Post by Mari on Oct 7, 2020 11:00:34 GMT -8
Yo! This is a little thread that I'm going to use to bring up things I perceive as flaws with the current mechanics of Li! If you want to comment on my thoughts, you can. Though I'd appreciate it if you didn't use this thread for any specific move balancing concerns, since it's meant to be a more broad discussion than that. Move concerns are best brought to staff! This thread does not necessarily offer solutions. Nor is it a statement that something needs to change. It's more observations. Without further ado:
Previewable Rolls
Here's an old one. I think that previewable rolls, the type of roll where you can see the result before you post, are actually a lot more problematic than we give them credit for. That isn't to say there isn't a benefit to doing rolls that way, but...
Pros:
They allow you to have an idea of the outcome of your post before you write it, which often means you get to write things you'd otherwise have to wait until next post to address. And they allow you to write around how good your rolls are.
Cons:
Why would you ever use a counter-style move unless you can see you have a really good move? These moves might as well have no conditional downsides, since you can literally confirm they're going to work before you use them.
Numerous other RNG exploits where the downsides are negated by the fact that you can just not use the move if you don't think the roll is good enough for it to work.
Advanced RNG manipulation, while not against the rules, is only possible because of previewable rolls.
Devour Moves
When I first created the Hungry Cookpot, I based it on its game of source FF8 where using it is a one turn thing. It just happens in one attack. And then that mechanic became a player mechanic.
But then I looked at how D&D handles this type of mechanic: Multi-Stage grapples, and wondered if perhaps that would've been smarter. Let's say that in theory, devouring an opponent worked like this:
Grapple (Wrestling with them) --> Pinned (You have control over them) --> Devouring --> Devoured
Requiring four total grapple checks. If any one is failed, you don't advance to the next stage but you don't lose your progress either. Your opponent has to beat you with THEIR counterattacks to undo your progress. Sufficiently large or magical shenaniganry could reduce it to a 3 stage grapple.
I wonder to myself. Would this be better? Certainly the moves are fun as-is, but there are also people who feel like the mechanic is stronger than it is, and I wonder if that's because all you have to do to afflict it is get lucky. If the status itself was stronger but it took significantly more effort and luck to afflict, would that even out into something better? I feel like it actually would.
Counter Moves
These are dumb. Trust me, I use them. Even if you look past how previewable rolls make them broken, people would just use them against bad rolls anyway. They're just better than normal attacks every time you can use them, which is why I've always said "No counter should ever be allowed to go without a cooldown". Because seriously, think about it. If you had an every time counter that did okay damage, you could just use it any time you can, or if you know it won't beat the attack roll, you can just dodge instead and save yourself the action so that you can try for a better roll. All your dodge rolls become potential attack rolls, which is absolutely crazy if you've ever been a little salty that some natural 20 you got was on a defense roll and only let you dodge an attack.
I feel like these moves are a bit anti-fun in their current design as a result. Like, straight up the most abusive mechanic we haven't already banned.
What do I think would be balanced? If we removed previewable rolls, and required that every counter attack cause the user to take double damage if they fail, I think that would be balanced. A counter-attack is you taking a risk for extra damage. It stands to reason that taking extra damage would be what needs to happen for net zero balancing. The moves would still be good, especially if you made free action versions, but if you got unlucky using them they could just screw you over. That would be leagues better than they are now, I think.
Action Economy
3 actions? In a single turn? This is... an idea I'm not too sure about, in hindsight, I feel like. The main upside is that you can create wacky combos. But this can be offset by just taking advantage of free action moves or adding a chance to combo onto your moves. D&D doesn't let you do this. You get maybe 2 standard actions a turn if you're using special magic/items in D&D, and that's considered POWERFUL. The only time D&D lets you make 3+ attack action during a turn is usually using basic weapon attacks analogous to our light comboable attacks. Aka nothing with complicated mechanics. And even then, they have what is essentially our haste penalty system for those. Each successive attack is less likely to hit.
The downsides?
Posts take significantly longer to write and combat paradoxically moves slower in spite of the fact that characters die faster.
You can't have moves that are contingent upon other moves working or failing without getting into weird contingencies. For example. If you have a devour move, that generally has to be the last move you use during a turn. Because otherwise your opponent may or may not be there to attack.
Excessive amounts of rolling in a post sap people's muse.
You have to balance around the possibility of someone hitting all of their attacks and none of their attacks on any given turn, providing a much larger range of potential damage.
Forums
RPing on forums is slow. I like it! But it causes a few issues we're all familiar with. The biggest one, besides being slow, is that it's hard to bounce back and forth between one another on the forums. You write a post, and someone gets to it when they get to it. You can't turn to someone in the middle of a post and ask them to work with you to make an exchange work smoothly like you can with a chat RP. I'm honestly not sure how to address this without actually abandoning a forum. Because I guarantee you, if we moved to a chat, that would have its own problems.
To revisit a previous topic for an example, here's an example of how counters would work a lot more smoothly in a chat.
It's the opponents turn. They roll to attack.
You roll to counter.
After that, the exchange resolves in a matter of seconds and your opponent can resume what they were doing.
On a forum, that exchange takes 3 entire posts and your opponent is doing things in between you countering them, preventing your counter from meaningfully affecting anything that came after the attack you're countering. Holy hell that is clunky.
Final Smashes
These little bastards that do 60-80% damage and just auto hit and ignore all mechanics that might resist them. Yeah, that kind of sucks. You have to either design bosses with the assumption your party is going to toss final smashes around for like 300-400% damage overall, or just hope they won't use them.
