Creature Stat Modifiers

[Udgard]

A post No One made a while ago made me think, how many people nowadays use a Knator? A Master Lorerootian Archer? They were well designed with unique advantages and disadvantages. The archer, for example, was built with high attack power and initiative despite limitations in targeting. The knator is a very strong attacker with high attack power (more than twice the base damage of a chaos archer). Yet, nobody uses them nowadays because their advantages are far eclipsed by personal stats (and now, tokens) that their use is most of the time not the best course of action to take.

What I am proposing is a way to make them useful again, and make varying creature combination useful again.

How?

My proposed idea is simple. Give all creatures different modifier for stats. These modifier works as a multiplier for the final stats on the creature (after taking into account personal stats and token bonus on the creature). For example, a Master Lorerootian Archer with a base attack of 200 (random number taken to avoid spoiler), no tokens, 500 personal stats effect and and attack modifier of 1.6 would have (200+500)*1.6 = 1120 attack power. A chaos archer within the same ritual, with a base atk of 100 (again, random number), no tokens, 500 personal stats effect and an attack modifier of 1.2 will have (100+500)*1.2=720 attack power.
Modifier would be available on all possible battle stats (initiative, defense, power), although some modifier can be left at 1 to avoid too much confusion. With this proposed idea, a creatures' worth will no longer be determined only by the ability to target all or its aura, but on how well its modifier will support a certain combat strategy. Rituals involving hard-hitting single targeters will be viable instead of just an attack all ritual, because modifiers can be adjusted depending on the creature's abilities. This will open up a lot of customization possibilities for rituals and help bring strategy back to MD once again. In time, it will also open new possbilities to creature development, because customization doesn't need to be only in auras/abilities, but can be in modifiers as well.

Please share you opinion on this.

[Kyphis the Bard]

I like this idea, but testing values would be very hard.

And depending on how you integrate the stats applied via slider, you either end up making the divide between high stat and low stat players worse, or making stats almost irrelevant...

I think it an interesting idea, but very easily bugged or exploited >.>

(Not fully conciouse, if my English or Reasoning isn't very good, bah. Bah I Say!)

[smartalekrj]

this woud allowed waaaaay too many bugs to be exploited all over again... and almost all the bugs are just getting fixed :-P

[AqlBeast]

Both LR archer and Kanator does not have any special influence in battle. May I propose giving each one of these creatures its own special influence?

Kanator (being a commander) may have the Creatureboost Influence at second to maxed level and a new special influence at maxed level--the War Influence will increase the initiative of each creature within the ritual by 1 skill stat.

LR archer at maxed level may have a new special influence as well. Since archers are known for their accuracy, maybe giving LR archer an Accuracy Influence to help ccreatures with Haotic Damage within the ritual always have +50% damage instead of + or - 50%.

I think new special influence may be the key to encourage players to test and use these creatures within a battle. Such is the case for Bird, which is really weak but has lots of special influences.

Possible influence to consider: (there are unlimited influence to consider out there)

War Influence--all creature in ritual gains 1 initiative stat
Accuracy Influence--all creature in ritual that does haotic damage gets +50% damage
Critical Influence--other than luck stat, this influence provides another chance to double the damage dealt

Also someone tell me what happen to Creature Stat Team? I was on it but now has no idea what is up ever since I haven't seen Eden. Want to continue creating special influence such as Freeze and Haste my ideas.

[AqlBeast]

Btw...not sure modifiers will be great for the game at this point. Alliance enables attacking between different MP too much. Also making the strong stronger but the avergae remains average. Minimum change is the best when we only want a change in player using a certain creature more in ritual. Equilizing a creature shouldn't come at the cost of widening a whole lot of attackpower between players.

[Udgard]

As for the numbers itself, I know there's a lot of testing to be done before it can be implemented. Modifiers doesn't have to be higher than 1, some of it can also be lower than 1 (0.8, for example). That way we can avoid enlarging the gap too much.

