Teamplay and Diversity, Part 2 - Skill Rework

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Lorenor
Administrator

Posts: 133

Teamplay and Diversity, Part 2 - Skill Rework Jan 4, 2016 8:19:43 GMT -8

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Post by Lorenor on Jan 4, 2016 8:19:43 GMT -8

1. Introduction
2. Skill Rework
3. Rogue
4. Alchemy and Poison
5. Beastmaster
6. Playing with Fire
...

Skill Rework

In order to bring more variety to the builds in Kobold Tribes, it is probably necessary to start with the skills, since they are part of every build.

Only the bolt notes are changes.

Forestry:
- Increases your armor by 1 and health regeneration by 0.5 per 5 forestry.
- Increases damage to trees by 2 and damage to structures by 1.5
- Increases the amount of stamina and warmth gained from chopping trees.
- Reduces the planting cooldown.
- Increases the growing speed of trees.
Perks:
- 15: Chopping a tree has a 30% chance to grow a new tree.
- 20: You gain 20% of the damage you deal to trees and structures as health. Additionally, you gain 1 armor penetration for each chopped tree for 45 seconds, stacking up to 3.
- 25: Allies (including you) near a tree you´ve planted (12 unit radius) gain the same amount of health the tree gains.
Additionally you gain 20 mana over 10 seconds whenever a tree you´ve planted grows to full size.

With the change to the 25 forestry perk, I just tried to add another facet to this skill, making it viable for support builds as well now.

Mining:
- Increases attack damage by 1%.
- Increases mining speed by 2%.
- Increases warmth gained while mining by 0.1.
Perks:
- 15: Reduces stamina loss while mining by 20% and adds a 20% chance to not consume a stack of a mineral deposit.
- 20: Allows you to build up and use mineral rush.
- 25: Gain 2 damage reduction (this means that all physical damage - after normal armor calculation - is reduced by that amount, just like armor works in normal SC2) and 10% stamina increase (or stamina decrease reduction, to be exact) if you have a radiant gem and shadow stone in your inventory.

Making the 2 armor you usually get to 2 damage reduction creates interesting combinations with more tanky sets. Before, mining was a pure dps skill, but since the damage reduction becomes more effective the less damage you take, it might be viable for full tank sets as well now.

Cooking:
- Increases the health, mana, stamina and hunger gained from COOKED food by 1.5%.
- Increases cooking speed.
- Increases campfire duration.
- Unlocks new recipes.
Perks:
- 15: Hunger drain is reduced by 50% and health regenreation increased by 2 for all allies in range of your campfires.
- 20: All food you´ve cooked increases your INT or WIL (alternating) by 20% of the required cooking skill for 30 seconds. If an ally eats your food, you gain the same bonus, but the duration is increased to 90 seconds. This can stack up to 2 [+1 per 5 cooking] INT and WIL.
- 25: Reduces the eating cooldown by 20% and increases the duration of all over-time-effects from food (including fish) and cooked poisons/potions (cocktail and concoction) by 20%.

While the 15 cooking perk is meant to support your team, the 20 cooking perk supports YOU when you are helping your team. Sharing food, especially high cooking food, with allies will increase your WIL and INT far longer than if you eat everything yourself, so even the most selfish players might think about going for cooking and sharing their food now.

Foraging:
- Increases the health, mana, stamina and hunger gained from non-cooked food (raw meat, berries, fish) by 2%.
- Increases health by 1%.
- Increases taming chance by 2%.
- Increases damage against animals by 1.
- Increases the range in which you spot campfires by 4 units.
- Increases cold resistance from torch and lantern by 1%.
- Increases gathering and fishing speed by 2%. (it was 4% gathering and 1% fishing speed before)
Perks:
- 15: Increases vision range of birds by 50% and allows herb and berry bushes to regrow.
- 20: Gives vision to wolves and bears in a 25 unit radius and increases your and your pet´s attack speed by 10% (I know that currently the attack speed of your pets automatically increases with yours, but I want to change that in the beastmaster post).
- 25: Doubles the experience you and your pets gain from killing animals (explained in the beastmaster post) and increases your pet´s armor by 50% of your own armor.

