High Level Balance

[ValdainTheKing]

I got the wrong person. But still, i dont care what you say is a community. If a community is that guy acting like he's god's gift to the world, then thats not a community. Especially when he's just as new as i am here. I am sorry about getting the wrong person, but make no mistake I dont take shit. And if people dont like the truth, then they should shut their mouth.

[DeathKnight1728]

I think that we should try and be civil as much as we can. There's enough hate going on in the world.

[Crisses]

Originally Posted by ValdainTheKing

I got the wrong person. But still, i dont care what you say is a community. If a community is that guy acting like he's god's gift to the world, then thats not a community. Especially when he's just as new as i am here. I am sorry about getting the wrong person, but make no mistake I dont take shit. And if people dont like the truth, then they should shut their mouth.

Thanks for the apology but please don't ever talk to me again. I don't want your energy or ethics in my life. I'm glad my son didn't see what you wrote because your apology wasn't sufficient for that type of potential heartache. Now I'd like to get back to haggling about game balance.

[Crisses]

Bluddy, is there a way to post a plugin for a potential fix? Again thanks for the number crunching, it's something I would have done before I became older and realized how OCD it made me seem

Oh, how will this affect critter-to-critter damage....pets and inter clan wars and slight of hand want to know.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Crisses

Bluddy, is there a way to post a plugin for a potential fix? Again thanks for the number crunching, it's something I would have done before I became older and realized how OCD it made me seem

I'll try to come up with values for a plugin for the first problem's solution. The second problem can't be solved properly using the method I suggested of raising monster armor unless Shadow provides some programming support for it. If I change monster armor per level from 7 to say, 20, that won't be enough to raise % armor absorption levels at the higher levels enough, but will hurt the lower levels a little since now instead of 20%, monsters will absorb 30%. A non-linear (I keep using that word) method is needed. The alternative is to lower the damage per strength bonus for player characters (just as I will for monsters). This will lower the non-linearity of the player's DPS somewhat.

I'll see if I can cook up something even without programming support.

That reminds me that I forgot to link to my (now huge) excel file. It's got many pages now:

DefOld - the old armor formula
DefNon - trying to play with the armor formula (and not succeeding)
DefX^2 - what I think will be a good tweak for the armor formula
ResOld - old resistance formula
ResNon - my tweak to the resistance formula
PlayerCalc - calculated player statistics
Samples - sampled values from real characters
MonsterCalc - calculated monster statistics
Values - constants used for calculations

Oh, how will this affect critter-to-critter damage....pets and inter clan wars and slight of hand want to know.

Good question. I think if anything, these changes should make inter-monster fighting better, or at least more similar in the higher levels to how it is in lower levels. Though I haven't checked it yet, my guess is that just as player vs monster combat gets unbalanced at higher levels, the same occurs to monsters. They'll kill each other way too fast because their HP won't match their fast-increasing damage. This should improve that.

[Bluddy]

OK after playing a little and having the values not match my calculations exactly, I realized I was missing a factor: aside from 0.6% per strength point, warrior classes get an extra 0.2% of damage per strength point, per tree! A full warrior gets 1.2% per strength point! A partial warrior will have 0.8%.

So basically, the most powerful class in the game gets the most powerful bonus, based on a stat that only it has tons of (ie. strength). This is very overpowered. To give you an idea of how powerful this is, at 1.2% per strength, at level 50, the warrior hits for 253% of damage all the time. At level 70 it'll be 313%. The full-time warrior finishes the game with around 400% damage. A part time warrior (only 1 warrior tree) gets 0.8% per strength. At level 50 he'll have 202% damage. At level 70 he'll have 242% damage, and at level 100, he'll reach 300% damage. You can see that even comparing a regular warrior to a part-warrior, the full warrior has a big advantage and will massacre monsters much more easily at high levels.

EDIT: I just realized that other classes (thief, hunter etc) have bonuses of 0.1%/strength each -- but they'll also have far fewer points in strength, so it won't make nearly as much of a difference.

In my opinion, these percentages all need to be lowered. They're the most powerful modifiers in the game, and they cause even worse, severe non-linearity in the DPS levels. 0.6% per strength can probably be lowered to 0.5%, and the bonus per tree should be lowered to 0.1% or even less.

I'll make a plugin of my changes pretty soon so they can be tested out.

[Baki]

Str isnt the only thing influencing damage. I think its too early to try to balance in that area.

Things like passive skills, damage bonus from skills etc also count. Those things have to be considered. Adjust the general area frist, look how it works, then move on to inter class balance.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Baki

Str isnt the only thing influencing damage. I think its too early to try to balance in that area.

Things like passive skills, damage bonus from skills etc also count. Those things have to be considered. Adjust the general area frist, look how it works, then move on to inter class balance.

Valid point. Adjusting the monsters' damage is quite predictable; the player character is far less predictable, mostly because of passive boosts. I tried to zone in on the biggest sources of non-linearity, though. The situation gets even worse once you count the different passive boosts warriors (and other strong classes) can have.

In any case, I'm trying small tweaks in these particular things to see how much effect they have. It's likely that ultimately, the solution will be to beef up wizards, and then raise the HP/armor of the monsters.

BTW could you attach the character that's giving you trouble? It'd really help me with testing changes.

[Baki]

since i exploited the stamp out the infestation thing with him he wont be of much use now

[Chumpy]

Wow, Bluddy, amazing job!

I'm almost at level 50 with a couple of characters, so this'll help me a lot down the road.