Hey guys, I've been working on a new system for skills where you can "Charge" them up to a maximum duration. (Most skills will charge up to 3 seconds, some will be higher)
What this means is that you simply hold down the hotkey for the ability you wish to "Charge", which will have bonus effects the longer you charge. Here are some example skills:
Heaven's Judgement:
Deals 20 dmg instantly, plus an additional 50 damage for every second you charge this skill, up to a maximum of 150 damage.
Unleashed Fury:
Deals 80 damage. For every 2 seconds you charge, this skill will gain an additional effect, up to three tiers.
- Tier 1: Stuns the target
- Tier 2: Deals bonus damage
- Tier 3: Jumps into the air slamming the ground, dealing bonus damage and stunning in an AoE.
Those are 2 obviously different charge skills. One is simple charge as long as you want and release to deal it's bonus dmg. The second one, however, needs a predetermined amount of time to get it's extra effect (Up to 6 seconds total charge - translates to about 4 real time seconds). As you scale higher in tiers, your charging animation grows and looks more flashy.
Hey all to those following or interested... Here's screenshots of the new UI that's still a work in progress...
EDIT: My goal here with the new UI is to keep things from being cluttered. It has been simplified down to some basic necessities - but more elements can be added depending on how the user wants to see things. (Go to options menu)
Yes, the game will have roughly 900 total skills. The amount of skills a player actually WANTS to have is entirely up to them, though. Not all 900~ are learned immediately. A person can probably learn 100 skills or so if he gets rank 1 skills only. As you level, you get "Talent Points". These talent points are in the thousands. Let's say you hit level 2, you now have 10,000 talent points (You get 6000 at the start at level 1, and 4000 for leveling up). To "learn" a skill and get it to rank 1, it will cost roughly 2500 points. However, if you want to rank up that skill (max rank 10) it will only cost about 1000 points to rank it up.
Everything is indeed made in triggers. I barely use data at all, just to rename units, change status flags, resize units, etc... Nothing deep. Players have an action bar at the bottom (as pictured in the screenshots). There are 12 slots for skills, but don't let that hold you back! My UI is user customizable and you can add more action bar rows if you please, or even add vertical action bars. I allow for up to 3 rows of action bars, and 2 vertical rows - this totals 60 skills hotkeyable. Which leads me to mention that hotkeys are bindable to whatever you like. Some skills are passive and don't need you to drag them to the action bar, or activate by themselves in certain situations (low health, death, procs from spells, etc).
So, while there are an ample amount of skills, you really are limited to about 100 of them - something I don't expect many ppl to do, or none at all. I also have a "Build Saver" where you can quickly swap builds on the fly - except in the dungeons. When you enter a dungeon, you are locked with your build until you leave/complete the dungeon. The same goes for items. There will be an equipment manager I have not made yet. But expect it!
EDIT: To your crit comment. Yeah, it'll still be very hard to balance dps-wise. Another example is League of Legends. Diablo 3... yeah, another very VERY good example. In my opinion, the player should not complain about their low survivability if they chose to go blazing DPS. Then again, that is my opinion, and I don't know about the general mass. While I believe it is fun to do insane amounts of dmg and see the numbers fly, I think balancing that fun for others is a higher priority.
Yeah, I know there are some black parts to the image. I was a little less experienced with how SC2 handled images and alpha channels back when I made that, so now I'm stuck with it. It takes a lot of constant testing to get it perfect.. But I'll polish it up soon.
Also, I've completed the quest system to those reading. I'm also looking for testers...
Do you mean in the last few screenshots on the main post? If so, yeah, I guess I never noticed how sharp the edges were. Thanks for the input and the read!
Increased critical hit chance the longer you do not crit. Does not reset to 0 bonus after a crit is made (loses only a few stacks).
Increased damage whenever you get a heal (from self or others, including heal over time ticks)
Massive hit mechanic
Massively hitting a target deals a flat bonus amount of damage. Unlike critical hits where it increases your damage by a percent.
Massive hits CANNOT crit. However, your attack can crit and massively hit at the same time. For example, a 1000 dmg hit can crit for 2000 dmg, and massively hit for the bonus 100 dmg. It will not be (1000 + 100) * 2.
Massive hits are unique to the Chaos sub-tree in Physical.
Bonus spell power depending on how long you did not cast a spell. Does not reset to 0 bonus after a spell is cast (loses only a few stacks).
This is to encourage different builds and play styles. Some players may want to focus on mashing buttons while others may want to focus on taking their time. Either route you go, you shall see a similar number in DPS, and hopefully (I plan on it) not see dominant builds that everyone will just go.
