Come Bitch About Skills! [Skills Rebalance Brainstorming]

BERGSTROOOOOOM!!

 

FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAX!!

sorry, it seemed appropriate.

 

I want to try the new fungal arts as soon as possible, it's one of my favourite skills of all time, and your changes look fabulous.
I think werediggle should have something more, too.
Gotta put those files in the main game asap.

 

AFAIK Fax does not use a Mac. Bergstrom does. That is why Essence screamed his name.

 

True, but it's modding troubles, and Fax's name is to be invoked whenever someone has modding troubles.

 

Good news: I managed to figure out how to install these things.
Bad news: They're crashing the game.

 

Sadly I kinda expected this. The differences between the Mac and Windows builds are minimal, but unknown. And a royal bitch to figure out.

Sorry it is giving you this issue. You can always restore the old files by having Steam "Verify the game cache" or whatever it calls it. (And if you made backups, you can always restore them manually.)

Does it throw up any errors or just crash?

 

Does this means those changes are not into the xml yet?

 

I get all the way up to "just about to actually start playing" before it crashes. Generally, the crash just quits, goes to a blue screen for a moment and then comes back, which in past I've associated with certain damaged mods for Dredmor.

 

I think you took the wrong DBs. Those are from exp3.

 

Sent this to Doctor Bad Ideas already, but here it is for general consumption in case anyone else is trying to use this on a Mac and is having trouble:

 

Essence, since I'm here anyway, I'm gonna open a can of worms. This is in lieu of debating specific skill modifications you proposed

Once upon a time, you (Essence) and I were discussing balance, and IIRC, I believe it would be fair to characterize our takes on balance as:

• Me: Prefers to find something akin to an average power-level of existing material, and tweak the weaker skills up but also the stronger skills down. In that conversation I mentioned that since Promethean was one of the best skills, I'd vote for knocking it down a few pegs.
• You: Prefers to find the strongest existing skills that are still fun to play, and crank everything weaker than that up until it gets pretty close to that same level of power. In that conversation IIRC you mentioned that since Promethean were one of the best skills, you'd vote for lifting the other stuff up to match it in power. (Please correct me if I'm mis-stating your position. If I am indeed doing so, it is unintentional, and most likely the function of the several months that have passed since the conversation occurred.)

You can probably guess where I'm going with this. That conversation happened back in 1.0.8-or-9, and since then Promethean has been nerfed at least once, possibly twice depending on exactly when we were talking. I'm curious as to whether or not you've adjusted at all the target power-level for the other skills in the rebalance seeing as how the Promethean goalpost moved a few yards closer to the line of scrimmage.

Admittedly, since that conversation Egyptian Magic has been added, which is a totally different goalpost and one set rather further away. Though EM was subsequently nerfed, I must admit that even post-nerfing it's still as strong as Promethean ever was, and it's also better than both Promethean and Necro at the moment, so if anything the power-level of wizards has actually gone up. Given that they've nerfed it once already, I expect Egyptian to get knocked down further soon. As it stands, leveling just Egyptian plus Blood Magic can empower you to coast through floors 2-10 of the dungeon in easy mode. Don't know if it keeps working beyond that as a mod-related game crash ate my Permadeath Egyptologist the floor after I got back from killing Vlad Digula. First floor remains difficult because wizards start squishy, but can be mitigated by other starting skill selection.

I'd be curious to hear your (and others) design-and-development thoughts on this topic. I'm wondering whether or not you've taken the promethean-nerfing into consideration when rebalancing, if you think it was a minimal-enough nerfing so as to not actually move the goalpost, or if you think Egyptian swung the pendulum far enough the other direction to leave your target where it was. (Football-pendulum-archery for the mixed-metaphor hat-trick trifecta. Up next, I'll try sailing this ship in an uphill battle.)

