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THE POWER OF 5% ~ PERCENTAGE INTERVALS
Posts
Jude
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CloseIn general I like lower granularity when it comes to stats. I like to keep damage and stats under 100 so that each point is meaningful. A lot of games are designed around 20-sided dice and that gives stats the same property: good granularity, so it's no surprise you're drawn to 5% which equates to the same.
JosephSeraph
For example, if you're using socketed equipment and have a lot of equipment slots, +2% HP might become more significant. XD
This is a response to MOG and slash a bit too: this is one of my concessions that I was gonna add to the OP before I had a kid go nuts and got busy, haha.
Stacking effects, either through leveling points in a passive or by having a chance to just equip a shitton of gems or w/e, is something that can benefit from small increments because the end result is noticeable. I have no problem with this!
While I'm at it, my other concession was going to be PVP games. These tend to be a war of tiny cuts in terms of getting an edge over your opponent. As such, with League of Legends' new masteries, I have no problem with Oppressor giving +2.5% damage on CC'd enemies. In League terms, a free 2.5% damage could win you the lane with the right champ.
The bottom line to ALL of this is that the game has to be designed around whatever you choose, as almost all of you have said.
Liberty
percents on ALL the things
Liberty, you've been going on about item healing for years now XD
Interesting idea with the mixed flat/percent equipment, though. Karsu and I's current game is kiiinda similar but it's not on the same items -- you have 3 "flat" items and then your five equipped abilities give 10% boosts to two different stats each. So, if you min/maxed, you could have +50% to a stat max.
JosephSeraph
Final Fantasy X did this really interestingly with their battle formula by making damage raise quadratically.
A 1 point of STR meant always a reasonable increase in damage. Be it from 70 to 96 damage, to 2800 to 3100 damage.
I never beat FFX, but I played up to the Gagazet. I loved the feeling of that game's progression, even if it was arbitrary for most of the game... but so are normal levels, so oh well ;V
Jude
In general I like lower granularity when it comes to stats. I like to keep damage and stats under 100 so that each point is meaningful. A lot of games are designed around 20-sided dice and that gives stats the same property: good granularity, so it's no surprise you're drawn to 5% which equates to the same.
I almost always use 20 as my base stat amount for all the reasons you mentioned above, yeah. I also like to keep stats fairly low in most projects. This is part of what messed me up with Kiddos - having both levels and equipment providing meaningful stat boosts made it a nightmare to keep numbers low AND impactful AND balanced. saiflsaf fuck leveling
Hey, I get passionate about the healing item thing. It really annoys me. Almost as much as weird carpets, slow walk speed and long-ass random battles.
XD
XD
I think percentage increments can be decided upon depending on how easy it is to stack them. It matters a lot more for rate-based parameters such as hit, eva, cri, and hp/mp/tp regen in general since they have a hard cap of 100%; 2% is a pretty big chunk of 100% especially if you can equip 5 items that increase eva by 2%, and additionally have skills/buffs that increase eva even further by certain values. Preventing the player from getting an easy high evasion/whatever parameter and cheesing the game of course can be done by different ways, but when a game's mechanics allow exceedingly high amounts of customization and granularity, trading off pretty 5% increments for a smaller value in order to preserve the customizability is more than a sensible decision!
The other aspect is having near irrelevant choices such as having both Sword A, which has a 22% critical chance and has 100 ATK, and Sword B which has a 24% critical chance and has 99 ATK. It really doesn't matter which you choose if you're just concerned with completing the game, but it does give the player several things to consider:
1) While having marginal differences when compared side by side, said equip/skill may have a more noticeable effect depending on the person equipping it (ex: A Rogue with an ability that increases critical damage will prefer Sword B, while a Warrior that has skills scaling off ATK will prefer Sword A)
2) Rare (dungeon found? enemy drop?) equipment that may be similar to the equipment in the next town, so that while they're essentially the same, there's just the small difference there to make the player feel a bit more special about it.
3) Letting the player choose which pretty icon they want on the equip menu
4) getting tryhards to nerd out on game math
i'm also an oddball and love prime/odd/difficult to divide numbers so i stick 7%s and 13%s and 19%s randomly in certain skills and stuff.
The other aspect is having near irrelevant choices such as having both Sword A, which has a 22% critical chance and has 100 ATK, and Sword B which has a 24% critical chance and has 99 ATK. It really doesn't matter which you choose if you're just concerned with completing the game, but it does give the player several things to consider:
1) While having marginal differences when compared side by side, said equip/skill may have a more noticeable effect depending on the person equipping it (ex: A Rogue with an ability that increases critical damage will prefer Sword B, while a Warrior that has skills scaling off ATK will prefer Sword A)
2) Rare (dungeon found? enemy drop?) equipment that may be similar to the equipment in the next town, so that while they're essentially the same, there's just the small difference there to make the player feel a bit more special about it.
i'm also an oddball and love prime/odd/difficult to divide numbers so i stick 7%s and 13%s and 19%s randomly in certain skills and stuff.
