1) I'd like to see the second melee skill of all weapons be activated in addition to procedural. Melee is woefully underpowered compared to magic. 2) I'd like to see physical ranged archer/throwing enemies that benefit a high stealth stat/physical armor absorbtion over ranged magic combat. I'd also like to see them drop ammo. 3) I'd like to see a hunger clock added to 'going rogue' or perhaps to a new ultra hard difficulty. 4) I'd like to see stat gain rebalanced. Why are my mages so stealthy? 5) Armor absorption should be added to some of the warrior skills. 6) Stealthy characters should get damage multipliers when attacking unaware enemies. 7) Each level of smithing should add resistance to item breakage and corruption. 8) Not everything should scale according to magic power. There should be 4 general archtypes supported by the game given the skill set: Mages/Warriors/Rogues/Archers. I don't feel the game properly encourages multiple play styles however the changes proposed here would help move the game in that direction.
1. Then when would you not use the second skill? 2. This has been suggested. 3. I also like the idea of a hunger clock separate from health on going rogue 4. This is being done. 5. This is being done. 6.This...well something like this is being done. 7. Not a bad idea. 8. I don't really know what you mean by this. Archer isn't an archetype. The fact that there's a separate slot on the character for their ranged weapon as opposed to taking up a hand slot should show this.
According to dredmorwiki the some of the second level weapon skills already have a CD of 5 or so. Perhaps this was originally intended? Obviously they would not be used on when on CD. Also, the second skill of axes could use a secondary effect like the other three. And each of the second level melee skills should scale with each point into that skill tree. As to magic power scaling, just about everything scales to magic power. Vampirism is being addressed already, however the assassination tree will still scale from magic power as will mushrooms (fairywodgers). This makes staves far and away the strongest weapon choice. Finally, I would argue that an archer archetype is supported by throwing/archery + deadshot + tinkerer. Though those skills are all pretty terrible as it stands now and I did not make any suggestions to address this. As it stands now, many of the skills add very little even discounting bugs. A magic user who wields a sword or bow is nearly as effective as a character who has dedicated many points into those skills.
I really like the idea of dealing critical damage to unaware/sleeping enemies. A high smithing-skill should also add corrosion reduction, good idea!
I concur with the hunger clock/meter/bar/timer, but it should be a separate mode similar to permadeath. Its a game mode that probably requires a lot of thought and balance changes to implement though. The Devs would probably be best served to fix most of the games balance issues before trying to add a mode like this or further changes and fixes to the balance would render this kind of mode too difficult or too pointless for most players to use and it would be something that they would need to continuously tweak after every rebalance.
I agree with Ratha. Currently I'm more scared of a Mini-boss Arch Diggle (and his 5 buddies) than I am of Lord Dredmor himself. Have you ever been counter-attacked by one of them things? You take a swing and WHAM, you're out 60+ health, thanks RNG. That's the sort of thing that needs to be sorted out before Gaslamp worries about overhauling (or adding massively to) the Skill Trees.
Arch-diggles are probably a touch too strong with the piercing damage. In the next patch I've boosted armour values a touch and given all heavy armour some piercing damage resistance which should help the survivability of late-game warriors a bit. Same for the armour skill. Sleeping enemies will no longer be able to dodge (or counter, I'm pretty sure). So it'll be like a free guaranteed hit. The sneakiness stat is a bit deceptive in that the number itself is really high but it gets checked fairly often so the gameplay effects of a high-looking number here are not quite as unbalanced as one might imagine. Still, it might stand to use some adjustment at the higher levels, and perhaps something could be done to make it feel more in line with the other stats. We're adding a hunger mechanics but it's more of a soft debuff that's rather annoying than a hard "you die" counter. And there's more, but I'll keep this note quick for now.
Number 8 I think is really the biggest problem. When you make everything scale with magic power and force a warrior to choose the staves/mage armor anyway, of course warriors are gonna suck compare to mage. Melee skills need to scale with melee power, and Rogue skills scale with sneakiness.
Great to hear about the Arch Diggles! I hope your upcoming buffs to Lord Dredmor include giving him the ability to realize you're there and maybe throw a spell or two at you when you're more than 4-5 squares away with Radiant Aura/Potion extending your Sight Radius and a high Sneakiness stat. I killed him from afar with Bolts and Wands and he basically had no idea what was happening to him. I guess all those years of "slowly breaking free" left him a little senile, the poor thing. Also, re: new "Hunger" mechanic, I wonder how it will work for Vampires? Are you guys really going to make two different versions of it, one for "normal" characters - "Eat FOOD to not die!"* (say it in the Announcer Voice!) and one for Vampires - "Suck BLOOD to not die!"...? I'm assuming you guys already thought of this, because putting in a "eat or die"* mechanic when a character is literally not allowed to eat food? Yeah, that could be bad. =p *Yes, I know he said you won't die, you'll just get a debuff (or something), but I was going for Overly Dramatic Announcer Guy Mode™.
"We're adding a hunger mechanics but it's more of a soft debuff that's rather annoying than a hard "you die" counter. And there's more, but I'll keep this note quick for now. " - This is pretty brilliant. I know other roguelikes require food but it's apparent that DoD was built much more for HP management and combat in mind, so this will suit the game perfectly. @Marak: They said in the upcoming patch notes that they're making a new sound byte for Vampires. Other than that I imagine they'll function like Slash 'Em where sucking blood and draining corpses counts towards making you less hungry.
@KittenMaster Oh, wow! Someone other than me who played Slash'EM! Super Lotts of Added Stuff Hack' Extended Magic! As for hunger, I always was curious why anyone wanted to add to any game really. Then again, people though Morrowind needed Eating/sleeping/drinking...which it needs as much as I need a RPG to my face. Roguelike would make sense, but has anyone realized how long it takes to die of starvation in a roguelike? With how common food is in Angband, it takes you around 5000 turns. Give or take. Yeah, that's not going to be a big deal, really, in this game. 5000 turns is a long enough time to find food.
