Improving Tactics

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Improving Tactics

Post by FoxBat » Sat Mar 29, 2003 5:33 am

This is just a brainstorm on attempts to increase "tactics" and resource management in D2.
What I mean by this is requiring the player to respond to situations in more varied ways. Even think their way out of a bad situation. This is an aspect I really like out of NWN, where you have for example monsters that have lots of different immunities, you need to find their weakness and exploit it. In NWN characters aren't so specialized which is what lets you get away with these immunities. You also get lots of one-shot items like potions and scrolls, that you must decide when to use them and when to save them. So I'm trying to see what of this I can replicate in D2.

This is not meant to discuss specifically balance or challenge or items/character builds, rather I am trying to come up with additional options, and reasons to use those options, for players in combat.

Here's some I'm thinking of now:

- Implement different multipliciative damage for demons/undead/animals on every weapon. (I think I know how to do this.)
- Create lots of charms with skill charges, make them somewhat affordable to repair or somehow regenerable, and at high levels. Intended so that you can use them in tricky situations, but using them constantly would be prohibitive.
- Create skill charges out of monster skills and set them to high level, allowing for some very powerful damage (monsters usually only go up to lvl 8-12ish in a skill, so a level 32 one can be quite powerful if you set the after-16 columns right.) Thus a very powerful, but rarely used, weapon.
- Double immunities on normal monsters. :twisted:
- Monsters with "unbalanced" strengths and weaknesses. Like unusually high AC but negative physical resistance. Or high damage but low AR.
- Monsters with a special ability, like can't be stunned, can't be controlled, really fast regen, really high block, etc.
- Try and change, say thawing potions to apply a shrine effect.
- "Death" a la Guantlet- some monster with extremely high hit points, but negative regen. You hit it once and it starts to die by itself, but you have to run for your life in the meantime! 8-O
- Spice up minions a bit. Like making spirit wolves have good physical but lousy magical resistance, and dire wolves the opposite.
- Some degree of friendly fire (OK, maybe that's too evil. :twisted: )
- Enemies that confuse or convert your minions (don't know if that's possible)

If anyone's played Neth@ck, I especially love all the wierd object interactions you can do in a game like that. So there's plenty of ideas, trouble is thinking of how they can be handled in the D2 engine without completely rewriting the game. There could be a lot more done with the cube for generating items, the question is what items would be interesting to generate that wouldn't be yet another standard equipment type of thing.

Add your own evil ideas! :mrgreen:
Last edited by FoxBat on Sat Mar 29, 2003 5:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Joel » Sat Mar 29, 2003 9:16 am

Be my guest, here's some tought of mine I used in CW-AT :

[quote=FoxBat";p="82036"]
- Implement different multipliciative damage for demons/undead/animals on every weapon. (I think I know how to do this.)
[/quote]

Nice idea ... so come the idea to retrieve the code that handle with resistance to fully implement the pierce-*** mods.

[quote=FoxBat";p="82036"]
- Create lots of charms with skill charges, make them somewhat affordable to repair or somehow regenerable, and at high levels. Intended so that you can use them in tricky situations, but using them constantly would be prohibitive.
[/quote]

Currently doing it in another way. Make Scroll with 1 charge of a given spell. And when the charge is used , the scroll disappear. Currently, the spell casting works and I know where to hijack the code to remove the item afterward. But ti seems I lack infos on the function to call to remove an item from inventory.

[quote=FoxBat";p="82036"]
- Double immunities on normal monsters. :twisted:
[/quote]

Oooops, my Troll (lvl 5 monster) are immune poison, immune fire ....
and has a BIG regen rate :mrgreenhat:
This stuff is really nice to do, they force the player to seek out the best way to defeat a monster. Obviously, the nicest is to remove all the immunity descriptor ...

[quote=FoxBat";p="82036"]
- Monsters with a special ability, like can't be stunned, can't be controlled, really fast regen, really high block, etc.
[/quote]

That should be a minimum even in classic Diablo LoD !

[quote=FoxBat";p="82036"]
- Try and change, say thawing potions to apply a shrine effect.
[/quote]

Easily doable. Potion of SKills or Elixir of Combat are REALLY easy to do.

