551 replies to this topic

[_redruM_]

I have given this file my endorsement.

Nice Mod, keep the good work going
Hope to see all the Specializations redone.

Thank you, glad you like it.

You like many others are seriously making some great progress with the game. I do however feel people are tweaking the game to their own liking and i know this is not really the case here either. It's just too much work to be doing just for yourself so i say keep this up. It was actually kind of hard to find this mod you should probably put it into a few categories to somehow bring it back to the top or try adding smaller updates here and there to keep it on the updated list.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll keep them in mind. As for updates, my delay has been twofold:

1.) Many of the changes I've been working on require a new game to experience all of them. I've been putting this off until I have everything I want and am reasonably satisfied so people don't have to start a new game every update.
2.) Many of the changes are also very significant in terms of game mechanics and balance. I've been spending a good deal of time trying to get everything balanced to a point I'm happy with.

That being said, the next update will be here shortly.

[mjharper]

I tired posting twice yesterday, but both times got chewed up in the net.

Gist: Great mod, love the rationale, does it work with Improved Atmosphere? (Overhaul + IA + More Hair = game GA should have been)

The two attempts yesterday were a little more eloquent :-)

[_redruM_]

I tired posting twice yesterday, but both times got chewed up in the net.

Gist: Great mod, love the rationale, does it work with Improved Atmosphere? (Overhaul + IA + More Hair = game GA should have been)

The two attempts yesterday were a little more eloquent :-)

Thanks for the support. As for your compatibility question, I've just downloaded IA and had a look through the files. There are a few issues. Firstly, the gold items. Not a big deal, I would just have to rebalance them for my mod. The other two issues are the No Bodies and Difficulty options. I COULD possibly achieve compatibility with No Bodies, but I believe doing so would impact compatibility with Personal Annoyance Remover. Anyway, I could theoretically do it if there is enough demand. The difficulty tweak is not an option, however. As things are right now, if you can play without the No Bodies and Difficulty tweaks of IA, you can pretty much use it with my mod without issue.

[mjharper]

One of the good things about IA is the being able to customise the install; gold items, no bodies and difficulty stuff are all very optional. Of those, I'd probably like to see gold compatible with Overhaul; the other two I can live without (I'm currently playing without No Bodies anyway). Compatibility with PAR is much more important than that :-)

I suppose my biggest question would be about the modified armour and weapons in IA, like the armour set you get in the Noble Background. I'm guessing that the Overhaul changes to materials will be incorporated by all items which use that material, even if not included in the original game? And IA also modifies (optionally) many of the weapon bonuses to make them more useful later in the game - again, I assume these changes would be applied regardless of those in Overhaul.

Anyway, I'll finish playing my current blood mage, then have a go with IA and Overhaul, and see what happens. Should be interesting :-)

[_redruM_]

One of the good things about IA is the being able to customise the install; gold items, no bodies and difficulty stuff are all very optional. Of those, I'd probably like to see gold compatible with Overhaul; the other two I can live without (I'm currently playing without No Bodies anyway). Compatibility with PAR is much more important than that :-)

Alright, I'll fix up the gold item stats. I believe they fall in between silverite and dragonbone, correct?

I suppose my biggest question would be about the modified armour and weapons in IA, like the armour set you get in the Noble Background. I'm guessing that the Overhaul changes to materials will be incorporated by all items which use that material, even if not included in the original game? And IA also modifies (optionally) many of the weapon bonuses to make them more useful later in the game - again, I assume these changes would be applied regardless of those in Overhaul.

Yeah, anything using existing materials would simply adopt Overhaul's values. Overhaul also doesn't modify item properties (besides poisons), so there should be no issue there.

Anyway, I'll finish playing my current blood mage, then have a go with IA and Overhaul, and see what happens. Should be interesting :-)

I'm interested to hear how it goes. My only concern with IA is balance. If enemies or allies are in higher quality equipment, the difference will be more significant with Overhaul since the jump in material quality is much bigger. Should be interesting though, like you said. I may just give it a try myself.

[mjharper]

Had a go using IA and Overhaul in the City Elf background, on Normal difficulty. Got slaughtered :-)

Maybe I'm not the best judge of difficulty here, as I haven't played on anything higher than Normal (for shame!). But Soris got killed in the first encounter with a Mubari and a guard, and then again on every second encounter. I had my Elf set as a two-handed sword fighter, and IA respecs Soris as a Rogue. At the start we only had basic weapons and wedding clothes; the guards seem to mostly be wearing steel chainmail. When I got to the room with the three guards standing over the dead Elf, I only managed to win on about the fourth attempt.

For me at least, the difference was overwhelming. I'll have a go with a Human Noble and see how that plays out. It should be easier as you get some decent equipment there, which should balance out against the enemy's better gear. Hopefully.

[_redruM_]

Had a go using IA and Overhaul in the City Elf background, on Normal difficulty. Got slaughtered :-)

Maybe I'm not the best judge of difficulty here, as I haven't played on anything higher than Normal (for shame!). But Soris got killed in the first encounter with a Mubari and a guard, and then again on every second encounter. I had my Elf set as a two-handed sword fighter, and IA respecs Soris as a Rogue. At the start we only had basic weapons and wedding clothes; the guards seem to mostly be wearing steel chainmail. When I got to the room with the three guards standing over the dead Elf, I only managed to win on about the fourth attempt.

