Some more thoughts on the rebalancing of Arcanum

Your problem, don't expect people you bash to help you any further, chinie...

 

OK, this is getting immature. The last I'm going to say on the matter:

If the feature of NPCs syncing with the PC's level is to be included, then it should be coded in ASM, properly. It's not even that hard to do actually, all you have to do is adjust the NPC's level to the PC's, give him an appropriate number of CPs and then trigger the auto-level subroutine, so that he can spend the points.

 

Any better, or is it too heavy an edit:

 

Excellent, that's what means to be a native speaker.

By the by, the Charged Axe schematic's description (in the Extra Content module) was written by me...

Do you see any room for improvement?

 

First of all: Great project, I'm sure enough people are interested. Many compliments for any effort made, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is speed translated directly into action points? If so, the cap should be 20 since that's the amount of dots on the action bar.

Rather than changing this, is it possible to do the same thing with ranged combat? If you're stronger you can throw harder, you can pull the the bow string farther and so forth. High perception could enable you to hit your enemies at vulnerable areas when using firearms and bows, giving you equal damage bonuses at PER20. What do you think?

All good ideas. I also think that Screhck's multi gun (or whatever it's called) should be changed significantly. If I recall correctly, it's a hand cannon (slow but powerful) that can shoot six shots simultaneously (which should make each "shot" cost 6 bullets, not affect speed, and multiply damage with 6). Instead, it's extremely fast and its damage lowered, turning it into a useless ammo waster. The hushed revolver should be improved too, making it viable for a sneaky gunslinger.

Regarded the balanced sword and feather weight axe, I think the various weapons you create by improving on them should be better rather than worse. For example, the poisoned sword (carried by Grunewald, but also craftable) is created by the balanced sword combined with some sort of poison. Why then, is it much slower than the original sword? I believe the same thing goes for the charged axe and other similar weapons.

Personally, I'd prefer that his damage output remained unchanged but that his hit points are lowered. It's an attack dog after all; they're capable of ripping someones throat out but could very well be shot dead quickly. You could however disable the training he receives, which goes all the way up to mastery if I recall correctly. Also, his known name should be changed to Worthless Mutt and his unknown to Dog. Just like every other character in the game, the species is revealed by mere observation while the name through dialogue.

Seeing as not every follower have schematics available through their dialogue you can quite possibly waste character points when using the Follower Editor. Alternatively you can force your tech followers into gaining doctorates in their particular disciplines make it unnecessary for a charismatic player to invest in tech at all, but still reap all the advantages. For these reasons I tend not to use it and would much rather like well thought out leveling scheme for each of them. Many melee followers should be able to toss a few more points into strength. Not all the way to 20 necessarily but at least 12. They should also be trainable up to expert level in all their chosen skills. Virgil spends 5 points into lock picking and 5 into heal (as to Jayna) but both skills are practically useless without training. (Raven on the other hand starts with expert training in archery). The Educator background (which should be available for anyone for free in my opinion) doesn't solve this problem, as their invested points are useless if the player is good enough to train them anyway.

Arronax should be way more powerful, as was mentioned. He uses Disintegrate in a cutscene but doesn't know the spell. His magickal aptitude should be full, I think, and he should be more generous with his use of spells - he often rushes in with his fists instead. Actually, his model should be changed into the ordinary elf male one. No other follower is using it and the hairstyle looks more like the style in Arronax's portrait (rather than the strange afro on his current model). Also, he should be able to wear robes/armour and weapons.

Chucka would be a hell of a lot more useful before the BMC rather than after. His level makes more sense for a pre BMC character too. Could it be edited so that Bates makes the offer earlier?

Brilliant!

Perhaps it could be ordered at classy bars, such the Wellington?

I'm no lumberjack, but I believe that oak is too heavy a wood to make good arrows (generally made out of lighter woods). But the only other appropriate item I can think of would be the olive tree branch, which isn't perfect either. BUT, I suggest that metal shavings (which is a currently useless item) should be used instead of steel as the second component. Since most other junk items can be used somehow, why not metal shavings? As mentioned by someone, the necessary components need to be plentiful. (If you don't agree, I think that metal shavings should at least be recyclable.)


Finally, the lemon trees and potato plants need to restock. The lemon+potato charges are currently useless.


Again: great project and good luck with it.

 

How about the Quality Staff for the wood part in the arrows schematic? It's not curved, and there's enough wood to make a lot of arrows.

 

No, I've always thought your description fits in perfectly with the current schematic descriptions - I was probably going to use "stupendous" myself before I decided I must fit "top-drawer" in there somewhere.

