Introduction, and a request for people

[enq]

Maelyn: only if the clvl relation to slvl limit is removed and I don't think Sephorus is planning on that.

enq : If you'd like some help with the uniques/runewords, I'd be more than happy to give you a hand. Just lemme know if you'd like some assistance, ok?

I should be sweet for the moment but thanks for the offer - it's just takes me a while to create them hehe but there is no hurry.

Btw what do you think of this idea:
(your idea of changing the resistance levels so that you have to concentrate on a couple of resists or have all low gave me the idea )
I was thinking of changing % Damage Reduction into something that was required like the other resistances.
If done right it could help to balance that mod and give players something more to look out for - along with more challenge

Edit: one sentence did not make sense

[Alkalund]

Resistances will be brought down from their standard cuts in NM and Hell. Tentatively, resistances will be -60 in NM, and -150 in Hell. Why so high? With the way I'd like to change things, resist all gear will be less powerful than standard D2X, and so players will need to choose between stocking up on one resist and suffering elsewhere, or having mediocre resistance to everything.

I find resistances a hard issue to balance. I tried -70/-140 in my mod, but that is not good. I think the D1 resistance system was much better, you didn't have resistance penalties, but to max them all you had to have one hell of a good equipment.
In my D2 mod I reworked the resists system to resemble the D1 one, no penalties with difficulty, but hard to reach max. You have to fight your way through normal and nightmare with resists around 20-40%. 75 is really hard to achieve, and my mod also does not have items that add +to max resists.
Well, this wasn't to hard to do in my mod because it does not have rare items (except rings and amulets) and charms.

[Sephorus]

enq : If you're all right for now, that's cool. Just know that the offer still stands, so just lemme know if/when you need help. *grin*

About Damage Reduction, though... it's more of a luxury than anything else, in my opinion. I'm probably going to make damage reduction equipment very, VERY rare, and any uniques with it will probably not have much else to offer... too much of it can easily distort the difficulty of the game. But of course, I'll consider making it 'required' like other resistances.

And about the clvl relation to skill levels... no, I don't plan on changing that. It'd just destroy everything if I did, you know? *grin*

Alkalund : Returning to my Final Fantasy upbringing with RPG's, I'm more used to the need to swap equipment every so often to be properly outfitted for an area, which would explain my previous idea of resistances and having to choose between a high/low or a medium-all-around setup. However, the idea of resistances returning to D1 is interesting... I'll see what others have to say about that before making a choice. It'll affect how items work, so that's an issue I need to clear up relatively soon.

[Sephorus]

Of course, I've got a couple more things I'd like to add to the list of mod ideas, so now you've got a few more things to brood over and decide if it's cool or not.

Point number one... I'm considering removing the Physical Immunity property from most regular enemies. Creatures like Ghosts would still have it, for obvious reasons, and uniques and superuniques could still have that property, but, personally, having regular enemies spawn with it is a little... I dunno... excessive? Just my own thoughts, personally.

Point number two... I'm considering changing the names of some/most skills, just to make them sound a little more interesting. Fire Bolt doesn't exactly sound very inspiring, you know? If I can get some suggestions, that'd be great.

Just something I'd like to mention for the sorceress... as far as balancing skills out goes, I'm giving fire and lightning spells an average damage of 800 to 1000 at level 70, with tweaking depending on the strategy involved in using the skill, and mana cost. Fire skills will have a fairly close range of damage, while lightning will have a very high maximum, while a very LOW maximum (I believe Thunder Storm's minimum damage is now equal to the current skill level, if I recall correctly.). Cold skills will average from 600 to 800, and will be adjusted according to the area of effect, as most cold skills have a splash radius or some other wide-area attack. Does this sound fairly decent for these skills? If you'd like more information, I can post a sample skill or three for you all to gander at.

[Alkalund]

Point number one... I'm considering removing the Physical Immunity property from most regular enemies. Creatures like Ghosts would still have it, for obvious reasons, and uniques and superuniques could still have that property, but, personally, having regular enemies spawn with it is a little... I dunno... excessive? Just my own thoughts, personally.

well, for me regular monsters spawning with physical immunity is no worse than regular monsters spawning with any other kind of immunity... of course that's just my opinion. I see no problem in having regular physical immune monsters, as long as all characters have ways to kill them.

[Sephorus]

I see no problem in having regular physical immune monsters, as long as all characters have ways to kill them.

Hmm... in that case, I'll have to make sure that character's elemental attacks don't suck too badly (Fire Claws, anyone?). Otherwise, we'll end up with all characters using one skill all over again...

[Alkalund]

Indeed. One-skill characters are not fun, that's where you can take advantage of the monster's immunities. Give the characters balanced skills that they can use in different situations, adopting different strategies in different areas of the game is great.

