I've recently been testing MM7View and been working on a mod for MM7. It looks like I can change respawn times and monster with it. However, where do I change skill and spell effects? I would like to rebalance those. I have heard that they might be encoded in the actual exe (which is terrible programming practice, vast majority of the time there is no reason to hardcode game data into the executable).
Anyway, here are some of my ideas and I'm looking for advice/help on how to implement them.
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The purpose of these balance changes are mostly to make previously inviable characters, abilities, and skills perks viable. Note that these changes are designed with a focus on balance instead of lore. For example, rangers having master level elemental/self skills at 2nd promotion hardly fits with their theme of having a bit of every skill instead of mastering a few, but it's needed for balance purposes.
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Respawn times: down to 1/12 of original values
Faster respawns means more leveling, more rewards, and more stuff to do.
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Skill changes:
Sword: Expert tier increases damage instead of decreasing recovery time
-> The main problem with swords in MM7 is that they can't increase their damage with skill level, which makes them into shields that do a bit of extra damage at grandmaster level as a knight.
Staff: Master tier increases damage instead of a chance to stun.
-> Staves have always sucked in Might and Magic. Low damage and slow. Swapping out chance to stun for damage per skillpoint at master level gives wizards more of a real choice between dual dagger DPS and balanced offense and defense with a staff. It also makes staves viable for monks who want increased damage and armor at the cost of recovery time (grandmaster staff can be used in conjunction with Unarmed skill, but greatly slows down attacks).
Bow: Swapped master and grandmaster perks. Master tier now increases damage, and grandmaster tier now doubleshots.
-> Rangers in MM7 are one of the weakest classes. Allowing them to increase their bow damage with skill level increases their late-game viability and gives them an incentive to use something that isn't a blaster.
-> Note: I'm not 100% certain if this is a good idea because a griffin bow does 13-18 damage - for +1 damage per skillpoint, it would require a 16 skill level for swapping the tiers to be worth it, with a much higher requirement if including elemental damage enchants on the bow. Another option is to just give rangers access to grandmaster bow skill, with the differences versus archers being self versus prismatic skills and archers having physical damage decrease via grandmaster chainmail.
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Class changes
Rogue: Elemental(fire/air/water/earth) skills at 2nd promotion increased to expert level. Increase bow and mace skill limit to master.
-> Face it, disarm trap skill is obsolete at higher levels because you can just telekinesis traps away or eat their damage once you have 200+ health. Rogues need something to keep them competitive versus a knight or monk's superior melee damage and defense late-game. This means that rogues turn into a "waste of a character slot" late-game. Adding expert elemental skills at 2nd promotion means that they can toss fireballs for area damage, blades for heavy damage, or viably use poison spray and sparks. The increased bow skill limit adds further ranged superiority, and rogues can now dual wield a mace with a dagger for a chance to stun.
Monk: Rogue skills equalized between light and dark paths. Self(body/mind/spirit) skills increased to expert level on dark path
-> This quality-of-life improvement makes monks more effective at removing conditions and grants them regeneration-healing while not making them overpowered or obsoleting paladins.
Ranger: Probably one of the biggest "waste of a character slot" classes. Needs a large buff. Elemental and self abilities increased to basic/expert/master per promotion level.
-> The bow damage change combined with increased elemental/self skills should be enough to make rangers a competitive option versus paladins and archers.
Paladin: Self abilities increased to expert/master/master per promotion level
-> With the buff to rangers, paladins now get one additional tier of self abilities until 2nd promotion, where they get light/dark.
Archer: Elemental abilities increased to expert/master/master per promotion level
-> With the buff to rangers, paladins now get one additional tier of elemental abilities until 2nd promotion, where they get light/dark.
Druid: Elemental and self abilities increased to grandmaster at 2nd promotion level.
-> In MM6, there were no skill mastery limits per class. This meant that druids could be as viable at healing as clerics or as viable at elemental abilities as wizards, with the balancing drawback being the lack of prismatic (light/dark) abilities.
In MM7, grandmaster healing is a must for protection from conditions and party-wide healing. With default balancing, druids are stronger than clerics and wizards until 2nd promotion, where their viability drops off greatly due to lack of prismatic abilities and grandmaster elemental/self abilities. Grandmaster meditation and alchemy are easily substituted with alchemy shops and temples, which means that druids have no perks late-game besides good elemental DPS and healing in one character. Giving them grandmaster elemental/self abilities keeps them viable like in MM6.
Cleric: Self abilities increased to master with no promotions.
-> With the buff to druids, clerics are kept viable at low levels with early access to master-level self abilities.
Wizard: Elemental abilities increased to master with no promotions.
-> With the buff to druids, wizards are kept viable at low levels with early access to master-level elemental abilities.
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Nonphysical damage changes:
In MM6 there were some elemental skills that could do multiple types of damage. In MM7, nonphysical damage is tied to the skill that it comes from, decreasing flexibility and options. This rebalance reshuffles elemental/self/light/dark resistances in a more sensible manner.
Also note that earth element has a proper theme now - most modern role-playing games and MMOs actually remove earth element and just have fire/lightning/cold.
Fire: Heat damage - anything that causes enemies to burn, melt, or vaporize.
Air: Lightning damage.
Water: Cold damage.
Earth: Damages enemies' molecular/atomic structure.
Spirit: Represents untyped damage that doesn't fit under any other damage type.
Mind: Effects that damage enemies' minds.
Body: Toxic damage.
Light: Electromagnetic radiation.
Dark: Destructive energy
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Monster changes - Conditions:
Instant death, eradication, unconscious, and "lose all SP" effects are broken and imbalanced because the effectively negate character level. These have been removed in favor of other conditions.
Ancient Wyverns: chance for instant death changed to 80% chance to inflict poisoned condition
Blood Titans: chance for instant death changed to 80% to cause insanity.
