attempt to index field 'resist' (a nil value)BUG #5
The Medical Powerarmor still only recovers health to 25%, despite the normal Medical Armor having been buffed to heal to 50%. Don't know if this is a bug or if you forgot to apply that buff to the Medical Powerarmor, but noting it here to be fixed for either case.
BUG #6
This is a bug I think still remains from older versions, where it appears when either the player or an enemy is hit directly by an explosive attack, damage calculation occurs after knockback. This results in explosive attacks doing less damage than they should on direct hits as the entity is knocked into the weaker edges of the explosion before damage calculation, or they can even take no damage at all if knocked far enough out of the explosion radius. An easy way to observe this to have Phaseshift Armor on and when an Archvile is about to attack you, stay still so you get hit directly by the center of the blast, where you then take no damage as it knocks you out of the explosion radius, while conversely, if you are moving around and so get hit by the sides of the Archvile zap, damage still occurs as normal since this error seems to apply to direct hits only. Another way to observe this is to use a powerful explosive weapon with a small explosion radius like the Tactical Rocket Launcher or Napalm Launcher, where often when they hit an enemy directly, the enemy will be sent flying far back but take no damage, especially if you power-modded them, got substantial SoB investment, or are playing in Angel Of Max Carnage. Unfortunately got no screenshots on hand to demonstrate this at the moment, but I could get some the next time I find a Phaseshift Armor if needed.
BUG #7?
Killing the Apostle in A100 doesn't immediately end the game. Don't know if this is a bug or a deliberate change, but will note it in case this isn't intended.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
3
Post Mortem / Re: [U|99%|YAFW] Suddenly a successful Conqueror
« on: March 31, 2024, 07:48 »Quote
that stupid Lava Elemental in the Pits was a SERIOUS PITA, he left me with 18%HP and zero medpaks (IIRC I kept one on hand)
You might not be pleased to find out then that the Lava Elemental is getting buffed and The Lava Pits/Mt. Erebus are being made harder in 0.9.9.8 :)
4
Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« on: September 22, 2023, 18:10 »
Related to sounds, I got three more small suggestions:
*Have a sound cue for when an Archvile initiates its attack
A simple suggestion; aside from making the game feel more lively, it can be confusing at times to know if an Archvile raising its arms is because it's initiating its attack or because it's reviving enemies. Having a sound cue would let you definitively know what it's doing, and will also better alert players who aren't fully paying attention to the game messages. The Archvile already has a fire attack sound set by default in the sound.lua file that goes unused (because the actual attack just uses the explosion sound), which uses the sound of the Archvile's flames when charging its attack; simply have its fire sound play when it initiates its attack. Not to mention that this would be more consistent with actual Doom.
*Have a sound cue for enemies reviving
There is similarly no sounds when an enemies revives, which again adds to the confusion to what an Archvile is actually doing, and just feels unpolished in general. So whether an enemy is revived by an Archvile, or because of Nightmare/Angel of Darkness, a sound should accompany it when the player is in close proximity to the reviving enemy. As for what sound to use, Doom has two different sounds for it depending on the method of revival; enemies revived by Archviles use the gibbing sound, while enemies reviving on Nightmare use the teleporting sound (as they are teleported back to their starting spawn point). Since DRL enemies revive on the spot of their corpse no matter the method with no teleportation involved, the gibbing sound would be more appropriate.
*Have a sound cue for spawned enemies
There is similarly no sounds for enemies being spawned, no matter the method. This one is more complicated, as there is no "one sound fits all" here. I think Pain Elementals summoning Lost Souls could simply use the Lost Souls' attacking sound, enemies spawned by traps (whether by levers, special level scripts, or the proposed trap rooms) can use the teleporting sound, enemies spawned by John Carmack could use the Icon of Sin's spawn cube sound (but if adding a new sound file to the default isn't doable for whatever reason, then they could just use the teleporting sound as well), and I don't know what sound to use for the Nightmare Demons spawned by the Berserker set, but I suppose they could just remain silent for the creepy factor (and hearing the teleporting sound or any other sound constantly from infinitely spawning demons would probably get annoying). As for Agony Elementals spawning Pain Elementals, I'm stumped; using the Lost Soul's attack sound doesn't fit, using the Pain Elemental's alert sound would get confusing, and the Pain Elemental has no attacking sound in Doom (as there it relies on the spat Lost Soul to make the sound).
*Have a sound cue for when an Archvile initiates its attack
A simple suggestion; aside from making the game feel more lively, it can be confusing at times to know if an Archvile raising its arms is because it's initiating its attack or because it's reviving enemies. Having a sound cue would let you definitively know what it's doing, and will also better alert players who aren't fully paying attention to the game messages. The Archvile already has a fire attack sound set by default in the sound.lua file that goes unused (because the actual attack just uses the explosion sound), which uses the sound of the Archvile's flames when charging its attack; simply have its fire sound play when it initiates its attack. Not to mention that this would be more consistent with actual Doom.
*Have a sound cue for enemies reviving
There is similarly no sounds when an enemies revives, which again adds to the confusion to what an Archvile is actually doing, and just feels unpolished in general. So whether an enemy is revived by an Archvile, or because of Nightmare/Angel of Darkness, a sound should accompany it when the player is in close proximity to the reviving enemy. As for what sound to use, Doom has two different sounds for it depending on the method of revival; enemies revived by Archviles use the gibbing sound, while enemies reviving on Nightmare use the teleporting sound (as they are teleported back to their starting spawn point). Since DRL enemies revive on the spot of their corpse no matter the method with no teleportation involved, the gibbing sound would be more appropriate.
*Have a sound cue for spawned enemies
There is similarly no sounds for enemies being spawned, no matter the method. This one is more complicated, as there is no "one sound fits all" here. I think Pain Elementals summoning Lost Souls could simply use the Lost Souls' attacking sound, enemies spawned by traps (whether by levers, special level scripts, or the proposed trap rooms) can use the teleporting sound, enemies spawned by John Carmack could use the Icon of Sin's spawn cube sound (but if adding a new sound file to the default isn't doable for whatever reason, then they could just use the teleporting sound as well), and I don't know what sound to use for the Nightmare Demons spawned by the Berserker set, but I suppose they could just remain silent for the creepy factor (and hearing the teleporting sound or any other sound constantly from infinitely spawning demons would probably get annoying). As for Agony Elementals spawning Pain Elementals, I'm stumped; using the Lost Soul's attack sound doesn't fit, using the Pain Elemental's alert sound would get confusing, and the Pain Elemental has no attacking sound in Doom (as there it relies on the spat Lost Soul to make the sound).
