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Messages - potterman28wxcv

Pages: [1] 2
1
Help Wanted / Re: One common project (to rule them all ?)
« on: May 03, 2017, 12:50:34 pm »
Thanks for your post doudley ! I'm seeing this as a super project, because one day we won't be modding Torchlight 2 anymore, and if we can bring it the extra touch that would make it closer to a perfect Torchlight 2, well that would be truly awesome :P

Quote from: doudley on May 01, 2017, 09:42:53 am
Human companions are totally off the vanilla traditions but I sure be obliged to assist anyone for making custom warbounds.
Yeah, I just cited it as an example. Whether it stays true enough to the game is debatable. I do think it actually brings an additional layer of customization - but porting all the classes to Warbound is surely not a task to underestimate. If we (I mean, everyone who wants to be involved in this) decide that it's not worth it, and that we should leave Warbound out of it, then so be it.

Do we want to go full "WOW" and agree on all the mods that add extra features (which is the path that took Synergies in the pre-GUTS version) ? Or would we more focus on staying as close as possible to the vanilla, but just with rebalances, end-game content, pet enhancements and the like ?

2
Help Wanted / Re: One common project (to rule them all ?)
« on: April 29, 2017, 06:14:18 pm »
To explain further what I meant with working together, on the existing mods. That could mean in the short term :
  • Integrate all the legendaries added by TL1CP into LAO 3.0
  • Add bindings to Warbound for every class in the Variant's pack

There are also some inconsistencies between the mods, that can only be addressed by putting them all together. For example, LAO 3.0 changes the staff to be Ranged instead of Melee, but then it's not really compatible with the Melee tree of the Alchemist, that is meant to be played with a staff (you can play it with a normal melee weapons, but then you miss out on the elementary damage)

And then there's some final touches that we could contribute, even if we're not the original author of the mod. For example, adding a nice UI binding to Warbound (press Alt = you compare the item with your hooman's. Shift+Right Click = you equip it to your hooman). Or just do some cleaning work ; in the case of Variant classes, I've just found a lvl 1 Teleport scroll that basically learns you a free cost-less teleport spell, hell it even adds you some dodge bonus. I guess it must be something that got included in one of the custom classes, kind of leftover.

I mean, I really believe that if you put all your efforts together into a single project, it might be possible to create a unique experience where there's no side effect and everything is really consistent.

3
Help Wanted / One common project (to rule them all ?)
« on: April 29, 2017, 06:08:12 pm »
The modding philosophy is to give the user as much freedom as he wants, to cherry-pick changes he wants and changes he doesn't want, leading to him getting an optimal experience.

But when you're new and arrive in the Workshop page, there are so many mods out there ! And you have no idea who is compatible with who.. So people will try to arrange a load order approximately, and then will get a suboptimal experience because some mods will overwrite the files of some other mod.

Given that we got some heavy modders out there, that I know produce mods of great quality, why not create some kind of project where our respective mods would just be part of something of a scale way bigger than what we can achieve all alone ?

When I look at what you guys have done on the Workshop, I see :
  • A lot of new classes : the amazing TL1CP project, but also there's the Variant classes compilation maintained by doudley and Viz
  • LAO 3.0 by RnF : not only does it provide an endless game, but it also provides more fun with items in general, and seems to rebalance the damage/armor graphs as well
  • Brother in Arms Warbound : some people release DLCs for less than that :P it completely changes how you play the game, because you have someone else to take care of. And you can imagine synergies between your companion and yourself
  • Various quality of life improvements

I'm quite sure there's a lot more that can be added in Torchlight 2. What would we gain from working together ?

1) It would be the overhaul mod to use for an optimal experience, gathering a maximum of interesting features in the Workshop. No more going through the whole thing and min-maxing your 10 mod limits
2) By working together, we would ensure our respective mods are compatible and playable with each others. This could also involve direct feedback between us, allowing to fine tune our mods more easily.
3) Generally it's just more motivating when there's several people working together. But you guys already did that for TL1CP ;p
4) Some of our mods make the game easier, some make it harder.. Working together means we can sort it out and leverage the difficulty, providing an optimal experience for the player
5) Help each other out !

