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Making multi hit attacks based on agility

PostPosted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 10:41 pm
by 2tousent
I don't know if its a good idea, but i wanted to share it anyway.

What i mean by this is: in skills like wild combo (wich, as far as i've seen, its just wild combo/frenzy, since maul allways hits twice), what if you make the number of hits scale with agility? The more agility you have, the less chances of hitting once and higher chances of hitting 3 times. The stats only matter in comparison to the enemy's tho, so i guess you could make their own agility counteract this.

I think this could reduce their spikyness (IIRC it hits with a power of 33, from 1 to 3 times with equal chance) this would make them more/less reliable, but based on your build or the enemy, rather than chance, because as it is right now it can range from a 33 power attack to a 99 power attack with 3 shots at inducing status effects, and there's nothing you can do about it! (it doesnt trigger guilt/pariah multiple times tho... Right? RIGHT?)

Maybe it would make them underpowered because they would rely on too many stats, after all, it takes Strength to deal damage, Cunning to trigger the passives, Vitality and Strength for defense because they are melee ( close combat needs more defense than ranged doesn't it?) and while Agility is already useful for accuracy and evasion, this would make it even more important, and seems to me that making it so could turn out to be a nerf, in case the stat you decided to focus less was agility...

Correct me if i'm wrong, but in Demon, getting higher stats doesnt seem to make you stronger because enemies scale the same way as you do, having 10/10/10/10/10 stats at level X against a level X enemy seems to be equal to having 11/11/11/11/11 stats at lvl X+1 against an enemy that's level X+1, so if you need to focus on agility too it would make your character just, even more average...

Perhaps i'm in no position of making suggestions as i'm not expert at this game, so i apologize in advance if there's an obvious reason why this wouldn't work. I havn't experienced the full game yet, so maybe there are abilities that i havn't seen that would interact badly with this, or if i'm misunderstanding how they actually work.

Re: Making multi hit attacks based on agility

PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 3:33 am
by Ferret
It's not a bad idea. :D Devil Survivor had attacks of that nature: though they tended to be pretty ridiculously powerful. I could see maybe bringing that mechanic here...

They do actually trigger Guilt/Pariah multiple times: Wild Frenzy in particular against a group of Pariah'd enemies can have amazing results... if you get lucky. :)

As you say, they already use Agility anyway, so it doesn't add a new stat to them... and as with other cases of abilities requiring more stats than usual, there are ways to make the balance work. Compare Fiery Claw and Feral Claw, for example. :D Feral is a 70 Power melee Slash for 5 SP; Fiery is an 85 Power melee Slash/Fire w/ a chance to Ignite for 5 SP. Fiery Claw gets a fair number of advantages since it requires two other stats Feral Claw doesn't (Magic and Cunning, for the Fire damage and Ignite.)

You're semi-correct about stats: It does make you stronger, but yes, the enemies usually keep up with you. What stats basically do is let you gradually decide what your strong/weak points will be build wise, starting from a relatively average spread. But yeah, it does also mean using more stats tends to push you towards being average across the board... though there are abilities that work very well for 'average' stats too. :)

:D Please don't feel like you need to be an expert to make suggestions, or that you need to apologize for that. All input is valuable to me, the perspective of a newer player is no less helpful than that of an old hand.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Re: Making multi hit attacks based on agility

PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 4:22 am
by 2tousent
Ha-Ha, "newer" is relative! I don't know when was it, but first time i played was before, at least, corpses were implemented!
>.> its just that i'm not exactly a good player so i had never gotten past floor 5 or so, so i had no reason to talk on the forums since i didn't really have anything to add...

I don't know what spearheaded my progress tho, it was either me finding builds that either fit my style or are decently powerful (i don't know wether fire shaman fits the latter or not, but it appears so) or the relic protection from death making my life easier.

One thing to add, since i don't want to create a whole new post just for it, and it may either be intended or an oversight.

Was it your plan to have rendundant skills for flavor? Because i can't find any difference between Shocking bite and Shocking stab, but it would be weird for flying heads to have shocking stab instead, or have eyes of the dragon start off with a biting skill... so i'm not sure if its more logical to have both or not.

Re: Making multi hit attacks based on agility

PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 8:21 am
by Saler
Here what I have to say about this:
If this change will be implemented. then, with enough Agi, you could somewhat reliably get 3 hit, for total of almost 100 power of damage. The same amount of damage is dealt by Clobber, but Clobber will be more reliable - I think high Agi, Chill and Mind Reader you caould hit with Clobber most of the time. Clobber is also less restrictive - you won't have to go as much with Agi, you can use Stun, Shock and other status effects instead. The advantage that random hit count attacks would have is getting decent damage even if you get unlucky - 2 hits will still have 66 power. You will also get to apply status effects 2-3 times.
So, to me, this looks like a pretty even tradeoff. It would probably take a few attempts to ballance Agi's infuence on the hit amount, however.

Re: Making multi hit attacks based on agility

PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 3:23 am
by Ferret
I try not to do redundant skills often, but yes, you correctly identified a set of them and guessed the reason why :) And yes, I agree Agility-based multi-hits could have a place vs. non-Agi based single attacks. I don't know how quickly I will do it, Matter is already a huge gameplay chunk for the current build, but I've put a 'consider this' on the list. :D

Re: Making multi hit attacks based on agility

PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 3:27 am
by 2tousent
Did you explain anywhere what matter is going to be about?
Because for something like "matter" all i kind think of that could fit is like: teleportation, disintegration and petrification i guess...

Re: Making multi hit attacks based on agility

PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 3:57 am
by Ferret
I gave some brief info in http://demon.ferretdev.org/devblog/coming-next/, but not a whole lot yet, no. :)

Re: Making multi hit attacks based on agility

PostPosted: Tue Aug 22, 2017 4:26 pm
by wizzzargh
A thought on this- maybe the wild multi-attacks could always try to hit 3 (or whatever their max is) times, but only have 50% accuracy for each hit?

Re: Making multi hit attacks based on agility

PostPosted: Thu Aug 24, 2017 12:45 am
by Ferret
It's not a bad thought, though one of Agility's challenges historically as been that reliance on debuffs like Chill, EVD Down, Stun, Sleep, Shock, etc. can somewhat replace it, which this would also be true of I think. It could still work though: after all, Clobber doesn't exactly rule the world. :)