complaints

As stated i've noticed a lack of something, i've never made a full dex bot before, as in no strength AT ALL, and now im gettin to the point, a lack of dex weapons, as in requiring only dex. ITS SOOOO GAY! bin stuck with rapiers for like 6 or 7 lvls now waitin for stats for Nunchucks! then solar sword... which is a fair way..

Fuck the Knicks

Eh? yeah... fuck Knicks!

Yeah see Zed gets it

+1 i agree. need more dex weapons.

Block chance needs to be raised 5% for dexterity bots to be worthwhile in the higher levels, or special armours that require both dex and strength. Can't remember being higher then level 120 and dexterity standing a chance.

I had a level 150 dex bot in bots2, he was alright

I bet it sucked.

Raising block chance is a bad idea. Dex bots are insanely over-powered at higher levels.

Perhaps a level-based formula for max block then? Pure dex bots are seriously underpowered due to the cap and it's never made sense that 95% of the bots in this game are strength based. It only makes the game a whole lot more boring and predictable.

we all know why 95% of bots in bots2 were str...they hit hard, they kill fast.


not so important anymore

He has a point, 95% of the bots being str is a bit gay and it would be good to have a bit more variation

Noo, I want more pure str bots! They suit me just fine.

How are they overpowered at high levels when you can only use armours that level 70 strength bots can? The extra defence from shields and block chance is no match for a bot with 400+ strength and the best armours.

The reason Pure Strength bots were popular before was because they would rape the fastest. Near the end, it hardly mattered because any bot could one shot whores from 30 levels down (I regularly did it with Dreads, I one shot whores 35 levels higher).

Now, there's no whores (for the most part) so you've technically got to make a good bot that can hold it's own. Early on, Balance hits hard. However, once you get to ~80, Answerers/Equalizers kick in, and from then on they demolish.

Higher on up, around 120+, you can get Evaps, which hit hard, and absorb a LOT. Their downfall? "omg low dex they miss" but it's not like they only hit 5% of the time or something.

A few things come to mind, though a change for the entire game would be a big decision and Ender is unsure he wants to do that. Though, if the game is based on a sort of "all out war" aspect with the best bots being on top, then a change lik that should be put into place, or else it's just going to be cloned builds again.

Two POSSIBLE Solutions, though they obviously would need to be fleshed out:

A) A change in the absorb formula. Pretty simple. It technically nerfs things across the whole fucking board, but the biggest downfall is to strength bots. I'd gladly take a 5% or so absorb hit if Pure Strength bots take a 15%-20% absorb reduction, as my damage is already minimal, that extra 15-20% is massive.

B) A change in the to hit formula. Again, fairly straight forward. The idea that Dex/Balance bots hit more makes sense, but it's almost like it doesn't even apply. I've had Strength bots block/hit me more often than I hit them. Certainly this isn't going to be the case in the long run, but the fact that they still hit me, generally, as much as I hit them, kind of hurts.

tl;dr - Fuck strength, buff Dex. How? Throw out suggestions/formula.

To add to my last post, I know someone's going to bring up the argument that later on, Balance demolishes everything again. Fair point, but how many bots at 180+ actually fought each other? There were very few high level bots with decent builds, and they were pretty much all used for tournaments.

That said, Strength is still the #1 build in this game, and to make/keep it competitive, some sort of change needs to be thrown in.

Anyway, it's 2:25am, why am I discussing things.

If there is an across the board armor nerf it would be the easiest solution.

More creative (and more fun imo) would be buff to dex/balance in this level range because buffs are fun and nerfs aren't. Buffs could include: dex armor, unique shields, armor increases to shields or a general increase in weapon damage for the affected level range.

Dex armors I don't agree with personally.

Dex/Balance weapons already do more damage on average than Strength weapons, and they're 'rushed' so they're even stronger.

The main issue is the absorb, it's just they don't take nearly enough damage, and dish out way too much.

"Dex/Balance weapons already do more damage on average than Strength weapons, and they're 'rushed' so they're even stronger.

The main issue is the absorb, it's just they don't take nearly enough damage, and dish out way too much"

I hope you realized that these two statements are contradictory. I suggested only buffing weapons where the str bots have a high absorb to bring the damage difference closer.

How do you feel about unique shields?

I'm talking about the weapons themselves.

Let's take 130...

Dread Dealers - 412 Total Damage, 507 total points
Soul Harvestors - 360 Total Damage, 505 total points

But because damage is based PURELY on Strength, Souls will deal a hell of a lot more damage.

Maybe if Dex were thrown in for the damage formula? Obviously this makes Strength Bots do a bit more damage, but I'd gladly take them gaining an extra 80 or so points versus my gaining an extra 250 or so.

As for shields, he's going to make them take damage, FURTHER nerfing Dex/Balance bots in that temporarily during fights we have even more a chance of losing durability and taking more damage.

