Opinion requested: System for ACC missing, hitting, and critting.

[Talonos]

We all know that the default Ace system of 5% EVA and 95% HIT is bad game design. (Missing is frustrating to players. See this blog post, the removal of dodge from LoL, etc.) But here's a question:

I'm using a multiplicatively balanced damage system, such as seen in pokemon. (The basic formula is Skill Power * Attack / Defense, meaning if you have twice as much attack as your opponent's defense, you deal double damage) I realized that if you use the following formulas:

Hit chance = Min((Your HIT/ Opponent's EVA), 100%)

Crit chance = Max((Your HIT/ Opponent's EVA)-1, 0%)

Crit damage = normal damage * 2.0

Then Accuracy and Evasion are balanced multiplicatively against each other, just like Attack and Defense are. This implies that accuracy and evasion are also balanced against Attack and defense, respectively.

Example: Use a skill with a power of 10 against a foe with A DEF of 10 and and EVA of 10 while you have an ATT of 10 and an ACC of 10:

 - Hit chance = Min(10/10,100%) = 100%,
 - Crit chance = Max( 10/10 - 1, 0% ) = 0%,
 - Damage = 10 * (10/10) = 10,
 - Average Expected Damage = 10*100% = 10 damage

Example 2: Try increasing ATT to 15:

 - Hit chance = Min(10/10,100%) = 100%,
 - Crit chance = Max( 10/10 - 1, 0% ) = 0%,
 - Damage = 10 * (15/10) = 15,
 - Average Expected Damage = 15*100% = 15 damage

Example 3: Increase ACC to 15 instead:

 - Hit chance = Min(15/10,100%) = 100%,
 - Crit chance = Max( 15/10 - 1, 0% ) = 50%,
 - Damage = 10 * (10/10) = 10,
 - Average Expected Damage = 10*100%+ (10*50%) = 15 damage
 - AKA: Because you deal double damage half the time, you deal a total of 50% extra damage

Thus, increasing an ACC statistic is just as good as increasing your ATK in terms of amortized damage. Likewise:

Example 4: Try increase enemy DEF to 20:

 - Hit chance = Min(10/10,100%) = 100%,
 - Crit chance = Max( 10/10 - 1, 0% ) = 0%,
 - Damage = 10 * (10/20) = 5,
 - Average Expected Damage = 5*100% = 5 damage

Example 5: Increase Enemy EVA to 20 instead:

 - Hit chance = Min(10/20,100%) = 50%,
 - Crit chance = Max( 10/20 - 1, 0% ) = 0%,
 - Damage = 10 * (10/10) = 10,
 - Average Expected Damage = 10*50% = 5 damage
 - AKA: Because you hit 50% less, you deal 50% less damage.

Thus, increasing your DEF and increasing your EVA increases your survivability the same. It is balanced.

So here's the question:

Would you want to play in such a system? I know that as a player, missing attacks is frustrating, and this system highly relies on missing as a way to provide balance. Here are some takaways from the proposed system:

 - Against foes with a high eva, you'll be missing... a lot. (As seen above, if they have twice as much EVA as you have HIT, you hit rate could be as low as 50%) 


 - Unlike RPGMaker default, you can easily get yourself to a 100% hit rate by increasing your HIT stat to be at least equal to your opponent's EVA.
 - If your have twice as much HIT as the enemy EVA, you always crit, which is probably fulfilling as a player.
 - Your hit rate (and your enemies hit rate) will never be zero. (There is always a chance an inaccurate enemy can hit you. )
 - ATT and ACC stack multiplicatively: Increasing both by 50% is better for you than increasing one by 100%, which encourages gear diversity. 
 - If you have the possibility of missing, you will never crit. Conversely, if you have the possibility of critting, you will never miss.
 - If you can get at least as much HIT as your opponents have EVA, combat becomes "safe", because you deal reliable damage to foes without fear of missing.
 - If you have less HIT than opponent's EVA, then combat becomes "Dangerous," because you always run the risk of getting a nice fat goose-egg for damage when you try and attack.
 - ATT and DEF are "Safe stats" to increase, providing reliable damage. HIT adds reliability to your damage until it equals your opponents EVA, at which point it begins providing unreliable damage.
 - EVA is an unsafe stat to increase because enemies always stand some chance of hitting. Even if you have 10x as much EVA as your opponent's HIT, you still have a 10% chance of taking full damage.


 - I suppose the previous two points heavily incentivizes proper gear; the EVA of the most dodgy foe is the "minimum standard" at which you can farm a dungeon safely, so a few optional HIT accessories come in handy when you first enter a dungeon until you level up enough to out-HIT everything's EVA.

As much as I love how the math comes out to be completely self-balancing, I'm leaning away from this system. I just worry it'll be too frustrating for a player. I'm really, really tempted to just put 100% hit rate and 0% crit rate on everything. (Or at least a 100% hit rate on player attacks and 0% crit rate on enemies.)

What are your thoughts?

 

[Victor Sant]

I do agree with that. This is how it was done on RMXP. For me, RMXP had the best design for the default formulas. From RMVX and beyond, the formulas become too much additive rather than multiplicative, and additive formulas are pretty hard to balance.