Blaster Wielders: chance for instant eradication changed to 80% to break armor; damage increased to 15d5 + 15
Kreegan Captains: chance to drain all SP changed to 80% chance to cause Weakness
Note that this renders Protection from Magic (*cough cough* Protection from Conditions) Grandmaster perk ineffective - this means that having it at master level is sufficient, so you aren't pigeonholed into needing a cleric if you want to avoid instant death and eradication effects.
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Monster changes - Resistances:
Permanent immunity is inherently broken and imbalanced. This update decreases permanent immunity. This list may need to be extended.
Undead changes:
-Fleshy undead (vampires, zombies, ghouls) are highly resistant to toxic damage instead of immune.
-Highly intelligent undead (liches and vampires) are highly resistant to mind damage instead of immune.
-Elementals are now resistant to Mind instead of immune.
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Ability changes:
Fire
*Inferno: damage per skillpoint increased to d3. 1 damage per skillpoint for its cost just isn't viable.
*Haste: duration increased to 1 hour + 5/10/15 minutes per skillpoint at expert/master/grandmaster
*Incinerate: damage increased to 30 + 1d17/skillpoint
-> With default balancing, Immolation is buggy crap and Inferno doesn't do nearly enough damage for its cost, meaning that you have only one reason to rank up your fire skill to master (meteor shower). With this balance update, you now have 2 reasons. You're welcome. Haste has also received a quality of life improvement so it doesn't need perpetual recasting. Incinerate has received a small damage buff to properly bridge the gap between Implosion and Sunray/Dragon Breath.
Air
*Implosion: changed to physical damage, increased damage to 12 + 1d12/skillpoint
-> Implosion now does physical damage to counter medusas. Damage increased to keep it competitive versus Psy-shock.
Water:
*Poison Spray: changed to toxic damage
*Acid Burst: changed to toxic damage
*Ice Blast: damage per skillpoint increased to d8
-> Ice Blast current damage is a joke. This makes it viable.
Earth:
*Deadly Swarm: changed to toxic damage
*Blades: damage type changed to physical
-> Flexibility improvement for earth-specialized characters
Spirit:
*Shared Life: pool increased 8/12 points at master/grandmaster level
*Spirit Lash: Added area damage like in MM8, damage decreased to 12 + 1d7 per skillpoint
-> Healing was buffed bigtime from MM6 to MM7 while Shared Life remained mostly stagnant. Time to fix it.
Mind:
*Psy-shock: Bugfixed to 12 + d12 per skillpoint, now has Fireball-style AoE
-> Clerics now get ranged area damage.
Body:
*Harm: changed to physical damage
*Flying Fist: damage increased to 30 + d10 per skillpoint, changed to physical damage
*Power Cure: healing changed to 20+8 per skillpoint
-> Clerics can now actually do ranged damage against medusas and elementals. Power Cure made significantly more "power"ful instead of just party-wide healing with 5 more health.
Light:
*Light Bolt: damage increased to 6 + d6 per skillpoint
*Destroy Undead: damage increased to 20 + d20 per skillpoint
*Prismatic Light: damage increased to 25 + d5 per skillpoint, removed indoors-only requirement
*Sunray: damage increased to 30 + d30 per skillpoint, removed indoors-only and daytime requirements
-> The light path offensive abilities are a joke compared to dark path offensive abilities. These changes keep light damage competitive while not overpowered. Light Bolt now does about 2/3 the damage of Toxic Cloud on average for 1/3 the cost (and double damage against undead). Destroy Undead gets buffed to d20 per skillpoint to keep it ahead of Light Bolt. With d5 damage per skillpoint and no more indoors-only requirement, Prismatic Light now becomes the best line-of-sight nuking ability (only Souldrinker does more damage and it has a slow recovery). Sunray receives a large usability and damage buff, keeping it ahead of Dragon Breath (it costs the same and has the same recovery while lacking AoE, so it should do more damage).
Dark:
*Shrapmetal: changed to physical damage
-> Not much to change, except that Shrapmetal is re-themed to physical damage
Need help building MM7 mod
Ok, now for a slightly more informative post. First of all, here's a thread to read: viewtopic.php?t=10423
Download the program there, which basically allows you to edit anything in the executable file, provided the hex offset is known. When you run the game once, several of them will automatically appear in the "data/tables" folder so you can edit them. These will include tables for skills tables, some spell data, and class stats. You can also create your own such as one to modify the stat break thresholds as I've done here: viewtopic.php?t=13909
These scripts can also be used, in theory, to change the skill level perks for skills or the cost/skill level requirements for skill advancement. You'll have to ask Greyface about it, though.
Other data, such as monsters, most spell data, npc hirelings, and weapons/items is located in events.lod, which you can edit with MM7View.
Download the program there, which basically allows you to edit anything in the executable file, provided the hex offset is known. When you run the game once, several of them will automatically appear in the "data/tables" folder so you can edit them. These will include tables for skills tables, some spell data, and class stats. You can also create your own such as one to modify the stat break thresholds as I've done here: viewtopic.php?t=13909
These scripts can also be used, in theory, to change the skill level perks for skills or the cost/skill level requirements for skill advancement. You'll have to ask Greyface about it, though.
Other data, such as monsters, most spell data, npc hirelings, and weapons/items is located in events.lod, which you can edit with MM7View.
"You don't have to be a vampire to die like one... bitch." -Simon Belmont
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Pope_Amole
- Leprechaun
- Posts: 9
- Joined: 26 May 2014
No offense meant, but you really need to understand the game better before attempting to mod it.
1. The game is already too easy. YOu definitely don't need more experience from more respawns, it's just dumb grinding (and if you want to do some dumb grinding, just breed dragons in the Wromthrax cave - much more efficient than cleaning Harmondale from goblins over and over again).
