The balancing process

Started by Tynan, June 19, 2018, 06:06:57 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Alenerel

#15
Quote from: Tynan on June 19, 2018, 08:47:45 AM
FWIW, I make basically no money off my book. There's zero chance that the effort to write that post was worth the cup of convenience store coffee I might earn from related book sales. This is about RimWorld and the RW community.

My reply was a joke but it failed cause it wasnt written in joke-y manner... Now you are mad at me and will never talk to me again...

SpookCrow

Quote from: Tynan on June 19, 2018, 08:47:45 AM
Quote from: Alenerel on June 19, 2018, 07:19:48 AM
- Even tho your long post has a point, I cant help but to feel that it was an excuse to plug in your book.

FWIW, I make basically no money off my book. There's zero chance that the effort to write that post was worth the cup of convenience store coffee I might earn from related book sales. This is about RimWorld and the RW community.
How much is the book.
"Fear is the enemy within you that can lead to your demise." -Spook

TheMeInTeam

Quote from: CrowSR on June 19, 2018, 11:39:52 AM
I've not played that long in 1.0 but I can already feel that the deflection on cloth items needs to be changed a bit.
Nothing feels more frustrating than having a colonist with armor and an autopistol get downed by a tribal raider with a club and magical cloth duster that deflects BULLETS

There are cloth-like materials that do give a small chance IRL to deflect bullets.  If you put a round dead center torso it won't, if it's glancing it can make a difference.

Considering that Rimworld folk have a tendency to aim like blindfolded fish shooting at skeet while riding backwards on a station wagon, the occasional glancing blow is arguably more plausible than some of the surrounding mechanical interactions :p.

ashaffee

#18
I agree with this 100%. I hate the idea that in most of my games I felt like I had no choice but to build a kill box early on in extreme because there wasn't time to build an actual base yet. The pace of the early game feels just a bit too easy but definitely on the right track.

From out the gate I can play this game in my style which is almost turn based strategy where every building has a way to defend  from it and navigate to flank. Plus punishing raiders with traps on the corners of my buildings being used as cover. I really really want the ability to reinstall traps because they are a thing built after studying behavior. A chance to detect traps would offset their opness as well. Instead of gauranteeing deaths they can be used to deny cover for the enemy or influence their pathing.

The animal thing really had to be done. I accidently built a swarm of 100 labs before. One time I just left my tamer and 1 other person behind while the rest were doing a quest. I sent like 80% of them in an animal zone outside of my base just to see what would happen and it was insane. All raiders dead with maybe only 25% losses.

Whiskiz

#19
Awesome.

Thank you, for actually balancing the game instead of leaving it a broken casual mess because of the pushback you would inevitably receive from the broken casual majority population.

I never liked the idea of newer or more casual people in any hobby, that try to reduce the depth, complexity and/or general challenge of the hobby to suit their personal level, which is generally pretty low. People cater to this in the gaming industry alot because it obviously leads to more $$$ for reaching more of the broken casual majority market. Thank you for not being one of these sellouts.

I understand it psychologically, it's even a recognized thing in Retail - that it sucks to have something taken away rather than added to, like when weighing meat at the deli counter etc. It sucks to have OP toys taken away, but is necessary for the health and longevity of a game.

As soon as i found out about just making "killboxes" to completely negate any semblance of challenge whatsoever, i stopped playing the game. It was a huge letdown. People say "Just dont do/use X or Y" but it just doesn't make sense logically - having a player restrict themselves from certain parts of game design, instead of fixing said game design and restricting yourself like that arbitrarily is not an easy thing to do.

It's great to see these things are being not only addressed, but with more thought than beyond simply as you said for example just "nerfing turrets" which then has other unintended downsides like making using just a few not very useful.

Taming and Turrets definitely needed some balance, but so do traps. Any intention of trying to fix the trap corridor that purposely exploits enemy AI and makes it so you get all the strengths of traps without the weaknesses? (your own pawns potentially triggering them, etc.) Especially when just 2 or 3 traps can kill an enemy and you don't need many in turn to send entire raiding parties away. Most overpowered early game.

