Arcanum: Balance Issues

[Drog Black Tooth]

Let's discuss the balance (or lack of thereof) in Arcanum. I heard so many opinions on it, that I got confused. How's it in reality? And is it fixable?

Some people say that technological stuff is not balanced. Well, I can say so about balanced (haha) swords, pyrotechnic axes and charged rings.

Considering magick, many people complain that harm spell is overpowered. And then there's unresistable disintegrate spell. Temporal college spells are considered overpowered as well.

There are many engine issues as well. For example, backstab skill is overpowered. Normally, it just adds bonus damage to a hit, but if you backstab an unaware creature, then all creature's armor and resistances get completely ignored, you hit its HPs directly in this case. And you can spend just 2 cps on the Stun Spell. Stunned creatures are considered unaware as well as when you attack while prowling. My character had full melee and dodge skills (with apprentice training) and full backstab skill with no training, and I was using an arcane dagger (max 18 dmg, even with 20 strength). I went to Stringy Pete, stunned him and backstabbed him in 18 hits, he didn't even recover from stun (it always takes two turns). He had 300HPs and 82% DR, as you can see his resistances were completely ignored. Stun spell works on all creatures except mechanical ones, and what's more if you get an expert training in backstab, it allows you to backstab with swords and axes, you can imagine damage to an unaware creature. A master of prowling can conceal oneself even during combat and backstab ignoring resistances too, but you get the training a bit late in the game.

There's also a problem with throwing items (they don't use APs in turn-based), which is also related to the engine.

And then there's also many exploitable bugs in the original game. For example, Dark Helm. You could buy it from any gypsy and it permanently adds +20% to Magick Aptitude each time your wear it. This way you can learn only Harm Spell and become and uber-mage. (There was just a typo in the script for the helm, but it changed the whole game experience!) Another exploitable bug was automatons. If you conceal yourself (prowling, invisibility spell) you could pick up hostile automatons and make them your army! And then there're also bugs with dweomer and reflection shields, there was a glitch that allowed to make any summoned or mind controlled creature into a permanent follower. I fixed all these bugs in my unofficial patch though.

 

[Volrath]

I think the biggest issue for me is the lack of AP cost on throwable items. You say that it's engine related but can it be fixed?

 

[JarlFrank]

Stone golems are imba. Really.

 

[The Feral Kid]

As much as I enjoyed the excellent character/skill system which is probably the best ever in an rpg I believe there were many gameplay flaws that made Arcanum a very uneven game. So on one hand you have the superb character/skill system, excellent role-play elements, balance of stats enough to make every replay a completely different experience. On the other hand combat is not tactically challenging, enemies are boring and generic so much that when you replay the game you don't have any particular encounter to look forward to like it happens with other games. Except for the cities and some places related with the main quest the rest of the game areas feel empty and generic, completely unable to motivate and make it worth for the player to replay/visit them. There is some serious lack of depth on that aspect.

For the tech/magic balance issues I believe the more experienced players that love to play as a tech/gunslinger have already found their way around to have a strong character relatively early in the game.

SPOILERS

I was able to access the Vendigroth ruins only at level 15 on my second run of the game, get the Droch schematic + Intel potion and I had Droch's Warbringer before even the main quest gets started. Oh and being able to easily dispatch enemies you're suppossed to beat at level 35+ in order to get the schematic while only being level 15 says a lot about the balance issues of the game. In a properly balanced game such high level areas and monsters would mean instant death for a low level character.
Anyway,some may call it a cheat I'd say it's necessary since following the story it's impossible to have a strong gunslinger until late in the game while melee/magick users are much stronger.

 

[Trash]

Ah, the balance in Arcanum. Frankly, there is hardly none. The inclusion of two combat systems in the game sounds good, but in the end neither one is what it could be.

Seems like you know the worst issues allready though. Besides the bugs that you've allready squashed, there are the balance issues you mentioned. The harm spell is all you need to know to butcher your way through arcanum, combat is ridiculously easy with a balanced sword, etc, etc. To balance the game I'd say one could take a good look at the ap costs of different weapons/items/spells and at the damage/resistances/flags these have. It would go a long way to improve the game. but it's a shitload of work.

