Designer Journal - "Care Bear Stare" - Friday, March 10, 2006

finaltom

i understand what that meant completely.

What i would also like to see is a graph of what the current combat system would look like. By what i see here for the CR2.0 the current system wouldn't be that straight of a rainbow. the numbers for the current system seem more individualy based per npc and per player ability. But then it would be hard to base a graph on the current system, because it is based more on the hit ratio then your defence, skill, dodge range, ability, and so forth.

so thank you for a more predise look at how a decicion is made when adjusting the combat system.

FINALTOM

**jeffers**

ReguIus wrote:
I just don't understand this

Hehe, if you don't label your cells properly then you may end up changing the wrong thing (hence all the bonuses being applied at less then 1% I assume). SMILEY

Nice artical (gives an insight anyway), I prefer the original name of the spreadsheet though, I think you should change it back Frog. :p

And devious players using things against NPC's? I can't believe you'd even suggest such a thing. :o

Jeffers

**Tytanya_MxO**

A welcome insight into the design process and I hope at some stage more details such as this can be released perhaps to offset the information we have lost by no longer seeing roll values. Although something may sound easy on paper, putting it into practice is a whole different matter; sometimes an appreciation we lose in our enthusiasm to request changes etc (well I know I'm guilty anyways SMILEY

)

On a practical front does this affect the current colour conning system as without average damage resistance the threat level range appears extended?

Venatrix.

I actually understood this. SMILEY

**Bethlehem**

ummmm /huh?

need something to reference to, ie what does the combat system on live look like (as suggested above)

it is pretty tho! lol

**Tarrega**

Man, too bad I dont speak computer, lol.

SilentW

Understood that one pretty well... hmm, maybe all there is to designing games is pretty colors in Excel ^_^
All jokes aside, though, that's smegging awesome! It's so cool to play a game for a long, long time, and then FINALLY get to see how it actually works. Bring us more, HCFrog! WE LIKE NUMBERS AND CHARTS!

Dodge_THIS · 03/11/2006 16:29:08

Sosuke1 wrote:

Why gets a lvl 1-8, or lvl 19-41 less damage from a lvl 14 NPC than from a lvl 13. Roughly the same for lvl 26 and 27 NPC´s.

I don't think you were reading that correctly (granted, the numbers are hard to make out). All the damage numbers appear to scale correctly based on the player level vs. NPC level.

Looks good, HCFrog! I was hoping for a pie chart, though! :smileytongue:

Message Edited by digitize on 03-11-200607:29 PM

Cognoscente

Well, that was very nice. Complicated but nice. I really appreciate all the hard work you guys do. I figured you all used something like that to figure your complex equations.

Now if I only had my CQ ladder ranking equation table system, I'd show ya... but it's back home on my computer. If you all don't eventually give us a ranking system with CQs, we could always settle for nice XML readouts for our characters. Sorta like other games that are out there right now.

- Cog

Sosuke

digitize wrote:

Sosuke1 wrote:

Why gets a lvl 1-8, or lvl 19-41 less damage from a lvl 14 NPC than from a lvl 13. Roughly the same for lvl 26 and 27 NPC´s.

I don't think you were reading that correctly (granted, the numbers are hard to make out). All the damage numbers appear to scale correctly based on the player level vs. NPC level.

Nope, they dont scale correctly based on the player level, but thx for the answer anyway.

For what reason did I post a picture?

reznik

Looks good. Can't wait to see it on the normal server.

**MxOElliMann**

Yay! It's a Norwegian on the screenie!

**Casandre**

Yah.. the level 14 numbers are off... Is anybody else worried about how qickly the DPS scales in the "conning ranges"? Greys scale slowly and Purples scale slowly (and in the above case backwards) but from green to red there's a huge diff. I have a feeling the bottom line wasn't an actual DPS number but secs. per kill... That seems backwards to me. And "as intended" is going to be a grey term.

Now here's the thing. Level based mitigation *sigh*. Now I'm a johnnie come lately to this discussion but as I understand it this means that by 'dinging' you will magically be more resistant to an attack. This seems to be a constant theme through SOE games and one I'm still not entirely comfortable with. It seems to me that this is also a 180 degree from the original concept. Wasn't mitigation going to be based largely on attribute point allocation, which is obviously level dependent, and item bonuses with level bonuses being the smallish tweaks?

That's a big balancing act but one I kinda' liked. Obviously with one point allocation you were turning what, 8 or 10 knobs at once in big jumps and leaving the other 30 or so largely unchanged. When you get the knobs turned correctly in relation to one another then you could add additional balance with gated loot drops (e.g. construct loot) and the like. This way you would reward the savvy player who takes the time to study the pros and cons of attribute/clothing combos instead of a blanket-- 5 level dfferential get out of jail free card (obviously an exaggeration).

I like the idea of a mismanaged or poorly equipped character getting beat up by a grey con or a lowbie. Now it would have to be a perfect storm for that sort of thing to happen. If you guys work without a net then it should be only fair that you allow the players to also.

kapinator

You guys rock! I know how hard it is to make this kind of change mid-stream and the effort it takes to pull it off like you guys are.

Keep up the good work!

AOK

Jilted1

Kudos to HCFrog for the write up. Those are some alright spreadsheets, but if that's all you need to know to be an SOE Dev where do I apply. :smileywink:

Impressive system though, nice to have some insight into the Dev proccess, and I expect those spreadsheets in my inbox within 24 hours thank you.

-Jilted