And yeah a quality staff would make more sense given it's straight shape and the fact it could potentially be made of a lightwood, are they stocked in general stores or is it only magick stores? If so, there would have to be another location a techie could buy them from.

 

I agree, the quality staff is the best alternative. The schematic description should be edited slightly though. Whittling is fine-tuning, right? Chopping up a large staff isn't really whittling then, if I understand the term correctly. This is just silly nitpicking though. And it's coming from a deranged, barely literate, non native speaker. My apologies.


Edit: But I'm fairly sure that you restock your quiver rather than your bow.

 

No I think whittling is still alright, wikipedia (the source of all knowledge) describes it as "the art of carving shapes, typically out of raw wood or bone, with a knife"; although that might not sound applicable to arrows all it essentially means is a verb for shaving off bits of wood with a knife (as in you would carve a sculpture, but you would whittle a wooden spearhead). As for the quiver bit, you are correct - as Arcanum never refers to a quiver and it's not seen on the character sprites it slipped my mind (though somewhere at the back of my mind I was think resupplying a bow sounded slightly odd). Therefore, now we have:

PS I did something borderline retarded there, I went to retrieve my original quote by editing the post it came from and copying and pasting it here but instead I actually submitted this post in its place and posted it by accident. I suppose no one had to know, but it was quite ridiculous.

 

Well, then. Please forgive my arrogant, uninformed and plain offensive comment.


Addition: How do you feel about the required expertise for creating arrows? Smithy seems to be the appropriate discipline, but in my opinion no expertise should be required. All guns are technological, so it stands to reason that bullets are too. But bows belong to all three categories (magick, netural, tech) so arrows should be neutral too.

What do you think?

 

My game isn't anything like carcanum, carcanum's ridiculous warping of the game is what made me want to make my mod. Notice the only two/three people who compared it to carcanum were people who never played it.

I'll give you a lot of help if you give me a little.

Long lists of imbalances and the worst offenders for balance (including weapons/armor and where they are located).

If you give me how to change:
fatigue derivation, particularly gain from WP/CN
melee bonus damage from str
backstab damage and unaware bonus
spell level requirement (1/1/5/10/15)

 

Staff and steel seems appropriate to me.

Um, I don't know what level of wizardry you're working on but if npcs could cast spells more effectively then that would be great.

Maybe just a few tweaked npcs in the right place who had a more imaginative range of spells and less recourse to Melee.

I'm all for the proposed changes to Arronax and dragon man (whatshisname) too. It seems more a case of rebalancing than extra content. Arronax being so unexpectedly lame is a old complaint and it should be fixed.

Thanks for modding on!

P.S. the WIP patch currently includes a schematic for shavings and a wooden staff, making arrows, as I recall. I'll check and get back.

 

I would download such a mod simply for the sake of the follower auto-level script. I mostly play goody two-shoes characters, and by the time I get Master Persuasion, and am able to keep Geoffrey Tarrelond-Ashe, I am way higher level than he is.

 

Holy mother of god!

A rebalance mod by somebody who actually knows what he is doing!

 

First off, I approve of this thread and I agree with virtually everything you said in the OP, especially since I'm right at this moment almost done with a new playthrough.

The sale price of grenades (particularly explosive grenades) needs to be reduced to a reasonable level.

Firearms are more in need of an overhaul than any other attack form. There are lots and lots of different firearm schematics, and most of them are complete junk, so that's for starters. In general I like the idea of increasing the AP cost (in some cases dramatically) and increasing the damage. On the other hand, a really skilled firearms user (a firearms Master, one might say) can pull of some pretty incredible feats of speed and accuracy. A Clint Eastwood-esque quickdraw artist should be possible with a pistol.

I could see a split between a Firearms character who tends toward DX and rapid firing on the one hand, and a Firearms character who tends toward PE and accurate shooting on the other hand. Right now it's impossible to make a sniper build, because shooting a sewer rat in the head with a Looking Glass Rifle just makes it angry.

I wish there was a way to force AP usage for working the bolt on rifles. They have that in Jagged Alliance 2, and it's much more realistic.

EDIT: Also, Metal Magic (i.e., Stun) should not work on undead and golems.

 

Why? This is one of the few legit methods to make money in the game. It costs you 5 character points and you have to look out for the ingredients to do this.

Do you want to encourage stealing money from Ristezze even more?

