Old tooltip mod discussion

[Archaeolagent]

Old topic, old verison; please see new version here.

 

Edited April 17 by Slawbug

[mikeprichard]

Nice. Questions for you both, if you don't mind:

Slarty:
1) Your Searer description states "A third point of this skill increases the duration." instead of Jeff's "Each extra point of this skill increases the damage." If your version is correct, what exactly do the fourth/fifth/etc. points do? Your text seems to imply they'd be useless (as there's no mention of either further duration increases or any direct damage increases), but I doubt that's the case.

2) You note "Each extra point of this skill does nothing." for War Infusion/Guardian Push/Lifedrain, and "Each extra point of this skill increases the damage by a miniscule amount." for Chain Lightning. If this is in fact the case as of version 1.0, do you know whether Jeff is aware of and will fix these bugs in the next patch (and whether you would also then update the mod accordingly for these fixes and any other known underlying changes)?

Alhoon:
I loved your G1 Mutagen "smaller fyoras" mod tips (here), because those monstrously large lizards don't look right. Should I be able to apply the same simple trick safely/effectively again here? Specifically, it looks like I added the line "cr_scaling=60" in the "PC created fyora" section, edited "cr_scaling=80" to "60" in the "Rogue Fyora" section, edited "cr_scaling=90" to "60" in the "Enraged Fyora" section, and skipped the "Basic friendly fyora"/"Warped Fyora"/"Charged Fyora"/"cryoa" sections. (Not sure why I skipped the sections I did - maybe those were already smaller.) Cheers.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Wait, melee skill includes a chance of an attack costing fewer action points? Since when?1

 

I had no idea.

 

Also, some of those tooltips on weapon shaping are brutal. Seems I wasted some money there...

 

 

 

Suggestion:

 

Healing craft -> Does it also boost the recovery effect of i.e. cure affliction? The tooltip on that spell lists a percentage bonus. I always thought that meant more turns' worth of debuff would be removed. If so, the tooltip could clarify that it's not just hitpoint healing.

 

Mechanics -> Tooltip could include that it also helps with disarming mines, manipulating power spirals, and using machines. (Though anyone who installs a mod probably already knows that.)

 

Either way, thanks for making this.

[Archaeolagent]

On 4/2/2024 at 1:35 PM, mikeprichard said:

1) Your Searer description states "A third point of this skill increases the duration." instead of Jeff's "Each extra point of this skill increases the damage." If your version is correct, what exactly do the fourth/fifth/etc. points do? Your text seems to imply they'd be useless (as there's no mention of either further duration increases or any direct damage increases), but I doubt that's the case.

 

My version is correct.  The fourth/fifth etc points do nothing except for the same "miniscule" damage increase noted for Chain Lightning.  Specifically, it adds 1 die, which is miniscule for most of the game, especially compared to the percentile increases of other tooltips.  FWIW, this is the only thing extra points in a lot of damage spells have done for Spiderweb games going back 20 years now, all the way to OG1.

 

On 4/2/2024 at 1:35 PM, mikeprichard said:

2) You note "Each extra point of this skill does nothing." for War Infusion/Guardian Push/Lifedrain, and "Each extra point of this skill increases the damage by a miniscule amount." for Chain Lightning. If this is in fact the case as of version 1.0, do you know whether Jeff is aware of and will fix these bugs in the next patch (and whether you would also then update the mod accordingly for these fixes and any other known underlying changes)?

 

Some of these might be unintentional, and stem from some subtle changes SW made to ability definitions.  However, in this case, if the extra levels did do something else, it would be to very slightly increase the duration of the statuses they cause, which is not very meaningful to begin with.  So IMO it's not worth wasting Jeff's time with.  (IMO, misleading tooltips that make people invest in things that don't work are a bigger issue than unimpressive spell upgrades.)

 

On 4/2/2024 at 2:39 PM, Iguana-on-a-stick said:

Wait, melee skill includes a chance of an attack costing fewer action points? Since when?

Since Mutagen -- and that was actually already in the tooltip.  Not my addition 🙂

 

On 4/2/2024 at 2:39 PM, Iguana-on-a-stick said:

Healing craft -> Does it also boost the recovery effect of i.e. cure affliction? The tooltip on that spell lists a percentage bonus. I always thought that meant more turns' worth of debuff would be removed. If so, the tooltip could clarify that it's not just hitpoint healing.

