Difficulty over Time

[BobTheJanitor]

It's an interesting problem, for sure, and one as old as computer RPGs. Although there's no traditional gear in this game, the spells are effectively your gear. And if I get a new rank of fireball it had better put out some bigger numbers than the old rank of fireball, or I will feel like I haven't progressed at all. But if the damage keeps adding up exponentially, eventually my fireball is going to be doing 9.99999999999999999999999989999e+55 damage, and that just won't make any sense. This is pretty much exactly why every progression based game eventually has a cap. If you can find a way to make the explosions always seem bigger as I move forward, without the numbers going off the side of the screen, I will applaud.

[Terraziel]

And correct me if I'm wrong, but the goal of this thread is that we WANT "1% damage at lvl 1 to lvl 1 monster every hit and then doing same 1% damage at lvl 10 to lvl 10 monster," right?  Or at the very least we want a pretty slight monster health buff increase as these numbers go up, but even that causes problems when the civ level gets high past a certain point.

The trick is to not rely just on this, but rather to have it so that by the time you hit level 10 you're fighting so many newer and more difficult monsters that you don't notice the relative damage amounts either way.  I think the numbers game IS inherently boring to some extent, but it's also absolutely vital so that there can be an infinite progression and basically serial campaigns in a single world, etc.

I think rather than wanting "1% damage at lvl 1 to lvl 1 monster every hit and then doing same 1% damage at lvl 10 to lvl 10 monster," which sounds sort of intuitively boring, it is an inevitable consequence of trying to fit infinity into anything with any ease. Also I think it important to note that the sentence should be...

"1% damage at lvl 1 to a lvl 1 monster with the correct relative tier spell every hit ,and then doing same 1% damage at lvl 10 to lvl 10 monster with the correct relative tier spell"

The way to keep it interesting is, as was noted, varied content, most people won't care or notice that a bat takes 2 shots at level 1, 2 shots at level 10 and 2 shots at level 2000, so long as there interaction with said bats is interspersed with more enemies,  killing three bats is an entirely different experience to killing two bats and a shadow bat, it doesn't matter that the bat itself hasn't changed it has instantly become more irritating due to context.

[x4000]

I think that what's going to wind up happening is that as you level up your old gear's numbers get lower, actually, and you get new gear that has damage output that is higher again.  So it's very much a treadmill, despite the fact that the tier number and civilization level continue to go up, but that's true in any case.  And you'd still smack the heck out of lower-level monsters because as the civilization level goes up THEIR numbers go down just like the equipment numbers do.

Anything that's equal to the civ level would essentially seem to be in stasis, and anything higher or lower than it would constantly be going down in stats every time you level up.  So when you level up, your stuff and the enemies all get worse at the same rate, but new stuff that isn't yet worse opens up, as do more powerful enemies.  I think this is the only clean way to handle health and MP, too.

It's a really different sort of approach than the traditional model, but in no way is this an RPG.  The progression element here has a lot of non-numerical effects on the game, such as opening up new things to find, opening up more of the world map, and so on.  So there's a tangible linear side there, too, where you make progress that doesn't "degrade" with time.

And you're right, this is the inevitable byproduct of trying to fit infinity into anything.  But this game isn't about "hey, come grind some levels and get those numbers higher!" at its core.  At its core it's about exploring and finding new stuff, and always having a challenge that's higher-level than you that is interesting to take on.  That second one requires the infinity bit, and the first one makes the numbers game fade into the background for most players (I expect) so long as the relative difficulty isn't mysteriously dropping as they play.

[Armanant]

I am absolutely stoked to have helped precipitate some changes! Looking great and is pretty much exactly the kind of thing I was meaning  Now I better sleep, 6am has rolled past 

Arg, post while I was typing - Yeh, IMO random is 'good' if the player can do something about it, and drastically less so when they cannot. I mean, what would a damage distribution mean in practice? All I could see would be monsters occasionally taking 1 hit instead of two (but you still wasted mana for a 2nd shot as you probably fired two shots out of habit/pattern), at the cost of monsters breaking the threshold from 2 hits to 1 at a later time (as with a crit chance the base damage would presumably need to be decreased to maintain dps). I'd much prefer for spells to have reliable special effects. For example tidal wave (or something like it) slows monsters by X% for Y second(s) (50% for 1 second? ballpark). Boom you have an interesting spell with tactical uses. Much better than "oh look I crit. Pity it has no actual effect on gameplay!"

Ok, sleep now, eyes bleeding...

Aaah more posts... ok I give up I'll check out developments later

[KDR_11k]

Maybe the relative difficulty should go up a bit as you increase in level. After all you're getting better at the game, get access to more non-level-based things and probably also want to see something as a proof that you've been at it for a looooooong time.

[x4000]

I am absolutely stoked to have helped precipitate some changes! Looking great and is pretty much exactly the kind of thing I was meaning 

And I really appreciate your bringing it up!  This was something we knew was only so-so, but I didn't realize quite how much it falls apart on higher tiers.

I mean, what would a damage distribution mean in practice? All I could see would be monsters occasionally taking 1 hit instead of two (but you still wasted mana for a 2nd shot as you probably fired two shots out of habit/pattern), at the cost of monsters breaking the threshold from 2 hits to 1 at a later time (as with a crit chance the base damage would presumably need to be decreased to maintain dps). I'd much prefer for spells to have reliable special effects. For example tidal wave (or something like it) slows monsters by X% for Y second(s) (50% for 1 second? ballpark). Boom you have an interesting spell with tactical uses. Much better than "oh look I crit. Pity it has no actual effect on gameplay!"

