New Patch Feedback

Discussion in 'Dungeons of Dredmor General' started by Nicholas, Dec 12, 2011.

  1. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    So let's talk about things that are not bugs. (That's what the bug forum is for.)

    - How are the new skills in 1.0.8?
    - How are the rebalancing changes in 1.0.8?
    - Anything over powered? Under powered?
    - New crafting interface: yea, or nay? (We're re-adding filters and the grid mode, although it won't be done by today.)
    - Eye Lasers? You have them. Talk about them?
     
  2. Velorien

    Velorien Member

    I like the fact that every magic skill now gives a resistance bonus (or penalty, in the case of Blood Magic). It makes them feel more unique. Though 1% magic resist is rather puny.

    Hurrah for the expanded inventory.

    Boo for moving lockpicks. It was pretty powerful in its original location, true, but the whole "smash half the chests instead of looting them" mechanic is much more irritating now that it applies to every character that hasn't maxed out the Burglary tree.

    I like what you've done with Wandcrafting (except for all those + Wand Use Affinity items that now do nothing). The original skill was always rather incoherent in its application (as in "just what tactical use can I possibly put this stuff to that would justify the investment?"), while this new one is very slick. Dread to think what will happen with rogues who craft wands of fire and then turn them into Bolts of Mass Destruction, though.

    The reworking of DoT effects from traps and spells is a brilliant idea that's long overdue. No more surviving horrific doom just by standing still for long enough. It's seriously boosted certain previously questionable spells, as well.

    What is the new Blood Magic skill Haematic Phylactery supposed to do? After using it, it gave me an apparently permanent huge penalty (so huge, indeed, that I couldn't see the numbers for most of the penalties at 1228x676 resolution), and I assumed that, as a phylactery, it would repay this sacrifice by triggering on a fatal blow and saving me from death. It didn't. And I still don't know what it does.

    In general, flavour is nice, but I think it a poor show for a skill description to be all flavour text and zero actual information (and that goes for others as well). Doubly so for a high-rank skill that takes several levels of investment to get to.
     
  3. DredLess

    DredLess Member

    I might be being very stupid but have steel ingots been removed as craftable items?
     
  4. lccorp2

    lccorp2 Member

    I'll second lockpicks. Much more frustrating now. Swapped out burglary for archeology on my dual wield evasion rogue melee build. To be honest, the main draw of burglary were the lockpicks. Not having lockpicks on hand also crippled lockup, leading to me using knightly leap far more often to get distance between me and enemies in say, zoos.

    Assassination level 2 skill feels a little underpowered. Level 3 skill makes for some nice spike damage, but 80 turns is a bit steep in my opinion. To be honest, I was hoping for skills after Et tu, but assassination is pretty strong as it is.

    Liking the body paint skill in berserking. Some resistance and reflect for melee characters is nice.
     
  5. Wootah

    Wootah Member

    I am loving most of teh changes. To respond to your individual questions:

    The new 1.08 skills are overall very well improved. Blood magic nerf was necessary since it was considered mandatory and the ley walker buff is amazing with thaumaturgic tap to supplement mana generation. Berserking bonus stats with the paint is a huge plus.

    Burglary was the must have 'in every build' skill. While the lockpick change might have been to make it less necessary as many people have pointed out, not having lockpicks is annoying. I have never gotten anything out of a smashed chest. Anything remotely non squishy (ie used in combat for example) should come out of a smashed chest just fine, including armor, shields, and mostly any equipment. the only things that should be destroyed are mushrooms, food, potions, and powders.

    Fungal Arts is still quite tedious (but probably the only overpowered skill left).
    As suggested elsewhere i think the should simply be a chance for mushrooms to grow from corpses slain by the player, completely eliminating spores.
    Something like:
    (Fungal Arts Skill level*10)/(Distance from the corpse on death)]% = Chance to spawn a mushroom. Thus favoring melee fighters slightly and penalizing mass aoe run and gun. Obviously numbers could be changed (or square root of the distance for really large distances). Toggalble buff too if you need that many corpses.