 

[crakkie]

Tech items should be rather powerful. If you have put all of your points into getting these items instead of maxing out melee or backstab, you should get some benefit that makes up for not having those kind of less expensive, more powerful skills. The balanced sword and pyro axe are a little too powerful, but most of technology's problems lie in many items being underpowered or consuming too much ammo, like most of the guns, charged staff, healing jacket, and many of the therapeutics (which do very little; they should be supplanting your lack of persuasion/strength/dexterity for all you invest in them).

This is assuming that the melee/backstab balance can't really be fixed, which I doubt it can.

 

[MetalCraze]

Arcanum: just manufacture the lightning rod and you have already beaten every fight in the game.

 

[Amasius]

Like Trash said, the combat is just broken. If you really want to rebalance the game (yes please!) you should decide for one combat style - turnbased of course - and tailor it accordingly. But to achieve a good balance it won't be enough to fix some spells and change the AP costs of some items.

 

[Moggs]

But to achieve a good balance it won't be enough to fix some spells and change the AP costs of some items.

Well, it depends what you mean by a "good" balance, but I think an adjustment of the numbers for certain spells/weapons would go a long way to improving the combat and maintaining an "upgrade" cycle in check throughout the game (i.e., you don't stick with the one sword/spell you found in the first 5 minutes). Yes, it would still be far from perfect, but it would be a lot more playable than it currently is (and I like the game).

 

[FaranBrygo]

If would be great if the combat in Arcanum could be rebalanced with TB in mind.

 

[inwoker]

nobody mentioned or I am on drugs and missed.
So, to the point.
There is stillwater blade. Wear it, you may cast spell summon creature WITHOUT spending mana, at all. If you have 100 magic aptitude and at least 15 int every creature in arcanum is fucked. You may cast 4 vorpal bunnies, muhahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

 

[Ander Vinz]

The only feasible improvement to the existing balance I see is tweaking weapons (especially technological), spells and equipment by someone with good mathematical skills and common sence.

 

[HanoverF]

I think a lot of balance problems with Arcanum stem from the advancement system. Dex as an uber stat, other stats almost completely useless, Stats costing the same as skills/hp/fatigue/spells/tech, etc. There's plenty of good threads about it, at least I remember some, I'm too lazy to search/bump.

 

[Lord Chambers]

If you had a bar graph which illustrated the amount of unbalance in a spell, weapon, skill, or so forth, the ones that would stand out are obviously harm, balanced swords, and backstab. Whacking them back into line would do the game good.

However, it would not make the game's combat balanced. There are many spells, weapons, and skills that need to be reduced or increased in effectiveness. Supposing you did this for 4 spells, 4 weapons, and 4 skills, the game would be better balanced. But it would still not be balanced because of the fundamentals like the stat system and differences between real-time and turn based combat. An overhaul of these systems would be much more time consuming and involved than just whacking the worst offenders.

And because the imbalances stem from poor design, I don't think even fixing harm, balanced swords, and backstab are really worth it. They help the player realize he has to accept that the combat is broken, and move past it to appreciate what the game might be good at. If you give the game more verisimilitude, in some sense you might decrease a player's satisfaction because he might invest some of it in "rebalanced combat!"

However, I probably won't ever play Arcanum again, and not with any of your hard work, so I don't really get a vote. 加油!

 

[team a]

I think there are definitely some things that everyone can agree are overpowered (balanced sword, fine revolver, pure melee/dodge/st, harm, disintegrate) but because there are a lot of different ways to play, my experience has been that people tend to go for different skill distributions. Some people will say that magic is overpowered, some that technology (or some parts of it) is.

