Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (Full Version)

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Stabilis -> Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/11/2012 19:12:50)

This is a short write-up about why I believe that that skills and stats should be kept apart.

To begin, let us delve into the past life of EpicDuel. In the beginning, balance issues were small. Skills were slowly added, some not following the standards. One of these off-road skills was an "ultimate" skill... Supercharge. This skill was 3 hits improving by energy. Now, energy was truly only meant for skills, and ironically enough, this one skill improved by it. It had been very costly to PvP balance.

Just check out this video: Chaos1x is OP

The synergy of skill and stat, energy and Supercharge, lead to instant death blows via a stat improving skill. Strike 1.

Later on, Auxiliaries were introduced for Support, damage is overall reduced, and we are approaching Beta. It is the hour of the heal loop. Tech Mages with Reroute, health, and Support rise to take on the classes once again. This time, not with aggression, but with an exploitable defence. Heal loop Tech Mage was an accomplished breed, successful via Support with empowered Auxiliaries and Malfunction for damage, and a constant ability to heal with Field Medic, looping their own Reroute.

See this video: Epicduel =ED= Video Two: EDZeron Level 30 Battle Mage "Legend Killer"

The synergy of skill and stat, Support and Field Medic, lead to near immortality with a reliable source of replenishing health. Strike 2.

More recently, new classes have been released into EpicDuel. Just last year, Tactical Mercenaries ruled since the Delta launch in June for close to half of a year. How did they do it? Tactical Mercenaries with a large selection of Strike skills: Double Strike, Maul, Frenzy, and Atom Smasher, to top it off each skill grew in power with Strength. Even today Strength is predominant, still a major sight, seen in some of our Mercenaries, Bounty Hunters, Blood Mages, Tactical Mercenaries, and Cyber Hunters. A Strength Tactical Mercenary build was accomplished with Reroute, Strike skills, Strength, Health, and occasionally with Dexterity to back accuracy up. Immediately, Frenzy without the Support requirement and Reroute lead to a brutal heal loop via crushing power. Maul could be used to shorten battles down to an insane number of 2 turns in some cases.

Watch this video: Epicduel The Power of Strength Tactical Mercenary

The synergy of skill and stat, Strength and Striking skills, resulted in incredulous "strategies" that battered most if not all opposing players with only their Primary weapon needed in a minimal amount of turns. Strike 3.

It seems we have encountered at least 3 considerable circumstances involving a close relationship of stat and skill. But we still play EpicDuel with it. I believe that we should no longer improve skills by stats as it truly only leads to exploiting builds. Stats and skills are both fundamental, to be able to play, all stat and skill points must be allocated. There is a grand window for imbalances to spring from, so I strongly suggest cutting this bond. Doing this would not harm creative thinking. We only have as many builds as we do stat types, and number of skills available. By cutting ties between stat and skill, there is always the possibility to create a Strength build or Dexterity build, simply there will no longer be skills that directly agree with our choices in stats. You can have a Strength build with a working Surgical Strike, would that not sound even vaguely original today? Please give this idea a chance everyone. Let us attack imbalances at the core, stop the overpowered statuses by rendering destructive skills unabusive! We can scale skills by level and cooldown, we can do it!

Thank you.



Clavier -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/13/2012 12:57:25)

Skills improving with stats has been implemented since alpha, right? If the devs knew it is wrong they wouldve changed this way back.



Stabilis -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/13/2012 16:02:47)

I am not sure that "improvements" would count as an implementation, as improvements have always been here (Double Strike is a good example), and there were no people who disapproved of improvements, instigating Titan to change it.

Lack of "improvement" topics in Alpha

Old forum is dead



drinde -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/14/2012 23:02:14)

This idea is starting to appeal to me now.

What if, instead of not improving, we double the statistics needed to improve them?



Stabilis -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/15/2012 1:05:23)

Raise the stat-threshold before being able to improve?

That does work, at the same time being a Focus player becomes even more appealing though. Focus does not have to conflict with any features at non-abusive stat range since no stats are being abused.

I wish Focus would behave fundamentally as a stat and be assigned as it's own stat placement as STR, DEX, TEC, and SUP do... instead of leeching off of basic stats.

If only Focus was the fifth stat Drinde, your suggestion would be fair, since all stats would act in the same fashion towards improvements.



Oba -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/15/2012 6:10:21)

If not stats improved skills, would I for one change to TLM and abuuuuuuuusseee STR and HP. As players not could get stronger sheilds and such would I be able to hit massive dmg.
Same thing as BH.
Nope, I dont find this idea good [:-]



Stabilis -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/15/2012 13:39:15)

Shields.

You are referring to RB, T, ES, and DM then?

Oba, you would still be able to get stronger shields. Simply put, to get stronger shields a player would be required to add skill points into a shield, opposed to abusing Defense Matrix for example by having, what, 100+ Support and a level 1 Defense Matrix that grants about 30 Defense?!

