We need a committed balance critic

Wild Magic + Mana Mastery (released recently for anyone who doesn't know), mainly because of gaining mana while using cantrip, ignoring all the other procs which make it even worse.

 

A review of every completed mod? I'm not sure if that's possible given the time constraints. No, scratch that, I know its not possible given the time constraints. "Balance" for big game developers is usually created using hundreds of hours of playtime by a dozen or so people who are all on the same page regarding targets and difficulty.

I'm not even 100% sure what counts as a completed mod in this forum, much less what each modder's target power level is. I intend to grab a mod that looks fairly interesting, then ask the question, "Is this mod balanced within the confines of the core game standing alone?" I'll analyze it in the context of my vanilla wins, my personal play style and my ideas on balance. Then I will blab about my opinions. Sniktch Other people will tell me I'm a numbskull. Eventually, a consensus will be reached.

As for balancing multiple mods at once? Perish the thought. Mods are incredibly open-ended, self-monitored and unstandardized. We cannot expect everyone's mods to be balanced with everyone else's. Without arbitrarily handing one person the ability to order changes in other people's mods that's impossible, because modders aren't going to want to (and shouldn't have to) bend their vision to other modders. At some point, the player community has to take some responsibility for how mods play and this is it.

If there's some unbalanced skill combo between one modders skills, mention it to that modder. If they're smart, they'll work with you to hammer it out. If they're not, eventually the community will learn to ignore their work until they shape up. If there's some unbalanced skill combo between two modder's skills, point it out. But we're not a game company (or else someone would be telling the modders programmers to change their mods) we can't test everything. Some things are just going to have to come out when they come out, and get fixed when they can, to the extent their creators are willing to bend.

And you can always play without mods. If the potential for massive cross skill unbalance bothers you, find a balance reviewer you trust, stick to skills they've reviewed and only play one mod at a time. There's huge numbers of skill combos in the core game, I can't believe they've all been tapped to their limit already. People have a habit of looking at one or two things of obvious power (Necronomics, Promethean) and ignoring plenty of other powerful options simply because they've gotten comfortable with them. Get creative. Keep in mind this is a diehard Johnny talking, so I may be full of bull (but you knew that already.)

Ultimately, mods let you customize you play experience. If you can't find one that lets you have fun while playing this game that's your own fault. You might want to think about finding a different game.

EDIT: Massively ninjaed. The "taboo list" would be a good way to let people know about tricky mod combos to avoid while also telling modders they can pose a problem.

 

I agree completely with my worthy adversary - and while my method may be not traditionally scientific, there's a reason. True empirical testing is impossible in a situation where EVERY variable changes with EVERY test. So the best way to reach a middle ground(AKA generally accepted balance) is to have a "low target" tester....and a "high target" tester. A player who eschews the worst standing game imbalances, to give as much of a baseline as can be obtained in such a shifting environment with ONE mod, and a player who goes for the throat and rams straight for the worst gamebreaking possible with the core game and the same one mod. We see high-end performance, and low-end performance, and can search for the middle between the two. For example, Blood Knight + Berzerker + Dual Wielding makes zoo cleanup(and often killing) easy once you have Bloody Mess and Combat Momentum; melee-kill the hordes, then throw things with a and that is buffed by a huge amount due to all the melee hit/kill procs to one-shot the chicken AI mobs without even needing a clear line of sight. Toss Killing Blow on top to ensure there are no dodges or blocks. That's a prime example of unexpected synergy with a less-used toolset and core game bugs - which is the most common breaker of balance in mod content.

And I'm not precisely formally applying for the job - I know my strengths, my weaknesses, and my blind spots, and I would be the first to say this needs a LOT more than two people in the end. My focused attention tends to rest on warrior skill issues, sometimes to the exclusion of the other classes. I'd guess we'd need probably at least 7 or 8 for a "best estimate" grade of accuracy - warrior high, warrior low, rogue high, rogue low, mage high, mage low, and a high/low pair for "off the wall" builds mixing and matching willy-nilly - and the more people we have working on the issue, the more data we can collate, and the more accurately we can pin down that elusive beast "Balance".

For my .02, "balance" is ROUGHLY where the classic 5/1/1 or 4/2/1 Rogue builds sit - every level needs to be taken with some degree of care, there are hills and valleys of difficulty, but nothing is ever "oh, a zoo. *spam right mouse till the reward pops up*" as mages see nowadays, nor is it "....great. another zoo packed with corrupting monsters and bosses. *prays*" as warriors are now prone to. Everything is by the player's skill and knowledge, the deck is neither stacked against them nor for them. The game is HARD...but fair.

 

I'd like to offer one suggestion to this well thought out discussion.

Rather than note that mods are overpowered or underpowered, note what kind of player they'd appeal to. There's nothing wrong with a mod that creates a very difficult skill path, or another that creates one which is extremely easy to win with. Not everybody likes vanilla ice cream, but everybody wants to know what flavors are in the cartons. Of course, if a mod is broken, that's another matter.

