Thanks a ton for your input. This was what I was afraid of, and I'm working to bring SwiftStriker in line with the vanilla skills.
You can always ask the modder instead; most of us would be fine with it if you included a skill tree based on something we created, with an added note that the idea is taken from modder going by that-and-that name. After all, we do it for fun *and* to make Dungeons of Dredmor better, and having something we created included in the vanilla game would mean that we achieved the second. I do see your point, though.
Ruleset plz? Very true. I think by and large most of the mod community here prefer to see themselves as designers rather than players. That might just be me projecting, though.
He did say "accidentally". It's very possible with creative projects that you can read something, not consciously process it, and then have it percolate around in your brain until something very similar pops out without realizing what influenced you. Asking "can I do this" isn't an option, since you're not aware (at least not consciously) the other thing even exists. It's also entirely possible to independently invent something similar without even being exposed to whatever it is you're paralleling, which just complicates it all further. How do (and why would) you ask for permission in that situation?
He wouldn't really need to ask if he created something similar to an existing mod without knowing about the existence of said mod. ~shrugs~
But that was sort of his point. If he plays a bunch of mods, and then creates something similar, if someone feels their stuff was "stolen" there's no way to dissuade them of that opinion. If his policy is that he doesn't ever play mods, that fact works as something of an insulation if a situation of independent invention does come up. I used to be active over at a certain companies forums for a particular tabletop RPG. I posted a bunch of stuff that I created for my campaign to their wiki and forum. Four months later they released a sourcebook that used really similar mechanics for the same conceptual ideas (a whole improvised weapon system, and later in a second book one very specific character power). Random people on the fora kept congratulating me for getting my materials in the sourcebooks, but it wasn't my stuff, it was just surprisingly similar. Other people kept telling me I should sue. In hind sight, it was almost certainly a case of independent invention (as there's several months lead time on a printed RPG product), but that sure wasn't my initial reaction. Then it got even worse when someone on their team did later look at the wiki, misread my name, and sent me a private communication intended for a freelancer that works with them and has slightly similar name. It was pretty ugly before it was over, and I'll probably never contribute to their fora or wikis again.
I know about that, r_b_bergstrom, which is why exactly I replied with the same thing that you wrote, only with a tenth of your text (not that it's bad, as I reckon your story will serve to show your point to other people). And I am aware of the whole problem; it caused a few wars on Minecraft's forum, and I also met with situations like that outside of there. They can either avoid mods at all, or simply play them and look for ideas. In the second case they'd have to ask the modder if they wanted to be nice, and they'd probably do it if they decided to create something based on those. And in the first case they aren't really aware of what exactly is in mods, so all ideas are their own, and thus there's nothing it has to do with mods.
Essence, I found your post to be very well argued, soundly reasoned, and quite compelling. I understand now why, for the way you play Dredmor, you feel the way you do about balance. All I can say in rebuttal is that not everyone plays the way you do. There are folks who use the random build button, or click it and then swap out only things that seem really contradictory. I also see posts on these forums all the time from people who play three crafting skills at once, or who play a particular "underpowered" skill again and again because it's fun or fits their style. I've seen plenty of posts where people express skepticism about necronomiconomics being the powerhouse that it is. When leveling up, some people min-max the best skill for their current situation, some pick a favorite skill tree and always level it first, and others pick more or less at random with each level based on what sounds cool or what they've never used before (with no thoughts to what the next level will bring). There's a lot of ways to play Dredmor. Not everyone reads the wiki (or the other wiki, or J-Factors not-technically-a-wiki-but-does-pretty-much-what-you'd-want-a-wiki-for). Not everyone is tactically oriented, and playing "to win". Not all players are willing to sit back and let the game play itself by staying in the wake of a summoned monster. Some of the 'easy button' skills are just not on some player's radar. For every well-informed player, there's 10 or 20 who casually poke at the game and focus on something other than the optimal builds. Sure, 5 to 15 of those 10 or 20 will never install a mod, but the other 5 to 15 will. These are the players for whom too much obvious power in a mod will change the feel of the game. Now, obviously, we can't balance every mod for every play style and every level of stat awareness. That way madness lies. But I'm not sure we want to go too far the other way and eliminate the skill/learning curve entirely. It's easy for a really skilled player (which you clearly are) who has peeked beneath the modding hood (and you have more so than most) to be aware of the great power at the fingertips of a player who picks the right skill sets and levels up in the proper fashion. But the game mechanics are a lot more subtle and opaque to a large subset of the game's audience. If you're playing random builds, or trying to unlock all the skill tree steam achievements, etc, you're sometimes going to end up with characters that aren't always great. Modding the equivalent of a new necronomiconomics (powerful, but not obviously so at first glance, and tricky to build around) doesn't change the power level of the game for those players, but making a new promethean (narrow but obviously potent) or a new psionics (wildly diverse with multiple cheap affects any build could use) does. That's my two dwarven microzorkmids.
