Stabilis
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First of all, sorry for all of this texting. I have a bit of free time right now as I am done modding (modifying) my PSP games. This may bore those with an attention disorder so I will cut things by highlighting important points... but I also recommend a text-to-speech addon for your browser; that way you can have this read to you while you relax (you know? Instead of having to dart your tired eyes everywhere). What this entails is a change to damage/defence progressions, a change to armour progressions and, the removal of decay (any slowed progression from an increasing stat).
Why this is a topic is because damage (Strength majorly) is difficult to balance with defence (Defense or Resistance). This should semi-cure the problem with Strength (the anti-balance stat) without nerfing or buffing it. As you can tell, Strength is very low on the statistics. Maybe Strength is not weaker than Focus, but underpopulated, and as such, this should restore "half" of Strength. This is not a buff or a nerf but a vital balancing technique. The other half of Strength (or Support for that matter) shall not be discussed here which is Strike (technically a game mechanic in it's own right) the Sidearm, even rage, and whatnot. Only discuss the topic of progressions here, please.
I would guess that this discussion has 3 parts to it, the 1st part is damage progressions (Strength Support) and defence progressions (Dexterity Technology). As you can tell, damage and defence progress differently (thanks Cpt. Oblivious). Defence progresses faster than damage. By itself, a battle of damage versus defence would be boring as players would be constantly damaging for nothing (well, 3 damage being an exception). Likewise if damage progressed faster then battles would be express-style without an extensive need for thought process (so no tactics used) while the damage figures would overwhelm your immobile brain (of course, not saying that you have one!). Then what is recommended? Easy, a balanced relationship. But you know what prevents this from happening? Have you ever looked at your weapon damage and compared it to your armour rating? This is part 2.
The fact that your weapons being between 35 and 39 damage, and your armour being at 10 points, means that you will never have a balanced relationship in the progressions. To achieve the latter the former must be balanced as well. So armour must be raised to 35 points and then damage progressions can be buffed to meet the standards. Why did you think people in Alpha throughout Omega could abuse Strength so easily? Damage vastly overwhelmed defence (with help from rage) (imagine [10 + X] vs [35 + X] every turn). So that this never happens again without buffing or nerfing anything, armour points at any level should equal weapon damage. Back to part 1.
Now that a crucial imbalance in damage relationships has been fixed we can look back at stat progressions. Now we can make damage progressions equal to defence progressions. OK, done. But what exactly is the progression? Does 1 stat point equal 1 damage/defence? Do 8 stat points equal 1 damage/defence? Before we can decide that, move to part 3.
Decay (also known as diminishing [returns]). Decay exists in our progressions as a nerf to "abusing" a single stat. But what this did, was punish anyone who dared concentrate on a single stat even if they were not about damage, and babied Focus... but this suggestion fixes overpowered damage from stat progressions like Strength. There will be no progressive stat abuse at all, but, this excludes skills (however, the change in armour weakens the damage of all non-melee skills like Plasma Bolt that independently improve by 1 stat). So... will we need a decaying principle to freeze those who abuse a single stat? No! So off to the scrapyard decaying goes! Now players will be free of chains if they choose to concentrate on 1 stat.
Back to part 1 again. The question we remained with, was "what will the progression of stat points to damage/defence be"? The answer is, what it currently is. Well, what is it? 4 stat points equals 1 damage, or 4 stat points equals 1 defence. That is correct, for each level, you can increase your Strength/Support damage by 1, or your Defense/Resistance by 1. This essentially equalizes items with stats (progressions). At level 35, your Physical Primary weapon can be 35 damage and your Strength can be 35 damage. But likewise, your Armor can be 35 Defense and your base Defense (from Dexterity) can be 35 points. Therefore no 1 progression or item can be overpowered at the same time no 1 progression or item will be weak!!! But, like I said earlier, this does not totally balance stats. Like it is with Strength today, it has Strike which is unlimited and a second weapon called the Sidearm so they can bypass your defence the same way I bypass shopping invitations. But also like I had said earlier, this is not the place (but still the time) to discuss rant or praise Strength, Focus, whatever. This is about the topics I have mentioned here which are stat damage/defence progressions, weapon/armour progressions and, the removal of decay.
Well you read this far (or you skipped everything to read this...), I am no English wiz (nor do I see any productivity from it...), but I do wish that at the very least as an analytical person or a scientist that you found this to be interesting to any degree as I did. I am not a small-scale thinker, I think big (or try to (sometimes I am too lazy to even bother)) and set sights on the very foundation of things (like EpicDuel's balance structure), things like those in EpicDuel that hurt balance in a broad range of ways. Some will dispute with me saying that all of this might be "full of crap" or that this is not a problem. All I can detest to that is by telling them to read the first sentence of this paragraph (if you read this then you actually care somewhat). That is all.
Discuss, ask questions, make suggestions. Every bit of knowledge to fix this helps. Thanks.
< Message edited by Depressed Void -- 4/19/2013 23:38:04 >
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