06/11/2020 - Feedback Request - Creature Balance - Test Server

[Xsyon]

Back to creature balance based on what is currently on the Test Server only.

Here are my goals with creatures:
-------------------------------------------------
- Small creatures should be easy to kill, even for low skilled new players.

- The toughest small creatures (adult, high power) may be a challenge for a newbie or medium skilled player but still easy for a high skilled veteran player.

- Large regular creatures should be difficult but manageable to kill solo by a high skilled veteran player. Full legendary adult bears may require two or more tough players to kill.

- Mutants of all ages should be a challenge and require a group of medium skilled players. Young mutants would be as strong as an adult bear with at least medium combat power.

- Old age and legendary mutants should be difficult and require a group of veteran players to kill.
-------------------------------------------------

Here is a list of creatures in general order of power
-------------------------------------------------
Hamster - Chicken
Douglas Squirrel - Ground Squirrel
Rabbit
Rat
Marmot - Pine Marten
Cats
Dogs
Raccoon
Mule Deer
Coyote
Bear

Mutants in the same order
-------------------------------------------------

Here are the creature age ranks
-------------------------------------------------
Child (Cub, Pup, etc.)
Adolescent
Young Adult
Adult
Senior
Elder
Ancient
-------------------------------------------------

Here are the creature power ranks
-------------------------------------------------
Rookie
Lesser
Veteran
Greater
Legendary
-------------------------------------------------

Here are some player stats that I am using to gauge the balance
-------------------------------------------------
Minimum life: around 20
Median life: around 45 - most new players are at this level
Active player life: around 80 - around 5% of players are at this level or above
Legendary player life: 150 to 300+ - 0.05% of players are at this level

Minimum strength: less than 20 (0.25% of players choose this low strength)
Median strength: around 75
Active player strength: around 95 - seems that most active players build up their strength
Legendary player strength - 100 to 150 - 0.5% of players are at this level with only 3 players having a strength (with armor bonuses) above 130
-------------------------------------------------

I've adjusted life and damage on all creatures, hopefully to meet these goals. I haven't tested anything yet so I am assuming there will need to be further adjustments.

In general, I raised both life and damage on everything. I also increased the differences between a young creature and an adult, legendary one and I increased the differences between regular creatures and mutants.

If specific creatures are too easy or too difficult based on my goals, let me know and I can make adjustments.

Thanks!

[Static]

Great to see this well organized with clear goals and stats to work with, great job :)

I fought a "senior veteran ground squirrel"

I took my armor off so I could see what the values would be like verse a new player.

He was dealing 8.60 damage per hit without my armor, while having 5.35 with some not great armor.

I "think" he had 36hps but I'm not sure since I cannot see the hp on a dead body due to the top hp bar being gone and the hp bar above the creature not displaying the hp number. 36hps feels good, I equipped a 65q knife and did 4 damage per hit, this felt around what it should be, my knives are 5 skill and I'm just beyond the active player strength ratio at 105str.

So it feels like the health is in the right point, however, the damage, for new players, may be too high for some of the smaller creatures.

For example, if this squirrel was to fight a 45hp new player, the squirrel would kill the player in 6 hits while the player would take 7-8 hits with a knife, possibly 4 hits with a shovel and somewhere inbetween for a club or axe. Since their damage over time, or dps should all be the same, really what needs to be balanced is so that a new player can kill one of these weaker creatures before dying themselves with a acceptable measure of user error since they could miss or something.

I feel like for this squirrel the damage could be cut in half, since 4-5 damage would still be fairly fearsome to a 45hp player, they would most likely need to recover after fighting one before fighting a 2nd one, this should be the goal of balance, not enough to kill but enough that they will need to heal after (a decent fight)

Its hard for me to say exactly what the damage should be since we're talking about flat damages here, not damage per second. DPS would be easier to balance since you could slow down more powerful attacks or speed up weaker attacks to get the same total damage over time or damage per second aka DPS.

[MrDDT]

Great to see this well organized with clear goals and stats to work with, great job :)

I fought a "senior veteran ground squirrel"

I took my armor off so I could see what the values would be like verse a new player.

He was dealing 8.60 damage per hit without my armor, while having 5.35 with some not great armor.

I "think" he had 36hps but I'm not sure since I cannot see the hp on a dead body due to the top hp bar being gone and the hp bar above the creature not displaying the hp number. 36hps feels good, I equipped a 65q knife and did 4 damage per hit, this felt around what it should be, my knives are 5 skill and I'm just beyond the active player strength ratio at 105str.

So it feels like the health is in the right point, however, the damage, for new players, may be too high for some of the smaller creatures.

For example, if this squirrel was to fight a 45hp new player, the squirrel would kill the player in 6 hits while the player would take 7-8 hits with a knife, possibly 4 hits with a shovel and somewhere inbetween for a club or axe. Since their damage over time, or dps should all be the same, really what needs to be balanced is so that a new player can kill one of these weaker creatures before dying themselves with a acceptable measure of user error since they could miss or something.

I feel like for this squirrel the damage could be cut in half, since 4-5 damage would still be fairly fearsome to a 45hp player, they would most likely need to recover after fighting one before fighting a 2nd one, this should be the goal of balance, not enough to kill but enough that they will need to heal after (a decent fight)

Its hard for me to say exactly what the damage should be since we're talking about flat damages here, not damage per second. DPS would be easier to balance since you could slow down more powerful attacks or speed up weaker attacks to get the same total damage over time or damage per second aka DPS.