I like this approach specially because It allows you to actually make Hit, Crit and Eva stats with progression like Atk and Def, rather than unchangeable rate values.

 

[Warpmind]

Personally, as a long-tme tabletop player, I find that missing because you screwed up (failed the hit rate roll) is vastly more infuriating than missing because the other guy dodged (This guy is a CHALLENGE! Onward to finding circumstantial modifiers in my favor!), so I suppose that's an element to be taken into consideration... It's a difference in mechanics, though; whether you roll against a flat defense score, or roll against a defense roll... Personally, I would want to do away with the general miss chance and instead keep a dodge chance for everyone, making it clear that if you miss, it's not because you rolled poorly, but because the opponent rolled well. It's a universe between those experiences; the feeling that you did poorly versus the feeling that the other guy got lucky.

It is, at the very least, a train of thought worth following for a bit.

 

[Talonos]

Yeah, that's reasonable. The above system makes no distinction between failed hit rolls and evasion rolls, though; there's always one "to hit" roll that factors both in. Incorporating that feedback is as simple as renaming "Missed" to "Dodged".

 

[Wavelength]

The first thing that really strikes me about such a system is that your stats really do feel equivalent to each other.  Not only balanced, but functionally identical.  I applaud the meticulous thought that went into striking such perfect balance, and infinitely prefer such a system to (for example) LUK's complete uselessness in the default RPG Maker system... but in the same breath, when it's this easy to do the math on "which stat should I increase", I think that fun factor and strategic diversity can suffer somewhat.


For example, you're going against a creature that has 20 DEF and 10 EVA (whereas most creatures in this zone have 10 DEF and 10 EVA).  What's the correct counterplay to such an enemy?  Let's work through different choices...

• You could use your character who has 20 ATK and 10 HIT (or ACC - you used the terms interchangeably, I think).  He'll do 10 damage to this enemy per turn.
  
• You could use your character who has 10 ATK and 20 HIT.  She'll do 10 damage to this enemy per turn.  Oh, same thing.
  
• You could forego increasing those characters' ATK and HIT stats and instead increase their DEF stat.  They'll each do 5 damage to this enemy per turn, and take exactly half the damage they'd otherwise take... which again comes out to a wash in the amount of damage done and taken at the end of the battle.
  

There's very little reason to use one character over another, and even less reason to focus on building a character's ATK over HIT or vice-versa (same with DEF-EVA).  Why not just roll ATK and HIT into a single stat?  The only difference is the reliability of damage, and in a game where you're supposed to win every battle to avoid a game over (unlike, for example LoL or Magic: the Gathering where surprising your opponent with a potentially lucky occurrence can be a solid move), I can't see the argument for ever wanting unreliable massive damage.  The fact that ATK and HIT (as well as DEF and EVA) essentially multiply each other's value is certainly interesting, but the correct solution is always to keep the two stats as close to each other as possible, which is not as interesting.


In light of this, I feel your system would best be served as part of a pen-and-paper/tabletop RPG where there's more room for personal expression in the actual actions that transpire during combat.  In a good D&D group, where you're roleplaying every action, the difference between your 20 ATK character and your 20 HIT character will be noticeable - missing an enemy with an attack and then whacking them with a heavy hit is going to feel a lot different than peppering them with reliable arrows for light damage two turns in a row, even if the end result is the same in both cases (missing can also be part of the fun in a tabletop RPG).  What your system's nearly-perfect balance is accomplishing is to ensure that players can choose freely between the styles they prefer without being implicitly punished by the rules for doing so.  In a JRPG's combat system, the difference between these two sets of stats is going to feel a lot more muted, and the best-case scenario for the player's emotions in the heavy-hitter scenario is probably going to be frustration followed by simple relief.  Choices in a JRPG need to manifest in visible gameplay differences in order to feel good, which is why I recommend keeping the player's choices as incomparable as possible when designing systems.


It's true that even in your system there are a few places in your system where stats are not directly equivalent.  Among what I can spot:

• If HIT increases beyond 2x the target's EVA, it's no longer providing any use since the Crit Chance is already 100%
  
• For skills that have extra effects (which require a hit to apply), HIT/EVA are more important than ATK/DEF since it's better to have (for example) 100% chance to deal 10 damage plus the extra effect than it is to have 50% chance to deal 20 damage plus the same extra effect
  
• In very short/easy battles the value of reliability (high HIT stat) is increased and the value of raw power (high ATK stat) is decreased
  
• If you are using MAT and MDF to determine damage on magical skills, then HIT/EVA become by far the most important stats as they affect the expected results of all skills whereas ATK/MAT/DEF/MDF only affect some skills
  
• The case could be made that ATK and DEF are not interchangeable when you have naturally Tanky characters and naturally DPS-Oriented characters fighting together in the same battle party
  

You could potentially play up a couple of these asymmetries even heavier than they're showing now, in order to present the player with meaningful choices over how they want to build their characters up.  In a couple of my games, Critical Hits do only +50% extra damage but they activate a "Crit Effect" (such as a short stun on the enemy or restoring the character's TP) on many skills which is a bonus that only happens if the skill Critical Hits (and is different for each skill).  This certainly makes the stats that determine Crit chance harder to balance against stats that determine damage, but it gives the player a meaningful choice about how they want to build up their characters (in this example my player is trading trading damage versus utility).  It also means that if you've built your characters differently, then certain characters will be better or worse against different enemies, allowing each one to have their moments to shine.


