[Forge]

I'm trying my hand at the high score challenge again.

I'm on my tenth map. The shotgun is at level 6, the pistol and chaingun are at level 5, everything else is at level 2 or 3.
I'm at that point where the aliens are starting to get pretty tough and my weapons are just adequate enough to handle handle them.
I've encountered no bugs, errors, or other issues. I'll keep at it until either the aliens get too tough to progress, or I'm at the point where it's a cake walk, then I'll report back my observations.

[bullerbullerseven]

Forge, on Nov 24 2010, 11:39 PM, said:

I'm trying my hand at the high score challenge again.

I'm on my tenth map. The shotgun is at level 6, the pistol and chaingun are at level 5, everything else is at level 2 or 3.
I'm at that point where the aliens are starting to get pretty tough and my weapons are just adequate enough to handle handle them.
I've encountered no bugs, errors, or other issues. I'll keep at it until either the aliens get too tough to progress, or I'm at the point where it's a cake walk, then I'll report back my observations.

from the point where the pigcops begins to have that crazy amount of health and damage you will have about 3 hard maps. i was unlucky that the first map i met those pigcops where in one of the biggest maps so it sucked hard for me. but when after this it wont get that much harder

[Forge]

Jhect, on Nov 24 2010, 05:36 PM, said:

from the point where the pigcops begins to have that crazy amount of health and damage you will have about 3 hard maps. i was unlucky that the first map i met those pigcops where in one of the biggest maps so it sucked hard for me. but when after this it wont get that much harder

If that's the case, I'll monitor where my health level is at and then be able determine a viable cap for it.

Either that or after level 14 Duke starts losing 10 to 20 points of health per map until he's back down to 100, if that's do-able.

[Forge]

At high score challenge map 13 now.

The enemy's difficulty peaked around level 11-12.
Health is 258
Armor is 326
Shotgun & chaingun are level 7
Pistol is level 6
Everything else is level 2 thru 5

With the enemy difficulty pretty much maxed out, leveling weapons is now under acceleration. This coupled with continued increases in health and armor is making the game snowball out of control. It's merely a matter of time before the game is going to become very lopsided and easy.

[bullerbullerseven]

i think it is very bad balanced. the first level is by far the hardest level/map. the 5. wave takes out most of your ammo and then the 6. wave gets seriously hard. ( i think its the 6. wave? the one with the battle lords ) you gotta make the end of the mode the hardest right? it isnt in this mode, and the same goes with all the other modes. deffinently something you need to work on i think.

and to forge
i think im at level 20 or something. im really not sure but i have crazy much health and armor. i guess thats fine since some of the enemies can do seriously much damage very fast but thats a good thing for the fun

[Forge]

On average, map 13-14 is the crossroad where Duke's strength and the enemies max strength are evenly matched.
After 14 Duke starts getting too strong; partly due to weapon leveling, but mainly due to the high hit points and armor.
The game up to this point is pretty well balanced with only minor fluctuations one way or the other on who has the upper hand.

On average I acquired around 11 health upgrades per level
17 armor upgrades per level
15 health kit upgrades per level
17 dukebot upgrades per level
9 nvg upgrades per level
If I concentrated on leveling one weapon, I could, on average, get it to 10-11 by level 14.

Suggestions:
If you want to keep the game challenging after level 14 for high score challenge, consider a health/armor cap of 250-300.
If you don't want people to keep playing for infinity, consider reducing the players health after level 14 by increment of 20 until they're back at 100.
(the upgrades can still work, but the players will still lose health at the start of each new map unless they manage to get more than 20 health upgrades and lose no ground. hard to do since the average is 11 upgrades per map...this will basically be a slow death)


Had a break, think I'm ready for some more war of attrition "episode" now

[Danukem]

Thanks for the detailed report. I'll look into the balance issues again when I get back to my computer in a few days.

[bullerbullerseven]

DeeperThought, on Nov 26 2010, 06:46 PM, said:

Thanks for the detailed report. I'll look into the balance issues again when I get back to my computer in a few days.

nice
its your choice how you wanna do but i suggest that you simply reduce the amount of pigcops in that wave. that is the one that causes the most damage to you. they hurt and take most of your ammo. im not sure but maybe 5 battle lords is a bit much. it should be possible if there wasnt so many pigcops before that wave. also do i have to do something to save my hiscore? is there a hiscore made only for the WaT mode?

[Danukem]

Forge, on Nov 25 2010, 07:36 PM, said:

On average, map 13-14 is the crossroad where Duke's strength and the enemies max strength are evenly matched.
After 14 Duke starts getting too strong; partly due to weapon leveling, but mainly due to the high hit points and armor.

Most of the really dangerous monster variations don't even begin to appear until the point at which you say Duke gets the upper hand. It could be that they need to have a higher probability of appearing when they first start to show up. As for hit points and armor: I would say that the main problem is not the high health and armor, but the fact that the player can easily replenish health due to the leech upgrades and the medical skill upgrades. Those need to be nerfed somehow.