5
Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« on: September 14, 2023, 04:59 »
You're probably right about allowing any other build access to Vampyre would be too powerful, even if the weapon was very weak. My suggestion would be perhaps the Blood Sword could be given a nerfed form of Vampyre that doesn't work on enemies that give no EXP (so no being able to farm revived enemies nor spontaneously spawned enemies like Lost Souls from Pain Elementals), but I do not know if that would be easily programmable, and if not, then the idea would have to go.
As for Mother-In-Law, I would agree with changing its assembly to PPFN, unless a couple more assemblies are turned into five mod assemblies so it doesn't stick out (a couple other five mod candidates could be Biggest Fucking Gun becoming BBBFF or BBFFF, and Nano-Shrapnel becoming PPTTN or PPPTN).
_____________
Also for a couple new suggestions:
*Have the character info screen show the amount of remaining enemies on the floor
Currently you can already deduce this by subtracting the total enemies killed count from the total enemies encountered count, so this wouldn't be giving the player any new tactical information, it will only make information already accessible more convenient to immediately see without having to do any math, especially so if you haven't killed every enemy on all prior floors (where you then need to also keep track of how many enemies you failed to kill up to that point, or have to pay attention to how much the total enemies count increases when entering a new floor).
*Fix exotics, uniques, and artifacts not having sounds for all actions, as well as some enemies not having sounds
Currently most exotics/uniques/artifacts lack any sounds for picking them up and switching to them, while most of the melee weapons have no sounds for attacking with them. Players can easily fix this by giving them whatever sounds they desire through editing the sound.lua/soundhq.lua file, but your average player probably lacks the technical knowledge or willingness to do that, and regardless it comes off as unpolished for this to be the default without modding (it certainly was really dissonant for me when I finally picked up the Dragonslayer for the first time and then there was no sounds at all when hitting enemies with it).
I would extend this to mute enemies too (e.g. nightmare enemies, the Arena Master, the Agony Elemental, the Lava Elemental, and the Apostle); it is unclear if their muteness was an intentional design choice to make them "harder" to fight, but regardless of if it's intentional, I would argue it again comes off as the game being unpolished for some enemies to nonsensically be completely mute (the Arena Master even has spoken lines, so why is he mute when you fight him?), while it additionally indirectly gives Intuition a very unneeded buff (by it being necessary to know mute enemies are around without seeing them outright). You can also easily mod in sounds for these mute enemies in the aforementioned sound.lua files to "fix" this, which players such as myself have done just to make the game feel more lively and polished, creating a grey area issue where if doing basic aesthetic modding enabled by the devs is considered "cheating", as it does technically give you a slight gameplay advantage by allowing you to detect these enemies are around without Intuition. Having all enemies make sounds by default would get rid of that ethical greyness around modding these enemies' sounds, and ensures all players are on a more even playing field regardless of if they mod enemy sounds or not.
As for Mother-In-Law, I would agree with changing its assembly to PPFN, unless a couple more assemblies are turned into five mod assemblies so it doesn't stick out (a couple other five mod candidates could be Biggest Fucking Gun becoming BBBFF or BBFFF, and Nano-Shrapnel becoming PPTTN or PPPTN).
_____________
Also for a couple new suggestions:
*Have the character info screen show the amount of remaining enemies on the floor
Currently you can already deduce this by subtracting the total enemies killed count from the total enemies encountered count, so this wouldn't be giving the player any new tactical information, it will only make information already accessible more convenient to immediately see without having to do any math, especially so if you haven't killed every enemy on all prior floors (where you then need to also keep track of how many enemies you failed to kill up to that point, or have to pay attention to how much the total enemies count increases when entering a new floor).
*Fix exotics, uniques, and artifacts not having sounds for all actions, as well as some enemies not having sounds
Currently most exotics/uniques/artifacts lack any sounds for picking them up and switching to them, while most of the melee weapons have no sounds for attacking with them. Players can easily fix this by giving them whatever sounds they desire through editing the sound.lua/soundhq.lua file, but your average player probably lacks the technical knowledge or willingness to do that, and regardless it comes off as unpolished for this to be the default without modding (it certainly was really dissonant for me when I finally picked up the Dragonslayer for the first time and then there was no sounds at all when hitting enemies with it).
I would extend this to mute enemies too (e.g. nightmare enemies, the Arena Master, the Agony Elemental, the Lava Elemental, and the Apostle); it is unclear if their muteness was an intentional design choice to make them "harder" to fight, but regardless of if it's intentional, I would argue it again comes off as the game being unpolished for some enemies to nonsensically be completely mute (the Arena Master even has spoken lines, so why is he mute when you fight him?), while it additionally indirectly gives Intuition a very unneeded buff (by it being necessary to know mute enemies are around without seeing them outright). You can also easily mod in sounds for these mute enemies in the aforementioned sound.lua files to "fix" this, which players such as myself have done just to make the game feel more lively and polished, creating a grey area issue where if doing basic aesthetic modding enabled by the devs is considered "cheating", as it does technically give you a slight gameplay advantage by allowing you to detect these enemies are around without Intuition. Having all enemies make sounds by default would get rid of that ethical greyness around modding these enemies' sounds, and ensures all players are on a more even playing field regardless of if they mod enemy sounds or not.
6
Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« on: September 11, 2023, 21:34 »Quote
Regarding having enemies revealed, it would have to restrict all bonus levels, all boss levels, and all dark levels, but even then I think it would impact too much. Having that level of intel in a game that is strategic and tactical is extremely powerful. On HNTR where you might get a single group of 6-8 enemies, that also lets you see where a good portion of them are as you clear them out through the floor. I don't think having a few stragglers be annoying to find is enough to justify such a fundamental change.
I don't think it's really that major of a fundamental change, floors are basically cleared once you reach the final three enemies on it, no matter how many were there before (and you could always just find a Tracking Map, or Computer Map with a Technician, rendering it moot). But we seem to be at a stalemate on this one, so this is something that others will need to comment on.
Quote
Just as a comment, I think Mother-In-Law would be pretty insane with Inquisitor Set.
It certainly could be, though that is going to be an exceptionally rate combo to obtain, especially if the proposed generation nerfs to the Inquisitor pieces go through.
