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Originally Posted by Gyson

Imagine that.. characters actually taking damage in combat and having to rely on intended forms of healing. I'm not sure why people are frowning at this concept.


I can only speak for myself:

For me it involved a whole strategy level in combat which is now just gone. I am still in my first playthrough with characters around level 15. None of them has any resistance which is greater than 50% (with gear and so on). Now, when I was in combat, there was a strategy planning involved like: Do I cast an earth shield so that my stunned witch who is very low on health standing in the pool of poison does not die during the next turn or do I try to finish off the one spider who is standing next to my witch in the poison pool and is going to heal and attack my witch? Do I now take a fire resistance potion because my warrior should walk over the fire surface without burning or do I try to blind the enemy archer?

I think, the ability to have resistances >100% was a very nice touch to the game. I am not against the hard cap for resistances on gear - but please allow us to drink potions/cast shields etc to raise resistances over 100%.

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Originally Posted by Elwyn
[quote=Gyson]
I think, the ability to have resistances >100% was a very nice touch to the game. I am not against the hard cap for resistances on gear - but please allow us to drink potions/cast shields etc to raise resistances over 100%.


Rejoice! According to a post by Larian this actually seems to be the intention and a hotfix today should allow for resistance to reach/slightly surpass 100% through the use of potions and spells. Also Zombie will be fixed.

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<sigh> this is very frustrating. I just want to play.....

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Originally Posted by dirigible
Yes it was silly. But we're playing a game in which a talking-cat gives you a remote control to a rampaging mech operated by an evil skeleton. Obviously silly is not a problem.


There's a pretty large (and important) difference between silly writing and silly design.

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Originally Posted by LeBurns
Like I said before most games have a cap like that and I'm glad it's there. In fact I was shocked you could go over 100% before.


Such cap is a good thing. Another one is they finally fixed Leech.

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Originally Posted by Rashar
During my months of play, I had 3 full playthroughs each on a different difficulty, I was only using a balanced crafting mod that made it so that unavailable recipes were fixed and there was some extra stuff for crafting/bs 5+ which I can't recall having used.

SNIP

Well presented, thank you.

I diagree with the changes, but not because of the effect it has on gameplay. Rather, it goes back to something I month or so ago: in a single player game like this, "balance changes" are unnecessary and potentially harmful. The best way for players to balance their game is to let them do it themselves.

Last edited by Armakoir; 22/08/14 02:52 PM.
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Originally Posted by Elwyn
Originally Posted by Gyson

Imagine that.. characters actually taking damage in combat and having to rely on intended forms of healing. I'm not sure why people are frowning at this concept.


I can only speak for myself:

For me it involved a whole strategy level in combat which is now just gone. I am still in my first playthrough with characters around level 15. None of them has any resistance which is greater than 50% (with gear and so on). Now, when I was in combat, there was a strategy planning involved like: Do I cast an earth shield so that my stunned witch who is very low on health standing in the pool of poison does not die during the next turn or do I try to finish off the one spider who is standing next to my witch in the poison pool and is going to heal and attack my witch? Do I now take a fire resistance potion because my warrior should walk over the fire surface without burning or do I try to blind the enemy archer?

I think, the ability to have resistances >100% was a very nice touch to the game. I am not against the hard cap for resistances on gear - but please allow us to drink potions/cast shields etc to raise resistances over 100%.

Even if resistances were hard capped at 80%, those choices you described in your scenario are still viable options for you. As you said, your current resistances are currently at 50%. That gives you another 30% to take advantage of, allowing you the choice to further reduce the amount of damage taken in those situation and possibly save your characters from death. The only difference is that the results of this route are now a nail-biting uncertainty rather than a guaranteed heal. I would call that a definite improvement in terms of spicing the game (and its lack of difficulty) up.

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Originally Posted by Armakoir
Originally Posted by Rashar
During my months of play, I had 3 full playthroughs each on a different difficulty, I was only using a balanced crafting mod that made it so that unavailable recipes were fixed and there was some extra stuff for crafting/bs 5+ which I can't recall having used.

SNIP

Well presented, thank you.

I diagree with the changes, but not because of the effect it has on gameplay. Rather, it goes back to something I month or so ago: in a single player game like this, "balance changes" are unnecessary and potentially harmful. The best way for players to balance their game is to let them do it themselves.


I think I've heard these comments here more so than all other single player forums combined that I've frequented. Many as in 100's of single player games have had patches which changes balance, I'm not sure why the phenomenon is happening here that is it holy not to touch game balancing changes. And if you read Lar_q's memo there is a really big one coming in the future.

