Balancing

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Cassandra Fjurin
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Balancing

Post by Cassandra Fjurin »

For my own interest and thinking about how we can improve some of the concepts i will ask

Fighters:

================================================
Do you think the Weapons, Armors are balanced. Is there truely a best armor which everyone uses which you can get easily (For example for some months up to a year everyone has ever used the plate armor because ist was the best one) or have different armors different improvements.

Maybe a Plate armor protects you well but makes you to slow, you cant block good enough with it.
A leather armor doesn't protect you as good as a plate armor but you are faster, can better dodge or block
and so on.

The same for weapons.

Is there a best weapon which uses everyone or is the best weapon. Or the weapons well balanced.

An large axe hits not so often but if you hit with it it hurts really, or destroyes the armor etc.
A small dager is hard to block or to dodge but if you hit someone in a heavy armor it doesn't harm really.

This are my questions to fighters.

===============================================

to the workers:

How ist the working balanced. Do you think the skillgain ist to easy, to hard. (i don't think its really to hard but you see to seldom the effect of gaining skill) is the variety of products enough. Can you determine on you actions that you become better etc. Do you think that it will be better to increase your product range earlier with only one or two new items.

Do you think that a new smith maybe will onle be able to create raw product (under the fact that there will be a smith npc which buys them or gives you an order to produce different of this product) and only later you can produce the first weapons ...

===============================================

to the magicans:

Think of a fair way to gain skill without powergaming, maybe learning magic through books, practicing "raw spells" learning theorie... to gain skills without casting the concrete spells for hours and hours.

===============================================

You can post you answers here or send them via pm to me.
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Meriel Pelith
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Re: Balancing

Post by Meriel Pelith »

Cassandra Fjurin wrote:===============================================

to the magicans:

Think of a fair way to gain skill without powergaming, maybe learning magic through books, practicing "raw spells" learning theorie... to gain skills without casting the concrete spells for hours and hours.

===============================================

In the old client was a staff, where you 'meditated' when you used it. Maybe something like that?

But yes, I think a way to gain skill without killing a hundred of pigs would be useful. I mean, my char Meriel does not mind at all , she would kill anything in her way, anyway. But if I would play a 'good' mage, I would be frustrated that there is no other way than to cast on poor animals.

*

Edit: I just got corrected that you learn when you cast on the ground too? Is that true?
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Kevin Lightdot
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Re: Balancing

Post by Kevin Lightdot »

Cassandra Fjurin wrote:
===============================================

to the workers:

How ist the working balanced. Do you think the skillgain ist to easy, to hard. (i don't think its really to hard but you see to seldom the effect of gaining skill) is the variety of products enough. Can you determine on you actions that you become better etc. Do you think that it will be better to increase your product range earlier with only one or two new items.

Do you think that a new smith maybe will onle be able to create raw product (under the fact that there will be a smith npc which buys them or gives you an order to produce different of this product) and only later you can produce the first weapons ...

===============================================
The 'raw products' idea seems good to me. Though i think there should be a few more kinds of daggers. There's plenty of everything else i guess, for smithing and carpentry atleast, dont realy know about the others.
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Arameh
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Post by Arameh »

I noticed the bastard sword was pretty slow, innacurate, and pretty much impossible to parry with it. At least to one of my character, it is complete crap compared to a double axe, maybe thats why no one uses 2 handed swords now?


I also noticed that one handed swords, did not hurt an armored opponent. Been dueling a character, we both had heavy armor, and the best one handed swords craftable of average quality (magical long sword..), we just did not hurt ourselves, my character had 9/10 healt in the end, and the fight lasted for about 3 minutes, by skilled warriors.


It also seems to me that maces are harder to parry, like that if the opponent holds a mace he has more chances to hit you, this is odd to me.


But yeah, double axe seems to be pretty much the common weapon now, since lot of peoples seen that 2 handed swords were pretty much useless.
As for hammer and staves, hammers too have been unused for a while, I think weapons that 2 tiles have been made weaker because they can hit 2 tiles. If its so, you should know that hitting 2 tiles is pretty useless when the character hitting gets stalled off for 5 seconds.


For armors it seems alright, most peoples dosent know which armors really are good now, so they use different ones. The armor attributes I think arent much logical but its being worked on I think.

Pretty much everything I wanted to type for now.
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NirAntae
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Post by NirAntae »

I wouldn't say that skillgain was either too easy or too hard as a whole, so much as certain skills seem to be much easier to gain than others.

For example, there are three crafts I have been trying to learn/work on: Carpentry, Tailoring, and Farming.

