Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Maegfaer]

This is a first concept for the skills in my new mod, a kind of 'Life is Balanced' reloaded. My main aim for skills is to remove annoying bottlenecks in skill chains. Feel free to share your thoughts!

Two skills are removed entirely: Prospecting and Procuration. Three other skills were moved to be Minor Skills (Piety, Mentoring and Arts).

Former procuration abilities are mostly divided between Animal Lore and Tailoring. Now you can level Animal Lore from level 0 by making Bone Glue and slaughtering animals in a coop! Drying hides on racks will also be part of animal lore, either at level 0 or 30.

Prospecting abilities are all part of Mining now. Tunneling has been moved from Terraforming to Mining (available at level 0). XP for these abilities will be low.

Since the dependies amongst farming, animal, cooking and tailoring group were frustrating, all these skills are now independent.

[Maegfaer]

For combat, I'm considering one armour chain (from light to heavy), a one-handed chain (including shield), a two-handed chain, and a mounted chain. Stats of weapons and armour will be adjusted so items further along in the chains are more useful.

I'm very open to drastic changes in combat skills and abilities, so brainstorming is welcome.

[Hoshiqua]

Just a suggestion.. THIS would be a drastic change
Now I like your new lines, even in combat, I would hugely prefer to have those ones in the game !

But do you think it would technically be possible to apply your changes to what skills actually do (like tunneling under mining skill) and.. remove the skill lines like stated here http://lifeisfeudal.com/Discussions/que ... skill-tree ?

Just asking if possible, not saying you should, it would change too much and I'm sure you spent time thinking about those lines.

But for combat skill lines, I think it is not a very sandbox friendly logic to put a progression like that.. especially in armor. Hell, I would remove the armor skills if I were you !

More accurately, I think you should put throwing weapons as an independant skill, and then Bow -> Crossbow. Put battle prep as independant aswell.

For two handers line, put 2h axes -> 2h swords -> 2h hammers -> War cries (keeping them at the end of the line because they are so OP right now )

For one handers lines, put 1h axes and maces -> shields -> 1h swords -> 1h piercing

For cavalry, War Horse Handling -> Mounted Combat -> Heavy War Horse Handling -> Lancing

And finally, for spearmen, Milita Service -> Spear Mastery -> Pollaxes -> Unarmed Combat

I don't know where to put armor skills honestly. As I said, better if you removed them I think. What use are they anyway ? Forces people to waste time hitting eachother with hammers to skill up.

Just like most of the skills when you think about it XD

[Maegfaer]

Thanks for the input. Concerning your suggestions in the linked thread, it's not possible for me to add additional effects to skills like a reduction in stamina usage, or the malus in archery when wearing heavy armour.

Edit: Changed my mind about the following spoilered text, archery behind crossbows is a bad idea.

Spoiler

I would like to put archery behind crossbows because it takes more practice to be proficient in a bow in real life. I'll balance their stats to make archery worth the skill poin investment. Then, if plate armour is the last skill in a chain, and archery is also far in a chain, the limit on skill points can make it impossible to be a plate armour archer.

Currently, all independent skills in a group are all put on the same line in the skill book. This means that if you have more than 6 independent skills the skills will overlap with the right page of the skill book. So completely removing skill chains creates a huge mess in the GUI.

Anyway, pointing out overpoweredness of abilities/items is also useful for me, since I haven't played the game for quite some time. I can then see if I can rebalance them or perhaps even disable them.

[Azzerhoden]

I don't think the combat skills need to be listed as 5 levels deep.

http://lifeisfeudal.com/forum/proposed-change-to-combat-skills-alignment-t14155/

[Maegfaer]

Thanks for the link, I'll contemplate your suggestions.

There are many factors one can consider when ordering skill chains, for example:

• (Historic) progression of technology
• Ease of use in real life (mace is easier than sword)
• Ease of use in this game (sword is easier than mace)
• Resource dependencies (especially relevant in crafting skills)
• Resource/item scarcity
• Relative effectiveness of skills and their abilities/items
• Potential skill combinations
• Statistics (Attributes) effects
• Skill point limits

About your proposal, I'm mainly concerned with the skill point limit in relation to the crafting skills. Shorter chains in combat than in crafting may give either too much flexibility in combat skills or too little flexibility in crafting.

