Benefit for having many active abilities?

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Benefit for having many active abilities?

Postby Gaswafers » Tue Nov 29, 2016 8:56 am

So it's been said before that it's most optimal to only have a few active abilities and the rest be passives because you can only use one active(that isn't a free action) at once. Is this completely alright, or would there be interest in giving some sort of extra benefit to characters with many actives? Two big things it would do is make healers stronger and make wild modified demons stronger on average. As for what that benefit would be, my first thought was just higher max SP.
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Re: Benefit for having many active abilities?

Postby Ferret » Tue Nov 29, 2016 2:24 pm

Ideally, one of the benefits of having multiple actives should be being able to respond to different situations. Even for pure damage dealers, you'd (theoretically) want things like different damage types, single-target versus multi-target, etc. For controllers, debuffers, healers, and the like, you could want different elemental types for controllers, multiple debuff types, heals and condition cures that cover various situations, etc. Then, for any character, there are things like Refresh, Short Jaunt, Dash, etc. which can prove useful on any build.

Granted, I said (theoretically) up there because we may not be quite there yet balance wise. But that's what the plan is anyway. I have at times considered trying to restrict passives in some way, such as tying them to Max SP and/or SP recovery in some way, or limiting the number you can have on a single character. Not quite there on them yet though: for now I want to see if I can balance them on their own merits.
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Re: Benefit for having many active abilities?

Postby wizzzargh » Wed Nov 30, 2016 8:12 pm

Code: Select all
1) Vigor Siphon (Type: Dark, 30 SP. 70 Power attack, split between HP and MaxHP damage. 33% of the MaxHP damage is drained to the user as bonus MaxHP. Cannot miss.)
2) Exorcism (Type: Light, 25 SP. Only affects enemies weak to Light. 10-100 Power attack, based on the target's current HP (more HP = more Power). Cannot miss. Cooldown: Light (4))
3) Protect (Type: Buff, 20 SP. Improves defense by 25%.)
4) Battle Cry (Type: Buff, 35 SP. Briefly improves offense by 25% for you and your allies. Cooldown: Presence (6))
5) Oppressor (Type: Dark, Passive. Increases defense by 25% against enemies with lower HP. (Bonus is affected by Dark resistance.))
6) Ritualist (Type: None, Passive. Reduces the SP cost of magical abilities that cost 25 or more SP by 10 if no Cantrip abilities are on cooldown. Cooldown: Cantrip (0))
7) Eternal Glory (Type: Healing, Passive. Fully restores HP when HP reaches 0. Cannot be discarded when on cooldown. Cooldown: Soul (90))
8) Sudden Chill (Type: Ice, 25 SP. Only affects enemies. 40 Power attack. Chills all targets, reducing their accuracy, evasion, and movement speed by 12%.)

1) Cleave (Type: Slash, 15 SP. 70 Power attack.)
2) Ember Burst (Type: Fire, 15 SP. 70% chance to Ignite the targets, causing damage over a short duration.)
3) Bull Rush (Type: Impact, 10 SP. Must target a character. Charge to the target with a 70 Power attack. Inflicts Stun, causing the target to miss their next turn. Cooldown: Charge (6))
4) Protect (Type: Buff, 20 SP. Improves defense by 25%.)
5) Reshape (Type: Healing, 0 SP. Removes all negative status effects, then applies a 125 Power heal. Free action. Cooldown: Endure (5))
6) Counterattack (Type: Slash, Reactive. 50% chance to respond to damage dealt to you by adjacent enemies with a 55 Power attack.)
7) Dominator (Type: Mind, Passive. Provides a 20% chance for your Slash, Impact, and Pierce attacks to apply Charm, turning the target against their allies.)
8) Inquisition (Type: Light, 35 SP. 50% chance to inflict Guilt on enemy targets, healing those who damage the targets (excluding reactions).)

While having Frost Dart, Flame Dart, Shock Dart, Light Dart would be fairly lame, I've had pretty good results from multiple active abilities like this, with multiple cooldowns and multiple modes of attack beyond just 'different elemental types.'
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Re: Benefit for having many active abilities?

