Matt516

When you need to make an explanation like that to players as why you went for some confusing decision instead of an obvious one it feels like not efficient design to me. Already have journalists saying that +2 Might on Amaumas makes them most powerful warriors. Well it does... Might makes anyone more powerful. Since Amaumas have the highest Might, they are, by definition, the most powerful warriors. I know what you're referring to though - the journalist equated it with Strength. So what? That's going to happen because PoE's attributes are somewhat unconventional (in most ways strengthening the game IMO). An attribute that causes journalists to get it wrong based on ~1.5 hours of gameplay (when cRPGs may not even be said journalist's forte) is hardly broken just because of that. And besides - plenty of systems are confusing when not fully explained. If an unintuitive issue can be solved with a quick ~3 sentence blurb in the attribute description, it's a nonissue IMO.

I do and don't understand that perspective. I understand wanting a justification, but it's always seemed fitting to me. Many AoE spells/effects originate at a point and spread outward. Fireball is probably the most obvious example, but I tend to think of most effects that way. You're a super smarty, so as you extend the AoE outward, you are able to selectively shape it at the margins, where it terminates. You can't do it on the interior because that's the origin of the effect, where it's emanating from. That's always been my view of it, anyway. That explanation is 100% sufficient for me, at least. Awesome. I would advise including it somewhere in the attribute description though - it's not immediately apparent and many would appreciate seeing that the Devs thought of that. Also adds flavor to the world if the mechanical benefits from attributes are explained in purple prose.

In the long run, averages dominate, so variance (unless we're talking *extreme* variance, like 1-100 versus a weapon that does 50-50) doesn't matter much. EDIT - I'm not really disagreeing with Seari here, just summarizing what I think OP's response to Seari would be. That is what I was alluding to. If quality of hit is already determined by the user's accuracy, then a damage range for the weapon would be redundant. Averages would be suitable, as variant comes from character ability--all things considered equal, of course. With balancing heavy on every-beta tester's mind, the passing notion seemed to lend to aiding that pursuit. If the quality of hit were a continuum, I'd agree with you. But it's not - it only has 4 discrete values, one of which is no damage at all. And in any given fight, it is very likely that only 3 of the attack resolutions will be applicable (due to ACC-DEF needing to be between -5 and 5 for all 4 to be possible). So removing variance from the weapons would lead to a fairly boring experience.

In the long run, averages dominate, so variance (unless we're talking *extreme* variance, like 1-100 versus a weapon that does 50-50) doesn't matter much. EDIT - I'm not really disagreeing with Seari here, just summarizing what I think OP's response to Seari would be. That being said, the use of DT as a core mechanic impacts the math in an interesting way versus other straight up variant-damage systems (mostly D&D - I know DR factors in at times, but it's far less common) - a low variance weapon may be worse than a high variance weapon with a lower average simply because against DT small chance of doing a some damage versus 100% chance of almost no damage might make the trade-off worth it. So there's some level of itemization strategy. (EDIT - an example of this scenario is going up against a guy with DT 10. Would you rather have a 10-10 damage weapon or a 1-17 if there is a minimum damage of 1 after DT? I think most people will ultimately go for the latter, even though in the general case it is weaker (average damage of 9 versus 10) since in this contrived high-DT case the 1-17 actually gives you a chance of doing significant damage). Adding random ranges also helps in balancing the game, theoretically. Your granularity is to fractions of damage without needing to actually use fractions. (Though the game already shows fractional damage, so I'm not sure how much this actually factors in.) Lastly, there's just the visceral pop up of it. In fairly kinetic games (shooters, shooter RPGs) static damage works well because you can approximate variant damage by using physics - i.e. headshots, glancing shots, shotguns that miss some of their pellets, etc. In more macro-scale games (like tactical party RPGs like this), the variance helps capture the "flow" of the randomness of combat. IE if a kobold has 8 health and you have a 10-10 damage weapon, you will always kill it in one hit; whereas if you have a d20 weapon, that is far from certain. Took the words right out of my mouth. Especially the bolded parts.

