November 26th, 2010, 17:04
(This post was last modified: November 27th, 2010, 20:45 by Vagabond.)
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Catnip 2.0 is scheduled to release by Christmas. However, we're still in early discussion of spell changes and there's no way all of that will be decided on by Christmas. I'm excited about the work we're doing, but I think 2.0 needs a smaller, more realistic goal. So for 2.0 we're going to make much simpler numeric changes, and we'll leave the heavier stuff for later. I don't want to confuse the long-term spell balance threads, so I'm making a 2.0 spell thread and long-term spell discussions will continue in the appropriate threads.
So what will we be changing for 2.0? Numbers. Resistance, damage, bonuses, cost, etc. What won't we be changing for 2.0? Everything else. Spell rarity, deleting and adding spells, etc. are all out for now. Please keep talking about them in the appropriate threads so we can move on to those changes once the Christmas rush is over.
For example:
Change Stone Skin to +2 defense - Good
Change Chaos Surge to an uncommon spell - Wait till after 2.0
The hopeful good news is these 2.0 changes will feed into 3.0 and later. Once we've changed Fire Bolt to x damage, we don't need to come back and do it again. Instead we can spend our time tweaking other interesting elements. I do think it's important we get some changes in now, though. If spells are still working based off of old resistances and old health then people aren't going to get a good idea of what Catnip is improving.
So, without further ado, some magic...
November 26th, 2010, 17:10
(This post was last modified: December 10th, 2010, 14:05 by Vagabond.)
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Chaos
Death
Life
Nature
Sorcery
Notes:
Number in parenthesis is the 1.31 number
Resistances are listed as hard, medium and easy to resist. Not putting in exact numbers because resistance mechanics are still being discussed elsewhere.
Change Log
November 27th, 2010, 00:55
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Looks good, thanks for the effort 
November 27th, 2010, 21:12
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OK, I have initial material for all the colors now. Some of the stuff I do not know if it's actually the simple mechanical change I was shooting for with this list. The big example is Heroism, which I downgraded to Veteran from Elite. That seems like it should be an easy change, but I have no idea if that's actually true.
Explanations...
Chaos - mainly increased damage for Catnip's increased health totals. Most damage increased by 25%, spells that you spend mana for (firebolt, etc) I increased by 50% since I was not changing the amount gained by spending mana.
Death - Mostly changing resistances, but exact values unknown. Note, some resistances changed massively. Black Sleep before had a huge effect and was somewhat hard to resist. Kept the huge effect, but it'll be much easier to resist. Other than that, mainly dropped upkeep costs.
Life - Mostly upkeep changes, usually increases. Downgraded Heroism, Invulnerability and Lion Heart effects. The reason Holy Armor upkeep decreased is I switched Iron Skin and Stone Armor, so Holy armor got the lower upkeep and Stone Skin got the higher defense.
Nature - Upgrades and downgrades all over the place. I'm actually hoping Earth to Mud will be a useful spell now units move 2+. That's also the reason I decreased Entangle's cost.
Sorcery - Like Death, mostly resist changes.
As always, suggestions and critiques welcome.
November 28th, 2010, 05:47
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A few comments (based on the summary alone, will look more closely later):
We're looking at changing the resistance system, and it seems likely we'll do that. If you balance resistance for the current system now it might have to be redone later. If you're okay with doing that, np. Just looking to avoid doing double work if possible.
I'm not a fan of the Heroism idea, I'd much prefer balancing it by making it Uncommon instead for v3.0. Short-term, cost balancing would be sufficient IMO. One of its main early uses is casting it in combat, that has a huge effect on a recruit unit. Put it at 30/150 mana with upkeep of 4 and it'll still be useful (because of the large effect) but nowhere near overpowered (because of cost limitations).
November 28th, 2010, 07:21
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Chaos
Wall of fire: 1 upkeep (2)
How about making it zero upkeep or strengthening the spell effect?
Lightning Bolt: strength 8 (5) attack +1/mana
How about making Lightning Bolt a fixed damage spell? Distinguishes it better from fire bolt and fireball. Those can at least be protected from with fire immunity, little you can do against lightning bolt. Say, strength 15 armour piercing attack for 20 mana.
Doom bolt: 12 (10) damage
I'd like to keep Doom Bolt at 10 damage for sake of balancing Warlock units.
Armageddon: Casting cost 750 (1250)
Why? This one is a game breaker and it even earns you mana. How about an upkeep reduction instead so you can really profit from it once you get it off?
November 28th, 2010, 09:42
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Catwalk Wrote:We're looking at changing the resistance system, and it seems likely we'll do that. If you balance resistance for the current system now it might have to be redone later. If you're okay with doing that, np. Just looking to avoid doing double work if possible.
Avoiding double-work is why I currently just list them as hard, medium and easy as I was waiting for resistance system changes. If those won't be in by 2.0, then I'll need to assign something and we'll redo some of them later. Unfortunate, but we can't leave 1.31 values in with Catnip resistance changes or we're just asking for disaster.
Quote:I'm not a fan of the Heroism idea, I'd much prefer balancing it by making it Uncommon instead for v3.0. Short-term, cost balancing would be sufficient IMO. One of its main early uses is casting it in combat, that has a huge effect on a recruit unit. Put it at 30/150 mana with upkeep of 4 and it'll still be useful (because of the large effect) but nowhere near overpowered (because of cost limitations).