    The crafting window change is great. I much prefer the inventory space and no storing stuff in crafting. I feel like it could be further improved with the mentioned filters, but more importantly, there should be tooltips for the items that we can craft (name is missing) showing the stats in a floatover. Who wants to craft stuff if you cannot see what the bonus stats are when you make it. It would also be nice if some crafted items were buffed by having a random stat or two as well. Finally I really want to be able to move through the crafting window with the mouse scroll, and try every time i open it.

    I haven't come across anything over or under powered yet... but I have started with all new characters, and you know how long it takes to play the game :)

    Eye lasers? Yay! I got perception on a character from random, but haven't come close to putting points towards it yet, because surviving is more important on GR than other things so getting early game damage is a must.

    I actually didn't mind the old wand setup. This does feel like a non-wand character will get more uses out of a wand though.

    I really thing the mana/health regeneration tooltips need MASSIVE revamp. I understand how they work, and the explanation is wordy. Why not just put actual numbers in there and then include an equation for the player.

    Like:

    You regenerate 1 mana every {X} Steps.
    Diffuclty [Number] - Mana Regen[Number] = X

    Example:

    And Under the Health Tooltip:

    It would be obvious to the player that the colored numbers changed while the ones that remained black did not. Personally, I think you should encourage stacking more health/mana regen past the 'cap' to occasionally give bonus regen.

    Other things I love (and said elsewhere).
    -Change to looting gold is great (was in 1.07)
    -Quest Monsters on the Minimap is a huge plus! Many more minmap changes could greatly improve the game. Resolution doesn't really improve when you change its size, but would greatly help in identifying things.

    There is a new Open doorway/door frame type shrine that one would assume worked like an eye or mellow shrine. There is however no floatover text or anyway to interact with it so I have no idea of what it is called. I can produce pictures if necessary.
     
  6. Marak

    Marak Member

    Re: the new Crafting interface

    Why does the Mouse Wheel not scroll this window up and down? It would be literally 500% easier to use if this one change was implemented - I literally start mashing my mouse wheel every time I open a crafting window, and then I remember I have to click on tiny little arrows for no real reason. :(
    Please please please add this if it's not a huge pain in the arse to do.

    That's all I've had time for so far, haven't gotten high enough level to play with any new Skills. :( Although going for Eye Lasers is very tempting, I gotta say.
     
  7. Neviskio

    Neviskio Member

    Couple things, one being the berserker +100:crit: and +5:melee_power:(if I recall correctly) feels a bit overpowered, not sure on hwo other feel but seems a bit a huge deal.Also a thing that stayed in the patch that makes me cringe is usage of spores of fungal arts...it's just too annoying, you have to either have them on the belt-bar(and then if you loot something that goes there they go back into inventory ugh...) or everytime open inventory, FIND THEM, and then use them...Easier way to use that please?I try to avoid fungal just for how annoyingly complex it is...

    Also the new interface is better but it needs tooltips for what you craft, going to the wiki (if it's updated) just to see the stats is annoying.I don't know other roguelikes, might be a standard of the genre, but seems kinda pointlessly annoying.Also could use some help not having the item crafted just by clicking on it, many times I misclick-crafted things...but that might be me.

    Also unarmed skill feels underpowered to me, it really is harder to get into it compared to weapons I'd say...

    also burglary lockpick would be better mid of the skill tree IMO.Being the last drastically changes the skill and is really a too big of a nerf maybe...
     
  8. FinestKind

    FinestKind Member

    Going to the effort of steali-.. creating an entirely new crafting UI and taking away the tooltip that listed the craftable item's name seems strange and very unfriendly to begginers. For some reason I thought that *more* information was going to be added, not less. I think the idea is to encourage expermination and "build it because it sounds cool"? But as crafting is a bit of a pain sometimes it's kind of anti-fun. Also, no scroll wheel functionality, deepset sadness about this.

