Josh Sawyer on Miss and Hit

[Hormalakh]

There is a question that has been asked on Josh's Formspring and I wanted people to share their opinions on the matter.

 

 

If armor determines how much damage you take. What dictates whether you hit/miss/dodge an attack in PE?

Right now, Tim, Steve, and I are experimenting with with a set of defenses that cover the basic "did you get hit?" mechanics of all sorts of attacks, from melee swings to arrows to fireballs to mind control spells. Currently, characters have a defense against melee attacks that attackers try to overcome (like AC without the armor component -- but with shields).

 

A "miss" against any defense translates to half minimum damage inflicted or half minimum duration on any sort of status effect. I.e. there aren't "full" misses, but mitigated effects. A hit is the standard damage/duration. A hit that is within the critical hit range does 150% max damage or duration.

 

This system is already implemented and seems to be working pretty well, but we'll continue to experiment with it.

 

Some people asked a few follow-up questions. Josh's answers have been highlighted in green.

 

Q: Wait...so neither the enemy nor your party members can ever miss? As in causing 0 damage/duration? Also what about critical misses?

 

Not currently, no. There is no special effect for a "critical miss".

 

Q: What made you decide that there shouldn't be a 0 damage miss. That is to say, what problem did you see with prior implementations of this that made you decide to try a new approach?

 

All-or-nothing results tend to produce large spikes in conflict resolution. On the extreme end, you have traditional AD&D spells like Disintegrate that either annihilate the target completely or... do nothing. More typically you have the standard to-hit roll that either results in normal damage or absolutely nothing. Because the gulf between success and failure results is so large, random chance has a very large impact how the conflict works out. This system normalizes the results. Our goal is to make your choice of tactic ultimately more important than the results of the die roll (though the die rolls still matter). If we're only implementing mechanics that are proven to be fun in RPGs, I'm not sure why we're talking about D&D's THAC0/BAB system. Players generally dislike the all-or-nothing results of those mechanics, which is why you saw a move away from it in 4E.

 

Q: Do you have any sort of source material on which you're basing this system? I'd assumed you're only implementing mechanics that have been proven to be fun in RPGs, ideally CRPGs.

 

As for source inspiration, 4E's dailies' miss results are a pretty good start. Also a lot of RTSs and MOBAs have moved to much more deterministic systems.

 

Q: That doesn't mean you should preclude 0 damage misses completely, especially in something as resource cheap as melee damage. Disintegrate was a resource heavy spell and I can understand that. Why not weigh your probability distributions and still have a 0 damage for those unable to pass a threshold like you are intending with lockpick and other events. Afterall, even a failed lockpick doesn't allow half of the party members through a locked door.

 

 

Locked doors are a traditionally problematic conflict resolution in games (as are most all-or-nothing checks) and, I think, highlight the problem rather than absolve it. My question is: how do "full" misses make gameplay better than mitigated results?

 

Q: It becomes a problem of victory through attrition. It can also limit the number of enemies attacking a party at one time. If you have 100 goblins and each always gets 1 point of damage even when they miss, that's a problem. Have you considered how this scales with lower-level and high-level party members? I can't simulate this, but does this adversely affect certain stages of the game more than others?

 

We're not planning on hundred enemy combats, but even at normal IE stages, I don't think it's a large problem. As for how it scales, we already know how standard THAC0/BAB scales (poorly), but it is one area we will continue to test.

 

Q: I'd wager that you're underestimating the fun of dodging and missing. It doesn't need to be as prominent as it was in Baldur's Gate-era missfests, but people like making characters that dodge all incoming damage. Also, the risk of doing no damage is fun.

 

I think you're overestimating the fun of dodging and missing. I don't think most players find it particularly enjoyable, and it's exacerbated/amplified in games like the new XCOM where players are constantly in stunned disbelief at the RNG.

 

What are your thoughts? Post them here or at Formspring if you wish.

http://www.formsprin...896189576204826

Edited January 3, 2013 by Hormalakh

[Malekith]

I have a question for Josh. I'll post some thoughts(not mine) in the matter and i hope he will see this post:

"

Is having a %miss chance better than the %glancing blow approach, and why?

