Projectile Evasion Revision

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Gregoriel wrote:

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Dreadnaut3447 wrote:

No, that is not why. I am calling out that projectile nodes can buff spells while remaining immune to projectile dodging. This means they are classified as projectiles while not remaining projectiles. ...

No, this means they are classified as projectiles, but not as attacks. That the projectile concept and the attack concept are separate ideas in this world. That an attack doesn't need be a projectile. And that a projectile does not need to be an attack. It allows for similar but different things. It allows for projectile evasion to have a weakness to projectile spells. Everything in this world has a weakness.

You can try to explain that perhaps because it is a spell it has a micro amount of homing ability that you just cannot evade or dodge if it comes in your close proximity, unless you have a special spell dodge "power" to push it away. That this is differentiated by its magical signature and your magical ability (from the regular kind.) But you're taking it too far, we're just accepting it and moving on. Perhaps you're trying to envision "magic" in a real world of physics. Um, magic breaks physics, or it wouldn't be magic...

And what are you asking they do? It sounds like you're asking them to make spells and attacks less differentiated, and more "more of the same". I'm quite confident that is a bad idea, as you'll effectively end up halving the current content.

Spoiler

I do get partially where you are coming from. I also once thought the effects from some mobs were spells, where many of these are actually attacks. And at another time I once expected that the Added physical/cold/lighting/fire damage on rings and amulets (or auras) should all benefit spells (more like how heralds are now starting to act.)

But the fact is that GGG chose this dichotomy. They chose to have something they called a spell, and something they called an attack, and they chose for them to behave in this way.

What this allows is for spells and attacks to feel differentiated. They have different base crits, different allowed increased cast/attack speeds, and this whole evasion and accuracy concept (which also complicates the crits on attacks some.)

And it is good for spells an attacks for feel and be differentiated.

Yes, they should be different, but when similar they should always be the same in their similarities for consistency. The magic is different from attacks thing gets debunked in many different ways in this game. For example, melee magic shouldn't have a hit chance through GGGs own logical understanding of this. A prime example of this is glacial hammer. It in essence is an attack, but is undeniably magic at the same time through manifestation of a magical ice hammer. Now, this isn't labeled a spell when it really is a spell (very clearly). A melee magic spell. So, through GGG's understanding, it should be allowed to be effected through spell damage increases, elemental damage buffing ( as it already is ), and should not be given a hit chance since it is clearly magic. My point in saying this is that there is very obvious classification issues in the game that need addressed. Not all spells should be allowed a 100% hit chance simply for the sake of being a spell.

Now, back to magic magic. It makes sense for certain spells to not have a hit chance, such as flameblast, cold snap, glacial cascade, curses and so forth. The spells are targeted locations where the spell is directly manifested as an attack SPECIFICALLY effecting only the targeted area. The victim inside the areas is hit because it is in effected locations, as where it wouldn't be hit outside of the effected area. This is hit specific location. The difference between this and projectiles are that projectiles are projected missile attacks that do not have a set location of effect and are not instantaneously placed AOE or directly effecting spells (directly effecting means there is no travelling between caster and subject, it just automatically happens. Instant transmission). This is why it makes 0 sense that a subject would not get the chance or ability to dodge/evade the incoming attack regardless of it being a spell or attack simply because it has travel time and no set or defined location of effect (I.E, a god damned projectile). This lack of specific targeting alone is why it shouldn't be an auto hit or else every other attack in the same fashion should be 100% hit chance if it lands on the target because they are skill shots at that point. They hit if you are good enough to land them on the target much similar to that of a MOBA game. Now that being said, non-spell projectile attacks get a major shafting compared to spells in the fact they have a doubled chance to miss because, they for one, have to actually be aimed to land on the target they targeted (via skillshot style). THEN after actually connecting they got the % calculator of actually hitting within the personal space of the character. Very obvious imbalance that is quite unacceptable simply because of how attacks and spells can be enhanced. Massive projectile count increases on spells make an unavoidable blanket, while the projectile attacks still remain almost void because of dodge/evasion chance in general. Maybe that clears up the issue I am talking about some.