    Personal thing, but I miss being able to click my diggle egg stack four times and hit smelt to make a Deep Omelette.

    Sorry, positive now, promise.

    I love the archery tree changes! Maverick is kind of a dud because it scales with magic power, but the icon is so cool it's worth the slot.

    More Diggle Eggs!

    I haven't tried most of the new skills yet, but I did grab the new dual-wielding one and whoever decided to include RIP AND TEAR in the tooltip deserves some kind of arbitrary meaningless coolguy award. Aikido for Adventurer's seems to be working great too. Honestly can't talk enough about how excited I am to try all of the new skills.

    Is using the scrollwheel to select spells new? Because I only just noticed it, and it's lovely. Would be nice if by holding shift you could scroll through your belt items too though. For archers and other such trendy fellows too cool for magic.

    You earnt another customer within minuites of me telling my fiancee a bat just yelled FUS ROH DAH. Money is of course the best kind of feedback i'm sure.

    Sorry for the lengthy post.

    Edit: The new crafting interface does look very nice though. Proper and classy like. Having just one window open sure is nice too.
     
  9. DaveSt

    DaveSt Member

    First of all, great job! It almost feels like I am playing a new game, which after 200+ hours of play is really cool.

    I have a bit of a problem with the new crafting window however and I am not sure if it is a bug or a design choice. When I open the window, if I hover over any of the ingredients I see a name of the item pop up. I do not however get to see exactly what I am crafting. Sure, I see a picture of the item but i have no idea what it is (no name ever pops up). So, if I don't know what a ring of iron thorns (for example) looks like I have no idea that is what the picture is showing me. In the old system there was always text that showed what was being crafted that seems to be gone. This holds true for smelting and smithing for sure as those are thge only two I have tried to this point.
     
  10. axxontepes

    axxontepes Member

    I'd really like an option to not automatically use lock picks on doors. It would help solve the lock pick issue. I'm also wondering, did we only have 24 inventory slots before because I currently only see 48 and we are supposed to have 2X the inventory. I don't remember inventory being that small.
     
    Xen0nex likes this.
  11. Greg Sterling

    Greg Sterling Member

    So... just upgraded on Steam running on a macbook air 2011 edition, i7 with 4gb of memory and it insta crashes on launch. Deleted from steam and reloaded and I have the exact same behavior. Anybody have any ideas? :)

    Wish this wasn't my first post, but what can ya do?
     
  12. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    After chasing the crash, it looks like Valve's content packager ate something vital and important in the .app file for OS X. We're going to try this again.
     
  13. lccorp2

    lccorp2 Member

    Please let us turn off transdimensional dodge. I can get behind the random nature of the teleportation, but not the random on dodge % proc--as a melee character, the only thing it does is a) teleport me away forcing me to waste turns getting back to the combat or b) teleport me into the middle of a monster zoo, which is what got me killed this run--I was killing monsters in a chokepoint and it suddenly decided to pop me into the middle of everything. I don't mind the random teleports--if one chooses to use them in the first place.

    I wouldn't even mind losing the stat bonus from the skill for being able to tun it on/off, since it's required to get the final skill in the tree.

    Edit: On floor 6 and rerolling with the exact same build, except I'm not going to take transdimensional dodge this time around. That thing is a PITA--wasting my turn-based potion buffs with me running back to the fight, popping me through walls and I have no way to get back to where I was, popping me into groups of enemies and traps, wasting my blackjack procs on enemies. Not once did I find it anywhere remotely near useful.

    It turns dodge into a BAD thing instead of a good one.

    A simple fix would be to make it like ninja vanish--activate it, and you get the dodge% proc for so many turns.
     