_______________
A couple more suggestions I thought about:
*Have Power Armor give +20% movement speed to the base armor, instead of having a set 0% movement speed regardless of the armor used
This change would keep Powered Red Armor the same, but will give an additional bonus to making Powered Blue Armor or especially Powered Green Armor instead, as they'll now have a nice speed bonus over the Powered Red Armor, helping to balance them out having weaker protection (well Powered Red Armor probably still wins, but +10% movement speed with 60% plasma resistance from Powered Blue Armor is something you might want to make instead).
*New assembly: Blood Sword - Combat Knife + BPO = a 5d2 weapon that when used to kill an enemy, will have Vampyre's effect, restoring your health by 10% of the slain enemy's max HP
I mentioned in the Discord I was thinking of ways to use an onyx mod in a melee weapon assembly, but was having difficulty coming up with something that wasn't a boring "really strong weapon". But when thinking about how there is a melee weapon that inherently has the effect of Blademaster (the Butcher's Cleaver), I thought perhaps there should be a weapon with the effect of Vampyre too. Initially I was thinking of having it be a new unique, but then thought back to the lack of onyx weapon assemblies, and how this would be pretty fitting on a Combat Knife, while also giving Blademasters and any build side-arming melee a reason to keep a Combat Knife in their inventory after getting a Chainsaw, Cleaver, or artifact weapon. The power could maybe be buffed to 6d2 or 5d3, but the power is intentionally weak (being explicitly weaker than a Chainsword), as Vampyre is a very powerful effect (so strong it's widely considered one of the best masteries despite having some of the worst blocks among masteries), so the weapon itself needs to be weak to not be broken. The idea is this won't replace your primary stronger melee weapon, but when an enemy is near death and you're in melee range, you can whip this out (preferably by Juggler) to finish them off and get yourself HP back. Giving up the chance at an infinite durability armor is a big opportunity cost, but if I'm a non-Vampyre build utilizing melee and I haven't found a particularly good armor to use an onyx mod on, I would seriously consider making this, especially if I ended up finding more than one onyx mod.
7
Requests For Features / Re: DoomRL 0.9.9.8 BETA 1
« on: September 08, 2023, 03:52 »
BUG #7
When playing Angel of Marksmanship on UV, I have encountered a game breaking bug, where upon killing Carmack, the game crashes. However, instead of counting the win and producing a mortem, the game creates a backup save from at the start of Hell Fortress, with me at the same state I was in when I killed Carmack.
Here's a screenshot from right before I kill Carmack:
And here's a screenshot from booting up that save, notice how my health and armor are in the same exact state at which I killed Carmack (but my Combat Pistol is reloaded because I have Gun Kata, which apparently still reloaded after killing Carmack before the crash occurs).
If I kill Carmack again upon booting this save, the game will crash again and create another backup save, leading to an unwinnable game loop. I'll also note that I did not save when first entering Hell Fortress, and that I have gotten a full win before on this beta, so it's not just getting a full win itself that's broken. After killing him a few more times and getting a crash everytime, I just let myself die, where the game crashed and tried creating a backup save yet again. Trying to boot up this save though resulted in this corrupted save notification:
Here's what the actual error message is for this crash:
BUG #8
After the corrupted save and the game deleting it, no mortem was saved, but I noticed some oddities with my player stats afterward.
First, it still awarded me the Marksman badges:
This is however despite the game not counting the win:
Then I have achieved the conditions to rank up, but the game has not upgraded my rank, despite it showing me having all the requisites for the next rank:
Then all the exotics and uniques I collected during the run were counted, but have their collected number inflated. Notice the ones here with a collected number of 9 or more, when I haven't even played that many games yet on this file:
The same bug applies to assemblies too (Nanomanufacture Ammo is counted as having been made 9 times, but this was the first time I assembled it on this file):
My medal counts have a similar inflation bug:
Then my kill counts are all fucked up. It says I killed 45 Carmacks on UV, which is obviously bogus, but then the 10 Mastermind kills are inflated as well, and it also says I haven't killed the Arena Master on UV, even though I did so this run (and I'll note that I did not go through the crash to save loop 45 times before dying, I did so only about like 5 or 6 times):
Well that's everything I can see for now, I'll report if I find any more oddities as a result of this game-ending crash.
When playing Angel of Marksmanship on UV, I have encountered a game breaking bug, where upon killing Carmack, the game crashes. However, instead of counting the win and producing a mortem, the game creates a backup save from at the start of Hell Fortress, with me at the same state I was in when I killed Carmack.
Here's a screenshot from right before I kill Carmack:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
And here's a screenshot from booting up that save, notice how my health and armor are in the same exact state at which I killed Carmack (but my Combat Pistol is reloaded because I have Gun Kata, which apparently still reloaded after killing Carmack before the crash occurs).
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
If I kill Carmack again upon booting this save, the game will crash again and create another backup save, leading to an unwinnable game loop. I'll also note that I did not save when first entering Hell Fortress, and that I have gotten a full win before on this beta, so it's not just getting a full win itself that's broken. After killing him a few more times and getting a crash everytime, I just let myself die, where the game crashed and tried creating a backup save yet again. Trying to boot up this save though resulted in this corrupted save notification:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Here's what the actual error message is for this crash:
Code: [Select]
Timestamp : 9/8/2023 4:47:07
Error level : FATAL EXCEPTION
Message : Fatal exception encountered
An unhandled exception occurred at $000000010006F057 :
ELuaException : Get(items.ufskull.group) failed!
$000000010006F057 GET, line 1408 of ../fpcvalkyrie/src/vluasystem.pas
$00000001000A72F4 WEAPONGROUP, line 814 of src/dfhof.pas
$00000001000A67F9 ADD, line 850 of src/dfhof.pas
$00000001000CE65A WRITEMEMORIAL, line 1114 of src/dfplayer.pas
$000000010002AC28 RUN, line 356 of src/doombase.pas
$0000000100002230 main, line 147 of src/doomrl.pas
$00000001000022C6
$00000001000166E0
$0000000100001B70
$00007FFFD3DD7614
$00007FFFD5A226B1BUG #8
After the corrupted save and the game deleting it, no mortem was saved, but I noticed some oddities with my player stats afterward.
First, it still awarded me the Marksman badges:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
This is however despite the game not counting the win:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Then I have achieved the conditions to rank up, but the game has not upgraded my rank, despite it showing me having all the requisites for the next rank:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Then all the exotics and uniques I collected during the run were counted, but have their collected number inflated. Notice the ones here with a collected number of 9 or more, when I haven't even played that many games yet on this file:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The same bug applies to assemblies too (Nanomanufacture Ammo is counted as having been made 9 times, but this was the first time I assembled it on this file):
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
My medal counts have a similar inflation bug:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Then my kill counts are all fucked up. It says I killed 45 Carmacks on UV, which is obviously bogus, but then the 10 Mastermind kills are inflated as well, and it also says I haven't killed the Arena Master on UV, even though I did so this run (and I'll note that I did not go through the crash to save loop 45 times before dying, I did so only about like 5 or 6 times):
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Well that's everything I can see for now, I'll report if I find any more oddities as a result of this game-ending crash.
