New Update

[thoeudhtaoed]

First post wanted to comment on this update. Not a fan. It just looks like a bunch of options were taken out of the game. I like playing a full psi character and 6 abilities is not enough. Certainly I don't see myself casting temporary rewind ever again. I think there is nothing wrong with adding more additional limitations, but this just feels like shit. I was excited to play hybrid psi builds with this updte but now current playthrough is just shit I got all these psi abilities I can't use and everything is just worse. Doesn't feel good. Playing psi, and playing this game in general on other builds is satisfying for me because I have a lot of options in combat. I would like to see updates try to add more tactical things in the game, I don't think cutting down to six spells/abilities is the way to go, I would rather stats were shuffled around and more actives on other builds. Cutting down options like this doesn't add fun in my opinion.

That's all, love this game and looking forward to Infusion. Please allow more abilities this change is not good.

[Elite]

That was the problem with pure psi, and to psi in general. You simply have too many options, you have an "out" for every scenario. Pure psi has been known to be disgustingly overpowered for a long time, this update is just bringing it back down to about where it should be.

[thoeudhtaoed]

Why doe it this way this is boring. I know a lot of crpgs with a lot of spells, they do fine. This is just bad. You can cast like a lot of spells in some crpgs like pathfinder or arcanum. There's way to balance magic/psionics, I can think of plenty. This just removes fun.

[Elite]

Why doe it this way this is boring. I know a lot of crpgs with a lot of spells, they do fine. This is just bad. You can cast like a lot of spells in some crpgs like pathfinder or arcanum. There's way to balance magic/psionics, I can think of plenty. This just removes fun.

You're comparing apples to oranges there.
While we're at it, you mind listing some of the way the psi-rebalance could have been done better?

[thoeudhtaoed]

I will list a couple of things I have thought of. I think you could have psionic schools give anti-synergies instead so that leveling all of them makes them not crit well, forcing you to choose more unevenly. You could apply this to gear to and for example, make it where thought control boosting gear limits your other skills. I think limiting the number of spells you have is still good, but it should be a higher number. You could have 6 empowered spells at 1.5 effectiveness, and the rest at like half their current effectiveness, allowing you to get some combat utility out of them, but not very much, or something, that is one idea which is similar system to the new one. I think the psi reserve change is pretty good because it gives another resource to manage which I think psi needed for balance reasons. I also think doing a will check to see if you miss your psionic attack like other weapons can miss would make a large difference. I think limiting the player to 12 spells or something like that if they invested in both will and int would be good considering the number of spells in the game. You could reduce the critical damage and max damage of certain abilities.
Just a couple of ideas. I think it is not a good way to solve it. Love playing mage in dcss and nethack and stuff and having like 40 spells while having no health or no stealth ability or something is like the whole point in my opinion.

[H.E. Esquire]

In terms of constructive criticism:

Psi Reserves is a good change. One benefit of Psi is your only "operating costs" were psi boosters. You might consider new spells as an operating cost, until you realize it's a weapon that doesn't need repairs. It creates more parity between different builds.

Toning down the more broken spells is also good, since it was easy to cheese a ton of areas with LOC+enrage, or force field, or blow up a dozen baddies with TD after luring them into standing next to each other with explosives.

I've saved the big one for last: limiting spell slots is certainly going to accomplish its goal. The more schools you learn, more inaccessible spells and therefore wasted skill points you've got. The exact implementation is pretty severe at the moment, requiring 15 Int (or all stat increases up to level 20, and completely ignoring Will) to access all 6. Even if I'm using a hybrid character with 9 Int (4 Circuits) and only using one school, I would be hard pressed to settle on just the 4 I need.

On one hand, it's good because it forces you to think of how you're going to tackle a given room (e.g.: no thought control against tons of bots), and has a real cost to re-innervating. The downside I see is that it's going to make a ton of spells functionally useless. With Circuits at such a premium, I can hardly see myself ever equipping Entropic Recurrence, or Pyrokinesis, or Disruptive Field, or Bilocation except as a gimmick. Even just 2 schools with a dedicated psion is unwieldly at best with the extra costs and wasted spells.

Where I can really see this system shining and evolving is if there are feats that extend the circuits at a cost or with some uncertainty. I would love a wild mage feat that randomly selects on spell each round that you can use in addition to those you've innervated, or a feat like premeditation with an enormous cooldown that lets you cast an non-innervated spell, at the cost of half your maximum reserves. That way, dedicated psi users *can* work, but will become addicted to huffing psi glue. Hell, you could even have a Tranquility-Psychosis dichotomy so that you only get one way of extending your Circuits. Maybe Wild Mage vs Focused Mage?

The point I'm getting at is that the system has a solid framework, although it feels pretty bad right now.

[Turbodevil]

The point I'm getting at is that the system has a solid framework, although it feels pretty bad right now.

We already have solid framework for limitting spells and adding another heavy limitation seems off. You sacrifice 25% of your health points to cast spells, then you invest skill points into given school, then have to find/buy and learn the spell, then optionally augment it with a feat or two, next you spend 2 limitted resources: mana and action points.

