[Gear] State Stabilization

[Penril]

In case you missed it, THIS is the proposal:

"There are a number of ways to implement state stabilization with respect to gear, and the following simple ones are those that occur to me now:

- Ultra-simple: Gear has a tier level, and the sum of the tier levels of a player's gear is used in an opposed check when interacting with another party. The relative factor, with a suitable cap, is used to modify the output of certain calculations (for example, for damage.)

- A little more complex: Gear awards points for a secondary type of specialization - for critical hit rate, etc. The number of points allocated in total is compared when two players interact, and this is used to scale the total application of those bonuses from this secondary specialization to that interaction. In this way, a character in Sovereign having allocated x% crit from secondary specialization will receive that bonus in full against a character in lower tier gear, but it will not apply at all against a foe in Sovereign himself."

[flintboth]

Solving This Problem: State Stabilization

State stabilization means the following:

• - Above a certain tier of gear, a given set of characters must perform in much the same manner against each other in combat regardless of the tier of gear which they are using, so long as each and every character is using the same tier of gear. This means that two groups in Annihilator should have the same underlying game state, or as close to, as two groups in Sovereign. Stats may of course differ in accordance with the distributions and possibilities available via lateral progression at Sovereign level compared with Annihilator (see: later points), but a player in Annihilator should be able to acquire Sovereign, enter a battle with other Sovereigns and play the game in exactly the same manner he did at Annihilator.

You mean in future the new players who will come on the superior Tier (for example player lvl 31 coming in T4 and why not with his group mates level 31) could have a good feeling on the T4 against a group of players level 40 ?

There is a great difference in gear between level players in one Tier but there is some other importants differences between the Renown points dispatched and Mastery points dispatched, between players level 31 and players level 40, players level 40 have more skills.

6 players level 40 have more skills (I don't say "are more skilled") than 6 players level 31 on the T4 and many other differences (the mounts contribute to an other form of disbalance).
In the futur of the game, will we have a T4 for level 39/40 only if the population allow it ? to have a more good balance stabilized.

You speak for changes on the T4, these changes "balance stabilised" , will they work for the other Tiers ? Where there is a high difference between players, differences who disserve the game.

[Tesq]

i have some question:

- Ultra-simple: Gear has a tier level, and the sum of the tier levels of a player's gear is used in an opposed check when interacting with another party. The relative factor, with a suitable cap, is used to modify the output of certain calculations (for example, for damage.)

- A little more complex: Gear awards points for a secondary type of specialization - for critical hit rate, etc. The number of points allocated in total is compared when two players interact, and this is used to scale the total application of those bonuses from this secondary specialization to that interaction. In this way, a character in Sovereign having allocated x% crit from secondary specialization will receive that bonus in full against a character in lower tier gear, but it will not apply at all against a foe in Sovereign himself.

Bear in mind that to satisfy state stabilization, it is not enough to provide counters to a certain specialization or ability that is offered with gear. The effects MUST BE NEGATED AUTOMATICALLY between players of the same rank, or players will violate the state by having different extremes of customisation. This is why absolute power creep is so bad.

i don't get this passage because if the point it's to limit dmg etc between character to avoid too many bracket in difference between set's like devastator and sovereign then it's all good but any change suggested would not change the situation of alredy 2 sovereign fighting each other

if the problem is the power creep how will you make the same set give the same scondary stat for exemple? i mean let's assume anni,conqueror,warlord and sovereign

you give to all set same stats and "same" secondary points and then apply only those secondary point against ppl with badder set than you?

Because i think that sov negate alredy sov, if the point is to negate too low level set disadvantage between sov and anni then i think i would preferable something linked to itiem level (guarantee that like tome jew and stuff like that get excluded from the itiem level etc) a dmg reduction and chance to be crit reduction applied to ppl down you and not at ppl above you so that they stay in that bracket even with anni but is like fighting with invader against a sov.

Also how this will reflec on stats like ap , moral gain, and wounds?

due to wounds increasing as new sets are released mostly that would had helped mitigate problems such morales bomb in the game (tough ye the problem can be hit at the core).

how this will work especially regarding wounds as stat? i mean if i have 10k of healt and another player have 5k how the difference in braket will fix this? you cannot change the wounds value in combat involving more players unless you wanna try to increase also the dmg based on the wounds difference? I see it problematic, it would also requrie server mor math done over the alredy impression number he have to do and share to each player. As the math can change between 2-3 braket it will be a lot of stress for the emulation i fear.