[quote=FoxBat";p="82036"]
- "Death" a la Guantlet- some monster with extremely high hit points, but negative regen. You hit it once and it starts to die by itself, but you have to run for your life in the meantime! 8-O
[/quote]

"Oh my Gawd ! Elf shot the food !!'

[quote=FoxBat";p="82036"]
- Spice up minions a bit. Like making spirit wolves have good physical but lousy magical resistance, and dire wolves the opposite.
[/quote]

And give them items ... it's possible in 1.09 via code eiditng but 1.10 will allow it text-wise. Imagine a Valkyry with a windforce, a Shadow with compelte natalya set etc ...
Skeleton with good polearm grrr :twisted:

[quote=FoxBat";p="82036"]
- Some degree of friendly fire (OK, maybe that's too evil. :twisted: )
[/quote]

hehe, my previous Magma Mine spell was able to be triggered when YOU or your pet walk on it :D And a volcano nova trap is NEVER good to be triggered :o)

More can be done to improve tactics :

- destroy item on 0 durability a la Diablo I.
- restrict the number of item types selalble and droppable. MAke monster drop equipement you can't sell and vice-verca. To avoid area camping, add a little touch of randomness.
- Add new shrines more dangerous to use by removing both label and icon ;)
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by enq » Sat Mar 29, 2003 11:05 am

I like the ideas above :) - sadly they are way over my head when it comes to implementing most of them :(

One thing I quite like is getting players to use items that they would not normally use. For example in my mod I have the option to use class specific bows (for each character) and while they do not appear that useful at first, many people have told me they like them and use these bows on occasion :)

Another idea I am working on is to have armours/items that are needed or almost required for specific areas in order to survive - if FPS games can provide players with hazard suits that last a short time ... we can do similar :D

One small thing may be to have quest items with different uses - Ancestral Recall does this with the Gidbinn I believe, where it is used in cube recipes. The quest items could also be very usable weapons - like Khalim's Will for instance :)
I thought Blizzard intended this originally but I may be a recalling a Dii.net comment :-|
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Nefarius » Sat Mar 29, 2003 12:06 pm

- Enemies that confuse or convert your minions (don't know if that's possible)

This was possible in the past but blizzard "fixed" it :-|
It was exploited in PVP to convert minions :P but they fixed this unfortunably.
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Olorin » Sat Mar 29, 2003 1:06 pm

Minions that after a certain time turn against you.
So let's say that give a minion a time limit to hang around (I'm sure there's one somewhere...) - if it dies before then, great. If it outlives your enemies, at the ned of the time limit it'll turn on you.
Would be cool for say summoning a really powerful demon, whom you could only manage to keep under control for a limited time.
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by ChaoticDeath » Sat Mar 29, 2003 2:31 pm

[quote=Olorin";p="82075"]
Minions that after a certain time turn against you.
So let's say that give a minion a time limit to hang around (I'm sure there's one somewhere...) - if it dies before then, great. If it outlives your enemies, at the ned of the time limit it'll turn on you.
Would be cool for say summoning a really powerful demon, whom you could only manage to keep under control for a limited time.
[/quote]

Maybe killing other[/b monsters would be considered a sacrifice! This would make the monster stay with you longer.

[quote=Joel";p="82060"]
And give them items ... it's possible in 1.09 via code eiditng but 1.10 will allow it text-wise. Imagine a Valkyry with a windforce, a Shadow with compelte natalya set etc ...
Skeleton with good polearm grrr :twisted:
[/quote]

Wait.... Sorry that this is off-topic, but I know that you can change the weapons on summons in 1.09, but in 1.10 you can change the weapons on monsters!! (Imagines ancients with Buriza's..... :twisted: )
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by *Astalion* » Sat Mar 29, 2003 3:10 pm

[quote=Olorin";p="82075"]Minions that after a certain time turn against you.
So let's say that give a minion a time limit to hang around (I'm sure there's one somewhere...) - if it dies before then, great. If it outlives your enemies, at the ned of the time limit it'll turn on you.
Would be cool for say summoning a really powerful demon, whom you could only manage to keep under control for a limited time.[/quote]