It needs to be reworked on both sides to fix this very obvious problem. Projectile attacks are too easy to dodge and projectile spells are almost unavoidable when modified. Unavoidable damage is just bad design in general. All of that is also coupled with classification and labeling inconsistencies that inhibit proper balancing and classification for buffing purposes.

Now, all of this said. I do really love this game, and that is mainly why I am trying to point out some of its inconsistencies, so that they may be enhanced or changed to further progress with ever present balancing issues and classification issues (mainly for the sake of proper buffing and mechanical functionality)

I've thought for years that this would have been an excellent bit of design. Far from the game needing unchanging, straight-line rules, clear boundaries between "attack" and "spell" to be complex and interesting, I usually feel that rules with exceptions - rules that break - make for more interesting games. Rules that never break are usually just missed opportunities.

A simple example might be Starcraft: two races' tech trees start with a melee unit, followed by a ranged unit. Once race "breaks" this "rule" by putting its ranged unit first. Warcraft 3 did the same thing with the elves starting with a ranged unit, against three races melee units. Would it have been possible for Starcraft to still be a wonderful game with all three races following the same melee->ranged tech path? Sure. Would it be better that way? Not by my reckoning.

I see "projectile spells are subject to evasion" as being much the same kind of "exception" as "physical spells are subject to armour". GGG certainly could have made armour only apply to attacks because <insert "it's magic" explanation here>; they could have chosen to never make physical spells at all. But having some spells that have a different interaction with defences (as opposed to all spells being elemental/chaos, subject to resistances) allows for greater distinction within the game's selection of spells, adding not just flavour but actual complexity - the game is less able to be optimised by dividing things up into simple categories.

Finally, as a scientist I take have to issue with the little "magic breaks physics, else it wouldn't be magic" statement up there. Physics is just the study of the forces and interactions that make up the world. In a world where "magic" exists, those forces and interactions by definition include the magical ones, so magic is a part of physics, not separate from it.

You can still, of course, come up with an unquestionable in-game explanation for why magic cannot be avoided at close quarters, if that's what you want to do. That's fine. Especially in a world containing magic, you can fudge a lore explanation for basically any design decision no matter how unintuitive. That's why I mostly don't like getting into the "realism" justifications - the world of Wraeclast isn't real, and the devs can make up any arbitrary rule they like to have it run a certain way. But yes, I do think being able to evade projectiles makes better intuitive sense (when I manually move out of the way of a fireball, I am evading it, that's literally what the word means. I'm just not capital-E Evading it, because of game mechanics with arbitrary names)



Now, having said all that....whether GGG would ever actually ever do anything along these lines is an entirely different matter. It would be a significant undertaking, that could end up requiring a complete rethink of concepts like accuracy if they now have to apply to spells. There are clearly different ways to go with that (personally I think accuracy is a dumb mechanic and I'd flat-out remove it given the choice), but the point is, whatever you do it's probably going to be a lot of balancing work. And I completely understand the viewpoint that it wouldn't be worthwhile, because while I would prefer a game with a less arbitrary division between things that can and cannot be evaded, I do basically agree that at this point, it's not solving a problem, as such. The current setup is "good enough", so even if the devs did share my taste (which they obviously have no obligation to), they would likely identify better places to spend their resources for a long time to come.

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

I've thought for years that this would have been an excellent bit of design. Far from the game needing unchanging, straight-line rules, clear boundaries between "attack" and "spell" to be complex and interesting, I usually feel that rules with exceptions - rules that break - make for more interesting games. Rules that never break are usually just missed opportunities.

