Erm...

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Brother Laz
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Erm...

Post by Brother Laz » Mon Nov 25, 2002 11:12 am

Creating the stats will be relatively easy, as it follows a set system.

How exactly? Cause I noticed that the uniques are actually balanced (except some with nearly identical stats and a few overpowered elite ones). I'm having major trouble balancing mine. If I balance that unique cap to be in line with other level 1 items people without MF won't see it until Nightmare and then tell me that it is too weak. If I balance it for act3-act4 normal, someone is bound to find it in the den of evil and blaze through Act1 and tell me that uniques are overpowered.

/lvl based affixes can combat this to some degree, but on many uniques I use negative /lvl properties to break them later in the game, and besides, /lvl affixes do nothing for characters below at least level 50.

What sort of system do you use? (or is that a secret?)
19.may.2007 | Adun Tori Laz.
Median XL released!
Flesyht sa ruobhgien yht etah.


y dont u play the game the way its supposta be played? -SlothNathan

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Post by FoxBat » Mon Nov 25, 2002 3:25 pm

Well for the uniques, I actually didn't use much of any system ;)

Most of the mod themes came from Spiderdrake, but I heavily modified the stats for better balance. There only real guideline I had was his well-designed affix system, which as you can see is much more compact and systematic than LoD's, but most of which was not of my creation.

I made sure that uniques did not exceed the highest level of the affixes. Thus, where +skill items are allowed is rather strict and usually follows only what you could somehow get from an affix. You'll also notice that the ED, DR, and resists on uniques are lower than what you can get on the affixes, I tried to stick to this with the mindset that the uniques come with loads of other cool features to offset that.

Spider did have a systematic way for making sets, but Koalachan came up with such great names that I have thrown that to the wind and am making up all sorts of wierd mods again. The only thing I'm sticking to is avoiding green mods on these normal/exceptionals, as working with greens makes set design infinitely more complicated, and often buggy.

Per-level affixes are great for normal-class uniques, especially weapons. For example, the Devil's Ire hand axe gives you 1% fire resistance per level. In this way you can get significant fire resistance early on; it becomes really huge later, but then you're stuck with the crappy damage of a hand axe. (Though with creative weapon switching, not necessarily a problem.) There are some other scaling abilities that people value equally at any stage in the game, such as crushing blow and open wounds, and to some extend absorb.

My primary goal however, was to balance for the act it appeared in, and only secondarily accomodate further use with per-level affixes or strange effects that are hard to find elsewhere. My opinion is users shouldn't expect much from a normal item if it's found in nightmarel. Of course, a few circumstances in this mod mitigate this. First, normal uniques tend to be much stronger than other item types, nightmare somewhat stronger than other item types, and in hell most unqiues are inferior to difficult-to-find item types. Second, the mod just doesen't have that much Magic Find to acquire for NM difficulty. Both of these ideas I have Spiderdrake to thank for.

My latest thinking though, is that what makes D2 so hard to balance is that it's spread over three inflated difficulty levels. An interesting mod approach might be to focus just on a long and difficult normal and throw out everything else ;)

Sounds like you've taken a look through all the uniques... what in your opinion was overpowered?

BTW you're sure you got negative per-level affixes working? Wow, maybe I should've played with itemstatcost more before releasing... :oops:

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Post by Brother Laz » Thu Nov 28, 2002 2:19 pm

from Foxbat: sorry, I was a complete idiot, and hit "edit" instead of "quote." However I think most of your post has been restored, minus formatting.
There only real guideline I had was his well-designed affix system, which as you can see is much more compact and systematic than LoD's, but most of which was not of my creation.
*ahem* Unterrares... until they fix the 3-modifiers bug, please make it so that at least rares can get the same bonuses as magicals! I get 1 extra modifier, but each of them is worse. :/
The only thing I'm sticking to is avoiding green mods on these normal/exceptionals, as working with greens makes set design infinitely more complicated, and often buggy.
Green mods?
Sounds like you've taken a look through all the uniques... what in your opinion was overpowered?
The huge skill bonuses on elite class uniques. IIRC there is one with +5 to battle orders (or was it revive?) on top of +3 to its tree... in LoD unique items with huge skill boni tend to boost useless skills (K's Owl +6 holy fire, Plague Bearer +5 rabies) but I'd hardly call BO useless. I'd say make them either good all-round items or huge skill bonuses at the cost of everything else, but not both. I remember CD2 where +9 was about the most you could expect from an equipment set.
Secondly, all the unique boots are the same. It reminds me of friggin Hellfire.
BTW you're sure you got negative per-level affixes working? Wow, maybe I should've played with itemstatcost more before releasing...
It's me who should have said oops... just found out the hard way that they only DISPLAY properly, but don't DO anything. Scrap one affix setup that only cost me 2 weeks to build. Blah and blah.
What DOES work though is -min damage and -max damage. I use it to make item damage more random. Mad Soul Circus, 1-450 damage. Or something like Bane of Skarra, bow, -30 or something to min and max damage, 100% chance to shoot lvl1 Another Arrow on attack, 50% chance to shoot lvl1 Another Arrow on attack. Dead Bardic Arch, 0-0 damage, 25% chance to cast lvl1 Quadruple Damage Arrow on attack. The barely useful but weird sort of uniques.
(yes, there is a subliminal hint in here)
(no, I actually do like this mod. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered posting my opinion here)
19.may.2007 | Adun Tori Laz.
Median XL released!
Flesyht sa ruobhgien yht etah.


y dont u play the game the way its supposta be played? -SlothNathan

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Post by Quark » Thu Nov 28, 2002 4:58 pm

Quick reply:

Green mods: the mods that an item will give you when wearing other items from that set. Green mods love to go crazy on you, especially when socketing items.

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Post by FoxBat » Thu Nov 28, 2002 5:36 pm

Sounds like you've taken a look through all the uniques... what in your opinion was overpowered?
The huge skill bonuses on elite class uniques. IIRC there is one with +5 to battle orders (or was it revive?) on top of +3 to its tree... in LoD unique items with huge skill boni tend to boost useless skills (K's Owl +6 holy fire, Plague Bearer +5 rabies) but I'd hardly call BO useless.
Read carefully, this item "Valorblind Chant" has no skilltab bonus. That's why it has the +5. :mrgreen: This was certainly the intent with any of those bigger +skill bonuses, it's because they lack a general skilltab bonus. If an exception is found, it's likely unintentional and needs fixing.

BTW I do like those item ideas but I am just not that creative, like I said Spider came up with most of the themes and I just adjusted them. I do of course accept ideas, but you'll probably need all that you've got for your own mod ;)
Last edited by FoxBat on Thu Nov 28, 2002 5:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by FoxBat » Thu Nov 28, 2002 5:39 pm

Sorry for the double post, this isn't my day... :oops:

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Post by Brother Laz » Fri Nov 29, 2002 8:29 am

Hmmm... so +3 skilltab +3 skill can spawn on magic/rare class-specifics? That's cool. :/ NEVER seen any of those though. Knowing how hard it is with the normal LoD affix setup (aka 'piles of trash, one uber item in a lifetime') to get one, it might be that they do exist but I just never saw any of them.

I seriously thought there was an error or something and +3 skilltab bonuses could not spawn on the items at all, because I never saw one. Do thney no longer appear in the shops then? Or did you reduce their chance to drop? Cause I went through Hell with that charged strike zon, two druids, and halfway through with a necromancer and never saw any +3 skilltab bonus after the first patch. :(
19.may.2007 | Adun Tori Laz.
Median XL released!
Flesyht sa ruobhgien yht etah.


y dont u play the game the way its supposta be played? -SlothNathan

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