[Carni's Online Combat Parser]

On 10/18/2022 at 3:10 PM, Book of Og said:

I'm getting Service Unavailable when I access carnifax.org.

 

Everything OK?

I'm seeing the same.  I hope this hasn't gone the way of HeroStats.

[Aim or Build-up (or the like) allow accuracy above 95%]

24 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

     Hey!   That's silly and wrong.  Why are you picking on +0 Minions the only group of foes for which this usually applies.

 

     And officially (for me) this is a no, not needed or wanted change.  What next?   Going to want to lower their health or resistance because we're tired of automatically landed hits leaving a sliver of health so we have to burn extra end and time taking another attack.  One thing after another next thing you know Boxing is a end free, auto hit power that one shots everything.  Or maybe instead of auto hitting the game incorporates varying hit ceilings.  One normal, one if your immobilized ... but wait how are you immobilized?  I mean generally the lower half is shown as covered (yeah are you aiming at its feet covered by err cover) the rest is free to twist but what if it's Mind Control vs Ice vs Granite.  Similar questions with Holds.  Wouldn't a Gravity Hold be the worst I mean it would accelerate the bullet, sword, energy Blast (pesky smashing damage) into the target?  Or make aiming at anything else harder, I mean gravity can bend light much less what it might do to anything else passing by.  Talk about taking wind into account, or Earth's rotation or yeah that's silly.

    They, the designer's, drew a line at 95%.  Could they have drawn the line elsewhere or even sliding.  Sure, but the combat is simple, straightforward, familiar conceptually to most and, while a non-issue 18yrs down the road, doesn't require the incremental increases in computing power/time increasing levels of such complications would be needed to add such features to the game.

That’s a hell of a straw man argument there.  I wasn’t suggesting any of that; simply a way to make snipes and aim powers special that wouldn’t affect combat balance by more than 1-2% on average, and wouldn’t be difficult to implement or disable should it prove problematic.

 

[Aim or Build-up (or the like) allow accuracy above 95%]

1 hour ago, EmperorSteele said:

Since the game already essentially uses a d20 system to determine hits, how about if having X extra/rollover tohit allows a player/critter to roll with advantage?

 

For those who haven't played a modern tabletop d20 rpg in a while, basically that means roll twice and take the best result. It would reduce the odds of a crit fail to 1/400 under specific circumstances.

 

Maybe there's some considerations that should go into that to make it more balanced, but it's a start =D

Seems like a more complicated way of achieving a similar result, so from the results perspective it sounds fine.  Or am I misunderstanding how the mechanics would differ?  Would you just give an additional roll for each effect, distinguished simply by magnitude of success?  Something like "upon initial miss, [tactics/aim] allows for another accuracy check with [50%/90%] chance to hit"?
 

[Aim or Build-up (or the like) allow accuracy above 95%]

2 minutes ago, MTeague said:

 

That's the thing. I'm pretty sure zero enemy mobs ever get a Build Up or an Aim.

I'd want to see it added to them, as the price of this.

But I'm also feeling somewhat vindictive and petty after a crappy day at work, which probably means I should log off the forums. Just gonna get myself in trouble.

I can’t vouch for Aim specifically, but I know that some bosses and up have animations that look like aim - a bright yellow highlight that lasts for a few seconds.  I also that there are some mobs in the Hero’s Epic and other higher level arcs that have targeting drones that let them shoot right through soft capped ranged defense.  
 

I could see a case for making villain powers like tactics or such a bit more common in general, but that’s outside the scope of this suggestion.

 

I know it doesn’t mean much coming from a random internet dude, but I’m sorry to hear that you had a crappy day. Hope you have a better evening at least. Cheers.

 

[Aim or Build-up (or the like) allow accuracy above 95%]

2 minutes ago, MTeague said:

I can go along with this, only if minions, lieuts, bosses, all get powers that can ignore defenses and hit the player regardless of being softcapped.

Otherwise, no. Misses happen. If they can miss you, you have to have at least a snowballs chance in hell to miss them.

Sure.  That's already true, but I'd be game for letting mobs operate under the same rules.  If they've got Aim then they can use it to harass the over-built squishies.

[Aim or Build-up (or the like) allow accuracy above 95%]

39 minutes ago, Rudra said:

I will never understand why so many games cling to the critical fail rule.

 

Example:

Target is helpless. (Affected by hold effect.) Your fire blaster puts his/her hand to the target's head to finish the target. Your fire blaster somehow fails to ignite his/her hand or suddenly decides to turn around and fire blast the wall behind him/her. (Congratulations, you rolled a 1. Or in game terms, the mandatory 5% miss chance got you.)