Would wounds just put simply take care of any problem and use a fix value lik 9k tanks, 8 kmdps, 7k healers? so that only dmg increase/reduction and crit increase reduction would have a between tiers balance?

i am not against it, the idea fell right but it's all a lot general talk, cant we have some pratical exemple for all solution between 2 player( 1 anni /inv and 1 sov) and how this will change hypotetically with stats?

specifically not direct counterable stats (like str vs toug) but per se stats like ap+/wounds/ moral gain /hp regen every 4 sec. And also how this will influence set bonuses.

[Penril]

There won't be crazy values from sets like on live; this has been mentioned in the past. I trust it doesn't restrict itself to armor values, but also other stats like Wounds (so you won't see a 5k difference in wounds between a Sov tank vs. a Annihilator one).

[Hastykrasty]

About first "Ultra Simple": Good idea, if we are speaking about full set vs full set, but how will it be handled if I mix gears of different sets? It gets a bit of tricky.
Correct me if i'm wrong: Aza is against the "optimization" of certain stats (optimization = obtain the max possible for certain parameters and min for others), breaking the game, like %crit, armor stack, parry etc...

Let me make an example of how I understood the proposal:
Let the tier level be linear as follow:
- Anni/bloodlord 1 point
-Conq/sentinel 2 points
-Inv/darkpromise3 points
Let be the player A in full inv. while player B has 2pieces of anni, 2 of conq, 2 of invader.
Player A points: 2*6=12
Player B points:(2*1+2*2+2*3)=12
They have the same set level, so they should "behave" in the same way in PvP vs each other (like no dmg compensation or whatever). But do they?
The same "spikes" of min/max could be achieved by the Player B stacking "primary abilities" (like str, thou, wound,int,will) leading to broken situation where they can stack crit like fools using rr points and taking other broken rr abilities. While the Player A would have maybe a 5% or so in crit bonus, and 1 or two mastery points (almost useless), I seriously doubt that they will behave in the same manner. Without speaking of the rr difference. Then if you add the talismans and potions Player B could have very hig offensive and defensive stats, maybe not an hig crit (15% maybe on average).
Take in account that anni has 5pieces, conq inv 6, warlord 7, and sov 8, the thing gets really tricky.
Maybe review the set bonus? Well here we are speaking about another world.

And what about an rr+armor tier? it will be a non linear scale, since rr abilities have a non linear progression: (2 level of difference in rr are nothing if i'm 42-44 but they are everithing if i'm 48-50)
I don't know if this can be coded efficiently, but i'm no expert progammer.

[wargrimnir]

You guys really don't need to get into the fine details of how it will work. It's the wider concepts that are being proposed, not specific implementation.

[Daknallbomb]

hmm but if we dont understand how it works how to discuss about ?
The proposal is a very good idea ! after we have that stabilization we could rly start to Balance the toons so in my opinions ist a must have ! but i dont understand how it will work

[vouzou]

I agree that the game need balance and i like the idea of those sets tier vs lower tiers. My suggestion should be that these bonushes must be divided for each piece set and determine the total for the cap. That means that you must have full sov to get the advantage of +2 agains conqueror or else the advandage should be x/6*2 where x is the number of sovereign pieces you have. The same applies to all other different combination of pieces you might have.
Maybe something like that helps for balancing.

Korthian DoK of Phalanx

[Penril]

hmm but if we dont understand how it works how to discuss about ?
The proposal is a very good idea ! after we have that stabilization we could rly start to Balance the toons so in my opinions ist a must have ! but i dont understand how it will work

If this proposal is approved, we will have a second thread for discussing the "How".

[Hastykrasty]

About the second part, I haven't fully understood that.
The points of this "specialization" aren't customizable? For example if I have 5 set bonus gives 5% crit it results in 5 points in the secondary specialization OR do I need to choose where to put those 5 points, making the set customizable?

BTW, if I understood correctly, the bonus of the higher sets (by bonus I mean the power that they provide) are fully operational against the lower tier gear level players (scaling whit gear difference or something like that ofcourse). But are "scaled" by some factor agains the same level gears.
Wouldn't this lead to a too strong survivability of the Sov players?