In my opinion, it's definitely better.

 

First, when you always hit, you cause constant damage (per second) no matter how small. Even if you "miss" a lot, you still cause damage and winning a battle becomes about staying alive long enough. Sure, much like anything else this problem can be be circumvented by making staying alive long enough harder, but why create a problem in the first place?

 

Second, most systems have special attacks that cause significantly more damage. In DnD if you want to use Power Attack, you subtract a number from your to-hit chance and add it to damage. Simple, logical (in the design context), and effective. You lower your to-hit chance for some extra damage. In systems where you always hit, it becomes another problem. Who cares if you only do minor damage with glancing attacks if you can do 330 points of damage (mighty blow at lvl 17) that always hit? A full round of special attacks of my party was about 4x4-5x200-300=3,200-6,000 points. Wait 20 seconds and repeat.

 

Third, when you always hit, it creates bloated HP monsters (see above) designed to last long enough against DPS and special attacks, whereas in %miss games, the hit points can remain relatively low, allowing you to finish the fight quickly if you can hit your target, which in turn creates a difference between a great fighter and an ok one. Such difference is absent in Dragon Age 2.

 

Again, compare the battle with the mine dragon in act 3 to the battle with Firkraag in BG2. The proof is right there in the proverbial pudding.

 

Fourth, as you can see from DA2, when you always hit, you need 1 stat, not 2. From the design perspective, a 6 stat character system with 4-5 dump stats is pure ****ing garbage.

---

 

The player is usually much better at coordinating his characters and healing than the AI, so the player can easily keep his character(s) alive. In %miss systems staying alive doesn't mean much by itself, but in %glancing the enemy's health goes down with every second and staying alive for 2 min means a ****load of points of damage.

 

Yes, in poorly designed games (like Morrowind, for example, where you could gulp one potion after another), you can keep yourself alive long enough to overcome the odds, but I hope we can agree that this problem is much worse in "always hit" games.

 

Overall, the %glancing system can work, and I stated so in my earlier post, but it would require a lot of rules and restrictions just to fix the in-built problems it comes with. Why do the extra work when a better and easier to implement system, a system that doesn't cause HP monsters, which in turn causes more design problems, already exist?

 

My point was that the %miss system is better. DA2 vs DA, Oblivion vs MW (with all the flaws) certainly seem to support this point of view. If you disagree, please present some argument showing that %glancing is, in fact, a better system.

---

Let's try it again.

 

1) Any %miss system is designed with certain "how long should it take you to kill your opponents" expectations. The chance to miss plays a very important role as other than determining your combat prowess, it keeps the characters alive without inflating the HP (case in point, the AoD system where an avg character has about 35-40 hit points and can be killed in 3-4 hits) and makes a huge difference for characters who can hit the target more often.

 

2) A %glancing system is basically a %miss system where the chance aspect is either eliminated or, in case of DA2, kept but the miss value is increased for some idiotic reasons (deferred success? don't cry, little buddy, you didn't miss, you just didn't cause as much damage as you could have! good job!) from 0 to either a set value like in Gothic or % of full damage like in DA2, ranging from 3/4 to 1/10.

 

So, now, you have to add more to the HP just to compensate for that extra damage that's not really damage because you're actually missing. So now the formula for HP is "how long should it take you to kill your opponents, considering that you have X people doing Y damage per second just for the lulz". Hence the bloat.

 

The problem in DA2 is that the glancing damage is very high on casual (3/4) which adds a huge HP chunk, so when you play on Hard and do a lot less glancing damage, the bloat caused by the casual glancing damage remains. So, while it is the casual damage that's the main culprit here, it wouldn't have been an issue if the game was using a traditional %miss system.

 

 

 

Roguey said:

So no matter what, you will always do at least 5 damage (a glance system). And here's G2's monster tables. Starts out in the dozens, goes up to the low-mid hundreds, a few special ones are 1000, the last one has 2000.

