Modifiers, Gazes, Party Control, Pariah, Links

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Re: Modifiers, Gazes, Party Control, Pariah, Links

Postby Abe » Fri Oct 30, 2015 9:26 pm

Support definitely has a lot of strengths in its favor. You get access to, as far as I've seen, extremely rare and powerful spells like Haste, AoE debuffs, and Ember Burst, that to my knowledge can't be learned ingame except for from lucky attribute rolls. Most importantly, as a support you're never *truly* just a support (aside from the earlygame) because of the existence of items. Even if you don't have a single true heal, attack, or status clear in your repertoire you actually do have some of the strongest in the game in the form of items. It also synergizes naturally with being a summoner as your team won't suddenly lose a key feature while you're spending turns desummoning/summoning. (This is what I personally have the hardest time with regarding draining melee and Evade Step builds, which effectively stop functioning in their role once you stop to manage summons.)

Though frankly I don't use attack items enough, especially when I get them early, so that may be one of the problems I've been having with 1 1/2 consistency. However it does raise the question of whether aggregating chance (finding items, getting enough early EXP, getting zombies, getting lucky in the fight itself, or not running into Jiangshi first/at all on 1/2) is sufficient, or if that situation should be relatively reliably survivable as a rule. In the case of Mind Mask, I think Direct Gaze will already do the matchup an enormous amount of good since unlike zombies they ARE mind vulnerable. You're probably right in that Mind Blast would be too strong, that's an endgame-tier ability all on it's own. I haven't personally used it though so I don't have a firm grasp of just how high that stun rate is when you have +30% cunning, but I have been on the receiving end.

Really, when it comes to 1 1/2 it's level 1 jiangshi packs that pose the biggest threats. West, Zombies, Firecats, Ghouls, and even Chindis can all be relatively reliably managed using their capture mechanics no matter what loadout you're playing, and Slimes aren't much of a threat to begin with. What sets Jiangshi apart is their high damage stat layout, their chase and burst potential via Pounce, and the huge regeneration which serves as a DPT check to be able to kill them, and makes spending turns rescuing summons and healing become counterproductive. (Also the capture quest that makes them, if anything, even harder to fight.) If anything I'd say they're the true "boss fight" of the floor, rather than West and the zombies which you can relatively reliably just run away from. For that same reason they should be handled with a lot of care, as that kind of challenge is what roguelikes should strive for in the first place.

Like you said, it's something I'll need to keep challenging in order to better grasp my opinion on. There might even be a solid answer in the game already and I just haven't found it yet.

The level 2 thing is a bit weird though. The thing with filling the first 2 floors with weak demons is not just that the EXP is low, but also your recruitment options are also very weak. Notably with a full level 1 team the only demon that offers a good offense and defense in a single package is Wisp. Wisp also happens to be completely awesome, I never leave home without him. :P

You do raise a good point on the resists. I got it in my head that the resists are a balance point, but it's also true that their relevancy changes with the type prevalence within the game. (Then again the same goes for the balance of pretty much everything in the game.) For that reason it might be moot to worry about balance when you're in an active content/system development stage, I guess baseline playability is the only thing that currently matters, and the game is certainly winnable judging from the scoreboards. I almost feel like I've been thinking about the wrong things this entire time.

As an aside, I also might have a disproportionate phobia of Light weakness simply because I don't know the exact numbers of Hand of Light and thus have no idea if it might be capable of killing me or my demons at any given moment. Judging from the (rather amusing) tendency of my chindis to cast Snuff Out on 75% HP allies that have Guilt just to get the heal out of it, it's probably 0% chance for a much larger proportion than I think.

Not sure which code you're referring to, if you mean I'm going off-topic then I apologize, when I get into a brainstorm-y mode like this I have a hard time reigning back random thoughts. On the note of Pounce, I don't mind the idea of gap closers, I just feel like it (even compared to other gap closers) does an awful lot of things. Pounce basically teleports, attacks, and stuns in a single turn. Compare to Haunt which is just a teleport and a psuedo-stun, Bull Rush which to my knowledge doesn't ignore obstacles, and Leap Attack which is a rare lategame ability. Pounce is also more common and usually appears earlier than any other gap closer.

