Introducing: the Mystic

[ALEXz407]

Shadow Pact: Create a charge of shadow pact that increases shadow damage by (spellpowerX.03) per charge. Charges are consumed when a minion dies, reviving the minion as if it was just summoned. Or a charge is consumed to bring the Skeleton Mage's mana back to full when it drops below 5% mana. Maximum of 5 charges. Can only be used inside combat. All charges are lost outside of combat.

Great idea!

I want to suggest a slightly modified version.

«Your soul is mine!» Shang Tsung

Soul Trap
Necromancer passively catches souls from dying units in medium AoE. The maximum number of trapped souls is 5, each cathed above this number soul will restore part (10% ?) of necromancer's mana. Souls consumed automatically for: reviving minions with full (50% ?) HP and 0 MP, refilling minion's manapool (when it below 5%). Necromancer can activate this ability and release all trapped souls, each soul will fly near to the caster for limited time (10 seconds?) and attack random enemy in medium AoE for low magic damage (SPx0.2 ?) each second. Doesn't generate aggro.

From a visual part: souls can be animated as small wisps flying around necromancer. Catched souls can fly from dying unit to the necromancer. If soul limit reached, additional soul just explode near to the necromancer and show some mana restore animation. For minions reviving/restoring mana they fly to the target and explode. Released souls will fly randomly near to the necromancer and "charge" through enemy to deal damage, also explode when spell duration ends.
From a balancing part: if there are two or more necromancers in the party, only closest to the dying unit hero will catch a soul.

Ability looks a bit complicated. However, a certain level of complexity will be a good addition to advanced classes, because other necro abilities looks a bit "generic" if compare them with Psion/Hexblade.

What do you think?

 

[Jumbo]

It looks cool Alex, but as you said it is a bit complicated. For now I'd go with Ihaz' idea.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Actually, that's not complicated at all. And I like the stack idea. Basicly a limited utility resource that you can carry over from battle to battle. It's great because it helps in boss battles too, but is not just fire and forget because you might need to get new stacks once all souls are depleted. Kind of like soul shards from Vanilla WoW warlocks.

 

[Jumbo]

Well after having compared to Hexblade and Psion and looked at your idea more carefully, I like this spell more. It looks very awesome both gameplay- and graphic-wise. Also I like spell names from TES Oblivion as they bring me a feeling of nostalgia. Go ahead with it Zwieb .

 

[Ihazdialup]

I don't like the idea of extra souls restoring mana to the Necromancer, because im just thinking about bosses like Brood Matriarch are you get tons of spawns that die very quickly, that would nearly instantly give you your 5 charges and back up to full mana

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I don't like the idea of extra souls restoring mana to the Necromancer, because im just thinking about bosses like Brood Matriarch are you get tons of spawns that die very quickly, that would nearly instantly give you your 5 charges and back up to full mana

Mana for the necromancer himself is a no go; only Druids and Bards are supposed to be able to refill mana by design.

Necromancers already have the Curse talent to get a small extra mana regen.


About the "small mobs":
I can always give it a cooldown so that you can only accumulate one additional soul every x seconds.

 

[Ihazdialup]

I think it should do shadow damage to fit more into a theme with Necromancer and goes better with his talents

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I think it should do shadow damage to fit more into a theme with Necromancer and goes better with his talents

I won't code exactly that as suggested anyway; I always apply some personal flavours to ideas depending on what I think works good or could improve upon the basic idea.

 

[Ihazdialup]

ah, okay, also any progress on the Mystic?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

ah, okay, also any progress on the Mystic?

Still working on the Psionic Blade ability. It's really hardcore from a programming perspective, as there's so many variables to keep track of, but I got it somewhat working.
Next on the list would be the Mind Control ability, which will - again - be pretty complicated (but nowhere near as complex as Psionic Blade).

The rest is pretty much business as usual.


So, yeah, I plan to finish all the abilities this week. Talents might then take some more days afterwards and then this should be ready for Betatesting.


The new boss battle beta will follow shortly afterwards.

 

[BoxOfFaith]

Hmm..

I kinda like charges that would buff your skeleton summons (increased for more charges). When a skeleton dies, a charge would be consumed to revive it instantly (Would be great to buff detonating bones skill here to have it fully kill a skeleton, and in exchange have it deal a bit more damage, its still pretty weak), or also to regenerate skeleton mage mana should it run below 5 or 10% as it was suggested earlier.