 

Now here's some Dragon Age HP values, which uses the honest-to-goodness miss system:

 

The bear in Lothering: 1369, Broodmother: 2032 (with each tentacle having 698), high dragon: 4085 Kolgrim (the Reaver fellow): 1240, Gaxkang: 2140, Arl Howe: 1220, Ser Cauthrien: 3415, Archdemon: 4180. Regular enemy values are in the low-mid hundreds.

 

Seems more like Bioware being Bioware. Or no?

No.

 

First, you have to multiply the Gothic numbers by 4 (a party of 4 hits harder than a party of 1). Second, make adjustment for the defense in Gothic games. Let's say you're trying to hit a regular Orc and your damage is 150 points. His health is 300 points, so theoretically you can kill him in 2 strikes. Right? Wrong. His defense against weapons is 150 points, so you're only doing 5 min points of damage. You'll have to hit that very hard hitting orc 60 ****ing times. Orc elite - 450HP and 160 armor. 150 times until you can hit significantly harder than 160 points. Black troll - 1000 HP, 150 armor. Etc.

 

If you had a 4-men party in Gothic, orcs would have had 1200-1800 HP, trolls/dragons 4000, and that's not counting the insane DR.

---

This are parts of a discusion elsewere, mostly about dragon age 2 and mechanics in general. I'm curious about Josh's thoughts in the matter

[Hormalakh]

lol @Malekith. I was just reading those posts.

[Lephys]

I'm not against removing the always-present % chance to dodge/miss, but I don't know that necessarily excludes ALL instances of dodging/missing completely.

 

I mean, what about parrying? There's absolutely no parrying now? Or, everyone's so incompetent that they can NEVER parry a blade well enough for it not to cut into their shoulder? From a mechanic function standpoint, it's fine. But, I dunno... it kinda messes with immersion a bit. And what about ranged weapons? If you're running across a field at full sprint, and some rookie bandit with a makeshift crossbow spots you and lets fly a bolt, it ALWAYS grazes you?

 

I'm really just wondering, because I know Josh was just answering specific questions and didn't say "Here's literally everything there is to our miss/mitigation system, and we're totally done designing it!"

 

I'll tell you how they could kill 2 birds with one stone, though... Work the whole "Stamina damage only, no health damage" thing into the block/dodge system. It would fit perfectly with that, and now there would be a way in which to mitigate health damage. After all, if you've parried or dodged what was meant to tear into your abdomen (or through your armor), why would it cause health damage? But, maybe between the dodge, or the force of the blow through your armor, you'd still lose stamina.

 

Obviously balancing is in order, along with all the other contextual design factors, but it makes sense at-a-glance.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Lephys

[SunBroSolaire]

I'm not sure I see the problem. Whether they use a miss or glance system, it still boils down to the expected value of melee attacks over a period of time. If I can do 50 damage 50% of the time, and I attack once every 3 seconds, I'm averaging 8.33 dps. If you use a glancing system where I do 50 damage 50% of the time, and 10 damage 50% of the time, I'm averaging 10 dps. I see a lot of hate for dps based combat, but it comes down to the fundamentally the same thing over a long enough encounter, doesn't it? The only difference being, as JES said, random spikes. I don't think more randomness is necessarily such a great thing. I don't play pnp games though, so maybe some of you guys have a different perspective on this.

[Malekith]

I'm not sure I see the problem. Whether they use a miss or glance system, it still boils down to the expected value of melee attacks over a period of time. If I can do 50 damage 50% of the time, and I attack once every 3 seconds, I'm averaging 8.33 dps. If you use a glancing system where I do 50 damage 50% of the time, and 10 damage 50% of the time, I'm averaging 10 dps. I see a lot of hate for dps based combat, but it comes down to the fundamentally the same thing over a long enough encounter, doesn't it? The only difference being, as JES said, random spikes. I don't think more randomness is necessarily such a great thing. I don't play pnp games though, so maybe some of you guys have a different perspective on this.