[AqlBeast]

Not sure if I am thinking correctly on this matter, but here is what I thought. Please clarify for me as I am still unclear.

Let's see here:

Strong players average around 2000 to 3000 attacks stats.
Average players average around 500 to 1500 attacks stats.
New players possibly between 200 to 500 attacks stats.
The creature attack stats remains the same for everyone therefore uncalculated.

Prior to the involvement of tokens:
Use of 1.08 modifiers

Strong players new range is 2160 to 3240 attacks stats. [gain from 160 to 240]
Average players new range is 540 to 1620 attacks stats. [gain 40 to 120]
New players new range is 216 to 540 attacks stats. [gain 16 to 40]

Actually not that bad if the tokens effects are not calculated and players attack other players of the same capabilities. This form of modifiers actually influence the player's personal stats within the ritual. I will be happy to support it when all the creatures have been setup. Too much going on right now and too much time is needed to test the modifiers.

[Czez]

Why not give greater gains to weaker players? Make these creatures more useful only at a certain level, like aramors, but cap the advantage later? And really it's the targets that makes them less desireable for most situations.

[Blackwoodforest]

Why not give those (and other) creatures "natural enemies"? For example. A Knator has a +30% attack if a drachorn is in the enemy rit, or -15% def if there are chaos archers in there? I guess this will bring a big change in the whole battle system.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Even with no stats and no tokens the LR archers were pretty much useless. I won't go into why, but I have been thinking about this for a while. And a bonus of 1.08? Who cares? An extra 40 to 120 damage doesn't make up for the fact that the darn thing is hitting 1/6th of the critters others attack. So I will say that I like Udgards idea, though for the sake of not needing to change current critters attack values I suggest having the multiplier apply only to the stats and token effects. IE, a LR archer with an attack of 200 (random number) with influence of 200 stat attack and 3k token attack with a multiplier of x2.5 would be 200+(3k+200)*2.5. Otherwise you are messing with the base attack, which is (supposedly) balanced already.

[Udgard]

For 0.8 modifiers, I mean the final stats will be total stats * 0.8, not total stats* 1.08. I kno this might seem weird at first; that's not a boost, that's a nerf! Yes, it does make the stat (let's take attack as an example) weaker, but I'm hoping that it ould balance out with the craeture's other abilities and attack targets. So a lv 5 dark archer can have 0.8 modifier, chaos archers maybe 0.9, and lorerootian archers something like 1.25 (subject to further balancing, of course). While reducing creature attacks might seem like a no-no at first, if this is implemented, everyone's going to be affectd, so no one's at a disadvantage because of this.

I'm trying not to make creatures only useful at certain levels, because one of my main objectives with this system is to make creature variation something that people do on all levels. Right now, only new players ever use aramors. What I aim is a state where even veterans will consider aramors on their rit (for example, we can give aramors decent attack mod to offset their targeting, and a decent defense mod - making it a balanced offensive and defensive creature, while archers might have more attack but less defense mod).

[AqlBeast]

Loads of testing involved for this one but the advantages of having it doesn't seem to alleviate the situation regarding more usages of old creature such as LR archer and Kanator. To address your concern on certain creatures not being used in a ritual, may I bring in the fact that a maxed Joker (with its large stat compare to LR archer) is rarely being used in the ritual now. Players seem to recruit and train them for collection purpose, which is fine as well in my opinion. There seems to be no way in which ritual may be modify to beat a ritual with drachorns, especially rusties. May as well try to make the game more interesting by creating new special influences for current creatures and new incoming creatures. Special influences that may possibly give a better chance of winning if there is not a significantly large amount of differences in stats. Special influence such as Freeze or War or Haste (possible special influence for new creatures), which may enable a creature to use its ability twice per round or boost initiative.

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Always share your opinion by voting other player's post up or down

Edited October 7, 2009 by AqlBeast

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Jokers aren't used because they are worse than LR archers... If LR archers did twice as much, three times as much damage as a drachorn, maybe some people (people without rusties/BPs/Imperials/tokens) would use them. Udgards solution works fine, and is quite simplistic. Well, that is that it works fine before accounting for auras. But that goes with most things in the game...

