Kyle873's Doom RPG Mod [0.10.0 Beta]

[subenji]

Well I don't intend on tweaking things for without DRLA, just changing the loot generation for the chests so you don't end up with an inventory of superior or above tier weapons and armor by MAP05.

[Silentdarkness12]

Well, sure, i'd expect that much : P

[DarkkOne]

Yeah. My point though is just that with default settings, no other mods, and on "normal" shouldn't the beginning game be baselined to default Doom at the same difficulty? That way it scales appropriately to other mods that could be paired with it, or other maps, or whatever, since they too should generally be scaled around default Doom. The fact that you can tweak it is great, but when discussing difficulty it should basically be "untweaked" difficulty.


But yeah, seeing the chests fixed would be great. Once you hit Map 07 in Doom 2, there's a nearly-guaranteed chest that spawns in the room with you, and typically about half of the invisibility spheres will be replaced with chests. You'll leave map 07 with something amazing.

Honestly, I think maybe master assemblies (or anything but basic ones, and exotic and possibly superior guns) shouldn't be in chests at all, but instead a higher rate of finding mods for making them? Combine that with limiting uniques to missions. So chests can give you decent base weapons / exotics, and the materials necessary to turn them into good stuff, but the really cool guns still require you to jump through hoops?

Aaaaalso maybe for balance, it might make sense to limit missions based on rank. Like... Rank 1 only gives you access to the very easiest ones? Right now it's super easy to just go in, get rank 1, then take a "Kill X Auras" mission for the shield piece / gun / armor / whatever that you want, and bypass the whole "hopefully I find something good in a chest" thing. You can have legendaries by map 3 or 4, if not earlier if you spend a bit of time in the arena getting a rank up. Fixing the chests wouldn't address this at all.

[subenji]

Oh whoops!
I thought, "doesn't it already do that? I swear mission difficulties are tied to player rank..." and then checked the code - I missed that check when altering the Mission screen to use consistent input.
I'll push an update now.

[Silentdarkness12]

Ew, no, i'd like to be able to have a chance to find epic-tier loot in crates. That's what eggs me on to try and hack the locked crates. The promise that there's a great piece in there!

[subenji]

OK, tested and fork updated.

While testing, I had another instance of exactly this issue - a "common" level crate contained a bulletstorm chaingun, hyperblaster, overcharged plasmatic shotgun, 2 miniguns....
I'm all for epic loot in epic crates - that won't change - but right now we have far too good loot appearing in basic level crates.

So you know I'm working on a big feature, here's a little teaser of what's to come:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-U3T_ ... -15-58.png

[whateve]

Ew, no, i'd like to be able to have a chance to find epic-tier loot in crates. That's what eggs me on to try and hack the locked crates. The promise that there's a great piece in there!

not to disparage your position, because I understand the feeling, but this is the exact opposite of what I'd like. At the moment, it feels as if credits are largely useless, and I'd rather have more pressure on to build up to better tier weapons rather than go "oh hey nano ammo bfg+5 modpacks, thanks map07"

ideally, once things are stable, we can dive in and tailor the drop rates to whatever we like. maybe even have that under loot generation options, if subenji feels up to it.

[Silentdarkness12]

Useless? I can't really say I agree with that. In the extreme late-game, I still find myself dumping a lot of credits into stuff like turret parts, ammo, mod-packs, etc etc.

I think the real solution to what you're talking about is not to remove epic loot from epic crates, but reduce the spawn rate for crates in the first place. And maybe remove epic and legendary crates from the ammo drop skill.

[DarkkOne]

Do crates weight loot? I mean, I feel like when I find a good item, it'll sometimes be like... 3 or 4 uniques at once. Not to mention some uniques are clearly a higher power tier than others.

Maybe treat it like some games do with an item budget? Give different guns a point value that approximates their general strength/ tier, then give crates at each quality a budget of points they can spend. That would mean a high quality crate could end up with a couple really good guns, or a *lot* of lower-quality ones, but those can be sold.

[subenji]

OK, I'll spell out my current plan regarding crates.
Crates have a rarity, that mostly coincides with DRLA's item rarities.