Perhaps have it only be able to be cast in the presence of a corpse (Or anywhere if you take the talent to summon skeletons without a corpse). Charges could disperse after a minute of not being used (Though this would be unnecessary if detonating bones is buffed again).

Its just in many boss battles, skeletons go untouched, so they'd almost never be dying, and thus charges would actually be rarely consumed. It kind of turns the skill into a fire and forget and just seems kinda meh. Needing to consistently stack charges during a fight would increase mana consumption throughout the fight with the payoff being much stronger minions. It would (hopefully) force the player to be a little more attentive to his/her mana use as they'd have another spell that they'd have to consistently keep an eye on to get its full benefit.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I could build the ability to gain charges into to the dark funnel ability, actually. It kind of makes sense, considering that there is very little incentive to actually use dark funnel over fireball if not for some shadow damage talent synergy.

So basicly, when a unit dies while Dark Funnel is active on the target, you gain a charge.
If we do this, the charge spender could be an active ability with multiple purposes, depending on who you use it on:

- You can spend a charge to buff a melee skeleton so that it gets revived if killed (permanent, buf buff gets consumed when it dies)
- You can spend a charge to refill the mana of a skeleton mage minion
- You can spend a charge to debuff an enemy to take extra damage from your minions
- You can spend a charge on yourself to get a small speed/haste bonus

... though the last thing is maybe a little bit too far of a stretch. It goes dangerously into bard territory. But it would add a purpose for charges if you are in a battle where you don't need the revive for skeletons or rather have some extra spell damage over increased minion damage.
Alternatively, if used on the caster, it could basicly create a small absorb shield that absorbs spelldamage only or grant a buff that increases SP by 50% for the next spell used.

 

[Jumbo]

This spell is very, very cool. And yes, leave out the last point (the bard wannabe effect). Instead use on yourself to allow/increase life regeneration (in combat) for a slow but steady hp replenish for 10-15 sec. This can take some pressure from healers as the necro can heal himself after taking aoe dmg for example. However it is not a substitute for real healing only in non-critical situations, mostly it just works as a supplement to healing.

 

[BoxOfFaith]

Okay I like that one Zwieb .

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Progress going fine. Just found a method to reliably change the attack index of a character without having to morph the unit. ... which was kind of the last hurdle in the Psion design.
Almost done there; gonna work on the Mind Control ability this afternoon and see if I can finish it.

 

[Ihazdialup]

Sounds great, and for some reason I thought you already made the upcomming abilities for the existing classes for the next 1.2 update so I thought it wouldn't be much of a hassle changing it from Necro to Psion

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Sounds great, and for some reason I thought you already made the upcomming abilities for the existing classes for the next 1.2 update so I thought it wouldn't be much of a hassle changing it from Necro to Psion

Oh hell no, those were just drafts.

When making new content, I always work in the order of importance for functionality, so that I can release a beta build as fast as possible:

Zone specific code (music, teleporters, interiors, entry beacons) --> Boss abilities --> Bosses and AI --> Creep abilities --> Creeps and AI --> Items (Can be outsourced) --> Item abilities --> Droptables --> Stealtables --> Quests --> Shops --> Player abilities

As you can see, player abilities are usually the lowest priority and usually come last in content design, as they are not required to make the new content functional.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

So I could finally implement the Mind Control ability.
... Turned out not to be as hard as I expected it to be... I had for some reason a lot more trouble to get the Levitate ability working.


After playing around with Mind Control in a testing game, I gotta say I expected this ability to be overpowered. But turns out that it actually isn't. After the 50% health cut from mind control (which brings them roughly on par with ordinary pets), creeps are actually quite weak: mostly mediocre armor values and pretty low damage when compared to the Ranger servant. The saving grace are the creep abilities, so I assume people will basicly MC creeps for their abilities.

I think it feels pretty balanced, maybe a little bit on the weak side. I actually thought about giving the Psion some heavy penalties when mind controlling a creep, but turns out this isn't even needed.


Don't get me wrong; it's a fun ability, especially as it encourages exploring (discovering new creeps to control ... brings that Pokemon vibe), but it's nowhere near as strong as I expected it to be. Which is okay in my book, really, as Psions already have Psionic Blade which is OP as fuck.

 

[BoxOfFaith]

Its a lot better to have something be underpowered until extensive testing is done anyhow. If it turns out to be uselessly weak its a lot easier to buff it without having a large impact on gameplay. Unlike the flipside, where if something is OP it can cause players to load the version of the map with the OP version and farm things using that, rather than an updated nerfed version.

