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Post by Tim on Dec 8, 2016 11:52:54 GMT -6
Pretty sure Ger admitted earlier that he changed his setup halfway through and his skill selection was far from optimal.
I've always been wary of the random classes idea. I like that it would force more variety and creativity, but don't like that it leaves part of whether or not you have the build you want up to chance. Otherwise we might see a lot more Wolfbros with poison builds. Also don't want to turn off the players that just want to make what they want. Making it optional with a bonus might work.
I'll consider it. It'd be a big change though. If I do do it, I'd say maybe every time you get a new class you have the option to go random or not and you get some bonus is you take the chance. MAYBE make the first new class always random, but I'll take some convincing.
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Post by gerdonat on Dec 8, 2016 11:57:13 GMT -6
I like the idea of having an option of randomness or not in each class you chose, so maybe you risk the first 2, then when you are in a path dont want to risk again.
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Post by Seitaarin on Dec 8, 2016 17:19:14 GMT -6
I'm not going to try and sell you on it Tim, this is certainly not a mechanic that would help me personally - My preference is to pick my own classes too, hands down ... the idea was from a game balance point of view. I was just trying to think of a kind of small tweak that would wind things back a notch, and make things a little more difficult for the selection of counter-classes. The concept works to limit people (chance based) whose choices are based on others' more than it limits those who choose just what they want to choose - I think. RNG would sometimes disagree, but it is a way to apply gentle balancing to things overall.
On the other hand, there's pretty much one class that raw damagers go to almost every time that's a really strong damaging class in wolfbrother, and I also think it just a little bit of a cool idea to have the technical idea of a chance at a 'birthright' class that is lore friendly. It's always irked me a little that some 75% of the game's active population are wolfbrothers ... not the class stats themselves, I class it as strong not OP, that's why it's such a popular choice ... just the fact that wolfbrothers in the lore are just not that common. The other classes I listed there all fall within that same sort of category, although none of them quite so commonly used.
On the getting bonuses for actively selecting random classes - I just don't think that would be necessary, or beneficial. Anyone that would choose a random class purely to receive a bonus kinda doesn't need a bonus, and a bonus would either have the effect of partially mitigating the rng effect of a suboptimal skill choice, or in the case of a good class roll, enhance beyond what is now being considered as unbalanced. Any bonus that is applied is only applied to the efficiency rate of the person running the build - thus it would end up benefiting min-maxers most, especially if RNG is kind.
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Post by dahllia on Dec 8, 2016 17:50:04 GMT -6
Just wanna say that randomizing classes sounds like a horrible idea to me and it would lead to the most "hardcore" running 6 chars and just making whatever turned out the best their main.
And if the first class is randomized people would just delete and create new characters until they got what they want.
(btw. any updates on improving the starting classes? seeing as they are objectively worse than the other ones so spending points in them are a waste as soon as you get to level 20)
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Post by Seitaarin on Dec 8, 2016 22:34:11 GMT -6
Also, diminishing returns/soft caps etc is a really good way to handle balances, as Mog pointed out ... And not just for health gain ... any stacking values/percentages set into a dr calculation immediately become server-side tweakable with minimal in-game impact, and without relying on item modifications or skill mechanic modifications. I mean there might still be skill and item tweaks required, but the DR system allows for the current database of created skills and items to continue to interact without a huge workload being involved in evaluating each piece of the workflow independently - instead you just define how they stack with each other.
Again from a countering point of view this makes things far more difficult - quite simply put, the more extreme a build is created in a single direction, the easier that build is to counter. Thus if players are working within softcap limits, they are likely to embrace more 'utility' skills that have previously been neglected, rather than simply add more damage. Or health gain. Or whatever.
BTW neglecting utility and building just damage is the precise reason this conversation was started, I'd just like to point that out. Duelling is a balance of damage vs utility ... different types of damage, different types of utility which complicates things, but that's it in a nutshell.
I'm rounding out some class balance ideas along these lines as well at the moment, I'll add more spam here soon, because I'm sure nobody's sick of seeing my wolf off to the side here at all.
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Post by Seitaarin on Dec 9, 2016 0:51:44 GMT -6
Figured why not jump in on this wholeheartedly ... For the record I still have no problem with the current system, that's plain I think to everyone at this point ... but whatever ... For all the balances!!! ... I prefer the softcap option myself, with DR taking effect to hard cap above that, simply because for the casual player this makes calculating your distance to soft cap much easier when you are considering stats for item upgrading.
