Development Info Fate patch in the works

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Fate; Travis Baldree

<b>Travis Baldree</b> has mentioned a fix list for <A href="http://www.playfate.com/">Fate</a> in <a href="https://forum.wildtangent.com/viewtopic.php?t=3178">this thread</a> on the <A href="https://forum.wildtangent.com/viewforum.php?f=22">official forum</a> for the game. Here's what he has to say:
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<blockquote>I am currently finishing up fixes on a couple of issues that have been reported since launch, and am working on an ETA for an updated version of the game on the site. Most of this is pretty minor stuff.
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If you experience any bugs, PLEASE let me know so that I can attempt to squeeze them into this fix! Thank you!
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1. (Critical) VERY RARE freeze when loading levels. This has to do with a level not generating properly and being unable to find a place to stick the stairwell. I've only had 2 reports, and we never saw it during test, so it is unlikely that most of you will see this.
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2. Artifact items were not sellable for the correct price - they ended up selling too cheap.
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3. If the pet turned into a creature with spells, the pet was not learning those spells. Not necessarily a bug, but needed to be changed IMHO.
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4. 'Increases' was misspelled in one of the tooltips Razz
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5. Rattlekill was not showing up as an Artifact
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6. Black Bit artifact had two Strength requirements
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7. Fish Caught statistic was actually tracking Times Fished instead. Doh!
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Thank you for your patience as I resolve these issues</blockquote>
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Pets should have spells, yeah. Spells are good.
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[Gwendo]

What's the difference between the demo and the registred version? The site or the game's docs don't say anything!

 

[Spazmo]

The demo of the game only lets you go up to level 3 of the dungeon, whereas the registered version gets you unlimited access.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Does saving work in the same way in the full version? It seems pretty limited in the demo.

 

[protobob]

Does saving work in the same way in the full version? It seems pretty limited in the demo.

It's the same. Remember this is a rogue-like/diablo-like, so saving is limited.
When you die you have three options on how to respawn, with various penalties.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Thanks for the answer. I was asking not because I died though, but because I made a small mistake when playing the demo. Nothing much, I absentmindedly dragged a jewel into a slotable necklace. Neither the item nor the gem were that important (so its not like I couldn't have one of the town NPCs give me back one or the other) but I tried reverting to the save I had made immediately before making that small mistake, and I couldn't.

Even being a roguelike, a standard save/load option wouldn't really be that bad. That, and two save slots.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

The demo of the game only lets you go up to level 3 of the dungeon, whereas the registered version gets you unlimited access.

Apparently you also can't go beyond level 6.

And I so much wanted to wear those items I've been holding on to

 

[Sol Invictus]

Roguelikes with save slots are unheard of!

 

[LlamaGod]

Roguelikes with save slots are unheard of!

acutally, most have them. you just cant use save + load tactics like in most games, you have to quit.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Even being a roguelike, a standard save/load option wouldn't really be that bad. That, and two save slots.

It would making gambling for an item rather cheaterific, wouldn't it? Same thing goes for those random outcome shrines that can either do good or bad things for you.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

acutally, most have them. you just cant use save + load tactics like in most games, you have to quit.

I don't use save/load tactics in roguelikes, even. I just would like to quit Fate without having to save in the process.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Even being a roguelike, a standard save/load option wouldn't really be that bad. That, and two save slots.

It would making gambling for an item rather cheaterific, wouldn't it? Same thing goes for those random outcome shrines that can either do good or bad things for you.

True, but this is always the gist of it. Some players will always abuse features, specially save/load ones. If that is a concern, then you could include something like a limited number of saves per play session. Even something like only one save per dungeon floor would be enough for me.

 

[LlamaGod]

you lose alot of ACKTIONPAKEDNESS from that.

It's rad knowing you could die, but Fate is all girly and lets you live.

You need a man's game like IVAN.

 

[Claw]

How about a single save but the option to reload though?

I guess you can always kill the task to quit without saving.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

How about a single save but the option to reload though?

I guess you can always kill the task to quit without saving.

Yes. That works. And people with the desire to milk the most out of gambling, and altars in the dungeons, will no doubt use this.

 

[undead dolphin hacker]

You need a man's game like IVAN.

What's with you and IVAN? I tried it and it's barely a Nethack mod, let alone its own game. What's so great about it? Random locational damage?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

True, but this is always the gist of it. Some players will always abuse features, specially save/load ones. If that is a concern, then you could include something like a limited number of saves per play session. Even something like only one save per dungeon floor would be enough for me.