---

Code: Select all

str const CrateRarityNames[MAX_DIFFICULTIES] =
{
    "\CcBasic",
    "\CjCommon",
    "\CdUncommon",
    "\CdSuperior",
    "\CnRare",
    "\CnVery Rare",
    "\CiElite",
    "\CtLegendary",
    "\CfSupreme"
};

Code: Select all

(there's no one section of code I can quote)
Weapons: (there's various crossovers here, e.g. an assembled master can be better than a unique...)
Basic
Assembled - Basic
Assembled - Advanced
Assembled - Master
Exotic
Superior
Unique
Demonic
Legendary

Armor:
Basic
Assembled / Color-Assembled (Green,Blue,Red)
Onyx
Exotic
Superior
Unique
Demonic
Legendary

Modpacks:
Basic
Advanced
Demonic

I want to align these, so a Superior level crate cannot contain anything more valuable than Superior level weapons and armor. I also want to fix the skew when DRLA is loaded to crates full of all weapons or all armor, powerups, modpacks etc should be in the loot mix too. I'm considering whether to do the "crate drop" type of system where most items will be of lesser quality, but with a guaranteed drop of at least 1 item of matching quality to the crate.
While i'm still making my mind up about reducing the amount of crates, I do think reducing the amount of items in the crates could work - when tied with these changes.

[DarkkOne]

An item budget could work excellently then for a system like that.

You could even split the budget, so that it's X points for equippables (weapons/armor) and Y points for powerups (shield parts, augs, stims, etc). If you make the scale exponential (say, each quality of guns costs double the quality below).

Then you give a tier-3 crate a budget of 24 points, but force it to spawn a tier 3 item automatically (dropping it to 16 points). Then it "buys" random items until it's out of points. In exceptionally rare cases it could 'buy' a tier-4 16 point item, if the very first item it buys is tier-4. Or it could buy two more tier-3 items, also very rare. The most likely outcome is a mix of tier-0 (1-point items, base guns probably), tier-1 (2-point items) and tier-2 (4 point items). The "worst" outcome would be 16 tier-0 items, which could at least mean some credits, or some bases for mods.

The budget could be slightly randomized (like, 24 could be the cap for tier 3, but it could be anywhere between 16-24).

This gives you the chance of a really lucky find, the guaranteed "at the same quality loot" and a wide range of variety with limits that create a nice bell curve, and allow randomness while still letting a player get a "feel" for what to expect out of each type of crate.

This also allows you to place items outside of their "quality" (for example, an assembled master could have a cost of 8 or 16, varying by gun, based on how well they actually perform, or where you see them belonging in the balance scale).

It allows "quality" of the gun to affect its drop rate, rather than just what "type" it is.

[subenji]

I like this idea.

[DarkkOne]

I'm more than happy to help where I can. I'm just starting to learn decorate and ACS but I have general programming experience and some experience with things like this.

Edit: This is a DoomRLA issue really, but the DoomRLA weapons are worth way too much money. There's one (the Reailty something or other) that's worth 12345678. That's enough to basically max a few augs and build a killer turret. Finding that one weapon can make you take half as much damage, do four times as much damage, have additional bonuses, and a turret that will handle 90% of the job of playing Doom for you.

That being said, there might be ways to address the aug issue without touching DRLA. The simplest being something like making the total ranks of your augs can't surpass either your level, or your rank, or some combination of the two. That way you can raise your augs up to be more powerful as you go, rather than it being 100% based on how much money you have.

Possibly something similar for the turret. Possibly tie it to a stat? Your turret's "level" (the total number of upgrades applied to it) could be limited to your "Capacity" for example, or some other stat.

There are other ways to look at it, of course, and this is mostly to spur discussion, but I feel like both Turret and Aug can jump you up really high, really fast, if you have a money windfall, where the guns can be really powerful, but are still limited by your level since you only get so much damage bonus per level naturally.

[DarkkOne]

Playing some last night, I finally got the chance to really max out the turret, buy all the shield upgrades, and get all of my stats (except agility) above 110. I'm sure I could've just cheated to do this, but I was really just playing around.

Note: These observations are all based on personal experience, and could easily include me overlooking things.

There are a lot of balance concerns here. The turret is *way* too 'expensive' for the fact that it seems to basically have an upper limit in power. I could set difficulty to easy and take a bounty on a Terminator or Nightmare Mastermind that would be unable to even get through my shield in a reasonable amount of time, let alone my actual health and health regen, but would wipe out the turret in an instant. The turret has 100% of upgrades purchased.