The thing I'd like to see in Torchlight 2, but that none of us can do alone :
  • Provide endgame challenges. Similar to Synergies, but without the farm-fest that it is currently. With very tough encounters.
  • Rework and rebalance the vanilla classes
  • Maybe some other stuff too!

If we can manage to put it all together, we would have a very strong mod that would bring to Torchlight 2 even more than Synergies! I wouldn't want it to be the Median XL of Torchlight 2, because MXL changes way too much.. But the players should have a great time playing this combination of mods, because it would be designed for it.

Instead of each of us doing things on our own, we would be creating the overhaul/megamod of Torchlight 2.

That's for the basic idea. Now for the realization, there are quite some questions to be asked :

First of all, would you be willing to do this ? It's a big change in the workflow, and perhaps you prefer to work alone, which is totally fine.

Then, what kind of organization should there be ? Is it technically possible to work on a single mod with several people ? How to ensure no one breaks anything before pushing an update publicly ? :P

Last but not least : obviously we will all have different visions for the game at some point. Do you think it would be an obstacle ? I mean, personally. At some point, changing key features could mean discussing it before-hand, which is harder to do than working alone

I'd be very interested in participating in such a project. Torchlight 2 is the ARPG with the most potential out there - and I believe that with the right modifications/additions, it can become a truly awesome experience.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts about it.

4
Modding Discussions / Re: On the topic of overhauling.. What would need to be addressed and how
« on: July 15, 2016, 03:23:39 pm »
Quote from: MTaur on July 15, 2016, 11:59:04 am
The one time I played Berserker through Veteran NG0, I started using a shield in the Forest level.  It felt bad.  But I didn't know what else to do.  Right now, "everything is OP so nothing is", but fixing that would require a ton of nerfs to (almost) everything (except health and armor, and maybe HP regen gear and gems).  My mod pack thingy addresses a lot of issues, but the damage graphs probably haven't been nerfed hard enough.  The player gives up some OP sustain and protection skills, but the nerfs to enemy damage are outscaled by level 30 or 40 or so, even with a nerf that I currently include.  It's a headache.
Yes - that's what i was talking about when stating that it's very hard to scale down the damage graph. You need to do a lot of iterations and fine tuning before you're at the right spot where the damage does not outscale you, but you are not OP neither.

5
Modding Discussions / Re: On the topic of overhauling.. What would need to be addressed and how
« on: July 15, 2016, 11:39:36 am »
One shots

There is a huge problem with these in the game. Even when you're pumping a lot of points into Vitality, assuming you're doing an Elite playthrough of the game with no particular farming (so no farming Grell's Eyes), there is always that monster in Act 3 who will one shoot you no matter what.

Assuming you're melee, if you're lucky it gets blocked or reflected. If you're not, you're just dead, and there is absolutely nothing you could have done. It's complete RnG. And that really sucks.

You could scale down the damage graph - but it's very hard to scale it down properly. It needs a lot of playthroughs to get the right balance.

I think a nice alternate way would be to just double the amount of HP the character has. So basically, double the base HP, and also double the HP per level and vitality point.

It would solve the one-shotting problem without making you completely OP - you still receive the same amount of damage, and you still have the same amount of healing to do. But it gives you more bufferization.

I think the glass cannons would still get one shotted.. But there's nothing much to do about it :p

However, the Berzerker skills giving back a % of the health pool would have to be divided by two (so that it gets the same healing as before). Otherwise, the Berzerker class would become even more powerful than it already is

Maybe the health potions would also have to be toned down - this would need some testing (with this change, their effect would be slightly more effective, since you would have more health to heal).

