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Post by mogmiester on May 6, 2015 13:41:08 GMT -6
Looks really interesting! Can I ask about the changes to stats? What are your plans? For health gain, have you considered maybe changing it to health gain rating or similar, like how WoW does it? So you need more and more health gain rating to gain more total health gain. Perhaps something like Total Health Gain Percentage = 0.02*HGR/(1+0.02*HGR) For weaves, what changes will be made? I was thinking of rolling a channeler next age - lightning storm in particular looks very strong, with +1 speed for each point in spirit. Will it be brought in line with other classes (i.e. +1/3 speed for each level). Otherwise, looks great - keep up the good word! EDIT: this was originally posted in the progress thread - which is why it might read a bit strangely!
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Post by Tim on May 7, 2015 10:44:04 GMT -6
I haven't started figuring out specific stats tweaks yet, but health gain for sure is getting a decent change. Poison and taint also are likely to be tweaked slightly (mainly with regards to how they work when players have multiple turns in a row). No concrete plans yet, so suggestions are definitely welcome.
As for weaves, I plan to overhaul them quite a bit, particularly due to the speed/wound bonuses that can be gained there. I'm currently toying with the plan of making it +1/2 speed per level, so better than other skills, but still not as over powered. We'll see. I do also plan to make weaves a bit more diverse from each other. Currently the stats are kinda random.
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Post by mogmiester on May 8, 2015 4:35:00 GMT -6
Sounds cool. You could keep the extra bonuses from weaves, and balance non channelers another way? Perhaps giving them a bonus to businesses to represent them having more time to make money because they're not as busy saving the world? alternatively you could buff the starting classes/equipment classes and not let them be chosen after you character has been created. For poison and taint, I quite like the way that they've turned out, although I do agree there probably needs to be some changes. I built a model to investigate what stats are good, and taint luck and poison were all pretty bad. At the moment taint is better if you have less turns - as your opponent has more turns and so takes more taint damage. To balance, maybe make taint a guaranteed proc to make up for less chances to apply, or make it so your taint is applied on the opponents turn as well as yours? Possibly increase taint numbers across the board as well, although that's a pretty boring buff. For poison, on the other hand, you get more from it the more turns you have, as it's applied and deals damage on your turn and the stack halves on the opponents turn. This means that you can keep it randomly applied, as you're going to have more shots to apply it if you're building correctly. Perhaps poison could reduce dodge by the stack, or remove block? This would make poison a counter to high defence builds, as it already removes defence %.
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Post by Seitaarin on May 11, 2015 1:40:39 GMT -6
First up sorry for the long post, there's a bit to cover There's a couple of discrepancies that were noted last age ... first up is the fact that a critical miss is not actually a critical miss as such, it's simply a % damage reduction (subtractive, not multiplicative), which means that when a character is built for damage %, it can blast through dodge, whereas a character primarying poison/taint damage has no possible way of applying ANY damage at all against a dodge stacked character - even one 15 levels below at the later stages. It's a GUARANTEED win, which is not good stat balance. The only real idea I can come up with is perhaps a bad one ... And that is ... drumroll ... remove poison/taint from the accuracy calculation, as they are already on a base to-hit calculation of (20-50% to hit) with Luck being taken into consideration as to whether they apply or not. Having to jump a second hurdle just to apply damage to start with doesn't seem like it's really needed. Or conversely, maybe having a luck calculation stacked onto melee hits might be good for a laugh - I'm not being serious there. Both poison and taint need a slight damage boost - poison because any reduction in top end speed (specifically from channeller abilities) will result in a fairly significant reduction in poison damage as P damage is massively driven from turn advantage. Taint is a bit more murky to plot though ... slow taint gives more damage ticks, but fast taint builds up bigger damage values due to the way taint works ... own turn taint damage builds, enemy turn taint damage applies ... Right now it's very hit and miss though (literally!!) with taint damage also prone to the double hurdle to-hit that poison suffers from. Really hard to balance this though, as there will be a secondary increase in p/t damage due to a lack of accuracy stat requirement, which will leave points available to build up primary damage stat and/or luck, so there are secondary ripple effects to take into consideration there. As for health gain, putting it on a diminishing returns scale is more a more complex fix (not to mention adding a mathematical complication for character builders not previously needed for GoS characters) than required ... taint damage does not currently get calculated when the new Max HP calculation is worked, but the damage taken from taint IS calculated in the 'damage taken' calc ... Tim can tell more on the multiple turn poison hits, that's where things get a little murky without being able to see what's going on behind the scenes ... but if the 'Max HP' calc is working correctly then it should be sweet. Of course by setting Max HP as an actual MAX, by definition you are going to hard cap Health Gain at 100%. That's IF Tim allows HG>100% to take health values above the max HP. There's arguments for an against that, honestly doesn't bother me at all whether it's capped or not, I mean if someone wants to sacrifice the amount of stat points to put that much into the health gain stat, I don't see why it shouldn't ... it's that max HP calculation that needs to be correct.