Well, that's not how I read it. What you typed, while short and sweet, didn't sound to me at all like you were saying what you've now clarified you meant. In fact, it was vague enough that I interpreted it to mean the opposite. Guess I misunderstood pretty badly.
I didn't read the whole thread in detail, but Gaslamp could always do what Bethesda has done... In a nutshell, they say in their (forced) agreements is; You mod it, we God it. It is ours. Heck, Gaslamp could even claim the english language, C++ and .xml as their own. Wouldn't have a leg in court, but who cares? Who is going to sue? All they have to say is "yeah, your right. We don't own English, C++ and .xml, Judge." Heck, they wouldn't even have to show up in court.
Personally, I think to ignore all of the mods outright is not a good thing. Concurrent development can happen and is fine; but with a company as small as GLG is, it is a waste of resources. If the devs think an idea should be in the main game, I don't think anyone would reject to their idea being credited and implemented (and perhaps rebalanced) in the main game. It's not like we are contributing to mods for financial reasons (Essence excluded ). If the devs still want to create content for the game, the time would be best spent making and doing things that we, as modders, can't implement with our tools or haven't already done.
Yep. And honestly, I've had a talk like this in almost every game forum I've hung out in, in one form or another. The administrator of the Elements:The Game forums was within a hair's breadth of exiling me (twice!) because she believed in aesthetics and 'fun' and designed huge community-wide games around the ideas -- and I organized massive boycotts of those games because the ruleset was imbalanced, and I care a lot more about mechanics and what a power-gamer can do with them than I do about aesthetics and what people who like to play chaotic-neutrally happen to do with them. The thing is, people who play casually/aesthetically/randomly generally don't make the game unfun for anyone. But people who are power-gamers and share their tactics/discoveries/whatever with everyone DO make the game less fun. I mean, when I first started playing and discovered the Drunken Master build on the wiki, I was like "damn...why even bother playing a Warrior at all?" (That's where Bushido came from.) I want the game to be as fun as possible for as many people as possible (which my mechanics-oriented brain translates into "as many builds as possible"). I don't particularly care what a casual random-clicker is going to do with my mods. If they find that the game is easier with Bushido than it is with Astrology, well, it's the same in my mind as if they discovered that the game is easier with Burglary than it is with Smithing. Hurray! What I care about is what the power-gamers can do with my mods -- they're the ones who are going to TRY to break the game, so they're the ones I balance for. That's why my goal, in general, is to give something new and different and fun to do without meaningfully making the game less challenging to someone who plays like I do.
Mind the double post. Must...not...talk...about...Fight Club... I just wanted to say, RBD, you took David's casual comment about "most mods for most games are overpowered" pretty personally, there. Admittedly, SwiftStriker has some elements (quickstep) that are a little out of line with the core game skills, but it sounds like you just read "most DoD mods are overpowered, yours included" where David went pretty far out of his way to say that he didn't know the status of most mods here that well.
EDIT: I was in the process of writing this BEFORE you posted your last post, essence. Essence, you are a very well-spoken and eloquent person, but I'd like to suggest that you be more careful... If I hadn't brought certain issues to your attention, there's no telling how much longer Bushido would have continued to have a 2-turn-cooldown double damage attack, zoo-slaying resistances, etc. You didn't notice these abuses, and yet still deemed Bushido to be balanced in the OP to the mod topic. This is not to rub that in your face, but it's important to temper your design philosophy with the knowledge that you have, in the past, deemed something to be balanced, and been quite mistaken. Again, your mods are awesome, but I think it's important that you consider just how many exploits have slipped past you so far. The biggest issue, I feel, is that you seem to prefer to err on the side of being overpowered, rather than underpowered, and I feel the correct approach is in fact the opposite.
Lame. I had a big ol' response here, but Opera crashed and it died. Short version: erring on the side of underpowered is a good philosophy to have, but it's a lot harder to implement in reality. You're learning this with SwiftStriker right now. How long has that mod been out and in use by the general public before you realized that SwiftStep is out-of-line with the core skills? Bushido has been out for months on end, but no one who posts to the forums has really put it to the test until you did with Mr. Connor. I played it up to Dredmor's face a few times, but it would never occur to me to jump into the middle of a Monster Zoo; that just registered as Professionally Stupid(TM) in my mind, so I never tried it. (Also keep in mind that Bushido was my very first mod. I've progressed a lot in my understanding of the game since then.) I'm just a dude. I'm not going to catch everything that's possible with my mods. I certainly don't have complete understanding of the game mechanics. But I'm not going to code around the constant worry that what I'm writing is abusable in a way that I can't forsee and thus put out weaker ideas than I think are balanced based on my current understanding. That's madness. This, on the other hand, is Sparta.
Just wanted to add, no offense taken, no hard feelings. I actually really appreciate all of your feedback and help balancing Bushido. If everyone had a RBD playtesting their stuff as thoroughly as you did, I think the entire mod forum would benefit.
ha. I think something like 40% of my 207 "likes" are from you, Wisp, so I'm certainly not about to keep you from spreading a story of mine even further.