8
Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« on: September 07, 2023, 20:01 »Quote
Regarding Throw for Combat Knife and Mjollnir, I agree. I was surprised when I looked up that Eagle Eye improves the accuracy and Brute does not. I would also argue that Finesse should improve the speed, which it currently does not. Furthermore, I haven't tested or checked this, but Brute's damage and Son of a Bitch should also affect Throw if they don't already. This also would indirectly give Mjollnir a nice buff.
I'm pretty sure Brute does boost their power, and so SoB should as well, but if they don't already, then yes they, alongside Finesse, absolutely should affect throwing.
Quote
Regarding having enemies become revealed when there are only a few left, I'm leaning towards disagreeing. It would be a pretty fundamental change to the game, would affect a lot of levels and builds, and feels very non-canonical. Angel of Red Alert would become a lot easier, Angel of Darkness with it active would be weird, and almost all bonus levels with it would make them much easier (Hell's Arena, Chained Court, Hell's Armory, Spider's Lair, etc).
With Intuition's proposed nerfing going to make AoRA a bit harder, I think this would help balanced that out. And with AoD, I assume it wouldn't apply, as the effect would work like a Tracking Map, which doesn't work in AoD. As for the special levels, I don't know how it works in Jupiter Hell for sure as I haven't played it yet, but like I suggested with the boss levels, you could have it not work in special levels.
Quote
We've already discussed buffing Reloader from 20% to 25%, but I'm going to boldly suggest buffing this more to 30%.
I think 25% is enough of a buff, and with 30% reduction for each level, after Rel3, you would hit the minimum time of 0.1 seconds for weapons with a reload time of 1 second without even having to use an ammo box. But I don't outwardly oppose this if you really want to make Reloader desirable for any build, like Finesse already is and will remain more desirable even with this Reloader buff.
Quote
Assembly: Mother-In-Law - Rocket Launcher (PPPFN) becomes 6d9 Rocket Launcher with instant recharge firing, blast radius 6. I think this is completely fine.
I like this assembly. Gonna be dangerous for most builds, but it would in particular give Fireangel something really good to abuse their mastery with, a build that otherwise has lackluster endgame potential, particularly in A100.
Quote
Medal: Medal of Pacifism - Win with 10% or less kills. I'd be fine with this and swap out one of our suggestions. Not a huge fan of it overall though.
I think this is ok and was thinking of something like this. I would be ok having int instead of the suggested Vash's Cross, though I'm not particularly keen on either idea.
Quote
Medal: Shotgunnery Cross - Win and killed everything (not necessarily 100%) with Shotguns/Fists. I'd say scrap this as it's basically just completing Angel of Shotgunnery.
Quote
Medal: Marksmanship Cross - Win and killed everything (not necessarily 100%) with Pistols/Fists. Scrap it, see above.
Agreed, these are pretty boring new medals, not to mention that Marksman Platinum already requires 100% kills (on UV, but still too much overlap for my liking).
Quote
Medal: Zen Master's Cross - Win and killed everything (not necessarily 100%) without ever using Fists/Knives/Shotguns/Pistols. This is weird, I'd say no.
So this would basically come down to:
*Stairdive to the Chained Court hoping nothing dies along the way until you get the Chainsaw.
*Stairdive and hope you find a Plasma Rifle before anything dies indirectly (and you can't kill a Commando for one).
*Hope you find an early Rocket Launcher and get enough ammo to actually use it as a primary offensive weapon.
*Hope you find the Cleaver (or the other melee uniques if they get the same early generation floor as proposed) very early.
Yeah this medal is just going to be annoying as hell to get, I'm firmly no as well. Also just how would you get past Phobos Base Entry without anything dying, which would immediately nullify the medal when any kill there will be inevitably attributed to fists, pistols, or shotguns?
Quote
Medal: Purple Heart - Reach experience level 20+ and die. lolno
Quote
Medal: Gutts' Sorrow - Die while wielding Dragonslayer. lolno
I remember hearing about Gutts' Sorrow being dummied out of 0.9.9.7 because Kornel didn't want to award bad play. Getting a medals for these things would be funny, but yeah it's not really an achievement and would be extremely annoying to actually get, as it essentially requires you to throw away a run that is near guaranteed to win and probably also had a ton of time put into it already.
Quote
Medal: Klear Cross - Nuke at least 12 levels in one game. This is basically the same as the other nuking medals, which revolves around finding Trigun. Granted, using it 12 times would require at least Ironman x2 with all Trigun nukes. I'd say no.
Oh funny that a variation of one of my initial new medal ideas is actually already in the game. If this doesn't block A100, I would be ok with having this instead of Vash's Cross, though like Medal of Pacifism, I'm not terribly into any of the ideas. If it does block A100, then absolutely not.
9
Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« on: September 07, 2023, 04:02 »
Those all seem pretty nobrainer. A few more things I want to suggest that I have forgotten about until now.
Have Brute increase the accuracy of throwing
Brute not affecting the accuracy of throwing always been a weird unintuitive limitation, and needlessly makes early AoB more annoyingly luck-based than it already is, when you have to rely on throwing knives to limit damage from tough enemies but have a coin flip chance at best to actually hit things with them. Then because of how awfully inaccurate throwing is, it then just gets ignored after you get the Chainsaw because it's not worth bothering with it, other than to blow up barrels. Melee builds will also never want to invest in Eagle Eye, and two of the melee masters block Eagle Eye even if they wanted to, including Malicious Blades, the build that is supposed to specialize in knives. It's not like this change would suddenly make early AoB easy either, as throwing still leaves you empty handed (unless you got the Mjollnir), and without Juggler, it's gonna take time to switch to another weapon, so you can often only safely throw one knife from long distance per enemy, if you got a chance to do so at all (Pinkies close that gap really fast).
