Nerf the run skill

Discuss Daggerfall Unity and Daggerfall Tools for Unity.
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alphaTECH
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Re: Nerf the run skill

Post by alphaTECH »

Jumping and climbing increase at a reasonable rate. Running increases ridiculously fast, and I +1 the suggestion to nerf it. I think if it increased at a quarter of the rate it usually does, that would be far more balanced.

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Midknightprince
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Re: Nerf the run skill

Post by Midknightprince »

Feralwarlord wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:24 pm perhaps how the skill cap works could be changed from only being able to have 1 skill at 100 to something like all primary skills being able to hit 100 all major skills capping at 95 all minor skills capping at 90 and misc skills capping at 80
That would be ideal, but if it doesn't match classic, I don't know..
That's why I suggested everyone try it, and see what they think.
Get a consensus kinda thing.
Making all skills cap at 100 is NOT classic though, so that's why I went with the "nerf the skill" approach, veterans are going to know the skill cap change, nobody's probably going to notice the Nerf if you're running around all the time jumping on stuff climbing everywhere, as long as they don't max out on that stuff real quick, it's going to feel like classic, and it goes up so fast I'm thinking cut it in half.
Just play normally and jump and climb on everything as you go and see what happens in a week, if you're climbing skill is fixing to match your highest other skill, that's what I'm talking about, and if not then it's just the way I play.
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R.D.
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Re: Nerf the run skill

Post by R.D. »

I think if it increased at a quarter of the rate it usually does, that would be far more balanced.
I tried that out, and it seemed like a decent rate. The classic rate of increase is so fast, it seems like it may have been a mistake in the original game's code. I think I'll send in a fix for this.

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Midknightprince
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Re: Nerf the run skill

Post by Midknightprince »

R.D. wrote: Sun Oct 21, 2018 8:37 am
I think if it increased at a quarter of the rate it usually does, that would be far more balanced.
I tried that out, and it seemed like a decent rate. The classic rate of increase is so fast, it seems like it may have been a mistake in the original game's code. I think I'll send in a fix for this.
Is this in yet ?
it seems like they are going up slower on my end.
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R.D.
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Re: Nerf the run skill

Post by R.D. »

Not yet, I've been distracted by other things.

R.D.
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Re: Nerf the run skill

Post by R.D. »

It's in the latest code now, and so it will be in the next release.

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Aleryn
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Re: Nerf the run skill

Post by Aleryn »

I wanted to add my single user opinion on this discussion.

I suspect that Bethesda may have allowed run to progress faster than some other skills to facilitate a sense of brisk movement through the world to accommodate all the, well, running needed in the game. I'd humbly request this running 'nerf' be optional in the settings somewhere if it becomes the default.

Wysardry
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Re: Nerf the run skill

Post by Wysardry »

I would suggest that any non-classic behaviour be optional and disabled by default.

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Ferital
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Re: Nerf the run skill

Post by Ferital »

Wysardry wrote: Fri Dec 14, 2018 1:47 pm I would suggest that any non-classic behaviour be optional and disabled by default.
I agree except when the classic behavior is buggy. I started to play DF around the end of 1997/beginning of 1998 and remember how fast the running skill was increasing at that time, it didn't make sense at all. Even when you started at 3%, it was only a matter of a few levels for a character to have this skill be his best one. This was particularly true when you used the "viewplyr.dat" controls setup, recommended by Bethesda in the DF manual. Then you would use WASD commands to move your character and the space bar for running. So you would constantly use it actually, considering that movement in DF is particularly slow.

R.D.
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Re: Nerf the run skill

Post by R.D. »

The way running works in classic is that it you get a running skill use tallied every game update if you are running and you're not on a horse or cart (after enough tallies, the skill will rise when you rest/travel). When recreating this for Daggerfall Unity, I measured how many running skill tallies were done when I ran from one point to another, and discovered that the number differed depending on how fast the game had been running (how high the FPS were). Higher FPS = tally happens faster. I tried to use a DOSBox cycles setting that reflected a typical computer of the time, in typical game scenes, and used the tally rate I got for Daggerfall Unity.

As others have said, though, running seems to rise very fast in classic. I had a character that I played through classic with in DOSBox, and running advanced way ahead of everything else, all the way to 100, even though I hadn't been trying to make it do that.

As I understand, DOSBox is not perfectly accurate in its emulation of computer timing, but I don't have an old 90-s era computer to test with. I did take a look at 2 old save games I found online that were supposedly from 1997 and 1998, and the running skills had been raised higher than other skills in them as well, but nothing conclusive.

If anyone has an old computer from that time, or is running Daggerfall on PCEm or 86Box (I think these emulators are supposed to have cycle-accurate timing), I'd be interested if they have anything to add.

I suspect, though, that the core problem is what Ferital mentioned. Probably most players these days, myself included, use a WASD-style control scheme in the original game, with "Run" set to something accessible. VIEWPLYR.DAT sets it to the space bar. The defaults of arrows keys for movement and P key for running make it so that you can't really do anything else while running, and running is less accessible. I wouldn't be surprised if just changing to VIEWPLYR.DAT or another WASD-style scheme increases how much a player uses running by a lot, maybe even 2 or 3 times as much. In this case I suspect the main issue is that the original running advancement rate was set based on the default control scheme.

Anyway, we could have it back as it was, or a setting for it or something. I just felt that adding a setting for this might be excessive, and I think it was probably not intended to rise so fast compared to the other skills, hence the change.

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