Fixing the block "lack of skill"

[Dracos]

Just a heads up to those saying it'd be a wash:

Even if 'Block' + Attack was -100, +100...it would still be a good move a lot of the time.

It'd mean that it could apply to your high damage moves, effectively doubling the benefit for the cost. For a good blocking build, it also significantly reduces cooldown in effect: If every other turn is 'can't hurt me', you are getting your cooldowns down with lower risk.

[Winddbourne]

Dracos, you're assuming the best possible outcome, I'm assuming the worst and working from there. The worst possible outcome is that Darkgod meant exactly what he wrote in the skill desrcription; that a normal attack would do double damage. Nothing was said about it effecting active talents, but this was easy to test with a few blocks followed by either a standard swing or a talent use, and then a lone talent use and a lone regular swing.

The next worst case scenario is that it is +100% of a normal weapon swing added to either the talent or the normal swing; you lose a turn (-100%) and that same amount is added to the next attack. Or to make it more clear your talent that normally does 150% normal weapon damage now does 250% normal weapon damage, which results in a wash. This is less simple to test as the difference between adding 100% and 150% percent of a normal blow isn't necessarily very large, especially given that both scaling and random power level ranges play a role in the resulting damage, as does the enemies resistances, armor, etc . . . So this was the result I went with, the safest assumption given ambiguous statistical test results.

The BEST case scenario is the one you just laid out, +100% of your talent, or your talent X2; if you were doing 150% normal damage with your talent now you are doing 300% damage with that high hitting skill. This may not be obvious until late in the game but it is far from a wash as the bell curve slopes up ever more sharply as talents scale for both point investment and base characteristic. Yet the base levels the slope would be gentle enough to effectively mimic either of my other two scenarios, and thus far I've been playing for about two weeks doing tests with characters in the 1-25 level range.

I'd expect to really start seeing a difference in the bell curve around level 30 for my best case scenario, but in the meantime the differences at the levels I'm playing at are so small that you can say that it is still effectively close to a wash depending on which enemy you are fighting. Am i making sense?

[HousePet]

You could have just checked the code, in which case you would discover it does a full x2 on the next hit.

[Winddbourne]

Housepet,

Most people can't "just check the code", I am one of them. I do know a few languages from my youth but Lua isn't one of the languages I use or know. You don't expect people to "check the code" you expect things to be written clearly by the designer. Players don't check the code they play the game, they report bugs, they make suggestions and give feedback. Modders and developers check the code.

That said I do have experience in game design, which probably came through with the talk of bell curves. Mostly I specialize in pen & paper style game design and balance with side efforts into card games, forum games, and board games. The actual problem here is that I could make such a strong case for three such vastly difference game mechanics based on the description of the skill.

I doubt most people are going to default to the conclusion that the most favorable and least supported interpretation of the text is the one to go with. Being wrong with my default interpretation simply means having more damage later on than you planned for in your build and being better defended. Assuming your thematic tank character is going to be doing double talent damage with weapons seems not only dangerous but silly. It's a recipe for having too little defense and damage output to survive at higher levels if you are wrong.

It especially becomes problematic once you realize that the ogre has the ability at higher levels to use a shield AND a two handed weapon, and can thus use both block, shield related skilled attack skills, and two handed attack skills to do MASSIVE damage beyond what you would expect to see with the specialist two handed weapon using classes that lack access to Shield Slam. On the surface that seems to be an odd design decision.

[HousePet]

In my experience, people assume the best case scenario, even when it would clearly be brokenly OP. XD

Sure, you could make a strong case for three different interpretations of the meaning of the description, and detail them neatly.
Or you could ask someone to look in the code for you.

[Sheila]

I agree that assuming that someone can and should read the code upon stumbling with a doubt is wrong, because that's not the player's job but I do think clarity should be addressed when possible.
That said I never had issues figuring out counterattack and whatnot based on descriptions, it can always be seen through actually looking at the damage you're doing, if all else fails.