I agree with all of this.

The last line I would like to be careful of as I think its better to have faster low damage attacks than slower stronger attacks. But I agree DPS is also a factor.

[Static]

I'm thinking about what I said a bit more.

Hamster
Chicken
Douglas Squirrel
Ground Squirrel

If this is the order of power, than 8.6 dmg on a ground squirrel makes a little more sense.... However I don't think there should be huge differences between these 4 types.

So instead of making these 4 different tiers, maybe split it into two tiers?

So hamster and chicken could share same lower values while both squirrel types could share same values.

If both squirrels had about half the attack, but same life (even a lil more 40-45 for fully grown) than I would feel that is balanaced.

Chickens and hamsters obviously are cool with being so weak they cant defend themselves.

I just fought a "ancient lesser mule deer doe" its a 0.40 power deer.

He dealt 15.12 damage with my armor on (103-106q not great), 24.32 damage without armor

I dealt 57.92 damage with charge attack to the front, 74.03 damage with charge attack to the back, this doesn't feel right, it feels overpowered.

I dealt 29.68 damage with a regular quick attack, meaning, two quick attacks would do more damage than a single charge attack. I used my "xmas shovel" since most people trying to solo the last 3 tiers (deer/coyte/beer) should have endgame equipment so it should be balanced towards that and not my weak noob knife.

I "think" he had 260hps however I cannot see since hes dead on the ground.

This all feels good for a deer, however may be a lil much as a 0.40 if a 0.8 to 1.00 does anymore than 45-50 damage its going to be too powerful for the class of people your trying to get to solo these to actually be able to solo these.

If a deer is supposed to be weaker than a coyote, than again I'd think the damage of the mule deers could come down a little, while leaving their health up there.

You want the high health to make the fight last longer, but if their damage is also high, than its more damage per second across the entire fight. So think about how long the fight should last by hp, than, how much damage the creature is expected to do to the player in that time.

[Static]

Rookie female mane coon kitten with 14hp is way too weak.

What if we came up with a way to math what each creatures hp should be.

So lets say if max hp on a squirrel is 40hp, than a rabbit should have no lower than 20hps since even a young rabbit should be stronger than a teen squirrel.

So if max hp on a rabbit is 60hps than you could say rats should have no lower than 30hps since even a young rat should be stronger than a teen rabbit.

If we did some sort of balancing based upon this concept than you would never see something like a cat with 14hps, that is weaker than a hamster or chicken or squirrel.

Basically I'm saying the ratio between child and adult should be closer so theres less of a huge difference... A 2nd idea for a solution might be to make it so the child has 50% of the max hps and work from there? That way we won't see bears with under 100hps that would be easily killed by someone who shouldnt be fighting bears.

[Static]

Fought a rat 67hps he dealt 13.94 damage. He was 0.60 power

If hes supposed to fight someone around 50-60hps than he would most likely win, I think his health is fine, however, his damage could be cut in half.

Again with ratios, if the weakest rat was around 30-35hp 3.5 dmg and the strongest 67-70hp 7dmg that would seem balanced to me

[Static]

rookie cockrell at 11hp seems fine, its a chicken.
adult vetteran hamster buck at 28hps seems fine, its a hamster.

elder vetteran marmot doe 68hps 10.20 damage seems low since this means that the rat was stronger at the same power, by your own tiers this doesn't make sense since the marmot should be stronger than the rat.

In my opinion, the marmot should have another 20hps at this point, at least, but the damage seems around what it should be for this tier.

The marmot should be the first guy that actually deals 10+ dmg and decent hps, I'd like to see something closer to a range of 60 weakest 95 strongest ratio, 5-6 damage lowest 10-12 damage highest.

This way its always stronger than a squirrel, at no point in time should a marmot ever be weaker than a chicken or squirrel.

[Static]

found a young adult veteran american shorthair tom (long ass name that doesnt fit in the bar) its 0.60 power

it had 85hps and dealt 10.23 damage with no armor on.

I used charged attack, to the face, with a xmas shovel for 62.72 damage and it seemed really over powered since it nearly killed it in one hit.

I think the hp and damage seem in line with where they should be, lowest life cat shouldn't be under say 60-70 and should go up to 100-120 imo while keeping the marmot range damage of 5-6 to 10-12 since its a mid tier creature, you can make them harder by adding more life, while adding more damage instead of more life makes it so you die faster instead of making the creature last longer, I think the creatures should be lasting longer for the mid tiers so that your 50-80hp player character dont see a huge change in damage, but rather, how many hits it takes to kill them.

The damage increase should come from dogs, coons and upwards, but cats and under creatures could have lower dmg, with more hps being the bigger difference between them.

[Static]

rookie male bunny 9hps

obviously way too low.

adolsent ragdoll cat 85hps did 15.46 damage to me 0.60 power.

I think all cats should universally have the same stats so people know what to expect out of that tier, since if someone could barely kill the 85hp / 10dmg cat than figured they could take this one, would die cuz its doing 50% more damage than the other cat, this does not seem balanced.

upon fighting this cat however, I do feel 15 damage is not bad verse someone whos new/naked, however I feel this should be the max end of the damage instead of the middle tier.