[Rendril]

I think the stat modifiers are a great idea.

The reason for the imballance is that the increases are not proportional.
Giving a static increase to the stat causes this imballance, for example if 2 students have a test and frist student scores 100% while the other scores 50%, and the teacher decides to give and increase onto the mark by 20, first student gets 120% and second has 70% but the proportional increase for student 2 was higher and he benefited more.


I would like a proportional stat modifier but rather than implementing new modifiers for the creatures, just use the given stats as the modifier.
This is what I propose:
[b]Creature's stat in the battle = creature's stat * (your personal stat / 100)[/b]

This is how it would work:
You assign a %-slider before the battle as always, this determineswhat part of your stats are given to the ritual.
Let us say you have 600 of some personal stat, call it [i]stat S[/i].
You use 2 creatures, creature A and creature B.
[i]Creature A[/i] has stat S of 200.
[i]Creature B[/i] has stat S of 100.

Lets say you set the slider to 100%, you give to each creature [i]300 stat S[/i] (600 * 100 / 100 / 2).
Now each creature gets their stat S modified as given in the formula.
[b]Creature A's stat S = 200 * (300 / 100) = 600.
Creature B's stat S = 100 * (300 / 100) = 300.[/b]

Ritual's total stat S = 900.

The difference however is that the individual creatures will get stronger proportionally, and thus it would not simply be a matter of what it can target.



I am aware that having less than 100 of a stat (or settign slider to 0%) would mean a decrease to the creature's performance.
It can be solved by either: using a multiplier of 1 (thereby not affecting the creature's stat) or applying a different forumla such as [b]creature's stat in the battle = creature's stat * (your personal stat / 100 [u]+ 1[/u])[/b]


It can be applied to any creature stat, including the VE increase, and used for the increase from tokens.


This means no new fields needed for the creatures by using the creatures' existing strengths and weaknesses, performing only a simple pre-battle calculation.

Edited October 11, 2009 by Rendril

[Udgard]

Bumping this so it won't get forgotten. I like Rendril's idea (it's better and easier to implement than mine), and this would make non-all targeting creatures a good strategic choice again. Any new comments (after a year o_o)?

[pipster]

personally i don't think this should be changed. as you grow stronger you should move to stranger creatures. not make the lower creatures stronger.

the LR archer is bad but not for the reasons listed here, he just gives nothing worth while when sacrificing him. the knator can be very useful depending who your attacking and just how big there stats are. both are very easy to level up which is the key for newer players. so why make them uber strong?

[Udgard]

Not make them uber strong, but make creatures useful at all stages. Right now the only use for knators are just for mp3s, when the huge attack it has can still offset its targeting. Right now, when we get stronger we do not move to stranger creatures; rather we move to all-targeting creatures, or the closest we can get to it (energy burn and life steal has no all-targets, so multi would have to suffice). Stats increase at a very fast rate and creature base stats almost has little to no effect on choosing the creature, the targeting is the only factor that determines the choice. All-targeting creatures has lower attack than multi-targeting and single targeting creatures to balance their power, but this factor has been erased with the humongous size that personal stats has in comparison to the creature's stats. The creatures won't be uber strong; their strength is proportional to the player who owns them, but with this those creatures actually has a chance to compete against the standard target all creatures (archers, drachs) and will actually promote more strategy rather than farm as much attack and use an all targeting creature.

[pipster]

just for mp3? i been using mine for a while now, in fact just the other day i bought a new one! they are not bad to chuck into the mix. but your right about one thing drachs are way more powerful and i can't help to think no matter what you do with these lower ones those will be used as main creatures by the grinders.

[Udgard]

With how things are, I won't even need to compare it do draches. 99% of the time, a non-boosted chaos archer already works way better than knators.

[Rendril]

I'm not sure how well the formula would scale with stats above 1000. Numbers will probably need tweaking.
Does anyone have some other ideas?

