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:
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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!

[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]

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 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.