Fix bridges being blocked off on floors with rivers
Each floor with a river is supposed to have a bridge over the river to ensure players don't get put in a position where they're forced to walk through acid and lava to reach the rest of the floor. However, these bridges can spawn in a way where they lead to a blocked off room, such as in this screenshot:
Or the bridge just gets walled off completely, such as in this screenshot:
If you don't have some means of fluid immunity, and don't have some means to blow up walls or got a sturdy walls event, then you're just in a screwed position, especially so if it's early in the game where you probably won't have the medkits to burn tanking damage running across acid/lava into potentially a waiting enemy ambush. This seems like a no-brainer fix to me, but I could see it being possibly too complicated to fix level generation to have more reliable bridges.
When there are only three or less enemies left on a floor, reveal their locations
A feature from Jupiter Hell that Svankensen suggested in the Discord server a while ago. I think it would be nice to have in DoomRL too, especially when playing builds without Intuition, where hunting down the last few enemies can get tedious (as anyone trying to get 100% kills in A100 without Intuition can attest to). It should have the limitation though that it doesn't apply in the boss levels, as part of the intended challenge with the Cyberdemon and Mastermind is not knowing where they'll be. Maybe it's too major of a new thing to add, and could be argued that it makes the Quartermaster and other AoRA-related badges easier by too much (though Intuition getting nerfed is going to make them harder too). Another possible complication is how it would work with reviving enemies or any other spontaneously spawning enemies (would it be "turned off" if more enemies spawn after three were left, would it permanently "stay on" once you get to the final three no matter how many more enemies spawn in, or would it only continue to show the original final three enemies but none of the revived/spawned enemies?) I would like to see some discussion on this, if it's even possible to add in the first place.
Have Brute increase the accuracy of throwing
Brute not affecting the accuracy of throwing always been a weird unintuitive limitation, and needlessly makes early AoB more annoyingly luck-based than it already is, when you have to rely on throwing knives to limit damage from tough enemies but have a coin flip chance at best to actually hit things with them. Then because of how awfully inaccurate throwing is, it then just gets ignored after you get the Chainsaw because it's not worth bothering with it, other than to blow up barrels. Melee builds will also never want to invest in Eagle Eye, and two of the melee masters block Eagle Eye even if they wanted to, including Malicious Blades, the build that is supposed to specialize in knives. It's not like this change would suddenly make early AoB easy either, as throwing still leaves you empty handed (unless you got the Mjollnir), and without Juggler, it's gonna take time to switch to another weapon, so you can often only safely throw one knife from long distance per enemy, if you got a chance to do so at all (Pinkies close that gap really fast).
Fix bridges being blocked off on floors with rivers
Each floor with a river is supposed to have a bridge over the river to ensure players don't get put in a position where they're forced to walk through acid and lava to reach the rest of the floor. However, these bridges can spawn in a way where they lead to a blocked off room, such as in this screenshot:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Or the bridge just gets walled off completely, such as in this screenshot:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
If you don't have some means of fluid immunity, and don't have some means to blow up walls or got a sturdy walls event, then you're just in a screwed position, especially so if it's early in the game where you probably won't have the medkits to burn tanking damage running across acid/lava into potentially a waiting enemy ambush. This seems like a no-brainer fix to me, but I could see it being possibly too complicated to fix level generation to have more reliable bridges.
When there are only three or less enemies left on a floor, reveal their locations
A feature from Jupiter Hell that Svankensen suggested in the Discord server a while ago. I think it would be nice to have in DoomRL too, especially when playing builds without Intuition, where hunting down the last few enemies can get tedious (as anyone trying to get 100% kills in A100 without Intuition can attest to). It should have the limitation though that it doesn't apply in the boss levels, as part of the intended challenge with the Cyberdemon and Mastermind is not knowing where they'll be. Maybe it's too major of a new thing to add, and could be argued that it makes the Quartermaster and other AoRA-related badges easier by too much (though Intuition getting nerfed is going to make them harder too). Another possible complication is how it would work with reviving enemies or any other spontaneously spawning enemies (would it be "turned off" if more enemies spawn after three were left, would it permanently "stay on" once you get to the final three no matter how many more enemies spawn in, or would it only continue to show the original final three enemies but none of the revived/spawned enemies?) I would like to see some discussion on this, if it's even possible to add in the first place.
10
Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« on: September 05, 2023, 02:33 »
Allow Scavenger to scavenge melee weapons, armors, and boots?
Scavenger is an ok mastery, but moreso because its blocks aren't as major as other masteries' blocks and so it can be played as a pseudo-masterless or pseudo-Sharpshooter build, rather than because the trait itself actually does all that much when it's entirely luck-dependent for it to do anything significant. Being able to "recycle" mods you don't need through cheap assemblies for a chance at a more helpful standard mod is nice to have, but the main appeal of the trait is it's supposed to give you much better odds at getting those highly desirable rare mods. Problem is, the odds still aren't any good; the limitation of being only able to scavenge ranged weapons means more than half of the exotics and uniques you won't be able to scavenge at all, so you could very well go an entire standard game without even getting a single chance to scavenge a unique for a potential nano or onyx mod, and in A100 you still will probably get very few chances at it (in an A100 run I just did with Scavenger, I only found two uniques that I could scavenge, and less than a dozen exotic weapons). Additionally, scavenging an exotic or unique means you can't use it yourself, so you might not get to utilize Scavenger because it would be counterproductive to give up such a good weapon for a random chance at a rare mod that you would have wanted to use on said weapon in the first place. Considering that, I think it would be fair to weigh the odds more in the favor of Scavenger making a difference over just going masterless. If people think this buff would be tilting the odds too much, I would be fine with scavenged armors and boots having lower odds at giving you the good stuff (say exotic armor and boots have a 1/8 chance each of giving you a sniper or firestorm mod while the standard mods each have a 3/16 chance, and unique armor and boots have a 1/3 chance of giving a power mod, a 1/4 chance each of giving a sniper or firestorm mod, and a 1/12 chance each of giving an onyx or nano mod).
If this change is accepted, I would also propose the following guaranteed mod drops: the Mjollnir and Shielded Armor will always produce an onyx mod; Malek's Armor will always produce a nano mod; and the Lava Armor will always produce a firestorm mod (also the Anti-Freak Jackal should always produce a firestorm mod too regardless, as it is practically a beefed up Demolition Pistol and currently nothing produces a guaranteed firestorm mod).