It's theoretically balanced by being a cooled ability, but the thing with cooldowns is that they disproportionately affect the player; your numbers are limited while the dungeon can always just throw more demons, with independent cooldowns, at you. When you're fighting a huge pack of Zars for instance, something (sometimes multiple things) can be getting pounced and panicked every single turn. (This is, in my opinion, one of the big reasons why Turdak's Sanctum is arguably the most dangerous floor in the entire game. The other being huge quantities of Autoantipathy lizards.)

I guess it's a question of what kind of role you want a move to serve. Right now pretty much every charge is extremely offensively potent, especially with numbers: it becomes stronger with larger numbers because of elements like chain stunning and cooldown cycling, and jumping over things makes it even better for ignoring the front row and dismantling whatever back row supports the player has set up for the encounter (and comparatively this is less beneficial for the player as you usually don't want to jump into the midst of large groups of enemies). If for instance you wanted a charge move that predominantly rewards the player for going melee, you can replace Stun with something that has diminishing returns when used in larger numbers. IE: A defensive or evasion self-buff, as defense buffs inherently are more valuable the more things you have attacking you. A non-stacking AoE debuff, excellent in the case of one user charging a crowd but less effective when you have a many users charging a few.

One might even say that extremely powerful offensive tools will inherently favor the dungeon, while powerful defensive tools favor the player. The reason for this is because the player's objective is just to survive to the win condition, while the objective of the dungeon is to kill the player.
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Re: Modifiers, Gazes, Party Control, Pariah, Links

Postby Ferret » Sat Oct 31, 2015 2:08 am

No argument on your assessment of support. :) Re: Melee and summoning mechanics, I think you may have also underlined for me one of the lingering problems with melee... hm... I have a planned mechanic I could use for addressing that that isn't implemented yet, but... grumble... I really need to get back to level/demon content here at some point, at least for awhile. :( This underlines one of the hardest parts of having a game in development and in the wild that I admit did not anticipate fully: trying to balance the needs of the current players (which often are polish, UI, and balance related) with the longer term goals of the game (which are implementing still unimplemented systems and of course, content, content, content.) I tend to lean towards the first because I value feedback (and, almost as importantly, because I want to show that I do by acting on it promptly), but... at some point I'm going to have to throw things on a waiting list so I can make more content. This is especially driven home when I have people on the scoreboard with Cycle 5 wins. :P

Anyway, sorry for the diversion. :P It's been on my mind lately. :D

Moving on: I will say I have a pretty high survival rate in Tower: 1 & 1/2... but yes, sometimes, on some builds, I have to pull out all the stops: use items effectively, no major mistakes in demon match ups, ruthless capture mechanic exploitation, the works. This is somewhat Demon's design though. Part of why I made Demon was I had gotten to the point in most of my favorite roguelikes (DCSS, ToME, etc.) where the only way the first couple of hours of each game were challenging or interesting at all anymore is if I was playing ridiculously crippled characters/conducts. I suppose those are valid ways for those games to provide difficulty for players who want a challenge... but I wanted to be able to play with the gloves off and get challenged, best game vs. best game, not have to walk in with handcuffs. I don't know, maybe this doesn't make sense to anyone but me? :D Anyway, short version: I *think* Tower: 1 & 1/2 is okay. It's very tough, and if you're not an expert you're probably going to die there a fair bit, but that's within the design parameters so for now I accept that.

Mind Blast's Stun rate with a +30% Cunning rating would be around 45%. For an ability you can spam (so long as your SP holds) and target anything you can see with, yeah, it's pretty devastating. The chance would jump to more like 70% on Mind weak targets, which is a pretty sure recipe for the target having a bad day in the Tower.

Heh, I can agree with Jiang Shi being the boss of the floor maybe, at least the non-optional one. Especially if they get a modifier... sheesh some of those turn out bad. You haven't lived until you've faced a pack of Cursed Jiang Shi on Tower: 1 & 1/2 with Distract and Weaken. :D

Wisp is definitely the MVP of the starter monsters when you're fighting other starter/very low level monsters. :) If I can manage it, I use Wisp, Zombie, and either Malingee, Faerie, or Gandayah for my default "exploring 1 & 1/2" party with most builds. Jiang Shi can't steal any HP from other undead, which neuters their threat nicely... provided you and your support stay out of Pouncy range so they don't get any funny ideas. Malingee works too: they can drain him, but he has a 33% chance to outright block any of their attacks so it works out somewhat still. Goblin will work in a pinch, they dodge 30% of the time, but without some help they hit like a wet noodle. That said, Goblin + Wisp works better if you have some ranged projectiles you want to lob into the Jiang Shi, thanks to Low Profile.