 

[Ihazdialup]

How many abilities are left for the Mystic till you can start on talents?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Its a lot better to have something be underpowered until extensive testing is done anyhow. If it turns out to be uselessly weak its a lot easier to buff it without having a large impact on gameplay. Unlike the flipside, where if something is OP it can cause players to load the version of the map with the OP version and farm things using that, rather than an updated nerfed version.

This is very true. If people complain about MC'ed units being too weak, I can always allow them to control more than one or buff the damage a bit.
Also, this is exactly where talents could come into play.

How many abilities are left for the Mystic till you can start on talents?

Mystic is done. Psion is only missing one last ability (which is easy to create).
Then I still have the 4 Hexblade abilities to code... which are also pretty easy to code.

So yeah; 5 more abilities before I can start with the talents. Not much complicated stuff going on in the talents either, so I don't expect them to take long (relatively spoken... it's still a shitload of talents, even if most of them are one-liners).

End of next week. Promise.

 

[Jumbo]

So why cant psionic blade be dropped from player inventory? How do you remove it in case you want to use another ability ?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

So why cant psionic blade be dropped from player inventory? How do you remove it in case you want to use another ability ?

You can't remove it; and why should you? You don't have any other misc items available anyway.
To learn a new ability, just use the item on a different unit. The spell stealing is done from the inventory, not the command card.

 

[Jumbo]

Haha Zwieb I know right . But this means Psion = 8 abilities + 1any other class ability.
It's unique to Gaias and pretty cool

 

[Jumbo]

I have an idea for the Hexblade golem stuff that you proposed: an iron golem which for each normal attack it does increases the armor of the Hexblade up to a max of 5?(8? 10?) stacks. The golem itself has medium HP and armor but low attack. Stats increase with strength and level.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I have an idea for the Hexblade golem stuff that you proposed: an iron golem which for each normal attack it does increases the armor of the Hexblade up to a max of 5?(8? 10?) stacks. The golem itself has medium HP and armor but low attack. Stats increase with strength and level.

The golem idea is off the table. I agree that having another pet class would be boring.

 

[Jumbo]

Hehe after I wrote the above, I pictured a game with necromancer pets + SoN + dryad + merc + golem. Damm that would be too much . Anyway the Hexblade.. It reminds me of the spellblade from TES and Mesmer from Guild Wars. What about a casting time and attackspeed slowing debuff (reverse symbol of fury). Or a thorns aura inspired active debuff: any unit with the debuff takes 50% damage from casting their own damage spells. Healing spells used by the debuffed caster is split between its target (25%) and itself (75%) even if the debuffed caster has full HP making 75% the spell go to waste.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Gaias Retaliation HD external texture pack incoming...

Next version will have an external (completely optional) zip file that contains highres variants of lots of environmental doodads. If local file support is enabled, the game will automaticly use them instead of the default textures. This does not require replacing any game files, so it will not affect the game outside of Gaias at all.

click

 

[Ihazdialup]

Neato

 

[SaikoDeMoN]

 

[Jumbo]

I knew you could do it with textures! Will this mean that you dont need Mytargas remade after all? Personally I cannot see the Riversdale House types making up a city.
Btw as usual my above spell ideas are just brainstorming.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I knew you could do it with textures! Will this mean that you dont need Mytargas remade after all? Personally I cannot see the Riversdale House types making up a city.
Btw as usual my above spell ideas are just brainstorming.

Yeah that was the general idea behind this; It would just be way too much work to remake Mytargas completely.

I'm also experimenting with a neat little hack that allows also replacing the hero textures for max res textures...
But this is low priority atm, as I feel they look good enough in current state anyway.

I'd rather have a way to replace the lowres terrain tiles, but it seems like there is no practical way to do this other than terrain images... which is not an option for performance reasons, unfortunately.

But I guess having unlimited highres textures for doodads is already cool enough.

 

[oger-lord]

Can you explain how it works with the high res textures for doodads?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Can you explain how it works with the high res textures for doodads?

It simply checks if the file exists in an external folder, and if it does, it will play a different animation for these doodads that uses the external filepath.