Increase the generation weights of all the Elite Formers and Lava Elemental
Yet for another proposed change for the Elite Formers, I think they should appear more often in the later depths of A100. Currently they all have a generation weight of 1, being as rare as a Cyberdemon and Agony Elemental, despite not posing anywhere near that threat. It would also help to increase the variety in deeper A100 so you're not fighting so many damn Barons and VMR. I would bump their weights by the following; the Elite Former Human up to 8 (as much as a Nightmare Imp), the Elite Former Sergeant up to 6 (as much as a Nightmare Demon and Nightmare Cacodemon), the Elite Former Captain up to 5 (inbetween the aformentioned two Nightmare enemies and Nightmare Arachnotrons), and the Elite Former Commando up to 3 (as much as a Nightmare Archvile and Shambler).
The Lava Elemental similarly has a generation weight of 1 despite being a much lesser threat than a Cyberdemon or Agony Elemental, or even the Shambler that has a weight of 3, unless you for some reason still do not have Cerberus Boots by the time you could even encounter it. I think bumping it up to 3 to match the Shambler is fair, but if you don't want to make it too rough for players with no lava-immune boots, then go with a weight of 2.
Scavenger is an ok mastery, but moreso because its blocks aren't as major as other masteries' blocks and so it can be played as a pseudo-masterless or pseudo-Sharpshooter build, rather than because the trait itself actually does all that much when it's entirely luck-dependent for it to do anything significant. Being able to "recycle" mods you don't need through cheap assemblies for a chance at a more helpful standard mod is nice to have, but the main appeal of the trait is it's supposed to give you much better odds at getting those highly desirable rare mods. Problem is, the odds still aren't any good; the limitation of being only able to scavenge ranged weapons means more than half of the exotics and uniques you won't be able to scavenge at all, so you could very well go an entire standard game without even getting a single chance to scavenge a unique for a potential nano or onyx mod, and in A100 you still will probably get very few chances at it (in an A100 run I just did with Scavenger, I only found two uniques that I could scavenge, and less than a dozen exotic weapons). Additionally, scavenging an exotic or unique means you can't use it yourself, so you might not get to utilize Scavenger because it would be counterproductive to give up such a good weapon for a random chance at a rare mod that you would have wanted to use on said weapon in the first place. Considering that, I think it would be fair to weigh the odds more in the favor of Scavenger making a difference over just going masterless. If people think this buff would be tilting the odds too much, I would be fine with scavenged armors and boots having lower odds at giving you the good stuff (say exotic armor and boots have a 1/8 chance each of giving you a sniper or firestorm mod while the standard mods each have a 3/16 chance, and unique armor and boots have a 1/3 chance of giving a power mod, a 1/4 chance each of giving a sniper or firestorm mod, and a 1/12 chance each of giving an onyx or nano mod).
If this change is accepted, I would also propose the following guaranteed mod drops: the Mjollnir and Shielded Armor will always produce an onyx mod; Malek's Armor will always produce a nano mod; and the Lava Armor will always produce a firestorm mod (also the Anti-Freak Jackal should always produce a firestorm mod too regardless, as it is practically a beefed up Demolition Pistol and currently nothing produces a guaranteed firestorm mod).
Increase the generation weights of all the Elite Formers and Lava Elemental
Yet for another proposed change for the Elite Formers, I think they should appear more often in the later depths of A100. Currently they all have a generation weight of 1, being as rare as a Cyberdemon and Agony Elemental, despite not posing anywhere near that threat. It would also help to increase the variety in deeper A100 so you're not fighting so many damn Barons and VMR. I would bump their weights by the following; the Elite Former Human up to 8 (as much as a Nightmare Imp), the Elite Former Sergeant up to 6 (as much as a Nightmare Demon and Nightmare Cacodemon), the Elite Former Captain up to 5 (inbetween the aformentioned two Nightmare enemies and Nightmare Arachnotrons), and the Elite Former Commando up to 3 (as much as a Nightmare Archvile and Shambler).
The Lava Elemental similarly has a generation weight of 1 despite being a much lesser threat than a Cyberdemon or Agony Elemental, or even the Shambler that has a weight of 3, unless you for some reason still do not have Cerberus Boots by the time you could even encounter it. I think bumping it up to 3 to match the Shambler is fair, but if you don't want to make it too rough for players with no lava-immune boots, then go with a weight of 2.
11
Requests For Features / Re: DoomRL 0.9.9.8 BETA 1
« on: September 04, 2023, 23:41 »
In case all of these weren't seen when I posted about them in the Discord server, I'll report the bugs here that I encountered after completing a standard game and A100 game in this 0.9.9.8 beta.
BUG #1
The newly added "repeat level feeling" command does not seem to work:
The error message in the error log is:
BUG #2
When stepping into damaging fluids with fluid-immune boots, you get the fluid damage message and pain sound despite taking no damage. Aside from general annoyance, this does have a gameplay impact, as the game prevents you from doing run -> wait on acid/lava with fluid-immune boots, with it thinking you're getting damaged each action. This bug did not exist in 0.9.9.7 and so is definitely newly introduced from this beta. Here are a couple screenshots showing it:
I'll also note this bug does not occur when you have the envirosuit effect active.
BUG #3
While one of the fixes listed in the changelog is adjusting the Pinky's AI to no longer get stuck, I can confirm that they still do. Here are a couple screenshots from Phobos Lab showing how they were bunched up together in the cave, unable to get out after I run -> waited several times to see if they would get out (well before and after the fact, I forgot to take the screenshot when they were all on screen alive at once):
I'll also note I observed Pinkies getting stuck in other levels. Personally I am fine with the Pinkies' AI as it was, as I do think it gives them a unique "ambush"-like behavior, and Phobos Lab in particular would lose a lot of its fear factor if you didn't need to go into the cave to flush the Demons out, but I noted it in case the majority do want their AI fully fixed.
BUG #4
I would get this error message whenever enemies seemingly kills themselves from barrels or their own splash damage. Here's a screenshot from one of the instances:
And here are a few of the error messages related to this bug from the error log:
BUG #5
In my A100 run, the killing spree tracker got frozen at one point, and remained that way for the rest of the run. Here are two screenshots from different times showing it stuck at 112:
______________________________________________
That's everything for now, if I encounter any more bugs, I'll report them here.
BUG #1
The newly added "repeat level feeling" command does not seem to work:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The error message in the error log is:
Code: [Select]
Timestamp : 9/1/2023 23:22:41
Error level : CRITICAL
Message : Player action exception!
Error message : ...0\Downloads\doomrl-win-0998-beta1-lq\keybindings.lua:69: attempt to call field 'repeat_feel' (a nil value)BUG #2
When stepping into damaging fluids with fluid-immune boots, you get the fluid damage message and pain sound despite taking no damage. Aside from general annoyance, this does have a gameplay impact, as the game prevents you from doing run -> wait on acid/lava with fluid-immune boots, with it thinking you're getting damaged each action. This bug did not exist in 0.9.9.7 and so is definitely newly introduced from this beta. Here are a couple screenshots showing it:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I'll also note this bug does not occur when you have the envirosuit effect active.