In a single 'round' of crafting, I'll get anywhere from one skillgain every two rounds to 2-3 skillgains in a round for Carpentry (probably partially having to do with the fact that you use both carpentry and lumberjacking.) This is relatively easy and not very time-consuming; all you have to do is find the trees. All the clicking gets repetitive, but it seems to be well-balanced within itself. It takes perhaps an hour of real time to do a full 'round' of Carpentry.

On to Tailoring. This skill in contrast with Carpentry is very difficult to craft with. You have to either harvest lots and lots of sibanac or go fight lots of mummies to get the thread. you then have to either weave cloth or go kills pigs for leather. Then you finally get to sit back and make a round of items. It seems to take on average 4-5 rounds to see a single skillgain. Because of the varied materials required, a single round can take 2-3 hours of realtime, if you can't find or afford to buy some of the materials. So, it takes twice as long to do a round, and each round is somewhere around 3-6 times less effective, than with Carpentry.

Now... on to the Farming. This is the second time I've worked to build up my char's Farming skill. The first time, right after trees were made perishable and plantable, everything seemed to proceed at about a pace I would expect. After leaving and returning, my char got killed several times and is all the way back to 0% full-blue in Farming. As I got back into Carpentry, I wanted to replace the trees I was eating up. I worked for three days straight on almost nothing but farming for the time I was in game. I never saw a single skillgain; after three days of work on it, she has not appreciably improved.


This seems very strange to me, to see such a wide range of effectiveness and times involved in improving the various crafting skills. An easy way to balance this, in my opinion, would be to allow those skills whose required materials are harder to gather (tailoring and smithing both come to mind) easier/faster to learn than those whose materials are easily obtainable as you craft (such and carpentry and farming).
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Arameh
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Post by Arameh »

I agree, could be why there are no tailors...I think it can be because skill gain is based too much on luck, as I heard. I find smithing awfully hard, getting sheets is a pain in the ass, you can either buy them from Arameh from 10 coppers each (which you can only make any profits by being as good as Salathe), or go mine them, and smelt them, its the hell. After having mined about 20 000 different ores, coal and gems, I pity the smiths.
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Athian
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Post by Athian »

for magic just like fighting you have to do in order to learn i feel, so i wouldn't ever want to see the need to actually practise spells completely removed from the skill gain aspect. in a way it's kind of the same you can't just sit someone down in front of a book and then throw them out in the field. but what would be nice are some tools to help along magic practises. by giving you a small amount of skill gain, of course the question is how can you effect a skill gain without making it easily exploitable, or just down right boring.
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Garett Gwenour
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Post by Garett Gwenour »

Fighting:
Armor is not the same for all. There are many different types that are used. Lor Angur for those who want to dodge. Salkamerian for those who cannot dodge and want to stand in a battle for a long time. And then dwarvenplate or chain mail for training armor.

As to weaponry, yes, basically everyone with slash uses a double axe because the two handed sword and bastard sword are horrible to parry with and tho for me are useful, a double axe is just better.
I would like to see a single handed sword made a bit stronger, as arameh said, you cannot really damage an opponent with it.
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Nalzaxx
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Post by Nalzaxx »

I would like to see magic become much more dynamic. Perhaps involving several stages in which skill increase comes.

For instance:

First stage: Teaching - The apprentice gets taught the basics of a skill by his master, he watches spells being cast, learns the ancient language gets into the whole feel of being a mage etc. First chunk of skill.

Second: Research - The mage goes and locks himself away in a library and researches through books and tomes and scrolls and all the like about magic and the spells and skill he wants to cast. Second chunk of skill.

Third: Practice - After having learnt the ways and which to perform spells the mage goes out and actually physically begins casting the spells in order to learn from their feel and familiarise himself with them. Third Chunk of Skill

Fourth: Meditation - After having gained lots of experience in casting the spell the mage meditates on the deeper meaning and workings of the spell and as such gains the final insights into it. Last chunk of skill.

The progression within each of these area's would obviously be progressive to an extent. But perhaps it would help sift out the workload and not make things quite so repetative.
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swish1
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Post by swish1 »

I think that skill gaining is too slow.
Thats just me but I tried to mine and to mine 30 coal it took a century and I still did not grow a level..

Odd.
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Dónal Mason
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Post by Dónal Mason »

Skill gain is being changed in the future to make it more fair. As it stands now, it's fairly random.
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Arameh
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Post by Arameh »

I have noticed damages bonus from attacking from behind got slightly decreased, I wonder why...it was alright, now attacking from behind has nearly same damages its useless. To me logically it should be at least 3x stronger in the back.
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Korwin
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Post by Korwin »

===============================================

to the magicans:

Think of a fair way to gain skill without powergaming, maybe learning magic through books, practicing "raw spells" learning theorie... to gain skills without casting the concrete spells for hours and hours.