Another consideration is, are there any combat skill combinations we want to be rare or even impossible? For example, do we want to see archers in plate armour?

[Azzerhoden]

Very valid considerations. My general philosophy is that the the YO release is a giant beta project and that we should play with as many different "rulesets" so as to present back to Bobik the ultimate MMO design.

I know a lot of players would probably disagree though, as they invest time into making characters and don't want to see a sudden change that ruins their game-play. Then again, perhaps most of them have probably left.

Anyhow, back to skills. Hoshiqua had floated the idea of removing all the skill requiements so players could train only those skills they wanted to learn. I was intrigued with the idea and tried to implement it, but ran into a few bugs. https://lifeisfeudal.com/mantis/view.php?id=3460.

So I guess, to answer your last question, yes, I do think players should be able to wear plate and use bows. Game balance should be sought in other avenues, such as time to produce and materials. As an example, I don't recall plate ever being made out of anything other than steel. Hoshiqua has done more research on Plate though, so I'll defer to his knowledge on the subject matter.

[Stormsblade]

Bobik has stated in the past that combat skill progression works this way:

Basic Weapons -> Armor -> Advanced Weapons -> Counter your own class -> Counter your traditional weakness

He's more focused on good gameplay mechanisms than he is on mirroring real life.

I support your mod and think it will be fun, but I prefer Bobiks vision for the MMO, and I think as combat moves closer to completion, balance will change dramatically.

[Hoshiqua]

I don't like that "class" system. I really don't like it. It is not original, not sandbox, and is something we've seen a hundred times. Why not do it like Wurm ? No classes, just a bunch of skills you can level up in free order, and have any weapon combination you want ? Much more diversity on the battlefield..

[Maegfaer]

I was intrigued with the idea and tried to implement it, but ran into a few bugs. https://lifeisfeudal.com/mantis/view.php?id=3460

Good catch. I have this bug with my current plan because no skill has Farming as a parent. It can be avoided by adapting the file 'createCharacterWindow.cs'. There you can change the range to less than 30. It might also be possible to remove a slider completely if you also adapt 'createCharacterWindow.gui', but I haven't tested this.

Bobik has stated in the past that combat skill progression works this way:

Basic Weapons -> Armor -> Advanced Weapons -> Counter your own class -> Counter your traditional weakness

Very interesting. It sounds good in theory for sure, but considering the number of people who are discontent with the combat skill chains, I'm not sure if it's straightforward enough. It may also be too restricting, pigeon holing people in particular classes? I'm not sure, I haven't played LiF for too long to say this with certainty.

Anyway, I'm starting to feel more in favour of either one armour skill only, or having independent armour skills. Probably the former, because armour choice was (and I believe should be) mostly a matter of resources, strength/stamina, and tactical considerations. Then I'll also make heavy armour harder and light armour easier to get, and heavier armour more useful.

[Hoshiqua]

Where can I meet you Maeg ? I want to give ya a hug

[Maegfaer]

I'd much rather have help with making this mod a reality! Suggestions and feedback are important, but I also don't want to run the main server in my own apartment this time (it gets too hot here). So any offers or donations for a server are more than welcome.

In addition, I'm going to develop this openly this time, on a public version control repository, so other people can help maintain and improve all aspects of it. I'd like this to be a community effort rather than it being completely dependent on me.

[Hoshiqua]

Well, I can't give you a game server, but I could sure as hell give you a teamspeak, if it can be of any use !

And.. well, I'm in vacation, I got a month of doing nothing ahead of me, so I can learn modding and help ya

I will send you a PM.

[EpicBlade]

I really like the whole new crafting skill tree, it fits the game a lot better, and doesn't bottle neck development flow at all. Seems pretty solid .
-Was thinking, just to add a little more freedom to the crafting skill tree by just making it so you don't have to go in order sometimes.
Example- Making it so you can go armorsmithing and/or jewelry, so you can skip armorsmithing if you don't want it. Same could be done with alchemy and healing, I'm pretty much for anything that brings a little more freedom. Just a little thought.

[Maegfaer]

Making it so you can go armorsmithing and/or jewelry, so you can skip armorsmithing if you don't want it. Same could be done with alchemy and healing, I'm pretty much for anything that brings a little more freedom. Just a little thought.