Personally, I think that while a lot of things in technology need to be reworked to be more useful - all the guns that are less powerful than the parts you combine - there are a lot of really powerful things there that nobody has mentioned. For example, therapeutics is actually useful when you use brain builder/muscle maker, which do make permanent changes (although there are drawbacks). There's anaesthesizer, which makes fighting flesh-and-blood enemies pretty simple, and the tranquilizer gun, which lets you do this from a long distance while dealing damage. There's also plastique, which if used in quantity can allow you to create a trap that can shred just about everything. And with creatable mechanical followers, you can spend a little coin and make 20 automatons, without actually having much by way of combat skills, which will lay waste to absolutely everything (possibly even your framerate)

Personally, I think the most powerful character is the CH/persuasion one, because it means you can have 6 followers (plus the dog) which can do all the work for you.

Really, though, the most powerful combinations are the ones that can be the most fun. The problem, I think, is that there just isn't a way to make the game difficult on the player, to where you'd need all these powerful skills and items, and therein lies the real reason Arcanum is so unbalanced. Because the game is designed so you can play a variety of different characters, it has to be easy enough for someone playing for the first time to be able to figure it out, and it's balanced for this kind of player. If only Arcanum's built-in hard mode actually did something.

 

[Claw]

Clearly, Arcanum is a terribly broken game, at least combat-wise.
So, do you veterans have any tips for a newbie? Should I avoid getting the balanced sword early, or rather use it to finish tedious combat faster? Anything I shouldn't get excited about although it looks promising?

 

[Redeye]

... you can spend a little coin and make 20 automatons...

Where would you get all of those steam engines?

It was a major undertaking for me to track those down.

No store cheats.

Also repairing those things was incredibly tedious if you had a full inventory.

Can't just drop things on the ground- npcs will pick items up.
Have to position yourself next to repair smith, transfer items to followers, collapse automaton, add automaton to inventory, talk to smith.

Might have to drop follower inventory off in a barrel first.

etc

My favorite was dynamiting people (esp. shopowners) through walls.

 

[Redeye]

Clearly, Arcanum is a terribly broken game, at least combat-wise.
So, do you veterans have any tips for a newbie? Should I avoid getting the balanced sword early, or rather use it to finish tedious combat faster? Anything I shouldn't get excited about although it looks promising?

Get balanced sword and pyrotechnic axe asap. Put the pyro axes in inventory of magic-oriented followers to keep them from being equipped. Have tech/tech neutral followers and magic followers use balanced sword- and keep spares on hand as they weaken sort of quickly. Against heavily armored opponents, have your tech followers retrieve the pyro axe(s) from the inventory of the magic oriented followers.

Also use forced tb combat mode to keep the whole party under influence of speed potions more or less continuously while in dungeons.

This is how i dealt with the annoying combat.

 

[Dark Elf]

I'm not sure what it's got to do with this thread, but when I finally manage to get my thumbs out of my ass and make that awesome Tribute mod of mine for Arcanum, I'll beef up the damage of guns a fair bit while I'll decrease their speed. There's something about firing 5000 bullets in a round that do squat damage I dislike, I'd rather fire more powerful shots that actually did a damn. It would conserve bullets too.

 

[Grump]

Clearly, Arcanum is a terribly broken game, at least combat-wise.
So, do you veterans have any tips for a newbie? Should I avoid getting the balanced sword early, or rather use it to finish tedious combat faster? Anything I shouldn't get excited about although it looks promising?

I just started the game but even I have run into poor design issues which decrease the fun factor. Fallout feels like a game that came after they learned from Arcanum's mistakes.

Random encounters are lethal for beginning characters no matter where you happen to be traveling. You can run into 1 ailing wolf around Shrouded Hills or a pack of poisonous rats twice your level. There is no way to tell or game your chances that I've seen so far (ie explorer or outdoorsman perks)

It is difficult to run away from hard random encounters because for the most part your NPCs will run straight for the enemy and get disemboweled.


Guns are weak due to the lack of specialized ammo and omission of targeted shots and a ton of other reasons.

Using schematics and other items are confusing because of the lack of fallout like descriptions. If you get the bullet schematic for example you don't know which skill you have to raise.

Traveling is confusing, there is no way to warp around most town areas like Fallout. Waypointing is awkward. and if you are walking around in an area where the world map is active you'll have trouble finding things.

To many unintuitive and/or fedex quests.

Alot of this stuff is probably due to a hasty release and can be fixed through a good re balance.