Raw damage - as-is. Might need a slight tweaking of the crit hit/miss bracketed values to balance, but would need some working numbers for that, which would need some decisions on mechanics. Easily tweaked though.
Damage (%) - subject to DR - in addition, have this modifier affect ALL damage calculations. This would kill the idea of trading damage% off as a useless stat - or at least stacking it ridiculously - while at the same time making poison and taint viable damage dealing options for hordes/NPC points. No item modifications required. Base values for these damage types cannot be stacked anywhere near as high as for melee values, so stacking values should be OK, especially with a diminished ability to stack health gain in opposition.
= Defense (%) DR, otherwise as-is.
Poison - per base damage, not soft capped. Might need to reduce poison item values slightly on TA's, maybe to be in line with the max value raw damage TAs that are available, will refer to number jockeys for that. Luck to hit/mitigate.
Taint - per base damage, not soft capped. Does not trigger health gain. However, percentage of damage done is also reduces the user's health gain - eg if 100% of the damage done by player 1 is Taint damage, then their health gain value is reduced by 100%. Something like this would NEED to be in place, as being able to dish out unavoidable damage while gaining back whatever capped health gain at the same time would be just plain OP. If you folks want to go down that path that's fine, but I can guarantee this thread will just pop up again if that gets put in place without caveats. Will also need slightly lower values on TAs, akin to poison. I think. Again, one for number jockeys. Side note on this, I like the rp value of the HG mechanic - someone so corrupt that their very presence corrupts doesn't sound like someone that would have a great sympathy towards the arts of healing at all, to a point where they lose the ability to even heal themselves.
Health Gain - DR, otherwise as-is.
Luck - Overall the potential for high luck values will increase on both sides with soft capped stats freeing up some itemisation, which will throw the double value for defenders in the calculation out the window. I'm inclined to suggest reducing the base chance to hit for special damage to 50%, but also making luck equal on both sides of a calculation. I don't have a particularly good feeling about this, but it's the best I can think of in terms of potential tweaks. Leaving as-is is certainly another option, but I don't particularly like that, either. Double value for defender bugs me for some reason. > Wasn't going to write this suggestion, but I'll put it out as an unlikely solution anyways for thought - I was initially thinking of suggesting making the Acc/Dodge calculation universal for hit/miss across the board, but removing the critical damage component from poison/taint. This would simplify hit/miss mechanics somewhat across the board, and then create a calculation that takes luck as a type of special damage mitigator of some sort, a calculation akin to base block against raw damage - there's just too many ACs with luck to relegate it to an optional pve item% chance/ pvp coin bonus stat only. This is not the right suggestion I don't think, but maybe someone else can come up with a better implementation of it.
Speed/Wound/Stun - I think with everything else needed to worry about, speed stats can more or less remain as-is for now, as damage% should even things out across the board somewhat.
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Post by mogmiester on Dec 9, 2016 3:13:38 GMT -6
Just a thought I had - health gain is one of the only stats that gets better with the amount of stats your opponent has (is it fair to say that?). Perhaps health gain should be a flat healing per turn, capped at the amount of damage you took last turn. Although that might screw over poisoners.
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Post by Seitaarin on Dec 9, 2016 3:27:20 GMT -6
It's currently a % of the damage you took between your last turn and this turn. Although that's a bit off ... it's between the end of your last turn and the point in this turn at which the calculation occurs, which is after taint damage applies.
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Post by Seitaarin on Dec 9, 2016 3:42:34 GMT -6
Also along the lines of what Dahl said, but considering everyone is on equal footing with those I don't see a huuuuge issue with them being stat allocation inefficient compared to ACs. It does make them very rarely used as AC choices however - either the stats need updating, or the non-selectables could be opened as start options perhaps.
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Post by gerdonat on Dec 9, 2016 8:54:09 GMT -6
Just a thought I had - health gain is one of the only stats that gets better with the amount of stats your opponent has (is it fair to say that?). Perhaps health gain should be a flat healing per turn, capped at the amount of damage you took last turn. Although that might screw over poisoners. Thats one of the options I offered, but I dont think it should be necessarily capped at the damage you took, you could get "temporary hit points", that way you dont waste your health gain if you go first or you do consecutive turns, making it better with speed. So, a defensive build with health gain, may not do any damage at all, but win because he healed more than what you damaged him... obviously needs a lot of balancing, and its not the easy fix... Or you could be capped at your max health, but not depending on how much damage you took last turn. So, supposed i have total 200 damage, and i go 3 times consecutively, and i heal 75 each turn, i end healing the 200 points. Its a big rehaul going this way, giving it some weakness vs taint or wound, or lower cap, would be easier to implement and test.