I didn't edit the Mechanics tooltip.  It's not an exhausting list of what Mechanics can do, but it's a representative enough list that it won't mislead players.  For Healing Craft, you are correct that Cure Affliction will technically receive a tiny increase to the number of turns removed (well, a small chance of removing 1 extra turn is how it really plays out).  However, it won't change the number of debuffs removed, and only certain removal abilities get this bonus.  I did think about mentioning this in the tooltip, but ultimately decided it would be too confusing and isn't really a plausible reason to raise the skill anyway.  So kind of like with Mechanics, the goal was to lead the player fairly, not to force a procession of every possible edge case.

[Mechalibur]

I did a brief test with buffs in Mutagen when it came out, and it does appear that the level influences duration, but it's kind of hard to pin down exactly how much. Seems like ~half a turn per level, but then you have to account for variance in the sample and yadda yadda yadda. Like Slarti says, not a huge difference having 1 vs 4 points.

 

In Infestation, spell level also seems to affect accuracy! ...by 1%! Not sure if it's still the case, but upgrading a firebolt had me go from 76% chance to hit to 77% chance to hit. I think this is the reason a lot of accuracy numbers don't seem to be nicely divisible by 5 any more.

Edited April 2 by Mechalibur

[Archaeolagent]

Oh, interesting!  That 1% makes sense -- I think everything that used to (in older engines) give 5% accuracy now just gives 1%, right?

 

I suppose I could change "nothing" to "nothing special."

[Archaeolagent]

Oh, and Mech -- the issue isn't that spell/ability level doesn't ever influence buff duration.  It depends how the definition is written.  For many spells it's written in such a way that it does impact it.  For those weapon shaping disciplines, it's not.

[Mechalibur]

2 minutes ago, Slarti said:

Oh, interesting!  That 1% makes sense -- I think everything that used to (in older engines) give 5% accuracy now just gives 1%, right?

 

I suppose I could change "nothing" to "nothing special."

 

Level ups still seem to be 5% increments

 

1 minute ago, Slarti said:

Oh, and Mech -- the issue isn't that spell/ability level doesn't ever influence buff duration.  It depends how the definition is written.  For many spells it's written in such a way that it does impact it.  For those weapon shaping disciplines, it's not.

 

Ah, so literally nothing. Great. They probably don't even affect accuracy like spells do since they're modifiers to attack rolls.

[Archaeolagent]

I meant everything besides level.  I was going to add besides level at the end.  In parentheses.  I was going to.  The best laid plans...

[mikeprichard]

Ha, thanks, Slarty. I wasn't really doubting you, but suspected these might be bugs - or at least very odd design/balance choices - you were (accurately) describing. I also already had in mind Jeff's fairly abysmal track record with UI descriptions, especially those that may lead people to invest points in skills that do absolutely/almost nothing.

That said, based on your and Mech's info, and assuming all of this is intentional and/or not going to change on Jeff's part, I'd appreciate your consideration of fully noting any confirmed "miniscule" damage/duration increases for the various referenced spells/weapon shaping skills, for completeness/accuracy and consistency with your revised Chain Lightning description. (For example, editing the Searer text to state "A third point of this skill increases the duration, and each point of this skill beyond the second increases the damage by a miniscule amount.") Either way, thanks for putting the time and effort into these very useful tweaks.

[Archaeolagent]

In a perfect world, I'd love to have tooltips that are both comprehensive and clear.  In reality, when the mechanics themselves are a little bit convoluted and there are edge cases, sometimes you can't get both of those things at the same time.  Trade-offs have to be made.  The priority for me is to make sure the player gets a clear picture of what the skill does so they can make fair choices about whether to invest in it.

 

My other comment, though, is that "each point of this skill increases the damage by a miniscule amount" doesn't actually have anything to do with Searer itself.  That's just how literally every damage skill works -- it's hardcoded.  It doesn't belong in an individual skill description any more than "Intelligence increases the damage of this spell" does.  So if anything, what your plea tempts me to do is to remove that mention from Chain Lightning 🙂 

[mikeprichard]

Totally understood and foreseen (you can't know absolutely everything going on under the hood without getting Jeff to spill all the deets, which he's not going to do) - so when it comes to making the descriptions consistent and "close enough" (including removing the "miniscule" reference from Chain Lightning, which I'd also considered), whatever works!

[Mechalibur]

Did a quick test on Guardian Push: level affects slow duration. I cheated my stat up to 101, and I slowed my target for 232 turns.

 

Also it pushes 6 squares (at every level) instead of 3 like the tooltip suggests, not sure if you already have that in your mod.

[Spidweb]

I am patching Geneforge 2 soon. If you want problems fixed, the best way for that to happen is to email about them to support@spiderwebsoftware.com. (Or my private email address if you have it, which is better.) If you had done this, most if not all of these fixes would be in v101.

 

For example, someone emailed me about the "3 squares" thing for the knockback ability. I fixed it instantly for v101.