Deadfire Polishing Poll pt2

[Ophiuchus]

2 hours ago, Vonbek said:

Good to hear, @MaxQuest. RL sometimes needs attention.

 

After finishing my first full run and achievements got a few further requests/ideas for perusal and possible "nope, that's game breaking/impossible/both"; I've scoured nexus and can't find anything that seems to cover them.

 

1. Range Mod - Specifically Sap, Both rogue Blows, Flurry, HBD and other thematically possible Melee abilities to be range possible too ( caveat : balance it out by having the "proc on crit > fresh attack" become "on crit > reset recovery bar" so that things like reload and animation time still affect it ) ( inspired by wanting to build a Zen Archer style character who starts doing mad stuff once he's "in the zone" ( ie critting ))... and no, it's not to abuse Frostseeker. I actually had St. Omakus in mind when the idea cropped up
2. If possible someone to work out what needs changed in the UC mod to fix the Global Teleport and Add Skills errors for 5.0+ GOG versions. I've tried multiple things including a fresh install of both UC and the game and while most stuff works now AS is totally borked even in new games and Teleport does one jump then blanks the list. And yes, I've tried both the Forum thread .py file and the Nexus instructions too
3. spitball idea here - a Godlike Mod that changes the max stat base to 19, so instead of the usual Dex/Int that they all have you could have a Strong (MGT) and Bold (RES) Firelike or a Fast (DEX) and Perceptive (PER) Moon or even a Sturdy Oak (CON/RES) Nature. Having seen how the Engine handles Racial Bonuses, I'm wondering would this be as simple as coding up a way to add +1 to all stats then reduce "Pool" points by 4 at creation time?

 

Beyond that thanks to the various Modders and Forum folk for their time and work and advice.

 

Especially @Boeroer ( loving the Icon Set ), @Stardusk78 ( liking your approach to the mods, just about to give TS a whirl on an Unroken/Stalker/Bear tank ), @checoden for Deadfire Tweaks, @MaxQuest ( for both Spoils and the CP ), @Spherikal ( for the Enhanced UI ), and last but not least @peardox ( for the Quality Mod that has made my life much easier for quick "is this better" comparison ) and @Armakoir ( for the wonderful IPD mod ).

 

Shout out to @bringingyouthefuture, @Waski, and @Ophiuchus as well for help with some ideas.

Big ups, homie.

IIRC, there was some talk about changing Farcasting from a 20% range bonus to a flat +2m. Did that idea make its way anywhere?

[Phenomenum]

Aha, yes, Fury auto-atack must be set as weapon.

[Phenomenum]

11 hours ago, Ophiuchus said:

Did that idea make its way anywhere?

Idea was rejected during Polishing poll. More than that, there's no technical way to add flat range bonus. So forget about it.

[Phenomenum]

@Boeroer @MaxQuest I suggest to create a list of tweaks/bugfixes that must be implemented in update. BTW have you tested Defensive Mindweb ability? Because we have report in BUGS section - one user says it doesn't work at all.

Edited August 8, 2019 by Phenomenum

[ocelotter]

I thought of another idea for "adjusting" Brilliant to be a bit less abusable, if there's any interest in such a thing. Instead of restoring one of each class resource once every six seconds, make it restore one (or two) of each class resource immediately upon receiving the buff, but none thereafter. Additionally, let the buff give +2-3 PL instead of just +1--as I believe Boeroer suggested before--so extending its duration still feels powerful. I think this should be pretty easy to do (just change "ApplicationType" to "ApplyOnStart" for "INS_Brilliant_SE_AddResources", maybe?), I might try implementing it if no one else has the inclination.

 

On a side note, has anyone tried adjusting the enemy AI at all? Looking through the files, it seems like the only way to make serious changes would be to create an application to read in "aidecisiontrees.aidecisiontreebundle", present it in an interactable format, and then export it with proper formatting, but creating that seems like an awful lot of effort. Is there perhaps some Unity program that the developers made use of to create the decision trees? Or maybe some way to translate the custom AI file format to the expanded decision tree format, so I can mostly use the in-game editor with manual changes for specific enemy-only abilities?