I feel like these aren't fun, in spite of being a signature move of the series. They're also so OP that we had to ban them from PVP simply because they just dominate any match where people are actually trying to win.
Previewable Rolls
Here's an old one. I think that previewable rolls, the type of roll where you can see the result before you post, are actually a lot more problematic than we give them credit for. That isn't to say there isn't a benefit to doing rolls that way, but...
Pros:
They allow you to have an idea of the outcome of your post before you write it, which often means you get to write things you'd otherwise have to wait until next post to address. And they allow you to write around how good your rolls are.
Cons:
Why would you ever use a counter-style move unless you can see you have a really good move? These moves might as well have no conditional downsides, since you can literally confirm they're going to work before you use them.
Numerous other RNG exploits where the downsides are negated by the fact that you can just not use the move if you don't think the roll is good enough for it to work.
Advanced RNG manipulation, while not against the rules, is only possible because of previewable rolls.
Devour Moves
When I first created the Hungry Cookpot, I based it on its game of source FF8 where using it is a one turn thing. It just happens in one attack. And then that mechanic became a player mechanic.
But then I looked at how D&D handles this type of mechanic: Multi-Stage grapples, and wondered if perhaps that would've been smarter. Let's say that in theory, devouring an opponent worked like this:
Grapple (Wrestling with them) --> Pinned (You have control over them) --> Devouring --> Devoured
Requiring four total grapple checks. If any one is failed, you don't advance to the next stage but you don't lose your progress either. Your opponent has to beat you with THEIR counterattacks to undo your progress. Sufficiently large or magical shenaniganry could reduce it to a 3 stage grapple.
I wonder to myself. Would this be better? Certainly the moves are fun as-is, but there are also people who feel like the mechanic is stronger than it is, and I wonder if that's because all you have to do to afflict it is get lucky. If the status itself was stronger but it took significantly more effort and luck to afflict, would that even out into something better? I feel like it actually would.
Counter Moves
These are dumb. Trust me, I use them. Even if you look past how previewable rolls make them broken, people would just use them against bad rolls anyway. They're just better than normal attacks every time you can use them, which is why I've always said "No counter should ever be allowed to go without a cooldown". Because seriously, think about it. If you had an every time counter that did okay damage, you could just use it any time you can, or if you know it won't beat the attack roll, you can just dodge instead and save yourself the action so that you can try for a better roll. All your dodge rolls become potential attack rolls, which is absolutely crazy if you've ever been a little salty that some natural 20 you got was on a defense roll and only let you dodge an attack.
I feel like these moves are a bit anti-fun in their current design as a result. Like, straight up the most abusive mechanic we haven't already banned.
What do I think would be balanced? If we removed previewable rolls, and required that every counter attack cause the user to take double damage if they fail, I think that would be balanced. A counter-attack is you taking a risk for extra damage. It stands to reason that taking extra damage would be what needs to happen for net zero balancing. The moves would still be good, especially if you made free action versions, but if you got unlucky using them they could just screw you over. That would be leagues better than they are now, I think.
Action Economy
3 actions? In a single turn? This is... an idea I'm not too sure about, in hindsight, I feel like. The main upside is that you can create wacky combos. But this can be offset by just taking advantage of free action moves or adding a chance to combo onto your moves. D&D doesn't let you do this. You get maybe 2 standard actions a turn if you're using special magic/items in D&D, and that's considered POWERFUL. The only time D&D lets you make 3+ attack action during a turn is usually using basic weapon attacks analogous to our light comboable attacks. Aka nothing with complicated mechanics. And even then, they have what is essentially our haste penalty system for those. Each successive attack is less likely to hit.
The downsides?
Posts take significantly longer to write and combat paradoxically moves slower in spite of the fact that characters die faster.
You can't have moves that are contingent upon other moves working or failing without getting into weird contingencies. For example. If you have a devour move, that generally has to be the last move you use during a turn. Because otherwise your opponent may or may not be there to attack.
Excessive amounts of rolling in a post sap people's muse.
You have to balance around the possibility of someone hitting all of their attacks and none of their attacks on any given turn, providing a much larger range of potential damage.
Forums
RPing on forums is slow. I like it! But it causes a few issues we're all familiar with. The biggest one, besides being slow, is that it's hard to bounce back and forth between one another on the forums. You write a post, and someone gets to it when they get to it. You can't turn to someone in the middle of a post and ask them to work with you to make an exchange work smoothly like you can with a chat RP. I'm honestly not sure how to address this without actually abandoning a forum. Because I guarantee you, if we moved to a chat, that would have its own problems.
To revisit a previous topic for an example, here's an example of how counters would work a lot more smoothly in a chat.
It's the opponents turn. They roll to attack.
You roll to counter.
After that, the exchange resolves in a matter of seconds and your opponent can resume what they were doing.
On a forum, that exchange takes 3 entire posts and your opponent is doing things in between you countering them, preventing your counter from meaningfully affecting anything that came after the attack you're countering. Holy hell that is clunky.
Final Smashes
These little bastards that do 60-80% damage and just auto hit and ignore all mechanics that might resist them. Yeah, that kind of sucks. You have to either design bosses with the assumption your party is going to toss final smashes around for like 300-400% damage overall, or just hope they won't use them.
I feel like these aren't fun, in spite of being a signature move of the series. They're also so OP that we had to ban them from PVP simply because they just dominate any match where people are actually trying to win.
Last Edit:
Oct 7, 2020 12:21:05 GMT -8 by Mari