A simple example might be Starcraft: two races' tech trees start with a melee unit, followed by a ranged unit. Once race "breaks" this "rule" by putting its ranged unit first. Warcraft 3 did the same thing with the elves starting with a ranged unit, against three races melee units. Would it have been possible for Starcraft to still be a wonderful game with all three races following the same melee->ranged tech path? Sure. Would it be better that way? Not by my reckoning.

I see "projectile spells are subject to evasion" as being much the same kind of "exception" as "physical spells are subject to armour". GGG certainly could have made armour only apply to attacks because <insert "it's magic" explanation here>; they could have chosen to never make physical spells at all. But having some spells that have a different interaction with defences (as opposed to all spells being elemental/chaos, subject to resistances) allows for greater distinction within the game's selection of spells, adding not just flavour but actual complexity - the game is less able to be optimised by dividing things up into simple categories.

Finally, as a scientist I take have to issue with the little "magic breaks physics, else it wouldn't be magic" statement up there. Physics is just the study of the forces and interactions that make up the world. In a world where "magic" exists, those forces and interactions by definition include the magical ones, so magic is a part of physics, not separate from it.

You can still, of course, come up with an unquestionable in-game explanation for why magic cannot be avoided at close quarters, if that's what you want to do. That's fine. Especially in a world containing magic, you can fudge a lore explanation for basically any design decision no matter how unintuitive. That's why I mostly don't like getting into the "realism" justifications - the world of Wraeclast isn't real, and the devs can make up any arbitrary rule they like to have it run a certain way. But yes, I do think being able to evade projectiles makes better intuitive sense (when I manually move out of the way of a fireball, I am evading it, that's literally what the word means. I'm just not capital-E Evading it, because of game mechanics with arbitrary names)



Now, having said all that....whether GGG would ever actually ever do anything along these lines is an entirely different matter. It would be a significant undertaking, that could end up requiring a complete rethink of concepts like accuracy if they now have to apply to spells. There are clearly different ways to go with that (personally I think accuracy is a dumb mechanic and I'd flat-out remove it given the choice), but the point is, whatever you do it's probably going to be a lot of balancing work. And I completely understand the viewpoint that it wouldn't be worthwhile, because while I would prefer a game with a less arbitrary division between things that can and cannot be evaded, I do basically agree that at this point, it's not solving a problem, as such. The current setup is "good enough", so even if the devs did share my taste (which they obviously have no obligation to), they would likely identify better places to spend their resources for a long time to come.

A reasonable, respectable, and acceptable answer for sure. I do agree, but still hold my ground on the ideas I listed. I do some work for game designing myself and stuff like this has a major tendency to bother the hell out of me, especially since it is a common game stigma. The only major reason I would ever focus on making this happen is because it does have crippling effects on a game that is just now blossoming into a PVP scene. This is the best time, if any, to change something that holds this much ground effect from a balancing standpoint. Unavoidable damage opposed to overly avoidable damage makes a sinkhole in balancing and sets up for a major imbalanced meta typing. I don't dabble in PvP much in this game, but the explanation still stands. It effects PVE as well for sure. I wasn't wanting to debate physics sides of things (or literal understandings), but it was the easiest way to get it where others could comprehend the understanding I was laying out on why I think this way and then explaining the effects is has on the game (in the literal mechanics sense). Main focus point being that of balancing and overall game functionality. A game is a giant compilation of mechanics and classifications wrapped into said mechanics that make a game ( once properly skinned ) through the outcome of their functions and interactions. When something is highly out of sync with the rest of the machine, the machine doesn't function properly as a whole and is bound to have failure in some major ways. Exploits, arch typing, and so much more. It not only has its inadequate natures, but leaves a hole for more to crawl in through to add to the dysfunction. I understand everyone's personal belief and understanding is completely subjective, but sometimes, it does indeed make a huge difference overall when some things are analysed and assessed thoroughly. Things progress through reevaluation and enhancements to keep everything running and to remove inadequacies for overall performance. I just see this as a huge blind spot and oversight that does effect the game pretty perversely.