Now, I will explain my thought process on balancing below:
I balance around a risk/reward system as well as taking into consideration the point cost of abilities. Also, certain stats scale with other stats, effectively reducing the overall "cost" of the DPS:Cost ratio. (Cost being skill points, item level, etc - for example, an item with Critical hit chance AND critical hit damage effectively increases ALL items with crit hit chance/dmg effective item cost) Since certain talents cost more to level/rank than others, their performance should increase relatively. Below is a summary of SOME of the risk/reward/cost and where I see how to balance them:
Critical Hit Dmg/Chance:
- I have to be careful as these two scale infinitely with each other, and can get really out of hand. They should offer NO survivability for the high reward they present. And since their cost go down exponentially as you get more, it gets to be even more of an issue to balance. There will be no procs of any kind of survivability. For example, there will NEVER be a skill where you are healed for critting. You will never take any kind of reduced damage, shield, or any means of survivability for critically striking. This is also true for offense, where you WILL NOT be rewarded any kind of offensive power for critting. This is to prevent a snowball effect in certain skill builds and item choices. Critical hit dmg/chance is a VERY high risk/high reward mechanic that I take seriously in balancing and preventing to go out of hand.
Massive Hits:
- A unique mechanic I just announced in this post. Since this is a unique sub-tree only mechanic, it has medium reward for it's somewhat high cost. This is medium risk, as it is just specific to the Chaos sub-tree and not available in items, where you are free to customize still. There will be other skills that will work right off of massive hits, such as procs, enhancements, and survivability - thus the medium risk.
Increased Damage for Heals:
- Another mechanic I just announced. It is an easily accessibly skill that has low risk because of the high survivability, medium reward for it's decent damage output, and a somewhat low cost, as you spend more points in it depending on how high you want the damage output to be versus the amount of survivability you want.
Heals/Bonus Damage for Taking Damage:
- There are certain skills in various areas of the multigon system where you can heal depending if you take damage. This is a high risk skill, because you are effectively WANTING to take damage to receive it's benefits. The reward is high, if it's either heal or bonus damage. Heals can scale off of other skills/crit, etc (such as a skill that increases all heals received by 10%, increases dmg by 5% whenever you receive a heal, etc). Bonus damage can scale off other skills as well, such as skills that heal you depending on the amount of damage you deal. This can provide survivability or bonus damage either way, and I think this is a great mechanic for those looking to balance their build around high survivability/high damage type of scenarios. It does not snowball out of hand. The cost is variant, and it does somewhat go down the more synergized skills you get with this.
There are an amplitude of mechanics to be mentioned, but I will not discuss them all. I wanted to give you guys some insight on how I plan on balancing and that I do see certain mechanics as potentially volatile in balancing. I really want to see some truly unique builds, and not just people posting cookie-cutter builds that everyone will follow. Sure, there's gonna be some, as to be expected in any game. But, overall, I want "Glass Cannon" builds to be just that - glass cannon and offer NO survivability. Balancing around this fact is what will determine the uniqueness of the game, I believe.
Thanks you two - the project IS still in development. However, things aren't going as fast as I would like. I have a whole mess of other things I must complete first, plus I am over-taxed for time!
Hey guys, quick update. Been busy building 3 different websites and some other misc. personal stuff. However, progress is still steady on this project, although slight - there is progress. Please visit our forums and give some feedback :) Thanks in advance if you do.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Project Rise of Nigma
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@Enexy: Go
New post located here as well now: http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/player-zone/map-feedback/44412-rise-of-nigma-rpg/#p1
Here is some updates to the UI...
@ScorpSCII: Go
I do use records, but I'm phasing out of them because I'm just using a type of arbitrary objects now.
Here's an image for giggles on how much work I've put in this project so far... and this picture still can't hold everything.
@Enexy: Go
Hey guys, I've been working on a new system for skills where you can "Charge" them up to a maximum duration. (Most skills will charge up to 3 seconds, some will be higher)
What this means is that you simply hold down the hotkey for the ability you wish to "Charge", which will have bonus effects the longer you charge. Here are some example skills:
Those are 2 obviously different charge skills. One is simple charge as long as you want and release to deal it's bonus dmg. The second one, however, needs a predetermined amount of time to get it's extra effect (Up to 6 seconds total charge - translates to about 4 real time seconds). As you scale higher in tiers, your charging animation grows and looks more flashy.
