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Lorekeeper -> RE: =AQ= Stat Overhaul Discussion & Feedback! (2/4/2024 22:01:49)
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Information Update
After reading your feedback, we're making several major adjustments to our stat revamp plans to both correct mathematical errors and better align the changes being made with the goals of the project. As we're fast approaching feature freeze on the project, we're posting these to keep everyone updated as well as gather a last round of preliminary feedback until noon EST on Tuesday the 6th.
After that point, barring any extreme circumstances, concepts will be frozen and we will not have time left to make major changes. This is the last chance to present general suggestions for stat behaviors. Because this is so close to the deadline, and stats are foundational aspects of the game's balance, we have to further emphasize that the most likely suggestions to be workable are those that take the game's balance into consideration. If you're satisfied with the upcoming changes to a stat, great! If you're not, this would be the time to present concrete suggestions!
Once this period of the discussion ends, we have to freeze the actual changes to begin working on them. We will then move the discussion to Game Balance Issues, where a general thread and a thread for each stat will be opened. The purpose of the GBI threads will be to iron out the balance of the changes and catch any last minute errors, not general discussion (This thread will remain for that purpose) or coming up with new and completely different ideas. These threads will be posted ahead of time for the sake of convenience, and we will keep a close eye on them until a final deadline of Wednesday the 7th at 11:59 EST.
General Changes
Most Style Bonuses were miscalculated and provided around 10% melee in benefit. Rather than double their power, which would be out of the question due to extreme power creep, or filling out the entire gap, which would delay the design phase beyond what we have time for, we're making a compromise by setting the value of a Style Bonus to 15% melee. This will still make most stats even stronger than the prior bonuses suggested.
Summary #2
quote:
STRENGTH
Base Behavior Changes:
Enable "Warrior Lean": FD armours deal 100% outdoing damage and take 80% incoming damage.
Style Bonus:
+10% to all weapon damage.
Counterattack: inflict damage when attacked, hit or miss, for each hit. Worth [2.5% Melee of an expected player attack] per hit, follows weapon type+element but doesn't get weapon effects
DEXTERITY
Base Behavior Changes:
Ranged attacks once again have a baseline of 100% melee.
Adaptation: After each successful Ranged hit, the lean shifts by -0.75 BtH. After each miss, the lean shifts away from damage and towards accuracy by +4.25 BtH. The effect on damage would be a multiplier of 85/(85±LeanMod) damage. The maximum values are +/-20 BtH. If not performing any Ranged attacks, the lean change is frozen. When using an autohit attack, the lean does not shift nor affect the attack.
Style bonus:
Weapon special attacks gain bonus output increasing logarithmically with their proc rate. With a power budget of 10%, this means 100 proc weapons will get a boost of 15% before being affected by DEX's adaptive behavior.
+3 Blocking
INTELLECT
Base Behavior Changes: None.
Style Bonus:
Wallbreaker: Value adjusted to a 15% melee style bonus.
>> Example: Against 90% resistance, spells deal +3.75% damage. Equivalent of hitting 93.375% resistance.
>> Example: Against 50% resistance, spells deal +18.75% damage. Equivalent of hitting 59.375% resistance.
>> Example: Against 10% resistnace, spells deal +33.75% damage. Equivalent of hitting 13.375% resistance.
ENDURANCE
Base Behavior Changes:
ENEMY ONLY: Reduced health scaling.
Style Bonus:
[Implemented] Increased status resistance
[Implemented] Increased heal resistance
Once per battle, break out of and remove any stun effect.
CHARISMA
Base Behavior Changes:
Pet and guest accuracy is now based on [Mainstat+CHA] instead of DEX+CHA.
Guest stats adjusted to account for paying a third of the actual cost of their output:
Base guest output reduced to 45% Melee from 60%
Base guest Cost increased to 30% Melee from 21%
Style Bonus:
Guests gain Ferocious Strikes: A flat 22.2% chance to have double output (Damage, status effects, etc).
Increase guest output by +5% Melee (50% Melee total)
LUCK
Base Behavior Changes:
Removed: Bonuses to blocking. No longer a part of the accuracy formula. Accuracy percentages remain the same; it simply doesn't take LUK to reach maximum accuracy.
