MM6 skill emphasis mod (#74)

[tnevolin]

goblins deal 1-9 damage (avg 5), this is raised by 5^0.25=1,49 it now deals 1-13 rather than double = 2-18
gold dragon deals 16-128 (avg 72), this is raised by 72^0.25=2,9 it now deals 47-374 rather than double =32 -258

I'd rather find something even steeper so goblin deals somewhat less and dragon somewhat more, if this approach or something similar is possible? [my guys are now level 51 and clearing alamos without difficulty, i think ill pause that game until hopefully we find a way to raise mid to late gme difficulty]

Make sense. The monster table is open. So we can plug in any values we like. I like the idea.

Formula: goddammit i wracked my brain trying to find that progression^^ ^0.7 is much simpler:) and yeah i added a tab to show the progression of the formula. Both are fine and very close in value until ~10 but already at 30 the SQRT is too low imo and you can see in higher levels it becomes unsustainable. casting a spell for 108 to do ~250% more damage than a 12 mana spell is a really bad deal.
at +365% damage for +700% cost i can begin to see a decent tradeoff between DPS and DPM

SQRT is same as ^5 and you want to use ^7. So, obviously, you are overtaking SQRT.
I am fine with idea. Personally, I felt too restricted with whole numbers being to close to each other. Now we will have a little more room. As usual, keep in mind, though that this need to be verified against physical damage and monsters to not become OP.

Poison/physical: I didnt come up with those numbers they are apparent (give or take) in the damage values in vanilla, i just continue to use them because i agree - and i guess its another design philosophy debate; i much prefer for all spells to be equally good in different ways that gives me freedom to choose. In a scheme where one is better I get a brief satisfaction from figuring out which buyt then i feel compelled to use that one, bad balance reduces game freedom the way i play games (compulsive min/maxing).
they dont hit the same, but if a spell is often reduced by resistances it should be doing more damage in other cases so the average is the same, certainly when players dont have access to all spells (at same rank)

You are probably right. It is not a great importance to me anyway.

spreadsheet
column A:H should be selfevident, just basic stats
column I is just a demarcation before computations
Column J computes the damage at rank 25/master
column K modifies this damage to adjust for the modifiers mentioned (damage type, multishot, AOE), to see the "unmodified" damage
column L computes expected damage based on spell cost^0.7*25 for rank
colum M compares the modified damage with expected damageto see if spell is above or below curve
subsequent columns do the same for SQRT at rank 25 and rank 4/expert with ^0.7 (i didnt bother to change the formula yet, kinda sore about that one

Got it. Sorry, too busy today and tomorrow. Will check it in more details later. Thank you for composing it.

[raekuul]

This is my base spell book values. I don't understand why first book cost 150 instead of 100. Maybe the way traders work by increasing price in their favor?
We can make them start from 50, for example, if you think it'll make things easier for player.

local modifiedBookValues =
{
[0] = 100,
[1] = 200,
[2] = 300,
[3] = 500,
[4] = 1000,
[5] = 2000,
[6] = 5000,
[7] = 10000,
[8] = 20000,
[9] = 50000,
[10] = 100000,
}

Shops adjust prices in their favor, yeah. Each shop starts at a certain markup that they sell at, and each rank in Merchant reduces their markup - the Elemental Guild and Self Guild in NS both sell at +50% before adjusting for Merchant. Selling goes in reverse: each store buys things at a certain markdown and each rank in Merchant reduces the effect of that markdown. If your Merchant skill is enough to set their markup/markdown to 0% then you buy/sell at the base value while in that shop (different shops have different markup/down values, which is why MM7 made the GM perk "Buy and sell at Cost")

For the elemental and self spellbooks in particular, I would say have the first four (0:3) go 100-400 to mimic vanilla, then have the next four (4:7) go 1000, 2000, 3000, 5000, then have the last three (8:10) go 10000, 25000, 50000. Dark/Light spellbooks in vanilla were 10x the cost of their lower tier counterparts, so we can just do that again (a quarter million gold for Armageddon sounds like a fair price, right?), but give the final spells a value of 0 so that you don't get an extra million gold for pawning off the Obelisk Reward in New Sorpigal's magic shop.

The underlying point is that "stuff is more expensive than you think it is in the early game"

Also I don't remember any delay for that. It just updated right on the screen. Try to reproduce it and send me the scenario to test.

The delay was because those skills were newly purchased after having already raised the other skills; when I checked in a clean run they leveled as you described they should so it's just "newly purchased skills are at level 1 until you raise skills again" since that's when the MMEXT script fires.

[RawSugar]

Make sense. The monster table is open. So we can plug in any values we like. I like the idea.

Is it just a matter of finding the right formula and copy pasting or must they be changed one by one? if the latter can i help? if the former ill try and come up with perfect formula
Also playing darkmoor it really felt like ogres need a ranged attack.