Just a thought, at any rate.

 

A good idea, overall, but very hard to implement - to me, a mod that makes the game as a whole significantly easier is "broken", because it takes away the fundamental nature of a Roguelike - unlike most modern games, the game is not helping you win because the story ends if you don't and the mass market doesn't like "and the hero died alone and unheralded, his mission failed, the end." Roguelikes aren't meant to be "I Wanna Be The Guy"-level hard, wherein the game is actively trying to break the player and does not follow its own rules from screen to screen(first cherries fall down, then they fall up, then they go sideways, for example), nor is it meant to be Bioware or Bethesda style, wherein you have your hand held most of the way and unlimited mulligans(and note, I DO like most Bioware and some Bethesda games, I'm just well-aware of the level of handholding needed to tell a good story in an interactive medium like a video game).

A roguelike won't screw you by changing the rules once you've learned them....but if you do something stupid, it WILL make you pay for it, harshly. So for me, something that moves warrior play into the current state of mages is a BAD thing - and I'll say so. Something that moves mages down to warrior hard is also a bad thing, and I'll say so....after a few weeks(hey, I'm only human and that frustration needs some schadenfraude eventually). Perhaps a good way to view it is mods noted as overpowered can be for those who want to roam the dungeon, noting all the little in-jokes and just having a good old Diablo 2 slaughterfest(and again, I still fire up my copy of Diablo 2 from time to time just for that old kick of facing down and army, and knowing it'll be a massacre), and mods noted as underpowered are the equivalent of doing Nethack with vows.

 

I'm not sure if trying to make warrior as easy of a route as wizard is the equivalent of "helping" the player too much. Unless going full berserker was *meant* to be a handicap, I would see it as simply opening up a new way to play the game, right up to the exact point where it becomes as good as the best vanilla build, and THEN maybe it's a LITTLE overpowered.

 

Personally I see it as less a handicap, and more a mistake in how critical (and possibly counter) works right now, due to this making it possible, and very likely in the deeper part of the dungeon, to go from fully healed to dead in one turn when in melee against one creature.

 

I like Sniktch's idea.

-elsewhere-

Paging the four riders. Would Famine, Plague, War and Death please report to Earth?

-back in the DoD forums-

A person to look at each of the four basic "types" of mods (Warrior/Rogue/Mage/?) would probably work best. Of course more, running as many tests as possible, will only yield more data from which to draw conclusions. If nothing else, that would help them/us keep up with the sheer quantity of content that comes out 'round here. After all, just since I started tracking with the forums about a month and a half ago there's been probably 8-10 released. More, probably, but my attention hasn't been on this forum very much (since I still wasn't ready for mods at the time.)

Also, Borodin, while I intend to make a few notes "style" of mod they will be entirely from my own point of view, and may not translate well to other players. As Sniktch has noted-

-elsewhere-

What do you mean the brimstone pit's frozen solid?

-and back-

-pinning down people's 'flavor of ice cream' as you put it is very hard to do. As I said in my last post, at some point finding the right mods becomes the player's own responsibility. If someone nerfs a mod you liked as it already was, you don't have to update to it. We're people who like to look under the hood. Sometimes that means turbocharging it as much as possible. Sometimes that means trying to restore the classics.

 

There could be a few mod 'critics' that comment on play styles, its aesthetics/ flavor, some other non-balance things and whether they personally liked a particular mod, so if you know that you have similar tastes you might be compelled to try mods that you would never have noticed before.. sort of like a reviewer for mods would be really cool. Skills in writing would be a big plus for such a reviewer, I've seen some amazing pieces of writing on these forums ^^

 

Just to give people an idea there are 77,519,922,480 possible combinations (assuming my maths is correct) of just the base (Core/RotDG) skills.
So with even just one mod skill there are 93,963,542,400 possible skill combinations, though only 2,349,088,560 possible combinations with that one skill in it and the rest base skills.
In those there are alot of different ways to take skill ranks as well. As anyone can see any majorly comprehensivly testing is unlikely to be possible.
Though any testing or feedback is always good so dont feel discoraged by the numbers.

 

...Yet once you know the numbers, it hard not to think about them. >.> I suppose on my occasional play throughs I can see what i can add in regards to the reviews and such. I doubt I'd be a good candidate, however, since I like to play oddball stuff, particularly if it includes polymorphing of one sort or another. For instance, I have thrown together Were-diggle, and Demonology on one of my playthroughs (only to find a glaring bug with the uncontrollable transformation). I've also got a playthrough of Gardener with Wild Magic and Cooliomancy (adding in Leyline Walker for additional mana management). I think the furthest floor I've gotten to is DL4, and a great deal of that is limited playtime and the desire to try out various skill builds.