PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)

[Yossar]

Originally posted by PvK:

quote:

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Basically, the VQ changes, in the main, were aimed at the way Norfleet (and only Norfleet) plays.

Oh? What about the chorus of whines that everyone was copying Norfleet's strategy?

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I've still never heard of anyone besides Norfleet successfully using his strategies.

[ June 11, 2004, 03:47: Message edited by: Yossar ]

[Blitz]

That's usually the case when a knee-jerk reaction occurs as a result of a public outcry of whining. This is why I feel that whenever somebody calls for a nerfing of anything, that somebody should generally be ignored. Now the VQ is a more or less completely unusable chassis by any nation that doesn't have a huge number of points to burn...and isn't available to the most noteworthy, and perhaps appropriate, of them: Ermor. Meanwhile, other options are no more attractive than they were before. Instead of more and better options, we have less. To top that off, the new patch didn't really give us anything new, contentwise. Bleh.

She's still very good for races who have some "free" heat/cold picks. For example, with Jotunheim I like her because she can summon ice devils without needing Water 4 or construction 6.

You can have Order 2, Sloth 1, Cold 2, Misfortune 1 with AA WWW EEE DDD BBB and dominion 5 on a Vampire Queen. For that I get an immortal, flying, erthreal, regenerating, poison and cold resistant pretender who can realisticly summon her first ice devil on turn 15-20. So she's not the hands down champ anymore? So what. There's at least 20-25 pretenders that are worse. Now she's more of a niche choice rather than a default selection. Good on the developers.

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
That's usually the case when a knee-jerk reaction occurs as a result of a public outcry of whining. This is why I feel that whenever somebody calls for a nerfing of anything, that somebody should generally be ignored. Now the VQ is a more or less completely unusable chassis by any nation that doesn't have a huge number of points to burn...and isn't available to the most noteworthy, and perhaps appropriate, of them: Ermor. Meanwhile, other options are no more attractive than they were before. Instead of more and better options, we have less. To top that off, the new patch didn't really give us anything new, contentwise. Bleh.

The intention was to price the VQ so that she would be as (un)viable as the liches. If you compared their costs before the VQ was a better choice than the standard- or Saurolich in almost every conceivable situation. Perhaps Liches are not very popular but they have been priced this way since dom 1 days and the VQ was added for dom 2, so our feeling was that the VQ was the pretender that was priced wrong rather than the liches. It was not a knee jerk reaction, especially since the VQ complaints emerged well before the previous patch, it was a measured response, and we didn't start fiddling with the VQ until we one day compared the lich with the VQ point by point, that was the reason for the change not the whining. We are not pavlov dogs. The removal of the VQ from Ermor is the sole instance where I might concede some part of your point, but even there it was mainly done for thematic reasons.

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by PvK:
Is there any reason why we shouldn't read that an overstatement from the perspective of a narrow selection process? She's still a good immortal fighting chassis with a huge list of build-in abilities. Looks good to me.

Well, the way I see it, the best comparison is with the Prince of Death. The base differences between the two post-patch is:

1) 100 points in favor of the Prince of Death.
2) 2 base Dominion in favor of the Prince of Death.
3) DDD (PoD) as opposed to DBB (VQ). If you are talking about an SC build for them, this is a point in favor of the PoD. I've never heard of an SC using Blood magic in combat.
4) The PoD has about a 2-3 pt. edge in every fighting statistic over a VQ. He also enjoys twice the base HPs of a VQ.

Now, balanced against this, you have the VQs Etherealness, Immortality, and Regeneration (there's also the Life Drain attack). If you think that's balanced, that's fine. I, personally, do not, especially since everything but the Immortality that the VQ possesses, the PoD can attain through items or spells.

As a test, I took a VQ and a PoD, and bought them up to the same level. The amount of points that took for each was:

VQ: 195
PoD: 116

Also, any further increase to Dominion (which is currently a 3) or to Death magic will favor the PoD, while an increase in Blood magic (which, for an SC, is suboptimal) favors the VQ.

Good point about Broken Empire, but they'd have to change the god selection UI to eliminate it only from the Ashen and SG themes. Seems to me there are good thematic and logical reasons from taking from them, and the perhaps unnecessary hit to Broken Empire doesn't seem to me like a big deal.

Personally, I'd rather have an unclear reason for an omitted pretender choice, than a couple of pretender choices that don't make a lot of sense (vampire queen with murderous dominion exterminating her blood sources).

True, but beware of where that path leads you. Why should Jotunheim get non-giant pretenders? Sure, there's Utgard, but that's only one theme. Same for C'tis and non-lizards. Etc.

Then there's the question of why it was removed from ONLY Ermor. If it had been restricted farther, I'd actually have less of a problem with it. But the 'only Ermor' removal smacks of silver bulleting, which is generally not a good way to enhance game balance.

Oh? What about the chorus of whines that everyone was copying Norfleet's strategy?

As Yossar said, I've not seen a single report of anyone but Norfleet able to win with the strategy Norfleet used.

Cool - looking forward to it!

Mm. Be careful of what you wish for.

Scott

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:
Well, the way I see it, the best comparison is with the Prince of Death. The base differences between the two post-patch is:

1) 100 points in favor of the Prince of Death.
2) 2 base Dominion in favor of the Prince of Death.
3) DDD (PoD) as opposed to DBB (VQ). If you are talking about an SC build for them, this is a point in favor of the PoD. I've never heard of an SC using Blood magic in combat.
4) The PoD has about a 2-3 pt. edge in every fighting statistic over a VQ. He also enjoys twice the base HPs of a VQ.