 

You try again. You fail to ignite your hand again or you project the fire blast somewhere off to your right. Completely missing the helpless, utterly immobile target you literally put your hand on. (That pesky mandatory 5% miss chance triggered again.)

 

After failing to ignite your hand or throwing your fire blast in a random direction away from the completely helpless target you are standing next to, you finally connect. (Streakbreaker kicked in.)

 

 

Why?!

 

Edit: That said, I am indifferent to the proposed change. I could see it on Aim since its purpose is to aim. Not so much on Build Up since its purpose is to build up power and unleash it. Just running off the power's names and primary effects. I would much rather that if you put in the effort to have a high accuracy, you get it. That is, take out the mandatory 5% miss chance.

 

Edit again: That said, I no more see the miss chance going away than I see Aim being allowed to break it. Sorry. Just not going to happen.

I can see some logic behind some manner of minimum miss rate above zero; not from a player character failing to ignite their hand, but rather from a "the target just noticed a coin on the ground and ducked out of the way as you pulled the trigger", or "a gust of wind threw off your aim", or "this particular cartridge was loaded wrong and it didn't follow the anticipated path", or "that overly heroic activity in the bedroom last night left my arm weaker than normal" perspective.  I think that the 5% minimum miss rate is excessive in this case, but I'm hoping that proposing a small change and observing little negative effect can enable a more foundational change in the future.
 

[Aim or Build-up (or the like) allow accuracy above 95%]

14 minutes ago, Ston said:

I think the clamp should be removed entirely. If you build for enough accuracy, then you should hit your target. It's so aggravating to buff up, cast your hard hitting attack, and miss on a 95% chance tohit roll. If there's a balance issue with that, give mobs more defense, tohit debuffs, etc. 

 

So +1 from me for this suggestion!

I’d get behind some manner of algorithmic/asymptotic system as well, where it’s as easy as now to build to 95%, requires some trade offs to build for 98%, and then you’d have to build almost exclusively for accuracy to hit 99%, and it’s very difficult (or maybe needs something like aim) to hit 100%.  Numbers subject to debate, of course.  However, that would require a lot more rejiggering than the simple if/then laid out above.  

 

[Aim or Build-up (or the like) allow accuracy above 95%]

I missed my scheduled sacrifices to RNGesus and recently had a string of Super Snipes (slow snipe plus aim) whiff, which brought to mind a thought that has been bouncing around in my head since Live: letting to-hit buff powers raise the accuracy cap for affected powers.

 

I figured that such a foundational limit would be difficult to conditionally change, but the recent expansion to the tanker aoe limits makes me think that it would be viable.  Wise or not is something that I hope to flesh out here, but it should be just as feasible as the tanker aoe width buffs.

 

Why such a buff would have value?  Right now, powers like aim, tactics, or build-up have little value since you can chew some inspirations instead for a shorter animation time and longer duration.  Every build that I make has 95% accuracy for the main attacks in a normal 50+1 vs 54s situation anyway, which means the yellow inspirations have very little value at all and aim or buildup only provide value in raising damage output momentarily.  Running tactics on a support toon, as things are now, is basically of no value at all to a team outside of a Posi task force.

 

So, what I propose would be something along the lines of yellow inspirations allowing a chance to hit cap (cthcap) of 96%, toggle powers like tactics or targeting drone or focused accuracy, or slow-snipe, allow a cthcap of 97%, damage focused long recharge click powers that also boost tohit like build up raise the cthcap to 98%, and tohit focused long recharge powers like Aim raise the cthcap to 99%.  Combining any number of these effects would simply add 1 point to cthcap for the current highest effective power, so a yellow plus buildup would have a cthcap of 99%, or targeting drone plus Aim would mean a 100% cthcap for the duration of Aim.

 

Note that this would only affect that maximum chance to hit, so trying to nail a mogged Paragon Protector or a saturation phalanx of Cimerorans would still be a fool’s errand.  
 

I don’t think that there would be any significant balance issues from this, as we’re only increasing effective damage output by 5% at a maximum and more like 2% most of the time.  However, this change would let slow-snipes regain some of their “special”ness in being able to more reliably hit special targets, as well as giving some benefit to powers like tactics and focused accuracy in the 99% of situations where running those is currently just an effort in losing net recovery.

 

Any other thoughts or considerations that I’ve missed?