Forge, on Nov 25 2010, 07:36 PM, said:

On average I acquired around 11 health upgrades per level
17 armor upgrades per level
15 health kit upgrades per level
17 dukebot upgrades per level
9 nvg upgrades per level

It's possible that you got that ratio of upgrades when you were testing, but that's definitely not normal. For example, health upgrades are more than 3X as likely to drop as dukebot upgrades:

	randvar temp 100
	ifvarl temp 7 ifvarl nukes 3 setvar picnum ATOMICHEALTH else // nuke energy
	ifvarl temp 41 setvar picnum COLA else // +1 max health
	ifvarl temp 43 ifvarl player[THISACTOR].boot_amount 150 setvar picnum BOOTS else // just ordinary boots, for flame protection
	ifvarl temp 52 setvar picnum FIRSTAID else // + medical skill
	ifvarl temp 62 setvar picnum AMMOPACK else // + max ammo or random ammo
	ifvarl temp 72 setvar picnum HOLODUKE else // + duke bot level
	ifvarl temp 82 setvar picnum STEROIDS else // + steroids level
	ifvarl temp 88 setvar picnum HEATSENSOR else // + stealth level
	setvar picnum SHIELD // + 5 max armor

[Forge]

Interesting.

There's also the possibility that I didn't pick up all the upgrades. They have been known to fly off into chasms or across blocking walls into non-play areas.

I played until level 20. The alien's did get slightly tougher after 14, but were out matched by Duke's strength and fire power.

Two things I did notice that I forgot to mention. The yellow (gold?) mech randomly drops a shield, is it supposed to?
With enemies that are cloned, if Duke gets too close to the clones while they are engaging other enemies, moving forward/backward cause Duke to randomly kick.

[Danukem]

I looked into the balance issues and discovered a bug: the med skill upgrade was way more powerful than it was supposed to be. I fixed this and made some other adjustments and I'm now going to test it. I'm posting the CONs here in case anyone else would like to.

-The value of health items increases much more slowly with med skill upgrades now. This should make a huge difference.
-got rid of the 2% leech upgrade and replaced it with a death rage upgrade. The original 1% leech is now 1.5%
-Fixed a death rage bug where it was not giving the full damage bonus. Also, when upgraded, DR lasts twice as long, increases the damage bonus more, and leaves the player with 100 health at the end instead of 30.

[Danukem]

Today I realized that I included the wrong tiles014.art with version 1.21. This is a major screw up, because it means that some textures and sprites are missing in all of the Duke in DC maps. Accordingly, I will have to release the next version much sooner than I had planned to. It will be another minor update, but will have more than just the art fix.

[Player Lin]

If it possible to just give player those item upgrade pickups if they drop from enemy, because it's annoying when some pickups drop to the inaccessible/killing player area/sector, I found some maps always happen about that shit.
Yeah, I know I can give up on them but it still annoying...

Just a stupid think of mine.

[bullerbullerseven]

maybe you should also know that dukes max health doesnt matter. if you keep spamming the medic button like i do then you wont die as long as you have more medicinal. i have the medic as the same as the quick kick. thats my Q button. that is why the creators of duke 3d did so that you could not pick up cola and six packs if you had max health. so in your mod dukes max health does not matter as long as they cant kill you insanely fast.

[Danukem]

New version 1.22 available at Fissile Materials now.

• fixed error from last version where the wrong tiles014.art was included
• added 5 new maps (Toxicity, Hazardous Chemicals, Kaiser land, Kaiser land 2, Lost Island)
• The value of health items increases much more slowly with med skill upgrades now. This is partly a bug fix, partly a balance tweak.
• Increased rate of fire when on steroids
• got rid of the 2% leech upgrade and replaced it with a death rage upgrade. The original 1% leech is now 1.5%
• Fixed a death rage bug where it was not giving the full damage bonus. Also, when upgraded, DR lasts twice as long, increases the damage bonus more, and leaves the player with 100 health at the end instead of 30.
• changed infinite pistol ammo upgrade to pistol ammo regen (it was too powerful)
• electric projectiles now track the player and cause momentary paralysis if they hit
• super pigcops have somewhat reduced hit points but better stun recovery
• super enforcers have better stun recovery


It's strange how much time I spent on this, considering how little code was actually changed. It's all that play testing.

[Mike Norvak]

Hey you should include the radiation thing in the laser pistol upgrade...

[DavoX]

Downloading now!

[E.C.S]

Yay!! More balanced destruction! and news maps!