Now, balanced against this, you have the VQs Etherealness, Immortality, and Regeneration (there's also the Life Drain attack). If you think that's balanced, that's fine. I, personally, do not, especially since everything but the Immortality that the VQ possesses, the PoD can attain through items or spells.

As a test, I took a VQ and a PoD, and bought them up to the same level. The amount of points that took for each was:

VQ: 195
PoD: 116

Also, any further increase to Dominion (which is currently a 3) or to Death magic will favor the PoD, while an increase in Blood magic (which, for an SC, is suboptimal) favors the VQ.

She was altered to be be on par with the lich, a comparable immortal.

True, but beware of where that path leads you. Why should Jotunheim get non-giant pretenders? Sure, there's Utgard, but that's only one theme. Same for C'tis and non-lizards. Etc.

Then there's the question of why it was removed from ONLY Ermor. If it had been restricted farther, I'd actually have less of a problem with it. But the 'only Ermor' removal smacks of silver bulleting, which is generally not a good way to enhance game balance.

...
Scott

It might smack of silver bullet or whatever. Fact of the matter is Kristoffer had thought it unthematic for AE and SG for a while and decided to restrict it, and JK agreed so it was implemented.

There is an annoying tendency amongst some posters to assume that illwinter is blown about like helpless leaves by the winds of whine.

I also wish to categorically deny that illwinter is wire tapping Norfleets phone.

[PvK]

Interesting comparison of VQ and PoD. Thanks Scott. It still seems to me that VQ and PoD are apple and orange choices and so one doesn't out-do the other except for a player who is already decided on one play style. PoD is a phenomenal fighter, but is not immortal. So I compare VQ to Liches, and see more combined abilities for more points. PoD is a superiority SC you try to keep alive, and may send breifly on strikes out of dominion. While VQ is a living-army-consuming defensive immortal SC, or just a middleweight but immortal SC for in-dominion defensive strikes, perhaps capitalizing on her immortality by letting her fight to the death repeatedly. Immortality and combo of strong built-in abilities is a very different thing from non-immortal but a great fighter. So again, they both look good to me, but in different ways.

Also the nature of the immortality effect (instant return with little loss on death, and recuperation effect) is very strong in itself and essentially a multiplier, which is why is gets extremely strong when combined with other abilities. I think for this consideration it makes sense for VQ to cost more and perhaps be unavailable to Ashen and SG, since they have scads of points to dump into the VQ.

Minor items:
* Built-in Ethereal for the VQ means she can wear body armor. The PoD, unless I'm missing a trick, needs to choose between body armor and no ethereal, body armor and self-cast ethereal meaning he needs to have Astral power (with its risk or cost), or wear an astral cloak which offers no protection (and requires someone else to forge it). So it doesn't seem to me like it's just something that can easily be got by the PoD with no disadvantage compared to the VQ.
* Seems to me Blood magic does have a good trick or two (or more?) for SC's, even if not commonly used.

Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:
... Why should Jotunheim get non-giant pretenders? Sure, there's Utgard, but that's only one theme. Same for C'tis and non-lizards. Etc.

There are plenty of thematic and literary examples of mixed-race masters and minions. The difference with Ermor and Soul Gate combined with VQ's is that the effect of one is a disaster for the other. (Extinction of life means starvation for a vampire, and traditionally, vampires' main concern is a good blood supply, so it doesn't make much sense.) There is no such conflict of interest for Jotunheim with little wizard masters, unless the wizard were afraid of tall ceilings or of getting stepped on by accident. Same with standard C'tis.

However, death and especially extinction dominions for anyone do seem contradictory for vampires, so Desert Tombs and Carrion Woods also seem like they would make less sense with a VQ. There's no really good mechanic in the god-selection GUI to make that perfect, though.

I don't really see any of this as much of a problem, though. I think a simple mod could allow VQ back in Ermor, while at the same time taking out the themes. The only thing that seemed to me like a slight problem surrounding all this was the cheap cost of the VQ when taken to extremes.

PvK

The VQ is still perfectly servicable as a SC in every instance of the word. Now though, it does not have the potential to be a rainbow Immortal. That is left to the Liches.

The PoD vs VQ is not an accurate depiction. Since a PoD does not have Immortality. If you take the best Lich (Sauro or Queen, depending on your perspective) you'll see that they fill the niche just as easily as the VQ did previously.

Ermor is purely thematic in not having the Vampire, I would hope that having more pretenders restricted and other pretenders added would be a desire for players of Dom2. But if not, there is no reason you have to patch at all. Everyone can refuse to patch because something/anything was changed in a way they do not like. They can also make as many mods and play games with said mods to create whatever vision of balance they have.

Also, IW does not work at the speed of light, or the speed of other's desire. This game in it's current state, with the Battle Speed fixed, has had more support than a good portion of games out there, for less money and no cost of expansions. So personally I feel they have done enough for 'me'. Whatever they do now, is just icing on the cake.

Edit: With the exception of Bug Fixes, that crop and are patched usually as soon as Illwinterly possible.

[ June 11, 2004, 17:04: Message edited by: Zen ]