Yep, those things are only available as equipment, there will be magical and rare arrows / bolts / slingshot bulletsDo those new arrow types mean that the skills they are based off will be replaced? Or what will happen to those skills? Won't they be redundant?
(I'm all for all brand new skills in mods anyway...)
...
This also gives me a chance to write a small summary of the balance in MetalStorm, and also a bit of a rant on D2 ( because we all knew this was comming! ) ( planned balance better to say, we are not in the process of doing this now, balance comes after a product is in post production, but before the real release, to avoid having to readjust everything 10000 times as new things are implemented, it is important to remember however that the code for everything here is either already in place but not adjusted or rather simple to implement using the current code base, except in cases were it has been noted that it still has to be done ).
Vanilla v1.10+ is so broken and bugged to an extent its not possible to break the balance, there simply is none left to break. When you encourage players to waste all points to boost a single attack skill via synergies so that they can cope against the grind-curve and reach lvl 99 for no reason whatsoever, other then doing it (many of the people I know that reached this level used bots to do so anyway, due to the utterly unfair lvl 95 curve, ie the requirement to lack a life), wouldn't it be for this curve, you could achieve lvl 95-99 by around the time you defeat hell baal, thus during regular game play, that is something I'd consider a fair deal, not artificially prolonging something by beating the dead horse repeatedly.
Having physical hitters (ie characters that rely on weapons) near useless by nerfing their main skills repetedly to the point of absurdidty, not addressing the real flaws, giving everything and its uncle rediculous physical resistance, having two penalities applied on life and mana steal ( both a individual penalty, and a global penalty... one being more then enough [ ofc, they shouldn't have added dual leech to everything except boots to start with... ] ) while at the same time pumping skills like meteor repeatedly (at slvl 20 it did 268-278 damage in v1.06, by v1.10 it has reached 955-1019 and thats without considering stuff like the mastery, the synergies, equipment with -target resist etc), allowing them to sweep away everything with one 15-20K blast (the virtually crippled and disabled artificial [strike]idiocy[/strike] intelligence doesn't help either). Then trying to make up for this by creating rediculously overpowered equipment that allows spell casters, not the initially intended poor physical hitters, to equip their mercs with 3 auras (meaning it ends with 4 auras because there are no mercs besides those act II guys), allows the mercs to deal a whooping 10K damage (and thats without the bugs comming into play!) thus eliminating the only real need for them to have more then one attack skill (immunes) entirely, with the exception ofc that act bosses get a bonus of +400% on all their damage output against mercs, while they recieve a penalty [ little rediculous petty fixups, vain attempts to fix whats already broken beyond repair... ], if this isn't broken, then I really don't know what is.
* enough with this rant *
MetalStorm isn't based upon this graetbazecrode, everything even remotely related to ai, damage and combat and many many other aspects is entirely new ( what remainds of D2 at present is merely a shell that handles the graphics, networking, threading, memory management etc, stuff I don't feel there is a reason to bother with atm ), written by a single individual, not 50+ devs that changed stuff without having an overview of the entire system over a course of 6 years under time constraints (though, that cannot hold as a justification for every tiny flaw, bug and quirk in this game), neither was the vanilla code debugged instruction by instruction, watching through execution and whatnot for hours on end to verify it does what its supposed to do****, now sure, there will be a handful of bugs that manage to slip underneath the radar but not in the order of magnitude displayed by vanilla ( keep in mind, vanilla actually manages to run despite all the mess even under extreme situations (ie open bnet), make your math what this means with the new code! ), there will also be some unexpected combinations that grant tremandous power, but, as mentioned elsewhere, neither me nor the other devs see this as a considerable problem, the system is meant to be very open to exploration and combination, it is true that having millions of different combinations makes true balance impossible (true balance, being impossible anyway, as its an entirely subjective feeling and depends on each and every players own expectations and experience), but at the same time, millions of combinations also make the casual cookiecutter go crazy as its equally difficult to make a cookiecutter build when you don't have certain guidelines (ie 'use engima', '08 gaze' and 'a few bugged items' to pwn). Hardcore audiences will always find ways to achieve things that are out of the developers own scope (and sometimes event intent!), its only a question how you feel about it, and whenever you consider it to be a very bad thing that your players are trying to push the limits (which in my book, it is not) [ note, I do not include using bugs and holes in this obviously ]. If it can be achieved by legal means, you have every right to do so if it can be done, its the sole reason for an open explorative system, with all the freedom to build something without being constrained to a template. The same goes for our concept of world design, having the entire game bloody linear doesn't contribute to the feeling of a organic, living world, this is not to say that you can ' go to kill hell baal at clvl 1 ' like it was possible in vanilla v1.09 and older (well actually, even if we did allow it, it wouldn't be baal
