Human Racial Balance - Con is King?

[Godkin Veratas]

Taking a look at the Human racial balance, it needs work.

The best melee foot build is Kallard.
The best mounted combat build will be Kallard.
The best mounted archer build will be Kallard.

From MO1 to MO2, Kallards have been granted 12 additional points of Dexterity, and 4 points of Constitution.

Kallards have the highest strength, height, constitution, hit points, damage bonus, and stamina.

Ok...Sweden Bias?

What have the other humans received in return?

Obviously, this impacts the Thursar builds also, Thursar Kallard is the only real choice.

There are two main ways to go with balancing characters:
1. Make them all equal in stats, the difference is basically a skin. Balance through limitation.
2. Make their attributes and effectiveness built upon lore and specialization. Balance through extremes.

We seem stuck between between two worlds. Normalizing speed but not the rest of the stats has us in a weird limbo.

Solutions? Suggestions?

Attribute total distribution

Attribute Cap distribution

 

[Rhias]

The total attribute points are in my opinion also an important factor.

 

[Godkin Veratas]

The total attribute points are in my opinion also an important factor.

Definitely a factor. Looking for suggestions and ideas about how to advance this system into something less... Scandinavian.

 

[Xronim]

just the way stats work in the game makes it weird to change just dex with a curve and increasing slower races yet keeping con the same way to where tankier races are more important for most situations when nearly everyone is the same speed.

Giving Kalls, Sidos, and Oghmir more dex while not compensating tind/sard/khur for kalls/sidos getting straight up more stats.

Kallards probably will be too good as hybrids that can measure up to a pure fighter due to their massive hp pool, size for dmg bonus and still decent speed because of how dex works now, while leaving str at a minimal point for your preferred weapon type (if most 2h swords are 60 then 60 str) to put more points into magic stats for a larger mana pool.

 

[Skydancer]

The total attribute points are in my opinion also an important factor.

This is something extremely few people are aware of. Factor available attribute points being eaten up by minimum size & attributes as well. Generally there's a price for having more extreme caps or more physical caps, in lower overall attribute potential.

• When taking out minimum size from each races pool, there is a 15% difference in available attributes relative to a races maximum potential
• Those with extremely high Str/Con potential generally have the lowest overall potential to compensate which ends up making classes with less max str/con statistically better hybrids
• Races with the least attributes (Oghmir (440)) and max (Tindremene) have a 44 attribute point gap which is significant, especially for those wanting to play the role of hybrid.
• Having 44 attribute points less for oghmir is a bitter pill, but while there's arguably an imbalance skewed toward physicality that might not matter to many

Of course this is just statistics - everyone has to make their own value judgment of the balance of attribute pools, maximum stat caps, preferred height ranges and most importantly look and theme:

 

[Godkin Veratas]

The total attribute points are in my opinion also an important factor.

Right.
Kallards don't even have the lowest attribute points, despite having the highest Strength, Con, Stamina, Height, Damage Bonus, and Hit Points possible for humans. As was said, they may also be the common "hybrid" also. Not a mage with a sword, but a fully capable front line fighter with some magic.

This attribute "bonus" grew out of a time when ThurKhur was "supreme". It punished high Dex/Con. It seems to have not been revisited since speed normalization, and the buffing of Kallard dex (stam & speed), and con (hp & stam). Khurites can't even afford to go max height with max physical attribute points because they have higher Dex, which isn't as important in this build.

So, Sarducaans and Tindremene get "free" mana, spell damage, and spell damage resist. We don't know these numbers yet, perhaps they are enough to be worthwhile. Hard to imagine that, but it's possible. Sid, Tind, Sard, Khurs won't have the best magic, won't be able to stand toe 2 toe with Thursars or Kallards, and will have pathetic health compared to Oghmir.

That would make it Melee, MC, MA, and "heavy hybrid" all Kallard. Leaving MM and Mage to the others.

Honestly, we seem to have gone no where in terms of diversity. Just changed the flavor from Khurite to Kallard. Meh. Again, this impacts Thursar as well. Would love to hear some suggestions that might improve it.

 

[Aesorn]

Seeing streamers who had around 35% damage bonus on a footie was a shock to me but also a red flag that there's some kind of problem, didn't realize it's even worse then i thought so cant help but agree with Godkin for once.

 

[grendel]

Kallards are simple barbarians.

 

[Kaemik]

Their new system resembles the old system way too much. The issue of needing to know your build before you create your character so you can pick an appropriate race and age is still way too big of a deal.

My suggestions.

1. Remove Age entirely. I mean I can put grey hair on an 18-year-old. So it's just for stats. It does nothing for the game so get rid of it and give yourself one less thing to balance / one less reason people might need to reroll.

2. Rework point investment entirely to heavily involve diminishing returns. There should be a point building a foot-fighter where you seriously stop and consider something along the lines of "Is raising my strength from 105 to 110 seriously worth it when I could use the same points to level phyche to 50 and get that extra magic resist?"