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Post by King Richard on May 11, 2015 4:05:35 GMT -6
The only thing that I get concerned about when people say Taint and Poison need to be upped is that it's already over powered in the early game. Maybe not Poison, but Taint for sure. For example: Khorakan Devalis last round was unstoppable by most players in the game for the first week or two. I will agree that Taint is less effective once the first class or two is added though, and Tainters usually end up among the weakest characters in the game against most builds. With health as low as it is the first 20 levels though, it's hard to counter someone who can potentially drop 20-40+ taint on someone each time they hit them. Like I said, it's just a concern, not opposition. If it can be fixed, by all means, fix it.
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Post by mogmiester on May 11, 2015 6:53:02 GMT -6
first up is the fact that a critical miss is not actually a critical miss as such, it's simply a % damage reduction (subtractive, not multiplicative), which means that when a character is built for damage %, it can blast through dodge, whereas a character primarying poison/taint damage has no possible way of applying ANY damage at all against a dodge stacked character - even one 15 levels below at the later stages. It's a GUARANTEED win, which is not good stat balance. That does seem a little bit broken. I'd be really interested in seeing the source code and looking at the order of calculations for damage. I think, though, that accuracy should be a straight multiplier to the final damage roll (so it doesn't penalise damage % vs +X-2X damage). I'm not sure how block is factored into the damage calculation (in particular, is damage reduced by block before or after increasing it by damage %), so it's hard to say how this could be balanced better. I've not given much thought to this, but maybe you could make def% a straight multiplier to your block roll - maybe even add a dodge roll in the same way you have a to hit roll, and then the final damage done is just final attack damage - final block damage? And that is ... drumroll ... remove poison/taint from the accuracy calculation, as they are already on a base to-hit calculation of (20-50% to hit) with Luck being taken into consideration as to whether they apply or not. Having to jump a second hurdle just to apply damage to start with doesn't seem like it's really needed. Or conversely, maybe having a luck calculation stacked onto melee hits might be good for a laugh - I'm not being serious there. I agree, there's not much point having two hurdles for poison and taint, seeing as they're not overpowered as is. Tangent - isn't max chance 55%? Both poison and taint need a slight damage boost - poison because any reduction in top end speed (specifically from channeller abilities) will result in a fairly significant reduction in poison damage as P damage is massively driven from turn advantage. Not just damage - any buff to the utility of poison could be a way of damaging it. Taint is a bit more murky to plot though ... slow taint gives more damage ticks, but fast taint builds up bigger damage values due to the way taint works ... own turn taint damage builds, enemy turn taint damage applies ... Right now it's very hit and miss though (literally!!) with taint damage also prone to the double hurdle to-hit that poison suffers from. Back of the EDIT: cigarette gay-packet maths suggests taint gives the most damage when your speed is matched to your opponents, with it falling off pretty hard as one party gets more turns in. But matching your opponents speed is pretty hard if you have more than one opponent! As for health gain, putting it on a diminishing returns scale is more a more complex fix (not to mention adding a mathematical complication for character builders not previously needed for GoS characters) than required ... taint damage does not currently get calculated when the new Max HP calculation is worked, but the damage taken from taint IS calculated in the 'damage taken' calc ... Tim can tell more on the multiple turn poison hits, that's where things get a little murky without being able to see what's going on behind the scenes ... but if the 'Max HP' calc is working correctly then it should be sweet. Of course by setting Max HP as an actual MAX, by definition you are going to hard cap Health Gain at 100%. That's IF Tim allows HG>100% to take health values above the max HP. There's arguments for an against that, honestly doesn't bother me at all whether it's capped or not, I mean if someone wants to sacrifice the amount of stat points to put that much into the health gain stat, I don't see why it shouldn't ... it's that max HP calculation that needs to be correct. Yea diminishing returns would be a big change, so I don't think it's the best idea. On a related note, I've seen funny stuff going on with health gain, even if there's no taint or poison involved. I definitely think that having an accurate understanding of how health gain works is necessary before we can start suggesting changes. The only thing that I get concerned about when people say Taint and Poison need to be upped is that it's already over powered in the early game. Maybe not Poison, but Taint for sure. For example: Khorakan Devalis last round was unstoppable by most players in the game for the first week or two. I will agree that Taint is less effective once the first class or two is added though, and Tainters usually end up among the weakest characters in the game against most builds. With health as low as it is the first 20 levels though, it's hard to counter someone who can potentially drop 20-40+ taint on someone each time they hit them. Like I said, it's just a concern, not opposition. If it can be fixed, by all means, fix it. I think that having stats that are strong early game but weak late game is conceptually OK, but given the comparative length of "late game" a rethink might be required?