With the increased regen from uncooked food, which is almost everything a forager will find in the wild, a forager now really becomes the survivalist he is supposed to be. Raw stag meat increases the stamina by an almost noticable amount now (I still would buff the stamina regen from raw stag meat by maybe 5 or 10 points) and berries can replenish your health very fast.
With the increased cold resistance from torch and lantern, foragers can now stay warm for a whole night as long as it doesn´t rain, making them at least a little bit more mobile (still no match for forestry and mining though)

Artisanship:
General change: all buildings take some time to build, starting at 2 seconds for campfire, tent, palisade and spike trap, 3 seconds for farm, working bench and smithy and 5 seconds for tavern, hunter´s lodge and storage outpost.
- Increases crafting and building speed by 2%.
- Restores stamina when completing a building based on it´s base build time (for 25 ART, you get 5 stamina per second of build time)
- Increases the damage of traps, trebuchets and explosives (explained in the engineer post) by 2%.
- Increases the armor of buildings by 1 per 5 artisanship and the health by 1% per 1 artisanship.
- Repairs nearby buildings.
- Unlocks new crafting recipes.
Perks:
- 15: You can salvage buildings.
- 20: Upgrading an item (for example huntsman jacket --> high ranger´s maille) gives you 25 gold and experience. Additionally, the attack speed of your turrets is increased by 25%.
- 25: Turrets and traps slow the target by 50% for 2 seconds. This makes the target immune to further slows from turrets or traps for 15 seconds. Additionally, all allied turrets and traps restore 1 charge every 20 seconds when you are nearby. This also applies for equipment with capacity, such as the Vicious Javelin or maybe the new Skullbreaker Cannon.

The 25 gold and experience should encourage people to craft for their allies. It just applies to upgraded equipment though because I don´t want people to craft all game long and be rich in the end, it is just meant to be a compensation for taking the time to craft an ally´s piece of equipment once in a while. Since I will add lots of upgrade possibilities in the upcoming posts there should be enough ways to make use of this effect.

Last Edit: Jan 6, 2016 7:59:46 GMT -8 by Lorenor

dnsingbanana
New Member

Posts: 22

Teamplay and Diversity, Part 2 - Skill Rework Feb 4, 2016 17:01:17 GMT -8 via mobile

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Post by dnsingbanana on Feb 4, 2016 17:01:17 GMT -8

Forestry :
It might be just me, but i think forestry isn't really the skill to buff right now, atleast in the stat department. You gain A LOT of armor with it, with 25 in forestry you gain +5 armor, which is as much as any good armor gives. Im pretty sure it's decently on par with the other skills combat bonuses, but if you did the math and found it was weak go ahead.
I personally don't like the flat health regen, because it's flat and doesn't scale with your stats like other skill bonuses.
The armor pen for chopping tree is good i think, since forestry lets you have close to infinite stamine it is supposed to be decent on, lets say, rogues, so it provides them with a bit of bonuses while still having to prepare the attack.
I believe the 25 bonus of forestry currently makes you regen out of all your trees, wherever they are, so switching it to a more local power is a good idea, and making your whole team the company of robin hood is a plus. Gotta watch the range but i think if it is made so that approximatively every tree on your screen(and when your kobold is at the center) has enough range to give you the bonuses it could be easily readable .

Mining : i agree.

Cooking : Currently it provides 2% health and hunger gain from food, did you reduce it to 1.5% because of it applying to mana and stamina aswell ? Of felt it was too good ?
I think the whole cooking eat cooked, foraging eats raw makes sense, might not change a lot because raw food has so tiny value , however that would mean mages would go towards foraging because sageberry is raw.
15 bonus : because of the whole building property of KT, it might be harder to get it to work, you would have to always be the one creating / taking control of the campfire, i think it's a bit of unnecessary work/organisation for a bonus that is good but not crucial. What about "after you've cooked something from the campfire, the campfire gains an aura that increases nearby allies's health regen by 2 and reduces hunger drain by 50% for 30 seconds. Would simplify a bit the process and have a relation to cooking. (the vapors of what you've cooked basically stays around the fire).
20 bonus : i like it, i think the current added cooking speed is overkill. But i still think making an ally eat what you cooked is a really tricky mechanic. It encourages teamplay and sharing sure, but it's kind of in a really forced way. It's also not that easy, you can't quickly see if what you have is from an ally, and as your allies mash the fast food button during fights it will not always be what you cooked.
25 bonus : it's good and makes sense. Not sure if the reduces eating cooldown wasn't enough already but it's a good way to buff it.