I have this planned for 1.10, but I think it should be possible in 1.09 as well (mind blast + summon some golem with align 0)
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Nefarius » Sat Mar 29, 2003 3:15 pm

It is possible to do this using the Suiccide Minion, just need to build a time trigger into it to go into Suiccide mode, the first one has aligh set to 1 and the enraged form has aligh set to 0. <- untested, but should work.
Last edited by Nefarius on Sat Mar 29, 2003 3:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Char » Sat Mar 29, 2003 3:28 pm

would like to give enemies in NM one and in hell two random immunities. each monster. that would prohibit fire sorcs running around only in areas where only non-fire-immune monsters exist.
one or two immunities on every monster type could be fixed (for example, all the snowy creatures should be immune cold).
that would by chance add monsters that are immune fire/lightning/cold, but sorcs could get charged items dealing high physical damage to fight against that monsters.
even if you add two fixed immunities so there could be up to four, it should be possible to kill them since there are at least six different types of damage that can be dealt (physical, cold, fire, lightning, poison, magic). you could add weapons that only do magical / cold / other elemental damages and no physical damage to balance that for melee characters.

just do not know how to assign random immunities to monsters.

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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Nefarius » Sat Mar 29, 2003 3:33 pm

70% global resistance in everything and one immunity is what im aiming at for xy16 in 1.10.
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by jbouley » Sat Mar 29, 2003 3:37 pm

[quote=FoxBat";p="82036"]- Some degree of friendly fire (OK, maybe that's too evil. :twisted: )[/quote]

Actually, this would be nice to a certain extent, as everyone makes mistakes or gets caught in a crossfire.

Of course, there are games where this can be a problem. I had a hairy situation in Planescape: Torment recently when party member Vhailor decided to start attacking fellow party member Annah for no good reason...she was almost dead by the time I realized what was happening. 8-O It was less troubling when once Annah started beating on me for no reason...after all, the Nameless One cannot die ;)
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Char » Sat Mar 29, 2003 4:00 pm

[quote=Nefarius";p="82110"]
70% global resistance in everything and one immunity is what im aiming at for xy16 in 1.10.
[/quote]
but that does not give the effect that you have to choose carefully which type of damage to use.
probability would also be 70% global resistance, one immunity and one type of damage where the resistance is zero. the weak point ;)

btw is it possible to show the resistances in game?

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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by *Astalion* » Sat Mar 29, 2003 4:03 pm

Yes, but it is very tedious, and the resistances would have to be the same for each difficulty (unless you load different tbls/text for each difficulty, like Joel).

Just put something in the Descriptor column and add a string for it, where you put the description. Rav3n is doing something like this, but not with the exact resists.
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Nefarius » Sat Mar 29, 2003 4:17 pm

the resistances are planed to be 30% global and 1 static immunity on normal, 50% global and one static immunity on nm, and on hell its 70% global. But some specific monsters have up to 4 immunities.
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Char » Sat Mar 29, 2003 4:39 pm

hmmm, for what reason do you do that? it just degrades leech values. anything else could be done with giving the monsters more HP

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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Myhrginoc » Sat Mar 29, 2003 5:10 pm

Aside from leech being vastly more powerful in D2 than in D1 (a whole different topic for debate), global resistances in Nefarious' context is most likely elemental resistance. You have six damage modes available: physical, fire, cold, lightning, poison and magic. Leech works on physical damage only. But if I understand Nefarious correctly, he would populate all the Normal elemental resistance fields in Monstats with 30 minimum, the Nightmare fields with 50 minimum, and the Hell fields with 70 minimum. Or he would go into the code and add the global to any spawned monster, probably in the table loader function. (It is the approach Blizzard took with physical resistance in Hell, however.)

One way to throw some serious confusion into the ranks would be to have a trailer code on the spawner function that first makes a random check for bonus resistance, then on success choose a random resistance type from the six. Once a type is selected, add ((difficulty=0,1,2)+1)*20 or some such formula to that particular resistance of that particular monster. This would be in addition to resistance values defined in Monstats, so you would get variability within a species.