I am fine with idea. Personally, I felt too restricted with whole numbers being to close to each other. Now we will have a little more room. As usual, keep in mind, though that this need to be verified against physical damage and monsters to not become OP.

the strongest spells like implosion and shrap metal are unchanged in this scheme, there's just a few brought into line with them imo, so balance should only be improved.
And the 0 cost spells dealing ~50 damage is still incredibly weak vs the modded weapon damage

[tnevolin]

For the elemental and self spellbooks in particular, I would say have the first four (0:3) go 100-400 to mimic vanilla, then have the next four (4:7) go 1000, 2000, 3000, 5000, then have the last three (8:10) go 10000, 25000, 50000. Dark/Light spellbooks in vanilla were 10x the cost of their lower tier counterparts, so we can just do that again (a quarter million gold for Armageddon sounds like a fair price, right?), but give the final spells a value of 0 so that you don't get an extra million gold for pawning off the Obelisk Reward in New Sorpigal's magic shop.

The underlying point is that "stuff is more expensive than you think it is in the early game"

Hmm. You complain that early game stuff is too expensive but you keep it intact and instead propose a drop in higher end books. I actually asking your if you want to do the opposite?

The delay was because those skills were newly purchased after having already raised the other skills; when I checked in a clean run they leveled as you described they should so it's just "newly purchased skills are at level 1 until you raise skills again" since that's when the MMEXT script fires.

That is the test case. I just don't understand how to reproduce it. Buy a skill, exit shop, open character skill screen, try to raise the skill?

[tnevolin]

Make sense. The monster table is open. So we can plug in any values we like. I like the idea.

Is it just a matter of finding the right formula and copy pasting or must they be changed one by one? if the latter can i help? if the former ill try and come up with perfect formula

Formula is always simpler to work with. If you are going to embed a lot of math in formula then I would suggest to base your formula not on their average damage as this is thing we are trying to modify but on some more or less stable and reliable parameter. Like a monster level.

Here: https://mm6.wiki/w/Monsters_chart. Max level is 100.

Also playing darkmoor it really felt like ogres need a ranged attack.

Easy to do.

I am fine with idea. Personally, I felt too restricted with whole numbers being to close to each other. Now we will have a little more room. As usual, keep in mind, though that this need to be verified against physical damage and monsters to not become OP.

the strongest spells like implosion and shrap metal are unchanged in this scheme, there's just a few brought into line with them imo, so balance should only be improved.
And the 0 cost spells dealing ~50 damage is still incredibly weak vs the modded weapon damage

Great stuff! Finalize it and I'll update my spell table.

[raekuul]

For the elemental and self spellbooks in particular, I would say have the first four (0:3) go 100-400 to mimic vanilla, then have the next four (4:7) go 1000, 2000, 3000, 5000, then have the last three (8:10) go 10000, 25000, 50000. Dark/Light spellbooks in vanilla were 10x the cost of their lower tier counterparts, so we can just do that again (a quarter million gold for Armageddon sounds like a fair price, right?), but give the final spells a value of 0 so that you don't get an extra million gold for pawning off the Obelisk Reward in New Sorpigal's magic shop.

The underlying point is that "stuff is more expensive than you think it is in the early game"

Hmm. You complain that early game stuff is too expensive but you keep it intact and instead propose a drop in higher end books. I actually asking your if you want to do the opposite?

The more I think about it, the more I think that the books are a red herring (though I still think that dropping the value of the books that cannot be purchased would be fun/funny). The problem is that I can't afford the books "and" all the skills "and" to buy ten day's worth of food to prepare for my journey to Free Haven "and" rest at the inn when I run out of points and potions at level 4, there just is not enough gold in the ecosystem to do that. That's a problem that will eventually resolve itself with more levels of merchant, but I can't push Merchant and my weapon skills at the same time.

EDIT: And now that I've said that, the solution is clear. "Prioritize your purchases correctly, you don't need everything at level 1 and the skills will smooth themselves out as you progress."

The delay was because those skills were newly purchased after having already raised the other skills; when I checked in a clean run they leveled as you described they should so it's just "newly purchased skills are at level 1 until you raise skills again" since that's when the MMEXT script fires.

New game PACS; level A's spear to 2 using the New Sorpigal horseshoes, then go to the skill trainer and buy a new melee weapon skill. That new skill is at level 1. That is the behavior that confused me.

On the topic of fine monster balancing:

• Rats actually didn't get appreciably harder (Giant Rats are dealing most of my Sorc's HP in damage on lucky attacks but that's something that can be mitigated with smarter pulling)
• Suckers don't deal a lot of damage but there's a lot of them
• You will definitely need to add a note to README.md suggesting avoiding Abandoned Temple at low levels. GW is definitely the "starter" dungeon now.
• Both Rats and Suckers can inflict Disease, which is expensive to fix - like with the bats in AT, it's cheaper to bank what gold I have and eat a TPK due to the changes to temple healing (both the ones in-place and the ones in the works) than to try and "cure" it at low levels. hey guess what healing cost multiplier isn't in place

[RawSugar]

Took a look at the file you linked and here's what i got:

I started with dividing the monsters into tiers based on the area/difficulty they appear in the game;