Relevant Accuracy Changes: Implementing a global accuracy floor. No attacks can be brought below a 5% chance to hit, regardless of other modifiers. This is a minimum result, and is unrelated to auto-hit and auto-block mechanics.
Added: Lucky Break. This is a player-only feature that gives a (LUK/50)% chance to cleanse one affliction and grant a buff worth 50% Melee.
Lucky Break buffs are chosen as follows:
- Non-stunning DPT effects (Burn, Bleed, etc) become Regeneration.
- EleVuln becomes EleShield.
- Damage or accuracy reductions (Choke, Panic, Blind) become Elemental Empowerment.
- DefLoss becomes DefBoost.
- Effects with a chance to stun you (Fear, Daze) would be cleansed with a 50% chance at Celerity.
- Secondary stat reductions become a boost to the stat being reduced.
- Main stat reductions become a boost to your main stat, using your held weapon's corresponding stat as a tie breaker.
Style Bonus:
15% additional Lucky Break chance.
Update Breakdowns
STRENGTH
Base behavior remains unchanged. As explained before, we cannot change the base value of STR due to its role as the root of the game's calculations.
This places STR in a similar situation to the 20-turn model, which is not a dev statement on how much we want fights to last, but the estimate of how long players fight between full heals if they perform nothing but a bog standard set of actions. Both are root values for the game's calculations, with design ripples on par with redesigning all items and the entire combat system if we should alter them. As such, changes to STR's effective power remain focused on Warrior Lean and the Style Bonus.
The prior bonuses had a number of issues. In tandem with Warrior Lean and DEX's damage ramping, they clearly spelled a return to the situation of DEX's niches being absorbed by other stats.
DEXTERITY
With FD Rangers taking an unacceptable 7 turns before achieving parity with defensive Warriors in the most recent iteration of the damage ramping, and offensive ones only having a shadow of an identity on the back of harming their counterpart, it was clearer than ever that we needed a fundamentally different approach. As such, we're trying a dual niche: Adaptability and opportunism.
The current iteration of DEX's ramping is being discarded in favor of returning to what we originally planned to replace it with: An adaptive accuracy lean that shifts towards accuracy to counteract misses, and pushes toward damage when hitting to reward accuracy. This concept is based on the next closest submission to a fully working DEX behavior that we received during the prior iteration of our stat plans, and we were prepared to fall back to it should damage ramping prove undesirable.
The Style Bonus has been replaced with an internal idea that was held in reserve due to uncertainty on the part of its proponent, with a formula for how to make it impactful that was helpfully provided by a player.
We considered additional player ideas, such as ones involving additional hits, but unfortunately kept running into technical hurdles for implementation and had to keep to what was plausible.
We also tried out ideas for separate lean modifiers for FD and FO rangers, but similar system limitations and time constraints made it so that these leans would have to wait for their potential place in another project.
INTELLECT
Base behavior for INT is still unchanged, and will remain that way. Because INT is the only stat that had a firmly fleshed out niche before, it's already at the level of success we want the other stats to achieve. As such, no changes that provide INT with a vertical increase in power will be made, similarly to how we're striving to avoid changes that make one stat infringe on the niche of another.
The sole change to INT for the moment is Wallbreaker being changed according to the 15% Style Bonus value.
ENDURANCE
With an extra 5% melee budget to fill, END is being given a counter to stuns. While the deliberate inclusion of stun inflicting enemies in modern story content is rare, there is a larger backlog of enemies in older content that do reduce the player's action economy. END is the perfect stat to provide a limited counter to that
CHARISMA
Charisma's Style Bonus was one of the miscalculated ones. As its buff, we decided to give it an increase to guest output to maintain the average assumed output of guests. While a lot of players might prefer an upkeep reduction instead, Ianthe's update of guests has made it possible to provide for that issue through future gear support. Ferocious Strikes remain random due to not being a nuking feature. Similarly, we've corrected wording on Ferocious Strikes affecting boosting features. That was a major error that fundamentally clashed with the point of Style Bonuses: Rewarding stats for their respective styles. Nuking is INT's style, not CHA's.
LUCK
As it was universally disliked, we're removing the feature by which LUK's fresh gap of 5% melee in power was spent on adding to the player's accuracy floor.
Instead, Lucky Break is being turned into base behavior, with the Style Bonus providing a bonus to bring its chance up to 20% at full LUK investment.
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