We have a bunch of people saying "yeah, AoE increase doesn't really seem that valuable", mostly because the marginal increase can be a liability. Allowing you to scale it down solves the liability problem, but also means that in those circumstances, you get literally no benefit from it at all. I still really don't get why this is such a spot of resistance when making the margins safe doesn't remove friendly fire, it makes INT valuable all the time instead of sometimes being a liability, and it doesn't require adding a UI layer on top of the system just to regulate AoE sizes. I think the only real reason for the resistance (assuming this would be balanced properly) is the RP perspective. I'm personally more of a mechanics focused person myself, so I can look past it - but many people won't like a system like this unless there's some plausible game-world explanation for it.

I do think that Sensuki and I's original suggestion puts the attributes into much more well-defined "boxes", making the whole thing easier to understand. I still prefer our system, I think it's a bit more elegant what with the mirrored attributes and 3 categories and such. But I also spent the past 2 weeks developing it, so I'm bound to be a bit biased. But honestly I think pretty much most of the suggestions that've been brought up in this thread would improve the current system. Josh's ideas (and by extension the PoE team's ideas I assume) have also been good - as I remarked in an earlier post, they're not really unbalanced (probably). And some of the proposed boni do fit a little better from an RP perspective. I dunno - I'm thrilled by the discussion that's going on right now. :D I still prefer our system, but either way I think we're going in the right direction. Except if we mess with Might or Constitution. As I mentioned earlier, I think that would just make further balancing even more difficult.

You're not alone in that concept. Many of us have been discussing scalable AoEs since the concept of Intellect was first announced. Mouse wheeling AoE dimensions would be magnificent. Yeah - the novel thing about my idea was to have Duration scale inversely with AoE, adding a bit of tactical choice beyond "big as possible without friendly fire". Well that's the problem he's trying to solve - selective AoE spells is a bit odd from a simulationist standpoint (a little too odd for my taste as I remarked), but it is from a mechanical standpoint a good way to solve the problem. It's clear that either that or scaleable AoE is necessary to make INT more viable though.

It's an idea for Talent but it's very unintuitive to make different parts of radii friendly fire or not. An option to increase&decrease radii with a mouse would be ideal. Seconded. While there's nothing wrong with that suggestion persay (as in I don't understand why people would object), it would be less intuitive than just letting the caster scale the AoE. That said, if you want to buff AoE as a stat, that's definitely one way to do it. The customizable AoE option is more intuitive, but still leads to situations in which you might want to cast a larger spell but can't do so because allies are in the way. With the foe-only expanded radius, increased AoE actually gets a lot more powerful since you can use the largest AoE all the time. You'd want to be careful with that though, as by buffing AoE and putting it with Deflection you run a slight risk of creating an overpowered stat - though this would probably be mitigated since classes that use lots of AoE probably won't take a huge number of hits and vice versa. The edge case of the super Deflective Barbarian with crazy Carnage does raise concerns, but I like Barbarians so I don't really care. xD (you could nerf them in other ways if it was just too powerful) Random thing - a while back, I had the idea that you could scale the AoE with the mouse wheel, and the Duration would scale inversely with the AoE - would give the player a choice between casting a really small intense fireball or a really large weak fireball, basically. You'd get more total AoE/Duration as Intellect increased, of course. It wasn't the best idea, but it's relevant here so I thought I'd mention it. EDIT: Found it. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67742-how-to-solve-the-aoe-problem-while-making-the-int-stat-more-compelling-and-int-characters-smarter/?hl=excel

I don't disagree, but if DEX affects Action Speed and PER affects Accuracy, putting Deflection on either would make them must-haves (IMO) and doesn't help out RES at all. Agreed - if DEX gives IAS and PER gives ACC, DEF absolutely cannot go on either of the two.