6
Modding Discussions / Re: On the topic of overhauling.. What would need to be addressed and how
« on: July 14, 2016, 03:06:07 am »
Quote from: Phanjam on July 13, 2016, 09:09:46 am
Heyya @potterman28wxcv Potty! Really sorry i havent engaged you yet on your planning stage, RL is killing me atm :P

But i wanted to tell u, if u want ur own subforum for your mod just let me know ;)
Thanks - but I did not start yet, and I don't even know what I would call it, or even if there would be multiple mods or not :-p

7
Modding Discussions / Re: skill diversity idea, based on RGF's skills as spells
« on: July 13, 2016, 06:22:44 am »
Quote from: StrUktO on July 13, 2016, 04:53:20 am
Quote
I'm glad you mention RGF's spells - it is one of the funniest mod out there. Especially when you give them to your pet.

However, the problem with that mod is that some skills can become a "must have". For example, Embermage's Frost Phase is the skill to get in priority - it's the strongest escape move of the game, and it can increase a lot the survivability of a character.

But the good thing is that it opens up new possibilities. A Magma Hammer embermage is hardly viable, and you have to get the %life steal set - but if you equip the Berzerker passive giving health regen at each crit, it's a different story.

However, be aware that it will make the game significantly easier. (it provides 4 free skills to each character.. 60 free skill points basically. + the pet's spells)
I don't agree with you that vanilla skills would need reworking in that light, because that would be saying that custom classes are better than vanilla ones.
which they are not, or are they?
I wasn't saying that the vanilla skills would need reworking - but just a warning that with droppable spells, you have basically 4 free spells to choose from, which means at lvl 100 that you get virtually 60 free skill points. (since at lvl 100, the droppable spells would be equivalent to tier-3 spells, and each of them is worth 15 skill points)

So you would either need to have the droppable version to be slightly weaker than the base version to mitigate that - if you want to keep the same level of challenge that is. Or you leave it like this, and the game becomes a bit less challenging. Which is not necessarily a bad thing - it's just a statement

Quote from: StrUktO on July 13, 2016, 04:53:20 am
Quote
I think a rework of the existing vanilla legendary would be appreciated in this regard. But it's a ton of work.

rework may not be the proper term, they would need to be redesigned and there would need to be at least the same number of  unique affixes as there are legendary items in the game.
some thinking work on the mechanics of the game would also have to be done because letting every legendary proc something would be boring as well.
examples: a unique pair of boots that leaves bloody footprints, a chest piece that alters the appearance of the character, a tag that doubles your number of pets etc.
Yes that's what i meant - I had the Diablo 3 high level legendaries in mind. Each of them having something very unique.

8
Other Games & Mods / Re: rebel galaxy
« on: July 13, 2016, 04:01:40 am »
Quote from: StrUktO on July 12, 2016, 11:51:27 pm
are the chthonics in Grim Dawn named after you?
Technically yes

9
Modding Discussions / Re: skill diversity idea, based on RGF's skills as spells
« on: July 12, 2016, 04:50:33 pm »
Quote from: StrUktO on July 12, 2016, 12:30:12 pm
just brainstorming a bit

I'm thinking about increasing the skill diversity by expanding upon RGF's idea.
my expansion would be adding skills from custom classes as spells, with permission of course...
I'm glad you mention RGF's spells - it is one of the funniest mod out there. Especially when you give them to your pet.

However, the problem with that mod is that some skills can become a "must have". For example, Embermage's Frost Phase is the skill to get in priority - it's the strongest escape move of the game, and it can increase a lot the survivability of a character.

But the good thing is that it opens up new possibilities. A Magma Hammer embermage is hardly viable, and you have to get the %life steal set - but if you equip the Berzerker passive giving health regen at each crit, it's a different story.

However, be aware that it will make the game significantly easier. (it provides 4 free skills to each character.. 60 free skill points basically. + the pet's spells)

Quote from: StrUktO on July 12, 2016, 12:30:12 pm
also, I would like to add some completely new skills only available as spells, making it much like the function that spells already have in the game.
however, there would be a lot more of them and their goal would be to increase build diversity to a much larger extent.
there would have to be different versions of skill spells dropping at different levels in the game and some would have to be rarer than others.
it would for example extend the possibility of melee embermages and other hybrid builds.
I would be more up for this rather than just adding the skills of the classes.
The vanilla spells need a great rework to begin with - only some of them are viable, all the others having either a weird design or a not strong enough effect.