), the 'acts' being countries, in which you can progress, they have quests and missions ranging from the simplest tasks to absolutely suicidal ordeals, it all depends on how deep you are daring to progress (daring as in, you are not forced to do it, you can go about finishing only the few key events, it's up to you, if all you want to do is a 1% speed run, be my guest, I have no problem with it).It comes down to the same thing with rarity, grind in itself is a part found in any rpg, it depends on the extent in which it is used, many games today are nothing but archaic game mechanics bloated with more grind then can possibly be healthy to give them a feeling of length and depth. Artificially delaying the inevitable is not something that makes a game better, only longer, without actually doing anything clever (hell, grind can be replaced with difficulty, it equally adds to length, but at least its more challenging then killing pindleskin 1 billion and eleven times to find a windforce [which are 99.9999% botted and then duped anyway, mostly due to this artificial scarcity, punishing the few players that do not cheat]). But why do vanilla players want these uniques so badly? simply because theres no alternatives (I count rune words as uniques here, as they too have preset stats, due to being unable to make them in non normal gear [ok superior items too, but what is +1 to max damage worth nowadays] [off-weapon ofc it counts for more, *cough*]), so why do they want them so badly? they are the only real option. MetalStorm puts its emphasis on rare items, as mentioned, most unique items are novelties, they have some truely unique capabilities but they are not always good (can be turned to the good in some cases though, but thats for players to discover, some things aren't what they first appear). Magic items are more common then rare items for a reason, they are meant to be weaker, I thus don't really understand what rare herb bluzzard was abusing when they got the idea that set, magic, normal (due to runewords) and unique items should all be more powerful then rares. After all, its _EASIER_ to find a CCBQ in a shop then a decent rare colossus blade, despite the fact that a CCBQ can be socketed (with 3 sockets, for 2 shaels, to max its WW speed, and before v1.10, eth, due to the bad way the stat was designed). Shouldn't the effort going into finding a rare colossus blade with decent modifiers (this can take longer then finding a grandfather because the rare stats are random and due to the totally wrong affix rarity usually subpar to uniques of half the level that are easier to find...) actually _REWARD_ the player more then repetedly clicking "trade" on a npc while using the waypoint to reload the inv? In MetalStorm rare items are better, they are better because they are meant to be better, they are meant to be superior to magic items, anything else would be, to say the least, unlogical. There are going to be reasons to use magic items, I did restrict some group of properties to magic items only (+all resistances, +all stats) and in a few cases they will make certain modifiers available earlier in the game (when the rare item drop rate is generally lower), all in the spirit that stuff should have an organic flow and progress alongside your own progress, instead of posing an obstacle. Difficulty is achieved by means other then grind, excessive grind isn't difficulty, excessive grind is a farce on difficulty. Unique items will not exactly be hard to find (you will get them now and then, but you can only do so once [ the game remembers what items you and other players have found even after you start a new game ], this will also apply to set items and the one quality beyond unique).
Other aspects of the MetalStorm balance is that the game reacts to how powerful you have become (in a MP game it considers the most powerful player in the game to be the 'variable' to work with). This means that the game will get more difficult as you get stronger ( the ai will become more aggressive, monsters are of higher level ), so theoretically, if you are lvl 150 you can do one of the early missions in a country and still have challenge doing it. This is irrelated to general ai improvements, its one of the 'other factors' that come into play. This increase in difficulty is gradual ( you won't get mLvl 150 units in the very first area, but they could easily hit lvl 50-70 there ), considering that level per se doesn't mean much ( none of the key formulae really use it anymore ), but leveling allows you to become stronger in general, which ofc effects the formulae too ( more dex/str/con/int/car will have its effects ), but a lvl 1 monster with a +10 weapons can still hit you and it will have good odds of achieving this. ( along these lines, most enemies have random equipment, and future additions to the ai will allow them to use their potions and scrolls etc ).
