SCS and the difficulty slider

[DrAzTiK]

On 1/7/2019 at 12:27 AM, DavidW said:

Dragons I'll delay for later. 300% is I think about right in terms of feel and flavor for the way I play, and I don't really want to make mechanical adjustments at the TACTICAL level -but that may be a mistake. Other views welcomed.

Like Bartimaeus I find dragons a bit weak even with +200% hp.  So I think +300% hp could be interesting.

And maybe add to dragons immunity to chaos, feeblemind and polymorph but maybe it is not PnP or SCS goal..

 

edit : about the difficulty slider and widget : it is really very convenient and essential ^^

Edited January 28, 2019 by DrAzTiK

[DavidW]

Because the console is deactivated by default, and because I don’t want a core part of the mod’s functionality to require console commands to activate it, and because my (inevitably impressionistic) assessment of the mod’s user base is that this way around suits most of them better, and because I think the widget is fairly self-explanatory so I’m not too worried about it confusing people, whereas I am worried about people not realizing the difficulty is very customizable.

[agnes]

1 minute ago, DavidW said:

Because the console is deactivated by default, and because I don’t want a core part of the mod’s functionality to require console commands to activate it, and because my (inevitably impressionistic) assessment of the mod’s user base is that this way around suits most of them better, and because I think the widget is fairly self-explanatory so I’m not too worried about it confusing people, whereas I am worried about people not realizing the difficulty is very customizable.

Fair enough, thanks for the answer.

[CamDawg]

Keep in mind that not all players (e.g. Android/iOS) have console access, too.

[Luke]

1 hour ago, CamDawg said:

Keep in mind that not all players (e.g. Android/iOS) have console access, too.

Well, there's a workaround ---> https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/73108/mod-cluaconsole-cheats-without-keyboard-any-device

Having said that, I cannot understand why the console (a quite important tool!) is not (yet?) available for mobile devices ...... Other mobile games (e.g., Rome Total War) have it and it works great........

Edited January 28, 2019 by Luke

[Ardanis]

On 1/28/2019 at 7:04 PM, CamDawg said:

Keep in mind that not all players (e.g. Android/iOS) have console access, too.

Tablet users are not human anyway, so we can skip on extending human rights protection on them

[Jarno Mikkola]

14 hours ago, Ardanis said:

Tablet users are not human anyway, so we can skip on extending human rights protection on them

Being part of a machinecult doesn't remove your humanity, but the implants surely will. But I am all ready saved, for the machine is immortal.

[Guest Loz]

For what it's worth, I agree with agnes. I find the widget to be an unfortunate immersion breaker, and feel it makes for a less polished experience. I'd much rather have the option to disable it at install time.

[agnes]

On that note, it was never actually explained why we can't have a component controlling this?

An idea is to have it installed by default, for the reasons @DavidW already outlined, but to have an optional component that removes it (but still having it accessible by the console).

[DavidW]

Because any component requires time cost for coding and maintenance, and I’m just not persuaded it’s worth it to save people from clicking the button once, right at the start of the game, and selecting the option to get rid of it.

[agnes]

9 minutes ago, DavidW said:

Because any component requires time cost for coding and maintenance, and I’m just not persuaded it’s worth it to save people from clicking the button once, right at the start of the game, and selecting the option to get rid of it.

It's not about the effort to click it really. But rather (for me at least) that it screams "mod!". And also to put a "widget" in the special abilities area seems a bit hackish. Versus having the AI tied to the difficulty slider which is very lean and integrated. I mean it's not a place for those things, and as far as I know (I might be wrong) scs is the only thing doing this.

It reminds me of those fallout 3/nv/4 mods where you get like a radio for adjusting the weather and etc. Not very lore friendly.

I agree with you that an item would be worse, but both are almost equally immersion breaking.

And about components, scs already has a bunch of them and I can't see how this type of component could be hard to maintain?

[krevett]

I don't understand why people are complaining about the widget. Even if you can't remove it at install time you can do it the fist 5 seconds you're starting your new game...

And it screams "mod!" really makes me laugh. Don't install mods then ^^

DavidW is already working hard to release an upgraded version of stratagems and I think he'd better dedicate it's working time to correct bugs rather than adding a component that has really no added value to the mod...

 

Edit: if you take my case, I like to play on hardcore most of the time but like some components to be on insane or LoB. When I start a new game I launch the widget once, set the corresponding variables and remove it, it takes about 30 seconds to do this!

Edited January 30, 2019 by krevett

[DrAzTiK]

This widget is amazing, cannot believe people complain about it 

[DavidW]

27 minutes ago, agnes said:

It's not about the effort to click it really. But rather (for me at least) that it screams "mod!".

If so, it screams it for the first 5 seconds, after which you have disabled it and never see it again. You have the rest of your 60+-hour playthrough to get over the loss of immersion.

 

27 minutes ago, agnes said:

And also to put a "widget" in the special abilities area seems a bit hackish. Versus having the AI tied to the difficulty slider which is very lean and integrated.

This is in principle a better objection. But the difficulty slider is too coarse-grained: it adjusts the difficulty of all the components at once. The widget is the only way I know to make finer-grained changes, e.g. to turn off mage prebuffing or dragon hit point boosts. I'd love to be able to do that through something more deeply integrated into the UI, but so far as I can tell that's not possible.

30 minutes ago, agnes said:

and as far as I know (I might be wrong) scs is the only thing doing this.

As far as I know, too, you're right: SCS is the only mod that lets you adjust the difficulty setting of 20+ components on the fly, in the middle of a playthrough, without reinstalling the mod. But I at least think this is a good thing, not a bad thing.

[agnes]

37 minutes ago, DavidW said:

This is in principle a better objection. But the difficulty slider is too coarse-grained: it adjusts the difficulty of all the components at once. The widget is the only way I know to make finer-grained changes, e.g. to turn off mage prebuffing or dragon hit point boosts. I'd love to be able to do that through something more deeply integrated into the UI, but so far as I can tell that's not possible.

Yes I understand. But since you say yourself that you would have preferred to put the options somewhere else, you see my point about the hackish nature of the widget. Principally, it doesn't make sense to have something hackish as mandatory. Hence make it optional by a component? Again, it can be there by default with an optional component to hide it. Everyone wins from this.