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Your Kiddos Have (New) Stats ~ Revision
Craze- 01/05/2015 11:59 PM
- 3316 views
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CloseI think I understand about 10% of this, but still, all the technical jargon makes me excited. I wish I understood RPG speak lol.
i sympathize. i hate numbers a lot, but they're integral to the traditional rpg. my overall goal as a game dev is to make it so that you can look at a bow, say "yes i want wish to have these numbers" and nod a bit because while you don't really know what +5 spd is, you believe.
i hate numbers and yet i teach algebra to kids on probation, what is my life
i hate numbers and yet i teach algebra to kids on probation, what is my life
Crystalgate
694
So Leon had almost thrice the HP Carmilla had and he had also far more armor? Yeah, there was no way this could have worked. As far as armor goes though, rather than thinking "the fighter should have x% more armor than the mage" you need to think "the fighter should take x% less damage from physical attacks". This will of course vary depending on enemy unless you're using a divisional defense formula, but an approximation can be made.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I mean, the HP/defense difference between the two characters could have worked, if you had ways to non-randomly (but requiring some expense and some planning) ensure that enemies hit the tank instead of the mage. I have certainly played games where every single-target attack in the game was guaranteed to hit the tank unless they did something wrong, and the tank's extremely low damage was fine because he didn't spend his turns doing damage, he spent them holding threat. A lot of MMORPGs work this way, for example, and FF12 works that way if you want it to. The HP and defense of other characters only comes into play in those games when an enemy uses an area attack, uses a threat-ignoring attack, or does something complex.
However, that's obviously not the game you're making! You're making a game where the player's tools get screwed with by enemies all the time, and they have to recalibrate and try something different, or people die. A very strong tanking mechanic isn't appropriate for a game like that, because it would make too many of the punishments applied to the player be all-or-nothing. The player needs to be able to get manhandled by an enemy and lose access to a character as punishment without their entire team definitely instantly wiping every time that happens, which is what happens when the tank dies in games like that. So it seems like a smaller gap between cannons and tanks is definitely a good thing here; now you get to figure out how to make tanks still be useful, which is the fun part.
Also, subbed. I had kinda forgotten that the list of game design blogs was shown on the forums and had gotten used to glossing over it, but when I clicked on a link on that page, something made me stop and press the back button and do a double-take. I saw what it was then, the most beautiful thing: a blog post with the words "stats" and "craze" in it.
However, that's obviously not the game you're making! You're making a game where the player's tools get screwed with by enemies all the time, and they have to recalibrate and try something different, or people die. A very strong tanking mechanic isn't appropriate for a game like that, because it would make too many of the punishments applied to the player be all-or-nothing. The player needs to be able to get manhandled by an enemy and lose access to a character as punishment without their entire team definitely instantly wiping every time that happens, which is what happens when the tank dies in games like that. So it seems like a smaller gap between cannons and tanks is definitely a good thing here; now you get to figure out how to make tanks still be useful, which is the fun part.
Also, subbed. I had kinda forgotten that the list of game design blogs was shown on the forums and had gotten used to glossing over it, but when I clicked on a link on that page, something made me stop and press the back button and do a double-take. I saw what it was then, the most beautiful thing: a blog post with the words "stats" and "craze" in it.
author=Crystalgate
So Leon had almost thrice the HP Carmilla had and he had also far more armor? Yeah, there was no way this could have worked. As far as armor goes though, rather than thinking "the fighter should have x% more armor than the mage" you need to think "the fighter should take x% less damage from physical attacks". This will of course vary depending on enemy unless you're using a divisional defense formula, but an approximation can be made.
That's the way it's shifting to, yes. The first pass of the game was "I hope these stats work!!", but this pass is now making the damage calculations play with the stat differences (by making the stat differences less ridiculous early on). The goal is more Carmilla taking 10 damage and Leon taking 5-6 instead of Carmilla taking 15-30 and Leon taking 1.
LockeZ, I've done my time in FFXIV and I've played/tinkered with games before that had similar threat systems. One of my biggest issues is that it gets awfully samey (every boss as an area and/or threat-ignoring attack... but if they don't they're EVEN MORE BORING) and the "tank swap" mechanics are ridiculously arbitrary, but oh well.
I am hoping my tanks are still useful, yeah... Leon and Padrick are the main tanks while Vaunea can tank if you want her to. Padrick is one of your three healers, so he's got that going for him. Leon has ways to silence, lower damage, and call down divine wrath on entire fields of enemies -- he's your paladin, he's still going to be really good at not dying (but hopefully now spreading that to other characters, not just himself). Vaunea hits them very hard (and has buffs that allow her and/or allies to do that even better).
