Gateless
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Addressing the Bigger Picture Player-Monster Asymmetry in Game Balance Changes and its Implications Bare with me, because I will be presenting a philosophical argument and not a mathematical one—because while I can provide individual examples that involve mathematics, the core argument itself cannot be relegated to the domain of number crunching. Because I think that these are important points to raise that focuses on the bigger picture, I will make this post despite it lacking the number of equations and data typically associated with posts in this sub-forum. Before I begin, I'd like to remind everyone of an ageless aphorism: when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is to say that by being too narrowly focused, one easily loses sight of the bigger picture. To be brief, the main point I want to make is simply that game balance changes, on the whole, needs to account for and potentially modify monster-sided behavior as well. Overly focusing on player-sided behavior in a narrow manner, results in solutions that end up being more akin to "retconning" the power of the player to produce semblances of balance. Rather than producing a game that is both balanced, and coherent, in the sense that the game becomes actually intuitive to play—which should be an essential part of the goal. That said, all this comes with the massive caveat of how small the AQ team is, and what is and isn't feasible for the developers to pull off. That is something I won't attempt to address in this post, aside from stating my acknowledgement with regards to practical limitations. Example 1 — Nonsensible Monster Stats One example of the relevance of monster-sided behavior is that, as a result of the (good and much needed) changes to player stats in recent years, monsters now have, on the whole, nonsensible stat distributions—due to archaic investment in DEX for hit chance. And these nonsensible stat distributions do effect gameplay, with the simplest and most prominent example being an effect of the Initiative calculation: (LUK + STR/2 + INT/2 + DEX/2)/2. Sparing numerical details, this implies that players need a larger Mainstat and-or LUK investment than they would be inclined to intuitively think (without knowing the actual formula for Initiative and the actual stat distributions of monsters), to boost their Initiative chance by the amount they expect. Put simply, it is non-intuitive for players to expect a full investment in 2 Mainstats in monsters, when he or her only runs 1 Mainstat. By virtue of the reasoning provided (for how the player would intuitively think): while players might be inclined to think that a full stat investment in 1 Mainstat and LUK, along with an Initiative boosting armor, would be sufficient to provide guaranteed first turn Initiative on standardly scaled monsters at Level 150, this turns out to be false. An Ambush Potion is needed on top of that as well—and also you can trim off your single Mainstat and-or LUK to specific numbers while still getting this guarantee—which is extremely non-intuitive in terms of gameplay mechanics, and contingent on the player actually knowing precise numbers and formulas. The caveat here is that many older monsters (i.e. by and by large the monsters in the game), have a combination of Melee and Ranged attacks; so simply offloading the DEX stat on monsters to a non-Mainstat, even if that were feasible, will adversely effect their coded attacks. For this reason, I am merely pointing out the problem without suggesting a solution that I think is viable. Example 2 — Nonsensible Monster Defenses Let's discuss another example and an issue that is possibly even less practically mendable (given the size of the AQ team), however a major game balance issue nevertheless: statistical non-uniformities in monsters. While elemental non-uniformity is something veteran AQ players regularly come across and discuss (both in relation to monsters and player equipment), something that is often overlooked even by veteran players, is statistical monster MRM non-uniformity. In the Data Science tab of the spreadsheet generated by Nivp, one can clearly see that, statistically speaking, monsters have an over 20 point disparity between their Melee Defense and their Ranged and Magic Defenses. Specifically, the averages are 63.59 for Melee, 40.95 for Ranged, and 39.67 for Magic. This also doesn't even touch on the non-uniformity in monster attack damage types, alluded to earlier, which is a far lesser issue (and not even something Nivp has statistics on). That is to say that by using Ranged or Magic damage (with Magic being marginally better in this regard), the player is, in practice and on average, obtaining a major boost to hit chance for free. And vice versa, by using Melee damage, the player is effectively reducing their hit chance by over 20 points in monster MRM, on average. It does not take complicated mathematics to conclude that this effects both gameplay and balance. It is also needless to say that none of this is intuitive for the average player, unless said player has actually seen the statistical breakdown of AQ monsters directly—something which under normal gameplay circumstances is as far removed from gameplay as humanly possible. And yet all this directly impacts the player's metaphorical mileage in AQ. These are not the only examples, where either: 1. non-uniform modifications (i.e. modifications intended at addressing player-sided behavior in exclusivity), due to monsters being left the same as before, produces actual gameplay implications that are sub-optimal or non-intuitive for the player (accounting for player intuition, being an important aspect of game design). Or, 2. monster-sided behavior needs to be looked at and modified, for the sake of producing a balanced and coherent game that is intuitive to play, and without a requirement on the part of the player, to find and look at hidden information or statistics of the game under the hood. However, since the central point here is not niche but far-reaching, I want to be brief and conclude here. Lastly, I'd like to state that I am not saying that players that have more knowledge of the game and its mechanics, shouldn't have an advantage over players that don't. The fact that players with more game knowledge have an advantage is true of any game; not just AQ. What I am suggesting is that, due to haphazard and asymmetric implementations in a game with hardcoded symmetries, the advantage provided by such knowledge in AQ is so disproportionally important, that the game may as well be, in certain respects, asking of all players to have such knowledge, simply to enjoy the game and to play it in a manner which does not drastically subvert his or her expectations. Which is a fault that falls purely on game design in any reasonable assessment; not on the player.
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“Thus, because the wise do not find that an illusory horse and elephant are a horse and an elephant, they do not qualify as nonexistent, but because they are found by fools, they qualify as existent.”
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