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Post by Karjus on Dec 10, 2013 0:24:40 GMT -5
So, first of all going to say I'm absolutely loving this. Really enjoyed Cyber Knights, but I absolutely adore the personalized characters with their stories. Very curious to see if different characters for the classes end up having their own specific twists beyond slight changes to dialogue.
Going through on Torment, and finding it just brilliant. Have to be careful, but with positioning and drawing the enemy out you can take them down one by one. High damage seems to win the day in this situation.
Onto the questions..
A) Out of the weapon classes, do 2-handed spears always have the highest damage but largest range? Don't want to get in to far with my current choice of swords if spears would suit my style better. B) Do you know what other character types you're going to have for the other slots beyond the ones for the Thief slot. (Think I saw mention Assassin and Rogue for that?) C) What sort of level do you think will be the maximum by the end of the game? D) What are the actual differences in the difficulties? Better item drops? Creature hitpoints/damage increases?
Impressions
A) It seems a touch odd that the Wizard's Flame spell second level seems to barely upgrade. From 3+ the jump in damage is rather substantial, but from 1-2 there is almost nothing. B) Damage generally seems to win out over debuffing/buffing on Torment. They simply don't stop enough damage compared to actually killing the enemy.
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Post by Karjus on Dec 10, 2013 0:56:34 GMT -5
Nightmare.... Not Torment. Apologies!
Sent from my GT-I9100P using proboards
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Post by Cory Trese on Dec 10, 2013 2:40:51 GMT -5
A) not always -- I think Andrew will probably be able to post a full weapon catalog for Episode 1 Act 1 and Act 2 soon. Spears have the largest range, but it isn't always maximum damage that they use to make up for the low minimum damage -- there is also Accuracy and Parry, which factor in a lot when you are building around buffs.
B) Rogue should be available pretty soon -- the alpha team will agree that her artwork is pretty cool!
C) Between 45 and 64 depending on your play style
D) All monster abilities, AI, talents, damage, armor, drops, XP, gold, monster level. It's a TB game so difficulty is in the foundation of every system.
B) I think buffs and curses are the only way to survive on Nightmare -- that is the intended outcome of this type of mathematical structure -- lots of variation in build that yield competitive results.
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Post by Karjus on Dec 10, 2013 3:44:29 GMT -5
And one more question...
A) Are enemy spawns static or scaled on level?
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Post by Cory Trese on Dec 10, 2013 4:30:13 GMT -5
A) individual monster stats are scaled by level and monster "cluster" difficulty is scaled by level as well.
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Post by fallen on Dec 10, 2013 8:57:00 GMT -5
The best way to know about weapon progressions is to go into the leveling screen and read about them on Vraes' Skill page. He describes spears, swords, hammers very accurately. They all hold strongly to their described pattern ("1-H Spears provide balanced accuracy and parry and cause focused damage for 2 AP.") but there are, of course, outliers.
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Post by fallen on Dec 10, 2013 8:58:04 GMT -5
While Firebolt 2 only adds +5 damage, it adds +2 points of accuracy. I will take a look at this.
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Post by Karjus on Dec 12, 2013 9:38:10 GMT -5
Couple more random selection of questions.
A) What constitutes as "Ranged Accuracy"? Any attack, be it via weapon or ability that you cannot perform against a target in an adjacent tile is what I am assuming? B) Likely a bit of a random one, but I'm assuming Monster abilities are scaled to take into account what you'd consider the "average" equipment for that level in the game? For example, a level 6 Monster so you'd expect the party to have reached Oskahold and have the equipment from the store there? C) Is there any bonus conferred from dual wielding? D) Is there anything to balance the AP-cost by weapon skills beyond SP usage? For example, Outlander 1 uses an AP-4 weapon to use Crushing Blow once while Outlander 2 uses an AP-1 weapon and casts it 7 times. E) I'm also curious as to the balance between Str vs Dex builds for melee fighters. Those who focus on Str only see Accuracy returns, while Dex builds see both Accuracy and Dodge. Does Monster damage reduction, and difference in weapon damage across types end up seeing Str builds making up for their lack of mobility/defense? F) Do loot drops take into account Level, or depend just on the area/difficulty?
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Post by fallen on Dec 12, 2013 11:27:03 GMT -5
A) Any attack that is ranged (Firebolt, Bow, etc). B) Yes. If you don't keep up with your equipment, ... it's very bad. C) Dual Wielding uses the best of the two weapons' Accuracy, the best of the two weapons' Parry, and combines their AP and Damage. D) The weapons are balanced taking their AP cost into account. There is no way to change a weapon's AP cost. E) Strength is a powerful offensive stat. Dexterity helps defensively, but is not going to help most melee fighters (Outlander, i.e. anyone not using Light Blades or Bows). You'll find Strength to be a critical attribute for warriors. F) Area, difficulty.
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Post by Karjus on Dec 12, 2013 11:50:07 GMT -5
So, for dual wielding it is an average of the AP and the Damage?
And by powerful offensive stat, does that mean it helps more than dexterity does in accuracy in their respective skills? Or that it helps in other ways? Otherwise, what is to stop someone building a Light Blade Outlander with a nice focus on Berserk with Karijtan buffing with Burning Blade? He'd have more defense than a Strength Build, and make vastly more use out of those two abilities. (7 attacks a round with an additional 64 damage for each and 36% critical chance sounds like he'd cause a lot more havoc than someone with 1-2 attacks instead unless they cause a ton more base damage with each.)
I'm very curious to see future equipment to see how you've balanced it out, especially with flat damage addition abilities which always favour more attacks.
Not meaning to sound sceptic or such! Not my intention, I'm honestly just very interested to see how all your math works out.
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Post by fallen on Dec 12, 2013 12:06:28 GMT -5
Karjus - 1) For dual wielding damage and AP are summed. 2) We have an adjustment on our list to fix Light Blades, they will all come up to 2 AP, but with special rules for how they are used in Dual Wielding. As you pointed out, there is a balancing flaw there. Enjoy!
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Post by Karjus on Dec 12, 2013 12:29:52 GMT -5
1) So the main advantage to dual wielding is to basically try and go for extremes of one with very high accuracy and the other with high parry so you can have both? 2) Interesting to hear! The 1 AP weapons seemed like a real winner in the way they synergized with flat addition skills, and in terms of average damage per turn as well. Look forward to poking the numbers some more soon then.
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Post by johndramey on Dec 12, 2013 16:57:32 GMT -5
I got one! Currently it seems that all of my characters are capable of wearing Light armor which is nice, however it seems to totally negate the need for Mage's armor. Might there be some way of increasing the attraction of Mage's armor? As it is now it just seems to be weaker light armor that you can buy if you are running out of cash. For full disclosure, I'm using Vincent atm and can not fully remember if Scraggly Beard was only able to equip Mage's armor or if he could fit into light armor as well.
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Post by captain nemo on Dec 12, 2013 18:33:33 GMT -5
I'm using Mage's Armor on the Wizard, I've never tried using Light Armor on him. Wouldn't think that would be in his class.
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Post by fallen on Dec 12, 2013 19:56:42 GMT -5
Vincent can wear light armor, Kjartan can not.
You'll soon start encountering mage armor / weapons that have their own powers, such as +40 SP. You'll start weighing between Protection and mage-related bonuses and have to decide.
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