Why? Because this system really doesn't address the fact that if build my character to be a fat-mage, and then later decide I want to be a foot-fighter, I need to absolutely reroll my character to be even semi-viable. With one character per account, I'd really rather see the benefits offered by race and clade be light enough that there is a feasible build for most basic combat types for most races.

With a good diminishing returns system you give every character the same number of attribute points, can have your various racial caps, and minor benefits from race/clade and there is a viable build for nearly every build on every character. Race is a flavor thing, not something so incredibly powerful that switching builds necessitate a reroll. That absolutely min-maxed strength/dex/con character has meaningful downsides over the one that took a bit of phyche.

Either that, or dispense with this one character per account nonsense because the idea that you need to know your build before you select race/age is 100% incompatible with a single character model. A lot of people are already talking alts because of how poor this game is handling taming and thievery. An atrociously bad character creation system (AKA anything that even slightly resembles MO1) isn't another mistake you need to pile onto the growing evidence this is a pay-to-win game where you need to have multiple accounts to truly be viable.

Like really, if evenly dividing your points between every attribute had even some level of merit as a build then a lot of the current problems surrounding which race can min-max the be would be FAR less pressing. The root of the issue with the MO1 system is that it's a min-maxers wet dream so the best min-max race is always unquestionably the best.

 

[Kaemik]

Going to throw out rerolls, and character creation are 90% of the reason I didn't play more MO1. It was seriously that bad. In a sandbox title I want my character to evolve as I do as a player. I learn new things, decides I like different things, make changes to my build and watch my character grow into the playstyle I eventually settle on.

MO1 goes with this great classless system. And then makes your starting race/age pick feel more restrictive than picking your class in a WoW-Clone.

It's awful. Don't go down this road again Starvault. It will kill your game.

 

[Godkin Veratas]

Going to throw out rerolls, and character creation are 90% of the reason I didn't play more MO1. It was seriously that bad. In a sandbox title I want my character to evolve as I do as a player. I learn new things, decides I like different things, make changes to my build and watch my character grow into the playstyle I eventually settle on.

MO1 goes with this great classless system. And then makes your starting race/age pick feel more restrictive than picking your class in a WoW-Clone.

It's awful. Don't go down this road again Starvault. It will kill your game.

There are at least a couple things to consider that SV is legitimately wrestling with, putting aside competence in implementation:

Flexibility and meaningful choices . They do, to some extent, involve a tradeoff.

A choice can be said to be meaningful to the extent that it has some consequence that isn't easily undone. Flexibility would involve the ability to access the full spectrum of possibility without a reroll.

If they go full flexibility and make races skins, no choice really makes much difference, it is not meaningful.

If they go the opposite direction, that racial choice will have significant consequences, you will be locked out of "something".

People will have different preferences for which path to take. However, I think we're in a middle ground where they are trying to accomplish both for humans, in particular. That may be a part of why the implementation is muddled and unsatisfying. I can see how diminishing returns would help, but caps would still limit utility and this is a game where subtle advantages lead to a complete victory. I can see how adding additional combat effectiveness to other stats, like int and psyche, would create "melee" paths for characters high in that area. That's just speculative though.

Good points and suggestions overall, and agree that this is important to the success of the game.


Also - the changes to the Human Clade don't necessarily need to involve a rework of the entire system. Perhaps that can't be solved, but there is no reason Kallards should persist as being the #1 in so many categories without any benefits being offered to others.

 

[Kaemik]

I want to see races meaningful to some degree because we've seen what happens when they take normalizing races to an extreme in a very similar title:

This:

Became this:

Why God, why, would you turn one of the coolest races in a fantasy game at the time into the cringe-worthy furries pictured below? Because they had the same hitboxes as humans. Just like every other race in Darkfall Unholy Wars. As someone who didn't even believe DFUW was all bad compared to DFO, that had to be the biggest screw up they made.

I want to see Ohgmir be short, Thursars be tall, and Alvarin be skinny and there needs to be race/clade bonuses meaningful enough to account for that as hitbox size is a major factor to racial balance.

If some of the foot-fighter builds that work on Thursar are different than what you would run on a Sarduucan, which is different than what you would run on an Blainn then I am fine with that. I'm even fine if say, Thursar can't really play mounted because the horses can't carry them as their racial description talks about, and Sheevra melee builds really need at least to be some level of hybrid to pop-off very well.

But I think every race should have enough viable builds for it that you could see a well-rounded army being fielded entirely made-up of any single race. Not every archer is Alvarin. Not every fighter is Kallard or Thursar. Every build you make at character selection has a lot of at least somewhat competitive directions you can take it based on the choices you make in-game.

 

[Godkin Veratas]

Another closely related issue is that the weight system is tightly linked to movement speed.

The tradeoff of speed versus health has been greatly reduced. Fit, lean, etc., are mostly worthless in the Human Clade and others.