[Static]

rookie female mule deer fawn 37hps

This is effectively a squirrel, this is not right at all, yes its young, but it should have a minimum base hp rate of at LEAST 25% or more of the max hp of the creature. If max hp is 450hp (? I have no idea?) than 112hp could be a good theoretical minimum hp.

yound adult greater mule deer buck 314hp 0.80 deer that dealt 37.75 damage to me without armor, this hurt alot and means he could kill me in 6 hits. I deal 58.76 damage to him with charge attack while doing 33.37 with a regular attack.

This means I would need to hit him 10 times while he would only need to hit me 5-6 times with 220hps.

Since your not expecting 95% of people to have this much health I would say that this is too much damage.

The health is fine, but the damage means that this guy is going to 2-3 hit most people you intend to be able to solo it.

[Static]

Universally I think its better to balance by increasing health than increasing damage.

This is going to be twice as true for "boss fight mutants" otherwise its just going to be a bunch of people running away from it cuz it does too much damage.

I don't think 1,000-2,000hp is a unreasonable amount of health if the damage of the creature isn't also unreasonable.

Like a max regular bear I don't think should do anymore than 40 damage, thats enough to 2-3 hit most people you would expect to solo it, so fighting it in pairs would be smart for alot of people still.

At this damage point you leave the ability to have a +25% damage mutant, that has massively more health.

So lets roll through some base creature rates and than turn them into mutants.

Hamster 15-30hp 1-3 damage
Chicken 15-30hp 1-3 damage
Douglas Squirrel 20-40hp 1-5 damage
Ground Squirrel 20-40hp 1-5 damage
Rabbit 30-60hps 3-6 damage
Rat 40-70hps 4-7 damage
Marmot 45-85hps 5-10 damage
Pine Marten 55-100hps 6-12 damage
Cats 60-120hps 6-14 damage
Dogs 70-150hps 7-16 damage
Raccoon 85-180hps 10-18 damage
Mule Deer 100-400hps 12-30 damage

So this means the weakest mule deer is going to be as strong as a max pine martin. This also means that the weakest dog at 70hp is as strong as a max rat at 70hp, they both have 12 damage and same hps.

I think "THIS" type of balancing would really help new players estimate what they are actually fighting, they can look at their health and know "okay this is roughly how strong its going to be" regardless of what they are fighting.

Now these last two are a bit of a different subject.

Coyote
Bear

I think coyote should be a stronger version of a dog AND that the raccoon should be WEAKER than the dog. I've seen alot of raccoons but I've never seen one bigger than a bluenose pitbull (that yours is modeled after).

So I think the tiers should look more like this with my proposed strength priority change;

Cats 60-120hps 6-14 damage
Raccoon 70-150hps 7-16 damage
Dogs 85-180hps 10-18 damage
Coyote 95-300hps 12-24 damage
Mule Deer 110-400hps 13-30 damage
Bears 150-500hps 16-40 damage

[MrDDT]

Universally I think its better to balance by increasing health than increasing damage.

This is going to be twice as true for "boss fight mutants" otherwise its just going to be a bunch of people running away from it cuz it does too much damage.

I don't think 1,000-2,000hp is a unreasonable amount of health if the damage of the creature isn't also unreasonable.


I totally agree with this. As I was saying before you are pretty much hard capped vets to be 350~ HP.
Making mutants do too much damage will make fights near impossible. Increasing their HP is the way to go.

I think 1k to 2k is low end for what will be needed at the current player damage levels to be required for group combat. I would say more likely 5k to 7k. This is assuming you want a group of vets to kill it.

1k to 2k was already able to be done before by 1 vet without backing up. So by making player damage higher, adding in both parry and dodge options, will only mean that the top end "group" fighting mutants will need to be very high HP.

[Static]

So lets make some mutants off these values.

The goal should NOT be that they do so much damage that you cannot fight them.

If you want them to be a "boss" it needs to be a marathon, as in, they need to have large amounts of health and a lower to medium amount of damage, they should NOT be one hitting people or doing so much damage that your unable to reduce their hps or actually fight them.

The "boss" version should be a increased HEALTH version but have close or slightly more damage, the massive amounts more health means you take more damage across the course of the fight, damage over time, damage per second increases due to more seconds in combat due to the creature having more health.

So I strongly feel having 0.20 0.40 0.60 and even possibly 0.80 power mutants is counter productive since these should be LEGENDARY creatures.... there shouldn't be 40hp hunchback coyote pups or it defeats the whole purpose of mutants.

I totally get the need for this for "regular" creatures, but whats the point of this for mutants? Your just creating weaker boss versions and I dont think thats good.

I think the mutants need to go back to the way they used to be, or what I was told it used to be.... I thought it used to be that a maxed age creature would go into the mist and turn into a mutant... I think thats a great concept.

This way you wouldn't have any low level mutants cuz the creature would get up to 1.00 first, than turn into a mutant so theres only 1.00 mutants going around, every mutant would be a boss than like your intending them to be.

The below balance numbers are for the current system of pups to adult mutants, altho I feel as if pups and non adult mutants shouldnt exist if the point is to make them boss's, I think they should only have the max values, but I have included possible min values too.

You could limit the amount of each mutant creature type as a way to insure that there doesn't become a overload of mutants nobody can kill.

~Hamster 15-30hp 1-3 damage [increase damage to 6-12, health to 500-800, increase speed/attack rate, make the hamster ALOT larger, the size of a racoon should be good.]

~Chicken 15-30hp 1-3 damage [increase damage to 6-12, health to 500-800, increase speed/attack rate, make it 50% larger than max size currently since its decent sized already.]

~Douglas Squirrel 20-40hp 1-5 damage [increase damage to 7-14, health to 700-1200, increase speed/attack rate, make them the size of a medium sized bear.]