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Post by Seitaarin on Dec 9, 2016 9:46:59 GMT -6
I'm gonna just say that if we go back to a health gain system that allows hp to end a fight at a higher value than it started (like we had in it's prior incarnation), we're going to be having this conversation at around lvl 50-60 again next age, and people are gonna be all kinds of pissy about how they can't damage a handful of folks in duels. This implementation has been tested and proven not so balanced.
In thinking about it, perhaps, Tim, your original idea was solid. The previous iteration of health gain had a theoretical recalculated max health which was half the difference between damage taken and previous max health, so basically 100% health gain would garner 50% health back. That was the theory anyways ... the actual calculation got kinda screwy when multiple consecutive turns occurred, and further screwy with taint across multiple turns I think.
What could be considered is making a hard cap that is lower than the current value and starting from there - Tim's fixed the actual calculation to perform as it's expected now, a good start would be to lower the actual strength of it ... although if you see my suggested skill balances above, % of damage done could actually be taken into account I think in a balanced way with there being some sort of evening out in damage potentials.
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Post by malorian on Dec 10, 2016 19:57:23 GMT -6
Bah, I most wrote of this 2 days ago, and should have posted it when it made more sense. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey there folks. I haven't logged into this forum to write a post in maybe 10 years. In fact I almost made a new account. I figured my account still existed, but 5 years ago, I named my son Malorian and it feels weird now using his name as my online persona. Oddly enough there in another Malorian in the real world. He is a bit older than my son, and he got his name from another player in GoS who liked the name Malorian as well. The point is duel fold. (GoS puns....) 1, be careful what you name your characters, they might end up spawning in real life. 2, I have a certain passion for this game which bleed over into real life and now that passion has been re-kindled.
I'm now Cast Banner. A pretty solid name. Cast Banner: [singing, loosely, to the tune of Shirly Bassey's "Goldfinger"] Cast Banner . He's the man with name you want to touch, but you mustn't touch! He's name sounds good in your ear, but when you say it, you mustn't fear, 'cause his name can be said by anyone.
So I wanted to chime in on the dueling balances discussion just this one time for a few reasons. I don't know the total number of duels this age, but I'm guessing that's I've done 25% of them? Just me. And I fight everybody. Above/below. Any build. I attack for gold. I attack for alignment. I attack online players to disrupt their mojo. I attack mostly enemies, but also the occasional ally if the prize is right.
My precise math skills aren't anywhere near most of the other players, but I am really good at spotting loopholes and analyzing data.
Even though I'm allied with Ger and Kaldar, I'm bipartisan in regards to my side taking. In fact I used to be the one debating with the 2 of them here on the forum. So if Ger and Kaldar were say Trump and Pence. Talena would be Hillary. I'd kinda be Bernie Sanders then. I'm not sure I like the direction this election is headed in.....
Talena. I hope it's ok if I call you that. It's my first age in 10 years and I associate names better with characters than with forum names.
Talena. I like your thoughts and opinions on the flexibility of a dueler and that no one should be able to beat everyone. I think you might have lost your way a bit in trying to butt heads with Ger and Kaldar rather than taking a higher ground and sticking with ideas to benefit the game.
I think that the game as a whole needs more randomness. Just straight across the board, more randomness. I think the best way to achive balance is more randomness. How to do that is beyond me. I'm not a numbers guy.
Dueling isn't any more unbalanced than fighting NPC's or making the most gold or getting the most experience or doing any 1 specific thing in the game.
There are some aspects to the game that are unbalanced however.
Health Gain. I have 4 pieces of armor that I keep raising as my equipment points allow that are defense to physical damage. I would be far better served with just 75% health gain and no armor. It covers all damage types and is a hard number. No variation. To duel you have to have health gain. Have to. You can beat all NPC's with health gain. There is no counter other than having your own 75% health gain. ****Bonus**** If you go over 75% the number doubles and gets added to your defense %. Speed. After you have the health gain, speed is what you need. It counters nearly all. You get extra attacks. Your opponent gets fewer. It counters First strike, stun and wound. The only defense from speed is taint and it's a very weak defense.
Of Tinkers. I was nervous about using it because I thought it would be violating the Terms of Service agreement I agreed to when I created my character. I thought I might be exploiting a bug within the game. I kinda still think I am. With poison, it's better alone than any other pair of terangreal in the game with the exception of possibly 'Scouts of Avendesora' There's just nothing else like it.