Sadly this is not possible without bugging the GUI. Armorsmithing skill will be drawn on top of Jewelry in the skill book, or the other way around.

[Maegfaer]

I have a few questions:

I read War cries are overpowered, should they perhaps be removed alltogether? Or is an increase in their cooldown and stamina cost sufficient? Is it OK if War cries is an independent Skill?

Is Demolition overpowered? Should it be limited by putting it far behind in a chain, or is it OK as an independent Skill?

What are your thoughts on removal of Equipment Maintenance, moving the maintenance abilities to Forging/Smithing, recovering projectiles to Bows mastery or Throwing weaponry, poisoning of 1H blades and setting alight a weapon with Naphta to Alchemy?

What are your thoughts on renaming Demolition to Siege and removing Combat Preperation? Then moving tent abilities of Combat preperation to Sieges, Arrowstand ability to Bows mastery, Pike wall ability to Spear mastery, Pavise shield ability to Crossbow mastery?



This is my current concept:

Warhorse line
Two-handed line
Militia Service -> Onehanded line (including shield)
Throwing -> Archery -> Crossbows
Unit and Formation -> Drill
Armour, Siege, Battle Survival, Unarmed, Warcries(?)

[Kybern]

Just some comments on the crafting skill changes:

I agree with your changes to the farming tree as the ordering of those skills makes absolutely no sense in the current game (why in the world do you have to know cooking in order to do tailoring???).

However, I have to disagree with the progression of higher level skills in the Metalworking, Woodworking and Herbology trees.
The only tree where the entire skill progression makes sense is the Construction tree.

All 3 trees I have problems with have the same issue: The progression for the first 3 skills makes sense, but falls apart for the last 2 skills.

1) Metalworking: The fusion of Prospecting and Mining is smart (although there is no reason for removing tunneling from Terraforming). Prospecting as a standalone skill is very thin, so that makes sense. The progression to Smelting and Forging makes sense too.
But why do you need to know Armorsmithing to do Jewelcrafting?

2) Same thing for Woodworking: The progression from Forestry over Logging to Carpentry makes sense (although you could make a very good case for the fusion of Logging with Forestry, since it is even thinner that Prospecting IMO).
However, why do you need to know Bowcrafting for Warfare Engineering?

3) Again the same problem with the Herbology tree: The progression of Nature's Lore over Gathering to Herbalism makes perfect sense, but why do you need to know Healing for Alchemy?

In all 3 cases the 4th and 5th skills of these trees could(should) both be skillable out of the 3rd skill.
This could be achieved by making a fork in the tree for the skills after the 3rd skill.

[EpicBlade]

Making it so you can go armorsmithing and/or jewelry, so you can skip armorsmithing if you don't want it. Same could be done with alchemy and healing, I'm pretty much for anything that brings a little more freedom. Just a little thought.

Sadly this is not possible without bugging the GUI. Armorsmithing skill will be drawn on top of Jewelry in the skill book, or the other way around.

Should of read more of the thread man i gave out same idea above you XD. Anyhow it might be able to work if he just leaves them in the same position they are in the gui currently(maybe might be slightly confusing?). I guess a little messed up gui if that doesn't work is worth a little more freedom and logic.

[Maegfaer]

Anyhow it might be able to work if he just leaves them in the same position they are in the gui currently(maybe might be slightly confusing?).

You can't control the skill positions in the GUI, they are dependent on their parent. Skills without parents are all put on the same line. So unless someone figures out how to change the GUI skill position rules, these options are not viable. And I'm pretty sure they are inside client executable.

[EpicBlade]

I have a few questions:
I read War cries are overpowered, should they perhaps be removed alltogether? Or is an increase in their cooldown and stamina cost sufficient? Is it OK if War cries is an independent Skill?

I don't think the game needs war cries to honest(*cough*unrealistic), but they already invested time into so i guess why not go with it? Probably best too up the cooldowns of them all and also maybe lower some of the chances of success. Probably best to throw it in the tree line, but where is the question.

Is Demolition overpowered? Should it be limited by putting it far behind in a chain, or is it OK as an independent Skill?

