Dark Oppressor Class concerns/tweaks discussion

[Kandarin]

This breath, the Dark Oppressor class has gotten a lot of improvements relative to the prior breath. I did most of the core design of these changes in the buildup to breath launch, and am pleased to see how well-received and popular a class the Breath 5 DO is. That said, looking at my assumptions about how this would play out in predesign relative to how it has actually played out reveals that not all of my predictions came true. In addition, some tweaks and concerns have come to mind since Breath launch as to how the class works and what could be better. I'd like to get these out of my head and put them here to open them for discussion and give players an idea of what might change with this class in the future.

The topics that have stood out most (to me at least) are:

Call Demons duration time - It'd be better if the options (and costs) were tied to how many Vassals you summon rather than scaled directly with time, with much more forgiving durations. The reason is that this is a casual game which should be more forgiving of not being constantly online in predictable ways. Currently it's possible to spend 5 DP to summon the strongest raid team in the game if your raiders are all Lifestyle Gamers who can sit on Discord live waiting for the ping - and possible to spend 50 DP to summon no one if you were trying to summon a person who had to answer a phone call for 11 minutes. I'd much prefer if this had (totally spitballing numbers here) Minor/Major/Greater summonings to summon 2/4/8 Vassals for 15/30/60 DP, with a duration of an hour or two to respond to the call.

Overlord Vassal Cap - So when Overlordship was originally conceived, it required Legion Master and your Vassal pool expanded with skills in the Vassals tree - your capacity to have Vassals gradually grew as you got Vassals, Thrall/Priesthood, then Legion Master and finally Overlord with the ultimate 15-member Vassal pool. Because Legion Master was too specific a build demand for what turned out to be quite a popular feature, the Legion Master requirement was dropped - but Overlordship getting you a 15-member Vassal pool remained, allowing Overlords to skip the incremental skills.

I consider this an oversight and a de facto bug. Ideally, Overlordship should advance your vassal pool size "one step" up from whatever your skills allow instead of going straight to the cap.

Dark Power Decay - 1 DP per day of DP decay is a pre-predesign number that was put out there so that decay would exist, before Dark Power had been played out to give us an idea of what DP generation per day for successful Dark Oppressors would be. In practice, this decay rate doesn't impact anyone and isn't an incentive to become an Overlord to protect it. If anything it's the reverse - some of the most successful DP collectors have been incentivized not to become Overlords because they don't want to lose their DP hoards to usurpation.

I'd like to adjust DP decay upward to account for the actual rate of DP gain. Possibly this should be a percentage instead of a flat amount. On the flip side, it'd be helpful if there was more stuff you could do with DP as an Overlord, possibly to temporarily enhance your lands in some way. A concept for Overlords using their power to alter the tile types of lands they control was floated in predesign, but didn't make it to final development because of how complicated it seemed to be at the time and how much stuff we had to get coded for breath launch.

I'm aware that there are some folks whose play experience might be adversely impacted. Perhaps an increase to DP decay ought to be accompanied by a cap on the amount of DP that can be taken from an Overlord in a single usurpation.

Priesthood and Thrall "spells" - Dark Priesthood is a contender for the most powerful skill in the game, because summoning vassals and resurrecting vassals are both insanely awesome abilities that are easily each worth 60 CP on their own. This has absolutely no contest with Command Thrall and it means there's one right way to play a Dark Power-using raider. These two abilities really ought to be separate skills and in the long run, the DP-spending expansion pack elements of Dark Priesthood (and Command Thrall) generally should really all be broken out into individual skills that Dark Oppressors can pick and choose between.

Command Thrall - Others have noted (and I agree) that Possessed Thralls ought to be rejuvable. I'd add though that there should be a cap of how many you can have. These abilities don't really need to be mutually exclusive with Dark Priesthood abilities either - sure, summoning vassal corpses and then resurrecting them is strong but ideally DP costs can be tweaked to match that strength.

Intimidating Aura - This skill is just really, really good (I say as the player of an Aura DO) because in practice there's no way to counter it. The only thing that can shut down an Aura is an Elementalist with Rebalance Area, who has to be active to defend against a raid - so in practice this never happens. Either Lead Paint needs to work on Auras, or Rebalance Area needs to be have a passive chance to trigger, or Rebalance Area needs to be something the Elementalist can prep like Shield of Faith. If any of these happen it'd be okay to lower the AP/MP cost of Aura accordingly.