It just feels like the game handcuffs most of the enemy characters with horrible AI, like the lich in Flooded Cave who just sits there auto-attacking instead of casting spells because his AI keeps randoming the Fighter decision tree.

Edited August 8, 2019 by ocelotter

[Elric Galad]

Making Brillant less abusable would make Dorudugan fight even more stupid : you would absolutely need some regenerating ressource class to fight this dumb wall of HP.

Edited August 8, 2019 by Elric Galad

[Boeroer]

I think that (optional) megabosses shouldn't be a reason for keeping a broken and overpowered inspiration. Especially if that problem mostly occurs when playing solo (which is not the intended way to play Deadfire and not how megabosses are balanced anyway).

Better: adjust Brilliant (I like @ocelotter's idea of giving back a fixed amount of resources once - can be more for replenishable resources like wounds and focus, a bit less for fixed pools like discipline and zeal and 1 spells use per tier for casters) AND adjust values of megabosses. For example make them harder to hit but take away the absurd amount of hitpoints. You can work around high defenses but you can't work around a stellar HP pool. 

Edited August 8, 2019 by Boeroer

[Tenray]

Not quite sure if this is fixed already by one of your patches since I am playing for the Ultimate and obviously not using any mods or the community patch. I am playing SC monk right now and noticed that killing with Resonant Touch does not grant you the 20hp back on kill. Maybe it's also not working with other on kill effects, haven't checked that yet. But health on kill is definitely not working for me with resonant touch.

[Elric Galad]

30 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Better: adjust Brilliant (I like @ocelotter's idea of giving back a fixed amount of resources once - can be more for replenishable resources like wounds and focus, a bit less for fixed pools like discipline and zeal and 1 spells use per tier for casters) AND adjust values of megabosses. For example make them harder to hit but take away the absurd amount of hitpoints. You can work around high defenses but you can't work around a stellar HP pool. 

That was indeed my point. If we're talking about balance, I think Dorudugan needs a bit of care. Not to make the fight easier, but just a bit less dumb.

Also I'm not very fond of fixed amont of ressources for Brillant because it would render its duration insignificant. IMHO, Brillant is mostly OP on casters, especially with SoT involved. Without that it would be a very powerful but not broken inspiration. Also, Ancestor's memory would be really bad with such change.

Edited August 8, 2019 by Elric Galad

[Boeroer]

23 minutes ago, Tenray said:

Not quite sure if this is fixed already by one of your patches since I am playing for the Ultimate and obviously not using any mods or the community patch. I am playing SC monk right now and noticed that killing with Resonant Touch does not grant you the 20hp back on kill. Maybe it's also not working with other on kill effects, haven't checked that yet. But health on kill is definitely not working for me with resonant touch.

You mean with a pet? Or which other ability should give you +20 health on kill?

It may be that damage of/death by Resonant Touch isn't connected to your character properly. Does it increase your "overall damage done" statistic when applied?

Edited August 8, 2019 by Boeroer

[QuiteGoneJin]

56 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Making Brillant less abusable would make Dorudugan fight even more stupid : you would absolutely need some regenerating ressource class to fight this dumb wall of HP.

Just now accidentally stumbled on this guy, wtf so if you don't have renewable resources is he even possible?

[ocelotter]

36 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Also I'm not very fond of fixed amont of ressources for Brillant because it would render its duration insignificant. IMHO, Brillant is mostly OP on casters, especially with SoT involved. Without that it would be a very powerful but not broken inspiration. Also, Ancestor's memory would be really bad with such change.

The duration of Brilliant would be as significant as the duration of the other tier 3 inspirations, particularly if the power level bonus was slightly buffed as suggested. It still provides a layer of safety from afflictions, and a persistent PL bonus. I'd take a +1-2 PL bonus (relative to Acute) over 25% hit to crit (Intuitive, relative to Aware), for example.