~Ground Squirrel 20-40hp 1-5 damage [increase damage to 7-14, health to 700-1200, increase speed/attack rate, make them the size of a medium sized bear.]

~Rabbit 30-60hps 3-6 damage [increase damage to 8-16, health to 900-1500, increase speed/attack rate, make them the size of a medium sized bear]

~Rat 40-70hps 4-7 damage [increase damage to 9-18, health 1200-1700, increase speed/attack rate, make them the size of a medium sized bear]

~Marmot 45-85hps 5-10 damage [increase damage to 10-20, health to 1500-2000, increase speed/attack rate, they are already decent sized, possibly double this size.]

~Pine Marten 55-100hps 6-12 damage [increase damage to 11-22, health to 1700-2200, increase speed/attack rate, they are decent sized as is, could increase size by 50%]

~Cats 60-120hps 6-14 damage [do mutant cats exist?]

Raccoon 70-150hps 7-16 damage [increase damage to 12-24, health to 1900-2400

Dogs 85-180hps 10-18 damage [is there dog mutants?]

Coyote 95-300hps 12-24 damage [increase damage to 16-30, health to 2100-2600, leave attack/speed alone as is, make them 50% larger]

Mule Deer 110-400hps 13-30 damage [increase damage to 22-40, health to 2300-2800, leave attack/speed alone as is, make them 50% larger]

Bears 150-500hps 16-40 damage [ increase damage to 27-50, health to 2500-3000, leave attack/speed alone as is, make them 50% larger]

[Static]

I totally agree with this. As I was saying before you are pretty much hard capped vets to be 350~ HP.
Making mutants do too much damage will make fights near impossible. Increasing their HP is the way to go.

I think 1k to 2k is low end for what will be needed at the current player damage levels to be required for group combat. I would say more likely 5k to 7k. This is assuming you want a group of vets to kill it.

1k to 2k was already able to be done before by 1 vet without backing up. So by making player damage higher, adding in both parry and dodge options, will only mean that the top end "group" fighting mutants will need to be very high HP.

I think what I've put down is a good starting point for balanace, if we find that people are doing what you claim and people are grouping to fight high hp guys than we can re-look at the health and add more, but I feel the damage ratios are good where they are at.

[Static]

If mutants truely are going to be a "boss" than I don't think they should aggro at all, they should 100% ignore you unless you attack them, otherwise your creating something people won't be able to build anywhere near.

I think they should only attack you if you attack them, cuz if your stupid enough to attack them than you should prob know what your doing enough to expect it to attack you... where I feel a 50 damage bear could easily 1-2 hit most of the people you think should be able to solo most of the game.

[MrDDT]

I think what I've put down is a good starting point for balanace, if we find that people are doing what you claim and people are grouping to fight high hp guys than we can re-look at the health and add more, but I feel the damage ratios are good where they are at.


If mutants truely are going to be a "boss" than I don't think they should aggro at all, they should 100% ignore you unless you attack them, otherwise your creating something people won't be able to build anywhere near.

I think they should only attack you if you attack them, cuz if your stupid enough to attack them than you should prob know what your doing enough to expect it to attack you... where I feel a 50 damage bear could easily 1-2 hit most of the people you think should be able to solo most of the game.

Well he wants them to be group. Thus if you have not balanced them for group, you have not balanced them for what he wants. I'm only giving the opinion of IF you do want them for a group (as stated at the top), then you need to give them a lot more than 1 or 2k HP because those will be solo'd by vets. As they already were solo'd by vets.

The biggest key to me, is not make the damage so high that it's 2 or 3 shotting vets because even in a group you would not be able to kill that type of mob. As you said it's much better to just increase HP of the mutants.

[MrDDT]

So lets make some mutants off these values.

The goal should NOT be that they do so much damage that you cannot fight them.

If you want them to be a "boss" it needs to be a marathon, as in, they need to have large amounts of health and a lower to medium amount of damage, they should NOT be one hitting people or doing so much damage that your unable to reduce their hps or actually fight them.

The "boss" version should be a increased HEALTH version but have close or slightly more damage, the massive amounts more health means you take more damage across the course of the fight, damage over time, damage per second increases due to more seconds in combat due to the creature having more health.

So I strongly feel having 0.20 0.40 0.60 and even possibly 0.80 power mutants is counter productive since these should be LEGENDARY creatures.... there shouldn't be 40hp hunchback coyote pups or it defeats the whole purpose of mutants.

I totally get the need for this for "regular" creatures, but whats the point of this for mutants? Your just creating weaker boss versions and I dont think thats good.

I think the mutants need to go back to the way they used to be, or what I was told it used to be.... I thought it used to be that a maxed age creature would go into the mist and turn into a mutant... I think thats a great concept.

This way you wouldn't have any low level mutants cuz the creature would get up to 1.00 first, than turn into a mutant so theres only 1.00 mutants going around, every mutant would be a boss than like your intending them to be.

The below balance numbers are for the current system of pups to adult mutants, altho I feel as if pups and non adult mutants shouldnt exist if the point is to make them boss's, I think they should only have the max values, but I have included possible min values too.

You could limit the amount of each mutant creature type as a way to insure that there doesn't become a overload of mutants nobody can kill.

~Hamster 15-30hp 1-3 damage [increase damage to 6-12, health to 500-800, increase speed/attack rate, make the hamster ALOT larger, the size of a racoon should be good.]

