Attack, crit and intuitiveness

[yayswords]

I ran some numbers on this. In this situation it looks like Kira could go as high as 30-or-so attack before crit would be better. We're talking very small differences though, for example with the stats in the screenshot +1 atk is only worth 0.1 more damage on average than +1 crt. And crits are double damage, right? Else these numbers are off.

Even if you give the thieves very high evasion this doesn't seem to change. You could probably do that though (give enemies significant evasion across the board), so that this tiny disadvantage crit has doesn't grow because you sometimes already have more crit than the enemy has evasion.

Another thing you could do is use atk/(def/1.5) or something in the formula, and increase the 2 multiplier after that if need be, to take some power out of attack.

Also there is no reason for Joanne to take crit now. Probably a greater concern than fine-tuning atk/crt for non-mages

I feel a little bad for starting this nerd orgy of numbers.

[jack1974]

Yes critical are double damage.
From what you write, well either I go back as it was before (so both attack and critical had same impact, but then why boost up attack? you only needed to boost up critical ) or right now attack has a slight advantage. I think is better now, at least it's more "even" ?

[yayswords]

Crit had only a tiny advantage before. Remember even distribution always gave you max damage. I seem to recall you noticing that

I'm not sure the new system is much better or worse so far. It probably has less risk of crazy numbers though.

[jack1974]

Yes but was MAY LAST YEAR!! I don't even remember what I did last week
The new system attracted some complaints from an user in blog: blog/2016/01/queen-of-thieves-gameplay- ... ent-860114
Quoting him/her:

One of the things I always liked about Loren and SoTW is that, in combat, when you attack you HIT. There isn’t always that constant fear and disgust that your battle strategy will fall apart because a random number generator (RNG) decided that it should. If I lost it was because I didn’t plan well, I made a mistake or I wasn’t strong enough.

Adding a system where it is possible to miss, or in this case have your damage halved, is a step backwards regardless. Now the threat of the bad RNG will be there once again, making random chance a factor in what would otherwise be a system where strategy and planning would thrive.

I’ll probably play Queen of Thieves anyway, but this stings a little.

I explained that won't happen very often and even half damage is not the end of the world, because the numbers I've used. But I can also probably turn this feature on/off completely based on difficulty level (maybe only in Hard+) or even in the options menu
I think this could also be part of strategic planning - if you want to never miss, pump up the critical hit stats of Kira/Thalia every time you gain a level up!

[yayswords]

Eh, the SotW I remember certainly had misses. Several flavors even. It also had crits, and your attacks had a damage range. QoT, even with this little miss system, is tame on the RNG compared to SotW.

I think this could also be part of strategic planning - if you want to never miss, pump up the critical hit stats of Kira/Thalia every time you gain a level up!

Yeah, if you could tune things so that crit is better until all evasion is countered and attack better after that, that would be great. Right now attack is better even against very high evasion (assuming the 18/14 stats Kira has).

[jack1974]

Yes true SOTW had misses, though I think depends at which level you played it. Also maybe since had bigger numbers (higher HP) and more common healing, even with a miss you could recover.

I think for now I'll leave the system as it is and then see during beta, since it's always the best way to see how those mechanics work! I also need to review all enemies now, since before they had all 0 evasion and it's a bit too easy right now

[yayswords]

An ability that dispels or bypasses Protect: possible/impossible/too much work?

[jack1974]

Yes is quite easy to do (the dispel, bypass is more complex). Joanne's Magic Sparks already reduce any enemy buff by 1 turn, so that exists

[jack1974]

By the way I did an "extreme test". Raised the party to level 10, and on each level up, I assigned to Kira always attack, and to Thalia always critical.
In the end Kira had AT 27 CR 12, Thalia AT 13 CR 28 (so basically a LOT of difference, as much as you can get by that level).
This is the result of a test battle (imgur gallery):
http://imgur.com/a/ZplpL
I honestly don't see attack being so much better. It does 2dmg more, that even in this game with smaller stats, it's nothing too much unbalancing. So I really think I'll keep as it is, and then see during testing if something breaks, but won't touch this again for now.

[yayswords]

No like I said it's a small difference, still it would be nice if that small difference was in favor of crit if you're not capped against the opponent's evasion it's probably nearly always better to take attack over crit, but it's not a big mistake to take crit. Unless you're Joanne maybe.