I have a similar concern about Harbinger Nimbuses (Nimbi?).

Overlordship and non-Stygia planes - I've heard a lot about how much impact Overlordship has on the territory war when Evil gets something like that but the other alignments don't. I disagree with part of the notion that it's winning the war, because the actual mechanics benefit for Team Evil of a half-dozen characters getting superpowers under very limited circumstances is very small - but the morale impact is enormous. I'd agree that other sides ought to get more ways to mark their influence on a neighborhood (though "personalistic rule by one character" is very much on-brand for Evil - Good and Unaligned not so much!) but until/unless more such mechanics exist it may be a good idea for Overlordship of non-Stygia realms to have fewer mechanics effects than Overlordship in Stygia. After all, Hades Tol has been gripped by the dark gods to eternity past but you just took over Belmont Court last Tuesday - logically it won't be as efficient to rule.

I'm open to debate and ideas on this one, not least because of the aforementioned mechanics vs morale/flavor gulf.

Horns Tree - Others have noted that this isn't competitive with spells or stuff-you-can-enchant and I'd agree. It could use a numbers buff, as could Doomsights.

[Klapaucius]

Call demons
Fair, sounds good to me. This skill is too damn meta right now. It's not in keeping with the spirit of the game.


Overlord call cap
Definitely a bug, I didn't even know this was the case


DP
There's a few things about the current paradigm which are kinda unreasonable.

1) You probably shouldn't be able to stockpile 9000 DP under any circumstances
2) You shouldn't be able to steal 9000 by killing someone once. IMO being an overlord shouldn't open you up to this level of liability. It makes the potential fight for Overlord totally unfun - no way am I stealing somebodies whole faction's DP just for overlordship. It takes any overlord conflict perilously close to griefing territory. You can't even voluntarily give the DP back without also giving all your own accumulated DP. Less of an issue with lower DP totals I guess, but I still don't like it
3) Having dp be something that all do's can steal from each other in nominal amounts sounds like a much more engaging system.

I'd be tempted to have a progressive DP taxation system. 1 dp per day from 30 to 100, then 5% of your total over 100 +1.
So assuming net DP income of about 20 a day before tax, you'd cap just below 500 DP (asymptote at 480)
Overlord could halve the decay or something, so you'd cap out closer to 1000

I think a progressive stealing system would also make sense. 10% of DP above 30 would be an okay number, so you'd cap out at about 40-50 stolen DP from a stockpiling DO in the above scenario.


Priesthood and thrall

Priesthood does an awful lot.

Thrall - be careful here. They're titans right? And giving a DO 5 titans is gonna be kinda silly. But this is mostly an issue with titan ticks IMO.


Aura
Great skill. Making it counterable with lead paint will remove the main use-case unless you come packing a bunch of glyphs and the ability to eat a lot of mana drain. I don't think that's a fair recompense for a 150 cp skill. Different to glyphs where the main use case is defensive. Overall, I don't like this solution. I almost feel like the best solution is giving all alignments a similarly powerful aura ability (like old advocate aura was ballpark equal to intimidating aura in power).

I kinda like the idea that everyone should be stacking as many area/group buffs as possible?


Overlordship
Aside from the logistics (vassal cap and pacts), overlord is not really that strong. its a small boost to a number of skills, for a few characters in the game. It's mostly flavor. The main combat value is being tanky when your allies are dead. It doesn't even make you any more tanky when your allies are still alive. Agree that other alignments need some fun flavorful 'counters' to overlord, and the problem will magically evaporate.

It's possible there's some confusion between how much tankiness comes from overlord vs DO's other skills?


Horns
Spells are just too good for this to be competitive.


Doomsights
Moderately respectable skill (with overlord, pretty meh without it), bit awkward and VERY random, and doesn't help with bashing wards which is annoying. Fun combo with a super heavy melee weapon. It's usable, but hard to compare with the reliability+power of spells.


Final comment
DO CP is brutally tight. I like the idea of some decisions that need to be made rather than just huge power cap gated behind infinite cp lust.