[Forge]

wat "episode"

A better balance has been struck

the game (especially roch island) was much more challenging(due to health restrictions), but was balanced out with the enemy/wave adjustment

alot more fun than the first time around

[Danukem]

Forge, on Dec 5 2010, 08:41 AM, said:

wat "episode"

A better balance has been struck

the game (especially roch island) was much more challenging(due to health restrictions), but was balanced out with the enemy/wave adjustment

alot more fun than the first time around

Yay! This will probably be the last version in a long time. Who knows, maybe I will never update it again.

[bullerbullerseven]

its still far from perfecly balanced. for example. if i take the third wave out of 4 in a map. then that wave is harder than the last wave. i this something you wanted to happen? look at the second map. 10 evil dukes is crazy hard compared to the last wave with all the cyclops monsters. you need to play it yourself dt!

[Danukem]

Jhect, on Dec 5 2010, 10:14 AM, said:

its still far from perfecly balanced. for example. if i take the third wave out of 4 in a map. then that wave is harder than the last wave. i this something you wanted to happen? look at the second map. 10 evil dukes is crazy hard compared to the last wave with all the cyclops monsters. you need to play it yourself dt!

I can beat the game without too much trouble and so can a lot of other players. I know that the waves do not always get progressively harder, and that is intentional. Sometimes the player needs a break or just some variety. If you look at most commercial games they do not get harder with each level. In fact it is pretty common for the harder parts to be near the beginning when you don't have a lot of equipment yet. Having said that, the WOA mode does tend to get harder as you go, but only a little bit, and if you are experienced with the mod and know how to make full use of the inventory and upgrades it may get easier at times.

With the evil Dukes in that wave you mentioned...camp and use tripbombs, nukes, your own Dukebot or whatever you have to kill them safely. The altfire on the devastator is extremely useful, too.

[Forge]

Some waves were harder than the wave that followed it, but it didn't drastically change the dynamics of the game flow.

The only time I ever had to "camp" was the first evil duke wave in the second map because my weapons weren't leveled high enough to go toe-to-toe with them. It didn't frustrate or deter me. In fact I enjoyed the challenge of luring them into my nook one at a time. This was the only time I had to do that through the whole game, so it was some-what fresh for the change up in the tactics. If the whole game was like that, then I could understand the frustrations with the difficulty, and it would make the game boring.

I do have a bit of an advantage, in that I was "unofficially beta-testing" it and reporting back to DT, so I played it quite a bit.

It's all about tactics and managing your resources

(i.e. if you can carry 50 shotgun shells and you're down to 42, don't grab that box of shells until you're under 40, knowing which weapon works the most effective against which enemy and changing weapons around during fire fights against multiple attackers, when's the best time to grab one of those boosts and which weapon to use while the boost is in effect)

[Danukem]

Forge, on Dec 5 2010, 01:03 PM, said:

The only time I ever had to "camp" was the first evil duke wave in the second map

Here's a video I just made of that wave:

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=Xtu3P0_z1SA

[Forge]

Cool.

I tried that a few times and failed. They always managed to get me cornered.

[bullerbullerseven]

nice

but i still find the balanced a bit wrong...

its just.


imagine you play this mod for the first time.

the first map you played had 6 or 7 waves and the waves kept getting harder and harder.

you beat the first wave of annoying drones in map 2.

in the second wave of map 2 you have to use ALL of the healing/defensive items there is on the map knowing where everything is and having a clear plan of what to do.

luckily there is only one more wave left >.>


what i am trying to say is that. i just cant play a mod where you have to know where everything is BEFORE you can beat it. if you didnt know that the second map only had 3 waves then you wouldnt use all of your items on the second wave. at the same time you should think that the waves kept getting harder and harder. and when there were 6 waves in the first map. and when the second wave of the second wave of the second map is totaly crazy. then you should think that the next waves were even harder, and then you would spare some of the items for later.

it doesnt look very friendly to new players xD

[Player Lin]

I don't know the difficulty setting is work on that WOA episode but if you think it's hard, maybe you can try Piece of a cake or Let's rock difficulty level, when you're a new player...

(I know I sometimes do stupid for playing hard mode and it's too hard for my skill, then I get my ass kicked and complaint about it's hard...but it's not mod/mapper's fault totally, at least...)

[bullerbullerseven]

yea the mod is hard. i have no idea if the difficulty settings changes anything though.

[Danukem]

The WOA mode is supposed to be the final challenge of the mod and it does not allow easy settings. If you start a game below Come Get Some it will be changed to Come Get Some.

It is assumed that you have played through some of the other episodes first.

[Player Lin]

DeeperThought, on Dec 7 2010, 01:55 AM, said:

The WOA mode is supposed to be the final challenge of the mod and it does not allow easy settings. If you start a game below Come Get Some it will be changed to Come Get Some.

It is assumed that you have played through some of the other episodes first.

Oh I see, it's for skilled players, that's why it's hard... new players shouldn't try this episode or they'll get their ass kicked...I guess even if I played a lot of other episodes so much, I may still get my ass kicked in WOA episode...:\