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QCF Design Community • View topic - Halflings - all shennanigans all the time


Halflings - all shennanigans all the time

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Re: Halflings - all shennanigans all the time

Postby Lujo on Tue Dec 09, 2014 6:20 pm

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Re: Halflings - all shennanigans all the time

Postby Lujo on Tue Dec 09, 2014 8:35 pm

Damn you guys, I actually figured something really important out, and included it in the new "let's try to bum a patch off the devs" thread.

There's VERY clear and VERY silly reasons why Gnomes are so damned good, and it's because they actually don't get s**t from their gods of choice for doing what they're good at and get way more support for it for way less effort than halflings. No time for textwalling it here because there's enough infor to get you guys going in the new thread, but if it does get discussed, let's do it here as to keep that thread as user friendly for the devs as possible on the off chance that we CAN in fact bum a patch off them (there's actually pretty legit reasons for one to happen in terms of tweaks).
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Re: Halflings - all shennanigans all the time

Postby Blovski on Tue Dec 09, 2014 10:41 pm

Yeah I kind of agree with you there, Lujo, though I think that's why JJ and EM are both good Halfling gods despite not really being conventionally used for melee builds. I kind of think GG is a bit off at the moment anyway.
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Re: Halflings - all shennanigans all the time

Postby Darvin on Tue Dec 09, 2014 11:06 pm

This is also what's really holding back Elves from utilizing Mystera. In theory a big mana pool would be awesome with refreshment, but they face an obvious catch-22 in practice: in order to have that big mana pool, they must have already converted their glyphs and thus cannot benefit from refreshment.
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Re: Halflings - all shennanigans all the time

Postby Astral on Tue Dec 09, 2014 11:53 pm

Except wizards, who can rack up more max mana than sorcerers can dream of and start out with a better version of Mystic Balance to boot. And we haven't even considered the power of an Elf Wiz who started out at JJ and boosted his mana there too.
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Re: Halflings - all shennanigans all the time

Postby Lujo on Wed Dec 10, 2014 12:03 am

^ Written this before Astrals comment so I'm kinda adressing other stuff here.

Which is why the sorcerers efortlessly bigass mana pool (and the ease with which he gets it up to 20) is such an anomaly - he can actually use what is probably the best theoretical tool for elves, while the elves can barely use it sensibly at all. o.O (Barring as astral has pointed out, Wizards).

And what I was saying about the potion races, I don't think they need nerfs exactly, it's more that there are clear imbalances in other places which cause several effects with them.

What I'm considering right now is the following - the Halfling spiker can get good with Taurog and Binlor, Taurog gives some damage, Binlor gives bigass damage, and he can get his basic spike off without a hitch. The gnome can get his basic stuff off with JJ, Mystera and Earthmother, likewise without a hitch, just hoard & spike and that's that. However, the halfling can get weird in very specific ways with other guys, and the Gnome can't. Yet, the gnome, who only ever really does hoard & spike if at all possible, is sorta the clear winner.

Why is this? I mean, you can tack a gnome onto a spellcasting strat and in most cases he'll be the "optimal" choice pretty much whatever the scenario is, once you do the end spike math (EDIT: not necessarily, but once you take all the cost/efect/effort bits into account). At least you'll get someone who loves gnomes asking "why not just go gnome" with possibly legit reasons. Tinker has compared the Crytal Ball to a "gnome module" and that's not that bad of a label (it's much stronger than being a gnome but the basic of it's functionality is the same, pulling mana refills out of basically nowhere).

But the halfling isn't nearly as clear cut a winner when it comes to his most effortless strats. And I think if he was, he'd need a nerf. Because he does convert for health refills, and those actually have way more costs than just dumping CP into them and even then require you to get your damage/health/resists up. Most other guys use racial bonuses, pretty tangible ones, and a lot of play to make it work on top of working for their refills. I mean, there's a reason we thought the halfling needs the trisword, it seemed impossible he could be able to work without a "damage cheat" to catch up with the other guys - because what is then the point of other guys? (And indeed, the Orc really started going places once the trisword was gone because he's the same thing minus coming with freebie refills on top of the damage).

But then, there's quite a bit more you can actually do with halflings, but all that stuff requires more resources and/or effort than either potion spam or what the gnome does (because gnome stuff involves much easier to get boons, very rarely more than one god and items which have actual price tags compared to glyphs).

What I'm trying to ask is:

- Should just tacking a potion guy onto a class/item/god combo really have hoard & spike as the most beneficial approach?
- Should tacking on a potion guy onto a class/item/god combo really edge out other options as much as tacking a gnome on stuff does currently?
- What sort of tweaks and to what exactly would make "finesse" approaches with these guys more rewarding than "hoard & spike"?
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Re: Halflings - all shennanigans all the time

Postby Tinker on Wed Dec 10, 2014 12:37 am

"Thinker", just without the "ache".
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Re: Halflings - all shennanigans all the time

Postby Lujo on Wed Dec 10, 2014 12:46 am

No, no, no, you misunderstood, I'm sorry if I didn't word it right. It's not about shutting down hoard & spike as a viable strat, it's just that it's absoultely the most patently reductive way to play those races. You play them when you DON'T want to play hoard and spike all the time, because they're the only guys who have enough efortless refills (and specifically potion refills) to always be able to blow them to get leg-ups while leveling or spend them on zany schemes like Drac piety farming. An elf gets a ton of benefits from saving his potions for the end spike because he can get way more out of them than a gnome would and has way fewer available - a gnome can't get that much out of hoard & spike but he can spike stuff more easily.

So a situation where hoard & spike is the most rewarding scenario for the potion races is probably way off. They can always do it, ofc, but they're not really supposed to be what you want to play it with because then Dwarfs and Elves really suck hard (those are the guys who want and need to save all the refills for when they get huge).

You might also have noticed that all the things you can do with potions actually promote using potions while you level instead of hoarding them. The trisword, the scroll, drac piety benefits, whatever - the reason they're all actually powerful is that the h&s instint is so hard to shake (in big part because it's the only thing you can do for a long while before you develop your kingdom) and the game really needed clues and incentives to get people to play to the actual strengths of the potion races (which are that they don't have to hoard nearly as much as some others do and actually can use them to spike stuff all the time). Most of those are actually there, AFAIK, because it was so hard to get people to get over the hoarding instinct/early kindgom mentality.

So when a bright new player who's even picked an avatar up manages to consistently see the potion races as the strongest ones - while at the same time professing the love for h&s, and also claiming that races which are build for it are disfunctional (whith which I agree) - something's probably a bit off. Having h&s be the most rewarding thing to do with potion guys is doubly disappointing because it so often leads to having potions left over and in stead of getting proper benefits from your racial bonus you end up with not in fact having one at all. Just think about it.
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Re: Halflings - all shennanigans all the time

Postby Tinker on Wed Dec 10, 2014 8:38 am

"Thinker", just without the "ache".
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Re: Halflings - all shennanigans all the time

Postby Lujo on Thu Jan 29, 2015 4:45 am

Hahahhaha, I was looking for a thread to post this in, and didn't want to make a new one, so I found this one :)

I reread the quest description of the quest "Halflings, Ho!" and it's so perfect: "Among their other (frequent) complaints, halflings often bemoan the fact that nobody takes them seriously - even when they prove themselves capable of bending reality itself..."

It's funny because it's true XD
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