[Cspace]

A little earlier, I was talking about limiting access to the "Enlightened" trees to two characters per player, to break up schemes like someone making all of his/her characters Savants (the healer tree). There are certain ways that I found I could break the system, and having four characters doing the exact same thing such as nuking or healing will either be no fun to fight, or will cause stalemates. We don't want either to be the case... Battles should be more tactical than that. However, in a system with so many possibilities, I don't want to limit everyone too much.

So here's the new plan...


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- Everyone can have up to four characters, and they can fight together (even from the same ship). They will have the same number of innate class points, and the same number of stat points (that you can move between stats). The only way to increase your class points is with glyphs, and any equipment slot or tome can potentially increase your stats.

- "Alpha" abilities granted by the leaders will really be potent for those with high Devotion (post count). They are powerful enough that they will really need to be limited to one character per battle. All four characters can follow different leaders, but in a battle, one will need to be listed as the player's hero (who can call for a leader's aid). It would be a tactical decision for each battle. If you didn't read this earlier, note that "deities" are going to be called "leaders" in DS2.

- To prevent one's characters from having an advantage by all being the same classes, the categories of trees will be able to exploit each other. The following is how...


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Enlightened Trees

The big category of classes at the top, including warriors, spellcasters, and scouts, will have a wide range of abilities. They will be able to counter each other, such as by interrupting or causing a number of inductions. Two Enlightened characters with differing abilities and similar stats could have a long and painful battle, with bullet-dodging, earthquakes, time manipulation, and all that good stuff. If they aren't countered, an Enlightened character's abilities can cause all kinds of problems for his/her enemies. However, they will be the only trees with Affinity-required abilities. If you want to have a powerful Enlightened character, his/her other stats may suffer because points will need to be placed in an extra stat. It'll be worth it, but it can make for certain weaknesses.

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Technological Trees

If two equally-matched characters are fighting who have a lot of tech skills, it may be a short but painful battle. Technology is all about getting the job done, and their abilities are not quite as situational as the other categories. A tech character would be consistent in causing damage or unique tech inductions, and most abilities will be usable against any target. While a tech character can heal, they're not very good at it. Instead, mitigation is their thing. In fact, only a tech character can effectively mitigate tech damage. Like with starships, technology abilities deal many types of damage: Long-wavelength, short-wavelength, kinetic, isotope, ion, electron, plasma, etc.. While others can mitigate or ward against it, the damage can be extraordinarily high for someone who can't specifically shield against it. Only the tech classes can do that.

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Enforcers & Underworld

Both are all about taking advantage of the situation. Enforcers and underworld classes counter each other very well, but they can't counter other characters with the same discipline so well. An enforcer and underworld character in the same fight will probably have a long battle, while two underworld characters fighting against each other (or two enforcers fighting against each other) will mutually be in a bad situation. That's intended, and is why a character cannot have enforcer and underworld abilities. Similarly, if an Enlightened or tech character is fighting an enforcer or underworld character, the Enlightened or tech character will have to deal with some "annoying" tactics that they can't effectively counter.


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All this will do one thing... A player will want a varied team of characters. If someone does something boring like having four Savants to turtle the entire battle, another more varied team will really be able to break that tactic. On the other hand, if you have at least one Enlightened character, at least one Tech character, and either an Enforcer or Underworld character, you'll be set for anything. Either that, or four characters each with abilities from multiple categories.

It'll probably make things more interesting at least, but four characters won't be nearly enough to cause a stalemate. You'll have specific advantages, and it's up to you to find them. Think of DS2's battle system as a card game, with hundreds of cards (abilities), and all players trying to find holes in their adversaries' deck that can lead to a win. DS is a roleplay game overall, but hopefully within the roleplay game there will be a fun battle system. That's what DS2 will hopefully bring.


I welcome feedback

[Neraphym]

Much better. Never make laws when you can just alter demand.

[MA-53]

Yar, from what I can understand it's sounds good. Though I still am wondering about the whole multiple-character thing. Will there still be an option to have a single character instead of four? Aside from various headaches caused by multiple inventories and equipment charts to manage, it seems that if your characters would talk to each other at all, it would be rather a lot like talking to yourself. Conversations are much less interesting when they only occur between one person and themselves. If you had two "parties" Who were controlled by two people, on a quest together, and one character from one party wanted to enlist the help of a character of a specific personality from the other party in making a point against another character personality in the same party... AAH MY HEAD HURTS.

It seems like, logically, if a player were given a set number of points that they could spend on up to four characters, then it would still balance out, no matter how many characters were chosen. The single character would have a bunch more points to spend, and therefore be able to advance much further in to a tree and be more powerful, but be restricted by the fact that, since they only have one character, they can't be as varied as a four person party. A four person party would be able to exploit weaknesses in the single character, while the single character's raw power could still deal with something it was weak against. Does any of this make sense?

[Cspace]

I'm not sure how exactly it will balance out... It ultimately depends on the abilities when they're all finalized. I'll try to make something like that possible, however, as long as it won't easily be exploited.

[Bashae]

I do plan to come to the forums more often once the update comes about... School has been holding me back mostly, but once DS2 comes out I can put in some commitment for some (American) offpeak DS RPing.

You can count on me to find balancing issues, I'm always looking for a cheap way to be uber hax...

I'd prefer to only roleplay one character, having four characters at once is a lot more maintenence for me... As well as much more consuming in cinii/credits. Perhaps you could have diminishing returns... Like you said the default is at around 6500, then every character you don't play would give you half of that back to a character of your choice. Every character you 'add' after that, would return half again. eg, You want to play two characters, so the other two can contribute 50/50 evenly, so you'll have 2 characters with 6500+3250 or you could buff up one and leave one normal, with the buffed up one having 6500+3250+1625. But it might be better for preset values that you would decide on, but this would be a pretty good rough idea on how you could keep things in balance.

I'm looking for forward to DS2...

[x..]

I've been looking at the RS balancing scheme recently, it seems that magic is the most powerful, maybe have a look at how we balance it between classes (ex. Ranger>Warrior>Mage)

[Neraphym]

It's more complicated than a simple game of rock/paper/scissors. There are tons of classes with unique and overlapping abilities. We have to develop attack and defense strategies for all possible teams, and if no uberteam can be found, then we have a balanced system. Trust me, I'll find such a team if there is one. And then Darky will find its weakness.

[Darkness]

And if I can't find a weakness, I'll just make an enemy strong enough that it could kill -anything-

[Cspace]

And if I can't find a weakness, I'll just make an enemy strong enough that it could kill -anything-

[MA-53]

Bwahaha! Your invinci-monsters are no match for my Cupcake of +2lbs!!

[x..]

Example:

Ranger>Mage
Warrior>Ranger
Mage>Warrior

[Darkness]

Example:

Ranger>Mage
Warrior>Ranger
Mage>Warrior

...

It's more complicated than a simple game of rock/paper/scissors. There are tons of classes with unique and overlapping abilities. We have to develop attack and defense strategies for all possible teams, and if no uberteam can be found, then we have a balanced system.

[x..]

ahh, damn.