OK, here is where I am documenting actual changes to the fight engine balances. You are right to fear anything you see here, and please provide (pleasantly-worded) feedback.Nothing is cast in concrete until A57 actually ships, and I will be trying to keep this post up to date as I go back and forth, freaking you out all the same.
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MY AGENDA:
I want the game to be fun. As challenging as possible, with as little tedium as can be managed. With every player given an equal opportunity, without every player being identical.
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COMMONLY ACCEPTED ISSUES:
* monsters magic attacks are out of proportion to their physical attacks. (engine issue)
* spells fail too frequently (engine issue)
* dart and bow users suck. (evergreen issue)
* magic users have disadvantage to non-sucky physicals (evergreen and engine issue)
* there aren't enough monsters of each level. (evergreen issue)
* maps have too wide a dynamic range of monster levels. (evergreen issue)
* randomness of attacks is too high a range (well, only LGH has formally complained about this, but she's mentioned it like a hundred times )
* magnificent attacks have too wide a range.
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WHAT I AM CHANGING IN A57
(and refer to this post from time to time as this will probably change moment by moment until A57 ships)
if I mark something [engine] then it affects ALL worlds. Otherwise, it's just an evergreen thing.
* [engine] STRENGTH IS MORE EFFECTIVE. Having maximum strength will benefit your physical attacks more. In general, this makes maxed-out physical users (and monsters) even stronger than before.
* [engine] WISDOM IS MORE EFFECTIVE. Having maximum wisdom will give you more leverage with your spells than it did before. In general, this makes all maxed-out magic users stronger than before. It also makes wise monsters more dangerous, but read below.
* [engine] MONSTERS HAVE LESS MAGIC-RATIO. Monsters used to get 100 for both hand and magic ratios. The change is that now a monster has a lower magic ratio than before, but that monsters with higher wisdom will have a higher magic ratio. Result: Most monster magic attacks will be weaker than before (on average, a monster with 255 wisdom will now have a magic attack which is about 30% stronger than its physical attack... instead of the 4x we had before).
* [engine] RANDOM DAMAGE LESS RANDOM. Before there was a 50% variance allowed in damage. That is to say if a base hit were 100 hit points, the random effect could make that anywhere from 75 to 125 (plus or minus 25% the base)
I have tightened that to 20% (plus or minus 10% of the basis), so a base hit of 100 units might deliver from 90 to 110 actual damage points.
* [engine] MAGNIFICENT ATTACKS LESS MAGNIFICENT. A hero's magnificent attack used to multiply the damage delivered by a multiple of 4x to 7x. (I mean, randomly within the range). Hence a base hit of 100 might be boosted to anything between 400 and 700. That's admittedly a pretty freaking huge range. I have lowered that now to 2x-4x, so the base hit might get upped from 100 to anything between 200 and 400, which is still pretty magnificent.
Monsters also get magnificent hits, but they only get 2x-3x (boosting 100 to something between 200 and 300).
* [engine] SPELLS FAIL LESS, BASED ON TRAINING. Before, your spell failure probability was implied entirely by you magic ratio and could never be improved. Now you can reduce your failure probability by training in the element in question. With maximum training in the element, you can reduce your failure rate by half. So, a crappy magic class (like fist user) normally has spell failures at the 50% rate. Now, with max-training in an element, they can reduce that to 25%
* MOST CLASSES HAVE NEW MAX_HP LIMITS. So as to reward a weaker attack by more HP, so to speak. This can't be thought of as 'fairness' per se (if you want FAIRness, then only fight people of the same class as yourself). This accomodates 'variety' of classes.
For example, dart users do NOT have the strongest attack, but they are (now) wiley little devils that can take quite a beating before they die). Scavengers are frighteningly powerful (highest hand and magic ratio of all classes), but they are also fairly brittle (lowest HP of all classes)
[This message has been edited by samsyn (edited 07-06-2001).]