This is part of a problem with simple solutions to complex problems. Speed was considered "King". Not really ever true, but to the extent that it was, now Con is "King". If Con is normalized, Strength or Int will be "King". On and on until there all races are nearly identical.

One alternative is to balance with difference. Restore the speed variation in the game and make each stat more desirable for every build, with diminishing returns. i.e. Having 10 int and psyche should cost melee fighters something they care about.

Spit balling--- Maybe bandaging speed and effectiveness could be tied to Intelligence. Clade buffs and warcrys could be tied to Psyche. A few subtle changes like that could create more variation in metas.

 

[barcode]

One alternative is to balance with difference. Restore the speed variation in the game and make each stat more desirable for every build, with diminishing returns. i.e. Having 10 int and psyche should cost melee fighters something they care about.

Spit balling--- Maybe bandaging speed and effectiveness could be tied to Intelligence. Clade buffs and warcrys could be tied to Psyche. A few subtle changes like that could create more variation in metas.

this, i think, is the important bit. right now the bonuses from int/psy are minimal vs what you get from con/dex and to a lesser degree str. this allows for completely viable characters to have 10 int/psy

choosing how to balance your attributes should be very difficult, even for pure melee characters.

-barcode

 

[Kaemik]

Yeah, it's important to make every attribute offer a stat that is good for any build. But they don't have to be anywhere near equal in value. Strength and Con should be a lot more valuable to a foot fighter than phyche. But there should come a point where it's literally a decision of the magnitude of "Do I want 1 more point of strength or 10 of psyche?"

Right now when it takes 1 point to raise Psyche to 1 above the minimum, and 1 point to raise strength to the absolute limit your race/age will allow, those limits have an extreme amount of importance.

 

[ElPerro]

Another closely related issue is that the weight system is tightly linked to movement speed.

The tradeoff of speed versus health has been greatly reduced. Fit, lean, etc., are mostly worthless in the Human Clade and others.

This is part of a problem with simple solutions to complex problems. Speed was considered "King". Not really ever true, but to the extent that it was, now Con is "King". If Con is normalized, Strength or Int will be "King". On and on until there all races are nearly identical.

One alternative is to balance with difference. Restore the speed variation in the game and make each stat more desirable for every build, with diminishing returns. i.e. Having 10 int and psyche should cost melee fighters something they care about.

Spit balling--- Maybe bandaging speed and effectiveness could be tied to Intelligence. Clade buffs and warcrys could be tied to Psyche. A few subtle changes like that could create more variation in metas.

I honestly think it was a mistake normalizing dex. Even if a bit unbalanced, it offered alot more diversity than the system we have now. The problem was anything below 235 speed just couldnt compete, but the difference between 235 - 238 - 240 - 243 - 245 - 248 - 250 speeds was pretty balanced with the advantages they could get.

For example we had like 4 types of viable warriors vs 1 now:

240 spd Pure Khur for a slightly faster warrior that could kite better
238 spd Thur Sid for all around good damage and hp (this was prob the strongest) but big hitbox
238 spd Thur Khur altho lower damage than thur sid, still had more stam and smaller hitbox, plus could go overweight for more hp
235 spd Thur Kall had the the best damage and good hp just a little bit slower.

And dont get me started on all the different human hybrids/paladins you could build. All they had to do was mess around with the dex curve a bit so every race could get at least 235 speed and then if theres still some imbalances they could look into other buffs/nerfs, but the base would be solid.

 

[Xunila]

The total attribute points are in my opinion also an important factor.

Please explain what you are understanding by "total attribute points"! My Khurite character has 391 attribute points, far away from your ~448, and when I sum up all maximum values I get 500.

 

[Rhias]

Please explain what you are understanding by "total attribute points"! My Khurite character has 391 attribute points, far away from your ~448, and when I sum up all maximum values I get 500.

Whatever the the character creation screen displays as "Attribute Points" e.g. 133(440). So far I was assuming that the numbers in brackets means how much attribute points you can spend in total. But maybe this number is as incorrect, as the max health displayed...

 

[Xunila]

Whatever the the character creation screen displays as "Attribute Points" e.g. 133(440). So far I was assuming that the numbers in brackets means how much attribute points you can spend in total. But maybe this number is as incorrect, as the max health displayed...

The character creation screen is completely wrong in the line "attribute points" both for the current value as for the max value. I checked the screenshot from my character creation and both values don't make any sense.

The 391 points I mentioned above are simply the sum of the current plus free attribute points.

 

[grendel]

One alternative is to balance with difference. Restore the speed variation in the game and make each stat more desirable for every build, with diminishing returns. i.e. Having 10 int and psyche should cost melee fighters something they care about.

Spit balling--- Maybe bandaging speed and effectiveness could be tied to Intelligence. Clade buffs and warcrys could be tied to Psyche. A few subtle changes like that could create more variation in metas.

I would love if all npc's had different conversation lines depending on intelligence, soph reputaion etc. I would also like if intelligence influence the sell/buy price at vendors. Mostly I think low intelligence should have a serious impact on reading, more than in mo1.