Edited August 8, 2019 by ocelotter

[Phenomenum]

54 minutes ago, Tenray said:

Not quite sure if this is fixed already by one of your patches since I am playing for the Ultimate and obviously not using any mods or the community patch. I am playing SC monk right now and noticed that killing with Resonant Touch does not grant you the 20hp back on kill. Maybe it's also not working with other on kill effects, haven't checked that yet. But health on kill is definitely not working for me with resonant touch.

RT itself doesn't grants HP on kill. Can you be more specific about items/abilities you're using with +20HP on kill?

About Brilliant:

I did some research and figured out that not all suggestions is technically available. I suggest (and this was a long time ago) to divide Brilliant tick duration for casters and non-casters: leave 1 each resource per 5-6 sec. for non-caster classes and adjust tick duration to, say 10-12 sec. for casters. This is an easy and gentle solution.

Thoughts?

Edited August 8, 2019 by Phenomenum

[Elric Galad]

7 minutes ago, ocelotter said:

The duration of Brilliant would be as significant as the duration of the other tier 3 inspirations, particularly if the power level bonus was slightly buffed as suggested. It still provides a layer of safety from afflictions, and a persistent stackable PL bonus. I'd take a +1-2 PL bonus (relative to Acute) over 25% hit to crit (Intuitive, relative to Aware), for example.

Still sounds like an overzealous change to me. I don't think that Community patch should remove all these slightly OP feature that makes the game fun.

Brillant is fun as it is, even if I ubderstand why meteor swarming every 6s is a problem, especially with SoT involved.

About this one change I would humbly suggest to make a poll with different solutions before patching Brillant. Consensus is the reason why I think your mod is so great and why I consider it legit or even cannon

[Vonbek]

@Boeroer / @MaxQuest, quick question.

 

Is there an guide to creating, or easy way to create, custom subclasses?

The more I think about it, the more I feel my Zen Archer idea would be better as an actual Monk Subclass that's pretty much a Shattered Pillar/HW hybrid ( possibly gaining wounds off crits and to a lesser degree dealt damage  ) with the emphasis shifted to "Martial Archery" ( I'll get me coat ) rather than fists.

 

That mucking about would probably give me the insight to be able to do a low impact "Trick Shots" mod afterwards for allowing certain abilities that make sense be able to proc off ranged too.

[Tenray]

Hello again and sorry for the late answer, was busy today doing alot stuff in my garden =D

But ye, I was talking about the 20hp on kill from the pets you get, I did try it now several times and I am certain it does not grant you the 20hp on kill. 

Furthermore, I think that in general Resonant Touch does not grant you on kill effects in general. That's what I was trying to say. I did not check it on other on kill effects like Grave Calling or something like that, so I cannot say it for certain. For hp on kill from the pets its definitely not working.

As Boeroer said, it's probably that Resonant Touch is "not connected" to your character properly.

Edited August 8, 2019 by Tenray

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

On 8/8/2019 at 9:59 AM, Boeroer said:

I think that (optional) megabosses shouldn't be a reason for keeping a broken and overpowered inspiration. Especially if that problem mostly occurs when playing solo (which is not the intended way to play Deadfire and not how megabosses are balanced anyway).

Better: adjust Brilliant (I like @ocelotter's idea of giving back a fixed amount of resources once - can be more for replenishable resources like wounds and focus, a bit less for fixed pools like discipline and zeal and 1 spells use per tier for casters) AND adjust values of megabosses. For example make them harder to hit but take away the absurd amount of hitpoints. You can work around high defenses but you can't work around a stellar HP pool. 

Lowering hitpoints for MBs is a good idea because Megabosses have insane health pools, but Dorudugan (who seems to be an outlier even with MBs) already has some absurd defenses combined with interrupt immunity, mind affliction immunity, Hellfire Iron, and high AR. The other megabosses can be major pains but with the others it felt like I could deal with them without having to use resource regeneration while with Dorudugan you could either exploit resonant touch or apply brilliant to your party members.

