The Tavern

I'm gonna play a Chei troll with short blades after this info

duvessa wrote:Notice how the only people who defend strength weighting are people who clearly don't understand how it worked.

That branded dagger had 4 base damage. Before str weight removal, 30 str would effectively increase that to 5.1 on average, and give you the equivalent of +1.5 accuracy slaying. After str weight removal, 30 str would effectively increase that to 6 on average and no longer gave an accuracy bonus. And that's after the effect of str on damage was doubled. Wow, you got almost an entire point of base damage.

If you're referring to my post, then yes I did understand how it worked. The point isn't that wow, this new system which gives me more damage with the dagger with extra strength is better. A person wielding a dagger should mostly be using it to stab, and to stab dex is the most helpful. Why? Because that means mostly lighter armours, not requiring strength and stealth, requiring dex... What you describe is true, but is also terrible game mechanics. As I said before, I could immediately tell the gains from donning heavy armour and repeatedly swinging a dagger with little skill, taking advantage of it's faster speed and accuracy then throwing it away after I'd trained whatever else I actually wanted to use and/or when I found whatever else I wanted to use for later on when piercing through enemy armour becomes a thing. The base accuracy of the weapon is more relevant than the accuracy bonus from strength, and particularly early on before you have a lot of stats.... you know, the time when you're abusing the short blade before you throw it away.

The fact that the str weighting system varied in impact depending on the size of the weapon was especially cool. Swords were best used with a balance of str/dex, maces more on the str side, short blades dex.. etc.

Duvessa is one of the most knowledgeable people on the forums, one can learn a lot about the game from reading his posts. Kindness and respect are not natural strengths.

I heard someone described at a going away party: "This person knows how to both demand respect and show respect to others. A lot of people don't have both." Duvessa is someone who has never naturally understood the latter.

It pleases me to see that he has improved a lot over the past year. I don't know if it will ever be something he is good at. If one has an acid tongue, one generally likes the taste.

On the other hand, Duvessa doesn't suffer fools.

I'm getting a Mr. T vibe from that last sentence.

svendre wrote:As I said before, I could immediately tell the gains from donning heavy armour and repeatedly swinging a dagger with little skill, taking advantage of it's faster speed and accuracy then throwing it away after I'd trained whatever else I actually wanted to use and/or when I found whatever else I wanted to use for later on when piercing through enemy armour becomes a thing. The base accuracy of the weapon is more relevant than the accuracy bonus from strength, and particularly early on before you have a lot of stats.... you know, the time when you're abusing the short blade before you throw it away.

I don't understand these two sentences. Apparently no one but a dev can tell how accurate an ogre is even after a thousand games, yet you can tell the accuracy gains there are for dexterity/strength for a dagger under the even more opaque str/dex weighing mechanism. Plus you never said anything before.

svendre wrote:The fact that the str weighting system varied in impact depending on the size of the weapon was especially cool. Swords were best used with a balance of str/dex, maces more on the str side, short blades dex.. etc.

I always thought it was kind of silly. The weight system just meant that if you wanted to improve weapon damage through stats, you either always chose strength or always chose dexterity if it wasn't 50/50. It's not a real choice at all and differentiating the weapons based on weapon abilty as they are now (though I don't really understand riposte) is so much more meaningful and interesting.

svendre wrote:If you're referring to my post, then yes I did understand how it worked. The point isn't that wow, this new system which gives me more damage with the dagger with extra strength is better. A person wielding a dagger should mostly be using it to stab, and to stab dex is the most helpful. Why? Because that means mostly lighter armours, not requiring strength and stealth, requiring dex... What you describe is true, but is also terrible game mechanics. As I said before, I could immediately tell the gains from donning heavy armour and repeatedly swinging a dagger with little skill, taking advantage of it's faster speed and accuracy then throwing it away after I'd trained whatever else I actually wanted to use and/or when I found whatever else I wanted to use for later on when piercing through enemy armour becomes a thing. The base accuracy of the weapon is more relevant than the accuracy bonus from strength, and particularly early on before you have a lot of stats.... you know, the time when you're abusing the short blade before you throw it away.

Okay, when I read:

svendre wrote:Str weighting should not have been arbitrarily removed in the name of dumbing down the code. I recall just after that change noting how ridiculous it was then to wear super heavy armor, pump all STR and swing a branded dagger over and over a ridiculous number of times (with no skill.)

I assumed that the second sentence had some sort of relationship with the first, what with being in the same paragraph and all. If

svendre wrote:I recall just after that change noting how ridiculous it was then to wear super heavy armor, pump all STR and swing a branded dagger over and over a ridiculous number of times (with no skill.)

was actually completely unrelated to strength weighting, then fair enough, but I hope you can understand why I thought otherwise.

svendre wrote:The fact that the str weighting system varied in impact depending on the size of the weapon was especially cool. Swords were best used with a balance of str/dex, maces more on the str side, short blades dex.. etc.

