1923 replies to this topic

[kend7510]

Thanks for the link, very useful for my own playthrough

But it is a very specific/expensive setup for min/maxers mostly, and it's already achieved without the help of new mental fortress. For most users, this new tweak gives most user a bump in spell resistance, which is exclusive to a specialization, and a third tier no less.

But maybe 10% is a tad bit too much. I will think about reducing it.

And I will not be reworking anything from a grounds up, only tweaks, as one of the objective of this project is to not stray too far from vanilla. That said, rest assured that there will always be ways to improve something without having to rebuild it.

[kallas_br]

Ahh... Idont no if anyone have said but. the mod reduce a lot de fps in the game.

i not american my inglish sucs

[Jeanseb28]

Great mod! Thanks!

I'm wondering... is there a way to make the Personnal Annoyance Remover mod work with yours? Both mod use the following files:

-spell_modal.ncs
-talent_aoe_duration.ncs
-talent_modal.ncs

[vernvern]

Do the dog-bone gifts only impact the dog, I hope? I never use the dog so I give the "bones" to other party members as gifts and don't want them getting something extra with their treats. (one other party member in particular actually values those)

re: Adv. Tactics and the parry bug - ??? I installed Advanced Tactics to FIX that problem (was hoping, I mean), among others more specific to tactics options. It was my first mod installed so I expect that at least some version of the problem exists in vanilla.

re: the magic recommendations, I agree that the original flavor and design of the game is an ideal target but the fact is some of the spells in the game are largely or totally useless. Partly this is because of friendly fire and partly because of either range or lack of stopping power. The cone spells as designed, with no stun or knockdown, and no real range, are simply useless if not dangerous. The bomb spells have similar problems, because the only bunches of enemies are likely to be those clustered around your own allies, and the game lacks a group protection spell that would make it useful as a tactic. Altering the function of those spells to make them a viable tactical option is more reasonable than increasing the power so much they no longer belong at the same place in the tree, or in the same tree at all. I don't like major changes to the game either, but a third of the spells in the bioware trees are badly placed or badly designed (compared to the others).

re: Mind Blast. I've used it, but the stun is too short for the magic to actually "escape" anywhere. At least on Hard or above, don't know about lower difficulty. And it doesn't reset threat, or a short range mage target is always rated so high they get attacked immediately anyway, because attackers never ignore my mages after casting it. (I expect the stun is less useful on Hard difficulty and I tend to use that spell to drink a health potion safely, so I don't have an issue with it at present.) I see the cone spells filling a different role, allowing the mage to retreat from incoming melee while doing damage and slowing enemies enough to get 1-2 casts in. Mind Blast at level 1 is too short for this, in range as well as duration, so it's a different tactical function.


@kallas_br - I have not experienced an fps drop, perhaps you have a conflict with another mod?

Edited by vernvern, 28 December 2009 - 02:37 AM.

[Flash_in_the_flesh]

@vernvern: check this mod http://social.biowar...m/project/1470/
It might help.

I like the general logic of your magic recommendations. I like logic above all and that's why I don't like the idea of cone of cold/fire with knockdown and/or stun effect. It's useful but doesn't have sense.

[elsellel]

@kend7510
So to compensate, I have included changelog.txt in the dazip readable by DAModder...
-----------

Ah, gotcha. Did not know there was a changelog included. Please forgive. I happened upon the 'other' thread and saw what's been going on there, so felt kind of bad about jumping your case (if it were perceived that way) in the midst of all that.

Thanks for the response.

[vernvern]

@Flash-
thanks, but I don't want to stop friendly fire effects. I like those generally, the problem is that some spells with those effects become useless because of gameplay and design restrictions.

Re: the cone elemental spells as an example, being short range means they are likely to hit your own fighters trying to protect your mages. My problem is that it makes the cone spells useless because either they need much greater range (ADnD like) OR no friendly fire OR some compensating ability that justifies my mage standing in front of a charging horde and annoying them with some little flames. (versus a sleep spell or repulsion glyph or blizzard or.... or anything useful). (okay those are higher tier but that makes my point more compelling, why would you cast a fire cone that isn't going to stop OR slow anyone and only increase threat? Making that tier 1 is just demented to begin with...especially where the fire weapon buff can fit nicely there and not dup a tier 2 or 3 weapon buf in other trees. Again, I HATE making large changes, but it's clear to me that 1/3 of bioware's spell choices are just badly designed and placed by comparison. Tweaking only get you so far until something MUST be moved in a tree because it's too powerful if it's going to be useful. And useless spells are not just something you sadly only cast twice in the game - they hurt RP and also waste a valuable skill point to get things that are useful, so it's double penalty for "respecting" what bioware had time to do instead of respecting bioware's vision for what COULD be done.)

So adding knockdown or stun to cone spells makes more sense to me than trying to increase the range, assuming you could. Re: that being logical, I'm not certain what you mean. Electricity has a stun effect, or it should, if we are really talking about an electrical elemental attack and not just an animation that looks like electricity. (it should be shocking and I have not seen any stun effects from it (granted it may be limited on hard/nightmare so maybe I just don't see it). And flames should cause knockdown - real bursts of heat come with a shockwave that does exactly that in real life. And with respect to game logic - the fireball has a knockdown effect also. Now I would tend to reverse that myself, favoring balance over logic, because the knockdown on fireball dups the earth tree attack, but that's just my personal taste. (sorry, I should edit that, by "balance" I also mean spell trees that are relatively separate but somewhat equal. Little or no duplication of ability (making combo's more interesting) and making trees distinctive while making sure a fire mage is just dangerous overall as a cold mage. Most games handle this by having fire do more damage while cold slows/freezes, etc. But here electricity does not seem to stun, and fire doesn't appear to do a lot of damage (generally) compared to cold.)

