Combat Discussion

[Mordred]

Evasion has to be accounted into damage because survivability is more than "how many direct hits does it take to kill this target," survivability includes "how many times do I have to swing before I can expect to have scored enough hits to kill this target."

Evade, HP, and damage are all locked together in the question of how tough a character actually is to kill. Evasion as hit-or-miss needs to be revised because at high levels of EV, it becomes incredibly swingy.

[Schwerpunkt]

Rods really shouldn't be capable of producing any serious amount of damage. Remember, those guys are lobbing lightning bolts and stuff for crazy amounts of damage (Black Magic being the largest share of damage under both scenarios). Giving Wizards a melee attack even vaguely on par with POJs isn't kosher.

Note also that Archers should not be able to do 100% of the damage a Knight can do because Archers can fire from far away (and, in many cases, from behind meatshields of allied Knights). Aiming around 75% of what a Knight can dish out strikes me as adequate.

For that matter, I think we should gauge all class melee damage as a percentage of what the Knight can do. The Knight is strong, but he's not putting out the highest figures (Ninja and Samurai probably do), so that makes him a good measuring stick for all the other classes. Just sayin'.

[Mordred]

I think Archers should do damage between a Knight and a Ninja. They're pretty squishy targets; kind of the mages of the physical tree. Archers are too often overlooked because their damage output isn't high enough to justify picking them over a tougher class with more ability to dive into the fray and mix things up.

[Schwerpunkt]

Archers do less damage because they can attack from way the hell away. They don't have to worry about MP to inflict serious damage, either. The version we have is notably more potent than the Archer from HoI or FFT. They can attack over allies, too, which gives them an enormous tactical value that most other classes really can't even hope to match.

Note also that the biggest problem with the Archer class in FFT (and the reason you stopped using it so fast) was Aim. Aim was terrible. We've almost entirely done away with that system.

[Mordred]

Mages also do the "attack over allies" thing, just from less far away. I guess I'm just being a nervous nelly because I really want to see Archers shine for once in their miserable lives.

[Ilium]

Either we beef his attack or we make him less deflatable, I think the archer needs a slight buff somewhere.

[Schwerpunkt]

May 2, 2013 19:00:54 GMT -6 Mordred said:

Mages also do the "attack over allies" thing, just from less far away. I guess I'm just being a nervous nelly because I really want to see Archers shine for once in their miserable lives.

This time around they get an aoe, a few status effects, an attack that lets them hit the same dude multiple times (potentially; it could also fail spectacularly), and a regular attack that just plain does more damage with a higher rate of crit.

I think they'll be fine.

[Ilium]

May 2, 2013 15:37:19 GMT -6 Mordred said:

Evasion has to be accounted into damage because survivability is more than "how many direct hits does it take to kill this target," survivability includes "how many times do I have to swing before I can expect to have scored enough hits to kill this target."

Evade, HP, and damage are all locked together in the question of how tough a character actually is to kill. Evasion as hit-or-miss needs to be revised because at high levels of EV, it becomes incredibly swingy.

Evasion has always been just a hit or miss value in Final Fantasy. I will look into the merits of adding a chance to glance alongside critical hits, but the formula as it exists is sound, so there won't be any fundamental changes done to it.

[Mordred]

May 3, 2013 15:09:36 GMT -6 Ilium said:

Evasion has always been just a hit or miss value in Final Fantasy. I will look into the merits of adding a chance to glance alongside critical hits, but the formula as it exists is sound, so there won't be any fundamental changes done to it.

Final Fantasy has always been a single player game, where no one cares about how the monsters feel about getting slaughtered en masse. If you lose, you can just reload. Players are going to be fighting players in this game and they will be pissed if you don't do this right.

Evade that functions as a complete negation of damage is not a mechanic that will work in a persistent, often PVP environment. Some kind of sliding scale of damage reduction from armor/dodge needs to be implemented to balance mages against dodgers against tanks. I don't care if it's my glance concept, Schwer's shield block, or something completely different, as long as it's a solution that addresses the problem I described in my example post.

Barring further invitation to do so, this will be the last comment I make on the subject. It's your game and I don't want to be a nuisance; I just hope to give you the best advice I can.

[Schwerpunkt]

I'd rather not see dodge result in glancing blows. It doesn't make much sense thematically. Rather, I'd like to see dodge cap out at around 30% under ideal circumstances to negate the risk of evasion tanking.

Shields, of course, would be the problem. What I'd like to do instead is replace their P-Ev with two stats: BV (Block Value) and BR (Block Rating). BV is simply expressed as, say, BV: 40. This means that whenever the character blocks an attack, it subtracts 40% of the incoming damage. BV, however, doesn't govern the rate of blocks happening -- that's where BR comes in. If BR is 15, you block 15% of the time -- and if BV is 40, you block 40% of incoming damage on 15% of all incoming physical attacks.

Naturally, in-game BRs would probably be considerably higher and BVs be considerably lower, but you get the idea. I'd like to see this as the primary means of minimizing the risk of evasion tanking.