And then you still cannot cast a spell you want because you did not memorize it prior encounter, so you need to reload the save.

It's too much mechanical limitations for my liking.

I understand the need to nerf generalist psi archetype but there is no need to introduce such annoying, limitting and counter intuitive mechanic to achieve that.

Just an example what could be done instead: casting a spell raises AP and PSI cost of spells from different psi disciplines by 5 AP and 5 PSI cost until the end of a turn. Now you have to consider if psi haste or force field is worth casting when all you want to do are metathermic combos.

If the idea is limitting the amount of utility psi provides for generalists, which is entire point of being psi generalist in the first place, then this new mechanic is spot on. But it goes against the very core of what versatile mage should be!

[Elite]

I will list a couple of things I have thought of. I think you could have psionic schools give anti-synergies instead so that leveling all of them makes them not crit well, forcing you to choose more unevenly. You could apply this to gear to and for example, make it where thought control boosting gear limits your other skills. I think limiting the number of spells you have is still good, but it should be a higher number. You could have 6 empowered spells at 1.5 effectiveness, and the rest at like half their current effectiveness, allowing you to get some combat utility out of them, but not very much, or something, that is one idea which is similar system to the new one. I think the psi reserve change is pretty good because it gives another resource to manage which I think psi needed for balance reasons. I also think doing a will check to see if you miss your psionic attack like other weapons can miss would make a large difference. I think limiting the player to 12 spells or something like that if they invested in both will and int would be good considering the number of spells in the game. You could reduce the critical damage and max damage of certain abilities.
Just a couple of ideas. I think it is not a good way to solve it. Love playing mage in dcss and nethack and stuff and having like 40 spells while having no health or no stealth ability or something is like the whole point in my opinion.

After actually getting to play the update myself, I have to agree it was pretty heavy-handed. As Styg said, it is an ever evolving game. The psi generalist playstyle was too strong and it did need a good nerf, but this update also hit hybrid builds bad too. Those are good ideas, hopefully Styg will take the feedback here on the forums into account in future patches.

[TheAverageGortsby]

I'd like to add in, if I may, rather than start another thread.  Hopefully the devs will read what y'all have said in this thread; some good constructive criticism.

I'd like to float a couple other ideas I feel are really important right now for pure psi:

--Draining psi and psi reserve when switching abilities has to go away.  Not because we posting here can't work with it, but because it disproportionately punishes new and less experienced players.  If you want a metaphor for it, it's as though all of a sudden when reloading guns all your previous bullets disappeared forever.  The idea behind the innervation system is that full psi users will need to limit themselves per encounter, while still being able to enjoy variety across the game; but by exercising that variety, an enormous additional cost shows up.  Further, getting to a fight and seeing what is necessary should only require "reloading your gun" with the type of ammo most useful for the fight; it shouldn't risk making someone have to run back and "buy new ammo" in the form of additional inhalers now needed just because swapping out fireball and mirror image for lightning bolt and electro trap to deal with robots caused the player to completely lose their ability to cast psi.  If you don't know ahead of time after the fight you just did what your next fight is going to be, then you're getting punished for having the "wrong" abilities readied.  That's just a terrible thing to do to players exploring the game.

--Psychosis needs a way to recover the additional psi cost the feat causes.  Now that psi is a globally scarce resource, Psychosis pays more "ammo cost" to use the same abilities, meaning once again, Psychosis has taken a step down in desirability.  Making non-damaging and crit-incapable spells immune to the higher cost would be an elegant way to handle it but might be difficult on the coding side; adding in a psi reserve leeching system would probably be far simpler and might even feel more rewarding since it would be visible to the player.  For example, letting crits refund some portion of the psi cost of the ability would be extremely in theme with Psychosis and would reward the fundamental play style; maybe 4% of the ability cost per target critically hit, capped at 20%, since the classic Psychosis opener is the AoE Cryo Orb; this then would also give a visible refund in exchange for the health cost of using Psionic Mania, making it feel more valuable.  Psychosis just needs a little love to deal with this giant change more gracefully.

--Inefficiencies need to be dealt with similarly to other combat styles, rather than harsher.  If you use a lot of "psi points" (bullets) in an SMG build, then your recourse is to bring more bullets because you need a lot.  With inhalers only being usable outside combat, there is no mechanic currently to allow someone who has blown all their points on ineffective abilities to recover and keep fighting*.  It's literally game over, reload.  A third booster type that's usable in combat and restores psi reserve needs to be implemented so that psi can choose to "carry more bullets" into the fight if they need.  Making said new booster scarce and expensive will ensure that it doesn't break the global scarcity of New Psi, while also allowing players who aren't doing everything perfectly to recover from their mistakes without getting punished too harshly for making them.