I'm playing a gunslinger my first time through for the challenge. Most people seem to think that technologists are weak compared to magick. I agree but they do have one saving grace, explosives. Grenades are uberpowerful and don't seem to hurt you or your party at all.

 

[Dark Elf]

Random encounters are lethal for beginning characters no matter where you happen to be traveling. You can run into 1 ailing wolf around Shrouded Hills or a pack of poisonous rats twice your level. There is no way to tell or game your chances that I've seen so far (ie explorer or outdoorsman perks)

Ailing wolves aren't a problem to most characters. Now, full-blown Wolves or bears on the other hand...

Using schematics and other items are confusing because of the lack of fallout like descriptions. If you get the bullet schematic for example you don't know which skill you have to raise.

Actually, if you look close enough you'll know what expertise you need and in what fields.

I'm playing a gunslinger my first time through for the challenge. Most people seem to think that technologists are weak compared to magick. I agree but they do have one saving grace, explosives. Grenades are uberpowerful and don't seem to hurt you or your party at all.

I think that depends on your difficulty level. On easy, you can bomb or fireflash away at your leisure, on harder difficulties that will trash your followers (and you as well) if you're not careful.

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

Guns are weak due to the lack of specialized ammo and omission of targeted shots and a ton of other reasons.

Called shots are in. RTFM.

 

[Dark Elf]

Actually, if you look close enough you'll know what expertise you need and in what fields.

Spoiler

Just wanted to add - you know about the skill books you can buy from the University of Tarant don't you? With those (and perhaps an Essence of Intellect) you can raise your expertise in the required fields of technology without spending a single character point. Handy to know.

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

Spoiler

I wish I could pass an exam by bringing all the textbooks on the subject I own with me.

 

[Krancor]

I am glad to see you are going to address this.

The magic has some exploits but overall it is fairly balanced. You are going to be a killing machine by the end of the game, but that should be somewhat expected.

This is making me want to fire up the old arcanum again so I can dig through specifics, but here are the biggest issues:
balanced sword: I am convinced the 18 speed is just a typo since all other swords but filament are 8 or so.

Speed in general:
Well, obviously if you attack 9 times even with a weak weapon you will do massive damage, especially with high strength. Virtually all of the high end weapons you'd *think* should be the best have pathetic speed, though. Daggers should only be slightly faster than swords, and staves the same speed.

Throwing:
Pretty obviously broken since you can throw forever and ever, but there is probably no way to fix it.

Guns:
The biggest issue is that bullets are SO expensive and heavy. There's just a constant impetus to make more bullets constantly. It also makes it so weapons like the mechanized gun are basically worthless. Same with the elephant gun. You should get about ten times the bullets for the money and they should be similarly easy to carry. Early, it's a ridiulous pain to be a gunfighter, and later youa re swimming in money but still need to constantly make bullets.

Gun speed:
As with melee weapons, gun speed needs to be evened out a bit. Some of the 'better' weapons are *ridiculously* slow, while some cheaper weapons deal out way more damage per second.

looking glass rifle:
40-40 damage is almost surely another typo. There's really no reason to use any other weapon. It's better than the vendigroth gun, even. It should probably do 15-20 damage or so, but really everything needs to be rebalanced a bit.

Elephant gun:
Uses too many bullets per shot, and too slow. This should functuon more like the looking glass rifle currently does, but even so without quite the damage and speed.

Mechanized gun:
If the bullets suggestion is taken to heart this one will become a viable option. Otherwise it's good for only a few fights.

Special weapons:
The ones that require being a doctorate in two different fields are ridiculously underpoowered. To get to that level your character will be seriously gimped. They should do some serious, heinous damage if you manage to make them.

Charged ring:
It should be either cut down in usefulness, or pushed to the top of its tech tree. If it's at the top of the tree, it won't be too imbalancing. Right now it's at the second level.


I honestly don't see the pyrotechnic axe or the poison sword thing as unbalancing. That could just be because the rest of the balance is so off, though. They are so slow compared to other weapons it's currently pretty stupid to use them.

Chakras:
These should take longer to throw than they do and/or do a bit less damage.