Resist system

[Magnate]

I didn't campaigned for that for several years, in fact I reversed my own opinion when Eddie suggested something like that. I previously tried to contain several side-effects in single resist, not the vice versa (chaos being in question).

Side-effect movement off the resists in their own category was to change availability of protections in wider variety of things meaning easier access to required protections from side-effects. It didn't actually change resists much, sound lost stunning resist except from sound, confusion resist disappeared completely with around five monsters that had damaging confusion attack and was replaced with protection so minimal change there, blindness and fear didn't have damage reductions, they were already just protections....and that's it. All the rest remained same. Pretty small change if you think about it.

Other approach to that was to revert things to older version of things, where chaos did provide confusion protection and sound stun protection from any source. It would have had pretty much same effect, more affected attributes in less things meaning wider variety of things would be unnecessary.

I changed my opinion partly because I knew that "more is better" gets thru more easily than "less is better" approach.

Or to put it less aggressively, we prefer to go forwards than backwards.

Ok, so I had forgotten that you had changed your view (I am not sure I ever really registered this until now). But I think to describe is as a "pretty small change" is misleading.

But never mind. My point is simply that things aren't perfect.

[Timo Pietilä]

Or to put it less aggressively, we prefer to go forwards than backwards.

In my opinion going backwards is not a good way to go forward. That is what this change would do unless very very carefully and preferably slowly adapted with gameplay testing in between. Changing things for sake of change is not going forward.

Ok, so I had forgotten that you had changed your view (I am not sure I ever really registered this until now). But I think to describe is as a "pretty small change" is misleading.

But never mind. My point is simply that things aren't perfect.

Things aren't perfect, I agree, but changing them for "consistency reasons" is not enough. That's the reason why chaos resist originally lost confusion protection and it caused major (well, at that time major) change in gameplay: several things that had chaos resist were no more as good as they were before, Chaos and BalanceDSM and chaos blades especially.

Changing side-effect protections outside of resists was small change in gameplay. It had very small effect on playing, especially when you just plain converted confusion resists to confusion protections. Stun protection never was that important, and most items having sound resist still have it giving all the protection they used to minus that stun protection from other sources.

[Nomad]

As it stands, the random higher resists currently reduce damage to:

* light and dark: 4/12 to 4/7 (33 - 57%)
* sound (and previously confusion): 5/12 to 5/7 (42 - 71%)
* chaos, disen, nexus, shards, nether: 6/12 to 6/7 (50 - 85%)

Rather than any major reworking of the resist system, to begin with I would propose just fixing those values to:

* light, dark, sound: 1/2
* chaos, disen, nexus, shards, nether: 2/3

I think that would do a lot to simplify the situation without (in theory) having much visible effect on gameplay.

[buzzkill]

Independent of other changes, what about removing the damage cap and instead somehow basing max damage on raw numbers (an equation involving HP's and native depth maybe). I never cared for the notion of damage caps. Since we're all discussing arbitrary numbers, these are arbitrary numbers.

[Shockbolt]

*edit : haha, I was the one in the wrong thread sorry about that!

[fizzix]

I just want to point out that I don't see a compelling reason to change the damage caps. I think having nether cap out higher than light or dark is good. (ooh, i made a garden path sentence!)

Changing variable to static resists is something I'm fine with, although I don't see the pressing need to do so.

Oddly the one proposal I'm in favor of is making a second resist count for something, at least on the base 4. At the very least I'd like it to be apparent to the player that timed resists + permanent resists do stack, but multiple perm resists don't. This is an essential part of gameplay that's hard to figure out, and I think that is problematic. I don't know how to present this seamlessly in the gameplay though.

[Derakon]

Oddly the one proposal I'm in favor of is making a second resist count for something, at least on the base 4. At the very least I'd like it to be apparent to the player that timed resists + permanent resists do stack, but multiple perm resists don't. This is an essential part of gameplay that's hard to figure out, and I think that is problematic. I don't know how to present this seamlessly in the gameplay though.

Probably the easiest way to do this would be to have a page that shows the player's current damage reductions from all sources, e.g.

You take only 11% normal damage from fire attacks (max 177).
You take only 33% normal damage from cold, lightning, and acid attacks (max  533).
You take only 50% normal damage from light and darkness attacks (max 200).
...
Due to armor class, you take only 72% normal damage from standard melee attacks.

Obviously this is trickier with variable resists, but the overall idea would be that a new player would find their second source of permanent resistance, equip it, look at this screen, and realize that nothing had changed.

More generally, this would be ideal information to display on another 'C' screen stats page.

[Nomad]

At the very least I'd like it to be apparent to the player that timed resists + permanent resists do stack, but multiple perm resists don't. This is an essential part of gameplay that's hard to figure out, and I think that is problematic. I don't know how to present this seamlessly in the gameplay though.

I think I mentioned this idea in a previous discussion on this issue, but I quite like the idea of having your base resist levels displayed in the sidebar, like so:

[BC=black]             
 rAcid  [COLOR="#C00000"]None[/COLOR] 
 rElec  [COLOR="#FFFF00"]x1/3[/COLOR] 
 rFire  [COLOR="#00FF00"]x1/9[/COLOR] 
 rCold  [COLOR="#008040"]****[/COLOR] 
             [/BC]

That way newbies would be able to observe resistance stacking/non-stacking in action, and also you'd be more likely to spot if you've left any dangerous resistance gaps swapping gear around in the late game.

