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 Post subject: Survey - Mana Costs for Skills
PostPosted: Wed Feb 01, 2017 9:28 pm 
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Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 11:28 am
Posts: 1136
Location: Vancouver, BC
What are your thoughts regarding how much HU's skills should cost. There are two easily identified extremes for this:
  1. The player runs out of mana during every fight (maybe drinking a mana potion every 1-2 monsters).
  2. Skills are effectively free (e.g. mana potions could be removed from monster drops).

Decide for yourself where you fit between those extremes, and consider how many monsters your characters should be able to defeat without drinking mana potions. To make that easier, maybe assume that it's a solo GlassCannon style of Caster (or maybe state your estimates for different styles).

The answers aren't meant to determine the One True Mana Cost, it's just to collect some data. Future HU versions might use the data to help determine reasonable costs for skills. People are welcome to participate in this survey at any time in the future, it's probably a decent idea to revive the thread once a year.


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 Post subject: Re: Survey - Mana Costs for Skills
PostPosted: Thu Feb 02, 2017 7:58 pm 

Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 3:35 am
Posts: 19
Personally, I think mana costs should be something a character can reasonably sustain through Regen/MpK/Leech/Potions, I also think energy should do something for a character besides providing mana.


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 Post subject: Re: Survey - Mana Costs for Skills
PostPosted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 10:13 am 

Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 3:51 am
Posts: 35
A survey ? But was there a mana-cost-for-skills problem in the first place before your "enhancement"/"moving forward"/"new contents" patch ? Did you do a such specific survey before doing it ? Are you really surprised by people's reactions ? What a masquerade.

IMO, there wasn't any serious mana problem. It's like you modders discovered Diablo II and reinvent the game from scratch, toying with different features at each patch. Here it's as if you would want an explanation about why mana cost for skills exists and what this feature provides as a gaming mechanic, I feel back in 2001 when Blizzard did just that.

There were just a few skills that would have eventually needed a small adjustment, that's all. For example, IMO the multi-shot mana cost was too low, only 2 or something, while in vanilla it scales with the number of arrows which sounds fair, I never understood this change from Soulmancer (it is at least since 1.16). Another one, Blade Fury : oftenly its mana cost felt excessive, it was just annoying, I think they had increased its mana cost for DPS "balance" purpose, a very lame solution. There were probably some other skills here and there, but only minor adjustments were needed if at all. Then in 1.7 you made those huge changes and people complain because it's simply player-unfriendly. I think you just want some people to back you up to play the "roller coaster of unbalancing" again.

I was reading old posts of the forum and I think I understood something I missed about the purpose of all those new patchs : supposedly, the community would want new contents in each patch... But to what purpose, for the sake of change ? And is it even true ? It looked like a wishful thinking statement from some people. But it's obviously also the opinion of the actual gurus.

What many players had noticed is that modders keep doing that roller coaster of unbalancing things in one way, then after feigning a surprise, they "fixe" them in a next patch by re-unbalancing them in the opposite way... You know we know that, right ? You modders did that again and again, a sure easy (and lame) way to make players feel a change ("new content"?) ; Quality (real balancing) doesn't matter, as long as there're new shits it should be popular (?).

For examples, from what I heard melees were useless in early 1.3 before a fixe in ~1.3G, or at one point summoners were super strong and then became shit, or excessively pushing thorns damages on items and next obliterating this feature almost completely, or nerfing so much the meditation's level of the Insight runeword it had become a useless item, or adding %life to Stamina and then making it along with BO to do only a skinny ~11-15% maxed. I think there was the same thing for poison characters (but they're harder to balance). Etc.

Here you created a problem out of nowhere (with no apparent reason) by making mana costs super high for all classes and nerfed leeching (why even keep those 1% ll/ml, why not cleanly remove those item's mods ? They're just visual pollution), and now you ask if mana cost should be bluntly erased... Another roller coaster anyone ? Going from evil numbers to zero, that's a full loop ; I'd expect some more "ungrateful" vomit following the introduction of a such "free" enhancement into this hijacked game's ass : P


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 Post subject: Re: Survey - Mana Costs for Skills
PostPosted: Sun Feb 12, 2017 7:12 pm 
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Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 11:28 am
Posts: 1136
Location: Vancouver, BC
It sounds like folks agree that a number in between the extremes is the way to go, which is encouraging. The reason an actual number is useful is because at some point in the algebra that determines spell costs, a number has to be used that collapses the formulas into concrete numbers that can be implemented.

For example, for HUv1.7 having enough mana to bring down 4-6 monsters at a time should be enough, and AoE spells need to be cast 4-6 times per trash group while Focused (single-target) spells need to be cast 1-3 times per trash monster. The other half of the equation is how much mana a build is expected to have, which was eventually determined by the HP of Tanking builds and EnergyShield (since each EShield MP is worth about 3 HP, this put a value to the mana a Sorc should have). I played at this level of balance for a couple years, so I'm biased towards this style of play and need a survey like this one to understand how others feel.

HUv1.7 was changed during Testing to nearly double the number of spells characters could cast (base mana regen +50%, spell costs reduced 20%, i.e. 125% * 150% = 188%). This means that the current HU is balanced around defeating 7-12 monsters per potion (so if you aggro smaller groups, you'd probably be fine without potions, but I'd agree that sometimes you'll need a potion or to retreat and regroup (and maybe rethink which spell element to rely on)).

If it helps, consider that the current HUv1.7 is balanced around bringing down roughly 9-10 critters per potion. If you're not happy with that, then maybe suggest that the next modders try to balance around 13-15 monsters per potion, or maybe even 20 monsters (i.e. clear an entire screen of monsters solo without needing a potion). If any of these numbers help you participate in the discussion, that'd be a good start.


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