I have to admit I almost did a spit take with my tea when I read what you said Chindi were doing. :P I mean... it makes sense now that I think of it... but it's also a little crazy. :D Unfortunately, I had better fix it, because one of my "keeping the AI honest" mechanics is that the AI is not allowed to accurately calculate the success rate of an ability when judging when to use it... it instead makes a rough guess with some fuzziness built in. This could cause disaster in the scenario outlined: if the fuzzy guess comes up 0% when the reality is 2% and that 2% triggers... ugh :(

Anyway, AI being a rules lawyer aside, the chances on Hand of Light/Night/Snuff Out, etc. are linear. So if one of them says "50% chance at 25% HP", it would be a 0% chance at 50%+ MaxHP and a 100% chance at 0% HP (if you weren't already dead, of course.) However... these chances are affected by the user's Magic stat, the target's resistances, etc. Against a target weak to the element in question, the 50% success amount would be more like 35%... which means you'd have to hit 0% you'd need close to 70%. Add in a high Magic stat too and it could get pretty ugly. Come to think of it, I probably need to make some adjustment here. :P

Re: Code! Oh, derp, sorry about that. "Broke the code" was just an expression for "you figured something out" :D Though I did get a good laugh out of the idea of me lecturing someone about being off-topic in a forum that has maybe 3 active users... including me. :D Frankly, even if I had such rules, I'd likely ignore them if someone was giving me good data piles. :P I'm more interested in making Demon awesome than I am running a tight forum. :)

Re: Pounce. You hit one point here that isn't specific to Pounce, but is a current design issue. Double encounters are pretty damn deadly. The trouble with giving the player a party of 4+5 at all times is that it means the absolute minimum for a challenging encounter is probably going to be at least 4 enemies. This is all well and good if you run into exactly one encounter... it quickly becomes a nightmare if you hit two at once, because it goes from a slightly-in-the-player's-favor 4+5 vs 4 to a 4+5 v 8... and 8 actives is far stronger than 4 actives + 5 inactives. I've attempted to stopgap this by simply making dungeon floors bigger.. but I need to find a real solution to it. I have some ideas, and it's the top of the list for being addressed when I move into the "content" phase since Step 1 of content is "get rid of these ridiculously large and largely empty floors for more reasonably sized ones"... which is going to mean I need a real solution to this so folks don't get doubled so often.

I could definitely create some less offensive-themed charges to pass out.. but, this is one where I want to wait and see for a bit longer before I make changes again since the current setup is relatively new and burdened with at least one major system issue (the double encounter thing described above) that is definitely making it worse than it otherwise would be.

PS: There is a bug with Turdak's Sanctum in the current builds where half the encounter chart is missing... which means Atua show up about twice as often as they should. In theory any monster should be okay to encounter any number of times, but with the double encounter stuff... yeah, that can get bad.
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Re: Modifiers, Gazes, Party Control, Pariah, Links

Postby Abe » Sat Oct 31, 2015 7:36 am

I don't think melee characters are left completely out in the cold. Summoning can be awkward for them, but they do get a naturally better survivability than mages in a lot of cases. One of my biggest scares as a support caster is getting pounced from around a corner while exploring, and for a melee that's not even always a bad thing to have happen. Mages get to avoid pressure more than melee characters, but melee characters are better at doing things under pressure than mages. Certain abilities like Evade Step and Parry may stop working in the meantime, but that might also be a considered a tradeoff to using them (as they're comparatively stronger when in effect) over something like Evasion, Mind Reader, and Block Physical that's always active. I personally am just an extremely greedy and meticulous style of player so I'm naturally naturally inclined to prefer the most controlling style of play.

On a vaguely related note, how do you feel about different archetypes having different levels of minion disposability? The reason why I'm asking (aside from simple curiosity) is because having trouble managing summons technically is only a "problem" if you care enough to manage them to begin with. I primarily play support so I put tremendous weight on building and maintaining a team of super-demons to serve as my main battle units, but a melee PC who already serves as the team's super-unit may get away with just letting his demons die every now and then. If you wanted to really run with the concept you could even introduce abilities to capitalize from the death of your allies (well there already are some, now that I think of it). Honestly, the idea is so interesting I might go as far as making a melee damage god and just filling my team with healers with Draw Wounds whose only role will be to keep me alive until they die. :twisted:

Honestly, there are so many untested concepts that I feel a little guilty for just pelting you with the rough ideas before refining them myself first. :P

As for the Jiangshi and 1 1/2, I think they might not actually be too much of a problem. I presumably just jumped to an exaggerated conclusion from playing one of the greediest class combinations in the game that also happened to be detrimentally bugged. Even something really greedy like a Buff Orb with Ember Burst could probably clear them by slapping Haste and Might onto a Raicho and watching it go to town on them.