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Post by Seitaarin on May 11, 2015 8:20:53 GMT -6
On the cigarette packet maths, sort of ... if you use a tainter extensively, you'll end up coming to accept the fact that fairly often taint just doesn't add up ... it's the single most unreliable damage type, which is why it's often neglected end game. I have no doubt that even as is, a full taint based build could pull of spectacular victories - you just can't do it reliably. No taint advanced class synergises with an accuracy bonus, so straight off the bat they are behind the 8 ball with actually applying a damage ramp considering they ALSO have to pass the luck check ... so speeding up a tainter has a positive effect on damage application simply by giving you more turns to pass damage ramp checks ... you might do less damage on paper, but you apply your damage more reliably.
Adding utility to poison is a slippery slope. Pretty much everyone ends up applying some degree of poison damage as it is just so prevalent throughout many of the advanced classes, so any buff to poison is a buff to everything which means it has the potential to be a hugely unbalancing force. Going off my own suggestion, increasing the chance of application by reducing the incidence of failure due to accuracy check failure will be a pretty significant buff to it's overall potential for damage ... to be honest I'm not sure that removing the accuracy check on critical miss wouldn't even throw things way out of whack - there is HUGE potential to rack up damage already with poison, given the number of advanced classes which can be stacked poison ... and we can't think of just a pure poisoner when thinking of a buff of a 'class' - there is no pure poisoner, every 'class' in the game is a hybrid, so there are secondary and tertiary effects of every modification.
Taint ... I don't know ... I'm not sure that removing the accuracy check for taint would change early game very much, with dodge/acc values so low and already playing a fairly minor role in success or failure... or rather, character stat modification of the RNG accuracy roll is very minor. It's when people are able to start stacking their builds that taint starts to fall behind, and that's mostly due to what I said above ... take a look at the advanced classes, and you'll find that anyone stacking taint has virtually no accuracy, but everyone NOT stacking taint will end up with alot more dodge more or less by happenstance.
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Post by dahllia on May 11, 2015 14:28:50 GMT -6
Just adding my two cents, and that is that poison as it is now is way too random and not very good.
Did not know that it had twice as big a chance to miss though, so fixing that might help, but my suggestion is upping the base chance to apply and lowering the damage.
Because I had some fights were if I was lucky I won in 2-3 hits, if I was unlucky I didn't apply poison at all (personal worst was 7 or 9 attacks in a row without proccing it) and that's just too random. Going damage/speed gives you almost as high or higher maximum output with a much higher average.
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Post by Seitaarin on May 11, 2015 16:56:04 GMT -6
Had you stacked any luck Dahl? Proc rates fall off significantly if you are fighting someone with more luck than you.
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Post by Tim on May 15, 2015 8:25:34 GMT -6
Ok. Gave things some thought and came up with these potential changes. Wanted to get you guys opinion before just going for it:
Poison: - Increase chance to hit from 20-55% to 40-75% (base chance to 60 instead of 40). - Change poison fade from 50% on opposing players turn to 25% on every turn (start of the player dealing poison's turn and end of the player receiving poison's turn) - Change %damage and %def affect from "-x% damage and -x% defense" to "-(x/2)% damage and -(x/2)% defense". - Remove current (undocumented) limit of base poison stat of 100
The change to how poison fades will actually result in more poison damage if the defending player is gets the same or more turns than the attacking player, but less damage if the attacking player has more turns. Note that when it fades, it will round to the nearest whole number. In general though the extra 20% chance for poison to hit should increase poison damage being dealt. The effect poison has on % damage and % defense seems strong (I think there's actually a limit in the code on its effect, but would have to double check), especially if we're upping the amount of poison being dealt, so those numbers get cut in half. KR found that player's poison stat was capping at 100 last age which was news to me. Was actually a hold over in a random leg of the code from back in Craig's day. I'll be removing that, though it shouldn't affect THAT many players.
Taint: - Increase chance to hit from 20-55% to 40-75% (base chance to 60 instead of 40).
Not much to say here. Just increasing the change to hit. Hopefully that will make taint more useful later in the age without making it TOO much better early on where it's already strong.
Health Gain: - Change health gain to gain % of damage taken since the end of your previous turn (or starting health if you haven't had a previous turn). - Maximum of 75% health gain (any health gain above 75% adds 2% defense instead, so 100% health gain = 75% health gain, 50% defense)
This one I thought the hardest about. Tried a couple different ideas, but this was the one I liked the most. It simplifies the max health limit so it's easy to tell how much you should be gaining. Health gain of more than 75% is just too hard to overcome in most cases (even that may be pushing it), so you can't gain more than that. I don't like hard caps though were raising it more than that is completely wasteful, so decided to just have the perks get applied elsewhere. % defense won't help against poison/taint, but it's still a nice boost.