Foraging :
Cold resistance : in think it's a necessity so that foraging doesn't have to always be paired with forestry to be able to also explore at night. How does it work mathematically ? Do i have 50.5% resistance with a lantern and 1 foraging, or 51%?
Berry and fish speed : agree, you pick up berry so fast but fishes are rarely used.
20 bonus : agree aswell.

Artisanship : althought a big change, i agree with a lot of things, especially the building time. Would make a good artisan able to build things in battle for stamina, much like you need a good amount of forestry to be able to profit from the stamina in-battle, as you need to cut the tree quickly. Another improvement i would make is : your buildings no longer gain increased life with artisanship, however now ALL building around you gain armor(a little bit more than currently) and magic armor. Basically the idea is to make this mechanic bypass the property system of KT(as i said before in cooking i think it is too hard to have your artisan be the only on making the buildings) by making it an aura around you. The increased armor and the bit of magic armor is to make it so the building still have the same effective hp as before, but you don't have buildings changing their max health amount as an artisan comes by or leave.

I also had a different rework of cooking / artisanship and recipes lvl in mind, dunno if i should post it there or on another thread (tis quite long).

Lorenor
Administrator

Posts: 133

Teamplay and Diversity, Part 2 - Skill Rework Feb 5, 2016 4:18:47 GMT -8

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Post by Lorenor on Feb 5, 2016 4:18:47 GMT -8

Thanks for the feedback, you make some very good points again

It might be just me, but i think forestry isn't really the skill to buff right now, atleast in the stat department. You gain A LOT of armor with it, with 25 in forestry you gain +5 armor, which is as much as any good armor gives. Im pretty sure it's decently on par with the other skills combat bonuses, but if you did the math and found it was weak go ahead.

My main though behind the health regen buff was to make up for the changed 25 forestry perk. As you´ve said, currently it heals you by the amount of the health that all tree on the map (planted by you) gain, which is a little more than 1 health per second per tree.
And about the combat bonus: The +5 armor decrease all PHYSICAL damage on you by about 10-12% (depending on how much armor you already have). That means it doesn´t help again magic damage at all, while beeing less than half as effective as the 25% attack damage or health form mining and foraging. But that´s really not the reason why I "buff" forestry, as a I´ve said before I just wanted to balance the reduced regeneration you have from the 25 forestry perk.

I personally don't like the flat health regen, because it's flat and doesn't scale with your stats like other skill bonuses.

Neither does the armor from forestry. And also, the 25 forestry perk has also "flat" health regen (at least not STAT-dependent). I don´t think that´s a big problem, forestry is still one of the best skills for tanks, even though they effectively gain less percentual health regen from it. On the other hand, a tank also takes less damage, so compared to the damage per second, the health regen per second is even better than on a squishy target.

Currently it provides 2% health and hunger gain from food, did you reduce it to 1.5% because of it applying to mana and stamina aswell ? Of felt it was too good ?

My bad, I thought it´s already 1.5%, otherwise I would´ve marked it as change by making it bolt. In that case I would even increase the increase from foraging for raw food by 3%.

Cold resistance : in think it's a necessity so that foraging doesn't have to always be paired with forestry to be able to also explore at night. How does it work mathematically ? Do i have 50.5% resistance with a lantern and 1 foraging, or 51%?

I think it should be something a little more complex, to make it less effective for high foraging. Simlar to the stamina regen from forestry and artisanship, where you get 5 stamina with 5 forestry/artisanship, but only 20 stamina with 25 forestry/art and 37 stamina with 50 forestry/art.

I also had a different rework of cooking / artisanship and recipes lvl in mind, dunno if i should post it there or on another thread (tis quite long).

Whatever you prefer, I´ll read it anyways

Everything I didn´t comment on I completely agree with.