The chindi thing actually happens shockingly often. It took like 5 times (and one case of an enemy chindi doing it to another enemy) before finally I acknowledged it a regular occurrence because of how absurd (and scary) it is. Imagine if giving them Soul/Flesh Eater made them start trying to harvest their allies. :?

And on subject of double encounters, 8 was supposed to be unintended? From Turdak's onward it feels like 6+ is the standard, and huge packs of 10+ aren't all that uncommon. It's honestly not that bad as long as disabling status isn't involved, but when there's a lot of pounces or, in my worst nightmares, mind blasters, it can get a little out of hand purely because of the inability to escape.

About Turdak's Sanctum's encounter pool, I honestly thought it was intentional. It's a dungeon full of spirits, floating skulls, and enemies that cause Panic, lead by a giant skeleton. It seems very thematic. :P

As for polish and balance, I honestly wouldn't sweat it too much. For what my opinion's worth, the game is very fun, very beatable, and to my knowledge there's no gamebreaking bugs, unbeatable situations, or game-trivializing advantages. That said, it's clear that there's a lot of things that I personally have yet to try. I think content and system development is very welcome at the current stage.
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Re: Modifiers, Gazes, Party Control, Pariah, Links

Postby Ferret » Sat Oct 31, 2015 4:57 pm

The survivability bit is true. :) I wasn't planning on going toooo far with the melee summoning changes I was alluding to, just something like replacing the 1 turn cost with a 1 turn cooldown on a free action instead for example. The different relics are supposed to (eventually) somewhat fill the role of races ala DCSS anyway (i.e.: offering different playstyles, not just stat changes, in hopes of leading to increased replayability), so it isn't unexpected that some of them might have subtly different summoning mechanics as part of that. :D

I wouldn't have a problem with different levels of minion disposability, so long as the different points on the spectrum remain fun and effective. :D A melee character with Draw Wounds-based support could actually be pretty darn effective, incidentally. :D Draw Wounds is an amazing ability. :)

I don't know if I'd send even a buffed Raicho against Jiang Shi though. :P Being weak to both Body *and* Pierce is going to make that heal return on the Jiang Shi bites huge. Kinda like what happens when they eat jello snacks... err.. Slimes. :D That said, if a Hasted and Mighty one managed to live, it would flash fry them in short order. :)

Gaaaah. I really need to fix that Chindi thing before the next build. If they had gotten the math wrong (which is intentionally quite possible for the AI!) you mighht be here cursing at me lots instead of laughing about it with me. :P

Well, I should clarify a bit more. 5+ is sometimes normal because if I want to use lower level monsters in an encounter, they count for less and I will allow 5th or even 6th monsters in that group. 10+ is definitely a double encounter though... and yeah, it's not really intentional, in part because there are some abilities (like the ones you mention) that just become too nasty if present in that kinda numbers.

The missing encounters for Turdak's are still in that theme. :D The monsters in the missing encounters aren't different, just different configurations. i.e.: Instead of Akateko and Acheri, you might find Akateko and Chindi.

Yeah, I'm getting close to the point where I will table anything other than game-breaking stuff and just jam on content and missing systems for awhile. I do want to finish the capture mechanics review (there are some glaring problems there still, most notably the "kill X guys in Y turns" ones which are basically a crap shoot w/ the current level layouts) and at least throw a bone in the direction of some AI tweaks... but I'm even starting to have second thoughts about that given how many winners or close-to-winners are running around out there now.
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Re: Modifiers, Gazes, Party Control, Pariah, Links

Postby Abe » Sat Oct 31, 2015 8:25 pm

The concept sounds really good. It's worth note that it would be a pretty massive buff, because free actions are fantastic. I use Draw Wounds specifically because it lets me do things like pump up my tank and escape an engagement at the same time, and being able to summon/desummon sounds even better. That said I naturally like the idea of free actions because they offer not just another option, but more options (and combinations thereof) per turn to the player, which therefore increases the complexity of choice provided it's met with sufficient challenge. Making summon switching easier should also, theoretically, increase the number and variety of summons used in a given battle. The current two turn cost is pretty substantial and heavily discourages any kind of switching other than setting up good type matchups prior to direct engagement, it can make using niche summons (IE an early combat debuffer, or a glass cannon that runs through it's HP/SP really quickly) pretty hard.

