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Major discrepancy/bug with tinkermage/summon mechanics


Slarti

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So I just did some testing to see what makes turrets stronger, and what doesn't. And the short answer is: nothing makes them stronger?!

 

The major caveat here is that I only tested by looking at total damage output (i.e., actual damage + blocked damage). If any of the things I tested improve some other aspect of turrets (like total HP) but don't improve their attacks, I wouldn't have picked it up. However, the last 15 or so Spiderweb games have all improved summoned monsters primarily by raising their level, which in turn raises their stats, so that may be unlikely. (And attack is probably the most important capacity for turrets, anyway.)

 

I tested primarily on Bolt Flingers, Snare Turrets, and Freezing Turrets as they were the easiest to manipulate circumstances with.

 

- Contrary to the newly added sentence in the tooltip, Intelligence does not improve turret attack strength.

- Putting more points into a turret skill (e.g., Build Boltflinger) does not improve turret attack strength. (For base level turrets, it will unlock a new attack ability used about half the time, as stated in the tooltip.)

- Putting points into Turret Craft does not improve turret attack strength. (It will auto-buff turrets on creation, as stated in the tooltip.)

 

I did not test PC level, which may or may not affect turret level / attack strength.

 

The "base level" of different turret types is used, so the better turret types are rather stronger, even aside from some of them having better attack abilities.

 

 

Note: I have not tested shaman summons. However, looking at the definitions file, it looks like those summons will improve with investment in the appropriate skill (and possibly also with investment in Intelligence).

 

 

I'm not sure Tinkermages need to be any stronger -- Charge Weapons is close to Call of the Frenzy level OP, and you get it for free at level 1 -- but at the moment, if my observations are accurate, that tooltip about Intelligence may be dead wrong.

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I saw the intelligence didn't improve things in testing, but never tested it again after telling Jeff. He said that shaman summons weren't improved with intelligence in previous games.

 

Edit - Intelligence didn't improve to hit, so it wasn't changing turret level.

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Randomizer -- you said in your advice thread that turret area attacks are weaker. However, the defs for all possible elements (build abilities, turret creature defs, and abilities used by turrets) all look identical to in Av2. Are you completely sure about that statement?

 

It looks like the only actual difference is the change in vitality, such that you can no longer just summon any 2 turrets that you like.

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Did Jeff actually say that he did something to make them weaker? It would have to be something hardcoded. Maybe that's why points in the Build skills and Turret Craft are now meaningless.

 

(Or were they always? Did anyone actually test those in Av2, or did we just assume they worked?)

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From Jeff:

 

"The Int of the tinkermage makes the turret be higher level, which ups its dexterity, which makes its attack more effective."

 

"So intelligence has never given a direct bonus to summons. What I am doing is reducing the damage bonus for all summoned creatures and instead giving shamans and tinkermages summoning bonuses for Int.

 

By the way, AE turrets will do less damage in the next beta."

 

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Well, maybe he did the first part but not the second. Weird.

 

I guess the next thing to test would be shaman summons for all three potential level+ sources (summon skill, bonus skill (bottom row), and Int). I don't know if you want to test it, but it's a bit easier since you have a version that will display hit rates.

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Okay, I couldn't test for to hit since all of the wolves had a 5% miss chance. So I looked at defense for the same monster type hitting wolves with different summons.

 

Intelligence, summon level, and beast bonus all made a difference. Beast bonus was 5% per level. Summon level was 5% per level. Intelligence seemed to be 2% per level.

 

From the Hint Book:

Your penalties for an attack are:

 

Target's Defense Skill - Half the value of the defender’s defense skill for that defense type.

 

Level - Half the defender's level.

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After Avadon 2, it was clear that Tinkermages needed a nerf. They are still overpowered, but less egregiously so.

 

I just went through the code step by step.

 

Every level of Turret Craft has a 90% chance of increasing a turret's level by 1. Every level of Intelligence has a 15% chance of increasing a turret's level by 1.

 

The key quote is here: "If any of the things I tested improve some other aspect of turrets (like total HP) but don't improve their attacks, I wouldn't have picked it up." Raising level increases EVERYTHING. Health. Chance to hit. Damage. Resistance to damage. Turrets are totally getting stronger when you up those skills. It's just can be subtle.

 

The healing pylon was nerfed from Avadon 2 to Avadon 3. It was WAY overpowered.

 

Hey, I might be wrong. If I am, I will fix it and apologize. However, I DO read my email at support@spiderwebsoftware.com. If you think something is broken, it might be worth dropping a note there before everyone on the forums decides everything is broken forever.

 

- Jeff Vogel

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I'm confused. According to what you just wrote, damage is one of the things that should be improved by level, which is what Turret Craft is supposed to improve.

 

I had the same understanding, so damage is the thing I tested for. Raising Turret Craft did not raise damage in my tests.

 

Also, I'm getting the impression that you would prefer email to forum posting, about bugs. Sorry about that; the idea with posting here is that other people can double check the results (as Randomizer and I did here) so that if one of us made some error in our testing, we don't waste your time with it. In the future, I'll use email.

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Aw, I like reading about bugs, though. Huge game breaking bugs are no fun (and irrelevant given that SW games never have them), but this sort of more obscure balancing minutia is fascinating to me. Most devs these days have dedicated bug threads just so they don't get the same issue reported 1,000 times. I know Spiderweb is a tiny company and the sorts of bugs that some here are finding are pretty obscure issues that you'd have to do some more extended testing to discover (so I doubt SW will be getting 1,000 outraged e-mails that a Tinkermage's turrets don't seem to scale from STR), but I don't think it's a bad mark on Spiderweb if the bugs are posted on and discussed on the forum. Nor do I think doing so would mean that the bugs will be seen as persisting forever, given that many of the more dedicated players here will no doubt go over 1.01 with a fine toothed comb upon release and correct the record. The sort of deep analysis of game mechanics that goes on here only comes from a place of love and over the years I've come to look forward to it as part of the ambiance of playing any new SW release.

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  • 1 month later...

So, I finally realized that I could test regular summons simply by picking a summon with an ability that increases damage along with the creature's stats (and hence with its level).

 

For Int and for Beast Focus, my observations line up with Randomizer's. But for summon skill, they are very different: I have been unable to see any improvement, ever. (This also lines up with my testing on turrets, which makes sense.)

 

Randomizer, are you sure about your testing results? The simplest explanation here is that summon skills do not and have never boosted summoned creature levels.

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i was only able to test summons in what they had for defense. I took shamans at the same level and made their builds identical except for the tested abilities and saw what it took to hit them.

 

There is a chance that Jeff made a change from the last beta that showed to hits and the final release since there were 4 different versions tested in between them.

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