PowerOfKaishin wrote:Cynos are canines so they should flat out have SInv.
I based the revised Strong Nose detect monsters off of the 'sense invisible' that jackals/hounds/wolves/wargs used to have, which is why they don't have straight up SInv; make up the excuse that it is weaker since they are a hybrid instead of a purebreed canine. However, if the 3-tile detect monsters still steps over Fo/Ash, or is too complicated, I'll probably cut the detect monsters portion entirely and just replace it with SInv.
Also, thanks for the feedback with Shoutitis, to everyone who provided it! I was not aware it was considered as bad as people think it is, probably because I have a problem with actually thinking about noise while playing.
minstrel wrote:Fear would be more appropriate but also a huge pain in the ass to chase stuff around (as much as a dog would love that...squirrel!). Having it happen at high tension, with increased chance of good side-effects would fit well with the theme lately of encouraging fights against more than 1 opponent.
This would be interesting in the revision of starting with a species ability to Cause Fear at the cost of making a loud noise and being tied to Breath/Exhaust, but I'm not sure how overpowered that would be (in comparison to how long it would take to find and power up the Cause Fear spell vs starting with it innately). Another proposal for flavor I found was to have a chance for Cynos to become mesmerized by a monster whenever one enters LoS, but I definitely wouldn't want to add that without an upside (which I would likely combine with the Cause Fear idea and have it also break Mesm). I am also wary of adding too many gimmicks to the species that have an impact on the game, considering the skill system is already supposed to be the main focus.
Doesnt wrote:I don't like Shoutitis as that seems to just be punishing stealth on the everyman sort of stealth builds that the race encourages.
I do think it'd be appropriate to change the shout messages to bark or howl though, similar to how barachians now croak.
I would feel guilty about adding yet another special case to the shout code, but I'm tempted to do so anyway if they do make it into Trunk.
As a separate issue, I would like to ask everyone (regardless if they have played the species or not) for feedback on the following:
Current information displayed to the player is their current aptitude per skill, the amount of skill points it costs per level (through the existing approximate skill cost system in the skill menu), and a message that appears whenever the aptitude increases/decreases as it hits one of the level breakpoints.
Here's how the skill screen currently looks:
Here's the message that appears when you hit one of the skill level breakpoints:
And, in case you're an Ashenzari worshipping Cyno, here's what happens when you Transfer Knowledge and drop below one of the skill level breakpoints:
However, it currently does not present which levels are the breakpoints (6/12/18, or every 6 levels starting from zero except for skill level 24), nor does it inform the player how much the aptitude drops at each breakpoint (start at +4, -4 per breakpoint). The only current explanation is the species selection information of "They are quick to train the basics of any skill, but struggle to master any", the custom mutation "You have a short attention span.", and the manual explanation of "This comes at the cost of a poor attention span, making it more difficult to train a skill the higher it gets." Thus, the player has no in-game accessible knowledge of when these breakpoints specifically will occur, nor how much the aptitude will be affected, until it happens. On one hand, there aren't defined numbers for when species mutations occur for many other species (other than Draconians in the species selection), such as how the Demonspawn mutation system functions. On the other hand, most species mutations are beneficial, and the negative ones are usually visible and take effect from XL 1, so having one that creates negative effects that aren't immediately observable may require more information displayed in some fashion to the user. Thus, I'm wondering if A) this is an issue and B) if it is, how to provide this specific information without breaking immersion.