The Drunken Lizard Pub

There's a lot of talk about balancing going on, but the problem is I hear it from both sides: "Melee characters are overpowered!" "Casters are overpowered!" "The game is too hard!" "The game was too easy!"...

So, I made this little poll to determine what needs adjusting in the next patch to make Eschalon more enjoyable...

How about ranger, and rogue ? I found the ranger to be powerful, especially since you can outrun most monsters,, rogue is much harder to play though.

I have found none of the classes to be overpowered. I played my first game as a paladin and now I am working on being a spellcaster. The spellcaster is working quite nicely.

It's just right: I've had some difficulties, but nothing I haven't managed to overcome. Remember, it's the challenges you beat that give satisfaction, not the really-easy-things.

You should add a hard mode, which you unlock after finishing the game. Monsters could do 50% more damage and have 50% more health or something. Also I heard the chatter that you intend to be able to let us get to ash island in some future patch, maybe that can only be gotten to in hard mode.

Would add some nice replay value.

VPeric wrote:It's just right: I've had some difficulties, but nothing I haven't managed to overcome. Remember, it's the challenges you beat that give satisfaction, not the really-easy-things.

Yes, when it is about game itself - rpg, monsters,... - I definitely agree.
But when it cames to basic elements like having to sleep after every combat - well, what enjoyment that gives to you? You've to sleep like 13 hours in late-game and that would mean, that you either will walk in night (and then has to rewalk same area, as you'll miss a lot) or sleep another up-to-12 hours, just to get a day.

What about testing patch, that will only remove manaregen-cap? You still will have to invest plenty of perception/meditation so you will get high regen and that would harm you in other areas...

And, maybe lower effect of endurance/survival/... to resistence against magic, so warrior will get some enemies too, now they're immortal gods of destruction.

This is a bit complex. I think heavy fighters (melee with heavy armour) are indeed much easier because they can deliver and take high levels of damage with little to no downside; this is inherent in the system. Since every melee character has an unused mana pool (even if it's small), adding (or finding), say, a single Divination rank means extra buffs and healing, can use rogue-like techniques such as Cats Eyes in the dark, the typical strength of a melee character means the weight restrictions on casting are little problem, you aren't reliant on mana regen because it's only secondary and you don't have the expense of buying arrows like a ranged character.

Any other style of character is reliant on something that acts as a small brake - mana regen or buying arrows etc - often with less raw damage dealing.

I'm not sure there is a simple solution - and I'm not sure there necessarily needs to be; I don't see this sort of balance as critical in a single-player game except that players don't really know what they are getting until they play through at least once (such as how many skills should you try to develop? How many ranks are effective? How much damage does this spell deliver?). Some skills deliver more "bang per skill point", which can sometimes be frustrating.

I'd probably like to see some of the higher-end spell damages tweaked up and mana regen increased. All that said, my "main" character (ranger/druid) found it challenging but fun.

I think the key in balancing Eschalon is not in the classes (or peoples' preconceptions about what the classes should be) but rather in the skills themselves.

There is a two stage process in this - firstly, skills within groups must be balanced, then groups balanced with each other.

E.g. consider the overall weapons group. At the moment, swords are the most powerful weapons with short bladed the worst (or possibly unarmed). The base skills are mostly fine, as mechanically every weapon skill works like every other. Balance for this set is dependent on item availability, fixing of an intended balancing factor (i.e. weapon swapping should cost time and not be free), and possibly changing unarmed and short blades to rely on agility rather than strength.

Secondly, to continue the example, the weapons skills need to be balanced to other skill groups. This relies on a couple of things.

First, what constitutes an optimal skill level? For example with weapons, you get linear increases in power from adding skill points whereas with magic you get non-linear progression as better spells become available. This can be balanced by requiring a high level of investment to get the tier 3 spells, and ensuring that the tier 1 and tier 2 spells are balanced based on their utility. E.g. suppose I dump 20 points into swords. This gives me +10 hit and damage. If I can dump 10 points into swords and 10 points into magic, and get +10 to hit and damage, then magic is too powerful - because my investment in magic is more flexible than that in swords. This is what makes me believe at the moment that magic is overpowered; it obviates the need to invest in other skills. A more reasonable approach would be for magic in this example to get us to say +7 or 8 to hit and damage with the given skill investment.