Don't mind the afore mentioned broken casual (even if-) majority player base - they are only wanting to have the game revolve around their very basic level and in turn don't care about the potential, health and longevity of the game, so let them be upset all they want.

For as almost as many of them as there are - there are others like me who really appreciate your direction and thought process behind the decisions as well as decisions themselves, even if we aren't as loud about it :P

Thanks again.


Diana Winters

Perhaps have damage deflected off of "hard" stuff types (such as steel) and reduced from "soft" stuff types (such as cloth)

TheMeInTeam

Quote from: Whiskiz on June 19, 2018, 12:50:06 PM
Awesome.

Thank you, for actually balancing the game instead of leaving it a broken casual mess because of the pushback you would inevitably receive from the broken casual majority population.

I never liked the idea of newer or more casual people in any hobby, that try to reduce the depth, complexity and/or general challenge of the hobby to suit their personal level, which is generally pretty low. People cater to this in the gaming industry alot because it obviously leads to more $$$ for reaching more of the broken casual majority market. Thank you for not being one of these sellouts.

I understand it psychologically, it's even a recognized thing in Retail - that it sucks to have something taken away rather than added to, like when weighing meat at the deli counter etc. It sucks to have OP toys taken away, but is necessary for the health and longevity of a game.

As soon as i found out about just making "killboxes" to completely negate any semblance of challenge whatsoever, i stopped playing the game. It was a huge letdown. People say "Just dont do/use X or Y" but it just doesn't make sense logically - having a player restrict themselves from certain parts of game design, instead of fixing said game design and restricting yourself like that arbitrarily is not an easy thing to do.

It's great to see these things are being not only addressed, but with more thought than beyond simply as you said for example just "nerfing turrets" which then has other unintended downsides like making using just a few not very useful.

Taming and Turrets definitely needed some balance, but so do traps. Any intention of trying to fix the trap corridor that purposely exploits enemy AI and makes it so you get all the strengths of traps without the weaknesses? (your own pawns potentially triggering them, etc.) Especially when just 2 or 3 traps can kill an enemy and you don't need many in turn to send entire raiding parties away. Most overpowered early game.

Don't mind the afore mentioned broken casual (even if-) majority player base - they are only wanting to have the game revolve around their very basic level and in turn don't care about the potential, health and longevity of the game, so let them be upset all they want.

For as almost as many of them as there are - there are others like me who really appreciate your direction and thought process behind the decisions as well as decisions themselves, even if we aren't as loud about it :P

Thanks again.

Claiming that turrets are strong in B18 and then calling out other players as casual is pretty inconsistent with reality :p.

If we're serious about using empirical reality to nerf anything in terms of raid defense in Rimworld, the single most important construct to nerf in the game is doors...and it isn't close.

ReZpawner

Speaking of books though, is there any chance that you'll write about the journey that led you to make Rimworld, and the process of making it?
I can't help but think that it would be a fascinating read. Not just a book full of empty quotes, but the entire history, from start to finish.
As much as I'm interested in the book on design, I can't help but think that there are thousands of books like it out there, that all cover pretty much the same stuff.
A detailed journey of the whole process of making the game would offer so much more to the reader. Not just the design part, but also the programming, the business side, what went right, what went wrong and so on.

draba

#23
Quote from: Tynan on June 19, 2018, 06:06:57 AM
Other changes relate to that too. For example, armor is now a chance-of-damage-cancel instead of a damage reduction. This means there are less wounds, but the wounds you get are significant. But, medicine is spent per wound, so this reduces time and medicine spend tending wounds, which on the econ side makes straight-up combat more viable. It also means that if you can get some really awesome armor, sending melee fighters to actually fight should be more viable since there's a real good chance you can win without getting hurt, as opposed to previous builds where you might win but you'd have a bunch of damage-reduced (but still bleeding) wounds - possibly on your eyes or brain.

I think armor could really use some kind of small flat damage reduction(on top of the % ones).
Clothing deflecting sniper shots and the weakest firearms/squirrels penetrating power armor both look silly.