That has lead in bosses that have 11000 hp and you clip at their health for 5 minutes,following the exact same tactic the whole time.that's not tactics,its tedious.Compare the dragon battles in BG2 and Dragon Age2.Firgraag had 180hp,the other dragons similar or even fewer.The encounters with each would last from 10 seconts(party wipe)to 2 minutes and were more memorable and chalenging than any modern game dragon fight.Dragon age dragon battle: you clip dragons health for 2 minutes(you just spam attacks ,on PC i just clicked on the dragon like it was Diablo or something),dragon flies on a rock,some dracochickens attack you.You kill them,dragon come again.You clip at his point for another 2 minutes(drinking a healing potion when nessesery)he flies away.Repeat the above 3 time and you won

[ogrezilla]

I like this a lot. Less RNG please.

[Gumbercules]

I'm not sure if I like the idea of attacks always doing at least some damage, but I have neither the information about this particular game nor the knowledge in general to state anything too vehemently. It seems especially weird for ranged attacks, since one of the hallmarks of fantasy is the enemy troopers who can't hit the side of a barn.

 

I do like the idea of having misses still cause some amount stamina damage but no health damage, as Lephys said. Also, maybe the damage doesn't have to occur for every miss. Instead, have the game track what the RNG is doing, and if it creates too many misses in a row, have it break things up by starting to deal partial damage. That way, you avoid the frustration of too much randomness but still retain some and keep some flavor as well.

[Pipyui]

What if full misses just drain stamina instead of stamina+health? We already know (inconclusively, of course) that hits will drain some ratio of stamina+health, so what if a full miss - e.g. block with a shield, dodge, parry - drains only stamina? A glancing blow could then still use the "half min damage" business, and randomness is still trimmed somewhat, though not as drastically.

 

Edit: Whoops! Only glanced through thread before posting. Looks like Lephys already addressed this.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Pipyui

[SunBroSolaire]

I'm not sure I see the problem. Whether they use a miss or glance system, it still boils down to the expected value of melee attacks over a period of time. If I can do 50 damage 50% of the time, and I attack once every 3 seconds, I'm averaging 8.33 dps. If you use a glancing system where I do 50 damage 50% of the time, and 10 damage 50% of the time, I'm averaging 10 dps. I see a lot of hate for dps based combat, but it comes down to the fundamentally the same thing over a long enough encounter, doesn't it? The only difference being, as JES said, random spikes. I don't think more randomness is necessarily such a great thing. I don't play pnp games though, so maybe some of you guys have a different perspective on this.

That has lead in bosses that have 11000 hp and you clip at their health for 5 minutes,following the exact same tactic the whole time.that's not tactics,its tedious.Compare the dragon battles in BG2 and Dragon Age2.Firgraag had 180hp,the other dragons similar or even fewer.The encounters with each would last from 10 seconts(party wipe)to 2 minutes and were more memorable and chalenging than any modern game dragon fight.Dragon age dragon battle: you clip dragons health for 2 minutes(you just spam attacks ,on PC i just clicked on the dragon like it was Diablo or something),dragon flies on a rock,some dracochickens attack you.You kill them,dragon come again.You clip at his point for another 2 minutes(drinking a healing potion when nessesery)he flies away.Repeat the above 3 time and you won

But how is it more "challenging" or interesting to have success riding on the rng? I don't like damage sponge bosses either, but I don't think a fight should be determined by attack rolls alone. I don't really see how this would necessarily lead to hp bloat either. If anything, it should allow the designer to have a better idea of the damage a party can inflict over a shorter period of time, and thus design shorter, more balanced encounters. The more random the attack rolls are, the longer the fight will have to be in order to be fair.

[Adhin]

@Lephys: That's what I was thinking after reading it, half min dmg done to stamina only on a 'miss' would make a lot of sense. Personally I prefer a mitigation system like this, they tend to be more balanced. DA2 issue's resulted from a lot of other crap completely different from that basic setup, such as armor becoming worse as you got higher in levels. Or an extreme case of base weapon dmg based off weapon lvl instead of the kind of weapon turning into some kinda Diablo on steroids non-sense for what should of been an RPG. DAO had a tiny bit of that with scaling weapon dmg based off lvl instead of due to being magic, a lesson you'd think they would of learned from DnD. Oddly the Mass Effect team relearned it for ME2-3 though for different reasons I guess.