Considering the altars that affect your attributes permenantly are in the game, even one save per dungeon level would make that feature exploitable. One save/reload per dungeon level would eliminate the risk of "tempting fate".

One thing I'd like to see changed is how skills work mathematically. Per this from the developer's forum:

Since skill advancement is unlimited, these skills are all a case of diminishing returns, so that each investment gives you slightly less bonus than the previous one, and the increments become infinitely small over time.

In essence, ALL of the skills are an exercise in diminishing returns - the 1 attack bonus and 1 damage bonus you get for investing in a weapon skill isn't worth nearly as much when you're already level 30. It's HUGE when you're level 1. So all of the skills have that sort of dynamic - it's just that these are percentage based.


So, for dual wielding -
Left handed weapons by default have their damage potential cut in half.
For each point invested in dual-wield, that is increased by a diminishing percentage via an algorithm. Your first point changes it to 75% damage, second point to 84%, then 87.5%, and so on, never actually getting to 100% damage. The first points are the most important, but later points can still make a difference at higher levels where your damage spread is SO much larger.

Right handed weapons in dual wield do 75% of normal dmage, but it increases with the same algorithm.

Dual wielders are also able to begin their secondary attack 20% faster than a single-wielder, so they increase their damage-per-second as a tradeoff. This doesn't change based on investment though.

Block chance works similarly, but increases to a theoretical maximum of 50% chance of block. Your first block gives you 1.5% chance, second is 2.9%, and so on.

Critical strike is identical to block, with a max of 50% and the same increase curve.

Spellcasting reduces cast time to a minimum of 20% of original cast time with a similar curve going from 100% to 20%.

If it works like that, it might as well BE limited because at some point, you're tossing points in to a skill and getting almost nothing in return.

It's probably better to make the dual wield linear in nature and eventually give bonuses to something like speed once the damage has hit 100% for both primary and off hand weapons. Start with the 75% and 50% penalties, and also decrease the speed by 25% for each hand. Have each point of Dual Wield increase the damage by 1% for the primary and 2% for the off hand weapon. At the same time, you increase the speed of the attack by 1% each time. That way, you have damage penalties and speed penalties up through 25 points devoted to that skill. After that, you just keep increasing the speed by 1%. That would make it MUCH more useful to actually invest points in even after you have the skill at 25 versus the current system.

A logrhythmic function is an awful way of handling this. Look at it this way. If you actually listed what the skill did for the current level and what it would do for the next level like Diablo 2 does, would anyone put more than 10 or 15 skill points in a skill? Without a linear adjustment system, you end up not only with situations where it becomes pointless to raise to raise a skill any further but you also run in to problems before that where your skill point is best spent in another skill instead. Why spend a point on Dual Wield to raise it from 9 to 10 when a point spent in Swords will raise your damage output 20x that much?

Even worse, why bother specializing in anything at all when the earlier points spent in skills matter way, WAY more than later on. You might as well just put five skill points in nearly every melee skill there is because the benefit fall off of specializing is so great? There's no point in being a pole arm specialist at all when a skill point is only going for a tiny fractional increase with each increase being less and less and less each time. The end result is that a melee focused character will end up being a jack of all trades, generic melee guy if the person is spreadsheeting his character's development. There should always be a reason to specialize versus being a jack of all trades.

And the last big reason why it shouldn't work like that for melee is because magic works linearly! A skill point spent towards Charm Magic will make my skeletons higher level on a linear scale and they'll last longer on a linear scale.

 

[Gwendo]

I think that there should be a save/load option. It's up to the player the decision to use it or not. The developer doesn't have to think we are all babies that don't know what they want and therefore spoil our games abusing the save/load option.

In my opinion, it doesn't bother me, as I'm used to play roguelike games, but I understand the need for a load option that some other players are saying.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Pfft. Saving is for pussies. Ditch the save option and revert to the good old days of having to play through the entire thing from start to finish all in one sitting.

 

[Shevek]

And the last big reason why it shouldn't work like that for melee is because magic works linearly! A skill point spent towards Charm Magic will make my skeletons higher level on a linear scale and they'll last longer on a linear scale.