BUG #3
While one of the fixes listed in the changelog is adjusting the Pinky's AI to no longer get stuck, I can confirm that they still do. Here are a couple screenshots from Phobos Lab showing how they were bunched up together in the cave, unable to get out after I run -> waited several times to see if they would get out (well before and after the fact, I forgot to take the screenshot when they were all on screen alive at once):
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I'll also note I observed Pinkies getting stuck in other levels. Personally I am fine with the Pinkies' AI as it was, as I do think it gives them a unique "ambush"-like behavior, and Phobos Lab in particular would lose a lot of its fear factor if you didn't need to go into the cave to flush the Demons out, but I noted it in case the majority do want their AI fully fixed.
BUG #4
I would get this error message whenever enemies seemingly kills themselves from barrels or their own splash damage. Here's a screenshot from one of the instances:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
And here are a few of the error messages related to this bug from the error log:
Code: [Select]
Timestamp : 9/2/2023 2:23:46
Error level : ERROR
Message : Lua hook OnAttacked caught ELuaStateException!
Call path : beings[baron].OnAttacked
Call params : (<object>,<object>)
Error message : Lua error : attempt to call a table valueCode: [Select]
Timestamp : 9/2/2023 2:24:38
Error level : ERROR
Message : Lua hook OnAttacked caught ELuaStateException!
Call path : beings[soldier].OnAttacked
Call params : (<object>,<object>)
Error message : Lua error : attempt to call a table valueCode: [Select]
Timestamp : 9/3/2023 18:06:58
Error level : ERROR
Message : Lua hook OnAttacked caught ELuaStateException!
Call path : beings[arch].OnAttacked
Call params : (<object>,<object>)
Error message : Lua error : attempt to call a table valueCode: [Select]
Timestamp : 9/4/2023 20:48:47
Error level : ERROR
Message : Lua hook OnAttacked caught EAccessViolation!
Call path : beings[revenant].OnAttacked
Call params : (<object>,<object>)
Error message : Access violationBUG #5
In my A100 run, the killing spree tracker got frozen at one point, and remained that way for the rest of the run. Here are two screenshots from different times showing it stuck at 112:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
______________________________________________
That's everything for now, if I encounter any more bugs, I'll report them here.
12
Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« on: September 04, 2023, 06:26 »Quote
Laser Rifle is extremely powerful and its huge accuracy boost counters the biggest probably with rapid-fires. Compared to a Plasma Rifle, it also reloads a bit faster and only shoots one less in its burst. Keeping the high accuracy can help it continue being unique, but perhaps decrease the burst to 4 or even 3. Nanomanufacture Laser Rifle basically melts everything in the game and doesn't even require many traits to be useful. I'm open to other discussion about other nerf ideas.
So I've been thinking about this, and I don't think I really agree with nerfing the Laser Rifle. For one thing, it is an exotic after all, so it should rightfully be very good to merit the rarity. And mostly outclassing the Plasma Rifle isn't an issue, when that's the normal deal with exotics compared to their standard counterparts; the Assault Shotgun completely outclasses the Combat Shotgun, the Super Shotgun completely outclasses the Double Shotgun, the Combat Pistol completely outclasses the standard Pistol, and the Chainsaw completely outclasses the Combat Knife. But in this case it's not even truly outclassing, as the Plasma Rifle does have higher damage potential with its extra shot, and can be made into a Hyperblaster, that substantially improves DPS, flexibility, and accuracy, which a Laser Rifle won't be able to beat without multiple rare mods. Also yes it is extremely powerful with Nanomanufacture, but that's pretty typical for any build making a Nano assembly with their build's primary weapon, including the Plasma Rifle. Overall I think the Laser Rifle is fine as is, being a very good weapon that doesn't require Eagle Eye like other rapid fire weapons if you're lucky enough to find it, but still has less potential than a Plasma Rifle. If something really has to be done to it, you could make it have the same reloading time as a Plasma Rifle, but I would disagree with any nerfing beyond that.
13
Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« on: August 31, 2023, 10:33 »
So thinking of buffs for Survivalist, which is widely considered a very underwhelming mastery, and I found myself agreeing with the consensus after finally trying it for myself in a UV run. I find thinking of buffs to try making it competitive while keeping the idea of it intact to be tricky; as is, you could obviously just let it get Hellrunner or Son of a Bitch to make it a lot better, but the idea of the trait is you trade being an absolute tank for terrible offense. One old suggestion I found on this board was to make it guaranteed to reduce damage to 0 when you have strong enough defenses to do so, but I agreed with the replies to that thread that would have the potential to be broken under the right circumstances.
Now the proposed inherent 10% omni resistances for the Marine would definitely help Survivalist more than any of the other Marine masteries, though that on its own won't be enough. So after thinking it through, I propose the following buffs:
Reduce the required levels of Ironman from 3 to 2
Have Survivalist double the health recovery of Small Medkits and Small Health Globes
With the first buff, you will be able to get Survivalist a bit sooner, and can put off that third level of Ironman for getting other, better stuff. Especially helpful when Finesse and Whizkid are essentially a must to succeed with this mastery, which alongside Survivalist will currently take you until level 11 at minimum to get them all, really damn late just to get a build in a functional state. I'll also note the other general masteries (Gunrunner and Scavenger) only require five cumulative traits, so having Survivalist do the same would keep it consistent with them (and it's certainly not better enough than them to be a minimum level 7 mastery).
With the second buff, it'll help Survivalist better do its job of keeping you alive and give it a noticeable benefit in the mid game before you can get good enough armor to take advantage of the 0 damage perk, as well as still let it do something in the late game if you're unable to get good enough armor. This also helps give it an actual healing boon over Vampyre, which otherwise does the extreme damage tanking a whole lot better (and still usually would even with this buff). With all these buffs, Survivalist probably still wouldn't be more than mid at best (offense > pure defense will always be true in DRL after all), but I think it would make it reasonably viable, and give players that like tanking builds a legitimate alternative to Vampyre.