===============================================
You can create all manner of confusing systems for skill gain, but couldn't gradual skill be granted automatically over time possibly based on intelligence? It's not an elegant solution, but I think we can agree that vetern characters should, in general, have more skill than neophytes. Also, to work, you'd need to have another more individual solution, or else the most experienced would simply be the strongest, and no one wants that.

This sort of system does violate the fundamental urge to feel that a player has to do some arbitrary action to gain some reward, but I don't think that's really what Illarion is about anyway.

I'm fully opposed to meditation as a method of skill gain, because it either directly causes people to drag their characters to some secluded spot in the woods, or have some particularly uninteresting role-play involving a lot of sitting serenely.
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Nilo
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Post by Nilo »

It seems to me that with the fighting system, many players have "Special armors" or "special weapons" which makes some warriors "Unbeatable."

As for working,
I'd like to see more of a use for foods. Most people do not buy food, because it is so easy to get ham and cook it for yourself, or else get apples or cherries.

Perhaps a new NPC could buy more food and for better prices?

Also, a suggestion, I think that cooking Ham in an oven should require a skill (Cooking...), this way buying food becomes more common.
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Salathe
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Post by Salathe »

Nilo wrote:It seems to me that with the fighting system, many players have "Special armors" or "special weapons" which makes some warriors "Unbeatable."
And these weapons/armors were earned. And not everyone can get these, only a few. They dont make a warrior unbeatable, just harder.

As for armors, they are fine.

But as everyone else said, for slashers, double axe is really the only way to go.

skill gain at my lvl in smithing is nearly impossible, i smithed 10000 sheets of iron and didnt get one lvl
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Gro'bul
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Post by Gro'bul »

Fighting:
Armor is just plain wrong with regards to any and everything. Weapons need more tweaking and balancing especially between axes and swords, they do co-ordinate with crafting, the ones that can be made that is. Because armor was made good against conc, their values need readjusting, either the weapons or armor since origionallly armor was weak against them. I have looked at, experienced, and gathered much feedback. I would really rather talk you on irc or the like about it. Creating multi-classes within hand to hand combat is difficult without total co-ordination.

Crafting:
Problem is the randomness. My char has gained 2 levels from 8 sheets, and then he gets stuck learning nothing after 300, can I get a wtf? :wink: Key problem in blacksmithing is item gaps in lower levels mostly between 30-50.
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Estralis Seborian
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Post by Estralis Seborian »

Just one remark about balancing fighting: Instead of balancing the weapon / armor data, I'd first balance the fighting system itself. Saves lots of work IMHO. Also, may I ask you to notify me on changes on the weapon / armor data - I require such kind of informations for my economy project.
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falco1029
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Post by falco1029 »

For magic, i think that you should be able to learn it through books, casting, perhaps certain quests, and such. Maybe also make it so when you are cast upon if you already hjave the base rune skil lyou learn a tiny bit more?
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Athian
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Post by Athian »

didn't like any of those porposals actually.

books we did. had ten thousand magic users

in order for people to not abuse quest knowledge after completing them (telling there buddies). the quests would not only have to be changed after every completion, but also be singular (groups couldn't do them and everyone recieve runes for one players work), but incredibly difficult in general.

learning a spell by being struck by it? powergame central, not to mention it would mean alot of nonmages would end up having magic skills with no corresponding ability or runes. plus, you don't learn how to fire a gun by getting shot by one, or learn to swing a sword by being slashed to pieces. doesn't make to much sense.
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falco1029
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Post by falco1029 »

Athian wrote:didn't like any of those porposals actually.

books we did. had ten thousand magic users

in order for people to not abuse quest knowledge after completing them (telling there buddies). the quests would not only have to be changed after every completion, but also be singular (groups couldn't do them and everyone recieve runes for one players work), but incredibly difficult in general.

learning a spell by being struck by it? powergame central, not to mention it would mean alot of nonmages would end up having magic skills with no corresponding ability or runes. plus, you don't learn how to fire a gun by getting shot by one, or learn to swing a sword by being slashed to pieces. doesn't make to much sense.
I dont mean actually learning magic, i mean training it via those things (this much explains the books). I actually agree with the current learning system. Quests qould be numerous, dynamic (a bit tough to do, but possible, maybe change around which items and which npc's it involves and such), and of course, hard. Completing one would train a single rune a certain amount.

