392 Discussion

[Sensuki]

I'm pretty sure you'd be free to express that view. Not really anyone there is going to agree with you though. The difference between the Codex and another forum is that on another forum you'll be moderated out of the forum in no time.

 

I can't say 'storyfan' on this forum, if I do, I'll be warned and then banned. You can say Anita Sarkeesian (whoever that is, but I can take a pretty good guess that it's something related to feminism) is right about a lot of things on the codex all you like, without impediment by a moderator.

[Luckmann]

I'm pretty sure you'd be free to express that view. Not really anyone there is going to agree with you though. The difference between the Codex and another forum is that on another forum you'll be moderated out of the forum in no time.

 

I can't say 'storyfan' on this forum, if I do, I'll be warned and then banned. You can say Anita Sarkeesian (whoever that is, but I can take a pretty good guess that it's something related to feminism) is right about a lot of things on the codex all you like, without impediment by a moderator.

 

You would be correct.

[Osvir]

 

I'm pretty sure you'd be free to express that view. Not really anyone there is going to agree with you though. The difference between the Codex and another forum is that on another forum you'll be moderated out of the forum in no time.

 

I can't say 'storyfan' on this forum, if I do, I'll be warned and then banned. You can say Anita Sarkeesian (whoever that is, but I can take a pretty good guess that it's something related to feminism) is right about a lot of things on the codex all you like, without impediment by a moderator.

 

You would be correct.

This one is good too. For any "Last of Us" fans out there  appearantly, her videos inspired "Last of Us", which in turn is a great game! Which only comes to the one conclusion: Anita was paid (Kickstarter) to give more feminine (or because backers, were genuinely interested in feminine feedback), in an area/field where there's mostly masculine feedback, that made devs make something better. Hence, the Ambassador's Award.

Edited January 7, 2015 by Osvir

[Sensuki]

Btw for the area transitions in combat, I was just having a look back at what some of the earlier modders did and mutonizer modded it in himself and said it worked fine (area would be the same as you left it, I think). Obviously that was prob just quick testing but we'll look into it soonish I guess.

[TheisEjsing]

Why is a forum without moderation something good? Most constructive discussion is done with moderation. If radicalists and obstructionists are free to sprout poison into the debate, it only halts progess.

 

I don't wanna start a philosophical discussion. If you feel neutrality is the way to go, fine by me. I'm just saying that many scholars of the internet, in their own time, have rejoiced at the sound a steadfast banhammer. 

Edited January 7, 2015 by TheisEjsing

[Gfted1]

Why is a forum without moderation something good? Most constructive discussion is done with moderation. If radicalists and obstructionists are free to sprout poison into the debate, it only halts progess.

 

I don't wanna start a philosophical discussion. If you feel neutrality is the way to go, fine by me. I'm just saying that many scholars of the internet, in their own time, have rejoiced at the sound a steadfast banhammer.

Many people do not understand the difference between a forum owned by a public company and one owned by a private citizen. #OPPRESHUN

 

Anywho, back onto V392 discussion, please.

[Sensuki]

My example was just an example.

[Luckmann]

 

Why is a forum without moderation something good? Most constructive discussion is done with moderation. If radicalists and obstructionists are free to sprout poison into the debate, it only halts progess.

 

I don't wanna start a philosophical discussion. If you feel neutrality is the way to go, fine by me. I'm just saying that many scholars of the internet, in their own time, have rejoiced at the sound a steadfast banhammer.

Many people do not understand the difference between a forum owned by a public company and one owned by a private citizen. #OPPRESHUN

 

Anywho, back onto V392 discussion, please.

 

 

There's also a fair bit of difference between lack of moderation and neutrality.

 

We need a new version to bicker about, I think.

[TheisEjsing]

I meant neutrality in reference to freedom of expression. And understood, back to topic! 

[PrimeJunta]

Yeh, sorry about my part in derailing the thread. Won't do it again. Er, not on this thread anyway.

[Hormalakh]

A few changes to this version that I don't think have been mentioned:

 

splitting items can now be done with double-clicking as well as left-click/right-click. Great news!

[Sensuki]

How's this for swingy damage.

This is against enemies that have between 10 and 12 DR (10, 10, 11 and 12 respectively) against Freeze

 

 

Casual swing between 6 and 85 damage 

Edited January 8, 2015 by Sensuki

[Sensuki]

Save Scum #1

 

[PrimeJunta]

In (A)D&D that would have been something like 0 (save), 0 (save), 22, 18. Also swingy.

[Sensuki]

Nah.

 

I think a Fireball is 6D6 or something, and I believe a save vs spell does half damage or something - against four normal level 6-7 enemies it usually does 20-30 damage each at least. Dunno if the IE games normalize damage or something but you don't see low rolls on that kind of stuff very often, particularly not in BG1 either.