(As one final note, I agree with you that the feast-or-famine payoffs that would come from high ATK and low HIT would feel bad to most players, in addition to being strategically inferior to higher HIT/lower ATK.  This should not be a gamebreaker on its own - what you could do to compensate would be to err on the side of giving enemies higher DEF and lower EVA.  With all else being equal, your average enemy might have 20-40% lower EVA than the player's expected HIT, so that the player has a 100% hit chance against the average enemy and won't take any crits from them.)

 

[Talonos]

That was an amazing analysis. Thank you, Wavelength. I feel as though you understand my system in a way nobody else has after such light exposure. You are right both in that I was going for "Sameness with Flavor," and it doesn't stop there. Doubling HP doubles your survivability, hence doubling your expected damage output over time. All actors gain passive MP regen equal to a portion of their max MP, so doubling MP gives you twice as much reliable MP per turn to play with, allowing you to use higher level skills, doubling your damage output. Finally, I'm using a CTB battle system, so doubling speed doubles your actions, meaning you double your damage output. This was specifically a thing I was trying to do, and it's neat to see you point out some unexpected downsides to a system like that. (It's also neat that through only four formulas you were able to diagnose my roots in table-top role-playing.)

Perhaps a bit of context would help: I am working on a "Gamification framework" as my Master's Thesis at my university, intended for parents to use with children, nerdy couples to use with each other, etc. Users have one character each. Each stat is tied to a task or daily chore that, when completed, gives a permanent boost to that stat, as well as XP and gold. Gold and XP rewards from monsters are entirely eliminated (though chests in dungeons still contain goodies obtainable once per game as "bonuses".) Over the course of days, you slowly form a character build that is based on what tasks you do. For example, perhaps daily exercise increases attack and daily recreational reading increases accuracy.

Currently unimplemented, but in the works, is a system that lets you "recruit" the characters of other saves on your hard drive, so a child can adventure with his siblings who share the same computer. When this happens, "unfairly" rewarding one task over another is unsatisfying; if one stat is flagrantly better than another, it would make a sporty child feel like his talents and interests are unappreciated compared to his bookwormy sibling or vice versa. (Luck is therefore completely nuked as a core stat.) However, different "flavors" of power are acceptable and even desired; hopefully the sporty child gets jealous of the nerdy child's consistent hit rate and reads some books, and the nerdy child gets jealous of the sporty child's high damage output and goes outside once in a while. By design, the stats stack multiplicatively; the best course of action in the game, like in real life (IMHO), is to be well rounded. The more you ignore a task, the more incentive you have to do it, because shoring up a weakness in a multiplicative system is so much better than continuing to increase a strength.

You mention that in JRPGs, you mostly win every battle you come across (unlike LoL or MtG.) In this game however, because you cannot "grind" dungeons (which ensures you a safe reliable lead over your opponents), winning and losing is much more like a rogue-like; every day, you go as far in the dungeon as you can, pushing yourself until you lose a battle. When that happens, you respawn back in town (with all the loot you pulled out of the dungeon, of course) and ask yourself "What do I need so I can beat that battle? More gold for greater equipment? More resistance to counter magical attacks? More HIT to keep RNG from screwing me over?" Then, you go to bed excited to do your daily tasks the next day, particularly the tasks that are low because of failure to do them in the past.

Unreliable damage might have a place, because it would let you "luckily" overcome battles you are not yet qualified to deal with. It might also be hazardous to game health because it breaks the causal link between doing chores and succeeding in the dungeon; you can do everything right and enter a dungeon legitimately more powerful than you were earlier, and RNG will screw you over and you end up doing worse than the day before, leaving the player to think "Why do I even bother?" Given that the causal link between chores and dungeon performance is sort of the point of the project, I'm leaning towards saying it's more likely to hurt game health than it is to add interest.

Likewise, I really like the idea you mentioned of really playing up some of the asymmetries. While each stat should be roughly equally powerful against one another, there should be times in which each stat gets a chance to "shine" and other stats don't. If a boss has a diverse array of status effects that it applies one at a time on-hit, somebody with attack is far better than somebody with defense because the "get hit for a small amount of damage repeatedly while I whittle them down" strategy exposes you to the full array of debuffs. I'm sure I can engineer situations where myopically focusing on other stats have similar drawbacks. It'd be nice to rotate through which stat is important on a per-dungeon basis, so if you ignore a task for too long, it will catch up to you eventually.

I guess in conclusion, your analysis was awesome, gave me lots of feedback, and makes me much more aware of the decisions I'm making and why I'm making them. Don't suppose you have any other thoughts now that you know my design goals? (Also, are you a professional? You write like a professional.)