~Chicken 15-30hp 1-3 damage [increase damage to 6-12, health to 500-800, increase speed/attack rate, make it 50% larger than max size currently since its decent sized already.]

~Douglas Squirrel 20-40hp 1-5 damage [increase damage to 7-14, health to 700-1200, increase speed/attack rate, make them the size of a medium sized bear.]

~Ground Squirrel 20-40hp 1-5 damage [increase damage to 7-14, health to 700-1200, increase speed/attack rate, make them the size of a medium sized bear.]

~Rabbit 30-60hps 3-6 damage [increase damage to 8-16, health to 900-1500, increase speed/attack rate, make them the size of a medium sized bear]

~Rat 40-70hps 4-7 damage [increase damage to 9-18, health 1200-1700, increase speed/attack rate, make them the size of a medium sized bear]

~Marmot 45-85hps 5-10 damage [increase damage to 10-20, health to 1500-2000, increase speed/attack rate, they are already decent sized, possibly double this size.]

~Pine Marten 55-100hps 6-12 damage [increase damage to 11-22, health to 1700-2200, increase speed/attack rate, they are decent sized as is, could increase size by 50%]

~Cats 60-120hps 6-14 damage [do mutant cats exist?]

Raccoon 70-150hps 7-16 damage [increase damage to 12-24, health to 1900-2400

Dogs 85-180hps 10-18 damage [is there dog mutants?]

Coyote 95-300hps 12-24 damage [increase damage to 16-30, health to 2100-2600, leave attack/speed alone as is, make them 50% larger]

Mule Deer 110-400hps 13-30 damage [increase damage to 22-40, health to 2300-2800, leave attack/speed alone as is, make them 50% larger]

Bears 150-500hps 16-40 damage [ increase damage to 27-50, health to 2500-3000, leave attack/speed alone as is, make them 50% larger]



This looks like a great starting point to me.

Also of note, very large animals like large bears and large mutant bears mostly, have a funky hitbox, so you will need to increase their hitbox a good bit as you make them bigger.

[Xsyon]

Comments so far as I'm reading the feedback:

1) Hamsters and Chickens are equivalent in power. The Squirrels are equivalent. Marmots and Pine Martens are equivalent. I updated the first post to reflect that.

2) I added the various age and power ranks to the first post. Age and power are separate. A creature can be an Adolescent that has fought a lot and has a lot of power, or can be an Ancient creature that has earned no combat power.

3) All creatures currently attack at a rate of 1.5 seconds. That can be used to determine FPS. I can adjust the attack rate of individual creatures if so desired. I welcome feedback on that.

4) Creature life and damage are currently based on formulas. Most creatures are basically set up like this:

- in child phase life can double based on age and double again based on combat power
- the youngest adult creature starts at 4 times the minimum life
- in adult phase life can double based on age and increase 1.5 times more based on combat power
- overall the max power adult's life would thus be 12 times the youngest baby

- attack power follows a typical progression but the difference between minimum and max damage is around 8 to 10 times.

- Both of these depend on the creature types.

5) I did deliberately set up creatures so that the weakest one type may be weaker than the toughest of a 'lesser' type. For example an ancient, legendary hamster would be more formidable than a baby marmot with no combat experience.

The reasoning behind this is that the 'normal' creatures in Xsyon are not supposed to be entirely normal, hence the unrealistically large sizes on legendary and adult animals.

6) Regarding mutants - any age creature can go into the mist and become a mutant. It's always been that way. I don't intend all mutants to be boss creatures, just the adults and especially the legendary ancient ones should require groups to take down.

I think it will be cool to have some baby mutants that players can have as pets.

7) Regarding large creature hit boxes. The hit boxes scale linearly as the creature scales so it's strange that it wouldn't match a larger creature. I will check it out.

---------------------------------------------

Overall, it sounds like you guys are asking for much less of a difference between a newborn baby critter and a max legendary one for normal creatures. I think a double increase is too little and would make 'ancient legendary' small creatures seem weak.

The minimum power child is supposed to be a newborn that is quite weak.

I think a 2 to 4 times increase in damage and 5 times increase in hp (maybe more) would be better. The current 10 to 12 times increase I guess is too much.

For mutants you guys are asking for a 2 to 4 times damage increase, speed increases and up to a 30 times life increase. That's quite a difference in life but I can try something like that and we'll see.

---------------------------------------------

Questions:

1) Do you guys think that player damage is too much? It scales up a lot compared to creatures because of all the factors involved (strength, skill, weapon quality, skill power).

2) How many hits from a veteran player do you think an ancient legendary mutant bear should be able to take? Around 100 or so attacks? More?

I will update the creature stats based on this feedback and will post again when a new build is ready.

Thanks for the feedback!

Note: I will be switching the data on the Test Server between the Peace and War Server data sets as we have players from both servers that want to test on their main toons.

[Xsyon]

I've updated the Test Server with stats similar to what was suggested.

In general, I took the suggested values for the range between the weakest adult and the most powerful, ancient adult for each creature, with lower values for the baby creatures. So the range in values from the weakest baby to the most powerful adult are more around 2-3 times for damage and 4-5 times for life.

Mutant life, especially for the legendary ancients, I set very high. Maybe too high. We'll see.

I think the rest makes pretty good sense but as usual I am open to further feedback.

I haven't adjusted attack speeds but I will do that next.

Thanks!

[MrDDT]

I've updated the Test Server with stats similar to what was suggested.

