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1

Suggestions / Re: A better psi fix

« on: September 21, 2020, 04:21:44 pm »

But the tchotchke (the glove) does nothing about any of those things.

Your explanation is all about how to limit psi powers either in strength and versatility, but the New Psi clearly shows that the innervation mechanic can do those things.  The glove, the physical object, does nothing.  That's unlike a weapon; you can't just throw bullets at your enemies and have an effective outcome.  And your opportunity cost of having something taking up a weapon slot isn't an opportunity cost for psi users, only for dabblers, who don't get the raw power out of psi because their stat profile doesn't support it.  They're not the ones Styg set out to nerf.

But first off a weapon degrades and needs to be repaired, that isn't something that the patch touches. Plus boosters plus an item that takes up a weapon slot would very much be making psi more in line with other weapon types. Not only do you have ammo (boosters) but you have the weapon to maintain (gauntlet). Again that means right now that hybrids can carry up to three effective weapons at a time based on build when a pure psi or pure weapon build won't be able to carry that.

No you can't "throw bullets" but the mechanic would be the same, there would be a persistent cost and failure to maintain equipment may not mean you couldn't use your abilities but again they all would be heavily impacted.

As for what Styg set out to fix, from what I have read it was the fact that pure psi users had to much utility and power available at all times. That there was no ammo cost, no upkeep, and that it would be hard to add new abilities into the system as it is right now. You are saying my suggestion doesn't fix any of that but you haven't actually explaned how. Innervation just adds "spell slots" but the issue is that a pure psi build will still be able to use all four schools just not as many of the abilities at the same time.

The problem with this however is that even with the added cost it still doesn't really add diversity to builds. The utility spells that hybrids want they still can use with little investment, the spells that a pure psi build would want they still can use. It just makes the less desirable ones like force emission even less desirable to take for the average user, and I have had people tell me you easily can get buy with 6 slots...which means the need to change or adapt with 8 is even less which brings us back to the original issues psi has: to much utility, power, and accuracy all available at the same time.

So if outright restricting isn't solving the issue the solution is to make the options more impactful. Innervation is cheap, easy, and is more of a annoyance mechanic then an effective one. But as I am suggesting anyone who wants to use psi would have the same build considerations as what gun to use or what melee weapon to use. It also would allow customization by the crafting system which is something that psi builds really don't have much diversity at the moment with either.

My point is that if you're trying to float ideas to limit psi, go at it as a fix to psi.  Adding A Thing to the mix gets you all wrapped up in the thing and you end up - as you did in your OP and your explanations - changing effects with The Thing without addressing the underlying concerns.

If you are seeing actual issues that this suggestion doesn't address please point them out, because obviously from where I am standing I am seeing this system add diversity, reign in the power and utility, gives meaningful choices, and makes psi more like other weapon choices while not actually removing the reasons one might want to make a full psionic build. Which from what I am reading in Styg's posts are what they were going for in the first place, but either their patch doesn't really address.

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Suggestions / Re: A better psi fix

« on: September 20, 2020, 06:11:09 pm »

The problem with your suggestion of having a tchotchke to Do The Thing is that it completely ignores the fundamental causes of the problem Styg wanted to solve.  But so does the patch, so maybe you're on to something.

Not exactly. Again the major issues as I understand it is that psi abilities are cheap, always available, 100% reliable, and in general more useful/powerful then the non-psi weapons and utility items. For example fireball is simply much much harder hitting then a grenade, somewhat from the synergy power boost and somewhat from the fact you can with the right build throw multiple fireballs in a turn. Something you can't do with a grenade (far as I know/played).

Limiting one school to having at all times 100% ability strength, duration, and accuracy would make for build diversity. For example take Metathermics vs Time Manipulation. You could have your attack spells be at full strength at the cost of your AP manipulation spells only lasting 1 turn with a 4 or 6 turn cool-down respectively; along with the risk of putting a debuff on yourself. The alternative is you could "attune" temporal manipulation or even buff it with the crafted glove but then your attack spells have less power and can miss. Which I would suggest making it a flat miss chance no matter range to target, and in that case firearms could have an advantage since they can increase chance to hit based on distance to target and weapon being used.