Many of the implementations that indeed have potential to break gameplay when incorrectly implemented are standards in rpgs (instant death spells, more or less freedom to explore parts of the game in your own order, invisibility etc), Incorrect implementation is when things cannot be countered ( d2 has this key problem with stun, which makes you invicible when done right ). Enemy mages can cast True Sight, which dispells your invisibility (as one example), you can counter this using other spells to protect from it, but that will often leave you vulnerable to other stuff ( not all protective magic can stack! ), and the ai may just know what that other stuff is, and use whatever will hurt the most if it can (and is smart enough!). Psychics and some other units can sense your presence, you may make noise when moving (in certain level types), which makes the invisibility merely a LoS reduction (again, they must be smart enough). Some effects like disintegration of lower undead are broken if you'd consider lower undead (zombies, skeletons) to be the ultimate end game menace, by the time this modifier is available these units are fodder summoned by powerful arch lich mages that can cast page 7-9 spells, you'd def. have other things to worry about by then
)**** Had they done this, they could've easily spotted 80% of the bugs the game contains (some are very cryptic to find, and I imagine their source isn't exactly clean, having been worked upon by so many people over the years, so its doubtlessly very hard to find it, without knowing it exists in the first place), but to disillusion all of you, no company working on closed-source code will ever bother to do it, patches (in someone elses words, turd polishing), are cheaper and faster approach then proper development, using the gamma phase as a extended alpha test, in the long run it is more expensive to patch stuff, games aren't meant to exist long enough for this to matter, they will be replaced by new products, so lots of it can fall under the nobody cares (ie the shareholders don't care) clause. It's also easier to remarket existing game mechanics over and over again then comming up with something really new (with the exception of the sort of innovation that just annoys, as its targeted at casual instead of hardcore audience, which is natural in a growing market trying to reach ever new groups of customers).
Precisely, also, dev screenshots are a nice thing, but they shouldn't be something taken for granted to be the same way in the final release ( which is still very distant in the future ), they are by no means worth the time to draw elaborate conclusions about how things are going to end up. For example, we have designed nearly many different concepts on how to do skills since 2004 (at least 4 in the last couple of years), just to have them aborted in favor of something superior. The raw features and spirit will stay, the "why, when and what" will change. Many factors come into play in MetalStorm that are normal in rpgs, but absent from D2 ( ability to fail at quests, harsh consequences from how you do things, adaptive environments and ais ( diablos ai is a bit different, he actually decides what to use against you, he's also the only remotely challenging boss in vanilla ( but more so due to his obscene chance to block ) ... [ except for classic duriel, but that was due to preload lag ] ), effects like fear, freeze, stone curse, confuse, invisibility ( did you really think only players can do this? ), charm, blindness and so on an so forth.Well i'm sure when the time comes there will be plenty of testing, but like I said i've seen numerous mods struggleing over the fact that a lot of there skills are too, "Uber" and allow users to proceed through the game untouched. Of course, this mod has things that will also affect the player in a negative way more severely then any other mod out there at this point. Cursed items, Fear, etc.. so perhaps it would be possible. Right now though, I think we'll just wait and see.
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Of courseThe only way to get it right balanced. Is to actually test it
but there is a time and place for everything. Tweaking, fine tuning, balancing and testing have their place once we have everything layed out in front of us. Right now we are only testing for bugs and glitches with newly implemented code as it gets implemented. ( every bit of revised / new code is debugged even when theres no apparent reason to do so , "trust no one, not even your own code" )---
Everything looks top notch! I love that you moved Natalya to Act IV - not much happens at the fortress icon_wink.gif
The Disintegrate effect is also very cool. The animation looks real professional
Keep up the good work, Nef!
thanks, always nice to hear people like this stuff the animation of disintegrate uses existing gfx, but implemented in a bit different way (and at different anim rates
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PS: There will be no corpse_explosion-frozen_orb-meteor-chain_lightning-armageddon-nova, I promiss
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