 

Don't really think arrows should always hit, would like a literal dodge % chance somewhere for actual complete dmg ignore but his example was just for melee using shields. So, curious what else is in there but yeah. I like it so far and hope they go with only stamina on a miss. Also like how they're handling Crits being max dmg x1.5. Always hated it when my crit ended up being about the same as a normal max dmg roll in some games because it still used the base random values... so silly.

[Lephys]

But how is it more "challenging" or interesting to have success riding on the rng? I don't like damage sponge bosses either, but I don't think a fight should be determined by attack rolls alone. I don't really see how this would necessarily lead to hp bloat either. If anything, it should allow the designer to have a better idea of the damage a party can inflict over a shorter period of time, and thus design shorter, more balanced encounters. The more random the attack rolls are, the longer the fight will have to be in order to be fair.

 

It doesn't necessarily have to ride on RNG. But, removing the ability to completely negate (or, in this case, avoid) damage removes a strategic element from combat. Especially with ranged projectiles, which haven't really been specifically addressed by Josh, like I said.

 

It's not THAT big of a deal. The results are the same, really, from a game-mechanical standpoint. But, if you always take at least some damage, then you've got a world in which nothing ever physically misses anything else. Ever. That's just a little weird.

 

I dunno. Josh did say "Not currently, no." Also, we don't really know what other factors will be involved. If the combat's designed from the ground up with that in mind, then we might see all the pros with pretty much no cons.

[SunBroSolaire]

I agree that it feels weird when applied to projectiles.

 

I'm not really strongly in favor of either system over the other, just trying to wrap my head around people's objections.

[Lephys]

I like it so far and hope they go with only stamina on a miss. Also like how they're handling Crits being max dmg x1.5. Always hated it when my crit ended up being about the same as a normal max dmg roll in some games because it still used the base random values... so silly.

 

Indubidably. . I always hated that. "You do 1d4. But you critted! You rolled a 1... YOU DID 2 DAMAGE! YES!" That's a perfect example, though, of the kinds of unintentional downsides to RNG that they're trying to avoid. I respect that goal. Just as long as they aren't doing it "just because." You know... "I don't wanna do the laundry, so I burned all my clothes. PROBLEM SOLVED!"

 

Haha. Not that I have so little faith in them, I'm sure the splendor of P:E combat, in its finality, will make up for anything I miss (pun intended) in a system without misses.

[Heresiarch]

Actually, the fact that similar systems have been used only by RTS and action RPGs doesn't mean that you can't do it right in a cRPG.

 

The only thing to look out for is fast weapons becoming superior to slow weapons in general, because their small, but often dealt damage averages out better and, hence, plays better. Not every combat situation has the luxury of having "fair" RNG due to the law of large numbers.

 

P.S. Where "the only thing" means "the only thing I can think of from the top of my head", obviously. And, while I'm at it, it kinda nags me that they combine a no-miss system with only-natural healing mechanic. It is kind of obvious that battles are going to be a pain, if even kids armed with stick are going to do at least some damage to your characters.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Heresiarch

[Hormalakh]

Wow.... I guess I'm in the minority here. I'm not sure how missing (0 damage) suddenly equates to RNG-hate. Can someone explain this to me? The HP bloat problem really hasn't been addressed as well as the issue when considering risk/rewards in this sort of structure. While I don't necessarily have a problem with resource-heavy things like spells having minimum damage, resource-light mechanics like melee battle, seem a little less interesting when not considering the risk/reward of missing/hitting for higher damage.

 

I agree that it feels weird when applied to projectiles.

 

I'm not really strongly in favor of either system over the other, just trying to wrap my head around people's objections.

 

You are looking at averages over time and seeing that they play the same, whereas it's not the averages that matter or make the older approach interesting, it's the spikes and valleys over time that make one different than the other.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Hormalakh

[Malekith]

The bottom line for me is that even if all the changes they propose work in the end, still the game will play nothing like AD&D and the IE games.I would be ok with some changes,but so far it feels like they changed every single aspect of the game.All aspects of IE combat were problematic? And yet so many people donated having played the games so it can't be so bad.They promised an IE like experience.From that alone,they sould aim for a system between 3,5 and AD&D and not 3,5 and 4 edition,even if the more chaotic and random elements of AD&D don't agree with Josh design philosophy.Bacause the IE experience would be different without that randomness.Not worse or better,that is a matter of preference,but different.

