May 2018 Tuning Discussion - PRELIMINARY

[Reeb99]

Are the changes to Ragna active already? I'm asking because I have her doing some seriously high damage with the right talisman setup. I don't think her basic needs any more damage than it does right now, it just needs to be broken up into several hits.

[90mphyorker]

Do you have any plans to make the Arena Talismans available anywhere else in the game?

Want a set of Fate Talismans (and many others) but kinda hard to spend 3000 IC on them when it’ll make me fall even further behind in the Relics arms war.

I know you keep saying IC’s will available in Gauntlet, but that could still be months away. Really think these Talismans should drop in BNW as well now. Or even in Skull Quests.

[blade685]

joke of the day: sacrifice 6 and: 1 rare gunner soul, 4 rare souls and 2 skill shard seriously looool
My shitest sacrifice i think, 10 full 4* for 5 souls to win 5 X 3* ahahahah
If my account is not flag to loot only shit i don't understand
They want i leave the game certainly....

[Liebhild]

I've seen, that the wonderful Sparton is reading here, so I will try again.

I write it a little bit bigger, so that Sparton can see it:


Why is there that defence bonus and how high is it?


@Leviathan: This is the question, that gets simply ignored for several months.

[Kaz_LOTB]

Why is there that defence bonus and how high is it? @Leviathan: This is the question, that gets simply ignored for several months.

I believe this has been answered on several occasions in the past, but to be absolutely clear, there is no bonus whatsoever given to the defense teams in the Arena. The coin toss is a 50/50 chance and the AI on average only has a 1 in 3 chance of hitting perfect attacks. Most of the time the AI will focus the character it has a Class Advantage over, but there is a slight chance that it deviates from that, especially if another opponent's health is low.

If anything, players have a giant advantage over the AI, especially in all of the ways that they can manipulate it into wasting actions (e.g. You, as the player, can do things like put Steel Talismans on a Gunner character to have Vampire Hunter / Rainmaker Eddie on defense waste all of their attacks and deal no damage for the first few rounds of battle. Or you can completely troll defenses with the Mayan Priestess, Gunner Lilith, or Warrior Undead Rescuer by placing Trap Talismans on characters they are likely to focus damage on, etc. as just a few examples)

The main things that make AI defenses strong are team/talisman synergies that cover a lot of these weaknesses in the AI or teams that push really hard in one direction in the hope of either going first or second (e.g. Guard Talisman + Blocker Comps with Seventh Son, Double Shadow Talisman Beast Comps, etc.) There is also, of course the difference in Character / Talisman / Relic Levels, but this is something that players themselves have control over, not the game.

That all being said, there are still quite a few character / talisman bugs that can cause unexpected behavior, which can lead to situations that are unfair. We are constantly working to fix as many of these issues as we safely can each update. But, if there is anything else in particular you are seeing beyond what has been mentioned, please do report it so that we can investigate.

-Kaz

[Yup]

Kaz with all due respect.. without some boost to the AI there's no feasible reason why echo fires each and every time at least 3 times, up to 6 times, in a row for the defense team but almost never fires for the attack team, and it if does fire.. it's generally only once on VERY rare occasions MAYBE twice. It may not be a "defense" boost.. but there does seem to be a % boost for ability chances.

I have Echo on my ATK G Lilith.. no echo fires at all.. DEF G Lilith steals the echo buff on it's first shot... and then fires off 2 more shots because of it... come on! I lost count of how many times this happens.

I don't mean to imply things like echo never fire for the ATK team, They do.. but at a clearly lower success rate than DEF teams.

[Kaz_LOTB]

I don't mean to imply things like echo never fire for the ATK team, They do.. but at a clearly lower success rate than DEF teams.

Sorry, that's just not the case. The mechanics used by both the Defense and Attack teams are exactly the same. There are no outside modifiers.

What we might consider looking at in the future is just adding something to deal with RNG streakiness to make things "feel" fairer. But we have to be very careful about that, as it can lead to actual exploits. The kind of psychology we are dealing with here is pretty well wrapped up in this talk, if you are interested.

-Kaz

[Yup]

Okay.. I'll take your word for it that it's more of a "perception" problem... but the "perception" is very real Maybe it is merely that RNG gets streaks that make it feel you just can't win at times. I know I OFTEN stop with PvP after 3 or 4 fights that seem defense weighted. And when I go on streaks of 4-6-8 fights and NEVER get first hit I know I just need to walk away and wait.


Don't have an hour to watch that at the moment.... but rest assured I will. I often let videos run while sitting and working. Human perception is very relevant to my work (although my work is COMPLETELY unrelated to game dev).

[Reeb99]

Sorry, that's just not the case. The mechanics used by both the Defense and Attack teams are exactly the same. There are no outside modifiers.

What we might consider looking at in the future is just adding something to deal with RNG streakiness to make things "feel" fairer. But we have to be very careful about that, as it can lead to actual exploits. The kind of psychology we are dealing with here is pretty well wrapped up in this talk, if you are interested.

-Kaz

Clearly you are not playing the same game that we are. I see the same stupid stuff Yup is talking about almost every match, and even more often vs teams with a much higher rating. It's maddening how many times the AI gets "perfect" RNG on 35% chance skills and my team gets 3 fails in a row on 70% chance skills.

Is it possible you don't understand the underlying mechanics of the engine itself?

[Kaz_LOTB]

Is it possible you don't understand the underlying mechanics of the engine itself?

It's pretty straight forward in terms of implementation. The problem you are running into is small sample size and a bit of confirmation bias. If you were to run the same battle 20,000 times in a row, the results would average out. But as mentioned, it's quite possible that you can indeed run into unlucky streaks.

Again, this has nothing to do with defense getting favored in any way from a mechanics stand point. That's just not the case.

-Kaz