2. By giving almost all weapon skills damage increasies you're pretty much negating the difference between them. And between the classes. Not to mention that neither of changes to the swords and staves are needed. Swords don't need damage because the knights (first of the primary sword users) gain their extra damage from the armsmaster (and at a double rate) and the paladings (secondary sword users) gain their damage from the maces. They don't need another skill for that. The notion that staff is slow is also deeply mistaken - given that the monk can master armsmaster (duh) and it's rather easy to find/enchant an armsmaster +12-16 item for him, even with the staff he will easily reach the recovery time cap of 30. And he also gains his bonus damage from the unarmed skill, at double rate and with the evasion bonus. So there's no point for this change - staves are already decent enough and the only thing they need is probably an artifact/relic staff made specifically for monks. And your bow change, as you've written yourself, is actually a nerf. And you're actually not touching the two actually bad weapon skills - the axe (which is the worst weapon in the game, not the staff) and the dagger. Fixing axe is also a way to fix ranger. For the axe, changing that armor-splitting chance for the chance of cutting monster's hp in half would've been nice (though I'm not sure how easy that is to mod). For daggers, including the bonus damage from skill/buffs/might into the tripling formula would be enough.
3. Your class challenge destroy the progression reward feelings. Cleric & Wizards promotin is supposed to be very tough, but also very rewarding. By giving them master from the start you destroy that rewarding feeling so now only the hassle remains. Other changes do pretty much nothing with the exception of Druid - that's good but also that's really obvious.
4. M&M VI damage system is ok, but you have way too many resistance sources. VI's system of only 5 was much better than this and you really don't have to invent the wheel here.
5. Insta-death removal is horrible. You may not like it as the player, but the point is, the player is not supposed to like every part of the game. It's actually good and memorable if some parts of the game are tough, ufair and challenging. Whether you like it or not, you remember something like a M&M VI's Control Center vividly. Can same be said for the majority of VIII's cakewalk dungeons? Not to mention that it also helps monsters fight overleveled party - you can't just grind up to be safe, you're never safe. If anything, this game needs more insta-kills and no cookie-cutter insta-kill protection.
6. Elemental spells changes are ok, though they're probably not enough. The problems with those schools run much deeper than that. M&M VIII style spirit lash is great, but the problem here is more in resistances and how will you fix them - in the vanilla VII, the majority of high level monsters simply ignored clerical magic. However, the rest of the clerical changes are horrible - clerics don't need fireballs. If clerics have fireballs then how are they different from the mages? Spirit lash is ok because it's so short ranged. But otherwise, you need to play on their strength - for example, Mind Magic would've been really powerful if it was actually working (and, iirc, you don't gain xp for the monster friendly fire kills - would've been nice if that was fixed, though it's really hard to fix, I suppose). Well, it's working, only, as I've said, everyone and their mom are immune to it. And light magic changes share the same problem - what's the difference between the light and the dark if both can nuke like there's no tomorrow? Light magic is supposed to be clumsy in the damage dealing department. It's supposed to put stupid limitations on you because it's all about the proper discipline. It's not the trigger happy dark side, after all. And it's already overpowered like hell with the freaking ulimited divine intervention spell - why make it even more broken?
1. The game is already too easy. YOu definitely don't need more experience from more respawns, it's just dumb grinding (and if you want to do some dumb grinding, just breed dragons in the Wromthrax cave - much more efficient than cleaning Harmondale from goblins over and over again).
2. By giving almost all weapon skills damage increasies you're pretty much negating the difference between them. And between the classes. Not to mention that neither of changes to the swords and staves are needed. Swords don't need damage because the knights (first of the primary sword users) gain their extra damage from the armsmaster (and at a double rate) and the paladings (secondary sword users) gain their damage from the maces. They don't need another skill for that. The notion that staff is slow is also deeply mistaken - given that the monk can master armsmaster (duh) and it's rather easy to find/enchant an armsmaster +12-16 item for him, even with the staff he will easily reach the recovery time cap of 30. And he also gains his bonus damage from the unarmed skill, at double rate and with the evasion bonus. So there's no point for this change - staves are already decent enough and the only thing they need is probably an artifact/relic staff made specifically for monks. And your bow change, as you've written yourself, is actually a nerf. And you're actually not touching the two actually bad weapon skills - the axe (which is the worst weapon in the game, not the staff) and the dagger. Fixing axe is also a way to fix ranger. For the axe, changing that armor-splitting chance for the chance of cutting monster's hp in half would've been nice (though I'm not sure how easy that is to mod). For daggers, including the bonus damage from skill/buffs/might into the tripling formula would be enough.
3. Your class challenge destroy the progression reward feelings. Cleric & Wizards promotin is supposed to be very tough, but also very rewarding. By giving them master from the start you destroy that rewarding feeling so now only the hassle remains. Other changes do pretty much nothing with the exception of Druid - that's good but also that's really obvious.
4. M&M VI damage system is ok, but you have way too many resistance sources. VI's system of only 5 was much better than this and you really don't have to invent the wheel here.
5. Insta-death removal is horrible. You may not like it as the player, but the point is, the player is not supposed to like every part of the game. It's actually good and memorable if some parts of the game are tough, ufair and challenging. Whether you like it or not, you remember something like a M&M VI's Control Center vividly. Can same be said for the majority of VIII's cakewalk dungeons? Not to mention that it also helps monsters fight overleveled party - you can't just grind up to be safe, you're never safe. If anything, this game needs more insta-kills and no cookie-cutter insta-kill protection.