In general, I took the suggested values for the range between the weakest adult and the most powerful, ancient adult for each creature, with lower values for the baby creatures. So the range in values from the weakest baby to the most powerful adult are more around 2-3 times for damage and 4-5 times for life.

Mutant life, especially for the legendary ancients, I set very high. Maybe too high. We'll see.

I think the rest makes pretty good sense but as usual I am open to further feedback.

I haven't adjusted attack speeds but I will do that next.

Thanks!

Running around and looking at the HP of animals (normal) they look great.
Mutants look good for what you wanted high HP for groups of medium to max skill to kill.
(I do want to put a word of warning here, there are not a lot of current group hunting so this will seem very rare unless people change to wanting to go out in groups) My suggestion is because of this, mutants should give more resources (especially hides) this will encourage groups to want to hunt them.

I believe that mutants because of how hard they are and will be requiring groups should get 1.25 x resources per age level and 1.25 x per power level.

This would make examples.
Child Rookie give 1.5 x resources.
Child Lessor give 1.75 x resources.
Adult Greater give 3 x resources.
Ancient Legendary give 4 x resources.


Damage looks pretty good to maybe a bit to high on all the animals I see (including mutants) I'm wearing 100QL armor.

I believe another factor here should likely be instead of lowering damage a bit, I think a better option is increase the effect of armors (player).

This looks really good. I do believe ALL mutants need to be increased in size. They are not big enough for their power/HP and players need to be able to see this is not just a meek rat.

[Static]

I have not done any additional testing before responding to this, I figure I should prob start by saying that.


Comments so far as I'm reading the feedback:

1) Hamsters and Chickens are equivalent in power. The Squirrels are equivalent. Marmots and Pine Martens are equivalent. I updated the first post to reflect that.

I think this is a good idea to group these together like this. I think the most important part however is to keep the health and damage ratios the same between them, so if your fighting for example a 40hp squirrel it should deal as much damage as a 40hp marmot or rat. This way new players can look at small creatures and know what to expect damage wise by looking at their hps. I think marmot+pine and below should be locked by this rule, while larger game like dogs, coytes, coons, deer and bears should be able to have access to higher values since they will be around new players less in the low danger zones.


2) I added the various age and power ranks to the first post. Age and power are separate. A creature can be an Adolescent that has fought a lot and has a lot of power, or can be an Ancient creature that has earned no combat power.
Its good to get a clear list of how your organizing the names/titles, so this helps clear up what I'm looking at in their names.



3) All creatures currently attack at a rate of 1.5 seconds. That can be used to determine FPS. I can adjust the attack rate of individual creatures if so desired. I welcome feedback on that.

Whats player weapon attack rates? Between the two values we should be able to figure out dps of both the player and creatures to more accurately balance this.


4) Creature life and damage are currently based on formulas. Most creatures are basically set up like this:

- in child phase life can double based on age and double again based on combat power
- the youngest adult creature starts at 4 times the minimum life
- in adult phase life can double based on age and increase 1.5 times more based on combat power
- overall the max power adult's life would thus be 12 times the youngest baby

- attack power follows a typical progression but the difference between minimum and max damage is around 8 to 10 times.

- Both of these depend on the creature types. I think the difference here is too wide and there would be benefit to tightening up these values so theres not such a wide difference between creatures.

You could keep the currently system of using so many life updates, however, would just have to change the min and max values so that each step along the way added less hps so the difference between min and max wasn't as much since each "times" would add less hp, while the creature starting with more base hp. This would give the end creature the same hp while making the younger stages more tanky and closer to the final creature so there isn't such a power difference between them.


5) I did deliberately set up creatures so that the weakest one type may be weaker than the toughest of a 'lesser' type. For example an ancient, legendary hamster would be more formidable than a baby marmot with no combat experience.
The reasoning behind this is that the 'normal' creatures in Xsyon are not supposed to be entirely normal, hence the unrealistically large sizes on legendary and adult animals. this makes sense, but currently with higher end creatures having hps at around 40hps for children than it seems like they are weaker than they should be, a deer child could be possibly as weak as a dog or cat but anything lower seems too weak due to its blunt size, its born the size of a smaller dog and bigger than a cat, so it shouldn't be any weaker than that.
I agree the creature size could go up in general, the older ones could be a lil bigger and the freshly born are nearly a dot you can't click so the range of size should be tightened up too so its not such a wide difference.



6) Regarding mutants - any age creature can go into the mist and become a mutant. It's always been that way. I don't intend all mutants to be boss creatures, just the adults and especially the legendary ancient ones should require groups to take down.
I agree that there should be some less strong versions so not every one is a boss..... However... I really don't think a 50hp or even 100hp or less mutant child at 0.20 to .040 power is a very good mutant.

Could we do something in the middle and make it so that only 0.60 power and higher can become mutants? so .6 .8 and 1.0 creatures can become mutants while .20 and .40 need to age up more before? Seems silly to convert .20 and .40 creaures to mutants when they are just going to be a weak version of a "boss" but also give bad drops.


I think it will be cool to have some baby mutants that players can have as pets. I don't disagree it would be cool, but wouldn't it be extremely over powered to capture a baby mutant than raise it up to fully grown? How would this be balanced in pvp if you can show up with a 2-3k hp bear after raising it?



