Mines Malingerer
Posts: 50
Joined: Saturday, 26th April 2014, 18:09
Draconians
-The RNG can potentially punish your background choice. (You picked Fire Elementalist, and got White Draconian)
-You wanted a color, any color, other than X. You got X. Uuuugh.
... which doesn't really encourage adapting around your color, it just encourages quitting on them and being mad.
Note that I don't mean players should be able to pick their color. My point is rather that, as things stand, the Draconian color being random is obnoxious and doesn't seem to really achieve the intended effect of encouraging players to be flexible in their planning.
Meanwhile, as I said earlier, Daemonspawn look to me to do what Draconians are intended to. Until you have all your different facets, you don't know what exactly you're going to get: if you're fully spoilered you know some things of importance, such as that one of your equipment slots will ultimately be unusable (Unless you roll monstrous, in which case you know already that you will be unable to use headgear, gloves, and boots), and that certain kinds of mutations will not roll together so if you got X mutation you will not get Y, but for instance a Daemonspawn who rolls Thin Skeletal Structure might in turn roll multiple other mutations that all weight them towards stabber material or they might roll stuff like Hooves (Which hinders stealth and encourages more straightforward melee activity), and so you can't really assume anything about your final build until you have rolled six different mutations (More if monstrous) which may not happen until quite late in your character's development.
It raises the question: if Daemonspawn do what Draconians are intended to do, and Draconians do not achieve their intended purpose, why are Draconians in the game? I like the general idea of Draconians and am not suggesting they be removed, but if they are invalidated in their purpose by another species and failing at it besides, then some kind of change needs to be made.
Draconian colors also have seemingly contradictory incentives at work. A Red Draconian, looking at their skill modifications, should obviously commit to Fire magics and quite possibly ignore Ice magic outright. (The removal of anti-training will make this less true, thankfully) But their innate breath weapon is a fire attack that overlaps in its utility with both Conjure Flame and Bolt of Fire, and in general is redundant in damage type with the Fire school: just looking at the breath weapon I would sooner make a Red Draconian an Ice Elementalist, using my breath weapon to dispatch Ice Beasts and so on and my spells to deal with Crimson Imps and later fire immune enemies. Red Draconians strike me as the color most guilty of this phenomenon, but other colors have this oddness at work too, such as how Green Draconians have a Mephitic breath weapon alongside skill with the Poison school. Purple, Pale, Yellow and Grey Draconians largely escape this, but that leaves more than half of the colors in an awkward position. There's also a psychological component: if I roll a Purple Draconian I feel pressured to start training Charms/Hexes even though it's not like a Purple Draconian is non-functional doing other things. One could argue I should just ignore that nagging feeling, but if I have no pressing motivation to use the advantages I've acquired, why am I supposed to care what color I got? That's a problem all its own, and a worse one than a psychological trick too.
More than that, the bonuses that distinguish Draconian colors don't seem very interesting in terms of gameplay. The skill modifications don't really encourage any interesting decision-making (While the skill maluses can directly punish your previous decisions) in that either you take advantage of them and are better than a color that lacks the bonus but raises the skill anyway or you don't take advantage of them and are left with... your breath weapon and resistance? Poison, Asphyxiation, and Electricity are the only resistances that carry substantial connotations beyond 'some attacks do less damage to you than normal', since they influence decisions like 'should I dump Mephitic Cloud at my feet?' or 'should I use this Electrical damage thing that can hurt me?' The Yellow Draconian's Acid resistance is particularly disappointing, because Corrosion Resistance provides Acid Resistance, the two effects don't stack, and if you're digging around in the Slime Pits or something you want Corrosion Resistance regardless of whether you have Acid Resistance or not, so at any given moment a Yellow Draconian doesn't necessarily meaningfully benefit from their innate resistance at all, even, and in fact especially, when they should.
I don't have anything resembling a proposal or suggestion. The two obvious "fixes" are to make Draconians into Daemonspawn knock-offs, or to remove Draconians, and I don't think either of those is a good answer. I like Draconians overall and think they can have a niche without re-imagining them as something completely unrelated to how they currently are. But I would like to generate discussion, because I feel Draconians aren't really doing what the developers say they're intended to do, and aren't really doing anything else so interesting so well that they are clearly worthwhile as is.
Though I will say that if Yellow was removed as a color or radically altered I wouldn't miss it.