View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0005959 | Valley 1 | Bug - Other | Feb 16, 2012 4:13 pm | Apr 9, 2012 8:32 pm | |
| Reporter | jerith | Assigned To | keith.lamothe | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 0.578 | ||||
| Summary | 0005959: Enchant progress uses nonstandard percentage range | ||||
| Description | Enchant progress seems not to be bound by the usual percentage range. It went up to 105.8% before I got a new enchante and then started again around 64%. See screenshot of message log for details. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | For New Player Experience | ||||
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This is, at least in part, due to the fact that you don't necessarily get an enchant right at 100%. What happens is that every time you get over 100%, the game tries to make one. If the one is the same as one you already have, you get nothing till the next container. That said, perhaps there is something we can do to make this neater. |
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Could it do the selection process when you get one enchant to pick the next one, so it can just report "60 points needed to next enchant" or "180 points &c" and be right? |
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Keith, I think that martyn's idea is really solid. |
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Picking them ahead of time would potentially result in duplicates if people trade enchants, but I suppose that's an acceptable edge case. |
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I'm up to 260%+ enchant progress and haven't received a new one. Does this mean I already have all the enchants in the game? |
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Probably; how many do you have? |
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Actually Keith, I'm not sure it does. I had (might still have, I'll check if you need) that said I had something like 4,000% and I didn't have them all. |
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Which one did you not have? |
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I don't remember at this point, but I only had like 12. Unfortunately, I just checked, and I no longer had that test world. I'll see if I can repro it later. |
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I've seen that also. Using the debug tools to add 30 hours of enchant points, then adding 1 enchant point at a time doesn't reliably give more like it seems like it should. When calculating the "unique enchants" thing, it's considering minor effects as making them unique from one another, right? So if I have a red firepower boost, but not a red firepower boost with whatever other secondary effect, it doens't consider me "having all the enchants" yet, does it? |
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Attached a screenshot of my enchant inventory. As far as I can tell, the only variant I have of a primary enchant is the Acid Gills, which I have with just the immunity and also with -5% vuln and emit light tagged on. This seems to support Chris' hypothesis about secondary effects not counting as "different". |
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In my tests it was always giving base enchants and then base+extra enchants (for example, reduce-incoming-damage and then reduce-incoming-damage+emit-light). It was doing that as recently as Friday when I gen'd some enchants for testing the stealth-assassination and rescue-npc stuff. The "duplicate prevention" code was definitely written with the intent of only considering it a duplicate if you already had something with _all_ the effects of the proposed enchant. |
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Ok, just tested again and starting from an absurd number of enchant points such that you only get the "top" ones there are 18 distinct enchants given (including powerslide, so a bit less in the current public version). If it's already given you "reduce-incoming-damage+emit-light" it won't give you the normal "reduce-incoming-damage" one even if you don't have it because there's really no case where you'd want that over the enhanced version (if there are later enchants with negative optionals we can handle that case differently). But starting from 0 and gathering enchant points the normal way it was more like 26 enchants before it petered out; the you-have-to-get-at-least-1/4-what-you've-spent total rule tends to give you a selection of the lower ones, a selection of the mid ones (which often "block" off the lower ones from which they derive), and a selection of the high ones (which render obsolete some of the low/mid ones, some of which you may not have yet). If that's really bothering people I could make it 1/8th of what you've spent total and you'll get more enchants from each cost-group, but the current approach actually gets you power somewhat faster. Chris, one reason you don't see reliable enchant gains per point after a certain point is that if there are only randomly-available enchants left in the list (the outgoing-damage ones are not available on every roll, but their total availability chance is comparable to 1-2 of the other types) then there's a chance that there's an actual enchant that's possible to generate but just doesn't turn up on that particular roll. |
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That makes a good amount of sense. Though, I will say that if I play for 200 hours, I should be getting lots more enchants than if I play for 100 hours. There should be a slowdown period, but right now it's happening a lot faster than it should -- I shouldn't just get one red power gem, I should be getting a goodly number of them and then get to choose between them, I feel like. I don't need endless variants in my inventory causing ridiculous clutter either, so it's a fine line, but I think the current version is a bit off somehow. It's close in a lot of respects, but I don't have enough experience with this sort of procedural loot system from a player perspective (not played Diablo, etc, just Boarderlands) to really be able to know what the optimal tuned version is like. |