1.sorpigal open, goblin watch, mist open, ironfist open, abandoned temple, bootleg bay open+tsantsta,
2. sorpigal island, ironfist dungeon, sewers, mist dungeon, free haven open (SE/wuzzies), bootleg bay dungeons (?)
3. darkmoor open, dwarves dungeons, ½ half werewolf dungeon,free haven open+dungeons, corlagon,silver cove dungeons+open (not warlord), white cap open+dungeon, (temples of baa when possible)
4. alamos, darkmoor castle, werewolf 2nd half, blackshire open
5. kriegspire open +dungeons, dragonsand+valley+isles open, pyramid, warlord fortress
6. two endgame dungeons

This is more or less (right and down) the order i'd suggest playing the game.
Next i calculated the average damage pr yier and factored in recovery, and made this table:



These are the numbers for the vanilla game.

Several things here that explain the issues; The max damage monsters deal increase very little (only doubles), the average damage increases somewhat but less than player hitpoint - and that before factoring in the improved defense from day of protection etc. Finally there's a lull in the increase in difficulty both in tier 4 and 6, where the areas may be more difficult but not always by a lot and mostly by the proximity/number of monsters rather than their strength,

The formula i came up with to modify damage is Mlvl/20+1 which means level 1 monsters get +5%, level 20 monsters get +100% level 70 get +350% which makes the table this:



This is much more reasonable, the endgame should be somewhat challenging, might actually push it further since the defensive skills increase effective hp so much(it looks like a lot but its actually just ~double what your mod did late game - and half what it did early game, but i think its best to make semigradual change and test.
There's still a bit of a lull between tier 2 and 3 but this is mostly driven by the two- three top monsters, that are not quite as bad outliers as queen cobras but still drive up average damage in their areas. It'd b best if those few monsters as well as possibly a few spells casters could be modified individually after the formula.

[Malekitsu]

I agree that a linear approach isn't ideal and this one sounds so much better, can't wait to test it.
I have just a few itemization issues with this skill based mod.
Weapon skills adding flat damage make the weapon's damage irrelevant at higher rank, same goes with might stat.
I would love having the skill increasing the weapon damage multiplicatively with weapon damage (and also weapon elemental damage) and having something like:
_____
weapon is 2h sword, which now is +3 damage*rank

flat damage=(weapon damage+might+heroism)

you can see how damage might grants in this table: https://grayface.github.io/mm/mechanics/#Statistics

DAMAGE= (1.03^sword-skill)*(flat damage)

this would also fix early game insane scaling (hitted a goblin 70 damage with 4 point in spears+3 with follower)
_____

note that heroism is overtuned at higher level, obscuring weapond damage and might, I would also consider changing it as a flat bonus% damage, like 5% at normal, 10% expert and 15% master.

A similiar problem is with shields and armors, I would like to make thoose bonus multiplicative so that finding a new armors feels really good and significative.
At the moment, once skill are high enough, going with new sorpigal items or endgame items is almost identical.

_____

There is another similiar issue (since vanilla) with hour of god making resistance rings useless, would like some changes also there.
An Idea would be making the resistance spell and rings increasing a flat% of that resistance, either stacking or capped to the highest %res ring of that spell type, making resistance rings super desiderable and cool but not op.
Could apply similiar ideas to all the other rings.


Generally speaking I would like finding new items to be exciting and rewarding throughout all the game.

_______

dagger lore: dagger are tipically used to stab and kill in a 1vs1 situation, having it to increase damage as the enemies increase is kinda weird, I would do the exact opposite having like: bonus damage= 5/(NMonsters)
making it ideal to kill isolated targets
____

With the current enemy health pool at the start of the game spells like cold ray with an average damage of 4 feels quite weak, it takes on average 7 spells to get down a green goblin, and 20 spells for a red one.
Not sure if intended but start spells to feel significative should do around 2 more damage on average.
Would be super cool having them scaling with magic skills doing something like: 2-6+1*skill level, making them a substitute of bow when you want to spare mana, but with cool animation effect. (also flame arrow should always hit, to be in line with other similiar spells)

_______

Bows feels so bad, they have 0 damage scaling making them useless, not sure if it is a bug.

_____

I'm not sure I like the fact that enemies run like crazy:
with melee weapon being good, having the mana to limit the ranged play, bow useless and more enemies having ranged Attack, having them to run fast feels unnecessary.
Pull range also is crazy, the moment the light turns from green to yellow they are already coming to you, even if you don't see them. I liked the vanilla setting more.

The time I get close to the goblin watch I find surrounded by all the guards, making all to be decided in one battle, instead of exploring it gradually.
Inside dungeon doesn't really change too much.

So in short: smaller(and smarter)range pull compensating with stronger enemies.

Citizens looks like they are on ad****ll lol
_____
Many 0 value items have insane gold value(even if you can't sell them)
____
I really believe in this mod.

[tnevolin]

New game PACS; level A's spear to 2 using the New Sorpigal horseshoes, then go to the skill trainer and buy a new melee weapon skill. That new skill is at level 1. That is the behavior that confused me.