Plantissue wrote:I always thought it was kind of silly. The weight system just meant that if you wanted to improve weapon damage through stats, you either always chose strength or always chose dexterity if it wasn't 50/50.

Except actually if you wanted more damage you always chose strength because strength always gave you more damage than dexterity for every weapon except quick blades, for which strength and dexterity increased damage equally. There was never a single weapon (or unarmed form) in the game where dexterity increased damage more than strength. Ever.

Really? How exactly did strength/dexterity weighing work?

half of the modifier from stats came from strength and the rest was split between strength and dex using the weights

The reasons for my statements are all a bit more complicated than I feel like explaining in great depth but I'll gloss over it. First of all, it doesn't make sense to analyze the impact of dex, and what str weighting did without a comprehensive analysis considering multiple factors.

Fact: with str weighting, adding dex caused some weapons to have increased damage, some more than others. Most notable were short blades, which have had the largest impact with stabbing. Dex helps with stealth, and dodging. Dodging is easier in lighter armour. STR isn't as necessary in lighter armour to mitigate armour penalties. Using a light weapon with more dex provided for more damage previously. When STR weighting was removed, light weapons lost damage if you increase dex over STR. They don't need the accuracy as much as the heavier weapons to begin with. They still do extreme damage on a stab, but then less for any other swing. As the game progresses you encounter monsters with more and more armour, which can result in situations where you have more difficulty dealing damage if you didn't stab. So, the solution is to add STR instead? The STR won't help stealth or dodging unless it's intended to mitgate heavy armour penalties, but you still will be loud (unless it's in shadow dragon armour..) It's a waste to pump STR to do more damage with light weapons, unless you just intend to use them awhile initially then throw them away later when you find a good heavier weapon, and avoiding adding dex even more than before (which is what removing str weighting promoted.) This is why the removal of str weighting has something to do with contributing to making dex even worse. If this doesn't make sense to you, I'm sorry I just don't feel like trying to explain it all. It's a series of inter-related reasons and factors. I'm of the opinion that the game would be better if it more evenly promoted pumping STR or DEX and having builds more focused around brute force ac and direct melee damage, and a more stealthy dex based build. The dex based build needs more consistent damage and not get as shut down against armored targets. It's currently in a situation where it's too good if you get the stab, then terrible if you don't (past the opening game.)

To fix the situation:

1) Put STR weighting back in so DEX causes light weapons to do a bit more damage. Possibly even more dramatic than previously.
2) Reduce the amount of damage from stabs, so they aren't often automatic kills but just very hard hits that wound things badly to begin the fight
3) Limit resists for things like elemental damage from items to a maximum of say 50% of the total possible mitigation, and use DEX for the remaining 50% mitigation. This is necessary because DEX is inferior in so many ways to STR for damage mitigation. AC is superior to Evasion in many ways. Adding DEX will never help mitigate penalties for wearing heavier armour. This would help offset the imbalance some.

Again: 30 dex would take your dagger's effective base damage from 4 to 5.1 on average (edit: less in fact). The effect was insignificant.

I added some more notes after the fact. See above, I mentioned I thought the effect of the STR weighting system should possibly be enhanced beyond where it was previously, but only in conjunction with other changes. I didn't think things were balanced before, just that removing the weighting pushed them even more out of balance. Also, you don't really need to use a dagger's base damage as the guide for what can be used later on in the game, since training shortblades allows you to hit with larger weapons as well such as rapiers.

svendre wrote:I added some more notes after the fact. See above, I mentioned I thought the effect of the STR weighting system should possibly be enhanced beyond where it was previously, but only in conjunction with other changes. I didn't think things were balanced before, just that removing the weighting pushed them even more out of balance. Also, you don't really need to use a dagger's base damage as the guide for what can be used later on in the game, since training shortblades allows you to hit with larger weapons as well such as rapiers.

The reason duvessa selected daggers was because they were the most in favor of dex of all the "normal" weapons (only quick blades had a lower strength weight) rapiers actually got a lower percentage bonus from dex than daggers did.

also because svendre selected a dagger, not me

svendre wrote:Str weighting should not have been arbitrarily removed in the name of dumbing down the code. I recall just after that change noting how ridiculous it was then to wear super heavy armor, pump all STR and swing a branded dagger over and over

duvessa wrote:also because svendre selected a dagger, not me
svendre wrote:Str weighting should not have been arbitrarily removed in the name of dumbing down the code. I recall just after that change noting how ridiculous it was then to wear super heavy armor, pump all STR and swing a branded dagger over and over

fair enough

The dagger reference was referring to game play after str weighting was removed--early on before your skill adds much accuracy, before monsters have much armor, and when they still evade better on average.

svendre wrote:The dagger reference was referring to game play after str weighting was removed--early on before your skill adds much accuracy, before monsters have much armor, and when they still evade better on average.

again: what does this have to do with strength weighting? surely this situation was the same before and after strength weighting was removed

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