Also, Strength and Health are available to everyone. You may be looking at TacM and BH in this perspective of "these skill trees are the best for Strength and Health, therefor these 2 classes are the best". Well, that is not very correct. For Strength, BM has Bloodlust, so that must make it a Strength class then. They also have Deadly Aim for increased Strength damage. M has Adrenaline to stack rage. Rage is determined by the amount of armour that was hit in the attack. Primaries can hit every turn so that must be a lot of rage. They also have Maul which by complete chance can dismantle an enemy within 5 turns, sometimes within 2 turns if the one strike removed more than half of the enemy's health. TM has Deadly Aim as well, Bludgeon and Malfunction for increased damage, and Reroute to do it all over again. CH has Static Charge that uses Strike, and since Static Charge is practically mutual to being a Cyber Hunter, Strength must be an option then. There is also Malfunction for increased damage when striking, and lastly Massacre for reliable yet high damage. All of which can be looped.



MrBones -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/15/2012 20:04:25)

@ To my new friend DepressVoid aka Oe (in-game main character name)


Why do you want to change the core of the game ? why do you want to change so many things about this game?

As you probably remember, we recently meet in-game. I find it quite funny that you hardly play the game.
Your are a beta player and don't even have a 'warlord' rating. You still have more than half of the missions to do.

With so little experience of the actual game, how can you make post like these ?



Ranloth -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/15/2012 20:13:51)

Eh, having a thread about such a big topic without knowing the core of the game is.. meh. It's easy to say from a player's perspective that this will be better, but in the end, you have no idea how the game works. I'm not on about how it's coded or anything but how numbers work, how it keeps all in shape and creates the so called balance line *which is abused quite a lot*.
Hence why I keep to normal suggestions regarding balance, like swapping skills, buffs/nerfs, etc. as I know it as much and have some knowledge about the game itself (battles) and numbers.

I wouldn't also judge by wins, Bones, if you implied that but it depends on what type of suggestion I'd say - wins shouldn't matter in the case of this suggestion. It should be knowledge of the game on much deeper level, not battle-wise from what all players see.



MrBones -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/15/2012 20:20:51)

@Trans

If you look at real life pro sports for example, you will find that most professional teams coachs are retired pro players themselves. Wins/loses is just a way to mesure how much a player have played the game. Without ingame experience, commitments, efforts, one's opinion should be dismissed and put in the ludicrious archives.



Ranloth -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/15/2012 20:24:44)

I'm just gonna say it purely depends on topic we're on about. I mainly focus myself in Balance Thread due to reasons I gave above + it's much simpler. I have knowledge from what I see in battles, nearing 4K only on my main but have 4 other alts so that will add up to 7K at least which gives me quite a share of experience of different classes and levels which is good in Balance Thread.

If we go by this thread, I cannot voice my opinion properly as it may be dismissed or not be proved enough by, yes, in-game knowledge but also how the game works on a core level, so what Devs can see, not us players.

Sorry if it sounds like arguing, but I just don't like if players judge others by wins although to an extent. >.<



ND Mallet -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/16/2012 8:35:37)

One should never judge by wins. I'm sure this guy knows more about the game than anyone here combined despite barely having 10k wins.

@void So buff shields until Strength abuse can't beat them? What happens to all the people who aren't strength abuse? Do they just get to fight each other spamming shields and buffs while hitting 3s? Oba is right, everyone will abuse strength even more because of this change. Buffing defenses until strength builds are useless will cause battles to last for several rounds to dozens.



Goony -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/16/2012 12:25:17)

DBag, Depressed has more than just the one account ;)

While I can see what he is suggesting I'm not in favor of having the skills totally dislocated from statistics. When playing using non varium equipment it is really noticable that the luck factors heavily favor the varium players, let alone the increased damage those extra stats give... Skills should only improve on base stats alone!



RabbleFroth -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/16/2012 13:36:26)

Just want to step in here and mention something.

Just because someone doesn't have significant experience in an activity, does not mean their opinion is invalid or useless. In fact, people newer to the game will very likely be able to point out issues that you might not experience or notice because it is something you take for granted. In game development, often times the greatest asset to a project is a a new set of eyes that can point out problems that have long-since been forgotten or glossed over.



MrBones -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/16/2012 13:59:47)

@RabbleFroth

Well thank you for putting me in my place but that was not needed.

I was simply trying, rather clumsily, to point out a huge problem about this forum. It is empty. There is about 5 people that makes up for 90% of all posts. Out of these people half of them play the game rarelly. It is not only about wins. It's about missions, it's about figthing random figths in 1vs1 and in 2vs, it's about figthing npcs.. I think you understand what I mean.

It is very easy to just sit in the stands criticizing. OH they should have done this or that! You see that kind of attitude in every stand of every professional pro sports league. That same minority fills the talk radio shows. Always the same callers again and again. EXACTLY like we have been seeing here for the last couples of months.

I fail to understand where you see new set of eyes here.



Pyure -> RE: Why Skills Should Not Improve by Stats (4/16/2012 14:11:14)

Xendran ish awesome! He probably does know more than any of us combined, and wow.. It's been ages since I've looked at ED forums, one question, how is ED holdin' up lately? I haven't really played at all since delta came out..



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