For me at least, the difference was overwhelming. I'll have a go with a Human Noble and see how that plays out. It should be easier as you get some decent equipment there, which should balance out against the enemy's better gear. Hopefully.

Haha, I suspected that might happen. My only suggestion would be to try your best to use a ranged weapon to draw enemies in one at a time. Kind of hard to do with fights like the 3 guards, though. Also probably a little too challenging for someone new to the game right off the hop. If this becomes a serious enough issue I will contact the author of IA and see what we can do to make things more manageable. Thanks for testing it out.

[mjharper]

To be fair, the author of IA said the City Elf background would be harder anyway. Just now it's even more so with Overhaul.

The Human Noble background, on the other hand, seemed more balanced with IA and Overhaul installed. With just IA, it was too easy, but with both it comes out fairly balanced. On Normal, for me, that is :-)

However, I did notice some issues with multiple enemies. I found I often couldn't hit the rats at the start; and I during the siege, I sometimes couldn't hit and sometimes combat wouldn't be properly started ( I stood there wacking the Elven mage for maybe 10 seconds while she stared off into space). Odder still, sometimes I'd use a talent, see the animation, have no effect on the target, and then find that the talent had been reset without cooldown, as though the game thought I hadn't used it at all.

The only mods I have installed which could be affecting this are IA (without difficulty and bodies stay), PAR, death blow plus, and lock bash. Everything else is cosmetic (hair, morphs, a couple of armours).

It might also be my system, since I'm running it on a MacBook. The basic game runs fine, but it's conceivable that the extra calculations you mention have a more pronounced effect on a Mac...

[_redruM_]

However, I did notice some issues with multiple enemies. I found I often couldn't hit the rats at the start; and I during the siege, I sometimes couldn't hit and sometimes combat wouldn't be properly started ( I stood there wacking the Elven mage for maybe 10 seconds while she stared off into space). Odder still, sometimes I'd use a talent, see the animation, have no effect on the target, and then find that the talent had been reset without cooldown, as though the game thought I hadn't used it at all.

The only mods I have installed which could be affecting this are IA (without difficulty and bodies stay), PAR, death blow plus, and lock bash. Everything else is cosmetic (hair, morphs, a couple of armours).

It might also be my system, since I'm running it on a MacBook. The basic game runs fine, but it's conceivable that the extra calculations you mention have a more pronounced effect on a Mac...

It is possible that your MacBook is taking a beating, yes. How long have you been noticing these things? Because I think its more likely that these 'lag' issues are caused by patch 1.03. I've noticed a lot of the things you describe ever since installing that patch, and there is a huge thread on the bioware social forums filled with people complaining about the patch and wanting fixes. However, its possible my mod might be contributing to some of these things. Like the misses, perhaps. Do you mean actual misses? Are the targets moving? I noticed a typo in my code for moving targets, which was making them a lot harder to hit (nearly impossible) than I intended. This fix will be in the next update.

[_redruM_]

I have given this file my endorsement.

Thanks for the thumbs up, much appreciated.

Now that the obbligatory thumbs up are out of the way...

This is great work, I'm playing with IA and your mod together and I love the balance it strikes.

-The white named mooks are all in all fairly easy to handle.
-The yellow elites are enough of a challenge to make you think about what you need to do, should you send off one guy to hold him off while you slaughter the minions or do you ignore the minions and try to take out the bigger threat.
-The orange bosses are so far pretty tough, I just finished my first run through of Ostagar with my mage and let me just say I was glad I took heal and cone of cold. The Deamon in the wilds wasn't bad, but the Ogre was a challenge doing 60-90 damage a hit!

I hope you keep it up, I love the balance you struck, it feels like if your party really does know what it's doing when it's hacking through the redshirts, but at the same time more elites and bosses actually feel like what they're supposed to be, as opposed to mooks who got a gold star in class.

I'm very glad to hear that, as that is pretty much exactly what I'm aiming for. I've always thought that Lieutenants should be highly formidable opponents, kind of like main characters in their own right, opposite yourself and your party. Bosses of all types should intimidate you and make you think and strategize.

There are a number of fights that will really stand out from their original form. I'll drop a few hints without spoiling too much. The ogre at Ostagar is one, almost any fight with dragons is another, and if you're playing a mage you should expect templars to give you some trouble.

Finally, if you are still taking suggestions for future updates to your mod, I have one concerning mages and namely the dreaded Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage combo...

Awesome, thanks for the suggestions. I haven't even played a mage yet, and I have yet to really look at them much. My plans thus far were to increase the effect spellpower has on spell damage, then increase cast times and have willpower affect them. I thought that would help to make both attributes about equally valuable, making people really think about how they invest their points, and creating much different feel of the class depending on it. As yet though, I haven't figured out any way to alter cast times besides the base values.

That being said, your suggestion is just the kind of thing I'm looking for. Your logic seems solid, and you have detailed and explained your reasoning well. I can't promise exact numbers or anything, but I will certainly keep your suggestions in mind when I take a good look at both classes.

Any ways thanks for your time and keep up the good work. I look foward to seeing what you have for us next.

Thanks for the time you took to credit my work and share your thoughts. The more interest and input I get, the more motivation I have.