Demolition has some logic issues that's all, but once you get rid of combat prep you can give those skills too demo and get rid of some out of demo completely. Examples would be getting rid of man battering ram prerequisite, siege ladders, and more effective use of siege hammers and torches prerequisite(maybe last one?). By throwing them into lvl 0 or just by getting rid of a skill for them completely. Then just start filling the gaps with stuff form combat preparation.

What are your thoughts on removal of Equipment Maintenance, moving the maintenance abilities to Forging/Smithing, recovering projectiles to Bows mastery or Throwing weaponry, poisoning of 1H blades and setting alight a weapon with Naphta to Alchemy?

Sounds good, but maybe 1h blade stuff thrown into 1h blade skill, would make more sense logically. Maybe just put it up high tier in 1h blade skill, seems reasonable.

What are your thoughts on renaming Demolition to Siege and removing Combat Preperation? Then moving tent abilities of Combat preperation to Sieges, Arrowstand ability to Bows mastery, Pike wall ability to Spear mastery, Pavise shield ability to Crossbow mastery?

Sounds good , but thought they already had pavise ability in crossbow mastery? I'm probably wrong XD

This is my current concept:

Warhorse line
Two-handed line
Militia Service -> Onehanded line (including shield)
Throwing -> Archery -> Crossbows
Unit and Formation -> Drill
Armour, Siege, Battle Survival, Unarmed, Warcries(?)

Warcries just needs to be move some where making it more costly t0o get. I would say just delete it(probably best) i got mix feelings on that one. Looks pretty solid, no such thing as "perfect", but does look good.

Anyhow it might be able to work if he just leaves them in the same position they are in the gui currently(maybe might be slightly confusing?).

You can't control the skill positions in the GUI, they are dependent on their parent. Skills without parents are all put on the same line. So unless someone figures out how to change the GUI skill position rules, these options are not viable. And I'm pretty sure they are inside client executable.

[Kybern]

I have a few questions:

I read War cries are overpowered, should they perhaps be removed alltogether? Or is an increase in their cooldown and stamina cost sufficient? Is it OK if War cries is an independent Skill?

Is Demolition overpowered? Should it be limited by putting it far behind in a chain, or is it OK as an independent Skill?

What are your thoughts on removal of Equipment Maintenance, moving the maintenance abilities to Forging/Smithing, recovering projectiles to Bows mastery or Throwing weaponry, poisoning of 1H blades and setting alight a weapon with Naphta to Alchemy?

What are your thoughts on renaming Demolition to Siege and removing Combat Preperation? Then moving tent abilities of Combat preperation to Sieges, Arrowstand ability to Bows mastery, Pike wall ability to Spear mastery, Pavise shield ability to Crossbow mastery?



This is my current concept:

Warhorse line
Two-handed line
Militia Service -> Onehanded line (including shield)
Throwing -> Archery -> Crossbows
Unit and Formation -> Drill
Armour, Siege, Battle Survival, Unarmed, Warcries(?)

War Cries:
The only really overpowered War Cry is the "Coward" one, which works a lot better than what the description suggests. The chance to trip (and thus be knocked down, just as if shield bashed - but at very long range) is very high, so moving will almost guarantee a trip. The description makes it sound like it was a very rare occurrence.

Demolition:
Demolition is not overpowered at all, in fact it is not really implemented at the moment. The only way to level demolition ATM is with the treb, but it is not needed because you can use the treb at 0 (and not 90 as the description says, which makes sense since it is the only way to level it in the first place).

Equipment Maintenance:
I see no reason to remove Equipment Maintenance, the abilities it confers make sense together. The repairing of weapons and armors comes at the cost of maximum durability, so it is very different from Forging.

Combat Preparation:
I agree that the Combat Preparation skill is superfluous. Even though it is entirely unimplemented, all the abilities it confers in the descriptions are better placed in different skills (or already there):

- Placing Tents should be part of Warfare Engineering, since it is the skill used to craft them.

- Arrowstands should be part of Archery.

- Pike Walls is already part of Spear Mastery.

- Pavise placement is already part of Crossbows.

[Maegfaer]

Thanks for the feedback, that's informative. I'll keep Equipment Maintenance, also because I realised repairing weapons includes bows and such, which is odd to put under a blacksmith skill.