Just like to chime in with this: my DOT and regen rates are based on (100/turns) where 'turns' is the number of turns I want before the DOT/regen completely depletes/restores HP/MP/TP/what-have-you. Hence why my 'poison' states almost always has the rate of -7.692%, and my 'regeneration' states has 14.286%.
Also, doesn't it make sense that healing items will drop off in effectivity the further you advance in the game? It just feels weird for me to have the main healing items restore with percentage rates.
Also, doesn't it make sense that healing items will drop off in effectivity the further you advance in the game? It just feels weird for me to have the main healing items restore with percentage rates.
LightningLord2
230
@Rhyme: Out of boredom, I'm going to calculate how much critical bonus the game must have for your two example swords to have identical DPS/DPT.
Sword A: 100*78+100*x*22
Sword B: 99*76+99*x*24
(total damage on 100 hits)
7800+2200x = 7501+2376x | -7501; -2200x
299 = 176x | :176
x = 1,6988636363... (infinite string of 63)
So a total of about 70% bonus damage, so never overestimate how much DPS a crit chance will add.
@karins_soulkeeper: I made my poison only take off 10% HP per turn, but it also halves HP recovery, so outhealing the damage per turn is less viable.
Sword A: 100*78+100*x*22
Sword B: 99*76+99*x*24
(total damage on 100 hits)
7800+2200x = 7501+2376x | -7501; -2200x
299 = 176x | :176
x = 1,6988636363... (infinite string of 63)
So a total of about 70% bonus damage, so never overestimate how much DPS a crit chance will add.
@karins_soulkeeper: I made my poison only take off 10% HP per turn, but it also halves HP recovery, so outhealing the damage per turn is less viable.
author=LightningLord2
@Rhyme: Out of boredom, I'm going to calculate how much critical bonus the game must have for your two example swords to have identical DPS/DPT.
Sword A: 100*78+100*x*22
Sword B: 99*76+99*x*24
7800+2200x = 7501+2376x | -7501; -2200x
299 = 176x | :176
x = 1,6988636363... (infinite string of 63)
A: 22(100 × 2) + 78(100) = 12200
B: 24(99 × 2) + 76(99) = 12276
B wins by 0.6%
Here's another question, since Rhyme brought up the "up to 100%" thing:
Should a rogue start with, say, 30% critical rate and maintain that throughout the game? There's been a lot of talk in this thread about progression and the joy of gaining numbers. Is it worthwhile to go from 0-30 or 20-35 over levels, then?
I, personally, would just tie the value to weapon choices (i.e. rogues can equip two of daggers and/or hand crossbows; daggers have lower attack but 20% crit, hand crossbows have higher attack and accuracy but 5% crit. thus, you could have 10, 25, or 40% crit).
I know mog talked about abstract numbers that go up felt better to him -- so should crit rate be your DEX versus the enemy level? For instance, assuming the Rogue gains about 3 DEX each level and starts at 20 --
Crit% = DEX / (10 + e_level * 2) * 0.1
At L15, with 72 DEX, against a L15 enemy, he has 18% rate. Against a L10 enemy, 24%.
At L50, with 167 DEX, against a L50 enemy, he has a 15% rate. He'll have to get some equipment with DEX to keep up! Against a L45 enemy, almost 17%. Understandably, not as dramatic a shift. (Against a L15 enemy, he has a 41% rate, haha.)
I don't really love this, but it works if you realllly crave a fairly consistent % stat but with a number that you can add a lot to as you grow.
Should a rogue start with, say, 30% critical rate and maintain that throughout the game? There's been a lot of talk in this thread about progression and the joy of gaining numbers. Is it worthwhile to go from 0-30 or 20-35 over levels, then?
I, personally, would just tie the value to weapon choices (i.e. rogues can equip two of daggers and/or hand crossbows; daggers have lower attack but 20% crit, hand crossbows have higher attack and accuracy but 5% crit. thus, you could have 10, 25, or 40% crit).
I know mog talked about abstract numbers that go up felt better to him -- so should crit rate be your DEX versus the enemy level? For instance, assuming the Rogue gains about 3 DEX each level and starts at 20 --
Crit% = DEX / (10 + e_level * 2) * 0.1
At L15, with 72 DEX, against a L15 enemy, he has 18% rate. Against a L10 enemy, 24%.
