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

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

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

Mutants in the same order
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Here are the creature age ranks
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Child (Cub, Pup, etc.)
Adolescent
Young Adult
Adult
Senior
Elder
Ancient
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Here are the creature power ranks
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Rookie
Lesser
Veteran
Greater
Legendary
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Here are some player stats that I am using to gauge the balance
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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
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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!

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.