Let me know what you think about this:

• Merging Militia Service and Unarmed Combat into 'Self-defense'.
• Merging Two-handed Axes mastery and Two-handed Blunt mastery into 'Two-handed Hafted Arms mastery'.
• Merging Axe and Mace mastery and Piercing mastery into 'Hafted Arms mastery'.

Which results in the following two melee weapon chains:

Self-defense -> Hafted Arms mastery -> Shield mastery -> Blades mastery
Spear mastery -> Two-handed Hafted Arms mastery -> Two-handed Blade mastery -> Poleaxe mastery


Weapons/armour stats and scarcity/costs will be adjusted to make deep investment in these skill line viable.

[Maegfaer]

The above plans result in the following:



I'm still considering switching Two-handed Blades and Poleaxes. But I'm not sure, is the higher reach of a poleaxe superior to the larger blade of a twohanded sword or the other way around?

[EpicBlade]

The above plans result in the following:



I'm still considering switching Two-handed Blades and Poleaxes. But I'm not sure, is the higher reach of a poleaxe superior to the larger blade of a twohanded sword or the other way around?

Looks good, probably better too keep it how it is currently.
I really like how you just through all the armors into one skill(genius).
Is armor going in order from padded too plate or are you just going to make it so it's like it is currently(ingame), but only difference is they are all combined?
Maybe archery should be after crossbows, just to make it so you got to invest more to be an archer.
Last question whats your plans on balancing war cries?
I'm really liking this a lot better then it is currently(ingame), seems great.

[Maegfaer]

Is armor going in order from padded too plate or are you just going to make it so it's like it is currently(ingame), but only difference is they are all combined?

The latter I think. I don't see a real benefit to putting heavier armours higher in the skill.

Maybe archery should be after crossbows, just to make it so you got to invest more to be an archer.

Good argument, one I considered myself as well. But at the same time, bows should and will be a lot easier to craft than crossbows. So requiring crossbow training before you can use a bow while you get a bow way earlier in the game than a crossbow is very conflicting.

Then again, I could make crossbow mastery an independent skill. But then the investment will be so low almost everyone will use one.

I considered all of that and then figured the current setup is the best compromise, in my opinion at least. Feel free to give additional arguments though.

Last question whats your plans on balancing war cries?

I'm considering removing the skill itself and spreading the individual war cry abilities over other combat skills. I'm just not sure yet if the ability's power then scales with the level of it's new skill, or still scales with the War cries skill level. I hope the latter, because then it will always be zero and the abilties may actually be somewhat balanced.

Alternatively, I'll either only remove the "Coward" cry, or remove the skill as well as the abilities.

[Custodian]

You can't control the skill positions in the GUI, they are dependent on their parent.

Client-side modification and you able to alter skills gui layout. A bit of work required to make it automatic and based on skill_types config.

Spoiler

Note Nature's Lore and Prospecting skills being exchanged and slightly moved out of the row.


UI is working as expected.

[Maegfaer]

Client-side modification and you able to alter skills gui layout. A bit of work required to make it automatic and based on skill_types config.

Spoiler

Note Nature's Lore and Prospecting skills being exchanged and slightly moved out of the row.


UI is working as expected.

Very cool, would you mind sharing how you did that? I tried messing around in .gui .cs files related to the skill book, but didn't manage this. I'm not that familiar with Torquescript.

[Custodian]

Very cool, would you mind sharing how you did that? I

You was right, gui is embedded into client binary, but it can be overloaded after window opens. i.e. default layout shown for couple of ms, flickers, and then there is desired layout.
I'm working of client side mod, which sould follow skill_types layout.

[Maegfaer]

Here is my skill_types.xml if you want to test with it.

[Custodian]

Here is my skill_types.xml if you want to test with it.

Okay, what we can do here:

You can setup needed group with skill_types.xml.
Parent and child skill should be at same group, or they wount be added to the skillbook page.

I'm following this draw rules:
Each skill without parent will start from the new line.
Each skill who depends on the parent will follow parent in the line.
If skill have 2 (or more) childrens, they will be drawn one by one after parent (need to check this).
Free skills (no parents, no childs) are drawn below all other skills.

If child is in another group, it will start at first column (like if it does not have parent), but since such are not populated, no images are drawn (note 3rd screenshot).

It is possible to do 6 skills per row for free skills(if margin is lowered), see screenshots below.

Skillbook layout generated based on skill_types attached

Spoiler