Secondly, for 'rogue-like' skills, and perhaps the melee skills too, the optimal level should be set lower than for magic - this applies particularly for rogue skills where 10 points (say) should give you pretty much full access to the top-level skill. This would compare to 30 skill to unlock a magic discipline completely, but is balanced because 30 in elemental gives you many more options than 10 in lock pick.

The end goal of all of this is to allow people to pick and choose skills knowing that they have to invest roughly similar amounts to end up with equivalent flexibility - so you could invest heavily in magic, and rely on it to achieve all your goals (fighting, movement, lock picks, trap elimination) or alternatively you invest in the skills that you actually want. Its what the current system is intended to do I think, but as far as I can tell tweaks are required to depower magic (or make it more skill-point intensive), set the effective caps for rogue-skills lower (i.e. skill level 10 could be set as the point at which you can do everything you need to), and either power up weapons skills or depower magic enhancement like bless and enchanted weapon.

I think Loriac got a point,,, I guess it is not necesarry for a game like Eschalon to be about playing one class, instead we can play around with each skill, use a little bit of magic here a little bit of fighting there a little bit of archery.... alchemy,, It is necesarry to use a little bit of each game mechanics to a certain extent.

You can focus more on one or the other put you need to use a little bit of everything,,,, so I guess the solution could just be to make straight melee a little bit less powerful.

I couldn't vote because the options really don't fit the issue. Warriors are not over powered. They are just right. Mages are just under powered if you try to build a traditional straight mage type. So my vote is for Other. Mages are under powered.

dak wrote:How about ranger, and rogue ? I found the ranger to be powerful, especially since you can outrun most monsters,, rogue is much harder to play though.

i think the rangers would need a fix with the arrows weight and cost..
and rangers should start with more arrows.. i always run out of arrows before i reach Arridel..

and the rogues need a 2x/3x damage when coming out of "Moving Silently"... since the strongest short bladed weapon only has a maximum of 5 base damage..

The easiest way to judge this is to play each damage ability at a high level and see who does the most damage. In my opinion, the mage nor cleric have a high level spell that come close to matching the damage output of a melee character. Read the destroyer thread and you'll see melee characters hitting for 100 damage! The mage, meanwhile, will be lucky to hit for 40. This will also be resisted much more often than a melee attack will be absorbed. A resisted spell stops 100% of the damage while armor and damage resistance only stop a portion. Another negative is that a melee build will have many more hitpoints than a mage build. Most mages aren't focussing on endurance and even if they did they get a -1 penalty for every level. A warrior doesn't need a lot of mana, but a mage does need as many hp as a warrior. They're getting hit as often, doing less damage, wearing less armor, and their ability to do damage is based on mana while a warrior has no stamina drain that makes them have to rest.

It really depends on if you want to balance your game based on typical roles. I can play a mage who is a swordmaster with high endurance. Of course, I'm not really a mage anymore...

The only way to truly balance this is to have different costs for skills based on builds. That would be a book II fix. In the interim, I would change the higher level mage spells into DOT (damage over time) spells. If my 10 pts/level cost spells did damage for 1 round per level of skill that might even the playing field. Sure I spent 60 points but I hit 5 targets that are going to take 24 damage a round if they fail their magic save, etc.

My long-winded 2¢

i always run out of arrows before i reach Arridel..

ehh, there are two salamanders between the start point and Aridell...

Three actually. One north from the beginning abandoned house, and two near the bridge.

BasiliskWrangler wrote:There's a lot of talk about balancing going on, but the problem is I hear it from both sides: "Melee characters are overpowered!" "Casters are overpowered!" "The game is too hard!" "The game was too easy!"...

So, I made this little poll to determine what needs adjusting in the next patch to make Eschalon more enjoyable...

I think you're actually asking the wrong question here... More later.