 

To clarify, i trust Josh and Tim, and most of the changes i liked indiviually, but all of them together are making me feel lied to and the game will play nothing like IE games.Also it comes like Josh didn't liked the IE mechanics at all,or at least disagrees in principle with them.Nothing wrong with that,but in a IE succesor maybe he sould make the game more like them even if he don't like it.After all the game is not for him but for us,and many of us prefer the random nature of AD&D from the streamlind 4E.I'm talking about design directions and not about particullar editions,AD&D was pretty horrible in some aspects

Edited January 3, 2013 by Malekith

[SunBroSolaire]

Honestly I did not expect them to stick to the old d&d formula as closely as they have been. Seems like every mechanic or feature they announce is a slight variation on a d&d counterpart. I know it was supposed to be in the style of the IE games, but it's still an original world and RPG system. Imho being tied to the dice and turn based combat was the worst part of those games, and I wouldn't mind Obsidian straying even further from that.

Edited January 3, 2013 by SunBroSolaire

[Adhin]

Can't disagree with ya more on that one Malekith but that's just a difference of opinion really. As for HP 'bloat' that's not an inherent issue with this kind of system it's a symptom of how cRPG's (more often then not 'action' RPG's or MMO's) tend to handle 'difficulty'. They have an odd habit of just jacking up HP to extreme levels and call it a day. If you look at a Balor in 3E (or 3.5) AC vs a 20 fighter with a +5 weapon and 24 str (not counting extra buffs) the fighter has a 95%/90%/65%/40% chance to hit with his 4 attacks. Other then a few freak rolls he's going to be hitting with his first 2 hits rather consistently, with a pretty good chance of the third landing, 4th is kinda a crapshoot but not as bad as it could be. If you replace that setup with a single %chance to do crappy damage the fight doesn't get much longer or shorter. Also keep in mind that on a crit hes doing x2 or x3 depending on his weapon and he can have a pretty solid chance of that on a higher end roll. With there current system crits always do max and x1.5 dmg can potentially make up a bit of that.

 

The biggest issue I see with the hit/miss system is its general exploitability. Working on pure AC in DnD could, for the most part, make you nearly untouchable and if on a 20 roll they couldn't hit you normally it was almost impossible for them to even get a crit on there 5% chance to hit you. With there current system you'd always at least be taking some immediate damage (maybe just stamina damage, hopefully) which at least keeps things dangerous so you can't just make a super tank who can't really be hurt the vast majority of time.

 

I just think people are using some poor examples for why they will just start having bloated HP. If they want a fight to last a short time, say generally 3-4 hits. A system based around always hitting will ensure that fight is a short one, a black and white hit or miss system can throw a wrench into it and make stuff take much, much longer then was intended just due to some bad choices on the players part. Or as I mentioned above, super tank which can get out of hand.

[rjshae]

I'm not sure I see the problem. Whether they use a miss or glance system, it still boils down to the expected value of melee attacks over a period of time. If I can do 50 damage 50% of the time, and I attack once every 3 seconds, I'm averaging 8.33 dps. If you use a glancing system where I do 50 damage 50% of the time, and 10 damage 50% of the time, I'm averaging 10 dps. I see a lot of hate for dps based combat, but it comes down to the fundamentally the same thing over a long enough encounter, doesn't it? The only difference being, as JES said, random spikes. I don't think more randomness is necessarily such a great thing. I don't play pnp games though, so maybe some of you guys have a different perspective on this.

Oh sure, stick one hand in boiling water and the other hand in ice water, then on average you're comfortable...

 

But then I suppose the "hit point total" as such is kind of a fake damage counter anyway.

