SEV DEMO IS OUT!

[Kamog]

Adjustable racial characteristics would be nice! More flexibility and choices are preferable to the limited selections available in the present setup.

[StarShadow]

Kamog said:
Adjustable racial characteristics would be nice! More flexibility and choices are preferable to the limited selections available in the present setup.

I agree. It was the race/trait setup in SEIV that made it so easy to like(for me), I love RPG's and having an RPG element in SEIV made it much easier to get into.

[arthurtuxedo]

Personally, I think people are mostly bemoaning the lack of the sliders simply because they were used to them. The current system may be just as unbalanced and crappy, but it is at least fundamentally sound. Sliders are a flawed idea from the get-go. +/- one percent to anything doesn't (or at least shouldn't) make much difference. Even +/- five percent is really peanuts. All the sliders did was make it very difficult to properly balance and encourage min-max powergaming. The current system may be just as unbalanced, but we are almost definitely going to see more balanced mods as a result of the new approach.

[Captain Kwok]

But we are also going to see lists that scroll on forever with dozens of the same sort of traits at different levels...

A good compromised would have been like a 5-point scale for most aptitudes, and then a separated page for selecting unique racial traits for technology or special skills.

[arthurtuxedo]

Such lists as you describe would be an attempt to force a square peg into a round hole, to "sliderize" the new system, which I feel is a mistake. There should be only two or three options at most for each area, and certainly more than +/- 5%. If you have +10%, +25%, and +50%, I think that pretty well covers the field. No need for +15%, +20%, etc.

[Captain Kwok]

I agree, that's why I said a 5-point scale would be best (ie poor > excellent, increments of 10% actual effect?) for presentation.

In your example, take the 10 or so typical aptitudes and add 6 traits for each one and all of a sudden you have 60 traits that would take up many "pages" worth of the traits screen. Yuck. It's already bad enough with the 30 or so actual traits that exist now.

[Mephisto]

Quite well, thank you.

[Fyron]

arthurtuxedo said:
All the sliders did was make it very difficult to properly balance...

Huh? It is pretty easy to balance them out... many existing mods do so. PvK Balance mod for a stock tech tree, Adamant, CB, etc., etc.

but we are almost definitely going to see more balanced mods as a result of the new approach.

We have a bunch of well balanced mods for SE4 already. The lack of "sliders" will contribute zilch to "more balanced mods" in the racial setup department.

"Sliders" are great because they are compact. You don't need 8 separate entries to get a good range (eg: -20 to +20 in increments of 5) to accomplish this. MOO2 managed to have a race design screen that put a bunch of options in little space; SE5 fails at this miserably.

[arthurtuxedo]

Some SE4 mods are well balanced, but the majority aren't. It's easier to visualize balance for people who aren't great at it when you have a smaller range of options to consider. That's why I feel it will contribute to more balanced mods. Obviously, if you're Malfador and your idea of balance is this, then it still won't be balanced, but modders who are better at balance than MM, but still suck will be helped.

[Suicide Junkie]

Dragging the well-balanced mods down to make the rest look better isn't an improvement.