Maybe use deflection ranges, for example normal devilstrand duster:
- guaranteed to reduce cutting/blunt damage by 2/1
- further reduces damage by up to 10/6, or has X% chance to reduce damage by 10/6
That way you can still have the deflection mechanics and avoid absurd situations.
Think Fallout 1-2-Tactics, I think a similar system would work very well here.

One other thing I dislike is that weapons are somewhat normalized, higher end guns could get some kind of maintenance or ammo cost and be made slightly better compared to primitive/weak ones.
With the flat armor reduction outlined above high-powered weapons could potentially lose some raw DPS for better penetration, so SMGs/pistols and the like are a bit better against soft targets up close.

RimSol

I'm very grateful for all of the updates.

Tynan, you have created and are continuing to improve on one of the best, if not, THE BEST, game I've ever played.

I tell my friends at work about this game. They are blown away by the stories your coding has helped create.

Keep up the amazing work- if not for the money, than for creating the most enjoyable rts/colony builder/survival/rpg/simulation ever created.

99% of games come and go these days- Rimworld has been in my arsenal since the day I touched it two years ago.

empa

Quote from: Alenerel on June 19, 2018, 07:19:48 AM
I have 2 points:
- Maybe make the cloth damage reduction only
- Even tho your long post has a point, I cant help but to feel that it was an excuse to plug in your book.

1. Making two different type of systems that effectively accomplishes the same thing is just like tynan said, unnecessary complex.

2. Plugging his book? what? I didn't realize he even had a book until you pointed that out.

Rincewind

Quote from: Whiskiz on June 19, 2018, 12:50:06 PM
Awesome.

Thank you, for actually balancing the game instead of leaving it a broken casual mess because of the pushback you would inevitably receive from the broken casual majority population.

I never liked the idea of newer or more casual people in any hobby, that try to reduce the depth, complexity and/or general challenge of the hobby to suit their personal level, which is generally pretty low. People cater to this in the gaming industry alot because it obviously leads to more $$$ for reaching more of the broken casual majority market. Thank you for not being one of these sellouts.

I understand it psychologically, it's even a recognized thing in Retail - that it sucks to have something taken away rather than added to, like when weighing meat at the deli counter etc. It sucks to have OP toys taken away, but is necessary for the health and longevity of a game.

As soon as i found out about just making "killboxes" to completely negate any semblance of challenge whatsoever, i stopped playing the game. It was a huge letdown. People say "Just dont do/use X or Y" but it just doesn't make sense logically - having a player restrict themselves from certain parts of game design, instead of fixing said game design and restricting yourself like that arbitrarily is not an easy thing to do.

It's great to see these things are being not only addressed, but with more thought than beyond simply as you said for example just "nerfing turrets" which then has other unintended downsides like making using just a few not very useful.

Taming and Turrets definitely needed some balance, but so do traps. Any intention of trying to fix the trap corridor that purposely exploits enemy AI and makes it so you get all the strengths of traps without the weaknesses? (your own pawns potentially triggering them, etc.) Especially when just 2 or 3 traps can kill an enemy and you don't need many in turn to send entire raiding parties away. Most overpowered early game.

Don't mind the afore mentioned broken casual (even if-) majority player base - they are only wanting to have the game revolve around their very basic level and in turn don't care about the potential, health and longevity of the game, so let them be upset all they want.

For as almost as many of them as there are - there are others like me who really appreciate your direction and thought process behind the decisions as well as decisions themselves, even if we aren't as loud about it :P

Thanks again.

sorry for disturbing your majesty, Mr Hardcore Player, but IRL by game design your able to rape, rob or kill people, even eat them. But somehow (i hope) you didn't do this. So your argument about not using "exploits" in game is invalid.

TheMeInTeam

^ Doing those things IRL has costs, and not just the immediately obvious legal ones.  It's not a refutation to his argument, even though said argument is still nonsense (nerfing a 4-5 strength option on the premise that it's a 9 despite that evidence doesn't support that conclusion).

Riffy

And here I am just hoping the fear system would return.

Probe1

I feel for you Tynan.  I've had these discussions myself with my players.  It's never pleasant and you always get yelled at for ruining the game and other fantastic hyperboles.  It must be much worse at your level with thousands of users giving feedback compared to my experience.