[Sephorus]

Tell me about it... how many times do we see Nova/Fire Wall sorcs, Burizons, Berserk S/S barbs, etc...? I swear, people CANNOT think for themselves... part of the reason why I'm trying to make this mod, so that people actually have a CHOICE of good stuff, you know? *grin*

[enq]

enq : If you're all right for now, that's cool. Just know that the offer still stands, so just lemme know if/when you need help. *grin*

I will have to get help with uniques/sets/runewords later on ^_^ I'll contact you and a couple of others when that time comes
I'd just better have a good go at it and see how many I can crank out before I go dry on ideas - I just added another 50ish names yesterday so it's just a matter of working though them slowly hehe

The swapping gear idea for resists etc sounds good - I remember that other Diabloii (;)) site talking (around the D2beta time) about having backup gear in your stash etc but noone really plays like that so it would be good to add that back to the game.

Btw: Fire Claws -> Fire Paws

[Sephorus]

Well, with the gear swapping, the reason that nobody does is because you don't have to. I never really liked being truly awesome (read: able to kill things in a second), and part of the reason that you can is because 'godly' gear exists. While I'd like that type of gear to exist, it'll be more specific - you're not going to find a Buriza-Do Kyanon style of weapon in my mod, or so I'd hope. If, for example, a unique piece of armor is to protect from fire, then it might have some additional fire-related abilites, but not much else, you know? To go along with that, anything with resist all as a property will not have too much else to go along with it, so people need to choose between higher resists and higher butt-whipping ability. Personal preferences, basically.

[Alkalund]

Personal preferences indeed. But the way you're planning to set things up is very interesting, I'm looking forward to see how it will come out.
Will you be including resist-all as an affix spawnable on magic and rare items? or will they appear only in some sets and uniques?

[mesti]

I'd be glad to help you with new ideas, namely uniques/sets. If you're interested, let me know (my info is on the D2.net forums, I assume you still visit them). My ID is the same on both forums.

If nothing else, I've always wanted to see whips in the game. It'd take new inventory art (in game graphics from the Act 2 cats), so you'd need someone else to draw them (I'm really bad at art). Long range is the main key, and high attack speed is almost as crucial. Balance comes from low damage, or large range (like lightning).

Like I said though, I don't frequent these forums. Let me know what the general guidelines are for new uniques/sets, and I can throw some out for you to mull over.

[Looe]

Seph I posted over on the Diablo forums before I saw you had moved over here. Shoot me and e-mail I would like to help out anyway I can on this project.

[Sephorus]

Alkalund : Resist-all will most likely appear as a magical affix, but they won't appear until much later into the game, and will start out very weak (probably 5%), and will not go much higher than that. Resist-all is a very strong mod, so I'm offsetting that power by keeping the relative strength low. Hopefully, the fact that it covers four resistances will offset that, and it'll still be balanced out.

mesti : I'll be glad to have the help with uniques and sets. It might take a while, though, but once I get done with the character skill trees, I'll try and get a site set up to display the skill information, so people can get a good idea of what level of power to aim for.

To answer your question, yes, I still frequent the D2.net forums. I've just stopped posting at my mod thread in the Single Player forum to bring the attention of the discussion here. *grin*

Whips do sound very interesting. If someone wants to offer their services to help bring them to the game, that'd be just awesome. This, however, brings up another reason to hold off on creating sets and uniques... I'd want to give a chance to any new items that get added into the game, you know?

Looe : What kind of services would you be able to offer? My policy is that if you're willing, and your half-decent at what you do, I'm find with having someone help out.



Just some general things I'm going to mention... first of all, I'm not going to be tweaking the life/mana bonuses per Vit/Ene point for the classes. They're fine as it is, and messing with them would screw up skill data anyways.

Second of all, nobody's given feedback on the gunblade idea... just something I'm wondering about.

Finally, does anyone know what the requirements are to get a mod web site hosted at the Phrozen Keep? I'd like to get this information online ASAP so people can give feedback to concrete information instead of the abstract ideas I've been dishing out.

[Sephorus]

Well, I have some level of good news... I've gotten Alpha versions of sorceress skills in a spreadsheet format, and I'm going to tweak the paladin skills slightly before moving on. I'll probably do necromancers next, and I'd like to make it so that skeletons don't totally suck, so that perhaps a summoning-only necromancer would be viable. I'll probably just boost the mastery slightly, and tweak damages on individual skeletons as well.

While I'm on the subject, does anyone happen to know the damages of skeleton mages? I've looked around for quite some time, but I haven't had any luck locating them. It'd be rather helpful to me to have that information handy, so I have some kind of base to go upon.

Another thing I'd like to mention... since sorceress skills are 'done' (as far as preliminary writeups go), would anyone like to view some of the skills to comment upon them? If you'd like, I could e-mail the spreadsheets, or I could post a few samples here.

Oh... one final thing I'd like to post... while I was on the subject of gunblades in the mod, the idea of creating sets based upon characters of FF fame ran through my head. Would anyone find this idea horrible if I went ahead with it for some ideas? Just curious, really.