[Kafuuka]

I think you should further simplify your formula's.
Define X the amount of stat added to a ritual by the player and A, B, C the innate stats of the creatures, then the easiest way to redistribute X to the creatures is:
A + X * A / (A + B + C) for creature a;
B + X * B / (A + B + C) for creature b;
C + X * C / (A + B + C) for creature c.
sum = A + B + C + X. Thus it adds exactly X all the time.

Alternatively you could invent a new stat for creatures, intelligence. So creature a has innate attack AA and intellect AI, creature b has innate attack BA and intellect BI etc. the new skills become:
AA + X * AI / (AI + BI + CI) for creature a;
BA + X * BI / (AI + BI + CI) for creature b;
CA + X * CI / (AI + BI + CI) for creature c.
sum = AA + BA + CA + X.

The first option is more interesting for efficiently distributing stats. eg a creature with zero power will not receive any additional power skill, while creatures that have a power stat will gain a larger share. Assuming that creatures only have zero for a stat that they can't use, this is nice. However the redistribution cannot be tweaked to favor specific creatures without altering their base stats. The second scheme allows that by including an intelligence or 'capacity to learn' skill or whatever one wants to name it. You could make these skills stat-specific to have the best of both worlds, but I think that would be highly noob unfriendly, while having a single skill is easy to calculate.
Unless I'm thoroughly mistaken, the current mechanic is the second scheme with all learning factors equal to one, so the second scheme is also a more 'natural' extension of the current mechanics.
I'd also propose to add tokens separately from the personal influence bonus.

A downside of both schemes is that using only a single type of creatures in a ritual has no added benefits. Removing this limitation is impossible without constraining on X. The constraint helps fix your scaling problem, although other acceptable solutions certainly exist.

Personally I think intellect skill could be very fun, if combined with new tokens, 'genius' and 'stupid'. Mixing dumb and genius creatures might create stronger rituals, while the randomness of tokens is sure to add agony for everyone.

[Burns]

Random thought, since i play Pokemon on my good old Game Boy again to pass time on duty:
You could also consider giving creatures strenghts and weaknesses against certain other creatures, like psycho beats poison, if you know what i'm talking about, fellow freaks out there...

e.g., grasan doesn't bother for archer's arrows, and is very strong against fragile creatures like hollow warriors. Ele is weak against a water daimon, but devasting against an aramor. Drachorn burns archers, but loses to the magics of tormented soul. Etc.Etc.

[Kamisha]

This was looked at by a previous post it was disregarded as people started adding formulas. I personally think this would unbalance things. Instead of playing with strategy you would be playing a bizarre chance game. Sort of like rock paper scissors. Its not as pronounced in Pokemon because of leveling but play "tom clancys endwar" (actually a good game I recommend trying it although what im about to say about it) you know what I am talking about.

[No one]

[quote name='Rendril' timestamp='1255253800' post='44381']
I think the stat modifiers are a great idea.

This is what I propose:
[b]Creature's stat in the battle = creature's stat * (your personal stat / 100)[/b]
[/quote]

I think I'm lost here . I do hope that you don't plan to use creature's stat to MULTIPLY with percentages of player's stats.

Should I remember you that there are creatures that have (in lower lvls) like 15-20 and in highest lvl 100?

Or ... you might want to compute the formula with personal stats under 100 ?

Just keep the formula simple with addition.



As for the rest of ____ proposals you really must be kidding me. A game must be simple to be understood by "new ppl".

If you find it too simple and imbalanced ... you should try starting as MP3 again and after that ask a new player how simple / complicated this game is.

[Rendril]

[quote name='No one' timestamp='1288880731' post='71434']
I think I'm lost here . I do hope that you don't plan to use creature's stat to MULTIPLY with percentages of player's stats.
[/quote]
Yes, I suggested they get multiplied. The point was to preserve the usefulness of the creature, for example: while a creature might have 10 times the attack of another, it's targeting or aura might not make up for it.