6. Elemental spells changes are ok, though they're probably not enough. The problems with those schools run much deeper than that. M&M VIII style spirit lash is great, but the problem here is more in resistances and how will you fix them - in the vanilla VII, the majority of high level monsters simply ignored clerical magic. However, the rest of the clerical changes are horrible - clerics don't need fireballs. If clerics have fireballs then how are they different from the mages? Spirit lash is ok because it's so short ranged. But otherwise, you need to play on their strength - for example, Mind Magic would've been really powerful if it was actually working (and, iirc, you don't gain xp for the monster friendly fire kills - would've been nice if that was fixed, though it's really hard to fix, I suppose). Well, it's working, only, as I've said, everyone and their mom are immune to it. And light magic changes share the same problem - what's the difference between the light and the dark if both can nuke like there's no tomorrow? Light magic is supposed to be clumsy in the damage dealing department. It's supposed to put stupid limitations on you because it's all about the proper discipline. It's not the trigger happy dark side, after all. And it's already overpowered like hell with the freaking ulimited divine intervention spell - why make it even more broken?
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Logscale
- Leprechaun
- Posts: 10
- Joined: 14 Sep 2014
- Location: Curled up in the Frozen Cliffs sitting on pile of books
@Pope_Amole:
Your post is so bad and incorrect that I have a hard time believing that it isn't trolling, but I will assume you are posting in good faith and provide a good counter-argument anyway.
On an unrelated note: it isn't like MM7 is an online game where one person demands rebalances and they are forced on everyone else. If you want to mod your MM7 install so that rats have a chance to eradicate, go for it.
"No offense meant, but you really need to understand the game better before attempting to mod it."
-> I've been playing MM7 since 2000 or 2001. I have no problems understanding it and understanding what needs to be fixed.
#1: Fast respawns are better than an empty game world where there's literally nothing to do. Random quest generator or improved quest system or regenerating quests would be better, but that's much more difficult to implement. Also your suggestion of breeding dragons in a cave makes absolutely no sense.
#2:
"By giving almost all weapon skills damage increasies you're pretty much negating the difference between them.
-> This isn't negating the difference because different weapons get different perks in different skill mastery level, so some classes are locked out of some of the perks. Also, certain perks are exclusive, such as 1/2 armor for axes, doubleshot for bows, and paralyze chance for maces
And between the classes. Not to mention that neither of changes to the swords and staves are needed. Swords do not need damage because the knights (first of the primary sword users) gain their extra damage from the armsmaster (and at a double rate) and the paladins (secondary sword users) gain their damage from the maces.
-> The sword changes are a small buff to Knights, but they are mainly intended for other classes that might want to wield a sword and something else.
"The notion that staff is slow is also deeply mistaken - given that the monk can master armsmaster (duh) and it's rather easy to find/enchant an armsmaster +12-16 item for him, even with the staff he will easily reach the recovery time limit of 30. And he also gains his bonus damage from the unarmed skill, at double rate and with the evasion bonus."
-> You're obviously mistaken in understanding how recovery time for attacks works in MM7. It is based off the slowest weapon you are holding. Unarmed is as fast as a dagger. If you equip a staff, you are gaining relatively little extra damage (even with Armsmaster) for potentially 50%-80% increase in recovery time, which royally damages your DPS. Also, giving staves damage instead of stun chance at master level gives wizards a real reason to use staves - with default balancing, the only reason to ever use a staff as a wizard is Ethric's Staff after Lich promotion.
"And your bow change, as you've written yourself, is actually a nerf."
-> This is 1 of 2 things in your post that I actually agree with. I would probably give rangers access to grandmaster archery instead to balance them properly against archers.
"And you're actually not touching the two actually bad weapon skills - the axe (which is the worst weapon in the game, not the staff) and the dagger. Fixing axe is also a way to fix ranger. For the axe, changing that armor-splitting chance for the chance of cutting monster's hp in half would've been nice (though I'm not sure how easy that is to mod). For daggers, including the bonus damage from skill/buffs/might into the tripling formula would be enough."
-> Axes and daggers are the worst weapons in the game? Lolwhut. Far from it. Axes are the only weapon that gets both +damage and -recovery in the default game balancing - and it doesn't even take a grandmaster. I agree that the axe grandmaster perk is a bit weak - but chance to halve health is also a bit broken. I would envision the grandmaster perk being an additional point of damage per skill level or chance to halve resistances as well as armor. Daggers are far from the worst weapon. A wizard dual wielding daggers at expert level will take a dump on a wizard wielding a staff at master level in melee combat. The best way to melee DPS as a druid is to wield a mace with an offhand dagger. Perhaps daggers are crap for knights and monks, but that doesn't make them bad all-around.
#3:
"Your class challenge destroy the progression reward feelings."
-> My class challenge destroy progression reward feelings? Was this translated from Japanese or Korean using Babelfish or something? Sorry, either the universal translator is broken, or you're verbally challenged.
"Cleric & Wizards promotion is supposed to be very tough, but also very rewarding. By giving them master from the start you destroy that rewarding feeling so now only the hassle remains. Other changes do pretty much nothing with the exception of Druid - that's good but also that's really obvious."
-> The point of the rebalance is to make every class viable at as many stages of the game as I can. Wizard promotion can be very easy if you get a Wind Master NPC or great druid for flight. Cleric promotion isn't difficult, just a lot of combat. Granted, my rebalance might not be perfect, but it's a quantum leap forward from default balancing.
#4:
"M&M VI damage system is ok, but you have way too many resistance sources. VI's system of only 5 was much better than this"
-> Agreed, that's why my rebalance attempts to make the resistance system more like MM6 while avoiding the broken aspects of it.
#5:
"Insta-death removal is horrible."
-> No it isn't. Insta-death is bad for almost any game. The point of a strategic combat game it to adapt, counter the opposition strategy, and win - not get OHKO'd with no counters.
"You may not like it as the player, but the point is, the player is not supposed to like every part of the game."
-> Every part of a game should be enjoyable. Any part that isn't enjoyable is just points taken away from it on Metacritic or other ratings sites.