Yep. That's the case with purchased skill. It is always at level 1. The equalization happens when you advance all skills. I can extend this logic to trigger when you purchase the skill as well to eliminate this confusing case too.

[*]You will definitely need to add a note to README.md suggesting avoiding Abandoned Temple at low levels. GW is definitely the "starter" dungeon now.

Yep. Probably some strategical guide is in order. Maybe separate file to not pollute readme? This is optional, after all.
Text files are editable right in github. So authors are welcome.

[tnevolin]

RE: monster rebalance

Awesome analysis. I agree that combination of skills makes party strength grow faster than linear and so should do the monsters. Vanilla monsters progression is also not linear if you look at the monster table their level grows faster with bigger jumps as it approaches top level ones. But you are right, that may be not enough.

Need to playtest it for sure but idea seems right.

I also like you used simpler formula for recalculation.

[tnevolin]

Thank you for your feedback. I really appreciate the big list of ideas. However, sometimes, they feel somewhat controversial.

Before we dig deeper, let me reiterate that this is not a "new experience mod". It may sound weird now but I try to avoid adding new experience whenever possible. The main driver for it is to highlight underused features, combat skills in first place.

Weapon skills adding flat damage make the weapon's damage irrelevant at higher rank, same goes with might stat.

True. I just don't see a problem with that. In vanilla the situation is opposite. Hence this mod. If you want to turn this around you'll arrive back at vanilla.

I would love having the skill increasing the weapon damage multiplicatively with weapon damage (and also weapon elemental damage) and having something like:
_____
weapon is 2h sword, which now is +3 damage*rank

flat damage=(weapon damage+might+heroism)

you can see how damage might grants in this table: https://grayface.github.io/mm/mechanics/#Statistics

DAMAGE= (1.03^sword-skill)*(flat damage)

this would also fix early game insane scaling (hitted a goblin 70 damage with 4 point in spears+3 with follower)

There is an inherent problem with that which I described in details in readme. Let me reiterate. Finding better item is not difficult nor it is a challenge. I used to find level 6 items in Goblin watch. And then what? Running with this item to the end of the game? I don't find it interesting. Could be cool once to carry shiny thingy but replayability of such mechanics is zilch. Hence this mod.

For the same exactly reason it does not make sense to multiply weapon and skill effects. They are of different rarity categories. Why bother working on skill if one can achieve same effect multiplication by finding better item?

In short. I am not absolutely interested in scavenger hunt unless someone works out a well balanced system where better item requires something more than dumb luck to acquire.

A similiar problem is with shields and armors, I would like to make thoose bonus multiplicative so that finding a new armors feels really good and significative.
At the moment, once skill are high enough, going with new sorpigal items or endgame items is almost identical.

Finding a new armors feels really good and significative in vanilla. I believe you better re-review the readme as this mod main idea is an absolute and explicit opposite of that.

This is not a criticism of your ideas and not the attempt of discouraging you from playing the mod. Hell, no. I like followers!


I am just at lost what is that you found in this mod that appeals to you while you are not happy with main idea?

There is another similiar issue (since vanilla) with hour of god making resistance rings useless, would like some changes also there.
An Idea would be making the resistance spell and rings increasing a flat% of that resistance, either stacking or capped to the highest %res ring of that spell type, making resistance rings super desiderable and cool but not op.
Could apply similiar ideas to all the other rings.

Good idea in general to make all contribution components matter. But again, they need to be more or less equal value. Otherwise, the easier to achieve method would always be superior.

dagger lore: dagger are tipically used to stab and kill in a 1vs1 situation, having it to increase damage as the enemies increase is kinda weird, I would do the exact opposite having like: bonus damage= 5/(NMonsters)
making it ideal to kill isolated targets

Lore is something difficult to argue with. Everybody has their own. Gameplay is another story. Vanilla monster distribution is absolutely sensible. Weaker monsters attack in large groups and strongest monsters are single targets. Your idea turns dagger into ultimate weapon against strongest opponents. This is kind of against the main game idea that the dagger weaker but faster than regular weapons.
"While daggers don't do the kind of damage that a sword or an axe can deliver, they are very quick - sometimes letting you get two attacks for every one of your slower opponents"

Also where did it come from that "dagger are typically used to stab and kill in a 1vs1 situation"? Nothing personal. Just curious because it is an absolute news to me. Every knight movie I have seen they use spear/sword/axe in duel only. In fact, they even use these regular weapons in epic battles as well. Dagger is short ranged and difficult to swing well. I would not imagine anyone in their sane mind preferring it against a heavily armored target.
What I typically see in moves and stories is that dagger is assassins' weapon used against unarmored and unprepared/asleep victim with back and side stabbing.

With the current enemy health pool at the start of the game spells like cold ray with an average damage of 4 feels quite weak, it takes on average 7 spells to get down a green goblin, and 20 spells for a red one.
Not sure if intended but start spells to feel significative should do around 2 more damage on average.
Would be super cool having them scaling with magic skills doing something like: 2-6+1*skill level, making them a substitute of bow when you want to spare mana, but with cool animation effect. (also flame arrow should always hit, to be in line with other similiar spells)

Not intended. That needs 1) spell balance and 2) monster balance. Both of these are being actively worked on in this thread. Feel free to contribute.

