13 replies to this topic

[Qwinn]

Thanks for the kind words

Are you aware that the game -does- have a difficulty slider in the Gameplay Options screen? The tooltip in the game says it merely "increases damage", but the manual says it changes "hidden factors" to make the game more difficult, so maybe it's more than that. Give it a try, and see if that increases the difficulty in the way you're interested in without us finagling stuff.

Now, since the game is in fact a storyline/quest/stat game, I'd actually be more interested in someone going through and making the stat checks more difficult. One rich source for this is the fact that, at least some part during the design of the game, it was clearly possible to have stats below 9. As a result, there's quite a few stat checks in game that are essentially totally invisible because any value greater than 8 passes it. I think a great tweak would be one that would increase those to non-trivial levels, as well as possibly making some existing stat checks that are too easy more difficult.

A mod like that would take a lot of analysis and stuff to balance gameplay though. I'd have no problem at all coding it up, but I don't know when I'm going to have time to sit down and go through every stat check in the game to do something like that. But for the record, I'd probably lend my efforts to something like that before I tried to make a "Tactics" style mod for PS:T.

Qwinn

[ghostdog]

I'll have to agree that the only aspect of PST that is not so great, is the combat. Not very challenging and somewhat repetitive, but as qwinn said a rebalance/tactics mod would require much work and testing.

Apart from resistances and damage power, the enemies would need a better AI altogether. They should use more abilites/spells etc. Also there should be ambushes and much more lethal traps. And it's not all about combat. The fact is that the game favors much wisdom and intelligence in dialogs resulting in a lot of XP gain, not to mention plot exposure. And how about the option to become a cleric? All this would be great if someone could pull it off, but it's not an easy task...

[Qwinn]

I agree with more lethal traps... they were basically made about as trivial as locks were. At least I took care of those, and the Knock spell is actually a must buy early on now I can definitely see making traps non-trivial as part of the Fixpack someday, same way as I did for locks. But first, let me get this version out and see if people actually like the lock changes and want to see more of that type of thing, heh.

I have no real interest in giving TNO the ability to become a cleric. Just doesn't fit his character.

Qwinn

[Icendoan]

No, I follow SCSII's idea on this. You should neither nerf nor buff, but instead improve AI.

Icen

[scient]

Another example of lack of lethal traps is inside scripts for Lothar area, if you fail lockpicking it increments a global variable "Lothar_Mad" which never gets used. So you can break into his stuff right in front of him and he won't care.

Updating the AI is no easy task even if source code was available. Spell casters are somewhat more difficult with horror working now but it would be nice if they could assess threats and cast spells accordingly. Currently, from my understanding they cast spells in a fixed order. I'm holding off messing with any of stats stuff since it's such an integrated part of the game it would be easy to miss something and cause bugs. I'd also put my vote towards revised stat checks in dialogs as opposed to combat modifiers. Another thing could be to lower the exp bonus from WIS.

Edited by scient, 23 November 2008 - 04:17 PM.

[Qwinn]

The other thing kinda dissuading me from a Tactics type mod is that you could knock yourself out trying to make the fights "difficult", but frankly, you will likely fail. Why? Because in other games, you die, game over. In this game, you die, you rez nearby, and if your teammates die, you can rez them and you just go back and beat the guy what killed ya down a bit further, wash, rinse, repeat. Believe me, I ran into this issue with the Expanded Deionarra mod... I tried hard to make a difficult combat encounter, and I think I did pretty well, but the fact remains that you can just keep throwing yourself in over and over, damaging the mobs a bit each time, and eventually you will kill them. Healing enemies to full health between your own rezzes you may get away with once or twice, but every creature in every area? Why would they heal to full when your own teammates don't heal at all? I suppose a way could be found around this to keep the fights challenging, but before anyone starts working on it, I'd say that's the first issue they need to deal with.

So I don't think this game can ever really be made to require real combat skill. I don't think it was ever meant to.

The more I look around, the more I think a stat-check boost tweak -is- in order. Like I said, though... something like that won't be coming out for a looooong time.

