Anima_ wrote:That is true, but didn't I already say that we want to scale it only up to 0.5? Maybe I forgot to write it here. At that level the difference is only 100% of damage which is acceptable.
You did mention that - the computation was to explain why high reduction values tend to favor crit (again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, it's just a description of what happens).
With respect to how this interacts with the 0.5 being the desired top end ratio of reduction to damage:
Given the ratio of damage to reduction going only up to 0.5 means the same amount of reduction is 'further along' the game than for damage.
Assuming the 0.5 reduction to damage ratio, and that early in the game you are at 200 damage and 50 reduction:
- By the time you level/get gear/etc. enough to be at 400 damage (+200 damage) you would expect to be around maybe 150 reduction (+100 reduction). It would not be much more than that or you would be violating the your expected ratio.
- By the time you level/get gear/etc. enough to be at 250 reduction (+200 reduction) you would expect to be around maybe 600 damage (+400 damage). It would not be much less than that or you would be violating the expected ratio.
This is what I mean by the scaling. While these are example numbers, the issue is with the approximate rate of increases (~2 damage to 1 reduction) rather than the specific values. So gear with say +10 reduction is likely worth a lot more than gear with +10 damage.
That in of itself is not necessarily a problem, but it is a characteristic of the mechanics that we can derive independently without knowing more about the gameworld (which is why I bring it up; most other analysis requires more data, which is not available yet).
Anima_ wrote: Interesting at that point would be that the same would happen with the reduction modifier.
- 100 damage vs 50 reduction Clean Hit: 100 - 1.0*50 = 50 damage, Critical Hit: 100-0.0*50 = 100 damage
- 1000 damage vs 950 reduction Clean Hit: 1000 - 1.0*950 = 50 damage, Critical Hit: 1000-0.0*950 = 1000 damage
So actually it would be even worse. Of course this numbers depend on the table used, but that goes both ways. (The 0.0 for critical hits comes from the experimental table, higher values gave disappointing results.)
You're correct here. The 'apply to reduction' is really an alternative to the 'apply to damage', and not really intended to be used with the 1.0 scaling as well (they are two different suggestions, to be applied separately). The computation I would show is using the (1.0,1.1,1.15,1.2) multipliers:
- 100 damage vs 50 reduction Clean Hit: 110 - 50 = 60 damage, Critical Hit: 120 - 50 = 70 damage
- 1000 damage vs 950 reduction Clean Hit: 1100 - 950 = 150 damage, Critical Hit: 1200 - 950 = 250 damage
70/60 ~= 116%, 250/150 ~= 167%, vs the original 200% and 1100%
What I meant before was that the smaller multiplier ranges would let +10 damage be closer in value to +10 reduction than the larger multipliers (whether this is good or bad is not a decision I am making).
Anima_ wrote: To really solve the problem we would have to subtract reduction before we apply the multiplier. Then the relation between the hit level modifiers and the actual damage for each hit level would remain the same.
This does 'fix' this issue (problem is a strong term). The downside, though, is that's it's somewhat boring
(not a coincidence; interesting almost always means more easily breakable).
Anima_ wrote: Might even be the better solution since getting crits is largely luck based. On the other hand having a recourse against high reduction enemies other than heavy weapons would be nice as well, even if the expected damage would still be much lower then for heavier weapons. Something to think over.
Well, to be honest I would much rather prefer a completely or minimally luck-based results in games like these due to the save/load issue. One kind of mechanic could be:
- Shooting someone always hits (damage is still damage - reduction, with a small random range)
- Delta accuracy 'builds' on the target (maybe with a _small_ random range)
- If the total delta accuracy is over a threshold, it is a critical hit, and delta accuracy is cleared
For example, character A and B are shooting enemy C (assume a +/- 20% randomness to accuracy buildup):
- Char A shoots enemy C, hits normally (automatic) and builds up 11 (10 +/- 2) points of accuracy on the target
- Char B shoots enemy C, hits normally (automatic) and builds up 33 (35 +/- 7) more points of accuracy (44 total)
- on enemy C's turn, enemy C drops 4 (5 +/- 1) points through evasion (40 total)
- Char A shoots enemy C, hits normally (automatic) and builds up 12 (10 +/- 2) points of delta accuracy on the target (total 52), which is over the (example) crit threshold of 50, and thus also gets a crit. Built up accuracy on Char C goes to 0.
Obviously it doesn't have to be exactly like this, but a mechanic like that mostly removes the randomness from the battle, and makes targeting much more an interesting issue (you might not want to 'waste' a high accuracy built with a weaker critical attack, so you might have a good reason to spread around attacks). This could thematically also be represented like cover (shooting someone 'flushes' them from cover, which is what 'accuracy build up' could represent; the name could certainly be altered).
- A glancing hit might be what you get if your attack would drop the built-up accuracy to below 0.
- This could also let the player react with active defenses, since they can see how much of a danger they are in (if a character is sitting near threshold of accuracy built, it might be a good idea to take a defensive action).
- Crits being really big is less of an issue since you can control it much better. Even the tank might need a 'breather' if they get close to their threshold, since normal attacks do little to them while crits are still dangerous (this also means having a second tanky character is a lot more useful than in the first game).