Okay, I know I said I'd move on to recharge and endurance, but I've actually another posts worth of material on accuracy, damage and resistance. One of the reasons for this is I want to clarify something:
I'm not pushing mechanics I suggest as the way SoH should be made. None of us are in a position to do this, and the SoH devs have a wealth of game-development experience behind them, certainly more than me.
There are several reasons for these posts then:
a) It sets up more reasonable expectations for how things can behave. Ideas are good to have and share, but not all are equal. Providing good reasons why such-and-such probably won't make it into the game is helps streamline discussion while we wait for the alpha.
b) More understanding of how games work is useful for players. My first post hopefully helped demonstrate the reasoning behind the original CoH system, and the polarising ED decision later.
c) Following on from that, it is (for me at least and apparently some others of you) an interesting topic of discussion that keeps us involved in the progress of SoH while we wait.
d) There is an outside chance that something discussed in these threads will be useful. They're happy to take suggestions on costumes and enemy groups, why not powers and mechanics?
So, let's recap. My first post demonstrated the way that accuracy was capped at 100% was fundamentally different from any of the other combat stats in CoH (since it lacked a "penetration" start for ignoring resistances, the way accuracy ignores defenses).
This meant that adding accuracy didn't scale as well as adding damage, in relative terms. To explain that, I'm going to re-iterate a core principle from my first mechanics post:
Absolute values matter far less than relative values. That is, adding "25" to something doesn't tell you anywhere near as much information as saying "doubled" or "halved", and that relative measures like this are actually what you need to balance against. Let's give a concrete example, using a similar power as from my first post (
128 damage, 50% base accuracy, 50% resistance, 12 second recharge, 24 endurance cost):
Against a target with 25% defense, an average of four attacks does 64 damage (50% base accuracy - 25% defense = 25% hit rate = 1 hit against 50% base resistance).
Adding 25% to your accuracy (via an enhancement) gives over four "average" attacks 128 damage (75% - 25% = 50% = 2 hits).
The damage output has gone up 100%.
Adding another 25% to your accuracy = 192 damage.
The damage output has gone up by 50%.
Adding a final 25% accuracy = 256 damage.
The damage output has gone up 33%.
Notice we now get no benefit from adding any more accuracy. Also, see how the actual relative increase in damage is less with each addition in accuracy? Well, good, you might say - adding more and more enhancements should have diminishing returns. Sure, there's a decent argument for that. But lets compare damage increases (not penetration, but raw damage, as original CoH did):
Our mathematically pure average of four attacks un-enhanced does 64 damage again, as before.
Adding 25% damage to the attack now does 80 after resistances (as we're not increasing accuracy, we only need consider the "average one hit of four that will land).
This is, as you might expect, a 25% increase in damage.
Adding another 25% damage to the attack now deals 100 damage after resistances.
This is again a 25% increase.
Next enhancement, 125 damage.
Oh look, 25% increase.
You get the idea - accuracy, in relative improvement, actually has a decreasing effect. Damage, however, doesn't. When coupled with the fact that damage can be added with limit, whereas we cannot increase accuracy any further, you again see why raw damage is preferable over increasing accuracy past a certain point. Obviously, increasing accuracy initially is more beneficial than damage, but once you hit "max accuracy" the benefit ends. How important this is depends on how many enhancement slots you have, and that's outside the scope of this discussion currently.
Damage penetration, as suggested in my original post, behaves like accuracy, however, since it is mathematically identical. It basically a way of making damage increase scale in the same fashion as accuracy. The issue with this, however, is that the other "big two" enhancements, recharge and endurance cost, scale like raw damage (something I'll discuss eventually, I promise).
So what happens if we make accuracy scale like damage, that is, not have diminishing returns? To do that, you'd have to remove the limit at 100% accuracy somehow. Now obviously, you can't hit more than every single time, but take a step back. What does hitting more often provide, in simplified terms? More damage, effectively (yes, I know I'm ignoring the effects of accuracy on reliability of crowd-control and debuffs, but there's a limit to what I can consider in one post). So why not scale damage based on accuracy, past 100%? You can explain it as being able to pick out critical areas, or weak points in the armour or whatever.
We have to slightly tweak the way our accuracy enhancements work too - rather than adding 25% accuracy, they now make us 25% more likely to hit, regardless of how likely to hit we were before. That is, they now work identically to raw damage. You hit more often until you reach 100%, then you just keep scaling up damage. Awesome. Why don't we do that then?
Well, why would you now
ever slot a damage enhancement? Slotting an accuracy increases damage output by
exactly the same amount, and means all your crowd-control effects and debuffs land more reliably. Making accuracy the same as raw damage means exactly that - it's the same, and there's no point having both.
Some games, realising this, have actually dropped accuracy and defense as a stat. You still have characters that dodge, but it's simply deflecting or avoid the full-strength of the impact, and functions exactly the same as resistance. I can see all the super-reflex fans grabbing their pitchforks, so bear with me one moment.
Missing is psychologically frustrating compared to resistances - you at least feel like you're doing something if you hit for minimal damage, but landing only one blow in twenty, even if total you've done the same amount of damage overall, feels far less "super". Removing accuracy/defense as an actual mechanic removes this frustrating aspect of gameplay.
Also, CoH generally had resistances based on damage type (fire, psionic, energy, etc.) and defenses based on "delivery mechanism" (melee, ranged, AoE). Enforcing that distinction, so that "defense" powersets gained resistances based on whether the attack was melee, ranged or AoE (with different powersets having a weakness to one or the other of those), and "resist" powersets gained resistances based on damage type, would give a different feel to each powerset still, and require a bit of tactical thought about which power to use against which opponent. And of course your "ultimate" power in a defense powerset could still be "avoid all melee/ranged/AoE attacks for ten seconds" - but that would be a special effect, and very time-limited.
This suggestion does, however, limit the number of possible debuff/buff types, which is very important in CoH gameplay - dark blast and sonic would basically have the same secondary effect under this scheme.
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The two suggestions in my two posts give a very different feel for gameplay, though both mathematically equalise accuracy and damage enhancements, slot for slot (admittedly that's because we replaced one with the other in one of the suggestions). Which of those "feels" you prefer is entirely subjective, and deciding between them is up to the devs and the playerbase.
I recommended in my original mechanics post way back when (feels so long ago) that it's best to decide on the feel you want for a game first, and then build the mechanics to match that feel. The polls suggest this is exactly what Consultant et al are doing, and it's good to see.
Still going to make posts like these though
Next up, recharge and endurance (for reals this time).