"It's actually good and memorable if some parts of the game are tough, ufair and challenging."
-> My mod increases damage from monsters that had instant unconscious/death/eradication effects. So this means that you need to bring a good healer, learn to dodge, learn to counter, etc. It makes the game more skill-based instead of RNG-based.
"Whether you like it or not, you remember something like a M&M VI's Control Center vividly."
-> I have recently finished MM6. I remember the Control Center all too well. Specifically, I remember getting the broken/badly written ranged AI glitched on the side of the wall while half of my characters hammered it with blasters.
"Can same be said for the majority of VIII's cakewalk dungeons?"
-> MM8 is a cakewalk, but for different reasons. I blame dragons and a level 50 Dark Elf Patriarch that can be recruited with little or no effort.
"Not to mention that it also helps monsters fight overleveled party - you can't just grind up to be safe, you're never safe. If anything, this game needs more insta-kills and no cookie-cutter insta-kill protection."
-> Level should be a real indicator of character strength. Insta-death is just a bad and broken way of forcing RNG difficult on players, and grandmaster protection from magic is just a bandaid solution. No well-made MMORPG would have RNG-based unavoidable insta-death as a mechanic. In almost every WoW-like game, if your character dies instantly in a raid, it's probably because you didn't pay attention to mechanics or stood in something that you should have avoided.
The point of my mod is to make more options viable which means that more party builds are viable - this means more replayability and a more fun game. Poorly balanced insta-death mechanics and other gimmicks only turn the game into a contest to see who can exploit the game's flaws the hardest (see Diablo 3 greater rifts and torment 6 difficulty as a case study on what happens when a game is fundamentally broken)
#6:
"Elemental spells changes are ok, though they're probably not enough. The problems with those schools run much deeper than that."
-> Agreed, but a partial solution is better than no solution.
"M&M VIII style spirit lash is great, but the problem here is more in resistances and how will you fix them - in the vanilla VII, the majority of high level monsters simply ignored clerical magic."
-> Solution: Remove perma-immunity. Also, the majority of high level monsters aren't immune to clerical abilities. High level monsters are: dragons, kreegan,titans,behemoths,and guardian robots. Titans are only immune to mind. Out of that list, only guardian robots are immune to clerical abilities.
"However, the rest of the clerical changes are horrible - clerics do not need fireballs."
-> So it's acceptable for a cleric in MM6 to have access to Dragon Breath for d25 damage per skillpoint, but it's unacceptable for a cleric in MM7 to have access to a "fireball" that has a much weaker element and does half the damage?
"If clerics have fireballs then how are they different from the mages?"
-> Mages get: Town Portal, Flight, Lloyd's Beacon, Air Raid spells (meteor shower, starburst, death blossom), Telekinesis, Finger of death With Half the RNG (Mass Distortion), and most importantly, elemental "shotguns"(Poison Spray and Sparks) that vaporize anything that gets close enough. Your discounting of Poison Sprak and Sparks just shows that you have no clue regarding MM7 balancing. At master level: poison spray is 5d2 damage per skillpoint at close range. Sparks is 7 damage per skillpoint at close range. Both of them have no chance to miss at close range, unlike knights. Nevermind knights being able to get 2 damage per skillpoint with armsmaster, grab grandmaster air/water and you're rolling 9 damage per skillpoint with Sparks and 7d2 per skillpoint with Poison Spray. That's why I almost never put a knight in my group, because there are no monsters besides medusas that are immune to both air and water.
Want a "balanced" party (no multiple instances of the same class) that has no knight or monk and absolutely wrecks at close range? Archer, Cleric, Druid, Wizard. Cleric heals, raises dead characters, and protects from insta-death. Druid is backup healer and also raises dead characters. If you fight at long range, your archer will turn your enemies into a pincushion if your wizard's starbursts and druid's meteor shower haven't finished them first. Anything gets into close range, it gets obliterated with sparks and poison spray. Fighting against medusas at close range? Archer, Druid, and Cleric can all increase their melee damage with spear or mace skills. No need for a knight - it's just a plain waste of a character slot given just how much poison spray and sparks can scale with one skill.
"Spirit lash is ok because it's so short ranged. But otherwise, you need to play on their strength - for example, Mind Magic would've been really powerful if it was actually working (and, iirc, no xp gain for the monster friendly fire kills - would've been nice if that was fixed, though it's really hard to fix, I suppose). Well, it's working, only, as I've said, everyone and their mom are immune to it."
-> This is for MM6, right? because NWC/3DO fixed debuffs in MM7.
"And light magic changes share the same problem - what's the difference between the light and the dark if both can nuke like there's no tomorrow?"
-> With my rebalancing, dark element still nukes harder. Prismatic Light post-buff has way more DPS than Souldrinker, but Prismatic Light doesn't heal you. Light Bolt might be more efficient than Toxic Cloud, but they have similar recovery and therefore Toxic Cloud has better DPS. Sunray does a bit more damage than Dragon Breath after the rebalance, but Sunray has no area damage. Also, light doesn't get Shrapmetal(the most powerful shotgun spell in the entire game) or Armageddon. The dark path is still very strong with this rebalance, it's just that the light path damage abilities are no longer a joke.
"Light magic is supposed to be clumsy in the damage dealing department. It's supposed to put stupid limitations on you because it's all about the proper discipline. It's not the trigger happy dark side, after all."
-> There's never any valid reason for stupid limitations or stupidly weak abilities to exist. Either rework them, buff them, or throw them out and put something useful in there.
"And it's already overpowered like hell with the freaking ulimited divine intervention spell - why make it even more broken?"
-> Divine Intervention isn't unlimited or overpowered in MM7, because there's no well of rejuvenation and anti-aging potions are rare. You're better off getting a grandmaster water wizard and using Lloyd's Beacon intervention instead.