I don't know how unique shields would work, though shields giving some sort of bonus may be interesting.

Unique shields would help, but they'd help balance bots just as much as dex bots. I think a slight change in the hitchance formula to favour dex more strongly would be the best outcome, by virtue of strengthening dex a lot and balance a little.

Also, once str bots get their absorb around 80%, they dominate until balance bots can get their absorb up around that mark as well. Perhaps there also needs to be a change in the absorb formula to give more diminishing returns on absorb at higher amounts.

If the absorb were any higher, damage for every bot would be retardedly low.

Block chance needs to be raised to 75, if not 80.
If str bots can have absorb at 82%, why can't block percent be around 80?

throwing "critical hit" shit into the game maybe?
(if this is smth dumb idea, nvm, I just woke up lol)

Unique shields are interesting, but I don't like the idea of any uniques outside of armors personally. That said, if they were implemented, sure they'd help Balance out as well, but I don't think it'd kick them into #1 by a fair amount. It'd level the field a bit more, though I still think Strength would be very strong, depending on how they were done of course.

As for the absorb thing, like I said before, across the board it'd be a nerf to everyone, though a much harder nerf to Strength bots. Due to how much absorb they get I'm more in favor of this, but in general I'm more a fan of buffing than nerfing; I'd much rather see the weaker stuff buffed than the strong stuff nerfed, as it's much easier to tweak a buff than it is to fix a nerf.

As for critical hits etc, in Bots2 I always thought that Int should have some sort of effect other than higher xp/kudos gain. Int giving critical would change the game in a big way, as -int armors wouldn't be the best anymore, and it'd have (in theory) fixed whores, as whores would have stupid amounts of crit % etc. Of course, that isn't an issue anymore really, but it's still an interesting idea.

I don't think Dex should have the critical chance though, because while I may get a few more crits that your Strength bot will absorb, when your Strength bot criticals me for 1600 damage and one shots me... that's tough to deal with.

Hmm I've been thinking that a new skill, 'luck' maybe, could possibly factor in critical hit %. It would have to increase by only a small amount so that there's incentive to keep adding points to it.

Perhaps increasing your luck could also improve chances of seeing items in the showroom. And maybe a long way down the track if random drops or something were implemented, luck could also factor into that.

Maybe this discussion should be taken to the suggestions thread :P

That'd require every player to have their own showroom, which seems kind of pointless.

A new stat would change the game entirely, that'd be difficult to balance. Tweaking a current stat wouldn't affect much, especially during Open Beta, where you can see how (roughly) it would affect things.

I was thinking more along the lines of everyone has the same showroom, but extra items (a limited number) randomly pop in yours based on your stats (eg. high str armours for a str bot). Eh, it's probably not such a great idea after all, and I can see how it would be difficult to incorporate a new skill into the game at this stage. But what the heck, this is open beta so I figure this is the best time to be making some wild suggestions :)

Here's some fucking theorycraft because I'm bored. Some of the math may be wrong, it's 3am, cut me some slack.

---

Just for two builds that I know are used at 132... Dreads and Souls.

Hit Chance 100 * [Attack Rating] / ( [Attack Rating] + [Defense Rating] ) Between 5 and 95

132 Dreads - 100 * [516] / ( 516 + 47 )
100 * 516 / 563
51600 / 563
91.6518...

132 Souls - 100 * [180] / ( 180 + 131 )
100 * 180 / 311
18000 / 311
57.877...

Although it certainly seems that they hit more than that.

So with Dreads I've got a 34% chance (roughly) higher to hit.

And then I've got 65% block chance, so for that ~58% or so of attacks from the Souls that can hit me, only 65% of THOSE will land, meaning something along the lines of 36% (is my math correct? I'm fairly sure I did it wrong) of my total attacks would hit the Dreads bot.

And of course Souls have the 5% minimum to block, meaning I hit less than 91%, but it's still a significant %.

Now, with Strength added in, Dreads do 428-1006 or so damage. 717 Average.
Souls do 442-1430. 936 Average.

Dreads have 65% absorb, so... 936 - 65% = 328 average damage taken.
Souls have 81% absorb, so... 717 - 81% = 136 average damage taken.

Holy shit, fuck Pure Strength.

Dreads have 1130 HP at this point where Souls have 1080, meaning it'd take on average ~4 hits from the Souls to win, and ~8 hits from the Dreads to win.

tl;dr

The benefits from having high Strength far outweigh the consequences from having low Dexterity.

"Unique shields are interesting, but I don't like the idea of any uniques outside of armors personally."

One could argue that shields are armor, being that they protect you and (at this point) don't do any damage. Thus, it should be odd that there isn't any unique shields.

"Hmm I've been thinking that a new skill, 'luck' maybe, could possibly factor in critical hit %."

