Author Topic: Help Us Decide Region Difficulty Multipliers! (For Display Only)  (Read 2009 times)

Offline x4000

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Help Us Decide Region Difficulty Multipliers! (For Display Only)
« on: February 09, 2013, 10:27:04 am »
Okay, so you know how there is that little thing saying how dangerous a region is when you are walking around the world map?  That needs to reflect the inherent existing difficulty of regions.  However, I'm a poor judge of that at the moment.  So the question is, for the following list of regions, what percentage difficulty would you say they are?  Where 100% is the normal difficulty, and anything higher than that is more difficult, and lower is easier.

Note that this would NOT affect any actual gameplay, this doesn't change the game in any way.  It's an aid to new players in determining how dangerous an area will be for them to go into.  Here is the list of regions along with my first stab at things:

Overlord Keep: 150%
Level Up Tower: 150%
Lava Flats: 300%
Desert: 100%
Deciduous Forest: 125% (during the day, anyway)
Ocean Shallows: 150%
Swamp: 125%
The Deep: 250%
Evergreen Forest: 125%
Craggy Highlands: 200%
Grasslands: 100%
Abandoned Town: 150%
Ice Age / Thawing: 125%
Future Junkyard: 200%
Robotic Research Facility: 300%

Thoughts?
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Offline Mick

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Re: Help Us Decide Region Difficulty Multipliers! (For Display Only)
« Reply #1 on: February 09, 2013, 10:59:36 am »
I wonder if word descriptions might provide better immersion. The %'s might imply that the monsters themselves hit 300% harder or whatever.

Offline x4000

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Re: Help Us Decide Region Difficulty Multipliers! (For Display Only)
« Reply #2 on: February 09, 2013, 11:04:45 am »
You get into two different numbers there, though.

In terms of the base percentage which already exists in the game, the monsters DO hit 300% harder or whatever when there are evil outposts about and you are on turn 40 or whatever.  Having "danger level 300%" from that and "threat level: low" from the region type would be just utterly confusing.  And vice versa.  That's why they need to be rolled into one number.  If the danger weren't actually numeric on the stuff from outposts and turn level, I'd just go with high, low, medium, though.
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Offline Pepisolo

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Re: Help Us Decide Region Difficulty Multipliers! (For Display Only)
« Reply #3 on: February 09, 2013, 08:38:15 pm »
It's actually tough to figure out just how much a certain area is more difficult than the next.

One thing that sticks out is that Ice Age areas seem much tougher than 125%. I feel much safer in an 150% abandoned town than I do the Ice Areas.  I'd swap these percentage around I think or at least bump Ice Age up a bit.

A list of the monsters per area would help me get my head around this if there's one available.

Offline x4000

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Re: Help Us Decide Region Difficulty Multipliers! (For Display Only)
« Reply #4 on: February 09, 2013, 08:48:47 pm »
Sure, here's my big monsters matrix that I was working off of as I was implementing them: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtdOj7epD2gRdFRYel91amJaeHlJbTlmRTVTSjMxVkE#gid=0

If you scroll way down to the bottom, it has the matrix of monsters by region type.
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Offline Pepisolo

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Re: Help Us Decide Region Difficulty Multipliers! (For Display Only)
« Reply #5 on: February 09, 2013, 08:51:24 pm »
Cool, thanks a lot. I'll take a look at this over the next couple of days.

Offline Pepisolo

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Re: Help Us Decide Region Difficulty Multipliers! (For Display Only)
« Reply #6 on: February 11, 2013, 08:51:42 am »
Quick update on this -- I can't quite get my head around how to quantify the inherent difficulty of the levels. I was thinking about rating each monster and systematically coming up with scores for each region, but that seems like too much of a subjective and awkward process. Generally, I actually think you've got this pretty much right, although I would up Ice Age to 150%. Sorry I couldn't be of more help, but it's tricky!

Oh, I did have one idea on how to really refine these numbers, though. Put a few polls up trying to find a general consensus on how difficult each area is. Let's say a 10 point scale, and use those numbers to refine the current multipliers. Big problem with this is that it would require numerous polls, though, probably too many.

I'll continue to think about it, but I think you've pretty much got this correct, anyway.

Offline Winge

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Re: Help Us Decide Region Difficulty Multipliers! (For Display Only)
« Reply #7 on: February 11, 2013, 07:12:22 pm »
What I would really like to know is what the danger to survivors number means.  For example, let's assume I have a survivor on a region with danger of 25%.  Does that mean that the survivor has a 25% chance of taking damage at the end of every turn?  Is there anything aside from the tile difficulty (class, current power, etc) that affects whether or not a survivor takes damage from wild beasts?

PS:  my apologies if this is explained elsewhere.  I've tried to keep up with patch notes, but I haven't played AVWW2 for a long time.
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Offline zespri

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Re: Help Us Decide Region Difficulty Multipliers! (For Display Only)
« Reply #8 on: February 11, 2013, 07:40:55 pm »
What I would really like to know is what the danger to survivors number means.  For example, let's assume I have a survivor on a region with danger of 25%.  Does that mean that the survivor has a 25% chance of taking damage at the end of every turn?  Is there anything aside from the tile difficulty (class, current power, etc) that affects whether or not a survivor takes damage from wild beasts?

PS:  my apologies if this is explained elsewhere.  I've tried to keep up with patch notes, but I haven't played AVWW2 for a long time.
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