HERE'S HOPING IT WORKS! But it won't until after work today... I need to win the lottery or something.
argh
792
This method of defense balancing is probably my biggest gripe with RPGs, eastern ones especially. When there's no way to direct enemy attacks, your tanks become virtually worthless because everything comes down to luck. If the enemy attacks the tank instead of anyone else that's good, but if the RNG decides to make everyone pound on the mage instead there's not a whole lot you can do about it. It makes battles way too much of a crapshoot and makes defense/HP balancing very confusing and difficult. But if you go the MMO route, things get really boring and repetitive, like you said.
There was an RPGMaker game I played once called Exit Fate that I think did a good job of this: both enemies and allies were placed on separate 3x3 grids, and anyone who had a battler in front of them couldn't be targeted by melee attacks. (So, say, if you placed a mage on the upper-right tile and a fighter on the upper-left one, enemies would have to go through the fighter to get to the mage. If you removed the fighter, the mage would still get a slight defense boost from being in the back row, but would be open to direct attack.) This was generally compensated for by no one being very durable, even the fighters, so you couldn't rely on them to take all the damage for you. It also made area attacks more varied and interesting, and potentially allowed you to shift your positioning to survive them better. Probably too far off-course from how you're intending to use your battle system, but having some kind of priority targeting system instead of depending solely on the whims of random chance might help with defense balancing.
There was an RPGMaker game I played once called Exit Fate that I think did a good job of this: both enemies and allies were placed on separate 3x3 grids, and anyone who had a battler in front of them couldn't be targeted by melee attacks. (So, say, if you placed a mage on the upper-right tile and a fighter on the upper-left one, enemies would have to go through the fighter to get to the mage. If you removed the fighter, the mage would still get a slight defense boost from being in the back row, but would be open to direct attack.) This was generally compensated for by no one being very durable, even the fighters, so you couldn't rely on them to take all the damage for you. It also made area attacks more varied and interesting, and potentially allowed you to shift your positioning to survive them better. Probably too far off-course from how you're intending to use your battle system, but having some kind of priority targeting system instead of depending solely on the whims of random chance might help with defense balancing.
Craze typically has target-attracting gear for that. He's not as fond of real, true tanks as I am.
(Even though he plays a tank in MMOs with me! And I play... healers, even though I hate giving players sustain. Huh.)
(Even though he plays a tank in MMOs with me! And I play... healers, even though I hate giving players sustain. Huh.)
First off, I have most definitely played both Last Scenario and Exit Fate. I've even played SCF's shump, haha.
...and yeah, I mained Paladin in FFXIV.
There are a few equips that affect targeting -- Myra actually starts with the Amulet of Destiny, which you can put on anybody to lower their chance to be targeted. There are other equips like this, as well as a Taunt spell in two flavors. One version makes an ally of your choice attract more hits for a few turns, and the other is self-only but also a 25% heal.
A huge part of the game's design goals, based largely on the HECSS, is that you need to prioritize when to press the offensive and when to be more buff-heavy and defensive. Since only Poison/KO/Petrify/Chilled carry over from battle to battle in a HECSS chain, do you really want to spend the turn letting slow Leon use Bodyguard? Or maybe you know this battle will actually be tough and not instantly nukeable, so you do toss some defenses up. Or maybe you let everybody attack except Marcia, who buff's Vaunea's physical damage at the start of the turn. OPTIONS
So, I -do- have tanking (imperfect tanking, mind you) in the game, but you need to know when to kill and when to tank.
</babble>
...and yeah, I mained Paladin in FFXIV.
There are a few equips that affect targeting -- Myra actually starts with the Amulet of Destiny, which you can put on anybody to lower their chance to be targeted. There are other equips like this, as well as a Taunt spell in two flavors. One version makes an ally of your choice attract more hits for a few turns, and the other is self-only but also a 25% heal.
A huge part of the game's design goals, based largely on the HECSS, is that you need to prioritize when to press the offensive and when to be more buff-heavy and defensive. Since only Poison/KO/Petrify/Chilled carry over from battle to battle in a HECSS chain, do you really want to spend the turn letting slow Leon use Bodyguard? Or maybe you know this battle will actually be tough and not instantly nukeable, so you do toss some defenses up. Or maybe you let everybody attack except Marcia, who buff's Vaunea's physical damage at the start of the turn. OPTIONS
So, I -do- have tanking (imperfect tanking, mind you) in the game, but you need to know when to kill and when to tank.
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