Vestibule Violator
Posts: 1533
Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 20:52
Balancing the factors in melee damage
I used my spreadsheet to calculate average damage per turn (AD/T) vs. Sigmund for a +0 giant spiked club for a character with maxed out stats (35) and skills (27). Then I dropped each of those (stats to 10, skills to 0) in turn to see how big an effect the loss had on each.
The max AD/T was 35.4.
Dropping Dex 35->10 had almost no effect (unsurprisingly), -3%
Dropping Str 35->10: -26%
Dropping Fighting 27->0: -38%
Dropping M&F 27->0: -77%
Note though that the stats have other effects to be considered for balancing purposes, such as EV, carrying capacity, etc.
Now, the balancing discussion, on which I have no views at this point, should consider:
- how does the current balancing affect gameplay?
- is that effect on gameplay the way it should be?
To attempt a first response to those questions:
- From what I gather, Informed players tend to ignore Str unless the other stats do nothing for them, esp. as the player really only gets to control about 5 points of stat increases from level ups, but they may make further decisions re randarts with stat increases, so that is only a fraction of the 25 point Str difference I tested here.
- Fighting skill is perceived as only being good for boosting HP, though as seen here going from 0 skill to 27 skill can boost damage output by nearly 40%, which is not something to sneeze at.
- Weapon skill is by far the biggest factor, but the perception is that the main benefit from weapon skill is in reducing delay. The boost to damage and accuracy is perceived as being negligible, so informed players tend to turn off a weapon skill once they reach minimum delay for that weapon type. Doing a little extra calculation shows that in this example the speed decrease, without any decrease in damage due to loss of skill, would account for a 61% reduction in AD/T, so it is true that attack delay is by far the dominant effect of weapon skill.
Let's look at it another way - Instead of a maxed-out character, suppose that a starting HEPa finds a triple sword on D:1. His/her starting AD/T would be 2.5, let's look at boosting different things:
+12 Str (what the character can probably achieve with levelups, artifacts and potions): Increases AD/T to 3.1
+12 Dex: Also increases AD/T to 3.1
+25 Fighting: Increase AD/T to 5.4
+24 Long blades: Increase AD/T to 14.0
Again, the weapon skill is by far the dominant factor in maxing out weapon damage.
Now, I have no opinions on what SHOULD matter more - Str, fighting, weapon skill, or whatever. I just thought some number would help devs and others discuss rebalancing these.