Edited January 3, 2013 by rjshae

[Lephys]

Wow.... I guess I'm in the minority here. I'm not sure how missing (0 damage) suddenly equates to RNG-hate. Can someone explain this to me? The HP bloat problem really hasn't been addressed as well as the issue when considering risk/rewards in this sort of structure. While I don't necessarily have a problem with resource-heavy things like spells having minimum damage, resource-light mechanics like melee battle, seem a little less interesting when not considering the risk/reward of missing/hitting for higher damage.

 

Well, it's more the system of allowing missing/evasion to be a significant aspect of character development. You know, when the Rogue gets like 20% evasion. You have instances of the Rogue getting 5 dodge rolls in a row, and slaying like 2 trolls. And, on the flip side, you have instances of his high evasion counting for nill when he gets hit 10 times in a row when you sent him into battle with the expectation of him dodging about 1-in-5 attacks. Then again, if you say "Okay, everyone gets like 2% evasion, MAX!", then hardly anyone cares about the fact that evasion's still in. It becomes a cake crumb.

 

So, I see their reasoning. And you've still got varied damage. Especially with the way they're handling the damage range, what with a "block" or whatever we're going to call an until-recently-called-"miss" dealing not half of whatever damage you happened to do, but specifically half of your MINIMUM damage. And crits will be doing 1.5X (I'm sure that's just a base) your MAX damage. So, that gives you the damage fluctuation. Really, the only difference that matters at least to the function of gameplay is that the damage and HP values will have to be balanced in accordance with always-hit damage in mind. In other words, even if the 0-damage situations are gone, you can reduce the damage ceiling on crits and best-case scenarios and still be dealing with the same combat times and health pools and such, really.

 

My only question is: Why not simply eliminate the RNG from evasion, and link it to active skills and such? Not super-crazy twitchy things. Like setup skills (block-and-counter, etc.). I mean, they've already said the Rogue gets Reversal, which sort of parries the next incoming attack (and the Rogue takes reduced damage), then has him roll around behind his opponent. Why not use things like that, instead? Again, though, we don't know what else they're planning for combat. It might be disable-heavy, with lots of "you basically can't attack me for this duration, so it's the same thing as me dodging" moves. As long as such things are short and require intelligent use, rather than traditional "stun-lock" systems, I don't see us losing anything that isn't getting made up for in gratuitous helpings of awesome.

 

Also... something else to consider in an evasion-less system: Traps. Are our characters completely unable to duck beneath giant swinging axe blades or streams of poison darts? Does a trap system work with 0% evasion? Perhaps. I just didn't think about traps until now.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Lephys

[Osvir]

What is a Hit and what is a Miss?

 

Sounds simple enough and I don't think anyone needs to explain that.

 

To me it sounds more like "This is what we've got thus far" more so than something about "This is what we are intending to do" (that whole Formspring discussion).

 

How is Obsidian thinking about this? You "Hit" the enemy, does that remove their health or their Stamina? What kind of strike did you manage to do? Likewise, what does it imply when you are getting hit? Do you lose Stamina or Health? If Stamina I can see how you lose half your stamina if the enemy "misses" you. What is it that you do that makes them miss you? (Kind of)

 

Example of suggestion/if this is how it works (let's say you've got 100 stamina):

1. You attack enemy (lose some minor 1-5 Stamina? Does a critical hit cost more stamina? Critical miss?)

2. Enemy attacks you, does the 1/2 "miss" attack. You lose 1/2 of the stamina of if they had hit? (Because you blocked/dodged) if they had done 20 Stamina damage originally, you'd lose 10 Stamina.

 

Narratively, in the combat log, it could say "You blocked!" or "You parried" or "You dodged!" etc. etc.. Hence mitigating some of the Stamina loss you could have taken. If the attack would break through that, however, you'd take health damage.