Ok. Now find all the problems with these changes!
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Post by Seitaarin on May 15, 2015 10:20:25 GMT -6
No matter the decision on poison modification, straight out upping poison damage (and taint) should only be done with speed balancing for channellers. More damage without speed mitigated will create an entirely new breed of ridiculously OP. Poison damage itself is not terrible at the moment, when built right, it's just SUPER vulnerable to dodge. Like way over the top, zero chance of victory type vulnerable. Modifying the luck chance itself doesn't overcome that particular imbalance. Taint we'll only be able to tell with trying, but it suffers the same achilles heel as poison with the whole acc/dodge thingo. For NPC's this isn't such a big problem, you can more or less pick and choose what NPC's you fight, and the dodgers are known ... it's when you get to the duels that the light is really shone on this particular issue. Honestly as things stand I think I will just make a full dodge suit for a deliberately held back character and level on poison/taint based characters 5+ levels above, just because the risk vs reward ratio is frikkin awesome
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Post by Tim on May 15, 2015 10:54:16 GMT -6
Don't worry. Weave changes are coming as well to deal with the speed issues. As far as dodge goes, I can tell you from the dodge build I had with Alcar last round that yes, poison/taint builds stood little chance against me. Really, a poison build would just need to add some accuracy to help counter act full dodge (I know my dodge build caught up with you too late in the game for you to do anything about it, but you could plan ahead next time). Most high damage builds still were a challenge even with high dodge due to it being more a -100% damage penalty than straight 0 damage dealt. A Full Dodge build is far from unstoppable in general, but I agree it's probably TOO strong against poison/taint builds. I will also note that how accurate you hit didn't used to affect poison/taint, but I got tired of people complaining "how am I being dealt poison damage if they completely missed me?". How's this: Poison: On critical miss, chance to deal poison damage cut by 50% (20-38%) instead of 0% chance. On critical hit, chance to deal poison damage increases by 15% (55-90%) Taint: Taint is no longer affected by critical miss. Logically, you could reason that Taint is more supernatural and therefore just being in its presence can corrupt you (like the affect Fain has on those who followed him). Poison you can't really explain how more poison it dealt on a miss, but I agree it's a necessary logic hole for balancing. It does make sense as a balance though that if critical miss reduces your chances, critical hit should increase your chances. Making poison affected by dodge/accuracy but not taint is one more thing that makes them different, which I think is something else that is sorely needed.
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Post by Seitaarin on May 15, 2015 18:50:15 GMT -6
Worth a shot, would be interested to see how it plays out. I did try a full legendary of marksmen set, ended up with I think +79 acc at one point (high for any char not solely and purposely built for acc) ... even at rest I still had 20+ accuracy in the build in any case, I certainly wouldn't go without completely with all the passively gained dodge that's just daft ... but even then there was no chance when you had I think 125+ or so dodge ... after 4 or 5 consecutive duels without hitting once it became rather apparent how things were going to go. I also tried to drop a little bit of that acc for legendary of madness to get the damage % up to compensate a little and try and roll over the top of the -dmg% to see if that allowed poison to land, but I still couldn't get a hit in to answer that question, so just gave it up as a bad job. EDIT: also with the taint thingo, the logic makes sense ... I'd be inclined to suggest the double dipping on the damage increase might be too much, but will have to be play tested to find out I guess. Tainters fall way behind at the end as things stand, so hard to measure how much help they really need, but do consider the starting model how powerful tainters are when acc plays a negligible role in the damage numbers???
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Post by sirus slayer on May 16, 2015 2:12:57 GMT -6
Just going to add: a paper, rock, scissors stand point isn't bad. having certain character types isn't all bad. as long as there isn't ultimate character builds. if you have extremely high dodge you may be able to avoid poison and taint, but chances are your defense/offense will suffer from the focus on dodge. thus no characters are ultimate and everyone has their match out there... unless someone finds the perfect balance
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Post by Tim on May 16, 2015 10:55:01 GMT -6
I agree with that in general, Sirus. The goal is for there always to be a counter for whatever you try to do. It's just a matter of whether the counter is TOO strong. I'm fine with a dodge build being great against poison builds. It just needs to be a bit closer of a fight. As it currently stood, poison builds had NO chance against a full dodge build. Should at least have a chance of winning every once in a while. Otherwise, you could just do as Seitaarin said and battle up level against targets you're guaranteed to win against.
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