Hey all to those following or interested... Here's screenshots of the new UI that's still a work in progress...
EDIT: My goal here with the new UI is to keep things from being cluttered. It has been simplified down to some basic necessities - but more elements can be added depending on how the user wants to see things. (Go to options menu)
@Imperfect1987: Go
Yes, the game will have roughly 900 total skills. The amount of skills a player actually WANTS to have is entirely up to them, though. Not all 900~ are learned immediately. A person can probably learn 100 skills or so if he gets rank 1 skills only. As you level, you get "Talent Points". These talent points are in the thousands. Let's say you hit level 2, you now have 10,000 talent points (You get 6000 at the start at level 1, and 4000 for leveling up). To "learn" a skill and get it to rank 1, it will cost roughly 2500 points. However, if you want to rank up that skill (max rank 10) it will only cost about 1000 points to rank it up.
Everything is indeed made in triggers. I barely use data at all, just to rename units, change status flags, resize units, etc... Nothing deep. Players have an action bar at the bottom (as pictured in the screenshots). There are 12 slots for skills, but don't let that hold you back! My UI is user customizable and you can add more action bar rows if you please, or even add vertical action bars. I allow for up to 3 rows of action bars, and 2 vertical rows - this totals 60 skills hotkeyable. Which leads me to mention that hotkeys are bindable to whatever you like. Some skills are passive and don't need you to drag them to the action bar, or activate by themselves in certain situations (low health, death, procs from spells, etc).
So, while there are an ample amount of skills, you really are limited to about 100 of them - something I don't expect many ppl to do, or none at all. I also have a "Build Saver" where you can quickly swap builds on the fly - except in the dungeons. When you enter a dungeon, you are locked with your build until you leave/complete the dungeon. The same goes for items. There will be an equipment manager I have not made yet. But expect it!
EDIT: To your crit comment. Yeah, it'll still be very hard to balance dps-wise. Another example is League of Legends. Diablo 3... yeah, another very VERY good example. In my opinion, the player should not complain about their low survivability if they chose to go blazing DPS. Then again, that is my opinion, and I don't know about the general mass. While I believe it is fun to do insane amounts of dmg and see the numbers fly, I think balancing that fun for others is a higher priority.
@Trieva: Go
Oh... I see :( Well, I look forward to it. I need to stress test my map with 14 ppl lol. Link to thread? Thanks in advance.
@Trieva: Go
Very nice... when is this date lol
@FuzzYD: Go
Yeah, I know there are some black parts to the image. I was a little less experienced with how SC2 handled images and alpha channels back when I made that, so now I'm stuck with it. It takes a lot of constant testing to get it perfect.. But I'll polish it up soon.
Also, I've completed the quest system to those reading. I'm also looking for testers...
@FuzzYD: Go
Do you mean in the last few screenshots on the main post? If so, yeah, I guess I never noticed how sharp the edges were. Thanks for the input and the read!
Hey guys!
This is to encourage different builds and play styles. Some players may want to focus on mashing buttons while others may want to focus on taking their time. Either route you go, you shall see a similar number in DPS, and hopefully (I plan on it) not see dominant builds that everyone will just go.
Now, I will explain my thought process on balancing below:
I balance around a risk/reward system as well as taking into consideration the point cost of abilities. Also, certain stats scale with other stats, effectively reducing the overall "cost" of the DPS:Cost ratio. (Cost being skill points, item level, etc - for example, an item with Critical hit chance AND critical hit damage effectively increases ALL items with crit hit chance/dmg effective item cost) Since certain talents cost more to level/rank than others, their performance should increase relatively. Below is a summary of SOME of the risk/reward/cost and where I see how to balance them:
There are an amplitude of mechanics to be mentioned, but I will not discuss them all. I wanted to give you guys some insight on how I plan on balancing and that I do see certain mechanics as potentially volatile in balancing. I really want to see some truly unique builds, and not just people posting cookie-cutter builds that everyone will follow. Sure, there's gonna be some, as to be expected in any game. But, overall, I want "Glass Cannon" builds to be just that - glass cannon and offer NO survivability. Balancing around this fact is what will determine the uniqueness of the game, I believe.
Thanks you two - the project IS still in development. However, things aren't going as fast as I would like. I have a whole mess of other things I must complete first, plus I am over-taxed for time!
original post has been updated, new screenshots as well.
Hey guys, quick update. Been busy building 3 different websites and some other misc. personal stuff. However, progress is still steady on this project, although slight - there is progress. Please visit our forums and give some feedback :) Thanks in advance if you do.