 

The point to remember when discussing this topic: Don't forget that it is Stamina that is your "Main Health Pool", Mortality is a second layer which probably gets implemented on top of the Stamina mechanic.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Osvir

[Malekith]

Can't disagree with ya more on that one Malekith but that's just a difference of opinion really. As for HP 'bloat' that's not an inherent issue with this kind of system it's a symptom of how cRPG's (more often then not 'action' RPG's or MMO's) tend to handle 'difficulty'. They have an odd habit of just jacking up HP to extreme levels and call it a day. If you look at a Balor in 3E (or 3.5) AC vs a 20 fighter with a +5 weapon and 24 str (not counting extra buffs) the fighter has a 95%/90%/65%/40% chance to hit with his 4 attacks. Other then a few freak rolls he's going to be hitting with his first 2 hits rather consistently, with a pretty good chance of the third landing, 4th is kinda a crapshoot but not as bad as it could be. If you replace that setup with a single %chance to do crappy damage the fight doesn't get much longer or shorter. Also keep in mind that on a crit hes doing x2 or x3 depending on his weapon and he can have a pretty solid chance of that on a higher end roll. With there current system crits always do max and x1.5 dmg can potentially make up a bit of that.

 

The biggest issue I see with the hit/miss system is its general exploitability. Working on pure AC in DnD could, for the most part, make you nearly untouchable and if on a 20 roll they couldn't hit you normally it was almost impossible for them to even get a crit on there 5% chance to hit you. With there current system you'd always at least be taking some immediate damage (maybe just stamina damage, hopefully) which at least keeps things dangerous so you can't just make a super tank who can't really be hurt the vast majority of time.

 

I just think people are using some poor examples for why they will just start having bloated HP. If they want a fight to last a short time, say generally 3-4 hits. A system based around always hitting will ensure that fight is a short one, a black and white hit or miss system can throw a wrench into it and make stuff take much, much longer then was intended just due to some bad choices on the players part. Or as I mentioned above, super tank which can get out of hand.

Oh, i agree it's a matter of preference.And i don't have a great love for AD&D either.But I liked the way IE games played. I was fine with their implementations.So with this game i hoped for something similar.Also the randomness and "spikes" made the encounters diffirent from each other and even the same battle would not be the same two times in a row.With Sawyers approach the fights would be a lot more homogenised and repeatetive in the long run. Also read my very first post and give your thoughts

Edited January 3, 2013 by Malekith

[Lephys]

True, Osvir. It's just that, so far, they haven't mentioned any damage that doesn't hit both your Stamina and your Health. So, I guess we're sort of discussing the possibility, until we hear otherwise. That isn't to say they aren't planning something and just haven't told us yet.

[Adhin]

Couldn't agree more with ya Lephys. And also, to prove my point that it wont actually require HP 'bloating' I went and used the exact same % values they've given, using a Longsword (19-20 range, no feats for bonuses) and you can kill a Balor (20d8, 30 con, max hp at 360) in 5-6 Rounds. Avg dmg output per rounds 21/20/14/9 = 64 per turn. Takes 5.6 rounds to kill a Balor with that dmg output with a single fighter. Going off a 5% crit chance with there x1.5 max dmg and a half of the min dmg on a miss and using the same miss percents as before (95%/90%/65%/40%) it's a bit surprising, It's exactly 5 turns, instead of 6, so it goes only a tiny bit faster.

 

Base DnD 3.5 vs 360 hp :: 21/20/14/9 = 64 per turn - 6 turns (5.6)

PE using Same %, 360hp : 20/20/17/14 = 72 per turn - 5 turns

 

You could up that to 400 hp to get 6 turns if you really wanted but that's not much of a bloat.

 

-edit-

@Malekith: I did already, read the whole thread before posting. Part of why I posted was a lot of that and the QA part in the first post. All I got to say is what I've already said. HP bloat isn't a product of this kind of system, it's a byproduct of bad difficulty design in games over the past few years on computers. A LOT of that comes from 'time investment'. Think of big HP pools as 'filler content'. If they make fights take longer they can extent the length of there game that much with out adding any extra work to make real content. Granted even with out that a lot of those games are still chock full of 'stuffs' but still.

 

There is no real need for major HP bloat and crits or crap dmg are already highs and lows. I would like a dodge stat specifically to ignore, as Lephys mentioned at one point 20% or something but I'd prefer that as a use skill and/or passives then something thats apart of attributes and all armor.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Adhin