Dev Log #48: Veteran Levels

[Styg]

Hey guys, it's time to start revealing some concrete info on the expansion. Some new game mechanics stuff, to be precise.



First, let's talk about leveling. Once your character levels past level 25, they become a "veteran" character. To gain veteran levels, a character will require significantly more experience (both oddity and classical) than for regular levels. Player can gain a maximum of 5 veteran levels, so the new level cap is 30.

Veteran characters no longer receive base ability or skill points during leveling and their derived stats such as health, detection and so on do not scale with levels anymore. However, they do get to pick a feat every level and, in addition to regular feats, they can also pick from the veteran feat pool.

Veteran feats, at least in this expansion, tend to be more general in nature, but they can also give you some important bonuses that you cannot otherwise obtain. Here are some examples (in addition to the one on the screenshot):

• Fight Response - When starting a turn below 25% of your maximum health, your action points are increased by 10.
• Improved Dodging - Increases the chance you'll dodge a melee attack by 5% (additive).
• Tempered: Acid/Cold/Electricity/Heat - Reduces all X (depending on feat) damage taken by 30%.
• Major Supplier - Increases the amount of money the merchants are willing to use when trading with you by 2% per mercantile skill.

Keep in mind that these feats might be altered, pending testing.

The reason I decided to prevent certain aspects of character from scaling beyond level 25 is to avoid having the character outscale the content at his current main storyline progression just by raw character power. Because we'll be expanding the game horizontally in this expansion (and probably in the future) we need to take special care to still provide adequate challenge to the player while also allowing them to improve some aspects of their character.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Interesting. It would certainly let players fill out the feats they need for a build, though not getting skillpoints disheartens me. I'd like to be able to boost lagging skills; open up new options. Like, on my current machine gunner, get him some psionic powers or trap skills. Or with my previous Thought Control/mixed character, actually get him some other psionic skills.

[TΛPETRVE]

It certainly makes sense, seeing how e.g. Borderlands' system makes the game completely trivial once you cross the level cap.

[LifeTears]

hmm i was really hoping to + my crafting skills since i started them late...

Styg
Would it be possible to make something like a character reset button? Let say you are level 25 and it will drop all your feats and skills to 0 and let you re-choose it without loosing the game progress.
I picked many skills that i shouldn't of picked and i'm at the end of the game, cant replay everything and start over. I would assume there are many more people with this issue.
I understand if maybe this re  build of character would cause some kind of abuse....maybe it could be limited to once right after the expansion or something like that.

[Tygrende]

hmm i was really hoping to + my crafting skills since i started them late...

Styg
Would it be possible to make something like a character reset button? Let say you are level 25 and it will drop all your feats and skills to 0 and let you re-choose it without loosing the game progress.
I picked many skills that i shouldn't of picked and i'm at the end of the game, cant replay everything and start over. I would assume there are many more people with this issue.
I understand if maybe this re  build of character would cause some kind of abuse....maybe it could be limited to once right after the expansion or something like that.

No offense but this is a terrible idea.

First of all, this would seriously mess up build dynamics. Some builds start off weaker than others only to end up ridiculously good in the end, other start very strong but end up weaker in the endgame, some stay relatively good through the whole game. Some skills are more useful at the beginning while other are better in the end. Introducing a late game reset button would allow you to completly ignore this.

Second, it would defintely be very easy to abuse and make extremaly overpowered builds with. I can already imagine starting with high INT, all crafting feats and maxing all crafting skills, crafting all the best gear available in the game, only to reset my character with no points into crafting at all and spending them on completely different skills instead.

Third, it would trivialize all the choices you have made before.

[captainmeow]

I imagined you'd do something like this regarding skills, but was hoping for a base ability point every level. i just really want to use balor's hammer

or is there a reusable perk that gives 1 ability point each level? 

[Altos]

Very interesting! The point that Veterans will not receive any more skill points or base ability points is saddening, but I totally understand why you've made that decision; the player would certainly become even more of a god at that point.
I am a bit concerned that the "significantly more experience" necessary for each level-up after 25 may become a serious problem for Oddity-style players, but I imagine that the (expected) volume of oddities to be added with all the new areas in the expansion will more than help to alleviate this concern.
It also seems to me that Veteran feat examples provided are very... generic, and I can't honestly see myself choosing any of the three examples provided here (I mean, living on half of your base health? Pure psi builds already have to cap constitution to survive as it is!), but you yourself stated that they are liable to change, so I expect that some more interesting feats will be provided as things come together. If not, I suppose that generic upgrades are still always better than no upgrades!
All in all, I'm excited! Keep up the good work!

[Altos]

Like, who cares about Major Supplier at this point? He hasn't yet even talked about the base game improvements they've done to Mercantile!

Improvements to Mercantile?!
"Gentlemen, you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention!"
Let's hope it will actually be worth my skill points now!

[hilf]

That's a nice idea.

And it seems that Styg chose to showcase some of the, let's say, less interesting feats.

He's trying to tell you something (:

[Phoenix7786]

^ Where does that shit even come from??

Anyways, loving the idea of the Veteran feats, yet still limiting the skill points available. Should help prevent cookie cutter builds from becoming predominant.

[player1]

The reason I decided to prevent certain aspects of character from scaling beyond level 25 is to avoid having the character outscale the content at his current main storyline progression just by raw character power. Because we'll be expanding the game horizontally in this expansion (and probably in the future) we need to take special care to still provide adequate challenge to the player while also allowing them to improve some aspects of their character.

This could potentially lead to characters getting stuck unskilled for last part of the game, by not investing skills points, when below 25 level in skills that are only required to be high in the end game.

[addictedorc]

Anyways, loving the idea of the Veteran feats, yet still limiting the skill points available. Should help prevent cookie cutter builds from becoming predominant.
[/quote]

agreed!

[TheAverageGortsby]

Would you consider / have you considered skill-boosting Veteran feats?  I get the design concept of not wanting characters to get those extra 200 skill points so that skill allotment decisions are still important, but it might be nice to be able to top up some skills.  It could be as simple as "Veteran X[say, Dodge] - increases base Dodge by Y points.  Requires Dodge < (135-Y)".  Or (100-Y) or whatever you want the catch-up cap to be in the event you want to leave clear advantage to builds specializing deeply in a skill.

Honestly, I'm specifically thinking about crafting feats here in light of the new Psi school, since unless the new school relies on something other than Will, a dedicated Psi build will be optimized toward having even fewer free skill points to do things aside from core combat competency.  But really any build that's struggling hard to get to acceptable minimums in skills could benefit hugely from an option to catch up a lagging skill or two at the opportunity cost of losing whatever other neat Veteran skills are on offer.

[Tygrende]

Look at the bottom of the picture again. Improved Dodge/Evasion/Throwing sound exactly like what you described.

[TheAverageGortsby]

Look at the bottom of the picture again. Improved Dodge/Evasion/Throwing sound exactly like what you described.

Sure, I saw them.  And there's nothing saying that they aren't exactly that.  But there currently exists no feat in the game that gives a flat bonus to base skills, and no feat mentioned uses a mechanic other than % improvements.  Those aren't bad; no doubt people would find use in them.  But they won't open up access to other feats, if they're %-based improvements on the base; they won't scale with stat specialization.  There's no reason for me to think you're wrong to suggest that, but I was wondering if base-boosting was considered or implemented.  I guess I didn't say any of that the first time.  Sorry 
EDIT: And since I didn't address your point (sorry, again): the description for Improved Dodging is clearly not a base boost, so it didn't meet my starry-eyed criteria for broadening character development from the bottom