Augs are... iffy. They're basically a free bonus multiplier to a few stats. Being able to permanently enable 4x damage is crazy, and basically impossible to balance around. You either balance around having it turned on, in which case buying it is mandatory, or you don't, in which case it trivialized content. There may be a few good ways to balance this, though. For example, rather than just passively draining the battery, the damage increase aug could drain with each shot. This could either be balanced so that rapid fire weapons use less, and slower weapons use more, for consistent drain per second, or it could be balanced so that it's strictly per-shot making the player have to only use it with big single-hit weapons.

Another way (and my current favorite idea) would be to change it so that all aug power is drained in a single shot, with ranks of the aug increasing how much the aug power is worth (starting at 0.05%, then 0.1% and maxing at about 0.3% making 1000 aug battery 4x you had before). You'd have an incentive to only turn it on for bosses, when you can fire one big shot (this would probably necessitate being able to set toggling augs to keys, though I think they need a wheel anyway). It would also allow augs to continue to scale with stats, since now capacity increases the total amount of bonus damage it can do.

Right now, augs are generally a very passive bonus. You invest in the charge aug, then pick a few others you like and leave them turned on. Or you turn a bunch on, and occasionally feed them batteries. And just the damage and resist aug (not even throwing in the regen ones) can be really game-breaking.


One thing I think seems to be the case is that each of the systems doesn't really seem to take into account the other systems. They're not really balanced around each other.

I think there's a lot that can be done here (I mean, I love this mod, and I *firmly* believe that it should be possible to become crazily overpowered in any good RPG anyway) but maybe a starting point would be just determining what the role of each "upgrade" type is?

I do far less damage with summons than I do with guns right now, because they too seem to cap out. Auras are a cool idea, but they seem specifically designed to be unsustainable. Augs are crazy powerful. The turret seems too fragile, and by the time you can really afford to make it do much, it's been left behind. The bonuses for going higher than 100 in each stat seem to be largely based on the idea that you'll be fighting at mid-low health, since they often depend on your health being low to kick in, but most things either barely scratch you, or nuke you nearly instantly. Shields... well, shields could be okay if they're what everything else is balanced around. There seems to be an idea that you should either choose shields or armor, but without DRLA, shields are unambiguously the better choice. *With* DRLA, shields + some armor that has a set bonus and active ability is the obvious choice, since you can still activate it while shielded (this seems a bug, and if you lost the set bonus and active that'd make the decision at least a little more difficult, but only with the very best armors).

I won't get into stims here, because I don't feel like I have much of a grasp on them yet. They're a bit complicated.

I guess the idea is "what is a player *supposed* to be doing with each of these things? Generally, yeah, the idea is "they can play how they want." But right now, you kinda can't. At least not without significantly hobbling yourself.

So, which parts are supposed to be mandatory? Should every player have a shield? Should every player be required to invest in the Heal and possibly Invulnerability and Ammo Drop skills? Should every player have to use Augs when facing bosses? Should turrets have a real combat role, or primarily be a support/heal type thing? (They feel a lot like PSO's mags to me, and I could see them doing well by going in that direction).

Basically, something needs to be the "core" that other aspects are balanced around, and the other aspects need to have a purpose, so that you know *why* you'll make whatever changes you make to them. There's an awful lot of good stuff here, I mean all of the systems seem interesting, but there's a lot of polishing that can be done that I think would increase player choice, because right now it feels like there's a very limited path to a powerful feeling character.

[Silentdarkness12]

Playing some last night, I finally got the chance to really max out the turret, buy all the shield upgrades, and get all of my stats (except agility) above 110. I'm sure I could've just cheated to do this, but I was really just playing around.

Note: These observations are all based on personal experience, and could easily include me overlooking things.

There are a lot of balance concerns here. The turret is *way* too 'expensive' for the fact that it seems to basically have an upper limit in power. I could set difficulty to easy and take a bounty on a Terminator or Nightmare Mastermind that would be unable to even get through my shield in a reasonable amount of time, let alone my actual health and health regen, but would wipe out the turret in an instant. The turret has 100% of upgrades purchased.

Augs are... iffy. They're basically a free bonus multiplier to a few stats. Being able to permanently enable 4x damage is crazy, and basically impossible to balance around. You either balance around having it turned on, in which case buying it is mandatory, or you don't, in which case it trivialized content. There may be a few good ways to balance this, though. For example, rather than just passively draining the battery, the damage increase aug could drain with each shot. This could either be balanced so that rapid fire weapons use less, and slower weapons use more, for consistent drain per second, or it could be balanced so that it's strictly per-shot making the player have to only use it with big single-hit weapons.