I think we're getting close on this, but here's a small modification: instead of INT being +5 AoE Size/Duration per point and RES being +3 Concentration/+? Deflection per point, for general *~ feels ~* and broader applicability, set INT to +5 AoE Size/+? Deflection per point, and RES to +3 Concentration, +5% Duration per point. Concentration and longer durations seem to feel appropriate on RES. If you're a character who is not always in the line of fire, you're probably creating more status effects and could use longer durations. If you're a caster character, AoE size is great even if you're not always in the line of fire (Deflection-wise). Any front-line character would benefit from increased Deflection even if they weren't creating effects with AoEs. And Deflection on INT seems slightly more fitting than Deflection on RES. Hmm. That would be interesting. I'll separate my reply into the mechanical (i.e. balance) and the role-playing (i.e. "appropriateness") sections, since they're really separate considerations. Mechanics: Of the two statistics currently tied to Intellect, Duration is obviously far superior. The AoE bonus is not very valuable at the moment due to the "my AoE is too big and I can't make it smaller" problem - not sure if that's planned to be customizable pre-cast with the mouse wheel or something. That said, even if that is fixed, AoE will still be much less powerful than Duration IMO. In light of that fact, combining AoE with Deflection doesn't seem like it would end up with an overpowered attribute, but I'm not entirely sure it wouldn't be underpowered either. Doesn't immediately strike me as a good or bad idea though - worth a try. Duration is very very powerful, so tying Concentration to it doesn't seem like a bad idea either since Concentration is kind of "meh" in my opinion. If it did turn out to be overpowered, the Concentration or Duration bonus could just be decreased to balance it. Role-Playing: While I think Deflection makes a bit more sense on Resolve than on Intellect, I can see how it could make sense for Intellect as well. So no argument here. Duration doesn't really make that much sense for Resolve IMO, but I don't really care all that much personally. I could be convinced to have it make sense on Resolve.

That's one thing we really liked about it - it's very intuitive. Works well enough from an RP standpoint (we think) while creating a mechanically appealing and balanced system. The symmetry of having those 3 categories is very aesthetically appealing. Also, the two offensive and defensive attributes directly oppose one another - Might/Constitution and Perception/Resolve. All in all we think it makes the attribute system much more elegant.

Seems a bit kludgy to me, but I suppose it's like having the different D&D hit dice for the various classes. I'd almost rather see the ratio change as a result of level advancement. Well, they've already got that in the form of different HP/lvl up for each class. This is basically just compounding that class-ingrained difference in survivability (I don't mind that - YMMV).

The only real difference I see with this (assuming that magical healing also heals from this "recovery power" pool) is that taking damage no longer removes your health immediately, but at the end of combat instead. That and the fact that stamina (health in your system) is now what determines if you die, not health (recovery power). So this really isn't much of a change from a mechanical standpoint. It's a good idea, sure - but I don't see too much reason for adopting it in place of the (soon to be) current system.

OK, here's my full response to the discussion so far: Thanks for the read and for the reply! I actually think it aligns perfectly with our conclusions - or at least the rationale behind them. In our proposed system, Interrupt chance per point of Perception is reduced from 3% to 1% - so it's very close to making it purely dependent on Accuracy anyway. The reason we left it in was to A) not suggest too drastic a change by removing % interrupt entirely, and (more importantly) B) that with Interrupt and Accuracy on the same stat, Interrupt can be very easily tuned. Either way, I think we're on the same page - Interrupt should be governed by whatever governs Accuracy. I just think that leaving the Interrupt chance variable in as well would give you more flexibility in balancing. Agreed from an RP perspective. From a mechanics perspective, of course, it doesn't really matter as long as the attributes offer roughly the same utility (as hard to quantify as that may be). Huzzah! Have been trying to convince people that it doesn't matter (mathematically) if they are penalties/boni or all boni ever since the Beta started. xD I do think that with this target audience (i.e. IE fans), making attributes below the "average" give nominal penalties would probably go over better and in general "feel" better. Here's where I've really got to disagree with you. 2 things: Regarding not putting Deflection on a stat: For one, there is already one "purely defensive" stat - Constitution. Additionally, stating that purely defensive stats don't "feel" great seems like a bit of a subjective thing. It might not feel great for you and for a majority of the playtesting team (which is where I assume you're drawing that info from), but you really need a larger sample size as this is basically a matter of personal preference. For me (and many others), having the ability to choose a purely defensive stat to augment a character concept "feels" fantastic! Also, Concentration is not a defensive stat, at least not from a mechanical standpoint. It does absolutely nothing to improve survivability - it prevents you from having your own attacks interrupted. At best, this is a hybrid (utility) stat, though I'd honestly even call it slightly offensive. Even if Deflection was added to Resolve, Constitution would still be more of a "purely defensive" stat. Regarding taking healing from Might or splitting up Health/Stamina: This is a bad idea, in my opinion. The current problems with the attribute system stem from Resolve and Perception. Those are the broken stats. Might and Constitution are just fine how they are. Removing healing from Might or removing health from Constitution would make them weaker, requiring other balance changes to compensate, and in general causing your team to spend much more time than necessary iterating through attribute design systems. From both an RP and a mechanical perspective, you've already gotten Might and Constitution right - they are attributes with very clear benefits that "feel" really good to put points into. Nerfing either one of them would be a mistake, and would cause a balancing chain reaction that would potentially eat up development time that could be better used for other things. Why waste time trying to find a good attribute system that requires major changes to the one already in place when you could have a good attribute system while making only minor changes? Anyway - that's my $0.02. Thanks again for taking the time to discuss these kinds of issues with the BB community - we appreciate it. PS: Yeah..... but I'm an engineer, not a mathematician. All I care about is if my analysis lets me draw useful conclusions. ;P You're right though... O_o