Quote from: StrUktO on July 12, 2016, 12:30:12 pm
I would see this as a viable option to add to 'thrasher's armory', shifting its focus more to this idea and the already included expansion upon recipes.
The problem with all-in-one mods is that you will have some people who will want only this or that modification, and not the whole.

I think the best way is to have seperate mods, + a big one where you put all your work. It should be just a matter of copying the files between your mods and recompiling everytime you do a change.

Quote from: StrUktO on July 12, 2016, 12:30:12 pm
another thing I then would like to add to that, is some legendary items that make more sense, you know, with affixes that actually set them apart from other items in the game  ;) ;) ;)
an example of such an item is a staff I created for Synergies that procs netherworms, called 'knee deep in the nether'.
Yes ! We need more legendaries that procs awesome stuff :-D
Right now the TL2 legendaries are just super-unique items - but they don't really have the feeling to be legendary. Ideally each legendary should have a unique effect, something that would be present nowhere else in the game.

I think a rework of the existing vanilla legendary would be appreciated in this regard. But it's a ton of work.

10
Modding Discussions / Re: On the topic of overhauling.. What would need to be addressed and how
« on: July 11, 2016, 06:10:20 pm »
Quote from: MTaur on July 11, 2016, 04:54:13 pm
I never got very far in Elite.  Just couldn't get the DPS out enough to get far even in Act 1.  It may have been a pacing and farming issue.  I don't remember whether I was playing modded or not, but it sounds like unmodded would be more manageable (assuming you can farm enough gold)
Actually unmodded is a lot harder. Every single mod out there (even Synergies !) is actually easier than vanilla. It's always "more challenge but more OPness" - except that the OPness overcomes the challenge overhead, so you get an easier playthrough.

Quote from: MTaur on July 11, 2016, 04:54:13 pm
I'm not a big fan of one-shotting or two-shotting.  "When everything is OP, nothing will be" is kind of the feeling I have about that sort of arms race.  Damage amounts tend to be 0 or 100 in the scheme they have going.
Yes, these are the main issues I had with this game. It requires you to focus your gear on :
  • Get enough block/dodge/missile reflection to give you more breathing
  • Get 75% DR
  • Get the +2k health gems
  • Have either a super-shield (Forcefield) or a way to regenerate health very quickly (Berserker) or strong crowd control (some engi skills, knockback..) or just kill trash mobs before they hit you (glass cannon build)

In particular, the mechanism I hate the most is the crits. HCE (without intense farming) is just impossible because of that - you have to consider that any damage done to you can get a random 1.5x bonus.. And this is just madness.

There's also some deadly skills that have been poorly designed - you don't see it coming, and it one shoots you. For example, the Regent kind-of-emberquake literally one shoots you if you're facetanking him, and the only clue that he's about to use it is a slight glow around the ground.. If there are already many particles, chances are that you won't even see it. And yet it one shoots you.

Quote from: MTaur on July 11, 2016, 04:54:13 pm
  But it might be very hard to get equivalent balance just with graphs and potions if equipment has its own ideas about everything.  Especially with so much flat damage reduction in the game, which tends to be extremely delicate.  It tends to be OP or useless...
Yes.. I'm aware of the problem, but I think it's just impossible to solve it with mods. First, you would need to get rid of the crit system (that I think is hard coded within the engine). But then, you also have to scale down the damage graph. But then the health potions become OP, because you have non-lethal damage everytime - so you have to nerf them as well. In the end you end up with a very hard balancing task.

You could balance based on the assumption that a glass cannon (someone building only on damage, no survivability at all) should be two-shotted. So you would do a playthrough with a glass cannon character (so that you also have an estimation of his gear), and then at each zone you would change the damage graph so that your character is two-shotted by most of the enemies. Then, once you have that, you would have to nerf the health potion so that it's still a challenge to beat the game.

This would work for most of the classes, but then the Berserker would be even more OP since he doesn't really need any potion to get his health back to full in seconds. There's also all the Life Steal items that would not be balanced anymore.. Ever heard of the Embermage hammer build ? With a particular set (emberweave maybe ? can't remember, it was long ago) I would regenerate my entire health pool with a single swing of my Magma Hammer. This means the only way to kill me is with two or one shot abilities.