The game doesn't become more enjoyable by making everything mediocre. Some options need to be more kickass than others, otherwise it wouldn't matter how you build your character (just look at D&D 4th Edition - they made everything balanced there - and everything became bland as a result)

 

Rebalance mod by Drog himself? That sure are news, especially considering how much you sperged on game before. I guess you were a huge tsundere after all, baka.
The first thing should be remade is EXP gain system to a more like Fallout one, i.e. you get XP on combat end. So playing game with followers and especially summons wouldn't be boring circus, where PC trying to lasthit enemy like it's some goddamn MOBA.
Nurfing Harm to floor isn't a bad thing, you can remake it so it will do irresistible nurfed amount of damage to living targets only. Right now there isn't any mechanical difference between damage spells aside from numbers. And make Disintegrate resistible by Fate Point saving throw.
It would be cool if followers could learn schematics, I never liked that retarded manual hoarding mechanic. Also, tech playthrough mostly consist of merchant farming, IMO it would be better if merchant inventory was less random, but evenly spread across them in the world, i.e. components for Machined Plate can be bought only from Wheel Clan dwarves, but merchant there have them on sale 100% of time. The same with schematics.
Traps should be a big pain in the butt across whole game, so player will be forced to use different means of detecting them (skill itself, followers with this skill, tech detector, magic detector). Right now only BMC and speciality quests have them, which is a big turn-off for taking respected skills.
Oh, and FUCKING NURF ALL-FATHER BLESSING TO HELL.
My wet dream of course is controlling followers in turn-based combat. But I doubt it will be possible though, because, along with UI changes, it requires to rewrite enemy AI in order to pose a threat. But man can dream, right?

 

Drog going to do rebalance mod? That would be pretty awesome as he is probably only one in these parts who understands inner workings for Arcanum. To be honest though personally I think stuff that's needed to fix the combat requires extensive hacking of exe. Stuff like reloading (it really is a must and not just for guns, but actually bows need it too), different ammo for different guns (essential resource management that makes game more balanced, bullet schematics could have additional extra pop-up menu where you can choose type of ammo, but Vendigroth ammo probably should have it's very own schematic, same menu could be utilized to choose size for armor too), better integration of called attacks and making combat more deadly by actually reworking stuff (already exist, it's just poorly implemented) like knockdowns and critical hits. Also, I believe absolute minimum to actually fix the combat would be forcing it turn based only and rework AP system. Basically turn combat into Fallout. Should be doable, but requires extensive exe hacking and is extremely difficult. It wouldn't be impossible though. I have seen crazier exe hacks that add completely new feautures to old games, but to implement such requires much more skills than even most professional programmers have. Fallout combat isn't exactly very good and easily feels like a bad chore when there's many enemies, but I bet that would be what most Arcanum players (just about everyone is a Fallout fan anyway) really want from this game. It would also fit into game better than the current Diablo-wannabe atrocity. Also, like Pyotr says EXP system should be copied from Fallout as well in order to make followers more useful.

I don't think Velorien's blessing is OP though as it's extremely late game nor I think followers should be able to learn schematics. There are already technical manuals that basically bypass need for studying too much extra tech in order to make everything. IIRC, those manuals can be used to make anything as they aren't dependent on your tech skills, but intelligence.

I'd love also to see more of beta stuff (such as better item graphics) and cut content restored ala Fallout 2 restoration project. This is I think would be more important than fixing or balancing combat. All Arcanum fans can already deal with shitty combat anyway and I really doubt it is possible to make it much better without hacking the shit out of exe and basically creating whole new combat system.

Sigh, I really hope we had master hacker like Timeslip (or Arcanum source code, but I think that actually might not even exist anymore) who basically reworked whole Fallout. Things would be much easier. There is always OpenArcanum though, but I'm not even sure if it's alive (no pun intended) anymore. Doing everything again from sratch would be probably far more sane approach to fix the game than Sfall style hacking though. Not to mention that it would open possibilities like actual multi-platform and optimizing the engine for modern computers.

 

This is a great idea. I really love the suggestions and id gladly help you come up with a balanced arcanum.

Disintegrate needs to be fixed so that a successful save stops it. Maybe change the save to have no modifier.

Speed id say cap it at 30 but 25 is great to. Some potions are abit to powerful, have 20 morganas tears in inventory for example.

 

Oh yeah also the pyro axe does less damage per ap for a 20 str char then a katana! (And Sword from isle of despair)

Id say make it so that realtime isnt an option and just balance the game for turnbased. I think that 1 actionpoint attacks are to much. 2 ap minimum or even 3. Id love to help you look it all over and ive played arcanum many many times.

Finally what a great job you did with uap.