Last Edit: Feb 5, 2016 4:21:40 GMT -8 by Lorenor

dnsingbanana
New Member

Posts: 22

Teamplay and Diversity, Part 2 - Skill Rework Feb 5, 2016 13:10:04 GMT -8

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Post by dnsingbanana on Feb 5, 2016 13:10:04 GMT -8

Indeed , from this point the flat health regen isn't that troublesome. It's still a whole lot, it will double most kobold's health regen, and combined with the regen from trees it will be alot of added regen. But that's to be balanced after a while.

So, about the recipes rework : I thought that what is strange with the current cooking and artisanship, is that while the other skill's function is to speed up the gathering of their affected resources, cooking and artisanship's main use (and they are heavily balanced around this factor) is to just unlock the crafting of higher-level recipes. With forestry 0, you can still gather infused lumber, you just do it slowly. With mining 0, you can still get gold and different minerals, you are just not as fast as a 25 miner. Cooking and artisanship however put on a coded barrier between you and the "resource" (equipment and food) they are associated to. With artisanship 0, you don't craft slower than a 25 artisan, you just cannot craft most things. For me it seems as silly as if the game said me"you cannot get iron from deposits before you have mining 5". As such, the effects on the game are :

-Decreased skill diversity, especially in non-organized games. Basically everyone has to get artisan X depending on what they want to craft, and cooking X depending on what they want to eat. I know the level requirements are supposed to encourage teamplay, having a dedicated artisan etc... but let's face it, the process of searching who has enough artisanship, asking him (he might also not speak english, not speak at all, not care, or not judge you worthy), waiting for him to finish what he was doing, putting all the resources etc.. it's a very laborious and unreliable process. I'm not trying to make the recipe system change because i want to avoid teamplay and go alone (i am always up to share potions or food and help against rushes) but because it's not currently working. If people really want to go alone in this game, they are not suddenly going to realise they need an artisan group up as a result. They are just going to take artisanship themselves.

-The 2 skills become wonky compared to how the other skills scale. Thought skill point are almost always put 5 by 5, you could totally get 4 in forestry instead of 5, and it wouldn't make that much of a difference. With artisanship just try and dare put 4 point in it, and it's a whole world of recipes that closes before your eyes. And even when you put then 5 by 5, with cooking 15, trying to make a stag stew, you are still at the same point as if you had 0 in it : unable to craft it. Yes, there are the 15, 20 and 25 bonuses in every skill, but that's the problem : When people get artisanship 25, they aim for the dreaplate or the liquidator spellblade, not any of the other effects you get.

-Even in organized play, it reduces skill diversity. You could totally imagine a team winning without investing a single point in forestry, or in foraging. even if they will maybe lack the utility of seeing campfires, of having a guy with infinite stamina, it will not completely make or break the game, and throught their good choices and action they could still win with this playstyle. However, unless they're rushing, i don't see a team winning with 0 point in artisanship, which means 0 good gear. You can't hope to win 30 minutes into the game with sticks.

-Without the recipes unlocking, the skills feel lackluster compared to the other. Because so much power is pumped into the recipes unlocking, all the other features can't be emphasized else the skill becomes too strong. For artisanship, it means no self combat effect (cooking have food health gain upgrade, forestry armor, mining damage and foraging hp) while cooking don't have any map control/movement enhancement effect (like forestry and artisanship restores you stamina, or foraging gives you overall better vision.) Artisanship is in no way regarded as a good fighting skill, as the only bonus that can be used directly in the heat of battle is the spike trap upgrade, even with 5 seconds building time you can't hope to build turrets right in the fight, they have to be prepared before so it belongs more to the "map control" element of the skill than the fighting element.

What i propose :

-Cooked meals and crafts no longer require a certain level in skill. They are now regrouped in "tiers" (artisanship 0 = tier 0, art 5 = tier 1 etc...).

-All cooked meals and craft have their crafting time increased based on their tier. Currently i'm thinking of something like tier 1 : +20% crafting time, tier 2 : + 40% crafting time, up to the current level 25 recipes who now requires double the amount of time to craft.

-Cooking and artisanship now provides their usual crafting speed, plus bonus crafting speed that increases with the recipe tier you are trying to craft. The higher tier the recipe, the more crafting speed you get.