Postby Remora » Thu Dec 01, 2016 4:22 am

While many passive abilities can be nice, they do take away one slot for an attack or other ability that may have some sort of use. Some passive abilities, especially those that are focusing on what elemental attacks you are using, can make those abilities more powerful but while enough abilities stacked into one thing can be indeed very powerful, it might also become less useful in some situations. Of course, you have to build a well-balanced party, but some situations may require direct action from the player to overcome them.
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Re: Benefit for having many active abilities?

Postby onget » Wed Dec 21, 2016 8:23 pm

New ability idea
100SP, activate all active abilities.
But this looks OP
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Re: Benefit for having many active abilities?

Postby Seth » Thu Feb 09, 2017 7:26 pm

Most passives boost raw offensive or defensive power of a character under certain conditions. As a result, they can end up being quite important for a tank or attacker in their current implementation. Supports can run a lot of active abilities because of their "utility toolbox" type role, IE status removals, debuffs, buffs, which often don't care much about stacking a ton of passive bonuses.

As Wizz pointed out, there's also a synergy between cooldown abilities where you can cycle through multiple different cooldowns while enjoying the overall high power of each of them, although that arguably isn't particularly reactive use of multiple actives since the intent is to use a high quantity of powerful moves every fight in general.

It might be worthwhile to put in some more passives that reward combat characters for having or using a variety of actives, IE ToME 4 has a few passives that give you a different effect depending on the attack element you use.
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Re: Benefit for having many active abilities?

Postby Gaswafers » Sat Feb 11, 2017 12:11 am

I thought of something that would be a massive pain to implement.

Slots not being the only restriction on which abilities you can have; you also have "ability points" and each ability takes up a certain amount to have learned. It could lead to some interesting situations where somebody does a weird build just because it takes up the exact amount of ability points they have.
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Re: Benefit for having many active abilities?

Postby Ferret » Sat Feb 11, 2017 5:45 pm

I should point out that to some degree, I'm actually somewhat okay with lots of passives as a thing: To me, it's the equivalent of traditional roguelike melee/fighter builds where you have a lot of passive bonuses from awesome weapons and armor, but not all that many actual active things you do. Builds of this sort have been somewhat popular and reported as fun in Demon ("dirty needles" and "veil tank" builds both come to mind as examples)

An ability points system is a fun idea: the only problem is that in *THEORY*, the abilities are supposed to be equally balanced and I've been trying to fix cases where it becomes apparent this isn't true. I definitely am not silly headed enough to claim I've actually succeeded at that, but I'm not ready to abandon the effort just yet. I may have to relent at some point though: even Magic: the Gathering (the model on which my ability system design is loosely based) has to restrict/ban cards sometimes, as a way of controlling stronger cards.

Passives that vary depending on what you use them with could be interesting. There exactly is one very obscure example of this in the game already: Aurastrike, which adds damage and a status effect to physical attacks based on which elemental type out of Fire, Ice, and Elec you used the previous turn. To my surprise, it's a semi-popular ability, so there's definitely good reason to consider more of that sort.
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Re: Benefit for having many active abilities?

Postby Gaswafers » Sat Feb 11, 2017 7:44 pm

Aren't the basic melee attack abilities strictly better as they go up in power? Because you can perform basic attacks at that range too, your DPS will never fall off by using the higher tier ability. Unlike ranged attacks where you lose the range advantage if you run out of SP, elemental attacks where you lose the advantage of the element, status inflicters where you lose that aspect, etc.
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Re: Benefit for having many active abilities?

Postby Ferret » Sat Feb 11, 2017 7:55 pm

The higher rank basic attacks cost more SP... granted, they range from 5 to 15, which isn't a huge range if that's all you're using, but the higher cost ones can become a concern if you have other demands on your SP. I could see a character based more on status conditions passives opting to stay with the cheaper/weaker versions of attacks, or a character who has other SP-heavy abilities (ex: healing/buffing?) they want to use that they consider more important than their basic attack damage.

I won't argue that for *most* builds, you should probably use the 100 Power/15 SP versions as soon as they become available. But, I think the 70/5 and 85/10 versions still have places too, even if they're small ones. Generally speaking, I will usually only consider an ability out of balance if it is either used almost always by relevant builds, or practically never. I don't mind having "situational" or even "very situational" abilities.
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