[Yukari]

Re aura:

What if all area statuses had HP amounts like glyphs do. Then can just use GGE to damage them. Maybe give them higher HPs than normal glyphs to account for them being more specialised skills, but while in turn being able to be damaged by any caster class.

Perhaps in the case of the DO aura or conduit arcana thing, the child skills additionally grant their aura higher hp (to make them a little harder to break). Where a glyph needs 1~2 gge casts, maybe these statuses could take 5~7, at which point, if you're in active combat, you're forcing the character to put their aura again (or if you returned from being raided, you can remove these effects from your sh).

[Kandarin]

Thanks for the feedback! Thanks also to the folks who provided input on DO in other venues.

So there's probably a patch coming this weekend. The main projects in it aren't my projects, but I've built in some basic responses to these issues:

• Horns: Caustic and Corrosive are being buffed +2 to 9 and 11 base damage, respectively.
• Doomsights: Buffed to 7 duration, 10 with overlordship.
• Overlord vassal cap: This has been adjusted to be "one step up" so if you got Overlord with just Pledge Vassals your vassal cap is as if you had Priesthood/Thrall, etc. The 15-member cap is Legion Master + Overlordship. No one currently vassaled will be unvassaled by this, only the cap on new arrivals is impacted.
• Command Thrall: Allows rejuvenation at 25 MP each, but only for the first two Possessed Thralls summoned - a DO with two or more will summon un-rejuvable Thralls. Hopefully this should allow DOs to bring something ahead of time to battles while avoiding the balance issues of a huge flock of titans.
• Dark Power seizure: Instead of everything above 50 DP, usurpation DP seizure will take the lesser of 1/4 of DP above 50, or 666 DP. Hopefully this should tone down the heatedness a bit while still retaining a prize.
• Dark Power daily decay: remains 1 DP for 50-100 DP stashes, then 2 DP for 100-200 DP stashes, then 5% above 200. Overlords on their home territory start losing DP above 200, but at half rate. Hopefully this should apply some kind of soft-cap to avoid Too Awesome To Use situations, while still allowing some large stockpiles for potent uses.

Aura
Great skill. Making it counterable with lead paint will remove the main use-case unless you come packing a bunch of glyphs and the ability to eat a lot of mana drain. I don't think that's a fair recompense for a 150 cp skill. Different to glyphs where the main use case is defensive. Overall, I don't like this solution. I almost feel like the best solution is giving all alignments a similarly powerful aura ability (like old advocate aura was ballpark equal to intimidating aura in power).

I kinda like the idea that everyone should be stacking as many area/group buffs as possible?

Re aura:

What if all area statuses had HP amounts like glyphs do. Then can just use GGE to damage them. Maybe give them higher HPs than normal glyphs to account for them being more specialised skills, but while in turn being able to be damaged by any caster class.

Perhaps in the case of the DO aura or conduit arcana thing, the child skills additionally grant their aura higher hp (to make them a little harder to break). Where a glyph needs 1~2 gge casts, maybe these statuses could take 5~7, at which point, if you're in active combat, you're forcing the character to put their aura again (or if you returned from being raided, you can remove these effects from your sh).

This is probably something beyond a simple solution, at least codewise, so I didn't try and address it today. 150 CP is a lot and should be strong. I'd agree there should be more stuff like this, but also some more reliable across-the-board countermeasure. I'm not sure counter-glyph is it, unless the HP totals are really high.

Overlordship
Aside from the logistics (vassal cap and pacts), overlord is not really that strong. its a small boost to a number of skills, for a few characters in the game. It's mostly flavor. The main combat value is being tanky when your allies are dead. It doesn't even make you any more tanky when your allies are still alive. Agree that other alignments need some fun flavorful 'counters' to overlord, and the problem will magically evaporate.

It's possible there's some confusion between how much tankiness comes from overlord vs DO's other skills?

I'd generally agree with this assessment - the topic was on my list because I hear it a lot. I think there is some underlying belief in the community that overlordship itself gives stuff that's actually reliant on having the underlying skills. More counterparts to this are a long-term solution. I'm not going to tinker with this in the short term.

Breaking Thrall and Priesthood out into multiple skills is probably a breath-change thing.