7) Regarding large creature hit boxes. The hit boxes scale linearly as the creature scales so it's strange that it wouldn't match a larger creature. I will check it out. maybe its placement? Cuz you seem to be able to hit mutant bears fine from the front, however, you gotta be like inside of his butt to be able to hit him from behind. Same with deer, fully grown ones seem to be only able to hit from front, not from the back.

So it could be a centering issue, where due to how the box is centered its going more towards the face than the rear, so the creature character blocking is preventing us from getting to where the box is from the back cuz its too far forward on the creature character.

---------------------------------------------


Overall, it sounds like you guys are asking for much less of a difference between a newborn baby critter and a max legendary one for normal creatures. I think a double increase is too little and would make 'ancient legendary' small creatures seem weak.

The minimum power child is supposed to be a newborn that is quite weak.

I think a 2 to 4 times increase in damage and 5 times increase in hp (maybe more) would be better. The current 10 to 12 times increase I guess is too much.

For mutants you guys are asking for a 2 to 4 times damage increase, speed increases and up to a 30 times life increase. That's quite a difference in life but I can try something like that and we'll see.

This all sounds great, by making less power ups it could make the gaps closer.... However... if you lowered the amount each increase was you could keep the same times of increase by changing the values so each increase adds less, this way you could have a higher base health and due to the lower increases, the value between max and min would be closer due to less added per increase.

Would require some math to change the value but in theory the current system could be adapted without reducing the amount of increases... however if its easier to just reduce the amount of increases and produces the same result than thats good too.

---------------------------------------------

Questions:


1) Do you guys think that player damage is too much? It scales up a lot compared to creatures because of all the factors involved (strength, skill, weapon quality, skill power).

Currently? No, I think if I'm dealing 30 dmg to a guy with 3k hps I need to hit him 100 times while he only needs to hit me 5 times, so I'd say this is already a extremely hard fight that we would need multiple people for... for sure do not do enough damage to solo this or feel overpowered. This is with a xmas shovel and 109 strength after tribe buff, so above where you think 95% of the game is... so seeing how 95% of people are weaker than me, I really don't think damage should be reduced since nobody has any damage.

Charged attack/power attack or whatever you want to make it to be would be your damage increase.

Currently I feel charged attack is a bit op since it does alot of damage and supports the older style of poke n walk back combat that we're trying to phase away from.


2) How many hits from a veteran player do you think an ancient legendary mutant bear should be able to take? Around 100 or so attacks? More? Somewhere around 100 hits seems fair, yes, with 5 people you need to hit him 20 times each while the 5 of you can take roughly 20 hits total between you.

Bear should be really really hard, possibly people taking a brake to heal up and use restorative food before heading back in. It should be the ultimate boss in the game, no challenge great than.


I will update the creature stats based on this feedback and will post again when a new build is ready.

Thanks for the feedback!

Note: I will be switching the data on the Test Server between the Peace and War Server data sets as we have players from both servers that want to test on their main toons.

Cool I get to use my peace toon than, this is a good thing cuz I wanted to test with someone who was quite a bit weaker than I am currently on pvp. So this is good, I can test different things now on a weaker guy.

[Static]

My suggestion is because of this, mutants should give more resources (especially hides) this will encourage groups to want to hunt them.

I believe that mutants because of how hard they are and will be requiring groups should get 1.25 x resources per age level and 1.25 x per power level.

This would make examples.
Child Rookie give 1.5 x resources.
Child Lessor give 1.75 x resources.
Adult Greater give 3 x resources.
Ancient Legendary give 4 x resources.


Damage looks pretty good to maybe a bit to high on all the animals I see (including mutants) I'm wearing 100QL armor.

I believe another factor here should likely be instead of lowering damage a bit, I think a better option is increase the effect of armors (player).

This looks really good. I do believe ALL mutants need to be increased in size. They are not big enough for their power/HP and players need to be able to see this is not just a meek rat.

I agree that if this is a boss mutant that the drops need to go up in order for there to be enough drops for everybody to share the rewards. Instead of 4 leather/skin it should be at least 3 times that or more imo.

But this brings up a whole other problem, nobody is going to want to spend the time to kill a legendary bear if its .6 or .8 so the only times people are going to actually engage on a boss bear like this is for 1.00 leather.... so why do we even have .6 to .8 mutant bears or lower if everybody is going to collectively ignore them till they age up to 1.00?

What if instead of change of power, we had change of drops.

So if you kill a .60 power mutant bear instead of getting 0.60 power drops, you instead get less of them. So lets say 4 skin/leather 1.00 if the bear was supposed to be .60, while make it 8 skin/leather 1.00 if the bear was supposed to be 8.0 while making it 12-16 skin/leather if the bear was supposed to be 1.00.

This way theres actually a reason to fight the 0.60 power bears instead of ignoring them, cuz they would drop useful materials, 1.00 power skin/leather, just less of it than if it was a bigger mutant bear.

This could be said for all mutants really, nobody is going to want to spend the time to kill a boss for drops that are worthless, so the point is to get 1.00 power drops, most times purely the skin/leather.... So by making it so every mutant drops at least a low amount of something useful, it makes all the weaker boss mutants huntable to people, not just only the 1.00 max age/power ones.

[Xsyon]

Just to be clear, when I say something like "I think a 2 to 4 times increase in damage and 5 times increase in hp" I mean that the maximum damage would be 2 to 4 times the minimum damage and maximum hp would be 5 times minimum hp. I am not talking about the number of times the update function runs.

Hit boxes are all scaled off the creature models center but I will run some measurements and tests. Some of the hit boxes may be off and not contain a creature in specific animations (like attack animations) and the incorrect box would become more pronounced as the creature gets scaled up.