Your post is so bad and incorrect that I have a hard time believing that it isn't trolling, but I will assume you are posting in good faith and provide a good counter-argument anyway.
On an unrelated note: it isn't like MM7 is an online game where one person demands rebalances and they are forced on everyone else. If you want to mod your MM7 install so that rats have a chance to eradicate, go for it.
"No offense meant, but you really need to understand the game better before attempting to mod it."
-> I've been playing MM7 since 2000 or 2001. I have no problems understanding it and understanding what needs to be fixed.
#1: Fast respawns are better than an empty game world where there's literally nothing to do. Random quest generator or improved quest system or regenerating quests would be better, but that's much more difficult to implement. Also your suggestion of breeding dragons in a cave makes absolutely no sense.
#2:
"By giving almost all weapon skills damage increasies you're pretty much negating the difference between them.
-> This isn't negating the difference because different weapons get different perks in different skill mastery level, so some classes are locked out of some of the perks. Also, certain perks are exclusive, such as 1/2 armor for axes, doubleshot for bows, and paralyze chance for maces
And between the classes. Not to mention that neither of changes to the swords and staves are needed. Swords do not need damage because the knights (first of the primary sword users) gain their extra damage from the armsmaster (and at a double rate) and the paladins (secondary sword users) gain their damage from the maces.
-> The sword changes are a small buff to Knights, but they are mainly intended for other classes that might want to wield a sword and something else.
"The notion that staff is slow is also deeply mistaken - given that the monk can master armsmaster (duh) and it's rather easy to find/enchant an armsmaster +12-16 item for him, even with the staff he will easily reach the recovery time limit of 30. And he also gains his bonus damage from the unarmed skill, at double rate and with the evasion bonus."
-> You're obviously mistaken in understanding how recovery time for attacks works in MM7. It is based off the slowest weapon you are holding. Unarmed is as fast as a dagger. If you equip a staff, you are gaining relatively little extra damage (even with Armsmaster) for potentially 50%-80% increase in recovery time, which royally damages your DPS. Also, giving staves damage instead of stun chance at master level gives wizards a real reason to use staves - with default balancing, the only reason to ever use a staff as a wizard is Ethric's Staff after Lich promotion.
"And your bow change, as you've written yourself, is actually a nerf."
-> This is 1 of 2 things in your post that I actually agree with. I would probably give rangers access to grandmaster archery instead to balance them properly against archers.
"And you're actually not touching the two actually bad weapon skills - the axe (which is the worst weapon in the game, not the staff) and the dagger. Fixing axe is also a way to fix ranger. For the axe, changing that armor-splitting chance for the chance of cutting monster's hp in half would've been nice (though I'm not sure how easy that is to mod). For daggers, including the bonus damage from skill/buffs/might into the tripling formula would be enough."
-> Axes and daggers are the worst weapons in the game? Lolwhut. Far from it. Axes are the only weapon that gets both +damage and -recovery in the default game balancing - and it doesn't even take a grandmaster. I agree that the axe grandmaster perk is a bit weak - but chance to halve health is also a bit broken. I would envision the grandmaster perk being an additional point of damage per skill level or chance to halve resistances as well as armor. Daggers are far from the worst weapon. A wizard dual wielding daggers at expert level will take a dump on a wizard wielding a staff at master level in melee combat. The best way to melee DPS as a druid is to wield a mace with an offhand dagger. Perhaps daggers are crap for knights and monks, but that doesn't make them bad all-around.
#3:
"Your class challenge destroy the progression reward feelings."
-> My class challenge destroy progression reward feelings? Was this translated from Japanese or Korean using Babelfish or something? Sorry, either the universal translator is broken, or you're verbally challenged.
"Cleric & Wizards promotion is supposed to be very tough, but also very rewarding. By giving them master from the start you destroy that rewarding feeling so now only the hassle remains. Other changes do pretty much nothing with the exception of Druid - that's good but also that's really obvious."
-> The point of the rebalance is to make every class viable at as many stages of the game as I can. Wizard promotion can be very easy if you get a Wind Master NPC or great druid for flight. Cleric promotion isn't difficult, just a lot of combat. Granted, my rebalance might not be perfect, but it's a quantum leap forward from default balancing.
#4:
"M&M VI damage system is ok, but you have way too many resistance sources. VI's system of only 5 was much better than this"
-> Agreed, that's why my rebalance attempts to make the resistance system more like MM6 while avoiding the broken aspects of it.
#5:
"Insta-death removal is horrible."
-> No it isn't. Insta-death is bad for almost any game. The point of a strategic combat game it to adapt, counter the opposition strategy, and win - not get OHKO'd with no counters.
"You may not like it as the player, but the point is, the player is not supposed to like every part of the game."
-> Every part of a game should be enjoyable. Any part that isn't enjoyable is just points taken away from it on Metacritic or other ratings sites.
"It's actually good and memorable if some parts of the game are tough, ufair and challenging."
-> My mod increases damage from monsters that had instant unconscious/death/eradication effects. So this means that you need to bring a good healer, learn to dodge, learn to counter, etc. It makes the game more skill-based instead of RNG-based.
"Whether you like it or not, you remember something like a M&M VI's Control Center vividly."
-> I have recently finished MM6. I remember the Control Center all too well. Specifically, I remember getting the broken/badly written ranged AI glitched on the side of the wall while half of my characters hammered it with blasters.
"Can same be said for the majority of VIII's cakewalk dungeons?"
-> MM8 is a cakewalk, but for different reasons. I blame dragons and a level 50 Dark Elf Patriarch that can be recruited with little or no effort.
"Not to mention that it also helps monsters fight overleveled party - you can't just grind up to be safe, you're never safe. If anything, this game needs more insta-kills and no cookie-cutter insta-kill protection."