Another way (and my current favorite idea) would be to change it so that all aug power is drained in a single shot, with ranks of the aug increasing how much the aug power is worth (starting at 0.05%, then 0.1% and maxing at about 0.3% making 1000 aug battery 4x you had before). You'd have an incentive to only turn it on for bosses, when you can fire one big shot (this would probably necessitate being able to set toggling augs to keys, though I think they need a wheel anyway). It would also allow augs to continue to scale with stats, since now capacity increases the total amount of bonus damage it can do.

Right now, augs are generally a very passive bonus. You invest in the charge aug, then pick a few others you like and leave them turned on. Or you turn a bunch on, and occasionally feed them batteries. And just the damage and resist aug (not even throwing in the regen ones) can be really game-breaking.


One thing I think seems to be the case is that each of the systems doesn't really seem to take into account the other systems. They're not really balanced around each other.

I think there's a lot that can be done here (I mean, I love this mod, and I *firmly* believe that it should be possible to become crazily overpowered in any good RPG anyway) but maybe a starting point would be just determining what the role of each "upgrade" type is?

I do far less damage with summons than I do with guns right now, because they too seem to cap out. Auras are a cool idea, but they seem specifically designed to be unsustainable. Augs are crazy powerful. The turret seems too fragile, and by the time you can really afford to make it do much, it's been left behind. The bonuses for going higher than 100 in each stat seem to be largely based on the idea that you'll be fighting at mid-low health, since they often depend on your health being low to kick in, but most things either barely scratch you, or nuke you nearly instantly. Shields... well, shields could be okay if they're what everything else is balanced around. There seems to be an idea that you should either choose shields or armor, but without DRLA, shields are unambiguously the better choice. *With* DRLA, shields + some armor that has a set bonus and active ability is the obvious choice, since you can still activate it while shielded (this seems a bug, and if you lost the set bonus and active that'd make the decision at least a little more difficult, but only with the very best armors).

I won't get into stims here, because I don't feel like I have much of a grasp on them yet. They're a bit complicated.

I guess the idea is "what is a player *supposed* to be doing with each of these things? Generally, yeah, the idea is "they can play how they want." But right now, you kinda can't. At least not without significantly hobbling yourself.

So, which parts are supposed to be mandatory? Should every player have a shield? Should every player be required to invest in the Heal and possibly Invulnerability and Ammo Drop skills? Should every player have to use Augs when facing bosses? Should turrets have a real combat role, or primarily be a support/heal type thing? (They feel a lot like PSO's mags to me, and I could see them doing well by going in that direction).

Basically, something needs to be the "core" that other aspects are balanced around, and the other aspects need to have a purpose, so that you know *why* you'll make whatever changes you make to them. There's an awful lot of good stuff here, I mean all of the systems seem interesting, but there's a lot of polishing that can be done that I think would increase player choice, because right now it feels like there's a very limited path to a powerful feeling character.

Okay, here's my opinion on your items here:

@Turret: Yes, it does seem like a very pricy item that ends up being wiped fairly easily. Although it is worth noting that once you get all the efficiency upgrades, it's far less of a chore to get it outfitted, repaired and recharged. Still could use a buff in the defense category.

@Augs: I think the augmentations are pretty fair as they are, to be honest. Yes, the late-game augs are QUITE powerful, and may even seem ludicrously powerful to the point of being OP, but monsters can inflict the EMP debuff on you, shutting down all your Augs. Which could potentially screw you up if you were heavily dependent on the Augs.

They used to be a lot more overpowered, giving infinite ammo xD

That said, your idea of incentivizing having them off most of the time, and being major energy hogs is unappealing, I think. The uber-hard levels may require being able to seriously up your DPS, especially if you're playing singleplayer. I can't stress this hard enough when you throw in mods like DRLA+Monsters. Looking at you, Agony Elemental.....

@Summons This. I really hate how underpowered summons are. It's far too easy to lose them, and they die way too easily anyways. I think the heal-summons skill should be used to revive dead summons instead.

@Stims They're seemingly meant to give the player that little extra edge when they're in over their heads and have a tough situation that they really can't manage with what they have on hand. Such as being stuck behind an Armageddon difficulty mission in DRLA : P I think it's fairly balanced, although i've yet to make a single stim above a medium size that isn't going to kill me. So maybe it does need rebalancing instead. : P