If double free action turns out to be too good there's also the possibility of making just summoning or desummoning a free action, or something like quickening the first turn of summons.

As an aside, I didn't think so either about the Raicho, but then I realized that their Shock rate gets extremely high against Weak opponents, which actually does a pretty good job of shutting down the Jiangshi's healing. It's a little similar to how Wisp is technically vulnerable to magic damage, but not as much as you'd think because they dodge everything anyway.

Also on another vaguely related note (your post reminded me of your recent announcement about possibly improving monster detection), I think that since there's no backtracking or respawns a "level feeling" system (examples being DoomRL and some Angband variants) would be a pretty nice addition. Basically just some flavor text and color indicator to clue you in when there's no enemies left ("You feel safe") or when there's a hero/unique on the floor. ("You have a special feeling about this level.") In DoomRL's case it also hints when there's an extra dungeon entrance on the floor, since it's entirely possible to get to the end of the game by just diving staircases and thus missing these things.
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Re: Modifiers, Gazes, Party Control, Pariah, Links

Postby Ferret » Sat Oct 31, 2015 10:31 pm

First, a small correction: I knew something sounded crazy about my Snuff Out math I gave you earlier. I should have checked it instead of just assuming I remembered. :)

Here's how it ACTUALLY works. :P If you have a "50% death at 25%" ability... the real 0% point is actually just (roughly) 30%, and the real 100% point is (roughly) 20%. Weakness would bring this up to about 45%/35/25%ish, and a high magic stat would be able to push it to 60/45/35ish. It can get pretty spookily high, but not kind of ridiculous like I was wrongly proclaimly before. :P For abilities with lower than "50% at 25%", the numbers change proportionally. i.e.: If an ability is 50% at 12%, the 0% point is roughly 15% and the 100% point is roughly 9%. (If that makes Hand of Light/Night seem weak, keep in mind they do apply *after* the triggering attack... that and they're passive. :D )

Which frankly, this also suggests I probably need to find a better way to explain this in the tooltip, nobody is going to read "50% chance at 25% MaxHP" and think it's already at 100% once you get just a bit lower than that. I'll have to noodle on that.

Anyway, corrections and iffy tooltips aisde:

Yeah, that "buff" is actually part of an entirely missing system: Relic Upgrades. :) Basically, relics will come with a few upgrades at start (which ones depending on the relic), and can get more by defeating other summoners. But, it's still in the design phases... and it's not level content... so this isn't likely to be fully implemented anytime soon. :P That unfortunately makes me reluctant to talk about a lot of details.. I don't like hyping up a system I know I won't be adding in the near future. :D

Free actions are pretty nice, but they do have to be carefully added as you suggest, especially any that translate to damage (which is why so few of them do!) I'm interested in adding more (also for the reasons you suggest), I just have to do so cautiously. Refresh becoming a free action is on the list, the main thing in the way is trying to get the AI right on it. The AI's never had an easy time with Refresh once multiple characters have Refresh in the same group... and since the AI highly values free actions, making it one only further encourage Refresh loops. :D Once I solve that, I'll probably make Refresh a freebie.

Level feeling's a good idea that I should probably get to at some point. For now though, Demon at least tries to do everything possible to prevent you from missing special levels: if you use auto-explore to find the next portal, it should take you to special ones first :D You have to go out of your way to avoid them at this point, which, since there IS no backtracking, is a good thing. :)
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Re: Modifiers, Gazes, Party Control, Pariah, Links

Postby Abe » Sun Nov 01, 2015 1:35 am

Those Chindi numbers make pretty good sense, I remember mine sniping stuff at some impressive HP levels. The Hand passives in particular seem quite a bit less scary too, since there's no like 1% chance of being instagibbed at 50% or anything.

The summoning upgrades sound like a good addition at whichever point they come down the line. (I'm used to roguelike development times so I'm not too worried about this aspect.) I never really thought about the mechanic itself that much, but how well you can summon actually pretty heavily influences how you can utilize your backup demons. There's a lot more to it than I had initially thought.
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