I was suggesting lower player damage as I am having to set creatures' hp very high to make them a challenge. If I lower player damage, of course I would also lower the hp of creatures to make sure things remain in balance. Lowering player damage would make creature and player damage more in line with each other. It would also make PvP combat take longer and give lower hp toons more of a chance against higher hp toons (more chances to run at least).

But if the current values are good for PvP I will leave them.

Here are the attack rates (in seconds between attacks) and base damage for player weapons:

Axes 1.2 seconds 4.8 damage
Clubs 1.3 seconds 5.2 damage
Blades 0.9 seconds 3.6 damage
Picks 1.4 seconds 5.6 damage
Shovels 1.5 seconds 6.0 damage

DPS for all is 4 damage / second

Increasing the resources gathered from the mutants as suggested makes sense.

Thanks

[fuquashawn]

Let's discuss the other half of the player base now.

Last night me and a fellow player got targeted by... i dunno a deer? I never had offensive skills on this tune (not even on the PvP server). My comrade did but simply not have enough to take it down.

So, after it targeted him (him having full stamina) he could not get away from it. It literally followed him through the entire zone until he ran out of stamina and ate him.

I've read something about this before... suggestions I think? All these fancy numbers don't mean much if you can't get away from it ;) There needs to be some sort of distance meter? Some kind of cutoff mechanism. Even embankments wouldn't stop this player eater. Something to consider while tinkering with the AI.

[Xsyon]

Let's discuss the other half of the player base now.
I welcome all feedback. I wish more players would join in these sessions!


So, after it targeted him (him having full stamina) he could not get away from it.

It literally followed him through the entire zone until he ran out of stamina and ate him.

These is a distance where you can escape creatures. Do you know if your friend was sprinting, or simply running? Running would be hard to get into the escape range. Sprinting, it should be pretty easy unless the player is encumbered or out of stamina.

I will look into this and make adjustments. It shouldn't be impossible to escape combat.

Thanks

[Static]

Might be a hard thing to balance this for both pvp (requiring more of a challenge in combat) and pve (where people avoid combat and build instead)


I was suggesting lower player damage as I am having to set creatures' hp very high to make them a challenge. If I lower player damage, of course I would also lower the hp of creatures to make sure things remain in balance. Lowering player damage would make creature and player damage more in line with each other. It would also make PvP combat take longer and give lower hp toons more of a chance against higher hp toons (more chances to run at least).

Dealing 29-33 damage with 109 strength with 90+ armed and pickaxe with a xmas shovel is pretty top tier damage, 95% of players most likely have well under this, I do NOT feel this is overpowered at all if 95% of players are doing this damage or less.

The point of having 2-3k hps is so that its:
1) a marathon (you cant kill it in a few hits if a few of you gang up on it)

2) requires multiple people or a very large, nearly impossible investment of time from a single player.

Thats what ddt is talking about when hes saying people "solo them" bears with 2k+ hp, hes talking about someone spending a good amount of time running away, healing, than refighting the same bear, this isn't one straight fight, but rather multiple engagements for a solo player to do this since their health wouldn't hold up, they would need to heal multiple times to take down a bear like that.

Sure you can say food makes that a lil easier with health regain rate but your still talking about a unreasonable battle for the 0.5% of players who can solo, but a decent fight for multiple players.

We should not be balancing the game after the 0.5% or less players who have reached the max hp stat of the game, if they can solo something by fighting, than running, than healing, than refighting again, there really isn't anything you can do to stop that by reducing their damage, it will just take them longer to do it.

Too much player damage requiring more creature health isn't the problem, the fact you want to turn mutants into boss's is the reason why the health is high, you can't both have them a raid boss requiring multiple people AND have them have low health.

[fuquashawn]

I welcome all feedback. I wish more players would join in these sessions!



These is a distance where you can escape creatures. Do you know if your friend was sprinting, or simply running? Running would be hard to get into the escape range. Sprinting, it should be pretty easy unless the player is encumbered or out of stamina.

I will look into this and make adjustments. It shouldn't be impossible to escape combat.

Thanks

We had just rested, full bars. We sprinted until half bar and ran till empty. There was no getting away from that battle. Keep in mind, we were doing nothing but attempting to evade the engagement (we were a distance from start with no re-spawn point), just wasn't possible. When I say an entire zone i'm not being facetious i am being literal.

I bring it up because long before a fight a noob will be running from them. Getting away should be the first numbers we look at, then engagement numbers in my humble opinion.

[Static]

3k hps at 30 damage per hit is 100 hits. 5 players 20 hits each, each player having 250hps means each player takes 5 hits from a mutant bear for a total of 20 hits between them.

This seems balanced to me towards your goals of wanting it to be a multiple person fight.

Sure one guy with 350hp like ddt could solo it with maybe 80-100 hits but he could only take 7-8 hits himself so he would need to heal multiple times in order to get all 80+ hits on the bear to kill it, yes its possible, but its only possible cuz his hp pool is so high to go in, hit n get hit, run n heal, than go back n attack it again... it would take at least 5+ heals for someone to solo a bear like this, its really not something people can solo without heavy hit and run+heal abuse.

So damage is not the problem here when nobody can become stronger than a regular deer or bear... again the reason why the health is so high is cuz you've stated your goal to be that it requires multiple people to kill it, this naturally requires a bigger hp pool if you truly want to make it a "boss"