There are several others, but these three things are IMO the most important changes to be made immediately if full psi is meant to be an actual play style in UnderRail.

edit:   * someone is going to say "but psi boosters can recover 50 psi reserve!" but that's not comparable at all.  With a cooldown on when they can be used, and with 50 points only being 3 basic attack spells at 100% cost, a psi booster isn't sufficient.  Guns have reloading belts; psi needs something to let them use as many "bullets" as necessary to finish the fight.  The global scarcity comes between fights, not during them; you worry about doing merchant rounds to restock, not about rationing what's in your inventory when the shooting starts.

[Tayon]

I'd like to float a couple other ideas I feel are really important right now for pure psi:

I fully support it. The new Psi system will have a lot of balancing issues, but what you have listed is not just balancing issues - these are issues that make Psi completely unplayable.
For example, I have not seen an energy pistol that would spend more than 20 energy per shot (most less than ten, but oh well, let's imagine that you have a Sonocaster in your hands). That's 10 shots per one Plasma Cell. The Plasma cell weighs 0.1, which means that we can carry a lot of them.
The maximum psi volume is 155. Accordingly, the maximum psi reserve is 775. This is 51 cryokinesis shots. I chose Cryokinesis for comparison, as this ability is the closest thing to a normal shot.
Translated into shots from Sonocaster, this is 5 Plasma Cells. This is all that we can use in normal combat. The question arises - how can this be enough?

P.S. If someone wants the psionics to live on psi boosters after the reserve expires, he must remove the cooldown. 60 psi (maximum) every three turns is nothing.

[Stavrophore]

51 cryokinesis is quite a lot.

[Riggs]

I'd like to add in, if I may, rather than start another thread.  Hopefully the devs will read what y'all have said in this thread; some good constructive criticism.

I'd like to float a couple other ideas I feel are really important right now for pure psi:

...

These are solid ideas that would help immensely. I hope the devs see them.

51 cryokinesis is quite a lot.

You're missing the point entirely.

[Tayon]

51 cryokinesis is quite a lot.

To jump out of stealth and send a group of enemies to hell? Yes of course. To withstand the Serpentborn raid? Not even close.

[Tamior]

I really think that the way innervation works should simply be inversed:
- once you use an inhalant, all your innervation slots free up.
- whenever you use an ability, it "locks into" a free innervation slot (assuming it's not already present in one of the other slots)
- if you have no free slots left, you can only use abilities already innervated
- penalties for having multiple schools innervated only start to apply once you actually have abilities from multiple schools "lock in"
- use inhalant to free up the slots once again

That's the basics. In my opinion, this system will achieve effectively very similar results in terms of limiting multi school usage in a single encounter, but it will NOT punish new players for the lack of meta-game knowledge and it will NOT promote heavy savescuming to have "the right abilities prepared for each encounter". As an added benefit, such system has an in-build mechanic for rewarding sticking to a single school within a given encounter. While the current system does nothing to reward sticking to a single school if I've already innervated multiply.



Now, if we DO switch to this type of system, there are a few other nifty things that come naturally with it:
- if there are no more free innervation slots left, it might be possible to still use the ability, but with (let's say) 200% the cost and an extra 100% of the cost being depleted directly from reserves
- penalties for having multiple schools innervated might be expanded to include modifiers to reserve utilization efficiency. For example, as long as you only have abilities from a single school you only use 7 reserve points to restore 10 actual psi points. While 2/3/4 schools would increase it to 10/15/20 points of reserves for 10 psi points.

[TheAverageGortsby]

- penalties for having multiple schools innervated might be expanded to include modifiers to reserve utilization efficiency. For example, as long as you only have abilities from a single school you only use 7 reserve points to restore 10 actual psi points. While 2/3/4 schools would increase it to 10/15/20 points of reserves for 10 psi points.

I'd caution against that sort of thing on the grounds that it directly rewards the most boring play possible, and further punishes newcomers to the game who don't know how to optimize every action.  As it is, I can't say I'm a fan of increasing psi cost combined with global scarcity of psi points, because it actively punishes people looking for variety in how they play the game, and that's just poor design.  With additional reward for single-school, you provide a strong psi bonus for builds that only dabble in psi, or use a minimal selection of it.  The cumulative effect of higher costs and reduced reserve efficiency, combined with the current inability to restore reserve during combat, nearly guarantees that in any difficult fight, bringing a generalized loadout will result in depletion and failure.  If you want to do the same thing every fight for the whole game, there's tin can AR, already. 

Reducing effective skill values for multiple schools - because it's so very hard to magically cave wizard in several different ways all at once and you mix up the tiny details and as a result don't do everything just right - would have weakened psi generalists compared to psi specialists without also mechanically punishing players for trying out new things.  We've clearly seen that Stygsoft can add in debuffs quite easily, so causing activation of a psi school ability to effect a psi school debuff (penalizing skill values, durations, and/or psi costs) on the player would have been simple and it could have done for psi generalists just as well as the current system, but without also sucking quite as hard as the original idea does.  But having "psi bullets" as an actual consumable resource, and then rewarding players for not using variety, and punishing them when they do use it, isn't an effective way to reign in power; it merely reigns in player agency.  If you can't manage the first without disturbing the second, then you don't understand the system you're changing.