At L50, with 167 DEX, against a L50 enemy, he has a 15% rate. He'll have to get some equipment with DEX to keep up! Against a L45 enemy, almost 17%. Understandably, not as dramatic a shift. (Against a L15 enemy, he has a 41% rate, haha.)
I don't really love this, but it works if you realllly crave a fairly consistent % stat but with a number that you can add a lot to as you grow.
Or you could do something similar to my LUK and divide the attacker's DEX by the enemy's and then multiply the crit chance by that!
A: 50DEX 10%CRT B: 100DEX
Crit%: (a.DEX / b.DEX) * a.CRT
Crit%: (50 / 100) * 0.1
Crit%: 0.5 * 0.1
Crit%: 0.05, or 5% chance. (the enemy has double your DEX so he halves it.)
Of course there are some problems with this, if you had 99 DEX and your enemy had 1,your critical chance would be multiplied by 99. But it's easy to add around some soft caps on the formula.
A: 50DEX 10%CRT B: 100DEX
Crit%: (a.DEX / b.DEX) * a.CRT
Crit%: (50 / 100) * 0.1
Crit%: 0.5 * 0.1
Crit%: 0.05, or 5% chance. (the enemy has double your DEX so he halves it.)
Of course there are some problems with this, if you had 99 DEX and your enemy had 1,your critical chance would be multiplied by 99. But it's easy to add around some soft caps on the formula.
Oh, trust me, that's what I do in most games. It requires a LOT more fiddling though, imo, because of the stuff you said (crazy multipliers). That's why I provided the level-based one.
Note that if you don't use enemy levels, you can just use that formula I put up against the actor's level to make it even more consistent. But then it wouldn't work for enemies lol.
Note that if you don't use enemy levels, you can just use that formula I put up against the actor's level to make it even more consistent. But then it wouldn't work for enemies lol.
Aegix_Drakan
6037
Most of my status effects are 100% chance of success, with some of the more powerful ones having a really high rate (say 80%), while also doing damage so a "miss" on the status effect is still worth it. Because no one likes to whiff a status effect, no matter how good it is.
I usually have extremely powerful or long-lasting effects fall under the 5% rule.
-Natural Crits are never higher than 5%
-Damage over time skills are usually no higher than -5% HP per turn, as they usually end up doing 15% HP damage by the time they're done. Double so if I have more than one DoT skill. Any more than 5% HP damage is usually too much.
I sometimes use 10% for stronger stuff, that has some offset
-One skill I once made does 10% HP damage upfront, but the enemy heals it back at the end of the turn, making it a great finisher, but a terrible move otherwise.
For stat buffs or debuffs I usually roll with 30% damage to a stat, and I sometimes consider allowing them to stack twice if the duration is small.
*jawdrop* That's...an interesting system. I like. There's a lot of leverage you can play with in that kind of combat environment.
I usually have extremely powerful or long-lasting effects fall under the 5% rule.
-Natural Crits are never higher than 5%
-Damage over time skills are usually no higher than -5% HP per turn, as they usually end up doing 15% HP damage by the time they're done. Double so if I have more than one DoT skill. Any more than 5% HP damage is usually too much.
I sometimes use 10% for stronger stuff, that has some offset
-One skill I once made does 10% HP damage upfront, but the enemy heals it back at the end of the turn, making it a great finisher, but a terrible move otherwise.
For stat buffs or debuffs I usually roll with 30% damage to a stat, and I sometimes consider allowing them to stack twice if the duration is small.
author=LockeZ
I think the main problem with really low stat increases isn't that they have a really low effect or that they look weird and tiny, it's that they often have no effect at all. Especially for offensive stats.
What happens is that:
- At 440 attack power, every enemy in your current dungeon dies in 3 hits, every single time.
- At 450 attack power, every enemy in your current dungeon still dies in 3 hits, every single time.
So the player gains stats that look pretty but have absolutely zero effect. They might need to get to over 500 attack power before they start having a chance to kill the weakest enemy in 2 hits instead of 3. If only one party member's attack power is increasing, they might need even more than that.
I've solved this problem in the past by making damage extremely random. Like, the default variance in RPG Maker is 15% or 20% - I change it to 50% for every skill. At such a high random variance, the player might randomly kill the enemy in 2 hits instead of 3. If you get more attack power and start doing 5% more damage, that means you have a higher chance to kill the enemy in 2 hits instead of 3. Even 1% more damage is meaningful.
*jawdrop* That's...an interesting system. I like. There's a lot of leverage you can play with in that kind of combat environment.
