Rodney Post 7DRL development (v13 released!!)

[Slash]

Right, I'll get into balancing it.

By the way, I'm on #rgrd at quakenet, in case someone wants to chat about this

[Vanguard]

Alright, so I've tried out a few rounds of the version posted last night.

You've done a good job improving the early game.  Low level enemies are much more threatening, and the game no longer has a boring phase where you don't need to think about what you're doing.  I also like that perks are now granted on every other level.  I found a bug where if you open and close your inventory, you can get a free perk.  It seems to only occur once per playthrough, so it doesn't completely break the game.

The biggest balance issue right now seems to be item distribution, particularly potions.  Healing potions are necessary, not optional, and strength/vitality potions are extremely powerful.  A player who gets lucky with potions will have a extreme advantage, and a player who gets unlucky might lose the game even with perfect play.  I recommend coming up with some system to even this out, such as generating one, and only one potion on each floor.  That would make the game much more fair and also decrease the need to explore every room of every floor.

I also think that armor should decay by the same amount for all incoming attacks.  Currently a nice set of armor can easily last for several floors in the early game, but only a few encounters in the late game.  Taking a ton of damage from a high level enemy is punishment enough without having your armor broken, and the inability of low level enemies' inability to damage armor was a major factor in the ease of the early game in older versions.

Do special attacks stack?  For instance, if I have both build up and corner, and I spend a turn resting and then on the next turn I strike an enemy against a wall, what happens?

[Xecutor]

Last version works fine in FF. At least I didn't encountered any problems till I died on lvl21.

As for other changes...
It looks like the game generates much fewer items on first floors. I've got my very first source of light on level 7!
Not sure if it's good or bad. But there is definitely more tension on first levels.
And the change I REALLY REALLY HATE is base damage roll from 1 to str.
This really breaks the game! There are so many enemies that you want to be dead from 1 hit, or you are
screwed otherwise, that chance of not making any significant damage for several turns is fatal!
First 3 wrathes reduced my max hp by 20! And I was dealing double damage to each wrath.
Another suggestion - probably rust monster should not deal any damage to leather armor?
The leather doesn't rust, as far as I know. This will also increase value of otherwise almost useless item.

[guest509]

  The rest monster was hurting my leather? I didn't notice, I just put it on, thinking I knew the trick. Probably it's taking normal damage instead of extra damage?

[Vanguard]

Armor is WAY too rare for how important it is.  Late game enemies cannot be consistently OHKOed and do too much to simply take it on the chin.  Early game enemies have a hard time standing up to a PC in armor, but extreme scarcity isn't a good solution.

And the change I REALLY REALLY HATE is base damage roll from 1 to str.

Whoah hold on.  Are you saying that when I attack with 10 strength, the game treats me as though my strength is a random number between 1 and 10?  That... is a serious problem if true.

Being able to reliably oneshot enemies is vital in Rodney (and I like that mechanic!  It's unique).  No health regeneration means minimal randomization is a must.

This really breaks the game! There are so many enemies that you want to be dead from 1 hit, or you are
screwed otherwise, that chance of not making any significant damage for several turns is fatal!
First 3 wrathes reduced my max hp by 20! And I was dealing double damage to each wrath.

Enemies with special effects on their attacks should have below average hp in general.  The exceptions are rust monsters, which can be beaten by dropping your armor.

For the most part, enemy health balance in Rodney is good, but I'd say ants, wraiths et al. could do with a bit less health.  The sweet spot is where an appropriately prepared player (a player with a decent weapon and adequate strength using a special attack) will always OHKO, while a player using a bad weapon or autoattacking will need two or more hits.

[Xecutor]

Armor is WAY too rare for how important it is.  Late game enemies cannot be consistently OHKOed and do too much to simply take it on the chin.  Early game enemies have a hard time standing up to a PC in armor, but extreme scarcity isn't a good solution.

And the change I REALLY REALLY HATE is base damage roll from 1 to str.

Whoah hold on.  Are you saying that when I attack with 10 strength, the game treats me as though my strength is a random number between 1 and 10?  That... is a serious problem if true.

Yes. I peeked at the source code. In earlier version str was solid base damage, and random weapon damage was added to it. But base damage is a roll 1..str. Which can lead us to (1+1)*2=4 damage with special attack when wielding spear, for example.

Being able to reliably oneshot enemies is vital in Rodney (and I like that mechanic!  It's unique).  No health regeneration means minimal randomization is a must.

This really breaks the game! There are so many enemies that you want to be dead from 1 hit, or you are
screwed otherwise, that chance of not making any significant damage for several turns is fatal!
First 3 wrathes reduced my max hp by 20! And I was dealing double damage to each wrath.

Enemies with special effects on their attacks should have below average hp in general.  The exceptions are rust monsters, which can be beaten by dropping your armor.

For the most part, enemy health balance in Rodney is good, but I'd say ants, wraiths et al. could do with a bit less health.  The sweet spot is where an appropriately prepared player (a player with a decent weapon and adequate strength using a special attack) will always OHKO, while a player using a bad weapon or autoattacking will need two or more hits.

