[DIS] Phylactery

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Wellvin
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Re: [DIS] Phylactery

Post by Wellvin »

Do I understand the issue correctly ?

Multiple factors affect attack speed like DEX, skill, weapon and items. We want to keep attack delay above 190ms. Players always find combinations of stats, skills, weapon and items to attack faster and get OP. The more items exist in the game, the more combinations lead to OP speed.
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jesusalva
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Re: [DIS] Phylactery

Post by jesusalva »

Wellvin wrote: 18 Oct 2022, 18:28 Do I understand the issue correctly ?
Yes and no.

Wellvin wrote: 18 Oct 2022, 18:28 Multiple factors affect attack speed like DEX, skill, weapon and items. [...] Players always find combinations of stats, skills, weapon and items to attack faster and get OP. The more items exist in the game, the more combinations lead to OP speed.
This is correct (except that AGI has much much more weight than DEX)
Wellvin wrote: 18 Oct 2022, 18:28 We want to keep attack delay above 190ms.
This is not.

First, this is a boogy formula not meant to be understood ─ it is meant to work and nothing more. So "190" is not necessarily "190 ms" ─ it is just an absolute value like any other absolute value. Attack Speed is first handled as an integer ranging from 0 to 190, which is then converted to ms where "0" stands for "2000 ms" and "190" stands for... whatever the minimum speed is. I forgot, but I think it is "100ms" or so.

Code: Select all

  0 ASPD = 2000 ms
190 ASPD =  100 ms
Second, 190 is the hard limit. You cannot go past it. If you did, the server would crash with a pile of NaN's as the formula would start returning infinity and causing all sort of overflows and errors. Remember that 190 converts to 100ms ─ if it kept going, we would start having negatives. You cannot do one attack every "-300ms", that don't even make sense. Obviously the server would crash.

So "Hard Limit" doesn't mean "Any higher than this and it is unplayable", it means "Any higher than this and stuff will start blowing up". Likewise, the hard limit for stat points is 255, but we never use more than 100.

"Soft Limit" is the value which is not enforced, but is the optimal. I can divide the soft limit in two:
─ 152, let's call it "Yellow Threshold": Whenever your ASPD gets past this value, you'll start seeing much more drastic returns. And it'll be much trickier to balance.
─ 172, let's call it "Red Threshold": In theory, this should never be surpassed, not even with potions and speed focus, as any value past this number could potentially double your DPS. In fact, every 10 ASPD past this threshold, your attack DPS will have received at minimum a 100% gain compared to the previous threshold. Balancing past this value is virtually impossible and I'll explain why:

Almost every item, skill and potion give you a % bonus of your ASPD, and the Phylactery is no exception.

Giving 50% from 50 ASPD will bring you to 75 ASPD, both are within the "green" area, where gameplay will admit the change ─ even if it could be seen as a lot for an item, it won't break anything. Game balance is not compromised. Player will notice they got much faster too.

Giving 50% from 115 ASPD however is a different story. That would bump you to 172, which is just on the red threshold. This should usually not be allowed ─ and is a clear sign of a poorly designed combo or item. But nothing will burn, you'll be attacking very fast but a solid penalty can take care of it.

Giving 50% from 120 ASPD is worse. That would bump you to 180. This won't make you attack 50% faster. This will make you attack ~2.5× faster. A mere increment of 8 in the ASPD is no longer a "cool bonus", but a drastic increase to DPS. At this point, there's no penalty you can safely apply ─ compared to turn-based RPGs, "there's 20% chance of your death every turn" would be the only passable penalty which don't really make sense in a MMORPG.

Giving 50% from 130 ASPD however, will bump you to 190. Why? Because as I said, 190 is the hard limit. The server will trim it to 190 to ensure it won't crash. But do note that this is the server keeping itself from a crash ─ gameplay is already broken, and you don't have a weapon, you have a machine gun. Your DPS has doubled compared to the previous mark.

In other words, after the "red threshold", any attack speed point you add will change your DPS immensely. This is bad for several reasons:

1. Players will get used to the high speed. High speed is addicting. Given every single point makes so much difference on the attack speed, any sort of tweak will affect final damage immensely.
2. Overwhelm. Below the yellow threshold (152), there's enough time to react. Past the red threshold, there's none. This means PvP will be decided by finding opponent first most of time past the red threshold. A monster with same speed will instantly kill its player opponents, no matter how little damage it does.
3. Difficult to balance. DPS is essentially a multiplication between damage and speed. Past the red threshold, you cannot really make any projection of the speed (strictly speaking, the interval between 180 and 190 increases DPS more than the whole interval between 0 and 180). You can inflict more damage than TMWA can assign as HP.

So to sum it up ASPD is an absolute integer ranging from 0 to 190, values above 152 should be avoided and values above 172 causes all sort of balance issues (there's no viable strategy to balance ASPD above 172). These values are later converted to ms using a table.
In theory, values above 152 ─ and even above 172 ─ can be used, but only if you have a fine-grain precision over these, which is not currently possible as most items, skills, potions and etc give you a % bonus.
I think the only thing which don't give you a % bonus is agility, and indeed, these values were meant to be reached with raw agility, not with boosters.

Jesusalva (aka. Jesusaves)
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jesusalva
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Re: [DIS] Phylactery

Post by jesusalva »

Please do not merge this reply with the previous one
Lets compare Original RO with our game, as we use the same formulas.

On Original RO...
+25% for Assassin Cross (Brawler-equivalent here) as a potion
+25% at the best skill ─ Knights could get +30% but then they would need to use the +20% potion so for rounding purposes.
+30% for the best equipment with the best combo, roughly.

So the maximum total would be 80% bonus with potions and skills.

On The Mana World Legacy...
+40% for Dark Concentration Potion. The regular one gives +30% by the way
+25% for the best equipment (Phylactery)
+200% for Speed Focus at level 9. It is hard to convert as agi affect it directly.

Notes:
Speed Focus is actually +2% per agility point.

For best equipment, knowing there are no combos in TMWA...
+5% Assassin Gloves
+15% Assassin Mask
-- or --
+10% Bull Helmet OR
+25% Phylactery

The comparison should be clear. Remember Banshee Bow has a +20% on its own, and agility can pass 100 with a full brawling set. So yes, brawlers pretty much hit the hard limit with relative ease, so no wonder they're a dominant class as Hello=) pointed out. Brawling has no weapon, meaning their base attack is low. The class popularity should be a statement to how dangerous balance-wise going past the red threshold is.

PS. There are skills on Renewal which together with proper equipment can reach the same ASPD bonuses which TMW Legacy currently give. Except that if kept active, the character die in 20 seconds or less, or is purely chance-based for small bursts.

Jesusalva (aka. Jesusaves)
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WildX
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Re: [DIS] Phylactery

Post by WildX »

The assassin set was given stats that were meant to be the top of the top in terms of attack speed. Anything that goes above assassin gear bonuses is not an upgrade, it's a broken stat. The Phylactery being equivalent to Assassin Mask with +15% would seem fair as a top-tier item. It makes the total bonus with Bull Helmet +25% which is significant but not broken.

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