So yeah, working to eliminate the one-shot mechanism is an interesting idea, but the amount of rebalancing it needs is quite huge I think. If you just nerf the potions, the game becomes impossible - but if you also nerf the damage graph, all the life recovering abilities become OP as hell.

Quote from: MTaur on July 11, 2016, 04:54:13 pm
It's kind of odd how the resistance potions grant a flat amount, and there is only one version.  They're really good in the first two acts of Normal when you run into that sort of enemy, and then they fall off...
Yes, definitely odd. I never really understood what was the design decision behind.

If you look at the Elemental Protection (or something similar) spell it's the same issue - it gives you like +10 to all elemental armor. And it's not even a passive, so you have to activate it everytime.. Anyway, I will cover that when I write the paragraph about spells

Quote from: MTaur on July 11, 2016, 04:54:13 pm
  At least there are only five kinds.  It drives me nuts when modern RPGs make you maximize fourteen different varieties of damage resistance just to be viable...
Titan Quest (and by extension, Grim Dawn) has a lot of damage types.. For me it's a lot of complexity for nothing.

11
Modding Discussions / Re: On the topic of overhauling.. What would need to be addressed and how
« on: July 11, 2016, 07:00:18 am »
Quote from: MTaur on July 10, 2016, 09:00:50 pm
The potions are fast enough that you can generally start walking to the next place soon, but still a lot slower than vanilla.  I forget the numbers exactly.  You could achieve similar just by level-locking the vanilla potions, but it would still be a gold sink, and once every 8 seconds got a bit tiring for me.  They also tend to outscale their costs.

The 15-minute potions are only about half as strong as the same level 30-second potion, but are more gold efficient overall (they also tend to drop more often than once every 15 minutes).  They also fizzle when you die, so when you're having a hard time, you have double incentives to use the 30-second ones anyway.
Actually I this "gold sink", because it rewards you whenever you play without drinking potions. It's a way to passively reward you for being a good player/having a good build - because you spend less gold in potions.

In Elite, after some lvl, every monster is two shotting you most of the time. If your regeneration is low and consistent, you cannot survive without drawing away from the fight at every hit. The vanilla potions are not particularly overpowered - they are just necessary to survive considering how hard the monsters hit.

What matters here is the amount of health/sec regenerated rather than the duration. If your potion regenerates less health/sec, your characters will have a harder time. When you press '1' to regenerate health, you really need it to be quick, or you just die. And sometimes it's not even sufficient with the vanilla potion.

I'm talking of Elite here - I did not precise it, but if I do a mod, it will be focused at being balanced for Elite. Of course, for having played Normal and Veteran, potions are overpowered there. But in Elite it's barely enough, and it's actually very damn hard to have enough money to sustain your potions if you don't play well enough.

12
Say Hello / Re: hello everybody
« on: July 10, 2016, 10:13:16 am »
I remember you :-) The Thrasher's Armory is a great addition with balanced items

I'm new to this forum as well, but I'm glad it exists. Give me some hope when it comes to TL2 modding :)

13
Modding Discussions / Re: On the topic of overhauling.. What would need to be addressed and how
« on: July 08, 2016, 02:35:08 am »
Quote from: MTaur on July 07, 2016, 10:39:51 pm
http://torchmodders.com/forums/mtaur's-mod-pack/

The main things that I did were to give a lot of skills substantial cooldowns, as well as massively nerf potions while buffing their durations.  This differentiates burst from DPS skills, and makes potions more about sustain than a really weird OP sustain mechanic that messes up the whole game.

Unfortunately, the mod needs more work.  Enemy damage seems to outscale my nerfed sustain numbers by a lot as you go forward, and I haven't nerfed the enemy damage graph enough to compensate.  It would take a lot more work to zero in on the appropriate numbers, and I might not ever get around to doing that.  The balance is just kind of messed up in vanilla across the board.
Yes I saw your work - but actually I've got a slight different view on the potion mechanism.