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

I've thought for years that this would have been an excellent bit of design. Far from the game needing unchanging, straight-line rules, clear boundaries between "attack" and "spell" to be complex and interesting, I usually feel that rules with exceptions - rules that break - make for more interesting games. Rules that never break are usually just missed opportunities.

Maybe this comes down to the 'two cultures' divide. GGG seems to come down on the 'hard' side of the divide, i.e. natural scientist/engineer/mathematician. That means clear, explicit rules and a solid logical framework. Maybe some of the players are coming from the 'soft' perspective and expecting to see 'intuitive' rules that bend or break according to the overall 'feel' of the situation.

For what it's worth, I'm very much on the 'hard' side (as a pure mathematician), and I find GGG's logical approach quite refreshing when it comes to tooltips, support gems and so on, as compared to the ad hoc approach you see in a lot of games. I agree that realism isn't a justification (it's instead often used to 'justify' a lot of inconsistency, I've found). But explicit logical rules have a justification of their own: they mean you can predict what will happen in an unfamiliar situation, so you can plan ahead. Their purpose isn't to add complexity to the game per se, but to allow the game to become more complex without becoming incomprehensible.

As for your 'interesting exceptions', many of these are already in the game as unique item mods or keystones. For instance, it's a 'rule' that you need to deal lightning damage in order to cause shock, but Three Dragons and Voltaxic Rift 'break' this rule. A more complex example is damage priority: the general principle is that damage is taken from energy shield before life. Chaos damage is the exception to this principle, but then there's a further exception if you wear Shavronne's Wrappings or Solaris Lorica. What the devs try to avoid are *implicit* exceptions that players have to hunt around to find.

(I wouldn't say 'melee unit first' is any sort of rule in Starcraft - it's not always true and it has no predictive power, and the great thing about Starcraft is how hugely different all three races are (e.g. the Zergling and Zealot are both light biological melee, but are poles apart in other respects).)

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Incompetent wrote:

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

I've thought for years that this would have been an excellent bit of design. Far from the game needing unchanging, straight-line rules, clear boundaries between "attack" and "spell" to be complex and interesting, I usually feel that rules with exceptions - rules that break - make for more interesting games. Rules that never break are usually just missed opportunities.

Maybe this comes down to the 'two cultures' divide. GGG seems to come down on the 'hard' side of the divide, i.e. natural scientist/engineer/mathematician. That means clear, explicit rules and a solid logical framework. Maybe some of the players are coming from the 'soft' perspective and expecting to see 'intuitive' rules that bend or break according to the overall 'feel' of the situation.

For what it's worth, I'm very much on the 'hard' side (as a pure mathematician), and I find GGG's logical approach quite refreshing when it comes to tooltips, support gems and so on, as compared to the ad hoc approach you see in a lot of games. I agree that realism isn't a justification (it's instead often used to 'justify' a lot of inconsistency, I've found). But explicit logical rules have a justification of their own: they mean you can predict what will happen in an unfamiliar situation, so you can plan ahead. Their purpose isn't to add complexity to the game per se, but to allow the game to become more complex without becoming incomprehensible.

As for your 'interesting exceptions', many of these are already in the game as unique item mods or keystones. For instance, it's a 'rule' that you need to deal lightning damage in order to cause shock, but Three Dragons and Voltaxic Rift 'break' this rule. A more complex example is damage priority: the general principle is that damage is taken from energy shield before life. Chaos damage is the exception to this principle, but then there's a further exception if you wear Shavronne's Wrappings or Solaris Lorica. What the devs try to avoid are *implicit* exceptions that players have to hunt around to find.

(I wouldn't say 'melee unit first' is any sort of rule in Starcraft - it's not always true and it has no predictive power, and the great thing about Starcraft is how hugely different all three races are (e.g. the Zergling and Zealot are both light biological melee, but are poles apart in other respects).)

