Attack, crit and intuitiveness

[yayswords]

Ehm, but I thought you prided yourself on the damage formula being easy to understand. Now it doesn't make sense unless a basic attack isn't 100% damage. She should be doing 16*12/11=17.454545... damage I'm trying to multiply and divide the numbers involved to reach 8, with no success so far. Maybe if it uses double defense...

Second part - I'm not trying to make battles faster. Right now crit does everything attack does and more. It makes up your raw damage in the same way as attack does (or at least the way it worked in the version we got to test, but maybe not in that screenshot) with the added bonus of sometimes giving more through a crit and/or a non-glancing hit. So with the sole exception of pumping up Distracting Blows, there's no reason to get more attack than crit, which makes it a no-brainer of keep them almost even with crit a little higher or you're unambiguously gimping yourself. Unless you're Joanne, in which case it seems the stats still do the exact same thing.

The point of the defense piercing ability isn't to be the best attack in every situation. If it is, just nerf it till it's only good against high defense targets. As an alternative to wittling down their defense with Backstab and the likes.

[jack1974]

Ehm, but I thought you prided yourself on the damage formula being easy to understand. Now it doesn't make sense unless a basic attack isn't 100% damage. She should be doing 16*12/11=17.454545... damage I'm trying to multiply and divide the numbers involved to reach 8, with no success so far. Maybe if it uses double defense...

Lol I had to go check the code... You're right, the formula works but I remembered now that I divided the resulting damage by 2. So indeed the result would be 17,5-something, divided by two, 8,75-something, rounded to 8.
I did other tests and they all return same formula. So well, at least works. I divided it by 2, because otherwise the fights would really be TOO fast, without the possibility to add any strategy

Second part - I'm not trying to make battles faster. Right now crit does everything attack does and more. It makes up your raw damage in the same way as attack does (or at least the way it worked in the version we got to test, but maybe not in that screenshot) with the added bonus of sometimes giving more through a crit and/or a non-glancing hit. So with the sole exception of pumping up Distracting Blows, there's no reason to get more attack than crit, which makes it a no-brainer of keep them almost even with crit a little higher or you're unambiguously gimping yourself. Unless you're Joanne, in which case it seems the stats still do the exact same thing.

The point of the defense piercing ability isn't to be the best attack in every situation. If it is, just nerf it till it's only good against high defense targets. As an alternative to wittling down their defense with Backstab and the likes.

OK I see your point. I guess I could come up with some other formula, where the attack ignores armor more? it would probably be more complex but could increase the base damage done based on attack, while the critical would still give more accuracy and double attack chance.
As long as the damase outcome ranges remains the same (so I don't need to redesign all the enemies/encounters which at this point would be too much work!) I'm fine with experimenting

[jack1974]

What about this test example:

Target: DEF 10
Attacker: ATK 10 ACC 15

Current formula: ATK x ACC / DEF = DMG / 2 = DMG
10 x 15 / 10 = 15 / 2 = 7,5 (rounded to 7)

Idea: ATK / (DEF/2) + ACC / DEF = DMG * 2 = DMG
10 / 5 + 15 / 10 = 2 + 1,5 = 3,5 * 2 = 7 DMG

So what if Attacker was: ATK 15 ACC 10 instead? It would be:
15 / 5 + 10 / 10 = 3 + 1 = 4 * 2 = 8 DMG

this way, having more attack will result in higher damage, even if not by much . Critical would still impact how easy you hit/miss the target and the double damage critical. I could increase the impact of the critical, increasing the ranges.
This though would have the side effect of making critical LESS important than attack, and more a gambling. So while it could work, I'm not sure if it's the "right solution" I mean there's the risk of the player then completely ignoring critical and use all his points in attack instead.

[yayswords]

That could work out well, since you can also tinker with precision vs. evasion so that attack is better if you have a good hit chance, else accuracy is better.

BTW, I don't suppose any abilities actually buff/debuff precision and evasion right now?

[jack1974]

Thalia has "Dodge" which buffs evasion, for critical hit I'm not sure I should check

[yayswords]

Okay, maybe I misunderstood. Crit itself is what counters evasion, not some separate hit stat also derived from accuracy? 'cause I know there's a few crit buffs (Hide in Shadows, Lightning Reflexes) and one debuff (Poisoned). That's simple I guess, but it would be fitting to have a skill or two that only countered evasion without also causing you to deal more raw damage (since a buff to crit does that). Too late for that now, I suppose.

[jack1974]

Yes the critical hit value counters evasion.
About other skill, I think I could add something to Joanne. Like you remember that tornado spell which was randomly changing the stats, a bit pointless. Instead it could reduce evasion, or maybe reduce target's critical hit.

[yayswords]

Pretty much anything is better than keeping it as it is, but lowering evasion would be excellent. It would be so easy to motivate lore-wise. You try to dodge out of the way, but a gust of wind pushes you in the direction of the attacker's blade...

Of course you could as easily motivate it reducing crit, but Thalia can already do that. Eh, it seems Joanne can too, through Earthquake. I would have thought Shattered would reduce defense. Anyway, I'm all for evasion on the tornado.

On the topic of changing skills, Kira's Wide Slash and Strike Through do almost exactly the same thing. One needs to be changed to something else entirely.

[jack1974]

Pretty much anything is better than keeping it as it is, but lowering evasion would be excellent. It would be so easy to motivate lore-wise. You try to dodge out of the way, but a gust of wind pushes you in the direction of the attacker's blade...

Of course you could as easily motivate it reducing crit, but Thalia can already do that. Eh, it seems Joanne can too, through Earthquake. I would have thought Shattered would reduce defense. Anyway, I'm all for evasion on the tornado.

Good, I've changed it now

On the topic of changing skills, Kira's Wide Slash and Strike Through do almost exactly the same thing. One needs to be changed to something else entirely.

Strike Through should lower the target defenses? Maybe then wide slash could also lower the evasion (not by much since is AOE).

[jack1974]

Today was away most of the day but the few hours were productive. I did many tweaks but the most important is:
Now I show the evasion value in the battle. I thought otherwise wouldn't be possible to decide who to attack if was hidden. I replaced the speed value: since it was a bit pointless, players can always see the movement order on the right, and besides the impact of speed stat on the battle is small (otherwise could unbalance everything).

in the screenshot above, Kira is considering attacking a rival thief. The target has 30 evasion, Kira's Critical is 14, so the resulting value is 30-14=16. The hit to ratio always starts at 100%, so 100 - 16 = 84% chance.

I think this way will be quite "fun", in particular in Nightmare, since Joanne is the only one who can always hit (magic attack always hit targets) and this way while normally her damage sucks, in certain battles with very hard to hit enemies she has her chance to shine