My thoughts exactly on all that, too.   Elemental damage and so forth is coming, so monsters will be stronger or weaker to spells of the various 6 elements, for instance.  And many, many other planned things.  But I don't think that a random chance for crits or just general randomization to the damage would be desirable in any way.  There used to be a big random component in the damage model for AI War, but one of the things I did as part of 4.0 was take that out because it had been an ongoing undesirable factor.

Maybe the relative difficulty should go up a bit as you increase in level. After all you're getting better at the game, get access to more non-level-based things and probably also want to see something as a proof that you've been at it for a looooooong time.

Well, as I noted above, this is something that could be done, but what I first intend to do is make it so that you start seeing higher-level monsters and elites of the monsters and so on.  Maybe after a certain level threshold this would start to happen, I'm not sure, but I don't want to make it so that players are unable to progress past a certain point because the game just becomes unwinnable.

[BobTheJanitor]

Maybe the relative difficulty should go up a bit as you increase in level. After all you're getting better at the game, get access to more non-level-based things and probably also want to see something as a proof that you've been at it for a looooooong time.

Never heard of a progression based game that made things harder as you got further. The idea is that the challenges get bigger and badder but you get stronger tools to deal with that. That's the whole point, the illusion that you're constantly improving.

But the problem here is that the game (theoretically) approaches infinity. So even the teeniest tiniest variance in difficulty would lead to the game being impossible to win by the time you hit level one-gazillion. Same thing if you make it easier over time. Get high enough level and you can just one shot or ignore every enemy up to and including overlords. It pretty much has to average out to equal power over time between player and bad guys.

[x4000]

It pretty much has to average out to equal power over time between player and bad guys.

Right.  But on the plus side, as I'm introducing more spells and more enemies, there's yet another arms race going on there: the enemies are getting bigger and stronger and scarier, and you're having to go out of your way more to get really ultra-powerful spells to deal with them unless you're insanely skilled on your own.  So again that balance of power is maintained, but it provides an intrinsic motivation for all the extra questing for better spells and so on.

This is always a hard topic to discuss because it's got four or five dimensions instead of the twoish we're used to from most games of this sort.  But I'm feeling really good about what is resulting so far; I'm about 50% of the way through implementing the changes into the game, and it's making sense and looking like something that will properly scale regardless of actual level values.

[Jerebaldo1]

Hehehehe, yes! This is awesome, that the game can be re-factored so fundamentally starting with an astute player observation. Never seen this before; wasn't around for AI War until like version 5.1.
Agile as hell coding; hope it becomes standard practice in the indie dev community!

Oh, and to weigh in on randomness: as a rule, I dislike it, but as an exception it can make for interesting tension (ie. a type of boss species known as "SnakeEyes" with a variable damage attack).

[zebramatt]

Although ranges of attack power are immensely common place in traditional RPGs and dungeon crawlers alike, I've no strong feelings about them one way or another. That is, I find systems where you know the damage output for definite to be no more nor less fun than where you simply know it will fall within a range. The former have the benefit of giving the player more perfect knowledge; the latter of allowing for differentiation between attacks based on not just (max) damage but also the range - which also means ways of maximising damage (traits, abilities, attaching gems, etc., etc.) can be introduced, which is good for variety and customisation.

All that aside, however, the idea of "critical hits" is another, equally tried and tested model which has benefits of both. You know your normal damage output with a given weapon (spell) for certain, but you also know that for this particular grade of spell, or with this character's abilities, or with this trait, you have 25% chance of doing more than your normal damage output. It's win-win.

But that's not to say it's at all necessary nor desirable in Valley's case. Just food for thought.

[Spejs]

I really hope to see critical hits in AVWW. Not just canonical "13% chance to score x2 damage", but all sorts of fun stuff: special effects like branching off, increased AOE or homing, short buffs or debuffs, no recoil or mana consumption. I believe you have enough creativity to make a good use of crits.

[BobTheJanitor]

I like that idea. Crits that do things outside of just more damage. That would make for some fun variety. Put me down in support of that idea. (And put it on mantis so I can go make that support official)

[The Mimic]

That's a wonderful idea. More uniqueness between spells could be achieved. Forest Rage has x% chance to launch y more Forest Rages in other random directions for instance. Or even just things like certain spells doing more damage the longer they travel / shorter they travel. That'd be fun!

[x4000]

Thanks for the kind words, folks.

And on the subject of crits -- that sort of thing is definitely of interest, for special spells.  I like that sort of thing quite a bit.  However, I don't see ever adding that just to the base version of the spell.  Rather, I see that as being something that you can build into a higher-tier version of the similar spell, or do through spell crests, or something like that.  I have a lot of great ideas just for positional, elemental, and other lower-level behavioral stuff to handle the kind of base selection of spells just fine, but then these other sorts of crazier effects would make an awesome second level on top of that baseline.

It's going to take some time to get to all that, but I think it would work out really well!

[Spejs]

Sorry for still being off-topic, but while we're at it, when era new spells or crests system are coming in game? I understand, that now you are mostly on bugfixing and tuning what already in place, but you can share approximate time?