Thanks for the link though, the spell shaping area idea is interesting. Better for a high level mastery option in an expansion pack, IMO, but will have to watch it.

Edited by vernvern, 28 December 2009 - 03:47 AM.

[elsellel]

My 2 cents on the cone talents thing (and I do think they're rather worthless at this point, although cone of ice of course has the freezing benefit).

But, in my mind, these cone talents should be circular short range aoe, like rally, like mind blast, death syphon, etc. The whole cone idea should've been dumped in the trash upon initial play testing. So many times when the mage(s) are surrounded by foes I find myself: ok, I've mind blasted them, now where in the hell is the flame burst (or an aura of pain like Reaver) or ANY other short range CIRCULAR aoe to hit them with. The game's really lacking there.

As to the friendly fire; that's something I've gotten used to with mage talents in this game. Even when Wynne drops a paralysis glyph on top of a repulsion glyph where allies are (very difficult to get her Tactics so she won't do this, and yet, still use both glyphs) I just shrug it off. Usually it paralyzes EVERYONE left in combat, so I wait for the effect to end and continue once players are free to move again.

What I'd like to see is someone edit these 'cones' so they're circular in nature and maybe make cone of cold like Winter's grasp in its affect of just 'possibly' freezing the foe unless a physical check passes. Cone of cold right now, is a bit overpowered in its freezing capabilities, and certainly compared to the effects of the lightning and fire cones. Lightning cone could be turned into more of a stamina remover, or reduced movement and attack speed with a bit of electricity damage thrown in, and of course circular short range in nature.

I think a small knockdown chance (only on weaker foes) with the Lightning cone and a reasonable knockdown chance with the Flame cone (again, updated to be circular short personal range; like a flame burst) would be worth thinking about.

The danger is overpowering any of these talents and tipping the balance of fair combat. I'm really enjoying the difficulty of this game and am ready to move into the nightmare setting for my next play through (never thought I'd say that). But I'm not much into talents that are overpowered (such as Fireball currently is) and also don't want to be a mage chump that can't dish out respectable damage. Proper balancing and all is key.

Of course, the foes get to use the updates too, so if anything is overpowered, well, you get to feel it coming at you from the guys on the other end of the screen, as a recent mod update to Chain Lightning has shown (look out when an enemy mage is casting that fooker; one or more allies caught in its effects are going to die).

Edited by elsellel, 28 December 2009 - 04:51 AM.

[kend7510]

@kallas_br:
I did not experience any fps drop in my testing. Script mods also shouldn't affect fps, worst case it would produce a lag between swing and damage float/application. If someone else experience fps drop with this mod on and not when mod is off, let me know.

@JJeanseb28:
Yes PAR compatibility is being worked on. I'm still experimenting on ways to incorporate it, so I don't have an ETA at the moment, but it will come soon.

@vernvern:
Yes those gifts listed only give dog bonus. If you give them to someone else there will be no attribute bonus for them. I made the tweak as an incentive to actually give those gifts to dog, with his affection being always at 100, there really was no point.

As for the parry bug, I could only reproduce it with AT on. I also didn't notice it until recently (been using AT since near the start), so maybe it was introduced in recent versions.

@elsellel:
No worries and I know you weren't jumping on anything. I myself also like things organized a certain way so I can relate.

@all others:
I have read all your suggestions and I will take them all into consideration. Regarding friendly fire, my opinion is that friendly fire is a very necessary mechanic. FF against your party is scaled (based on difficulty) so there's already a bias there. No other non-specialization talent tree has on-click AoE beyond the melee ring, and with mage being the only class that does it, those mechanics need to be in place to restrict it. I believe Bioware designed the cone spells and some AoE (or even none AoE) spells to be restrictive on purpose, and I feel we shouldn't expect to use a mage effectively with AI, but rather position one carefully manually before using a cone spell, for example.

I agree on the fact fire and earth tree in primal is not well defined enough. Ice can CC and electricity drains stamina, while fire is just very situational (only does more damage on certain foes), and earth being an ugly mesh between offense and defense. I will of course work on changing that.

What we have to keep in mind is that, when we compare mage with itself, there's just so much that should be changed and improved. But if we put it in the context of the game, how encounters normally are, with other classes etc, we can sometimes see why some design decisions are made regarding these spells (or all other talents, in general).

What I've spoke is all of gut feeling and based on a mage playthrough. I will have better perspective after I organize the spells into lists, and see the way they are implemented.


Thank you all for the feedbacks

EDIT: some of my explanation was a little misleading upon re-reading them , fixed

Edited by kend7510, 28 December 2009 - 07:25 AM.

[chaiminhuei]

On primal spells:

IMHO, the primal spell tree is quite nicely worked out although there is plenty of area to work with numbers. When I first started playing more mages in the party, I was quite unhappy because it requires a lot of micro-managing. However, I feel that the flavor of the spells work out a lot.

In general, I usually avoid all primal spells since supportive mages are far more superior in nightmare modes. I still have to order my warriors to get out of a cone of cold or cast a fireball into a crowd whilst my melee characters storm the field.

I don't know... Maybe I'm just gotten used to playing the spells right. IMO, all the other trees requires more work than the primal tree.