As for the last one, as i said, itd be for training, only a magic user who already knows the basics of the rune could learn from it. Since magic is different, and involves energy and mental patterns, i could see a magic user learning by getting hit, and understanding HOW the damage is done, if you get hwat I mean. And by the way, are you saying if you fought with swords against someone, you wouldnt pick up on how they parry your blows, and how they get past your defenses? It'd be much slower than actually doing it, but should still be possible
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Taylor
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Post by Taylor »

Thought i'd point out:

Herb Lore is rediculous., I have bright blue herb lore. And i've tested on 3 different items and 3 different surfaces. Here are the results:

Palm Tree 150 clicks: 8 rotten bark
Foot leaf plant on Plains 150 clicks: 6 Foot leaves
Sandberry plant in desert. 150 clicks: 3 sandberries

Plains 150 clicks: 9 items
Desert 150 clicks: 4 items
Forest 150 clicks: 3 items


I don't know if this is on purpose..But it just seems incredibly hard...And you don't exactly make a ton of money off of it...

Edit: More more test:
Entire full Food Bar:
On Reeds for sibanac leaf: 4 leaves
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NirAntae
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Post by NirAntae »

I have to agree, the 'click ratio' for most of the crafts seems very high.

For another example, I have turquoise, almost to green Lumberjacking skill... it takes 5 clicks to down the tree every time, and anywhere from another 6 to another 18 clicks to get the four logs I can get from it. While this isn't as extreme an example as Taylor's, it's still pretty bad, especially since my skill is almost up to green. I know some of the multi-step clicking is to help prevent powergaming or 'macroing', but it does get fairly tedious and frustrating. It's surprising that anyone could stick with it enough to master a craft at those 'clicking levels'.

Plus, in three rounds of 52 logs (that's what... an average of about 600 clicks per round, so about 1800 clicks total) I didn't gain a single skill level that I saw. Granted, at almost-green skill, it would take a lot of chopping to get another level, but that does seem a bit much; I was averaging about one skillgain per 'round', before... granted some I didn't get any, other times 2 or 3... but average about 1.



Edit:
Also, I don't know if the crafting success rate has been tweaked, but up until today I was averaging about 3 arrows to every board/thread I used; today, that dropped down to somewhere between 1.5 and 2... that's somewhere between one half and one third less; that's a pretty big change. Was that purely chance, or have they been tweaked? If they have, I think they've been tweaked the wrong way... crafting was already tedious and frustrating, making it even harder is the last thing it needs...
Last edited by NirAntae on Sun Jun 25, 2006 5:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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falco1029
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Post by falco1029 »

yeah, kinda funny how they dont want the game to be mindless clicking and powergaming, yet thats what you HAVE to do to gain any skill.....
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Gro'bul
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Post by Gro'bul »

Taylor wrote:Herb Lore is rediculous.,
You fail to take into account its still late winter. Theres also only 20 herbs per 20 tiles when using the ground.
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Taylor
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Post by Taylor »

On the Horoscope it says that Elos and Tanos are Spring..
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Samantha Meryadeles
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Post by Samantha Meryadeles »

Grobul, we have already spring
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Garett Gwenour
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Post by Garett Gwenour »

generally at the coldest month we don't go straight into sunny ideal weather. Elos is the februrary for us that is really neither winter nor spring but in the middle. Tho now we are in Tanos? So herb lore should be plentiful now.
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Misjbar
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Post by Misjbar »

Tailoring should be balanced. Greatly.
Currently it is only for the rich, because of the overly expensive dyes.
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Poots
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Post by Poots »

my turn!

goldsmithing (I don't know if this apllies for smithing, though it probaly does)
can't get frustrating. and heres why:

background info: my guy's goldmsithing skill is about....halfway there to being green, though I have been doing this for a while.for the past year he's been able to make everything except the diamond ring (but I heard there's gold armour too, dunno) smithing level is bright green. buisness sucks because everyone already has rings, and they want either quality, which I don't have, or diamonds rings, which I also don't have.

now, mining gold and copper is easy, run outside trolls bane, run back in. prices are fine. but for coal, I have to either pay 7 coins a piece, which outragous though it''s from an npc, so I understand, or pay like 6 coins a piece from some stupid player *cough Arameh cough ripoff* that's the lazy way out. aside from that, I have to run up this dangerous mountain where if I get hit by anything I die, go down the mine, shift click for an hour, get 60 coals, crawl all the way down the mountain, (which is very slow even with good strength and agility, and I mean, very slow.) get back to town, do smelting for 10 minutes, smith my now 55 ingots, make 20 plates, and them dump them behind some tree somewhere.

after I do that 2 or 3 times, I get a blue swirly
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Jon Childs
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Post by Jon Childs »

There should be a coal rock in the east mine...
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