There is a designer at Larian like any game, that has a vision and expectation of how they want their game to work. When they see mistakes to that vision they correct it. Only companies that don't do this are typically companies that don't make any patches and we whine about "why no support?".

But being a PC game, take an hour, go over to the mod section, download Lstools, unpack main, open up a handful of files in excel, make changes yourself, talk about variety there, then compile and add to a mod and play it the way you want to. The Resis cap was one single cell change in excel from whatever it was to 80.

Last edited by Horrorscope; 22/08/14 04:10 PM.
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Originally Posted by Horrorscope
Originally Posted by Armakoir
Originally Posted by Rashar
During my months of play, I had 3 full playthroughs each on a different difficulty, I was only using a balanced crafting mod that made it so that unavailable recipes were fixed and there was some extra stuff for crafting/bs 5+ which I can't recall having used.

SNIP

Well presented, thank you.

I diagree with the changes, but not because of the effect it has on gameplay. Rather, it goes back to something I month or so ago: in a single player game like this, "balance changes" are unnecessary and potentially harmful. The best way for players to balance their game is to let them do it themselves.


I think I've heard these comments here more so than all other single player forums combined that I've frequented. Many as in 100's of single player games have had patches which changes balance, I'm not sure why the phenomenon is happening here that is it holy not to touch game balancing changes. And if you read Lar_q's memo there is a really big one coming in the future.

There is a designer at Larian like any game, that has a vision and expectation of how they want their game to work. When they see mistakes to that vision they correct it. Only companies that don't do this are typically companies that don't make any patches and we whine about "why no support?".

But being a PC game, take an hour, go over to the mod section, download Lstools, unpack main, open up a handful of files in excel, make changes yourself, talk about variety there, then compile and add to a mod and play it the way you want to. The Resis cap was one single cell change in excel from whatever it was to 80.


I have to agree with what Horrorscope is saying here. I honestly don't think I've ever heard the "it's a single player game, balance is unnecessary" argument until I came to these forums, and yet here it's everywhere. I feel like I'm dealing with a generation raised on MMOs or something, and this is their first experience with a single player game (although obviously that can't be true).

All games (all decent ones, anyway) make an attempt to balance their gameplay. And the decent ones continue to address problems (but bugs and balance issues) with patches following the release.

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I also agree with Horrorscope, and like him I knew the arguing "it's a single player game, balance is unnecessary". But it's clearly a modern arguing, first time I quoted it was only few years ago.

There's an idea of Diablo vs Torchlight, allows player cheat is fine in single player, and bad in multi player, and I agree with that. That arguing leads to classes balance doesn't matter in SP but does in MP and again I agree too. And this is leading to the vague arguing that it doesn't matter to balance the game difficulty.

The problem is the current state of combats and their difficulty is just like not tuned. In my opinion more than mechanics and rules change, the game would need better designed combats ie better tuned each including with the perspective of plenty possibilities offered by the system and the two difficulty levels.

There's just too many basic OP stuff that makes most combats trivial, good luck to fix all that, but it's good and courageous that dev try, at least a bit.

Also it's not about balancing any build, skill, talent more, just removed basic OP stuff.

Last edited by Fend; 22/08/14 05:25 PM.
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I'd feel better about the game if it didn't make Zombie just kill you, since you can't be healed by heals and you can't be healed by poison.

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Of course some kind of balance is necessary, but it's not egalitarian balance, it's 'is this fun?' balance.

However it's clear that in general changes they are making are bug fixes, not balance changes. And as of the latest patch:

Originally Posted by Larian
hotfixes live:
-HP Bug on loading
-Changes to resistance cap that were supposed to be in the patch but did not make it in (zombie talent fix, can go over cap with potions and temporary effects)

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Re: balance
If I want the game to be challenging then I have to limit my options.
Leech is not an option
Glass Cannon is not an option
Stacking Rubies is not an option
Mages are not an option
Easy and Medium difficulty (obviously) are not options
Telekinesis in combat is not an option
Putting Stealth on every character is not an option
etc

At a certain point, the number of options I have left if I want the game to challenge me are pretty slim. That's not a good thing. Ideally, I could simply switch the game to Hard mode and it would be balanced enough to be actually hard. In a well balanced game, people who want to be uber powerful set the difficulty lower, and people who want to be challenged set the difficulty higher. In an unbalanced game, one or both of those groups are gonna be disappointed.

Currently DOS is unbalanced. People who want to be challenged can't rely on the game to challenge them.