Progress is going nicely. I almost finished the Mystic class now (Blades and Witchcraft was a pain in the ass to code, but it works now). Only 3 simple spells to go for the Hexblade and I'm done. The class change quest will take some more time, but otherwise, the new update is ready to ship...
...including the HD texture pack, music, intro cinematic and the first voiceover extension pack for the main quest (more to come in future updates). I got some really skilled voice actors for this job.

 

[Ihazdialup]

sounds great hope you finish those skills with minimal problems

 

[Zwiebelchen]

No problems so far. Progress goes extremely fast now that all the spells are finished.

Finished Mystic and Hexblade talents. Next are the Psion talents, which are quite simple as most of the complicated stuff was already prepared for in the initial spell-design.
I Hope I can finalize the class mechanics this evening.

... which leaves only the class change quest. This is a little bit more work since I have to create a new interior for it. But that's a fun thing to do, so I don't mind a little bit of extra effort here. It's fun to do some terraining for a change. Might also create a screen or two for the forums.

I think I will be able to release the Mystic update by the end of this week, quickly (= some days later) followed by the boss battle beta.

 

[Ihazdialup]

Woo!

 

[Jumbo]

I cross my fingers that psionic blade is working for all spells .

Anyway good to hear the progress. This time it really seems like you are done with the hardest work and that release is close by

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I cross my fingers that psionic blade is working for all spells .

Anyway good to hear the progress. This time it really seems like you are done with the hardest work and that release is close by

Yeah a lot of stuff has become much easier since I replaced some critical systems in the map.
But the bottleneck is still and always was my lack of time.

 

[ALEXz407]

Do you think to rework hero attributes in future updates?
This system was intended to work with attribute points distribution with fixed base stats, so it balanced around this i guess.

Current hero attributes

Maybe rebalance it a bit, to make choice between base/secondary stats more meaningful? And also make it more relevant to automatically increasing base stats. Here is example how it can work:

Strength:
- Melee/Ranged Crit damage multiplier: 140% + (Str/[base Str] - 1) * 25%
- Every point increases Armor Penetration by 0.5
- Hitpoints multiplier: (Str/[base Str] - 1) * 15%
- Block power: 15% + (Str/[base Str] - 1) * 10%

Agility:
- Attack/Spell Crit chance: 5% + (Agi/[base Agi] - 1) * 10%
- Evasion chance: 5% + (Agi/[base Agi] - 1) * 10%
- Attackspeed bonus: (Agi/[base Agi] - 1) * 25%
- Spell Haste bonus: (Agi/[base Agi] - 1) * 25%

Intelligence:
- Spell Crit damage multiplier: 140% + (Int/[base Int] - 1) * 25%
- Every point increases Spellpower by 1
- Mana multiplier: (Int/[base Int] - 1) * 10%
- All resistances: (Int/[base Int] - 1) * 20%

All stat formulas use ceil (Stat/[base Stat] - 1) and can go into negative values.

---

Hitpoints multiplier - similar to talent "Increases maximum health by 15%.", value added to it and counted once.
Block power - replaces fixed 20% shield block value, so you can stack your front damage mitigation with STR, or increase evasion with DEX.
Mana multiplier - similar to talent "Increases maximum MP by 15%.", value added to it and counted once.
All resistances - simple bonus to allres that makes INT based characters better as mage tanks.

What do you think?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

This would mean that at every level up you might actually lose hitpoints.

The stat relatives are okay to be used on combat stats like crit or evasion, as you can actually justify the slight loss of the stat on level up by just saying the enemies hit or defend better. I actually plan to add crit/evasion bonuses when fighting lower level units, so that when leveling up, you effectively feel an increase in power than a loss when you fight the same units as before.
But I can't justify that for life or mana.

 

[Jumbo]

I think the levelling part of the game is too short - especially at lower levels when the items are considered. Perhaps a small decrease in xp gain from kills (not from quests) would be feasible as currently items such as basilisk poison are almost useless because getting far ahead of its intended level range happens so fast. A decrease of 10-20% would be great I think.

 

[muzzel]

I dont think thats helping, with less exp per mob players will even more focus on pure leveling. In addition, with less exp per mob people will actually get more drops per level, so crafting gets even less interesting.

The only way i see to force players to equip their heroes at all times in the best possible way (gearing up instead of pure leveling) is to use milestones which the player has to complete in order to move on in the game. For example every 5 levels there is a boss you have to kill so you are allowed to enter the next area, and if that boss is hard enough you are forced to gear up every 5 levels. However, the whole map is based on an open world principle, i dont think its a good idea to screw this over.