[enq]

The damages for the Necromancer Skeleton Mages are located in the missiles.txt file I think.

• Under the columns: EType, EMin, Emax, Elvl1, Elvl2, Elvl3 etc
  And row names: NecroMage1, NecroMage2, NecroMage3, NecroMage4

If you like email me a copy of the Sorc spell damages and I'll take a look

I can't really comment on gunblades or FF set having never played FF. Though they do sound quite interesting

[Sephorus]

Thanks for the information, man! I'll try to figure out the damages, and then scale all of them to meet the heightened skill levels... what a task, eh?

Sorceress skills have been sent! Go check your e-mail.

If you haven't played FF at all, you should sometime... it's good stuff. 7 through 10 are pretty good, if you can play them at all (by that, I mean if you have a Playstation or Playstation 2).

[Sephorus]

enq : Thanks for taking a look at the sorceress skills. I'm tweaking them as you mentioned in the e-mail, and so hopefully they'll be a little more on target.

One thing I'd like to mention... monsters in NM and Hell will be recieving a life boost, and most likely a damage boost to go along with it. Most notably are enemies in Act 5, and any bosses that are much too easy.

Mephisto will have his life increased very slightly, and his treasure class dropped to prevent any 'serious' item farming from him any more.

Diablo and Izual will have their life values switched - the Lord of Terror should be the Lord of Life, not Izual.

For now, that's all I can think of for tweaking monsters out. Any comments?

[enq]

Just a tip for getting the Skeleton Mage damage numbers right: with skills like that you can use the numbers in a skill were you can see the damage (ie for Fire just use a fire skill to work out the damages - Poison may be a problem though as it seems to be quite odd and needs balancing with the srcdam column).

Perhaps with Izual you could increase his defence because the reward for killing him is quite a good one.

[Alkalund]

Personally I think Izual should have increased attack speed, increased attack rating and damage, and high chance to block; one immunity, maybe even two. And tweaked AI, to be more agressive.

[Sephorus]

enq : If I gave skeletal mages the same damage as sorcie skills, then the necromancer could have 20+ 'undead sorcies' at his disposal... unless you're talking about giving them a spell level of the slvl of Skeletal Mage... then it might be a little more balanced out. I'll have to head back and take a look to see if that would work.

Well, with the way that I'd be setting up skills (5 points per level), either beef up Izual and boost the skill points earned from him, or leave him the way he is and leave it as 2 skill points as the quest reward. Any thoughts?

Oh, one thing I'd like to mention... alpha Paladin skills are done, and I'm moving on to the necromancer. I'm also changing the way that skeletal mages gain damage. Instead of adding to Skeleton Mastery to boost their skill damage, I'm having their damage go up with the slvl of Skeletal Mages. Does this sound like a reasonable change?

[Alkalund]

Well, with the way that I'd be setting up skills (5 points per level), either beef up Izual and boost the skill points earned from him, or leave him the way he is and leave it as 2 skill points as the quest reward. Any thoughts?

Izual must be hard, he is a fallen archangel! I say beef him up, and give like 8-10 skill points as a reward... that would be 24-30 skill points for beating him in all difficulties (this will require some dll editing, but shouldn't be hard). It is reasonable in your system I think.

I'm also changing the way that skeletal mages gain damage. Instead of adding to Skeleton Mastery to boost their skill damage, I'm having their damage go up with the slvl of Skeletal Mages. Does this sound like a reasonable change?

Yep, sounds good to me

[Zhoulomcrist]

Considering that Izual already comes packed with lots and lots of HP, I'll bet he will be a real hard one to deal with should you beef up his combat prowess and capabilities. I agree, some more skill points for his slaughter would be in order if he is defeated should you go that route. I'd of probably given the hero a 5-skill point reward with some hellacious item drops for his defeat. But, that's me. I guess it kind of depends on how hard Izual will end up being. Anyway, good luck with it

[Sephorus]

Well, 10 points from Izual would be more 'accurate' as he normally forks over 2 skill points, and I'm giving players 5x the normal amount per level, so...

But that might be too many. For planning purposes, I'll leave it as 10, and adjust it as we go down the road.

As the the skeletal mages, the reason I made that change is because, normally, skeletons gain damage per point in their skill, and yet skeletal mages do not. I found it just a little stupid, really. Now, Skeleton Mastery won't give bonus damage anymore, so it's a boost here, a nerf there. Hopefully, it's reasonable.

Edit : Thanks for the luck, Zhoulomcrist. I think I'm going to need all of the luck that I can get. *grin*

[enq]

Sorry should have been a bit more clear in my previous post:

I mean put the values you want for the Skeleton Mages into another skill so you can see the damage on-screen and how it levels up.
Then copy the numbers back to the missiles.txt file for that particular Skeleton and restore the values from the skill you used for testing.

I prefer to do this rather than use excel or something similar to plot changes, but that's just me