Hello everyone! Hope your all doing well!
Today is the first of many balancing updates that will be occurring throughout development. Balance is going to be an ongoing process right up until the full release, so be warned, that stuff will be swinging wildly back and forth pretty much until the last month of EA. For now, I'm not trying to get anything 'perfect', since new additions and changes to mechanics / content tend to upset any fine tuning. Rather I'm just trying to hammer on the glaring issues.
As a rule, especially this early on, I try to err on the side of overbalancing i.e. making large changes rather than small ones. This is simply so that we can actually 'see' the effect of changes through the fog of the RNG.
This first round of balancing focuses on two things:
1) Reducing random difficulty created by the RNG:
Obviously variety between runs is critical for the replay-ability of a rogue-like and obviously there is going to be some runs that are harder than others. That being said, I'd like this variation in difficulty to offer opportunities for players to demonstrate their skill and knowledge of the game. What I mean by this is a run may be 'hard' because it doesn't give you everything you need to do a standard character build, but a clever player should still be able to adapt. A run should not be hard because it just randomly refuses to generate any enchantment scrolls or tables. The reverse case is also an issue i.e. a run becoming a no-brainer, easy run, simply due to some extreme edge case in generation.
2) Balancing Classes:
This is simply targeting the worst offenders of over-powered classes and under-powered classes and attempting to give them a nerf or buff to bring them more in line. The goal here isn't perfect balance, and this is always going to depend a lot on play style, but we're mostly targeting the extreme offenders on either side.
As a side note, the Rogue is being left alone for now until the split into Assassin and Rogue since his current kit was designed back in Alpha when he got all of his EXP from items and non from kills which is why it is mostly based around avoidance, with killing as a secondary consideration.
Current Class Balance:
Thank you everyone for your feedback on class balance! Here's the combined data I got from you guys:
OVER-POWERED:
- Storm Mage [6]
- Ranger [5]
- Enchanter [5]
- Necromancer [4]
- Fire Mage [2]
- Ice Mage [2]
- Warrior [1]
UNDER-POWERED:
- Barbarian [6]
- Rogue [4] (poor guys gonna have to wait another week unfortunately)
- Fire Mage [4]
- Warrior [3]
- Ice Mage [2]
With that said, on to the updates:
GLOBAL_DIFFICULTY_BALANCE:
Up until this point, there was no global (dungeon wide) control on any of the generation. This meant there was an insane range in the number of certain features that could spawn. For example you could get something crazy like 0-20 enchantment tables (though the average was something like 3-4). The exact numbers here may need some adjusting (possibly widening the ranges a bit), but this is a first stab at controlling this more carefully.
- Merchants: 1-3 per dungeon on levels >= 6. The 3 guaranteed spawns don't count towards this.
- Enchantment tables: 2-4 per dungeon on levels >= 6.
- Transference tables: 1-3 per dungeon on levels >= 9.
- Well of Wishing: 1-2 per dungeon
- Skill Trainer: 1 per dungeon in either TIER_III (9-12), BRANCH_I or BRANCH_II (but never on the last levels).
- Talent trainer: same as the skill trainer
- Priests: 1-2 per dungeon in BRANCH_I, BRANCH_II or Yendor (never twice in same zone).
CLASS_BALANCING_NERFS:
- Strafe attack will never trigger when increasing distance from an enemy. Its not supposed to be used for kiting. We may need to play with the 'shape' of this a bit and perhaps add additional talent levels.
- Shock Damage: 18,22,24 => 14,18,20. Shock is easily the best room clearing spell in the game. It likely will still hold this place even with a damage reduction.
- Confusion duration: 6,10,12 => 6,6,6. The AoE already increases in size with levels which is a massive boost. Plus your magic modifier is applied to duration already.
- Reduced all caster natural hit points from 24-48 to 20-40 (levels 1-20). All casters showed up on the OP list so this is a bit of a nerf to them while also helping to distinguish them as the 'glass cannons'. For casters that need a boost I'd prefer to do this through their abilities.
- Lunge has had its range reduced: 3,4,5 => 3.0, 3.5, 4.0. Its was WAY better than charge.
CLASS_BALANCE_BUFF:
- Barbarian is no longer restricted from using magic. Though I really like the idea of him having this unique penalty it really just doesn't work in such a short game like this where 50% of your drops therefore become useless.
- Barbarian maintains his rage longer 10 => 12 turns per point.
- Barbarian will maintain higher rage longer i.e. the turns to decrease rage are BASE + RAGE_LEVEL
- Deflect Talent now increases reflect w/ talent points: 10,10,10 => 10,14,16.
- Fire Mage now has the talent Shield of Flames instead of flaming hands which provides fire resistance, a 3 point damage shield and will burn off webs or nets cast on the player. I like that this talent will actually be very useful for pretty much any class that can find it.
- Ice armor now provides a point of cold resistance. Ice Armor + Shield of Flames therefore give the casters a way to gain elemental immunity while also providing another way to do this for all other classes.
MISC:
- +2MP for consuming a mana potion (brings it in line with healing pots).
- Removed mummies toxic resistance bonus. I'm not even looking at race balance atm but this guy is just so OP that he certainly doesn't need MORE bonuses :P
- You can now summon ranged weapons from wells and scrolls. Will be adding more ranged weapons soon as its currently just long bow and sling. Ranger is likely gonna need even more nerfs after this one as he's now pretty much guaranteed to get a good bow if he wants one.
- Changed ring of sustenance to simply halve the rate of food consumption so that you don't have to fiddle with it once you drop below 20 food.
- Iron Imps now correctly spawn in Arcane Tower.
CONCLUSION:
So we'l let this sit for a bit before making further adjustments so that we can all digest the changes. I look forward to hearing feedback on all these changes :)
Next few days will be bug fixes and interface stuff (keybindings especially).
Thanks again for all your help and support and thank you everyone who has been reviewing the game, it helps a lot!