Bows feels so bad, they have 0 damage scaling making them useless, not sure if it is a bug.

This is how they are in vanilla. They are ranged already. Why they also need to be super damaging?

I'm not sure I like the fact that enemies run like crazy:
with melee weapon being good, having the mana to limit the ranged play, bow useless and more enemies having ranged Attack, having them to run fast feels unnecessary.

I agree that they should either run fast or all have ranged attack. These options are being debated right now. So far I got opinions that giving them all bows could be not a good idea. Keep adding more arguments and you may persuade them otherwise.

Pull range also is crazy, the moment the light turns from green to yellow they are already coming to you, even if you don't see them. I liked the vanilla setting more.

Vanilla setting is exactly the same. Yellow = they see you and are rushing toward you. They don't care if you see them or not.

The time I get close to the goblin watch I find surrounded by all the guards, making all to be decided in one battle, instead of exploring it gradually.
Inside dungeon doesn't really change too much.

So in short: smaller(and smarter)range pull compensating with stronger enemies.

They are guarding their territory and they don't want you to "explore it gradually". They want you dead. Vanilla exploit of agitating just one monster out of the group is laughable.

[tnevolin]

Guys, this thread started generating ideas with kaleidoscopic speed. I surely adore it but sometimes I cannot answer them all. Filing an issue in github project should get my attention sooner or later. Also this is a good way to add backlog tasks.

Another thing is that I am quite busy now and cannot do serious modifications. If anyone is versed in Lua, feel free to branch it for ideas implementation and create PR for review and merging. The repository should be open.

[RawSugar]

RE: monster rebalance

Awesome analysis. I agree that combination of skills makes party strength grow faster than linear and so should do the monsters. Vanilla monsters progression is also not linear if you look at the monster table their level grows faster with bigger jumps as it approaches top level ones. But you are right, that may be not enough.

Need to playtest it for sure but idea seems right.

I also like you used simpler formula for recalculation.

So whats the next step? If i rework the list you linked and put it in a spreadsheet is it just a copy paste to update the game?
Also where are we on the spell changes (if any)

Weapon vs Skill: I like the idea of letting weapons matter more by making the skill bonus more of a % boost, but i dont know if thats possiblle and more importantly i dont think the game supports it; max level weapons are readily available in the shops, and they drop quite often as well. Its not at all like diablo where weapon drops can drastically change performance. So while it'd be a fun rework it would be a massive rework.

Running: Im doing a 3rd/4th game atm w DDDC and i gotta say now that i've gotten used to the game its much more reasonable, you need to approach the game much more carefully and be much more strict with proper area progression but its possible. I still feel like taking ~20% off the monster speed so that they are much faster than vanilla but not quite as fast as player would be good. And possibly excluding some spells from autoaim, but like i said either version is good w me, i've gotten used to play the game this way already.

Bows: all skills/weapons deal pitiful damage unless ranked, and in this mod the benefit from rank depends heavily on class. The vanilla/base still has a pretty good return on points if you get master/rank 8. It'd be cool if you could add bow your graphs to see how they compare to the weapons for the various classes.
There IS kinda an issue with bows not getting bonuses from heroism. It'd be interesting to see some maths on what that would do as well.
But I think the game is reasonable as it is. Even with monsters dealing better ranged damage there's still a lot of times where bows are useful because they provide relative safety. Casters use bows far more often than melee weapons for sure.
If the low level spells are changed to give extra damage for rank, those will replace bows for many casters, and the question really becomes; should knights get a strong ranged attack. Given how powerful the mod makes their melee my immediate opinion is they shouldnt. If you ever rework the ability for melee to attack around corners etc maybe they should though.

[raekuul]

Before we dig deeper, let me reiterate that this is not a "new experience mod". It may sound weird now but I try to avoid adding new experience whenever possible. The main driver for it is to highlight underused features, combat skills in first place.

Hm, it might be worthwhile to make a fork of SkEm that just does the changes to skills, to make a base mod for other things that are New Experience mods. Main SkEm would then be a combination of Base SkEm and a difficulty rebalancing centered around SkEm.

Wrt Bows: There's actually a pretty good reason that MM7 made the GM perk "rank adds to damage," and that is because at higher levels the enemies have too much health for bows to make a meaningful difference otherwise (carnage bows notwithstanding). SkEm does need to tweak bows somewhat due to the combination of inflated creature health and increased creature movement speed, otherwise they're going to fall off a lot faster than in vanilla, but it is a bit of a balancing act (which means if we split SkEm into Base and Main we would have to leave further adjustments to Bows out of Base). I'll have actual suggestions on this matter once I start my trek to Free Haven on my not-cheated team, but for now I would probably suggest modifying Bless and Heroism to also affect bows (NOT BLASTERS).