I get what you are saying, but most of the examples and understandings here don't hold much ground on the subject at hand. They, in fact, step into a whole other part of the games rulings, functions, and mechanics. GGG has done a great job for sure in many many things, and the game as a whole. However, there are many things like what I am pointing out that are actually terrifyingly crippling to game balancing and overall function. I find it nice that this post has got some actual interaction at all. I expected to get trolled pretty damn hard.

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Incompetent wrote:

Maybe this comes down to the 'two cultures' divide. GGG seems to come down on the 'hard' side of the divide, i.e. natural scientist/engineer/mathematician.

Well, that's also my area of training, broadly speaking, and we seem to have opposing views, so I can't say I'm too sold on this particular dichotomy. :)

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Incompetent wrote:

That means clear, explicit rules and a solid logical framework.

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What the devs try to avoid are *implicit* exceptions that players have to hunt around to find.

I don't really know where you're getting this stuff from. The idea isn't to not have "clear, explicit rules and a solid logical framework", it's just to change what those rules are. If evasion applies to projectiles and attacks, as opposed to just attacks (with whatever hypothetical changes need to be made to make that happen), that's a clear rule, that can be stated explicitly, and applied logically, including making the useful predictions about game behaviour that you mention. I don't see the problem.

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Incompetent wrote:

As for your 'interesting exceptions', many of these are already in the game as unique item mods or keystones...

Indeed, uniques and keystones are a big way this kind of thinking is applied in PoE. I was going to bring up chaos bypassing ES as an example myself.

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Incompetent wrote:

(I wouldn't say 'melee unit first' is any sort of rule in Starcraft - it's not always true and it has no predictive power, and the great thing about Starcraft is how hugely different all three races are (e.g. the Zergling and Zealot are both light biological melee, but are poles apart in other respects).)

In case it wasn't clear, by "first" I meant "lowest tech". That is always true. And that knowledge does have predictive power: in TvZ, you can wall off and be safe until they tech (assuming you don't scout some crazy 4pool or whatever). If hydralisks were the low-tech unit, that would not be the case. Knowledge of tech tree and related timings (which can be thought of as a collection of this and other "rules") is what allows that kind of useful prediction in play.

In any case, you're doubtless not wrong for your idea of a "rule" is in this context: I think this example of mine is getting caught up on personal connotations, which don't really matter. Whatever you want to call it, what I was talking about is the value (to me) in having patterns in your design that aren't just the same all the way through the game. That doesn't mean they need to be unintuitive, or unpredictable, or unclear. It's just about not building everything out of straight lines and symmetry.

I simply much prefer the Venn diagram where "spells", "skills that are subject to armour" and "skills that are subject to evasion" all intersect than the diagram where they don't.

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

I simply much prefer the Venn diagram where "spells", "skills that are subject to armour" and "skills that are subject to evasion" all intersect than the diagram where they don't.

OK, I can get with that. The only unbreakable rule here is that 'skills that are subject to evasion' is the same as 'skills that are subject to accuracy', because evasion only means anything as part of the evasion versus accuracy formula (unless you want to turn evasion itself into something completely different). So we can have unevadable or 'perfectly accurate' attacks (these already exist in several guises, but you could also change things so that e.g. AoE attacks are unevadable), and also potentially inaccurate spells (these don't currently exist).

Then we have to decide which spells require accuracy to hit the target. All spells? All projectile spells? Just a few spells? If it's only some spells, how much would those spells need to be buffed to make them balanced versus spells that don't use accuracy? Bear in mind the player has to deal with this from the other side when casting the spells (not least in PvP).