Now the proposed inherent 10% omni resistances for the Marine would definitely help Survivalist more than any of the other Marine masteries, though that on its own won't be enough. So after thinking it through, I propose the following buffs:
Reduce the required levels of Ironman from 3 to 2
Have Survivalist double the health recovery of Small Medkits and Small Health Globes
With the first buff, you will be able to get Survivalist a bit sooner, and can put off that third level of Ironman for getting other, better stuff. Especially helpful when Finesse and Whizkid are essentially a must to succeed with this mastery, which alongside Survivalist will currently take you until level 11 at minimum to get them all, really damn late just to get a build in a functional state. I'll also note the other general masteries (Gunrunner and Scavenger) only require five cumulative traits, so having Survivalist do the same would keep it consistent with them (and it's certainly not better enough than them to be a minimum level 7 mastery).
With the second buff, it'll help Survivalist better do its job of keeping you alive and give it a noticeable benefit in the mid game before you can get good enough armor to take advantage of the 0 damage perk, as well as still let it do something in the late game if you're unable to get good enough armor. This also helps give it an actual healing boon over Vampyre, which otherwise does the extreme damage tanking a whole lot better (and still usually would even with this buff). With all these buffs, Survivalist probably still wouldn't be more than mid at best (offense > pure defense will always be true in DRL after all), but I think it would make it reasonably viable, and give players that like tanking builds a legitimate alternative to Vampyre.
14
Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« on: August 29, 2023, 07:41 »
On the talk of nerfing Inquisitor Set, I do stand by what I said earlier about it, but I do think Nyarlaptotep's Boots and Malek's Armor themselves could receive a slight nerf. I would reduce their movement speed from +25% to +20%, as well as decrease their generation weight from 3 to 2.
With Nyarlaptotep's Boots, on their own they clearly outclass all other boots. With +25% speed, they're as fast as A-modded Tactical Boots and A-modded Phaseshift Boots, except while those boots have no protection and average protection respectively, the Laptop Boots have as much protection as you can get without having full fluid immunity (with them reducing acid damage to 1 and lava damage to 2, which then gets reduced to 1 when running or if you have any TaN investment). If you find them and can't or aren't making Antigrav Boots, you have no reason to not wear them unless you can complete the Phaseshift set (which has its own limitations, as you'll have to wear defensively mediocre armor unless you take a big sacrifice in mobility by making Cerberus Phaseshift Armor). If you reduce it to +20%, there would at least be an argument for wearing the other boots without having to make Antigrav Boots, and you would no longer get the absolute best of non-Antigrav movement speed and non-immunity fluid protection in a single pair of boots.
As for Malek's Armor, it doesn't egregiously outclass other armors on its own, with quite a few being better defensively. But still, the only armors that can match or exceed its movement bonus are Phaseshift Armor, Duelist Armor, and A-modded Tactical Armor, none of which come close defensively without using the former two in the very expensive and hard committal Nanofiber Skin and Cybernano Armor assemblies. AP Energy-shielded Vest does boost movement too while outclassing Malek's Armor defensively, but Malek's Armor still beats the Vest's movement bonus by a solid 10% and has inherent regeneration without the need for any rare mods, before even considering the potential of the Inquisitor Set (and that regeneration has no catch, unlike Lava Armor and Necro Armor). As a single piece, it combines mobility and protection in a way that no other armor does without other rare finds and heavy investment. Reducing its movement speed to +20% would keep it inline with the Laptop Boots after its proposed nerf, and make it not as much ahead of other armors without any investment. You could probably justify nerfing the speed of both to +15%, but I do like to be cautious with nerfing, and they are uniques still, so I would be fine with +20%.
As for the generation weight, at 3 each, they're currently among the more common uniques, despite both being clearly among the best uniques and being highly desirable equipment for virtually any build. They do have one of the latest spawn depths (not spawning until floor 15), but that is still overly common for such strong equipment, and so a generation weight of 2 would be more fitting. On another note, I would bump the Medical Powerarmor's generation weight to 3; even with its proposed buffs it still wouldn't be amazing, so it should be one of the more common uniques.
With Nyarlaptotep's Boots, on their own they clearly outclass all other boots. With +25% speed, they're as fast as A-modded Tactical Boots and A-modded Phaseshift Boots, except while those boots have no protection and average protection respectively, the Laptop Boots have as much protection as you can get without having full fluid immunity (with them reducing acid damage to 1 and lava damage to 2, which then gets reduced to 1 when running or if you have any TaN investment). If you find them and can't or aren't making Antigrav Boots, you have no reason to not wear them unless you can complete the Phaseshift set (which has its own limitations, as you'll have to wear defensively mediocre armor unless you take a big sacrifice in mobility by making Cerberus Phaseshift Armor). If you reduce it to +20%, there would at least be an argument for wearing the other boots without having to make Antigrav Boots, and you would no longer get the absolute best of non-Antigrav movement speed and non-immunity fluid protection in a single pair of boots.
As for Malek's Armor, it doesn't egregiously outclass other armors on its own, with quite a few being better defensively. But still, the only armors that can match or exceed its movement bonus are Phaseshift Armor, Duelist Armor, and A-modded Tactical Armor, none of which come close defensively without using the former two in the very expensive and hard committal Nanofiber Skin and Cybernano Armor assemblies. AP Energy-shielded Vest does boost movement too while outclassing Malek's Armor defensively, but Malek's Armor still beats the Vest's movement bonus by a solid 10% and has inherent regeneration without the need for any rare mods, before even considering the potential of the Inquisitor Set (and that regeneration has no catch, unlike Lava Armor and Necro Armor). As a single piece, it combines mobility and protection in a way that no other armor does without other rare finds and heavy investment. Reducing its movement speed to +20% would keep it inline with the Laptop Boots after its proposed nerf, and make it not as much ahead of other armors without any investment. You could probably justify nerfing the speed of both to +15%, but I do like to be cautious with nerfing, and they are uniques still, so I would be fine with +20%.
As for the generation weight, at 3 each, they're currently among the more common uniques, despite both being clearly among the best uniques and being highly desirable equipment for virtually any build. They do have one of the latest spawn depths (not spawning until floor 15), but that is still overly common for such strong equipment, and so a generation weight of 2 would be more fitting. On another note, I would bump the Medical Powerarmor's generation weight to 3; even with its proposed buffs it still wouldn't be amazing, so it should be one of the more common uniques.
15
Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas
« on: August 27, 2023, 08:58 »
Oh my intention was for the item to always be obtainable, and the trap wouldn't spring until you picked it up. I think the chance should vary by depth and difficulty, where the deeper you are and the harder the difficulty, the greater chance it will be that a trap is sprung. The trap could have the same effect of the monster summon lever, and could sometimes also have the same effect as a lever flooding the room with acid/lava.