However, i would love to see some higher level recipes which require rare items from lower levels, so players are forced to repeat some of the old content (which, of course, is a lot easier with stronger heroes, yet it would be nice to see people running d3 again).

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I dont think thats helping, with less exp per mob players will even more focus on pure leveling. In addition, with less exp per mob people will actually get more drops per level, so crafting gets even less interesting.

The only way i see to force players to equip their heroes at all times in the best possible way (gearing up instead of pure leveling) is to use milestones which the player has to complete in order to move on in the game. For example every 5 levels there is a boss you have to kill so you are allowed to enter the next area, and if that boss is hard enough you are forced to gear up every 5 levels. However, the whole map is based on an open world principle, i dont think its a good idea to screw this over.

However, i would love to see some higher level recipes which require rare items from lower levels, so players are forced to repeat some of the old content (which, of course, is a lot easier with stronger heroes, yet it would be nice to see people running d3 again).

Yeah the backtracking thing is a reoccuring theme in these forums... to be honest; I'd rather have backtracking in form of heroic dungeon modes...

But here's the kicker: I have a huge amount of completely designed terrain that is begging to be filled with content. Until all that runs out, there is simply no point in backtracking at all, as creating new content requires the same time investment than recreating old content. And I'd rather make the map larger instead of recycling old stuff.


Anyways, here's a WIP of the Varatraz estate redesign.

... and as an appetizer for the voice acting extension pack a small sampler for you guys to check out! Try to guess the characters to these samples.

 

[Jumbo]

Decreasing xp gain by a small amount has nothing to do with backtracking. But I agree it is a minor thing. Just nevermind about it, I just like to bring it up from time to time.

The new estate looks awesome and the voices are cool. I laughed at that demon, but in a good way - very well done by the actors.

 

[muzzel]

Anyways, here's a WIP of the Varatraz estate redesign.

S&S, nice!

 

[BoxOfFaith]

I think the levelling part of the game is too short - especially at lower levels when the items are considered. Perhaps a small decrease in xp gain from kills (not from quests) would be feasible as currently items such as basilisk poison are almost useless because getting far ahead of its intended level range happens so fast. A decrease of 10-20% would be great I think.

I'd rather have a repeatable quest for completing content under a certain level.

Such as, Kill Gaelas Tar, repeatable 5 times, and only available to receive as a quest as long as you're under level 15. Each time completing the quest would give some experience and gold. After completing the quest for the fifth time you should be given the choice of receiving your dungeon skill drop, world skill drop, or a level 15ish green item.

Same could be done for the final boss of all of the dungeons (Kill firelord 10 times under level 40 to receive one red item of your choice? ). This would provide certain incentive for players to do the content to its fullest without completely feeling like they've wasted their time.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Tbh, whenever I played Gaias with a lowlevel group up to highlevel, I never had the case of people skipping content. Especially not D1/D2 and the outdoor bosses.
D3 is kind of an exception here, as it's actually a pretty hard skill-wall in the game. I'm okay with people skipping D3. It's not like you have to see all the content to have fun in the game.

Heroic Mode for D3 will be the first heroic mode I implement. It's perfectly suited for progression content as the difficulty is about right for fresh level 50s. I more or less just have to adjust the levels and stats of bosses and creeps and that's it, so not that much amount of work to do.
Since D4 will start with a gearcheck encounter, people might want to go there first.

D1 and D2 heroic modes will come at a later point. This is because obviously I can't just adjust levels for these dungeons; I actually need to redesign the creeps completely. It would feel weird to fight level 50 bandits.

 

[Jumbo]

Since the discussion is continued I may aswell too . It would be cool with a quest that requires a large amount of dropped quest items for instance hides (to keep the poor warm or scalps. Make all gnolls drop one gnoll scalp as a quest item. 60 or so are needed to complete the quest. This gives the player a long term quest in the big forest area. It doesn't provide anything but xp and gold, so is completely optional. Quest lvl is 20 so req16 to start.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I don't like grinding, tbh.

S&S, nice!

In this case, it's almost an equal trade: Got rid of the 160kb Donjon model, instead added 160kbs worth of S&S (and 160kb is almost half of the S&S pack). Seems like a good trade in my book, considering S&S can be used for almost everything whereas the Donjon is dropped just once on the entire map...

Btw, nice to see you back. Just here for a visit or are you planning to stay for longer?
Wanna try out some neat terraining duty or spell coding?