CDV12: Character Strength

[kaldar]

It is really hard to balance the strength of NPCs because they each have different skills and strengths. I suppose my suggestion would simply be to not allow a character to attack if they are below some strength threshold. I'm not suggesting this particular number necessarily, but in War of Empires, we could not attack below 70 strength.

[Seitaarin]

Dec 4, 2016 11:41:41 GMT -6 kaldar said:

It is really hard to balance the strength of NPCs because they each have different skills and strengths. I suppose my suggestion would simply be to not allow a character to attack if they are below some strength threshold. I'm not suggesting this particular number necessarily, but in War of Empires, we could not attack below 70 strength.

This idea actually has some merit, you know ... not in limiting being able to attack, but in limiting the xp calculation. On the one hand, balancing your gear to hit NPCs and win with as low a score as possible is one thing (albeit not difficult ... just run stam down and let gear get trashed without repairing, or even just go naked in the case of some NPCs) ... but upon reflection, the other problem with this is that it rewards laziness. If you can't be bothered upgrading gear for 10-15 levels and your character is naturally hitting npcs with fair gear because the npc difficulty is such that it allows this, then this I think does lend weight to the argument that NPCs are too easy. There is no incentive to update gear, why would you bother when you can still win and gain bonus exp? This in turn actually leads to a REDUCTION of potential xp for those that choose to duel. That's not very balanced.

If my rambling sounds confused as to my final goal I am attempting to achieve, that's because I am ... I don't have a perfect solution, I just see a problem and like to talk through it until a better solution IS achieved

[Tim]

So first, let me explain the reasoning that the strength stuff was added to the xp calculations in the first place. A few versions back there was a group of higher level players that were stripping their gear just so their low level friends could beat up on them for ridiculous amounts of xp. Adding strength numbers to the calculations helped stop this from being a problem. As usual, fixing one problem just seems to have let to another, as now running vs NPCs with low gear or low stamina is a great way to gain extra XP.

Second, I agree that the Explore button basically becomes a "Win" button at a certain point. On some of my characters (let's face it, all of them this age), I only upgrade my gear when I finally start losing to NPCs more than once in a blue moon. Laziness is definitely a factor there.

I want the system to reward people for putting in the effort, but I also don't want to 1) make the game uninviting for casual players or 2) shoehorn players into a single play-style. Some people want to log on, run their battles, and be done. Some want to build the toughest SOB out there and whoop up on everyone else. Some want to horde every scrap of coin they can and others get by simply selling the gear they find in NPC drops. I want a wide variety of options for players.

That doesn't mean every route has to be equal. Those that put the most time into their businesses and do the most item quests make the most coin. It's only fair that those that put the most effort into preparing their character for battle earn the most experience (SLIGHTLY more). Balancing is always tricky though. One or two extra xp per battle goes a long ways in the long run. The formula could use a little tweaking. Perhaps for NPCs, the strength of you vs your opponent should play less of a factor. Maybe something like 50% strength and below all counts the same? I'll fiddle with it a bit and try to come up with something for next age.

Here's what's always been my goal for the best ways to get XP: (highest to lowest)
1. Dueling (competitively)
2. Hordes
3. NPCs

In general, I'm fine with normal NPC battles being pretty much murder sims as long as you put in the minimal effort to keep your gear up to date. That way if casual players want to log in and put in the minimal effort, they can still get the job done. But ideally the game should give incentives to players that to use their turns in other ways. Duels, hordes, and quests should present more of a challenge and therefore more of a reward. I'm open to suggestions on how to make these more challenging without unbalancing things too much or making things TOO hard.

As for Boss quests, I already have plans for next version that might fit the bill for what you're talking about...

[Seitaarin]

I'll toss a few options out that spring to mind, most of these are separate ideas but not mutually exclusive Sorry about the novel, I just started putting ideas down and fleshed them out a little as I continued along.

1. Kaldar's suggestion, although I'd tweak it slightly - rather than flooring gear score which you can actually fight with, I'd suggest flooring the xp based on a lower bound gear score. I think limiting the attack button to a gear score would enforce people to do more back and forth for inns/consumables and whatnot, especially during CB's, LB, etc when they just want to spam that I win button until their inventory is full or out of end or whatever. Just more interruption than strictly necessary. I think people should be able to hit until they lose to be able to understand the limitations of what they can/can't do with their build, gear etc.
> This only limits xp gain without having any real impact on any other issue, so really only a partial fix in my view if we are talking about a total effort vs reward system.

2. simply increase the penalty for using damaged gear ...
> bear in mind that any current penalties that apply on raw damage should also apply on poison and taint, although I'd be inclined to actually make this some sort of luck bonus (that allows chance for poison/taint application to dip below the pvp lower bound of 40%) rather than % damage reduction, as there is no 'base block value' in effect in order to be able to create a poison/taint threshold for damaging an npc.
> This is a simplistic approach that more or less builds on the current system already in place, upping certain value modifiers although I feel that the NPC luck bonus should be built in as the current system only handicaps raw damagers and is far more open to abuse by special damagers that are able to equip t1 weapons/shields with 0 effect on their damage output capabilities.
>> This is still restricting in the way the current system is with regards to hitting up levels, which I feel is too harsh. Capping XP is OK I guess, but nullifying XP completely for legitimately beating a >+5 in a duel is still crap.