[Blue Baron]

I am indifferent to what is or is not done to the resist system, but I thought I would share a system that I thought of while reading this thread that seemed interesting to me.

Just leave equipment as is, then count and store the number of a resist flag and use something like the following table to get the damage reduction.
1 - 35% (+35)
2 - 60% (+25)
3 - 75% (+15)
4 - 85% (+10)
5 - 90% (+5)
6 - 95% (+5)
7+ - 100% (+5)
2 resists avoid the side effect.
temporary resists count for 3 permanent resists

with this:
1 permanent is close to current (35%)
1 permanent + temp resist is close to current (85%)
7 permanent resists or 4 permanent and temp resist gives immunity.

However, temporary resists by themselves would be worth a lot more, 75% vs 33%, so this may not work.

I think that this would have more interesting equipment choices, but again, I do not have an opinion whether or not the resist system is changed (or how). I'm just tossing another idea out.

[Nick]

Just leave equipment as is, then count and store the number of a resist flag and use something like the following table to get the damage reduction.
1 - 35% (+35)
2 - 60% (+25)
3 - 75% (+15)
4 - 85% (+10)
5 - 90% (+5)
6 - 95% (+5)
7+ - 100% (+5)
2 resists avoid the side effect.
temporary resists count for 3 permanent resists

with this:
1 permanent is close to current (35%)
1 permanent + temp resist is close to current (85%)
7 permanent resists or 4 permanent and temp resist gives immunity.

With a minor tweak to the numbers, you have re-invented the Oangband resistance system. Nice work! It took Bahman a few attempts

[Blue Baron]

With a minor tweak to the numbers, you have re-invented the Oangband resistance system. Nice work! It took Bahman a few attempts

Really? from earlier posts, it seemed like the Oangband has numbers in the item information. Anyways, good, I thought that might be an additional step away from the tested system the dev team prefers.

[Timo Pietilä]

As it stands, the random higher resists currently reduce damage to:

* light and dark: 4/12 to 4/7 (33 - 57%)
* sound (and previously confusion): 5/12 to 5/7 (42 - 71%)
* chaos, disen, nexus, shards, nether: 6/12 to 6/7 (50 - 85%)

Rather than any major reworking of the resist system, to begin with I would propose just fixing those values to:

* light, dark, sound: 1/2
* chaos, disen, nexus, shards, nether: 2/3

I think that would do a lot to simplify the situation without (in theory) having much visible effect on gameplay.

Yes it does, because you don't use average damage in estimating monster deadliness, you use maximum damage. Closer to what it is now would be

* light, dark, sound 5/7.
* chaos, disen, nexus, shards, nether: 6/7.

If you can count on much less damage you weaken those elements a lot. Make them irrelevant with resist. This changes gameplay significantly.

[Timo Pietilä]

Just leave equipment as is, then count and store the number of a resist flag and use something like the following table to get the damage reduction.
1 - 35% (+35)

with this:
1 permanent is close to current (35%)

This is wrong, currently single resist counts for 66%. You would be forcing people to use two or more resists for each basic four elements.

Start with 66% and then count down with maybe some logarithmic calculation each additional resist halving the remaining damage.

66 - 83 - 92 - 96 - 98 - 99 - 100. Temp resist count as one of those.

This still makes extra permanent resist too strong which results in change in gameplay.

How about removing double resists completely? Or make basic four also variable resist with max damage close to 550 with resist with double-resist doubling the count? Something like dam / (1d7+2) with double then being that twice: dam/ 2*(1d7+2): at best dam/6 which is more than currently and at worst dam/18 which is (much) less than currently.

I think the problem people have here is that they get used to fixed heavy damage reduction with basic 4 with very predictable results and then experience less predictable results with high elements. If you have variable resist from the start, then that problem goes away.

[Jungle_Boy]

How about removing double resists completely? Or make basic four also variable resist with max damage close to 550 with resist with double-resist doubling the count? Something like dam / (1d7+2) with double then being that twice: dam/ 2*(1d7+2): at best dam/6 which is more than currently and at worst dam/18 which is (much) less than currently.

I think the problem people have here is that they get used to fixed heavy damage reduction with basic 4 with very predictable results and then experience less predictable results with high elements. If you have variable resist from the start, then that problem goes away.

You complain that I want to change the game too much but you suggest doubling the effectiveness of basic resists. You complain about high resists not being effective but complain when someone suggests chaging them.

With the change you suggest the average max damage fireball would be 233!! You just halved the damage of every breather in game. Yes you have to be prepared for max damage but when it doesn't happen you are already prepared for the next one.

[Nick]

Independent of other changes, what about removing the damage cap and instead somehow basing max damage on raw numbers (an equation involving HP's and native depth maybe).

I like this idea, but it may be difficult to implement without big monster changes. For example, Ancalagon currently breathes the cap until he's down below half hitpoints. A formula without a cap would AFAICS mean either making him considerably more dangerous at the start, or start losing power immediately. But maybe the latter is OK, come to think of it.

So, I like the idea and will think more about it's feasibility