At least in Early Game, and playing Elite, I didn't find that the potions were that overpowered when you're playing for example a melee engineer. It's more of a "I have to drink loads of potions otherwise i die" - but if you weren't drinking these potions, you would be saving money. So if you make a more sustainable character.. Then you get more profit in terms of money.

Changing the potions to have a long duration would mean that you lose this aspect of the game, and grant everyone a significant boost in income during Early Game. It also slows the flow of the game, since you have to wait until your health/mana is replenished, and makes you more endangered against the monsters as the damage grows. So you have to rebalance the damage graphs.. And this is not trivial to do at all - it would require either a full-time job or spending all your free time on it to re-balance properly. Just to change the potion mechanism.

But I'm interested to see how your mod changes the gameplay in practice - I will try it soon and post in your thread :-)

14
Modding Discussions / Re: On the topic of overhauling.. What would need to be addressed and how
« on: July 07, 2016, 04:23:54 am »
Pets
Right now I think the pets are useless. Unless you socket tons of %pet_dmg, your pet is just an aggro that can carry some items for you to town. It does not play any central role.

Fishing

In Torchlight 1 I have fond memories of my pet becoming super-powerful when he was an elemental one. I never had these kind of feelings in Torchlight 2, and I think the fish should provide stronger bonuses to your pet.

I think there should be different kind of fishes, each one transforming your pet with different abilities
  • Common fishes. It would transform your pet into one of the base monsters of the game. Which monster can drop should depend on which level you are. At lvl < 20, you are likely to be in Act 1, and only Act 1 monsters should drop.
  • Rare fishes. These would transform your pet into one of the champions of the game.
  • Unique fishes. Your pet is transformed into one of the minor bosses of the act you're in. (Minor boss = boss of a side quest)
  • Legendary fishes. Your pet is transformed into one of the major boss (bosses that you have to defeat in the main story).

Legendary and unique fishes should be very rare of course.

For each category, there should be a roll to determine the duration. You roll 1d20, and :
  • If the result is 20, the duration is permanent
  • If the result is 19-18, the duration is one hour
  • If the result is 17-14, the duration is 15 minutes
  • Otherwise, the duration is 5 minutes

It would be possible to get a permanent boss pet. But the odds of getting it would be very very low - if you get one during your playtime, you can consider yourself lucky.

This would need some testing to ensure that the odds are indeed very low..

Also, I can't remember what's the mechanism - if you get a permanent transformation, but feed another fish to your pet. Does he lose his permanent transformation, or does he go back to it after a while ?

Spells

Right the only usefulness of a pet is to carry the droppable spells. I kind of like this aspect of the game, even though some of the spells are really useless.. I will be coming back to it later when it comes to the vanilla spells.

I just wanted to mention that I had played a mod one day which was making every class-spell droppable. In particular, you could feed them to your pet, and he would then be able to cast stuff like Tremor or Forcefield or Blazing Pillars.. It was very fun to see.

I don't think this should be implemented - the pet was way too OP, and I believe some cooldowns were messed up, resulting in funny spams. Besides, if pets can be transformed into bosses, you should not need this.

Gear

I think the pet gears are quite balanced right now. The percentage to do something on hit will make more sense when your pet is transformed into a monster that can use abilities to proc it.

15
Modding Discussions / Re: On the topic of overhauling.. What would need to be addressed and how
« on: July 07, 2016, 04:13:18 am »
Potions
This is a tricky problem. Right now, the meta imposes you to literally spam the health and mana potions to survive or deal enough DPS.

In a standpoint of pure gameplay, this doesn't have much sense - why not replacing it with a constant regeneration instead of mashign the buttons ?

However, it does have an impact on the economy. The more your character is able to sustain itself, the more income you will get from your dungeon trips. If you spend too many health/mana potions, you will only get a limited return in money. And you actually need that money to buy/enchant gear.

So, even though i'm not a fan of spamming potions, I think that it contributes to balance the game by moderating your gold income depending on whether your character is struggling or not.

So I would vote to leave the current potions as they are now

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