Qwinn

[ghostdog]

To tell you the truth I've almost never used the resurrection ability for TNO, if he died I just reloaded, I always thought it made things too easy. Healing the other creatures would be a way to go. Since it's not very realistic that TNO has immediately come back to life, maybe a day of resting should pass before he revives. I'm not sure if enemies regain hp when you rest, but maybe this should be included anyway.

[Icendoan]

BACKUP ~Stat Check Boosts/Backup~
AUTHOR ~Icendoan~

BEGIN ~Stat Check Boosts~

PRINT ~What would you like the stat checks to be?~
ACTION_READLN statCheck

COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~.*.dlg~ ~override~
DECOMPILE_DLG_TO_D
REPLACE_TEXTUALLY ~CheckStat.*(.*)~ ~CheckStat.*(.*,%statCheck%,.*)~ //Replaces any occurances of statchecking
COMPILE_D_TO_DLG
BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

Completely and utterly untested! Not even installed. Feel free to chop it up and alter it in any way.

Icen

[InTourette]

The other thing kinda dissuading me from a Tactics type mod is that you could knock yourself out trying to make the fights "difficult", but frankly, you will likely fail. Why? Because in other games, you die, game over. In this game, you die, you rez nearby, and if your teammates die, you can rez them and you just go back and beat the guy what killed ya down a bit further, wash, rinse, repeat. Believe me, I ran into this issue with the Expanded Deionarra mod... I tried hard to make a difficult combat encounter, and I think I did pretty well, but the fact remains that you can just keep throwing yourself in over and over, damaging the mobs a bit each time, and eventually you will kill them. Healing enemies to full health between your own rezzes you may get away with once or twice, but every creature in every area? Why would they heal to full when your own teammates don't heal at all? I suppose a way could be found around this to keep the fights challenging, but before anyone starts working on it, I'd say that's the first issue they need to deal with.

So I don't think this game can ever really be made to require real combat skill. I don't think it was ever meant to.

The more I look around, the more I think a stat-check boost tweak -is- in order. Like I said, though... something like that won't be coming out for a looooong time.

Qwinn

Why is it odd, if the enemies are healing each other? Imo it would be great to have more encounters like this, because I always liked the challenging fights in pst. Now there are just some, like against the Evil Wizard for example, but this again depends on how you skilled TNO. If you skilled a kensaimage you wont have a problem even against ggs. It would be nice, if there were some challenging fights after you go back to Sigil, but this is a UB thing, I think.
So my proposal would be regeneration of enemies, if TNO dies and general higher stats for them.
But after all its easier to put in just a few more challenging fights, maybe something like Champions in Diablo 2.

[Qwinn]

If you skilled a kensaimage you wont have a problem even against ggs.

Right. Which is why in version 3.1 you won't be able to do the kensaimage thing anymore You were never supposed to be able to.

So my proposal would be regeneration of enemies, if TNO dies and general higher stats for them.

My initial impression is that the regeneration thing would be very difficult to code, but I'll see if there's a way to accomplish it. Maybe there's a way I haven't thought of.

I do think a MaxHP tweak for creatures in the game would be a good idea at some point. Most of them have a very crappy amount of HP.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 15 December 2008 - 03:02 PM.

[Qwinn]

The creature list doesn't have all the information available in a creature file. Most creatures have a Level too, and you can extrapolate a max hp based on that level.

That aside, in a lot of cases the creature files are somewhat poorly defined. I think the proper approach to take for a Creature Upgrade Tweak would be to use the true 2nd edition D&D values for those creatures as often as possible, though of course in a lot of cases that's not going to be possible. I'm gonna guess there isn't actually a "Low Threat Construct" in any old Monster Manual or Fiend Folio, the constructs in the modron maze are custom to PS:T, and in those we can work with the existing stats/level to work something out. I actually think that the high threat constructs are an appropriate challenge for the point where you can get there, though. More balanced/challenging than 90% of the remainder of the game, anyway. Maybe a slight upgrade to them, but not a huge one.

One thing I noticed was their weapon proficiencies. Both low and medium threat constructs have 0 proficiencies, and the high threat ones have 3. I would actually make them 1, 3 and 5.

Making every single room of a 64 room maze challenging might get kinda grueling, though.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 16 December 2008 - 08:26 PM.