Wrt pulling: In vanilla you don't have to make special plans to get from the Ironfist carriage to Castle Ironfist proper. In SkEm you do, because the nearby Followers now move fast enough that they'll catch up to you when you're going from the Castle to the training center. Keep in mind that Training Centers don't refresh spawns like Inns do (one of the very few ways to make cleaning up Pleasant Valley easier is to show up ready to level up, so that if you need a quick heal and don't think you can reach the Baa in time you can just... level up), so once you come out of the training center the Followers are still there in town.

[Malekitsu]

True. I just don't see a problem with that. In vanilla the situation is opposite. Hence this mod. If you want to turn this around you'll arrive back at vanilla.

In vanilla at high skill is quite:"from skill comes the attack and speed, from weapon the damage"
which makes both weapon and skill necessary.
In the mod (high skill) is: "from skill comes attack, speed and damage, from weapon nothing"
I would like both to be relevant

Why bother working on skill if one can achieve same effect multiplication by finding better item?

They don't don't achieve the same effect, as they are on a different coefficent you need both to do great damage.

In short. I am not absolutely interested in scavenger hunt unless someone works out a well balanced system where better item requires something more than dumb luck to acquire.

would love to do it, just need the "how to start" tools, I'm used more to statistic's software than actual programming ones.

I am just at lost what is that you found in this mod that appeals to you while you are not happy with main idea?

I love the new skills and the direction is taking the balance but I don't like the fact they make the equip and other stats completely unworthy.
I see great features projecting a great shadow to other game mechanics.

I like followers!

try changing your nick in "Baa", you will have more followers for sure

Good idea in general to make all contribution components matter. But again, they need to be more or less equal value. Otherwise, the easier to achieve method would always be superior.

There might be a misunderstanding: the formula would be for example: "base resistance: 140 , ring resistance+buff resistance=+50%, final resistance=210
so that you need both to optimize magic (numbers are completely random).

__
Dagger lore: usually in rpgs the assassin is the 1vs1 guy
__

Not intended. That needs 1) spell balance and 2) monster balance. Both of these are being actively worked on in this thread. Feel free to contribute.

Sure, could you help me finding the tables to give you directly the file?

This is how they are in vanilla. They are ranged already. Why they also need to be super damaging?

because now melee weapons hit around 4 times harder and now bows have higher speed cap preventing it shooting like a machine gun.

Vanilla setting is exactly the same. Yellow = they see you and are rushing toward you. They don't care if you see them or not.

I looked better into this and the reason it feels different is because in vanilla once you seed yellow you can disengage, here you are doomed.

They are guarding their territory

It's not them protecting their territory, it's them chasing you for the whole map.
So at least a small reduction in speed would be nice.

max level weapons are readily available in the shops, and they drop quite often as well.

I agree it would be exploitable.
By limiting the stablemasters, with fast monsters and aiming missiles going to late zones is a challenge.
My idea would be putting the strongest equip in dungeons and nerf ironfist shops.

[tnevolin]

Before we dig deeper, let me reiterate that this is not a "new experience mod". It may sound weird now but I try to avoid adding new experience whenever possible. The main driver for it is to highlight underused features, combat skills in first place.

Hm, it might be worthwhile to make a fork of SkEm that just does the changes to skills, to make a base mod for other things that are New Experience mods. Main SkEm would then be a combination of Base SkEm and a difficulty rebalancing centered around SkEm.

Definitely. One may consider SkEm as a mechanics mode that is fully integrable with experience mods.

Wrt Bows: There's actually a pretty good reason that MM7 made the GM perk "rank adds to damage," and that is because at higher levels the enemies have too much health for bows to make a meaningful difference otherwise (carnage bows notwithstanding). SkEm does need to tweak bows somewhat due to the combination of inflated creature health and increased creature movement speed, otherwise they're going to fall off a lot faster than in vanilla, but it is a bit of a balancing act (which means if we split SkEm into Base and Main we would have to leave further adjustments to Bows out of Base). I'll have actual suggestions on this matter once I start my trek to Free Haven on my not-cheated team, but for now I would probably suggest modifying Bless and Heroism to also affect bows (NOT BLASTERS).

Bless does affect bows. I am completely fine with adding damage to bow skill just be careful not to overdo it.

Wrt pulling: In vanilla you don't have to make special plans to get from the Ironfist carriage to Castle Ironfist proper. In SkEm you do, because the nearby Followers now move fast enough that they'll catch up to you when you're going from the Castle to the training center. Keep in mind that Training Centers don't refresh spawns like Inns do (one of the very few ways to make cleaning up Pleasant Valley easier is to show up ready to level up, so that if you need a quick heal and don't think you can reach the Baa in time you can just... level up), so once you come out of the training center the Followers are still there in town.

Yes, they do catch up to you but there are not many of them anyway and one can maneuver between houses to kill them one by one.
Either way, I never perceived this as a complete stopper.