The reason I made the change I did is Heroism is pretty much unprecedented for buff bonuses as it is. If you buff a regular unit with it, you get +1 attack, +1 defense, +2 crosses, +1 heart and +1 to hit. (using standard MoM xp bonuses.) That's not too far behind Lion Heart, a rare. If we use Catnip xp, that's +1 attack, +3 defense, +2 crosses, +1 heart and +1 to hit. The problem is finding a cost to justify those bonuses. It's better than any common or uncommon buff out there, and I'm not comfortable with just upping the cost to compensate.
If, instead we downgrade to Veteran as suggested, it's +1 defense and +1 cross with 1.31 or +2 defense, +1 cross, +1 heart with Catnip. Those bonuses are much more in line with other buffs AND it's only during the xp window before your unit hits veteran which isn't that far off once you start fighting. You'll notice I didn't talk about green troops. Since you won't start with Heroism but have to research it, use on green troops should be limited.
Quote:Chaos
Wall of fire: 1 upkeep (2)
How about making it zero upkeep or strengthening the spell effect?
Lightning Bolt: strength 8 (5) attack +1/mana
How about making Lightning Bolt a fixed damage spell? Distinguishes it better from fire bolt and fireball. Those can at least be protected from with fire immunity, little you can do against lightning bolt. Say, strength 15 armour piercing attack for 20 mana.
Doom bolt: 12 (10) damage
I'd like to keep Doom Bolt at 10 damage for sake of balancing Warlock units.
Armageddon: Casting cost 750 (1250)
Why? This one is a game breaker and it even earns you mana. How about an upkeep reduction instead so you can really profit from it once you get it off?
Wall of Fire - good catch, I'll up the strength.
Lightning Bolt - I'd rather not make it fixed as I feel that makes it less interesting. Unless the intent is to power down hero-killer spells such as Lightning Bolt, Psionic Blast, Crack's Call, etc.
Doom Bolt - Understood, though it got scaled up because health got scaled up. Health went up almost 100%, Doom Bolt only went up 25%. I'd be worried about Warlocks being nerfed by the change instead of buffed.
Armageddon - Reduced cost since I've generally seen this spell as a late-game annoyance instead of a game breaker. If other folks disagree I'll remove the cost reduction.
November 28th, 2010, 15:03
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I'm quite certain the resistance system won't change for v2.0, any changes kyrub does for v2.0 will be minimal. So if needed, you can proceed with that assumption in mind.
Quote:The reason I made the change I did is Heroism is pretty much unprecedented for buff bonuses as it is. If you buff a regular unit with it, you get +1 attack, +1 defense, +2 crosses, +1 heart and +1 to hit. (using standard MoM xp bonuses.) That's not too far behind Lion Heart, a rare. If we use Catnip xp, that's +1 attack, +3 defense, +2 crosses, +1 heart and +1 to hit. The problem is finding a cost to justify those bonuses. It's better than any common or uncommon buff out there, and I'm not comfortable with just upping the cost to compensate.
If, instead we downgrade to Veteran as suggested, it's +1 defense and +1 cross with 1.31 or +2 defense, +1 cross, +1 heart with Catnip. Those bonuses are much more in line with other buffs AND it's only during the xp window before your unit hits veteran which isn't that far off once you start fighting. You'll notice I didn't talk about green troops. Since you won't start with Heroism but have to research it, use on green troops should be limited.
Other buffs can stay on the unit, though. And if Veteran is lowered to 50 XP (or possibly 40), it'll have an even shorter life span. I think it should be a powerful spell, it can easily be balanced by cost so it's not overpowered. I'd much rather have that than a watered-down version.
Lightning Bolt pretty much renders Fire Bolt obsolete. It's very similar to it, and better in just about every way. Can't we distinguish them more from each other somehow?
November 29th, 2010, 08:27
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I set Lightning Bolt to a fixed value and then followed suit with Psionic Blast.
I have a question about resistances: are we updating summoned monster resistances for 2.0, or are we going to have the new, lower resistances for normal units and fantastic units still have their 1.31 resistances?
For reference, average racial resist with Catnip is 3.5, average racial resist for 1.31 is 5.5. That's before xp, which is +1-3 in 1.31 and +1-4 in Catnip (plus Warlord/Crusade of course).
1.31 summoned resistances
Common 6.5 avg (3-10 range)
Uncommon 7.5 avg (6-8 range)
Rare 9 avg (8-10 range)
Very Rare 11.5 avg (9-15 range)
System-wise this meant in 1.31 a regular unit was on average around the same resistance as a common, a veteran on par with uncommon and elite slightly worse than a rare. There was of course significant variance, with dwarves getting +4 to resistance for example, but that's the general idea. I'm just looking at these numbers to figure out good resistance penalties, so I need to know where units and summon numbers will be at.
November 29th, 2010, 09:04
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Resistances...
I would like to have Catnip 2.0 as a testing platform for the new system of resistance. This a basic combat concept, that will be changed which means a big shift in combat and overall strategy - it needs a good run of tests. So, I will try to put that in and, unless something unexpected happens, I think you can count on it being there.
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