On 8/8/2019 at 11:03 AM, Phenomenum said:

RT itself doesn't grants HP on kill. Can you be more specific about items/abilities you're using with +20HP on kill?

About Brilliant:

I did some research and figured out that not all suggestions is technically available. I suggest (and this was a long time ago) to divide Brilliant tick duration for casters and non-casters: leave 1 each resource per 5-6 sec. for non-caster classes and adjust tick duration to, say 10-12 sec. for casters. This is an easy and gentle solution.

Thoughts?

How would this affect a non-caster/caster multiclass?

[Boeroer]

Like he said. Since Brilliant is applied per class and multiclass characters have two classes they'd each gain their resources respectively. I mean I guess...

That solution is also fine with me. The baf thing about (prolonged) Brilliant atm is not replenishing Discipline, Zeal or Guile - but endless spells. Some spells are a LOT more powerful than other abilities - but more scarce (uses) which balances spells vs. other abilities.

Brilliant removes this balance and even turns it upside down because you gain 1 spell per tier per tick while the other classes gain some meager points for their pool.

Nomatter how many levels you've got: a Fighter always profits the same from Brilliant while a caster gains more and more spells the more unlocked spell tiers he has. 

The whole reason why I think Brilliant is broken is because of this single mechanic. If it would work like Blood Sacrifice (restoring one single random spell use per tick) it wouldn't be so broken and comparable to the other classes' gains. 

Or make the ticks for casters a lot slower like @Phenomenum said. Also helps - and if that's easy to do then be it. The gap should be longer than 10 secs so that you can't prolong Brilliant endlessly with SoT. Wall of Draining also has to be considered.

That'swhy I liked @ocelotter's idea better: if you get a higher (but one-time) replenishment at the start and a higher PL bonus (+3 instead of +1) then SoT and Wall of Draining etc. are no problem anymore. Still a very useful inspiration and powerful (+3 PL is big), but not as abusable when getting endless duration.

Edited August 10, 2019 by Boeroer

[Phenomenum]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Like he said. Since Brilliant is applied per class and multiclass characters have two classes they'd each gain their resources respectively. I mean I guess...

Indeed.

Sooo... We have two suggestions: mine and @ocelotter, both suggestions are relatively easy to implement.

Maybe worth to make a poll? Also i want to hear (read) @MaxQuest opinion.

Edited August 10, 2019 by Phenomenum

[ocelotter]

4 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Brilliant removes this balance and even turns it upside down because you gain 1 spell per tier per tick while the other classes gain some meager points for their pool.

Nomatter how many levels you've got: a Fighter always profits the same from Brilliant while a caster gains more and more spells the more unlocked spell tiers he has. 

The whole reason why I think Brilliant is broken is because of this single mechanic. If it would work like Blood Sacrifice (restoring one single random spell use per tick) it wouldn't be so broken and comparable to the other classes' gains.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but Brilliant restores exactly one spell each tick to a (single-class) caster, of a random spell level. So if all nine of your spell tiers are depleted, it will still only restore one spell, not nine of them. The problem lies in that this can be controlled by only casting a single spell, so if you only cast Salvation of Time (and Barring Death's Door, which is conveniently in the same tier) or Missile Salvo, you always get that spell slot back.

I think it's actually a pretty cool mechanic that you can control what Brilliant restores if you plan ahead a bit, but it's definitely abusable with some abilities. I still think that Barring Death's Door is at least as problematic; it's an effect that makes you immune to death, which has its duration affected by Intelligence and which can be extended by more effects than just Salvation of Time (notably Wall of Draining). I think at the very least effects that can destroy targets with less than 25% health should counter it, e.g. Death Ring, though I'm not certain the AI would take advantage of them in its current state. Abilities that break the game's fundamental conceit, health loss results in death, should be incredibly limited or have more counters than just Arcane Dampener/Arcane Cleanse. Just imagine the frustration if an enemy encounter in the game used these shenanigans on the player; suddenly it's impossible to win unless you interrupt the Cipher's first Brilliant cast, stunlock the Priest (quickly) or have a Wizard to dampen or repeatedly cleanse the buffs.