[tnevolin]

In vanilla at high skill is quite:"from skill comes the attack and speed, from weapon the damage"
which makes both weapon and skill necessary.
In the mod (high skill) is: "from skill comes attack, speed and damage, from weapon nothing"
I would like both to be relevant

Depends on the weapon. Axe gives all three parameters.

I do not absolutely mind would like both to be relevant as long as items would have about same progression as skills. I.e. you find item level 6 in last 1/6th part of the game by doing some quest or something. Currently it is not the case.

Why bother working on skill if one can achieve same effect multiplication by finding better item?

They don't don't achieve the same effect, as they are on a different coefficent you need both to do great damage.

They do if they are multipliers. Imagine character currently has +10% item and +10% skill. It'll take a lot of investment and efforts to advance skill to +20% level but it is much easier to find next level +20% item. True that if you advance both the skill and item you get 30% but finding a next-next level item for 30% increase is still easier.

In short. I am not absolutely interested in scavenger hunt unless someone works out a well balanced system where better item requires something more than dumb luck to acquire.

would love to do it, just need the "how to start" tools, I'm used more to statistic's software than actual programming ones.

I guess, one should just redo all chests and other item generators and corps lootings to balance item levels according to current progress stage. I'd suggest starting with https://grayface.github.io/mm/ext/ and then joining the corresponding forum. The author is still active right here on this site. I can help you with programming but I should warn you that this is extremely tedious work. Each and every item generator should be adjusted manually. I don't see other way to do it, unfortunately.

other stats completely unworthy.
I see great features projecting a great shadow to other game mechanics.

True. But, as I said, I didn't find an easy way to balance items so far. They have to stay in the shadow until this happens.

I like followers!

try changing your nick in "Baa", you will have more followers for sure

I tried. They don't change nick after you registers. So I'm stuck with whatever I have.

Good idea in general to make all contribution components matter. But again, they need to be more or less equal value. Otherwise, the easier to achieve method would always be superior.

There might be a misunderstanding: the formula would be for example: "base resistance: 140 , ring resistance+buff resistance=+50%, final resistance=210
so that you need both to optimize magic (numbers are completely random).

I didn't mean you proposal is wrong. Just need more clear presentation with tables, examples, and such. Other thread participants also can contribute their opinions.

Dagger lore: usually in rpgs the assassin is the 1vs1 guy

As long as you can make it unique not breaking other weapon uniqueness - I'm fine with that.

Not intended. That needs 1) spell balance and 2) monster balance. Both of these are being actively worked on in this thread. Feel free to contribute.

Sure, could you help me finding the tables to give you directly the file?

Browse few last weeks of the forums. There are plenty of links there already. If anything is missing - ping me, I'll share - no problems.

This is how they are in vanilla. They are ranged already. Why they also need to be super damaging?

because now melee weapons hit around 4 times harder and now bows have higher speed cap preventing it shooting like a machine gun.

Agree.

Vanilla setting is exactly the same. Yellow = they see you and are rushing toward you. They don't care if you see them or not.

I looked better into this and the reason it feels different is because in vanilla once you seed yellow you can disengage, here you are doomed.

True. That one is different. People periodically complain about it. Feel free to propose any other solution that would prevent unprepared player to cross monster populated areas.

They are guarding their territory

It's not them protecting their territory, it's them chasing you for the whole map.
So at least a small reduction in speed would be nice.

Eh. This is just a figure of speech. I can make them disengage if they wander too far from their habitat.

There is no small reduction in speed. Monster speed is variable. Some vanilla monsters are actually faster than party (agars). I increased their speed proportionally. Some of them are still slower than others. It is pretty difficult to fine tune balance their speed. Feel free to play with the numbers.

max level weapons are readily available in the shops, and they drop quite often as well.

I agree it would be exploitable.
By limiting the stablemasters, with fast monsters and aiming missiles going to late zones is a challenge.
My idea would be putting the strongest equip in dungeons and nerf ironfist shops.

Yep. Doable but again - extremely tedious. It is high hanging fruit now and I am not sure if it is even worth doing at all. You can get sucked to it and never produce anything remotely balanced. That's the risk.

[raekuul]

Vanilla setting is exactly the same. Yellow = they see you and are rushing toward you. They don't care if you see them or not.

I looked better into this and the reason it feels different is because in vanilla once you seed yellow you can disengage, here you are doomed.

True. That one is different. People periodically complain about it. Feel free to propose any other solution that would prevent unprepared player to cross monster populated areas.