Accuracy is RNG based as well, Ganrich.

Real quick - thanks a ton for reading and replying, Josh! Out and about at the moment, but will have thoughts and more detailed responses in a few hours when I'm back at my computer.

Well one of the goals of Josh's system is that it's kinda supposed to protect people from making bad characters. It's not that they don't matter, it's just that a 13 in every attribute will be a good build most likely, you just have to play to it. I haven't tried a build of 13 in all stats in the current system because Perception and Resolve are terrible, but in our proposed system I wouldn't be surprised if you could get away with it. Which would be fine. All around decent characters should be an option if someone doesn't want to specialize - they'll just never be quite as good at any specific thing as the specialists are.

They're smaller relative boni than the D&D attributes. IMO it's more about broad stat ranges though - sure, one point in any won't make a huge difference, but every little bit helps. In D&D, a melee character had to have between 12 and 18 STR to be even remotely viable. So you effectively only have a 6 point range to play around with when trying to build "viable" characters. PoE's system is designed such that the entire stat range is viable. That doesn't mean the stats don't matter though - just that the game isn't punishing you for not speccing into any given stat. The difference between a MIG build and a CON build and a DEX build will still be quite noticeable though.

True, true - all good points. Some classes will invariably favor some attributes above others simply because of differences in their design and role.

They'd probably just do more damage to Health. Pretty much anything from the old system can be tweaked into the new system with a simple multiplier.

I'd not worry about performance at the moment - someone correct me if I'm wrong but optimization is generally one of the last phases of game development, correct?

Well yes, doing things faster is always better than doing them slower. Even for characters with limited spells, getting those spells off faster rather than slower is a definite advantage. The point we try to make is that doing things faster is rarely if ever better than simply doing things better - whether "things" is casting buffs, hitting dudes, etc. IAS, if implemented, would improve everything - but not beat any attribute at its own game. Hence the "Jack of all Trades, Master of None" nature of the attribute.

Yeah, an interrupt build is basically a support build. Which makes sense - an extremely perceptive and dextrous character would naturally be able to get in enemies' way and interrupt their flow. Kind of a trickster build - I can see the potential for a PER/DEX Rogue working pretty well. And now you see the increased character build capability and diversity this system offers. Re: magnitude of DPS reduction from interrupt - what it boils down to is that it reduces the enemy's effective attack speed. By how much? Depends on the ratio of your attack speed to the enemy's attack speed, who attacked first, what weapon you're using, their concentration, and a whole host of other factors. It'd be very very difficult to boil Interrupt down to something that could be displayed on a single plot (which is why I haven't tried). I may, in the future, see how far I can get with Interrupt DPS calculation - but for now, we can simply assume that Interrupt can be easily tuned to be as strong or as weak as OE wants it to be (they've got a few global variables in place).

It would be applied to everything. So previously if you were 1s attack, 1s recovery, 1s armor penalty, that's 3s total attack time. Then with 30% IAS (15 DEX under our system) that becomes 2.3s total attack time. And just to reiterate - I know the paper's long (boy do I know that xD), but we'd very much appreciate if anyone stumbling on to this thread takes the time to read the paper before replying - I've seen 1 or 2 posts so far that are answered in the paper, albiet maybe in the middle of a long paragraph or something.

And here it is. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68526-how-to-fix-the-attribute-design-in-pillars-of-eternity/ http://imgur.com/7drHiqr?tags Enjoy! :D