That makes sense. That being said, you forget how items work in this game. Items based off of magic tend to give huge bonuses to magic skills. Im wearing a rare hat that gives +15 to attack and charm magic. Magic staves very often give those kinda bonuses or even greater. On the other hand, strength/dex items tend to give half as much of a bonus to weapon skills as magic items give to magic skills. Moreover, its harder to get the right bonus with weapon skills cuz there are so many. Therefore, items tend to make investment in magic skills more trivial (since magic skill modifiers are big and common) and weapon skills more worthwhile. Im not sure if this balances out your concerns in the end or not but I will say that my level 40 skeletons+charmed enemies can do pretty good for themselves but I dont regret investing in sword, shield and crit skills at all. Of course, this is what I have observed in my game; I am not sure if ths is just the luck of the draw of how items have popped in my game or what.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

That makes sense. That being said, you forget how items work in this game. Items based off of magic tend to give huge bonuses to magic skills. Im wearing a rare hat that gives +15 to attack and charm magic. Magic staves very often give those kinda bonuses or even greater.

No, I haven't. In fact, I have yet to invest in a single point of Attack Magic, and I'm not using staves, and I have an Attack Magic skill of 20+ with items.

There are also items that do the same for melee weapon skills. I have a bonus of 8 dual wielding on an item I found at fairly low level. I have a polearm skill of 11 without investing anything in it due to one item as well.

But here's the thing about that. Sure, there's items with ridiculous bonuses. The difference being that a ridiculous bonus for a magic skill actually does something for the character. Meanwhile, ANY bonus to something like dual wield doesn't do anything at a certain point.

If your Dual Wield is 20, and you get a +10 to Dual Wield item at that level, how much is it going to do for you? Not much. A +10 to Charm means those skeletons get +5 level and last nearly two minutes longer, IIRC.

There's a big reason that specialization in one weapon should matter. If you're only good at swords, and you find a mace with uber stats, you might as well sell it. A character that's distributed his skill points in all the melee weapons will be weaker than the specialist, but that character will have a broader range of weapons to use. He won't have to give up that uber mace, because he'll have a moderate level at using it.

The guy that's dumped all his skills in to one melee weapon should be extremely kick ass with it - because that's all he can use. However, the way the skills are handled in this game, there's no point in specializing because you're wasting your time at some point because you're only getting a tiny fractional increase.

 

[undead dolphin hacker]

Save/Load? In a Diablo/Roguelike? Are you insane?

I'd love to see a Hardcore mode. Maybe we get better drops or more exp, but death is DEATH. Though that kind of works around the concept of Fate meeting you when you die. Maybe you should be able to use each of the options only once in Hardcore mode, like they're Lifelines in that obnoxious gameshow. Or not. That idea sounded better in my head.

I like the Skill system, but its current setup very much favors Magic, since it increases linearly, while everything else is logarithmic, like Saint mentioned. I do believe a Skill cap is in order--this isn't something I would ask Travis to do, as it's disrupting his own vision of the game, but I hope a cap will be moddable in so I can work on a kind of rebalance mod.

It'd be like Diablo 2 -- every skill has a given cap that you can spend points up to. Items with +skill are capable of breaking the limit.

What do you guys think about changing spell memorization from checking the Magic stat to checking the user's skill in the appropriate Sphere, and then balancing the spells around their minimum required Skill? In its current form, Summon Rats and Summon Liches both give +1 to the mob level per point in Charm... which seems a little imbalanced, considering Liches are far more powerful than Rats. If Rats gave +1 level for every Charm Skill above 1, while Liches gave +1 level for every Charm Skill above 10, however, it might balance things out a little better. The liches would still be far more powerful than the high-level rats, but they wouldn't be overwhelmingly powerful as Charm Magic can make them in the current build.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The problem with capping it is that there is no max level for the character. So, in theory, you'd eventually get to a point where you had nothing to spend skill points on if they were capped. So, basically, capping skills would just be trading one problem for a different problem.

 

[Sol Invictus]

As Saint said, this game would benefit from having a skill cap and a total reworking of the mathematical system behind the way skills work. There's really no point in specializing in any kind of melee weapon when the diminishing returns are so severe.

Diablo 2 had diminishing returns after a certain point, but it was really worth investing in certain skills due to the synergies system introduced in the 1.10 patch that made specializing more worthwhile than simply dumping points into every skill with diminishing returns that you could simply pump up by equipping certain items.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

So, which one gets the vote, Fate or Diablo 2?