 

There are certainly cases in BG2 where you can have some interesting results due to magic resistance, save vs spells and the like, but the damage range is nowhere near as swingy as this because there's no spell crits and no misses either.

[GordonHalfman]

In 3e you had evasion to consider but in AD&D most spells were save for half, with some exceptions. Basically equivalent to a graze except when you consider DT grazes will be less than half damage in general, and then you have misses and crits on top of that.

[Sensuki]

Yeah pretty much - those are the reasons why it's more swingy - DR, and misses/crits.

[morhilane]

Fireball is 1D6 per caster level up to 10D6 in the IE games, but I don't think the engine roll different damage for all creatures hit by a single cast of the spell outside of resistance checks.

Edited January 8, 2015 by morhilane

[Hormalakh]

I don't think they've completely fixed all the DR/DT changes. For example, a fine large shield doesn't give you more DT than a regular one. I'm not sure how precise their attack resolution is at this point. If I understand correctly, Sawyer is still working on that bit.

[curryinahurry]

How's this for swingy damage.

This is against enemies that have between 10 and 12 DR (10, 10, 11 and 12 respectively) against Freeze

 

 

Casual swing between 6 and 85 damage 

 

I finally had a chance to play through 392; the first version I've played since 333 and the swingy damage seems to be the biggest item that stands out at the moment.  

 

I played through the beta 'critical path' (all the Dyrford quests in the beta ending with the Skaen temple) with a DPS fighter build ( Soldier focus).  By the end of the Skaen Temple final combat, the party had killed 71 foes, of which the fighter had dispatched 39 and totaling over 5700 points of damage.  By the time the party got to the temple, the DPS fighter, armed with the greatsword from Winifrith's shop, was routinely hitting for 65 damage every crit (which he was landing routinely having an accuracy of 83 with the greatsword).  By contrast, the BB Fighter, who I built out for defender capacity, had dished out a paltry 1800 points by the end of the run.   This gap between 2 melee oriented characters is too wide by my estimation and will only get worse once we start adding in magic items and crafting.

 

I think one solution to this problem is to re-think the way critical hit damage is calculated. It might be worthwhile for someone to start a thread just to explore the swingy damage problem, and solutions that forum members might have.

Edited January 8, 2015 by curryinahurry

[Sensuki]

It's not just the damage it's how accuracy works. Accuracy is such a huge deal, that a character that is built defensively will end up contributing almost no damage at all. I build a full defensive fighter and his DPS contribution to a few fights was less than 100 points of damage, whereas every other BB character was around 800-2000.

 

Not only that but even with 115 Deflection, I did not really notice that good of an increase in survivability, so IMO building for defense is fairly useless as it only made encounters longer and my party took more damage than I would have if I had a more offensive character (such as a Druid).

[curryinahurry]

^ I'm wondering if that Deflection issue is related to how flanking works.  

 

I think that the way talents are being allocated now has to be tweaked a bit.  Currently, talents that aided in  offence like Confident Aim and Armored Grace are choice options for builds as opposed to the original method.  At the end of my playthrough, my BB fighter had an accuracy of 46 compared to 83 for my DPS build.  I did notice that by giving the BB fighter Confident Aim before the Skaen dungeon, he did quite a bit more damage (all of this was on Normal BTW).

Edited January 9, 2015 by curryinahurry

[Sensuki]

Yeah Confident Aim is quite good, as are any of the percentile changes in attack resolution (Minor Threat, Dirty Fighting etc).

 

Flanking is just -10 Deflection. When my Super Defender was flanked he had 105 Deflection. Enemies missed him more, but he did still get hit fairly often and it didn't make much difference to his survivability in encounters because combat went for longer because I wasn't killing things faster, and thus he took more damage because of it.

[curryinahurry]

Yeah, I have been thinking that the formula for hit points in general might also need to be increased; besides any adjustments to how damage is calculated.  Many of the complaints about a whole panoply of issues (disengagement attacks, lethality of combat, etc.) might be lessened if there were simply more endurance/health points.  The other option would likely involve a very complicated re-working of Damage threshold/damage reduction which I just don't see happening this late in the development process.

 

BTW, I think Cirtical hits still should be looked at, because it  might provide an opportunity for light weapons to have more value (as in light weapons do more crit damage, or some variation osfsuch a concept).

Edited January 9, 2015 by curryinahurry

[Sensuki]

That's one of the things I've said too. In the next version, enemies will do less damage. But yep, it does feel like we aren't given enough endurance/health relative to incoming damage. One of the problems with that though is when you start increasing those numbers, enemy parties will start soaking up minimum damage like a sponge. I try and avoid wearing armor on most of my characters simply because of the DPS penalty but if you're using light weapons/the wrong weapon type against an armor type you'll be doing single digit damage for the most part, compared to 20-60 damage per hit for the right damage type.

 

I also don't believe these problems would exist if bonus damage was handled in integers.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Sensuki