A more evil way would be to check for bonus resistance and on success add for each resistance, so if you get particularly unlucky in Hell you might end up with four or five immunities on a monster. Combine that with suppressing the "Immune to" display and you would get some nasty surprises!!!
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Nefarius » Sat Mar 29, 2003 6:23 pm

I have salvation bosses ATM in xyrax :twisted: and if a physical and magic immune monster gets salvation as a chosen aura he will have 5 immunities as well. So there are multiple methodes of playing with immunities.

Techincally you can make all enemies immune to everything except to a single damage type, this type is different per species.
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Joel » Sat Mar 29, 2003 6:46 pm

Another idea is to setup monster like players.

In cabal wars, there is a place where you encounter Helm Priest.
Well, they fight you because of some misunderstanding but, well, they have the same HP/AR/AC and skills of an equivalent level Knight player.
And so they use Healing (castable Prayer), Proctective Shield (aura that grants +red-dmg) or even Conjure Celestial ....

Well, man, I can tell you that this is tactical to beat them.

Give the mosnters the same variety of skills and spells as players could bring interesting situation ...
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Char » Sat Mar 29, 2003 7:45 pm

well, how to do that? thought about that, too.
well, probably i'll have to do some code editing really ....

btw, is it possible to give enemies the look of players with items put on? so that you have kind of a PVP situation vs monsters?
of course, i know that it is impossible to make them act like human players....

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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Joel » Sat Mar 29, 2003 8:31 pm

[quote=Char";p="82211"]well, how to do that? thought about that, too.
well, probably i'll have to do some code editing really ....
[/quote]

yes, this is skille diting, skill editing and more skille diting :D

[quote=Char";p="82211"]
btw, is it possible to give enemies the look of players with items put on? so that you have kind of a PVP situation vs monsters?
[/quote]

Use merge_dcc to create player looking animations :D

[quote=Char";p="82211"]
of course, i know that it is impossible to make them act like human players....[/quote]

you mean as dumb as human :mrgreenhat:
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Olorin » Sat Mar 29, 2003 9:28 pm

Is it/will it be possiblke to add extra types of damage otehr thna phys, magic and the elements? :twisted:

When I first heard of D2, one cool feature I heard of is that when you died, whicever monster you'd killed would have your equipment equipped (with all their properties) and to get them back you'd have to kill them. Obviously, that wasn't so. But it would be sweet. :twisted: And of ocurse players would know about it so they'd have a spare equipment set in thier stash. And if you quit game, you could get them back with some penaltiy ro something, like if you quit without grabbing your corpse.
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Joel » Sat Mar 29, 2003 9:42 pm

Change the location of corpse spawning point .... outside of town :D
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Olorin » Sun Mar 30, 2003 12:09 am

One thing I've just remembered - let's say that, because Town Portals are presumably powerful magics (you can travel a long way after all ;) ), they act as a beacon to demons. In game terms, whenever someone flees from a boos or pack of mosnters to heal up and repiar, leaving the mosnters all wounded while they'r erefreshed, some new mosnters are spawned around the town portal. :)
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Nefarius » Sun Mar 30, 2003 9:20 am

Well, challenge comes out of unfairness as well.
My blood god is not really a fair enemy.

You cannot steal life from him
2 square melee range
100% attack and approach in his AI, no delays!
He has 100% lifesteal
Does atleast 100-300 dmg
Spawns as extra fast and vigor aura
70% resistance everywhere else
Dual immunity
He can walk over objects, like water and so on
Cannot be converted (his minions)

And yes, my lvl 119 chars got their *** kicked in normal dif!
Thought to fight him on hell takes a long time 1-3 hours the least

Just a word of advice, never use something like this for a normal enemy that you must beat in order to finish the game, I prefer keeping these killing machines for side quests.
Last edited by Nefarius on Sun Mar 30, 2003 9:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Improving Tactics

Post by Char » Sun Mar 30, 2003 10:24 am

oh my god...
dont you think one to three hours is a bit TOO much ?
i like tough enemies, too, but thats really a bit too extreme, isnt it?
btw, the no life steal makes this boss easier for the caster classes, doesnt it?

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