I gave my answer to that in a previous statement. This one actually

"Now, back to magic magic. It makes sense for certain spells to not have a hit chance, such as flameblast, cold snap, glacial cascade, curses and so forth. The spells are targeted locations where the spell is directly manifested as an attack SPECIFICALLY effecting only the targeted area. The victim inside the areas is hit because it is in effected locations, as where it wouldn't be hit outside of the effected area. This is hit specific location. The difference between this and projectiles are that projectiles are projected missile attacks that do not have a set location of effect and are not instantaneously placed AOE or directly effecting spells (directly effecting means there is no travelling between caster and subject, it just automatically happens. Instant transmission). This is why it makes 0 sense that a subject would not get the chance or ability to dodge/evade the incoming attack regardless of it being a spell or attack simply because it has travel time and no set or defined location of effect (I.E, a god damned projectile). This lack of specific targeting alone is why it shouldn't be an auto hit or else every other attack in the same fashion should be 100% hit chance if it lands on the target because they are skill shots at that point. They hit if you are good enough to land them on the target much similar to that of a MOBA game. Now that being said, non-spell projectile attacks get a major shafting compared to spells in the fact they have a doubled chance to miss because, they for one, have to actually be aimed to land on the target they targeted (via skillshot style). THEN after actually connecting they got the % calculator of actually hitting within the personal space of the character. Very obvious imbalance that is quite unacceptable simply because of how attacks and spells can be enhanced. Massive projectile count increases on spells make an unavoidable blanket, while the projectile attacks still remain almost void because of dodge/evasion chance in general. Maybe that clears up the issue I am talking about some."

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Incompetent wrote:

(unless you want to turn evasion itself into something completely different)

Heh, well, as I said, I don't much like accuracy, and in the alternate universe where game developers do massive amounts of work to fix non-issues just so I like the game marginally more, I'd be happy without it. :)

But considering slightly less drastic changes than that, creating a variety of casters that have to take accuracy into account is potentially a pretty neat addition to the game. Might even go some way to dispelling the old "dexterity is the worst base stat" attitude.

I'd do that much the same way you're suggesting: accuracy could apply to projectile spells, and your Flameblasts and Cold Snaps etc would remain guaranteed hits. And then yes, various relative buffs/nerfs, likely some significant changes to the blue side of the passive tree, potential reexamination of things like wand mods, perhaps reworks of a few skills if they lose purpose with the changes...it'd be a lot of work. We're still in alternate-universe territory, I'm aware of that. Fun to think about though.

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

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Incompetent wrote:

(unless you want to turn evasion itself into something completely different)

Heh, well, as I said, I don't much like accuracy, and in the alternate universe where game developers do massive amounts of work to fix non-issues just so I like the game marginally more, I'd be happy without it. :)

But considering slightly less drastic changes than that, creating a variety of casters that have to take accuracy into account is potentially a pretty neat addition to the game. Might even go some way to dispelling the old "dexterity is the worst base stat" attitude.

I'd do that much the same way you're suggesting: accuracy could apply to projectile spells, and your Flameblasts and Cold Snaps etc would remain guaranteed hits. And then yes, various relative buffs/nerfs, likely some significant changes to the blue side of the passive tree, potential reexamination of things like wand mods, perhaps reworks of a few skills if they lose purpose with the changes...it'd be a lot of work. We're still in alternate-universe territory, I'm aware of that. Fun to think about though.

Yeah, it would be a lot of work, but it would overall improve a lot of things amazingly enough. Most people don't look at these things, ignore it, or just accept it for what it is. I am not most people (that doesn't make me a know-it-all or seem arrogant...hopefully). I am actually aiming to do stuff like this for a living (game design / development, so-on). So, spotting things like this just happens with me haha. It is a nice skill to have, but can be a burden sometimes when playing games. You just can't help from wanting to talk about it XD

Would be fun to hear from someone in GGG on the subject. Or maybe it would be just pointless. You never know, but I remain confident in what I have said and the points I have detailed. I've never really been a fan of suggestion forums, they vastly go ignored (not calling out any specific game companies, was speaking in generals). Though, again, you never know haha. Not all companies are like that.