• The Green/Yellow/Red colors on the warning lights are solely based on proximity, not on if you've pulled something or not - you're yellow basically all the time in Goblinwatch despite nothing being 'pulled' when you first enter, meanwhile in overland areas creatures can react to you while you're still "Green" - the pull range is actually slightly larger than the range for the warning lights being Yellow.
• You already partially solved the problem by improving the Dragon Towers, making ranged attacks auto-homing, and adding a bunch of spells to creatures that normally don't cast spells.
• While the amplified movement speed for creatures is fun once you know how to deal with it, you will get caught by surprise the first time you go up to see Wilbur Humphrey. Especially if your official suggestion is to do that before attempting any NS dungeons so that you can be level 3, since the Follower-class enemies hit harder now.
• Incidentally, I do like this effect within dungeons - I was working on Goblinwatch and had to disengage from rats in one of the lower side-tunnels (cleric got KO'd, Paladin can't heal yet); when I came back the rat was still aggro'd and ambushed me as I was coming back in. Made for a nice accidental jump-scare and I was laughing for a few minutes once I realized what had happened and why.
• Ultimately, I say that it needs to be adjusted for overland areas like Castle Ironfist and Free Haven and Silver Cove, where you'll pull aggro just from walking around the city doing civilian things (visiting Wilbur Humphrey/Loretta Fliese for Ironfist and Silver Cove, buying spells from a couple of the adept self guilds that are in range of archer clusters for Free Haven).
• The difference between these three areas and Darkmoor/Paradise Valley is that those two areas have the monsters directly in town, while even Silver Cove does you the courtesy of putting the Gargoyles on the outskirts; the problem is you can't reliably disengage once pulled and (as stated above) the pull range is still just barely in the Green area, so you're pulling stuff before you know you're pulling stuff.

[Malekitsu]

Bless does affect bows. I am completely fine with adding damage to bow skill just be careful not to overdo it.

considering bows shoot 2 arrows at level master I think something like 1 or 1.5 damage*skill point would do the job.

They do if they are multipliers. Imagine character currently has +10% item and +10% skill. It'll take a lot of investment and efforts to advance skill to +20% level but it is much easier to find next level +20% item. True that if you advance both the skill and item you get 30% but finding a next-next level item for 30% increase is still easier.

Not sure we are on the same page.
Increasing 50% flat damage damage from weapon and 50% bonus damage from skill would make it +125% damage, making both equally important.
Doing this would make both skill and weapon necessary in order to deal good damage.
This also would prevent exploiting skill points at early stages in the game.
In a new game my knight lvl 3 has lvl 5 spear+3LVL with follower.
The spear gets 3 damage because 2hands, 2 base damage with skill and 2 damage because knight.
I have +56 damage at level 3, making the spear to hit 60-80.
With the new formula it just would be 14 average damage+56%, having it to hit for for about 22, wich is in line with the current balance and giving a more healthy progression.

I guess, one should just redo all chests and other item generators and corps lootings to balance item levels according to current progress stage. I'd suggest starting with https://grayface.github.io/mm/ext/ and then joining the corresponding forum. The author is still active right here on this site. I can help you with programming but I should warn you that this is extremely tedious work. Each and every item generator should be adjusted manually. I don't see other way to do it, unfortunately.

no problem, once I learn to do 1 it isn't a big deal wasting few days if it means to make a great mod, I have no other particular plans for the summer .

I didn't mean you proposal is wrong. Just need more clear presentation with tables, examples, and such. Other thread participants also can contribute their opinions.

sure, is there already a table I can edit? Or I have to make it from scratch?

I managed to find the monster table. While the value are normal in actual gameplay they have 2x stats, I guess the lua code is doing the work.
I think before working on the monster balance is important to balance skills and equip first, so I would like to start there.

[tnevolin]

So whats the next step? If i rework the list you linked and put it in a spreadsheet is it just a copy paste to update the game?

I have experience modifying monsters properties by formula. I.e. cycling through them all and apply same formula modifications. If you can narrow it down to that it should be a piece of cake to implement.
Did not try to embed the complete table. I can try to implement a few pieces of code or partial table for 1-3 monsters and then you can copy-paste-extend it to all of them and then either update it directly in the code or just send back to me so I can insert it.

Also where are we on the spell changes (if any)

We are nowhere. I am exceptionally busy with other stuff right now. Cannot dedicate a shred of time to this project. Sorry.
One option would be to someone overtake on code modification if there a coding familiar person among us. I can surely help and guide.
Other option is just wait. Maybe I'll get more time in a month of so.

Bows: all skills/weapons deal pitiful damage unless ranked, and in this mod the benefit from rank depends heavily on class. The vanilla/base still has a pretty good return on points if you get master/rank 8. It'd be cool if you could add bow your graphs to see how they compare to the weapons for the various classes.
There IS kinda an issue with bows not getting bonuses from heroism. It'd be interesting to see some maths on what that would do as well.
But I think the game is reasonable as it is. Even with monsters dealing better ranged damage there's still a lot of times where bows are useful because they provide relative safety. Casters use bows far more often than melee weapons for sure.
If the low level spells are changed to give extra damage for rank, those will replace bows for many casters, and the question really becomes; should knights get a strong ranged attack. Given how powerful the mod makes their melee my immediate opinion is they shouldnt. If you ever rework the ability for melee to attack around corners etc maybe they should though.

I don't think we need to bother with bows, at lest for now. Yes, they are weak in vanilla and even weaker in SkEm and they become even more weaker with skill growth. So what? They were supposed to be lightweight weapon. I don't think even in vanilla people used bows to fight dragons or something. Too not effective.
They are very cool first third of the game and then then fade away. Don't try to revive them just for the sake of balance.