    Neviskio likes this.
  14. Aldin

    Aldin Member

    My main character (melee) picked Perception in 1.06 but ignored it until the very end of the game, and for good reason: the stat increases were meager at best and the tree as a whole required too much of an investment to unlock the only good subskill in the entire tree (Second Sight). As I see it, trees that offer more immediate returns in regards to damage/survivability also warrant more immediate investment, and a late-blooming tree like Perception will always lose in that respect.

    Anyhow, I was tempted to try that same build in 1.08 after I heard the tree would be buffed, but it turns out that it's pretty much exactly the same. Only difference is the addition of a 5th and 6th subskill, but the problem is that it takes so long to get to those skills that I can't imagine myself not ignoring them in favor of weapon/defensive/crafting skills, for the same reason I didn't get Second Sight until the end of the game in 1.06.

    What's even worse is that all the weapon skills have been buffed too, and my main reason to pick Perception (enemy dodge reduction) is now completely gone because the last subskill in every weapon skill provides more dodge reduction than the entire Perception tree.

    What I'm getting at is basically: make the Perception tree less of a late-bloomer. I haven't tried the new subskills, but they'd have to be pretty damn amazing to make up for the weak first half of the tree, and I'm guessing they don't. If they somehow do then I'd still rather see a stronger first half at the expense of a slightly weaker second half.

    That being said, I really like the buff to the melee skill trees, but I think it might be better if some of that dodge reduction was spread out across the tree to shift some of the power to the earlier skills. Right now it creates the same situation as the perception tree (strongly encourages investment in a single tree) but perhaps the pattern I'm seeing is actually a design philosophy and not a design error per se?
     
    lccorp2 likes this.
  15. Luke00016

    Luke00016 Member

    I really dislike the new crafting interface. No easy scrolling. No clicking on what you want to make, you have to line it up with the "craft" button. No tooltip to see what the heck you're trying to make (you don't have to show its stats, but at least give me a name of the item). The whole thing feels about 75% complete and is missing the nice touches that make it easy/simple to use.

    That said, I like the expansion of the various support skills (ley walker, mage training, blood magic, perception, etc.).
     
  16. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    Does Third Sight do anything at all that is useful to someone that already has the first 4 skills of Perception? It eliminates Invisibility -- but with Perception you already have enough Trapsight to see invisible creatures in plenty of time regardless. It's kind of a waste of a level -- just make Perception 5 items long and let us get to the eye-lasering! :D
     
    Xen0nex likes this.
  17. tcjsavannah

    tcjsavannah Member

    Thanks to Bootcamp, I was able to play a little 1.08 tonight while waiting for the Mac fix.
    I like the "No Time To Grind" function - it really does play quicker and the fast leveling helps me play with the new skills. I thought the anti-cast skill would get no use but once I hit level 3, I was spreading that thing around like Halloween candy.
    Love the new items and the new item slots. The crafting interface will take some getting used to, my biggest annoyance is that you used to click on the recipe to craft it and that obviously doesn't work now, even though I keep trying it. I'm not as annoyed with the lockpicks as some, but I can see where they're coming from.
    Can't wait for the expansion!
     
  18. jzworkman

    jzworkman Member

    My biggest complaint, crafting is now useless. And not because of the interface(which is really inconvenient) but because you need the reccipe now where before you could just add the items. So now melee characters need to get even more lucky to try and craft the armor needed to survive later levels... Lets see how far I can get with a pure melee character. I have doubt I will get far without being able to craft a serpentine armor, or some of the better weapons.
     
  19. tcjsavannah

    tcjsavannah Member

    Don't underestimate the new armor slots though. One or two good found gloves/pants/belt can make up for having your platemail armor by level 3.
     
  20. Silvah

    Silvah Member

    Heck, a floor 1 kilt made things absurdly squishy (then i had burglary crash). Also i could think that there will be some extremely new broken situations with spells that leave damaging residue.. and the root of T'char. you simply do not just eat it now for laughs, it is ye deadly ><