Now this makes for a lot of change and a complicated crafting time formula, but the general idea is :

Everyone can craft anything, no matter how much point in skills they have. However, as you try and get some more higher tier recipes, the crafting times begin to become reaaaaally long. If you try and craft a dreadplate with 0 artisanship, you will be able to, but it will take you 2 full minutes during which you will have to take care nothing interrupts you, and 2 minutes during which you will be unable to assist you team.

For artisans, nothing changes in terms of crafting times. If a 25 artisan tries to make the same dreadplate, because of the bonus crafting speed depending on the tier of the recipe, he will take the same amount of time as today to craft . Now i've not done the math but i think there are some fine numbers that can achieve that.

-Because cooking and artisanship went from "essential for crafting" to "very good for crafting", we can add some more power into them and as such homogenize a bit the skills :

-Artisanship now gives a direct combat bonus : +0.15 armor penetration(could add in the description "the artisan learns the different armor's weak points and how to exploit them). This would also make mining no longer be the only DPS skill.

-Artisanship gains the bonus damage to traps, trebuchet and explosives you mentioned

the 20 and 25 bonus get merged into one 25 bonus, like you mentioned.

-the 20 bonus you proposed can still encourage teamplay, but maybe it could work off of every craft (with a slightly low value) so there would still be a strong incentive to let the artisan craft for others. I also thought of a reduction in all items's cooldown/recharge time.

-Cooking now gets better stamina gain : you gain a bit of stamina regen when in range of a campfire, and gain some stamina after cooking a meal depending of that meal's quality.

15, 20, and 25 bonuses become the one you're mentioned. For the 20 bonus, i also thought about being able to craft a portable crockpot(works like the trebuchet in terms of deployment) that lets you cook without being seen by foragers.

Why i think in the end all these changes would be nice is that you will have more diversity in pub game, being able to not have to use artisanship quite as often, but it will still remain an option due to it making you gain a ton of time while crafting (and making crafting less dangerous) and its newfound battle strenght, in particular the armor penetration. There is also an added flexibility in the skills themselves, as going only 20 instead of 25 for exemple will only make you loose the 25 bonuses, instead of the 25 bonuses AND the lvl 25 recipes.

In regard of teamplay, in a competitive environment and with people knowing themselves, there is still a strong incentive on letting the artisan craft, and the cook cook, due to the new bonuses and the fact that a lvl 25 artisan can craft 3 liquidator spellblades in the same time a 0 artisan crafts only 1. It remains a strong and adviced decision to have a high level cook/artisan, but it is no longer mandatory.

Also, artisanship and cooking become less "highly about supporting" skills. While i think teamplay should be the name of the game, i think it should be more in terms of map presence/quests/moving together than crafting.

Lorenor
Administrator

Posts: 133

Teamplay and Diversity, Part 2 - Skill Rework Feb 5, 2016 13:54:26 GMT -8

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Post by Lorenor on Feb 5, 2016 13:54:26 GMT -8

Well, you might or might not believe it, but... I completely agree with you (again) ^^ I assume Broot will get a heart attack because of this (we talked about it a while ago and his exact words were: "things like that would require reinventing the wheel"

), but you make some really good points.
Of course Broot is right, changes like these require a lot of balance consideration. But the advantages you´ve listed would be more than enough to be worth the time and effort to do these considerations, at least in my opinion. I currently don´t have the time to analyse every detail of your suggestion and give respective feedback, but I want to let you know that I support your ideas and will get back to them soon.

Not really important, but about that: Currently you can have about +7 (and more) health regen from growing trees with 25 forestry, so the +2.5 you would get from these changes are actually a nerf. The advantage is that your 25 forestry perk is now able to heal not only you, but your whole team, if it´s nearby. Placing a tree before the fight starts will increase the regen of your whole team by about 1.5, and if someone happens to use nature´s grace on the tree...

dnsingbanana
New Member

Posts: 22

Teamplay and Diversity, Part 2 - Skill Rework Feb 6, 2016 2:29:52 GMT -8

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Post by dnsingbanana on Feb 6, 2016 2:29:52 GMT -8

I am actually pretty surprised x) That's kind of the subject i never see people talk about

But yeah i am aware these are some big changes, thought maybe not as much as they seems in terms of balance (i am pretty confident that my proposition could work

)

I like switching to power to a more local source, so it actually has interaction in terms of trees being there. Also didn't know it works with nature's grace x)