Critical hit would be interesting for a new stat, but I think at this point Ender wants to get the game up and running with the basics before he introduces any radical changes. Lets stick to possible, simple, additions to reduce the OP'ness of str bots at certain level ranges. (and I'm not against buffing str bots in the lower brackets were they are weak right now either)

"The benefits from having high Strength far outweigh the consequences from having low Dexterity."

In those level ranges I completely agree.

"Block chance needs to be raised to 75, if not 80."

I'm not sure if this will benefit balance bots because I don't think they get dex high enough.(I might be wrong) But it is an interesting idea and it wouldn't be hard to implement/reverse if necessary.

Something no one else addressed is simply buffing the armor values on shields. Any thoughts on that?

I dunno about raising the defense on shields, I don't think it'd make enough of a difference, as the extra absorb would only be ~1-2% more (unless they were dramatically increased).

Something I toyed around with, though I'm unsure of how the damage would be calculated etc, was instead of One Two Two One Two Two rounds due to a shield, it'd go Weapon Weapon Shield Weapon, as in a chance to hit with the Weapon. Naturally the damage would be lower than the Weapon as it's just a shield bash, not a strike with a weapon.

Naturally reduced by absorb/able to miss like a regular attack, but a small bit of extra damage would be beneficial. How much damage I'm unsure, but the damage could be increased via Dex, the way Weapon damage is increased by Strength.

This way, Strength has it's benefit in high absorb, Dex has it's benefit in high block/secondary attack, and Balance is stuck in the middle still :P

Why only in this game there is no critical strikes ? :D or something like armor penetration ...

yes, and achievement points, and epic armours, and princess leia outfits for our bots.

PENIS PENETRATION!

I think the point we keep dancing about is that shields need something, imo. More defense / unique stats / deal damage on block / ect

"Why only in this game there is no critical strikes ? :D or something like armor penetration ..."

Yes because armor penetration worked out so well for WoW with balancing. Anyways, armor penetration sounds like a str attribute not dex.

Anyways, dex increasing possible shield damage would be cool. It would help clarify if shields actually are armors(which there are unique for other slots) or a weapon which doesn't have uniques.

whoa... people are talking on my thread! thats Nucking Futs! I like all the ideas! ima steal your porn and sodomise your mind with my vast imagination!

i like all of this. i agree with everyone!

even with "PENIS PENETRATION"?

Hrm.... No.... Not that. i agree with everything except PENIS PENETRATION

Someone come up with something :)

I'm out of stuff to theorize.

Maybe blocking with a shield will do half/fourth your normal damage?

Kraft3 missed Ninja!

Kraft3 missed Ninja!

Ninja erased Kraft3 from history with its silver katana. (132 damage)
Kraft3 is in good shape.

Kraft3 missed Ninja!

Kraft3 erased Ninja from history with its blackrazor. (130 damage)
damage report: 600/730 82 % left

Ninja missed Kraft3!

Kraft3 erased Ninja from history with its blackrazor. (112 damage)
damage report: 488/730 67 % left

Kraft3 missed Ninja!

Ninja erased Kraft3 from history with its silver katana. (122 damage)
Kraft3 is in reasonable shape.

Kraft3 missed Ninja!

Kraft3 missed Ninja!

Ninja missed Kraft3!

Kraft3 missed Ninja!

Kraft3 missed Ninja!

Ninja erased Kraft3 from history with its silver katana. (125 damage)
Kraft3 is not looking too good.

Kraft3 missed Ninja!

Kraft3 erased Ninja from history with its blackrazor. (145 damage)
damage report: 343/730 47 % left

Ninja removed Kraft3 from the gene pool with its silver katana. (166 damage)
Kraft3 is in bad shape.

Ninja blocked Kraft3!

Ninja blocked Kraft3!

Ninja missed Kraft3!

Ninja blocked Kraft3!

Kraft3 missed Ninja!

Ninja erased Kraft3 from history with its silver katana. (126 damage)
Kraft3 is in bad shape.

Kraft3 erased Ninja from history with its blackrazor. (109 damage)
damage report: 234/730 32 % left

Kraft3 erased Ninja from history with its blackrazor. (110 damage)
damage report: 124/730 17 % left

Ninja erased Kraft3 from history with its silver katana. (131 damage)
Kraft3 is barely alive.

Kraft3 erased Ninja from history with its blackrazor. (131 damage)
damage report: -7/730 -1 % left

That just pisses me off

Why are you using a shield? Your block % is probably terrible if you're using silver katanas. Try dual wielding, but even then str is too strong.

I realised, probably too late, that any changes to the hitchance or absorb formula aimed at improving dex bots will also boost training bots massively, since they also have massive dex and/or crappy absorb. Which high level trainers won't be happy about ;)

I don't have any ideas either, but if there is a change it has to work around training bots.

Training bots can easily be nerfed.