3. Increase the level range of NPCs that a player can randomly face, based on their player level. eg at lvl 1 a player may face lvl +/- 0 (50), +/- 1 (35), +/- 2 (15) for example, which could scale out to +/- 5 (2%) at lvl 100.
> This is a scaling difficulty modifier only really, so not a total solution ... hell, probably not a solution that is really much of a solution at all, but I though I'd include it to maybe spark someone's imagination.
>> Despite it being a difficulty modifier, it would certainly make people think about their gear a little more if they were to lose a bit more often but again, don't do this by itself, it would be bad, lol.

4. This one's a bit far out there ... introduce a replacement to the penalty on individual gear pieces that are damaged, and replace this with a global equip point penalty (which damaged gear pieces count towards already due to reducing ep cost of damage gear) - if you don't have your gear up to scratch, you get a blanket -dmg(includes raw AND poison and taint) modifier as well as a -def%. this one could also translate across to the level difference calculation as well, as gear score caps grow as lvls increase ... now whether that should work on a system like = @ +/- 2 levels, then increasing with another leap at +/- 5 levels, and then a huge leap at +/- 10 levels to lock down the level difference farming issue, or work on a flat grade, or some other variation perhaps you'd have to crunch some numbers to come up with the most appropriate solution there. My suggestion would be to have the +/- penalty flexed by the players' equipped gear scores.
> This is virtually a replacement of the current strength system, so likely the most time consuming/complicated to implement (and thus the greatest chance of breaking stuff as well)
>> Self regulating in terms of difficulty for hitting up/down levels ... if the +10/-10 (or scaled to the current +5/-15 or whatever ... though I prefer 10s myself) penalty was something like -100% damage on attack, +100% damage taken, then that would negate exploiting gear dropping - If scaling occurs based on equipped gear scores, then a 0% damage modifier modified by 50% would still be 0% (purely example numbers to illustrate the point).
>>> Offers a scaling risk vs reward for exp gain that is easily tweakable moving forward, should initial values prove too high/low, giving the difficulty junkies rewards for their efforts in matching gear to exp payscale. Also, however, would force casual players to maintain their gear somewhat

[Seitaarin]

actually, option 4 is not so different from your current Strength system when I think about it, just tweaked a bit. I shush now.

[Seitaarin]

As for reward vs effort - there is already in place a system of higher quality loot dropping from hordes/armies yeah? I mean this makes sense seeing as how you're trading 3 turns for 1 normal chance. But can this also extend to other content that requires players to maintain some sort of upper end gear? These boss quests sound interesting Would upping the difficulty of find NPCs also be such a bad thing? A higher rate chance of gear dropping being clean TAs perhaps? something like all tiers as per now from finds, and current level tier TAs from 'boss' quests? This then offers incentives to gain chances at more desirable items that would require sacrificing bonus XP due to NPC difficulty. The mass murderers could still take the quantity over quality route in NPC quests, basic horde/army quests etc.

[gerdonat]

A few thoughts:

-Npc's get too easy as you raise your levels, maybe that can be adjusted somehow.
-For xp, the best npc's are those that dont hit very hard, so you can beat them with poison and defense, and thats a lot cheapier equipment wise. Maybe any npc should get some alternative way to do damage, or they hit hard, or they poison, or they taint...
-This makes some builds to be able to farm xp easily (those builds that give you defensive skills) maybe the "strength" of a character, should count skills too... so if you used all your skill points, you are at least at 40% strength, in order to have, lets say 10% strength, you have to be at low stamina, without equipment and with skill points unused... that way it will make much harder to get the strength differential. Lets say that strength of a character is 3 * %points used + 3 * %of skills used + 1 * % of stamina.
- Totally unrelated but the different strategies right now are totally unbalanced (dueling wise) will open a new discussion about it.

[Seitaarin]

'Senses weakness' buff for NPC's ... the weaker a player character is, the stronger the buff is ... so a heavy fit vs an npc stays as is ... when you are attacking an NPC from Strong, some NPC types in particular might be able to beat you ... at fair you are seriously running the risk of losing to alot of the NPC types ... and if you're still winning at Light then you win GoS, no need for a LB. Reduce item quality drops from NPC's based on their 'senses weakness' level, thus encouraging players to keep gear up to scratch, or lose potential item quality for exp gain.

Also increase the penalty for pvp vs underequipped opponents to a degree that strongly encourages people to not use lower level gear. This makes people think more before slotting premium equipment, as they basically have a shelf life, and also should be a big enough debuff so as to not allow folks to sit around in low tier gear for the specific purpose of lowering exp of other duellers.

Addendum: Might require a tweaking of the strength values to increase the 'heavy' range slightly to be a little bit more lenient than currently is set up to allow for more casual NPC bashers.

[Seitaarin]

Add2 - 'Senses weakness' buff value should be based on equipped strength, not the current strength as a function of gear score + stam + damaged equipment, as this would again open the way for underlevelled players beating on a pre-damaged +5. Current equipment stat changes for being damaged, and def penalties for stam loss should continue to be counted separately.