-> Level should be a real indicator of character strength. Insta-death is just a bad and broken way of forcing RNG difficult on players, and grandmaster protection from magic is just a bandaid solution. No well-made MMORPG would have RNG-based unavoidable insta-death as a mechanic. In almost every WoW-like game, if your character dies instantly in a raid, it's probably because you didn't pay attention to mechanics or stood in something that you should have avoided.
The point of my mod is to make more options viable which means that more party builds are viable - this means more replayability and a more fun game. Poorly balanced insta-death mechanics and other gimmicks only turn the game into a contest to see who can exploit the game's flaws the hardest (see Diablo 3 greater rifts and torment 6 difficulty as a case study on what happens when a game is fundamentally broken)
#6:
"Elemental spells changes are ok, though they're probably not enough. The problems with those schools run much deeper than that."
-> Agreed, but a partial solution is better than no solution.
"M&M VIII style spirit lash is great, but the problem here is more in resistances and how will you fix them - in the vanilla VII, the majority of high level monsters simply ignored clerical magic."
-> Solution: Remove perma-immunity. Also, the majority of high level monsters aren't immune to clerical abilities. High level monsters are: dragons, kreegan,titans,behemoths,and guardian robots. Titans are only immune to mind. Out of that list, only guardian robots are immune to clerical abilities.
"However, the rest of the clerical changes are horrible - clerics do not need fireballs."
-> So it's acceptable for a cleric in MM6 to have access to Dragon Breath for d25 damage per skillpoint, but it's unacceptable for a cleric in MM7 to have access to a "fireball" that has a much weaker element and does half the damage?
"If clerics have fireballs then how are they different from the mages?"
-> Mages get: Town Portal, Flight, Lloyd's Beacon, Air Raid spells (meteor shower, starburst, death blossom), Telekinesis, Finger of death With Half the RNG (Mass Distortion), and most importantly, elemental "shotguns"(Poison Spray and Sparks) that vaporize anything that gets close enough. Your discounting of Poison Sprak and Sparks just shows that you have no clue regarding MM7 balancing. At master level: poison spray is 5d2 damage per skillpoint at close range. Sparks is 7 damage per skillpoint at close range. Both of them have no chance to miss at close range, unlike knights. Nevermind knights being able to get 2 damage per skillpoint with armsmaster, grab grandmaster air/water and you're rolling 9 damage per skillpoint with Sparks and 7d2 per skillpoint with Poison Spray. That's why I almost never put a knight in my group, because there are no monsters besides medusas that are immune to both air and water.
Want a "balanced" party (no multiple instances of the same class) that has no knight or monk and absolutely wrecks at close range? Archer, Cleric, Druid, Wizard. Cleric heals, raises dead characters, and protects from insta-death. Druid is backup healer and also raises dead characters. If you fight at long range, your archer will turn your enemies into a pincushion if your wizard's starbursts and druid's meteor shower haven't finished them first. Anything gets into close range, it gets obliterated with sparks and poison spray. Fighting against medusas at close range? Archer, Druid, and Cleric can all increase their melee damage with spear or mace skills. No need for a knight - it's just a plain waste of a character slot given just how much poison spray and sparks can scale with one skill.
"Spirit lash is ok because it's so short ranged. But otherwise, you need to play on their strength - for example, Mind Magic would've been really powerful if it was actually working (and, iirc, no xp gain for the monster friendly fire kills - would've been nice if that was fixed, though it's really hard to fix, I suppose). Well, it's working, only, as I've said, everyone and their mom are immune to it."
-> This is for MM6, right? because NWC/3DO fixed debuffs in MM7.
"And light magic changes share the same problem - what's the difference between the light and the dark if both can nuke like there's no tomorrow?"
-> With my rebalancing, dark element still nukes harder. Prismatic Light post-buff has way more DPS than Souldrinker, but Prismatic Light doesn't heal you. Light Bolt might be more efficient than Toxic Cloud, but they have similar recovery and therefore Toxic Cloud has better DPS. Sunray does a bit more damage than Dragon Breath after the rebalance, but Sunray has no area damage. Also, light doesn't get Shrapmetal(the most powerful shotgun spell in the entire game) or Armageddon. The dark path is still very strong with this rebalance, it's just that the light path damage abilities are no longer a joke.
"Light magic is supposed to be clumsy in the damage dealing department. It's supposed to put stupid limitations on you because it's all about the proper discipline. It's not the trigger happy dark side, after all."
-> There's never any valid reason for stupid limitations or stupidly weak abilities to exist. Either rework them, buff them, or throw them out and put something useful in there.
"And it's already overpowered like hell with the freaking ulimited divine intervention spell - why make it even more broken?"
-> Divine Intervention isn't unlimited or overpowered in MM7, because there's no well of rejuvenation and anti-aging potions are rare. You're better off getting a grandmaster water wizard and using Lloyd's Beacon intervention instead.
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Pope_Amole
- Leprechaun
- Posts: 9
- Joined: 26 May 2014
You may get angry and try to go on the level of the personal insults all you want, but that doesn't change the fact you know nothing about this game. Sorry, but that's true.
I'm not gonna waste much time on you, but let me educate you on axes which you say are one of the best weapons in the game and, from your words, absolutely don't need fixing.
For both one-handed and two-handed axes, the basic attack recovery time is 100. That's as slow as it gets in the game and, coincidentally, the only other weapon in the game which has it equally as low is the staff (which everyone bashes for being useless). In comparison, sword has 90 recovery time, mace & spear have 80 and dagger has 60. And, while you can invest into the axe skill to gain a recovery time reduction, you gain only 1 point per skill level - i.e., at 10, the axes will swing with 90 recovery time (without accounting for speed bonus, armsmaster bonus & haste). At 20, with 80. And so forth. Meaning that, to be as fast as the spear, you need to invest only 209 skillpoints into it. Imba weapon.