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I agree with Chris, except that I think Borderlands has maybe a bit too much. I wouldn't want to see quite that level of randomization in the enchants, but, certainly a bit closer to that than what it is now would be good. |
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I'm also not outright against the system occasionally giving you worse enchants than you've got. I reckon the knowledge that you'll always get something as good or better than what you've got previously can actually work against the sense of treasure hunting as a whole. That said, I'm not sure that idea would even hold up in the current implementation - but I thought I'd put it out there! ;) |
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Are there only two variants (base and with bonus) of each enchant? If so, I think we could use a bit more variability. As far as I can tell, the standard mechanism for handling loads of random loot is to not worry about duplicates and to provide a way to get rid of unwanted items (usually by selling them). I don't think that really fits AVWW's enchants very well, though. Some way of hiding enchants I don't want to ever use while still keeping them around to stave off dupes is probably a better way forward, but that introduces all sorts of new and exciting (by which I mean problematic) UI considerations. I'd definitely like to see more variability in secondary enchant powers, though. Two or three options for the second elemental bonus on a power boost, that sort of thing. You'd get a combinatorial increase in the number of enchants available without making anything too random. You could also tune the drop probability to penalise enchants of a type the player already has multiple variants of, so you only start to pick up the extra variants later in the game. This would also incentivise playing with spell types that aren't your first preference (the same way random ship types in AI War does) while still letting you fine-tune your playstyle later. Alternatively, enchant extras could work in a similar manner to spell tiers. Rather than getting a new enchant, you could potentially get an upgrade to an existing one. You randomly choose from the set of available base enchants that aren't already maxed out, and then either give the base version to the player (if he doesn't already have it) or upgrade the one he does have. This gives a slower progression in power, while still leaving the possibility of a few lucky rolls dishing out a high-power enchant early on. It also reduces inventory clutter, because you can only carry one of each kind of enchant around. |
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There's enchants with more than two variations, but I simply haven't had time to add a lot more than what's there. I'll probably spend most of today on that. |
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Actually, plans changed, I'm not working on enchants :) |
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Today. Soon, just not today. :) |
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This was fixed a while ago when enchants were overhauled, now it always grants an enchant when you reach the target point total (and now there's actually such a target point total rather than the game trying to guess at it) :) |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 16, 2012 4:13 pm | jerith | New Issue | |
| Feb 16, 2012 4:13 pm | jerith | File Added: Enchant progress.png | |
| Feb 16, 2012 4:21 pm | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => For New Player Experience |
| Feb 16, 2012 4:21 pm | tigersfan | Note Added: 0019242 | |
| Feb 16, 2012 4:21 pm | tigersfan | Assigned To | => keith.lamothe |
| Feb 16, 2012 4:21 pm | tigersfan | Status | new => assigned |
| Feb 16, 2012 4:37 pm | martyn_van_buren | Note Added: 0019243 | |
| Feb 16, 2012 5:04 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0019245 | |
| Feb 20, 2012 10:40 am | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0019439 | |
| Feb 20, 2012 11:08 am | jerith | Note Added: 0019447 | |
| Feb 20, 2012 12:42 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0019450 | |
| Feb 20, 2012 1:25 pm | tigersfan | Note Added: 0019460 | |
| Feb 20, 2012 2:23 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0019466 | |
| Feb 20, 2012 2:27 pm | tigersfan | Note Added: 0019467 | |
| Feb 20, 2012 3:43 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0019471 | |
| Feb 20, 2012 4:19 pm | jerith | File Added: Enchant inventory.png | |
| Feb 20, 2012 4:25 pm | jerith | Note Added: 0019473 | |
| Feb 20, 2012 6:35 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0019477 | |
| Feb 21, 2012 10:26 am | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0019486 | |
| Feb 21, 2012 10:39 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0019488 | |
| Feb 21, 2012 10:41 am | tigersfan | Note Added: 0019489 | |
| Feb 21, 2012 11:19 am | zebramatt | Note Added: 0019495 | |
| Feb 21, 2012 11:24 am | jerith | Note Added: 0019499 | |
| Feb 21, 2012 11:55 am | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0019506 | |
| Feb 21, 2012 2:07 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0019511 | |
| Feb 21, 2012 2:12 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0019512 | |
| Apr 9, 2012 8:32 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0021892 | |
| Apr 9, 2012 8:32 pm | keith.lamothe | Status | assigned => resolved |
| Apr 9, 2012 8:32 pm | keith.lamothe | Resolution | open => fixed |