I second this
It's already challenging enough to try to always kill monsters with special attacks with own special moves.
And when there are many monsters around, it's a serious challenge.
The paralyzing eye with the ant around is already something to be feared.
Confusion from the umberhulk with the wrath around is more then enough of a possibility to loose max health.

Thank you for your attention and thank you for the game. I hope together we will find a challenging, but fair balance

[Slash]

It looks like the game generates much fewer items on first floors. I've got my very first source of light on level 7!
Not sure if it's good or bad. But there is definitely more tension on first levels.

Yes, that was the idea... still need to balance it a bit.

And the change I REALLY REALLY HATE is base damage roll from 1 to str.
This really breaks the game! There are so many enemies that you want to be dead from 1 hit, or you are
screwed otherwise, that chance of not making any significant damage for several turns is fatal!
First 3 wrathes reduced my max hp by 20! And I was dealing double damage to each wrath.

I did that in order to make first enemies non-trivial to defeat. I'll look for an alternate solution

Another suggestion - probably rust monster should not deal any damage to leather armor?
The leather doesn't rust, as far as I know. This will also increase value of otherwise almost useless item.

Leather armor should not be damaged by Rust Monsters; if it's hapenning then it's a bug.

Thank you for your attention and thank you for the game. I hope together we will find a challenging, but fair balance

No, thank you for your interest!

[Slash]

Armor is WAY too rare for how important it is.  Late game enemies cannot be consistently OHKOed and do too much to simply take it on the chin.  Early game enemies have a hard time standing up to a PC in armor, but extreme scarcity isn't a good solution.

While I'd like luck to be an important factor on winning (like in rogue), I don't want to be extremely unfair. I'll increase the odds.

Enemies with special effects on their attacks should have below average hp in general.  The exceptions are rust monsters, which can be beaten by dropping your armor.

For the most part, enemy health balance in Rodney is good, but I'd say ants, wraiths et al. could do with a bit less health.  The sweet spot is where an appropriately prepared player (a player with a decent weapon and adequate strength using a special attack) will always OHKO, while a player using a bad weapon or autoattacking will need two or more hits.

Sounds good

[Vanguard]

I did that in order to make first enemies non-trivial to defeat. I'll look for an alternate solution

Personally, I think increasing the health of most low level enemies by a small amount would be a better way to achieve this.  Some of them need it anyway.  Orcs in particular seem fragile for the depths they appear in.

But since you said you want to keep a fair amount of randomization involved, what about this: the game rolls two numbers in between 1 and str and uses the average of the two for base damage.  That way things are more reliable on average, but the possibility of extreme luck still exists.

Hopefully I haven't come across as too negative or bossy in this thread.  I know that most of what I say is critical, but I do like your game.  So thanks for your hard work!

[Slash]

New version released, take a look!

Thanks for your feedback, keep it coming

http://games.slashware.net/rodney/

[Ex]

My keyboard doesn't seem to do anything once I'm past the name entry screen. I haven't tried it since a few versions back, so it may not be a bug specific to this version. The moment it gets past the name entry, none of my keys do anything. Also, clicking on the buttons that say up/down/etc doesn't do anything for me either. I can however type things into the chat box and press enter just fine, but even trying to chose the default skill by pressing enter does nothing.

[guest509]

I had the issue to but it seems to be fixed.

[Xecutor]

Try to look for errors in javascript console. If the game stops react to keyboard, it's highly likely that it has crashed.

I was playing the game slightly zoomed in. And now it doesn't fit on one page. As a result the scroller appeared and pressing and holding down arrow now scrolls the content of the page.

Is it me, or stalkers started to do some really serious damage?

[Vanguard]

I had my best run yet in this version.  I think I got to floor 23.  I found a suit of EXCELLENT PLATE MAIL early on, and assumed that would make me basically invincible, but some kind and helpful purple worms saw my confusion and explained to my why that was not the case.

Anyway, I've reached the conclusion that since the player's power changes relatively little over the course of the game, and enemy and item power change dramatically, the only way to achieve balance is to make the quality of generated items drastically better in the late game than the early game.  That's not to say that every early item needs to be trash or that every late item needs to be amazing, but I think they should trend in that direction.  The thing is, a nice set of banded mail will dominate the early game, but it's like, the bare minimum of what is acceptable in the late game.

I don't think reducing the quantity of items spawned in the early game would be a good solution, because a huge part of the strategy in Rodney is deciding whether you want to need that worn banded mail more than your excellent mace.  Or whatever.  And those kinds of decisions only come up if you find more useful items than you can carry.

I also did a run where I used only basic weapons and never upgraded my strength to try to gauge how much health early game enemies have.

In my opinion, hobgoblins, jackals, snakes, orcs, gnomes and zombies have a bit less health than they ought to.

I thought that kobolds, floating eyes, giant ants, leprechauns, and centaurs all had appropriate health for their threat levels and the depths in which they are encountered.

I didn't encounter any early game enemies which I thought had too much health.

Is it me, or stalkers started to do some really serious damage?

Yeah, they seem to be more dangerous than I remembered.

[Ex]

The game is still running, the animation for the charge ability is still playing, but I can't select anything or even change the selection on the menu. I just tried it again, still nothing.