[Klapaucius]

• Dark Power seizure: Instead of everything above 50 DP, usurpation DP seizure will take the lesser of 1/4 of DP above 50, or 666 DP. Hopefully this should tone down the heatedness a bit while still retaining a prize.
• Dark Power daily decay: remains 1 DP for 50-100 DP stashes, then 2 DP for 100-200 DP stashes, then 5% above 200. Overlords on their home territory start losing DP above 200, but at half rate. Hopefully this should apply some kind of soft-cap to avoid Too Awesome To Use situations, while still allowing some large stockpiles for potent uses.

This seems fair. However, I'm moderately devastated that I'll never reach 9000 DP after this change.

[Thenixon]

Rather than start a new thread can I ask a DO Overlord powers question here?

Before the Enhanced Senses tweaks, Overlords were finding/seeing hiddens and invis.

The Wiki currently reads:

Overlords in their own domain have an empowered version of Enhanced Senses (regardless of skills) that allows them to see invisible characters. Searching is still required to located Hidden characters.

When ES/Invis/Reveal/Sixth Sense changes were made to the whole game regarding that, the following was provided as patch notes:

The Myrmidon's "Enhanced Senses" skill no longer auto-reveals hidden occupants in a tile. Instead, if you "Search" a location and at least one person you don't know about is hiding there, you have a 100% chance to find that person (if 3 people are hiding, you only find 1, you have to search 3 times to find all three). This behavior extends to status effects that grant Enhanced Senses such as the Revenant's Shadow of the Wolf ability.

So I would have guessed that currently that an Overlord in their own territory, on a tile that is also evil, would search up a hidden character on the first try. I looked/searched for other updates in patch notes or here but didn't find anything.

Imagine my surprise when:

- You step inside Vorderman Barn. (2023-04-20 13:18:35).
- You search and find a Bottle of Beer. (2023-04-20 13:18:50).
- You conjure forth a wave of divination magic, dispelling invisibility throughout the area. You do not see anyone appear. (2023-04-20 13:18:54).
- (2 times) You search and find nothing. (2023-04-20 13:19:04).
- You search and find a Bottle of Beer. (2023-04-20 13:19:07).
- You search and find Garmuth. They were hiding. (2023-04-20 13:19:10).

So, is this a bug or deliberate scaling back of the overlord powers?

[Kandarin]

Rather than start a new thread can I ask a DO Overlord powers question here?

Before the Enhanced Senses tweaks, Overlords were finding/seeing hiddens and invis.

The Wiki currently reads:

Overlords in their own domain have an empowered version of Enhanced Senses (regardless of skills) that allows them to see invisible characters. Searching is still required to located Hidden characters.

When ES/Invis/Reveal/Sixth Sense changes were made to the whole game regarding that, the following was provided as patch notes:

The Myrmidon's "Enhanced Senses" skill no longer auto-reveals hidden occupants in a tile. Instead, if you "Search" a location and at least one person you don't know about is hiding there, you have a 100% chance to find that person (if 3 people are hiding, you only find 1, you have to search 3 times to find all three). This behavior extends to status effects that grant Enhanced Senses such as the Revenant's Shadow of the Wolf ability.

So I would have guessed that currently that an Overlord in their own territory, on a tile that is also evil, would search up a hidden character on the first try. I looked/searched for other updates in patch notes or here but didn't find anything.

Imagine my surprise when:

- You step inside Vorderman Barn. (2023-04-20 13:18:35).
- You search and find a Bottle of Beer. (2023-04-20 13:18:50).
- You conjure forth a wave of divination magic, dispelling invisibility throughout the area. You do not see anyone appear. (2023-04-20 13:18:54).
- (2 times) You search and find nothing. (2023-04-20 13:19:04).
- You search and find a Bottle of Beer. (2023-04-20 13:19:07).
- You search and find Garmuth. They were hiding. (2023-04-20 13:19:10).

So, is this a bug or deliberate scaling back of the overlord powers?

Bug. The Overlord functionality wasn't factored in when the new Enhanced Senses rework was coded, because enthroned Overlord abilities and Enhanced Senses rework were developed by different devs who didn't know to watch out for consistency with each others' projects.

It'll be fixed in the next patch. (EDIT: if you're reading this a fix has been deployed by now.)