Consumables. Kaf in particular. With poison, 1 drink of Kaf is better than 2 drinks of any other consumable in the game except Andilay Root which it is equal to. I can drink 2 cups of Kaf, take off all my equiptment. Lower my stamina to 1 and beat 75% of the NPC's in the game. If I go to somewhere I have an estate and fight NPC's I have a nation bonus against that number nears 100%.
Terangreal boosts with trade-offs. I think these inherently are going to be exploited or at least people are going to try to exploit them. I know a damage dealer that has a touch 'of the Madness'. It's not paying off well for him. I mentioned 'of Tinkers' but a couple others are quite malleable with intent. Aggressive is cheap to add to weapons. Bloody is great for poisoners. Passive is ok for poisoners. They all cost very little equipment points to add to equipment.
Well, that's my 2 coppers. Next you see me here on the forum, I'll probably be Cast Banner.
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Post by kaldar on Dec 12, 2016 10:06:38 GMT -6
Oh Mal how we have missed you and your posts.
In the tune of another Bond song .... nobody does .... it better
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Post by Edvar al'Given on Dec 12, 2016 17:25:22 GMT -6
Yeah, as the Dark One(Who is unbalanced himself), people 20 levels higher than me couldn't beat me, but a Bubble of Evil crushed me. Hows that for irony So yes....Bubbles of Evil are very hard.
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Post by Seitaarin on Dec 29, 2016 8:32:29 GMT -6
Health Gain is the problem, rather than Tinkers itself. Actually even that's not 100% true, it's health gain amped by poison secondary penalties. Poison as a build needs an end game suffix, and the stats for Tinkers seem right (ish) ... I mean it could probably have HG dropped some really, but that wouldn't actually solve the problem, because the problem is the fact that the poison secondary damage% penalties are amplified by the health gain mitigation. Actually even THAT is not entirely correct, as it is also the ease with which health gain is capped in a poison build compared to building that amount of HG in a melee build requiring sacrificing of some damage, which itself amplifies the effectiveness of poison secondary penalties. That I actually have no problem with, in order to gain in one stat people SHOULD have to sacrifice another - but sacrificing damage% doesn't hurt a poisoner as much as it does a melee, due to the ramping poison penalties. It's actually a bit of a complex issue (imo) that making a simple modification to Tinkers wouldn't actually fix. If you reduce the health gain, it will still end up being capped, just overcapping won't be as prevalent, if you reduce speed then poisoners will simply disappear - without turn advantage they're toast, poison as a build NEEDS the ramping penalties in order to function. Removing the damage penalty isn't an option either really, having it as a niche TA keeps it build specific, more or less. Actually against a poisoner as it stands a melee character could theoretically win on the back of first strike + stun/wound if it's stacked high enough and are able to do enough frontload damage to take the poisoner out, but as soon as poison starts ramping and cutting damage%, and then health gain kicks in it's kind of all over for a melee vs poison ... and in equal parts health gain vs health gain, it really does come down to whoever hits last wins on the back of their health gain tick for the last battle hit. This makes most p v p fights a coin flip at the end of the age where everyone has stun values to a degree that last hit cannot be manufactured. That's bad. I've tried with up to I think +85 luck in my build at times, or somewhere therabouts, and because it's still 40-75% or whatever it is, there's really very little noticeable difference in performance - You still get better results simply aiming for more turns to just try and get the last hit in rather than trying to build with any sort of finesse to play the odds. Having said that, as I write this it occurs that the best melee vs a poisoner would have to be a speed/stunning madness user ... it's all about that frontload. Avoiding health gain altogether avoids the problem of poison amped health gain yeah? Of course, you probably kill yourself in the process ... at least that's always been my experience with fully stacked madness items. Nerfing the self damage on Madness would only turn the game into a madness fest even worse than the current Tinkers cafuffle though, but interesting thought. As for solutions, I don't know, it seems a fairly delicate balance ... reducing the secondary effects of poison could help some, but as it is damage can get ramped to pretty high values, so that would need some careful execution as it's really the only mechanic in the poison arsenal that allows it to be played as a primary damage source, pitiful as it is compared to melee. Health Gain? Again, not sure ... maybe bring it back to 50% - that was the old theoretical cap (with the health cap being 50% of the difference in health lost), so much as capping it at 75% was a nerf to the 100% health gain problem, it's still given it a buff over where it was originally intended. As for poisoners being able to shortskill themselves on damage% - I refer back to my earlier idea maybe of making damage% universal rather than melee specific. That's a serious change though, wouldn't be fun to implement I don't think
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