Next thing is damage. While being much slower, two-handed axes deal only as much damage as the two-handed swords and less damage than the halberds. That's while being at least 25% slower than halberd. Imba weapon. And, unlike the halberds, they can never be held one-handed (btw, with your deep knowledge of the game, do you know that spear weapons gain an extra die of damage when held two-handed? like, that the starting spear isn't really the 1d9, but 2d9?)
One handed axes are better in this department, though - they do a little bit more damage than maces and almost as much damage as longswords & broadswords. They're still slow as hell, though.
The grandmaster bonus for axes is worthless. If you'll do some basic calculations (I hope you know the game's to-hit formula), you'll see that (at skill level 10) it's basically a 10% chance to have a 10-15% greater to-hit chance (for one attack). Your average to-hit chance is about 70%, so it goes up to 85%. But that's once in 10 attacks. Very useful.
In the end, the problem is that you look at the skill itself instead of looking at the system in whole. Yeah, the skill sounds great (apart from the grand-master ability, but why, it also sounds great). But the weapon itself is so horrible that said greatness just gets wasted on it. Good day, sir.
I'm not gonna waste much time on you, but let me educate you on axes which you say are one of the best weapons in the game and, from your words, absolutely don't need fixing.
For both one-handed and two-handed axes, the basic attack recovery time is 100. That's as slow as it gets in the game and, coincidentally, the only other weapon in the game which has it equally as low is the staff (which everyone bashes for being useless). In comparison, sword has 90 recovery time, mace & spear have 80 and dagger has 60. And, while you can invest into the axe skill to gain a recovery time reduction, you gain only 1 point per skill level - i.e., at 10, the axes will swing with 90 recovery time (without accounting for speed bonus, armsmaster bonus & haste). At 20, with 80. And so forth. Meaning that, to be as fast as the spear, you need to invest only 209 skillpoints into it. Imba weapon.
Next thing is damage. While being much slower, two-handed axes deal only as much damage as the two-handed swords and less damage than the halberds. That's while being at least 25% slower than halberd. Imba weapon. And, unlike the halberds, they can never be held one-handed (btw, with your deep knowledge of the game, do you know that spear weapons gain an extra die of damage when held two-handed? like, that the starting spear isn't really the 1d9, but 2d9?)
One handed axes are better in this department, though - they do a little bit more damage than maces and almost as much damage as longswords & broadswords. They're still slow as hell, though.
The grandmaster bonus for axes is worthless. If you'll do some basic calculations (I hope you know the game's to-hit formula), you'll see that (at skill level 10) it's basically a 10% chance to have a 10-15% greater to-hit chance (for one attack). Your average to-hit chance is about 70%, so it goes up to 85%. But that's once in 10 attacks. Very useful.
In the end, the problem is that you look at the skill itself instead of looking at the system in whole. Yeah, the skill sounds great (apart from the grand-master ability, but why, it also sounds great). But the weapon itself is so horrible that said greatness just gets wasted on it. Good day, sir.
I figure I'll throw in my two cents here, as you've been nice enough to do the same.
I'll preface this by saying that I have a... rather long background in modding. Most recently, I've spend the last two and a half years on an overhaul of Final Fantasy VI. So, this is coming from much more of a developer perspective than that of a player.
I do agree with Pope on most points. Namely, you seem to want to add damage bonuses to the "weaker" weapons to bring them up to shore rather than work to differentiate them further. Swords, for example, are meant to be weaker weapons overall since they can be off-handed; giving them a damage boost makes the Drizz't setup a no-brainer. The idea should be to give the player interesting choices, and that means doing everything you can to make each option attractive and different.
Unfortunately, I'm aware that we have very little to work with given the limitations of the tools we have available to us. This is why my mod is going to include adjusting the damage and effects of the weapons and armor themselves - I suggest you do the same. Even if moving around the skill level perks is doable, it's simply not enough.
You are right in other cases, though. Disarm Trap is largely a "convenience" skill that's not at all necessary once you obtain Telekinesis (though it does make it possible to open chests in the Titan's Stronghold without breaking Invisibility, which is nice). Where we differ in opinion, it seems, is that you see that ability as the only draw of the Thief class, whereas I would cite the superior physical damage from daggers as the most appealing aspect.
I could probably go on a bit further into some specifics, but I'm at work and don't really have much spare time. I just wanted to pitch out my biggest thoughts (that I didn't already bring up in my response to you in my thread).
I'll preface this by saying that I have a... rather long background in modding. Most recently, I've spend the last two and a half years on an overhaul of Final Fantasy VI. So, this is coming from much more of a developer perspective than that of a player.
I do agree with Pope on most points. Namely, you seem to want to add damage bonuses to the "weaker" weapons to bring them up to shore rather than work to differentiate them further. Swords, for example, are meant to be weaker weapons overall since they can be off-handed; giving them a damage boost makes the Drizz't setup a no-brainer. The idea should be to give the player interesting choices, and that means doing everything you can to make each option attractive and different.
Unfortunately, I'm aware that we have very little to work with given the limitations of the tools we have available to us. This is why my mod is going to include adjusting the damage and effects of the weapons and armor themselves - I suggest you do the same. Even if moving around the skill level perks is doable, it's simply not enough.
You are right in other cases, though. Disarm Trap is largely a "convenience" skill that's not at all necessary once you obtain Telekinesis (though it does make it possible to open chests in the Titan's Stronghold without breaking Invisibility, which is nice). Where we differ in opinion, it seems, is that you see that ability as the only draw of the Thief class, whereas I would cite the superior physical damage from daggers as the most appealing aspect.
I could probably go on a bit further into some specifics, but I'm at work and don't really have much spare time. I just wanted to pitch out my biggest thoughts (that I didn't already bring up in my response to you in my thread).
"You don't have to be a vampire to die like one... bitch." -Simon Belmont
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