 

I think the target goal should be somewhere between the average and the peak, Bergstrom (is there any other way to call you? I don't want to use the whole username but calling you "Bergstrom" is a little awkward since it's your last name and stuff), most likely just a little above the average.

Trying to make every skill as strong as the strongest existing skill is a mistake because the player would become too strong in the end, but making everything average might result in the opposite. That being said, some skills' worth lies not in stat changes but rather in the unique (or semi-unique) mechanics they give to the player, so in some cases it might be difficult to make them equally as useful as some other skills without making them either overpowered (if we were to bring weapon proficiency skills to the level of other skills, because of these skills' restrictions we would have to make them too strong to make it really balanced) or underpowered (Perception is a good example, as the fact it gives you a renewable source of many materials is enough to make it a really good skill, and if we were to nerf the additional effects of the skill tree to get around that it would become a crud).

 

Honestly, in this particular case, I didn't really do a lot of conscious balancing against other skills -- I basically just went through this thread here and looked at people's suggestions and picked the ones that seemed reasonable.

 

Bergstrom is probably best, as it will result in less confusion than some folks randomly using my first name (which no one ever spells or pronounces correctly anyway). I have it on very good authority that they already shout "BERGSTROM!!!" in the Gaslamp offices on a regular basis, usually in a Professor Hubert Farnsworth voice, so there's a precedent already established.

I will definitely agree. I was simplifying and paraphrasing both my position and my understanding of Essence's position, for the sake of discussion. I don't actually think all skills should be at average, and he most likely doesn't actually think all skills should be as strong as Promethean. Some skills are meant to be support material, and others are meant to be combo-pieces.

Back in one of the Beta threads there was a statement from Nicholas re: Artful Dodger and his design philosophy that not all skills need to be equal so that build choices matter, and because this is a non-competitive single-player game, and because different skills are designed for different players. Example: Most weapon skills are less complicated so that a casual player can dive right in to smashing monster face without having to learn or manage as many different abilities.

If anything, that weigh-in from Nicholas pushed me even further from the "rebalance" camp. Knowing that the original designers intent was for that style of power-disparity and learning curve, I'm largely of the opinion that only really outlying/broken skills (*cough* Egyptian *cough*) even need tweaking.

But I also play mostly on GRPD, and usually not as a wizard, because I want the game to challenge me. I may just be a masochist.

EDIT:

That's reasonable. I hadn't noticed that, because I've come to this specific thread only lately/recently, mostly as a result of being asked in a private thread where the files were on a Mac. I've only read about 2 of the 9 pages (I think), and was wondering whether or not it was worth my digging in further. Until very recently, 99% of my Dredmor time has been spent modding swashbucklers, so I've been rarely dabbling with the forums.

 

Just for now, I've only started a new character with Fungal Arts. As far I can tell you, at least this little implementation will not destroy balance for FA. A little , and (dunno why this) never killed anyone, and is just a little more to a skill which was a little empty. And this went for an exchange of one maximus shroom less than one could drop before (two little procs are more than one a little more than little proc).

 

They're primarybuffs, not secondarybuffs -- so it's +12 . Stacksize 2, but with a 96 turn downtime, so you can invest a little more in your pet if you can keep it alive for a long time.

All told, if you can get both stacks, it'll end up with
+48 , +8, +4, +12, +8, +8, +12 (and +18 , but that won't matter.)

That should be enough to keep the Mobile Combat Mushroom viable for an extra floor or two.

 

Ohmahgad, fantastic!
Sorry about the error, I'm just entering the bizzarro world of DBspeech.
This skill is also fabolous for every summon, not only those fungal pets. I'm thinking to that summoner.
(btw, essence, the second db is wrong; it's from CotW)

 

Right -- fix'd.

 

Huh? Did it get changed out? I remember telling you about the different files since you specified /expansion2/ and it had RotDG skills in the files themselves.

Either that or I ate some magic 'shrooms and never noticed it...

NM. I reread it and it is correct now... Was anything changed since last time I grabbed it?