In the first example you maintain the power of the psi build but the utility is greatly reduced, in the latter example you have more utility but the power is reduced. So you see you get an actual trade-off which can be further diversified by having another slot that can augment a school like the headband, but unlike the headband again this slot determines to greater effect  at what strength and duration schools/abilities could be used at.

So again a nuker built character would still be powerful, but mainly along one school only. Even if the hypothetical gauntlet allows two schools to be at full strength, you still would have to choose between attack or utility, and the utility abilities of schools not augmented would be severly reduced in strength. Thus overall making school choice much more meaningful.

As a side note it would also make building a hybrid less of a standard option and more an actual choice as well. As to use utility abilities at full strength you would have to give up a weapon slot. Or you could run with less powerful utility, or simply not run a hybrid at all. Because again if you want build diversity you need to have actual reasons for people to go along different routes.

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Suggestions / Re: A better psi fix

« on: September 20, 2020, 05:45:48 pm »

Why does psi need another craftable item when it already has psionic headbands? A powerglove would duplicate the options available for the headband.

As I said you could have different options such as having two schools "attuned" or completly augmenting a power, which are two things headbands don't do. Even then, again it is allowing build diversity which was what Styg was supposed to have been going for with the patch.

Using a weapon slot would suck for hybrid psi builds that want to use two weapons, for example spear users or melee builds with taser. Thematically I don't think it fits better than the current invocation mechanic.

Actually it would, as it is a hybrid suffers no drawback from being a hybrid. In fact supposedly the game is much much harder if you don't take any sort of psi ability at all since they are in general more powerful, more available to use, and at less cost effective then many non-psi alternatives. If part of the reason the patch was introduced was because all of those things were true of a full psion, they are still true in a hybrid build. Which means there should be some consequence to being a hybrid, which there really isn't one outside of a minor reduction of health.

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Development Log / Re: Dev Log #68: The Psi Question

« on: September 18, 2020, 01:27:28 am »

It's not a perfect solution, I know, but it's some kind of compromise at least.

It would be better if the system actually did what you claim it is meant to do. Because as far as I have seen and played the system feels like a shoehorn of D&D systems into this game with spell-slots and such. Wouldn't a better system have been to make psi abilities more like an actual weapon choice rather then simply trying to break the whole point of playing a psion, the versatility?

Are you actually open to alternatives to this system that may make both sides happy? Or is it just your way or the highway at this point?

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Suggestions / A better psi fix

« on: September 18, 2020, 12:28:31 am »

So I have been looking at the game and the changes and frankly it doesn't really fix anything. You still can play all four schools, you still have all the abilities at full strength, you still don't really get the goal of build diversity.

So instead of shoehorning in a D&D spellbook mechanic maybe go the opposite route and embrace making psi more like a weapon as well as the crafting system. IN that you have a gauntlet(s) that act as a "focus" for abilities. Which fits since we already have headbands and armor affecting psi builds. It would even make sense with Force Emission and the gauntlets could double as an unarmed weapon.

From there you choose one school to "attune" the gauntlet to, this school would operate as it always has. I.e. with 100% accuracy, duration, and power. The unattuned schools take hits in all three categories based on INT/WILL with different categories affected in different portions. Or as example accuracy could be governed by will, power by intelligence, and duration a combination. Higher of course means less reduction, but it still is significant. But more significant at lower values. I was thinking for a normal 8/8 starting value the penalties would be 20% reduction in accuracy, half duration, and -15% in power. Just throwing our numbers, but the point is that they are significant but still workable penalties.

From here the gauntlet allows more diversity in play. You could build the gauntlet to give more more in power, duration, or an innate crit chance (like the feat) for a particular school or even more for a particular ability of said school. Or you could build the gauntlet to negate the penalties of a second school. You could even have alterations to abilities such as force wall acting as an AoE stasis, or Force Emisison allowing you to switch to a second weapon to buff damage. The dev could go as crazy as they wanted with this system, and it would benefit builds that aren't strictly psion as well.

This would also make it easier to fine tune psion abilities as you can change the abillity, the values given by equipment, or the penalties non-attuned schools get. At this point since there are guilds for playing a 4 school psion still, and they are still pretty much just as powerful and versatile, I think the answer to build diversity is to actually give meaningful choices to playstyle in the form of equipment and penalties based on player stats.