 

Back to the topic at hand, I'm biased but I think halving the tick rate of Brilliant merely ameliorates the issue rather than solving it, and hurts people that don't abuse it in the process. Now, instead of just needing one Priest to secure immortality, you need two! To be fair they'd both need Brilliant, but if you give the Cipher immortality while acquiring it (or the Priest with Shroud of the Phantasm), everything works out. It certainly helps make it more difficult, though.

Another solution that would work for both Brilliant and Barring Death's Door is to give them a cap on their maximum length. I think this can be done using status effect triggers, e.g. "TriggerOnEvent": "OnInterval", "MaxTriggerCount": "5", "RemoveEffectAtMax": "true". Would probably have to give Barring Death's Door a child status effect that ticks for this to work though, or maybe just use the dreaded "ApplyOverTime" ApplicationType.

I would also like to hear more opinions on this. Thankfully, we can each opt-out of certain modifications we particularly don't like, but there is some value in consensus.

Edited August 10, 2019 by ocelotter

[Boeroer]

You are right. It was as I said some time ago but it already got nerfed. I simply forgot.

Still I find the onetime replenishment with higher PL a good solution. Capping duration etc. is kind of counterintuitive since it would be the only inspiration which would have such a cap.

So basically:

---------------------
INT Inspirations
---------------------
Smart: +5 INT
Acute: +5 INT, +1 PL
Brilliant: +5 INT, +x Resources (depends on class, can be higher than original Brilliant for all I care) onetime, +3 PL (or +2 - I'm not set on this).
---------------------

Classes like Tactician and Cipher's Ancestor's Memory can still be cool with this if the onetime replenishment is good/high enough. E.g. spending lots of focus for Ancestor's Memory and then giving your fellow Barb 2 Rage back (+5 INT + 3 PL) is obviously meh. Since the Tactician is designed/balanced around Brilliant (not around the abuse) one has to make sure that class doesn't tip over the edge. 

A poll would be my favorite method. Don't want to press anything onto the community. I'm just trying to make my position clear on this and why I think it's not good in its current state.

This doesn't affect the Ultimate because you can't use mods anyway if you're doing that challenge. 

 

[Vonbek]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

Still I find the onetime replenishment with higher PL a good solution. Capping duration etc. is kind of counterintuitive since it would be the only inspiration which would have such a cap.

If anything I prefer that idea.

 

To me it should be a "flash of brilliance". Immediate Pool regen, buff for small time. Rather than a low buff and having to wait for the result.

 

Eureka is Instant, not 5 minutes down the street once you've got out the bath and found the towel.

[Powerotti]

I think brilliant triggering effect simillar to blood sacrifice 1/6sec is the best and the simplest way for casters. You can use it with sot few times if you are lucky, but not abuse it forever. 

One time fixed resources gain can be overpowered with tactican/caster. Flank enemies, then let them flank you, then spam weapon switch for kapana taga/something, to get brilliant->flanked->brilliant->flanked chain. 

I'm not sure if ascended cipher with time parasite can reaply brilliant to refresh resources gain if target is inspired, but that would be bad thing.

Edited August 10, 2019 by Powerotti

[Phenomenum]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

Brilliant: +5 INT, +x Resources (depends on class, can be higher than original Brilliant for all I care) onetime, +3 PL (or +2 - I'm not set on this).

The problem is (let's say Brilliant grants 4 resources): it will grant 1 or 2 ability uses for martial single-class, 2 or 4 ability uses for martial multy-class, and 4 ability uses (casts) for caster. A huge disproportion.

[Boeroer]

Yes, that's why I wrote the replenishment depends on the class:

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

---------------------
INT Inspirations
---------------------
Smart: +5 INT
Acute: +5 INT, +1 PL
Brilliant: +5 INT, +x Resources (depends on class, can be higher than original Brilliant for all I care) onetime, +3 PL (or +2 - I'm not set on this).
---------------------