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Originally Posted by strider24seven
Originally Posted by Caed
how do u do a rollback on Steam? On GoG I heard its possible but mine's Steam.

You unfortunately cannot roll back on steam. You can, however, tell the game not to update on the properties menu... which doesn't help you if you've already downloaded the new step backward... I mean "patch"

Sadly Steam removed the ability to disable auto updates at some point. You USED to be able to do that, now all you can do is defer the updates until you play the game (to save bandwidth for updates on games you no longer play). For this reason people should avoid buying the game on Steam and buy it on GoG. If I had known I would not have bought 2 licenses on Steam.

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This is actually the first time I have been truly pissed off by a game patch since they nerfed shamans in DAOC (and I quit MMO's).

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Originally Posted by Horrorscope

There is a designer at Larian like any game, that has a vision and expectation of how they want their game to work. When they see mistakes to that vision they correct it. Only companies that don't do this are typically companies that don't make any patches and we whine about "why no support?".

I'll have to take your word for it that it's somewhat unique to this game/forums. That being said, I think the argument for balance changes just SEEMS like a new phenomenon because of MMO's and the commonality of forums.

MMOs require players to lobby for balance changes because MMOs are more competitive (either directly or indirectly) and a neutral party needs to do the balancing. So, I think over the years we've gotten used to that need to lobby. It's what we automatically do now: jump on the forums and call for a balance change. But with D:OS, you don't have to lobby because you as the player can balance the game to your liking with a little self discipline. Or a mod. We've just forgotten that we actually have that opportunity.

Forums are more common than they were 10+ years ago, and so is the traffic to them, which means that this argument may have also existed back in the day but there were far fewer people arguing for it.

Lastly, D:OS is (mostly) an old school CRPG, so there's an element of getting back to basics. Combined with the above to points, I think that's why you're seeing this argument. You're actually seeing pushback against where 10 years of MMOs and single player games (that are very different than D:OS) have taken us.

Quote
But being a PC game, take an hour, go over to the mod section, download Lstools, unpack main, open up a handful of files in excel, make changes yourself, talk about variety there, then compile and add to a mod and play it the way you want to. The Resis cap was one single cell change in excel from whatever it was to 80.

This argument works both ways. If the game is designed to be moddable, balance changes (especially big balance changes) are even more unnecessary.


Regarding designer liberties: such liberties only go so far. At some point, the game isn't his/hers anymore. Of course it is legally and all that, but at some point the game becomes beloved and "owned" by the players, and the "this is my game I'll do what I want" isn't going to go over very well. Just ask George Lucas.

The argument for no balance changes is not the same as arguing for no support. There is some overlap, but fixing things is not necessarily the same as balancing things. And regarding that overlap: in single player games like D:OS, more in game liberties result in more fun for a wider range of players. Even if a liberty (such as excessive resists) is unintended or broken, designers should seriously consider leaving in such "emergent gameplay."

Last edited by Armakoir; 23/08/14 04:12 AM.
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Originally Posted by dirigible
Re: balance
If I want the game to be challenging then I have to limit my options.
Leech is not an option
Glass Cannon is not an option
Stacking Rubies is not an option
Mages are not an option
Easy and Medium difficulty (obviously) are not options
Telekinesis in combat is not an option
Putting Stealth on every character is not an option
etc

At a certain point, the number of options I have left if I want the game to challenge me are pretty slim. That's not a good thing. Ideally, I could simply switch the game to Hard mode and it would be balanced enough to be actually hard. In a well balanced game, people who want to be uber powerful set the difficulty lower, and people who want to be challenged set the difficulty higher. In an unbalanced game, one or both of those groups are gonna be disappointed.

Currently DOS is unbalanced. People who want to be challenged can't rely on the game to challenge them.

Try no leadership.

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So many games CTD on quickload that I haven't used it for years. Automatically go to menu to load a new game now.

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Originally Posted by Hazey
So many games CTD on quickload that I haven't used it for years. Automatically go to menu to load a new game now.


Really? I almost never encounter a problem with that. If I do, it's definitely the rare exception, and certainly not the rule.

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Originally Posted by Horrorscope

But being a PC game, take an hour, go over to the mod section, download Lstools, unpack main, open up a handful of files in excel, make changes yourself, talk about variety there, then compile and add to a mod and play it the way you want to. The Resis cap was one single cell change in excel from whatever it was to 80.


This goes both ways - if you wanted a Resist cap, it was equally trivial to implement one. We are just annoyed that Larian is taking it upon themselves to moderate the difficulty of the game by stifling player creativity and options rather than developing and fine-tuning new and interesting content.

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