Genesis

by UnknownHobbit
This is a roleplaying game inspired by Generations.
ID:2545866
 
Applies to:Genesis
Status: Open

Issue hasn't been assigned a status value.
There was a lot of redundancy in the old passive system in DBG. A lot of the passives just out-rightly didn’t work at all, primarily caused by the balance issue of them having an infinite scaling.

My first suggestion is to give particular passives a quantifiable cap on how many points may be placed in them. There’s no reason you should be able to place a million points into something like energy deflection and just be permanently immune to physical attacks. The cap would obviously be different for each passive as they don’t linearly scale the same, but should be kept within a 100-10,000 range (At 50k rating per passive point, that would mean you would need anywhere from 5 million rating to 500 million rating worth of points just to cap a passive out, which already itself would be extremely unattainable).

The passives I recommend to give a cap to would be:

-- Bone Breaker
-- Laceration
-- Deflection
-- Energy Deflection
-- Cyborg & Parts
-- Android & Parts
-- Artificial Skin
-- Self Cyborg

My second suggestion would be re-introducing regeneration and recovery passives with caps. Your recovery and regeneration mod would determine how valuable each point you placed into those passives would be. The reason why I’m asking for regeneration and recovery passives to be reconsidered is because combat in Generations became mega clunky without them. And I know this isn’t the same project, but it caused a tremendous amount of gameplay issues that took away from the fluidity of the game and I feel like at a fundamental level it makes the game systems harder to optimize.

Edit 1: grammar
Edit 2: Removed the Generations related things. Irrelevant and confusing people
My understanding of passive points is limited. However, what I do recall is that the Cyborg, and Android passives did have a practical cap for the sake of not making androids and cyborgs an unbelievable degree of broken.

I would argue that removing regeneration, and recovery passives is a net benefit. It places more importance on them when you're making your build as opposed to just using them as a piggy bank to get that 7th point into endurance.

I don't believe that regeneration, nor recovery work in combat from what I remember.
People will always gravity train, because of how viable it is, regardless of how quickly your health ticks down.
People stay in spar-mode for sparring, because that's what it's for. When you don't want to potentially maim the other person.
Turning it off when you're not trying to be lethal for the sake of damaging limbs is called meta-gaming.
Having low energy will make it seem like everything drains too fast, because that's just how it works. Your energy increases, and it takes longer to drain because of that.
Besides, being invisible, flying, and sparring indefinitely sound like stupid complaints regardless of what the reasoning may be.
In response to ItsMisk
I would argue that removing regeneration, and recovery passives is a net benefit. It places more importance on them when you're making your build as opposed to just using them as a piggy bank to get that 7th point into endurance.

I don't believe that regeneration, nor recovery work in combat from what I remember.

Okay well, if they don't work in combat, they're still piggy banks for extra mod points. That's why my idea is to enable regen/recovery in battle and balance the regen & recovery passives around a cap and character mods rather than just removing them from the game.

People will always gravity train, because of how viable it is, regardless of how quickly your health ticks down.

Sorry if people misunderstood, I wasn't referring to gravity training in Genesis. I was just stating that back in Generations, when regeneration was disabled, it completely broke gravity. It was wrong for me to assume the same thing would happen in Genesis.

People stay in spar-mode for sparring, because that's what it's for. When you don't want to potentially maim the other person.
Turning it off when you're not trying to be lethal for the sake of damaging limbs is called meta-gaming.

It wasn't that they were turning it off to damage limbs, it was that they were keeping spar-mode on because it was faster at KOing people, even in hostile situations. Again, I don't know if this was a thing in Genesis, I was just listing the impact the changes had in Generations.



In response to Callencice
I'm just going to give you a suggestion here. The whole reason Regen and Recovery passive points were removed all together, is because people would just dump into them to basically get Majin style Regeneration/Recovery. There's no real way to balance literally being able to to alter your recovery/regen mods through a second vector.

However, I will say, considering that needing to build Regen and Recovery into your build is something you have to do now, and you'll be very hard pressed to end up getting instant regeration. I actually don't really mind if the whole "You gotta wait 10 seconds to start regaining health" thing was removed. Mostly cause that's a bit frustrating to deal with, and I feel that your regeneration shouldn't stop upon taking damage, but should slowly get drained as your limbs take damage.
(Sorry for double posting)

Regarding your first suggestion, some things make sense, some don't.

The Cyborging passives (minus Self cyborg) Should have infinite scaling, but that also means that the costs infinitely scale as well.

Regarding things like the combat passives (minus energy deflection) Honestly yeah they should just have a hard cap, once you reach it, you have a 100% success of doing things like targeting limbs or causing bleed damage with laceration, or blocking attacks with a preferred limb. Maybe something like 100 Points to max it for each passive (so each passive gives a 1% chance of what the passive does to work)

Now energy deflection is a special thing, I feel that energy deflection and Energy efficiency need to work in tandem to be good. What do I mean? Energy deflection should be COSTLY to use, since you're trading health for energy, it should drain a certain percentage from your energy. Now, in terms of the passive, it should be like other passives, it caps at 100% allowing you to block 100% of attacks. Now, how would the cost of Energy deflection work. Basically, whatever the damage you would of taken for health, apply it to your energy. So for example, if you took 25% of your health as damage, with Energy deflection, you take 25% of that damage but applied to your energy.

Now Energy Efficiency would apply to this to where, it reduces the amount of energy you would lose from an attack. So lets say for example, you have maxed out Energy deflection and you have 1K points in energy efficiency, And you fight somebody who's equal to you in strength, without the passives in efficiency, you would lose between 3-5% energy per hit, with the amount in efficiency, you take 1-2% per hit. So it has an effect, but it's not going to mean you have infinite energy because you have points in deflection and efficiency. It allows you to play with your energy being a second health bar, but it means that you need to actually think instead of just lol using it.
In response to Manly-pink
Manly-pink wrote:
I'm just going to give you a suggestion here. The whole reason Regen and Recovery passive points were removed all together, is because people would just dump into them to basically get Majin style Regeneration/Recovery. There's no real way to balance literally being able to to alter your recovery/regen mods through a second vector.

That is why I am suggesting a cap is implemented to prevent that from happening, without taking the regeneration in combat mechanic away. Having to rely on mitigation is flawed alone because any min-max force character will just destroy you through sheer DPS alone and I guarantee nobody will invest more than 1-2 points into resistance because it is a generally bad mod to put points in without making your character useless.


I feel that your regeneration shouldn't stop upon taking damage, but should slowly get drained as your limbs take damage.

That is precisely the reason why I believe in combat regeneration should be a thing. The more damage your limbs take, the less you're able to mitigate damage, the more vitals you lose. Because of the aforementioned suggestion of a cap, you can only out-regen so much before it's too much to take. This draws out fights longer, puts more emphasis on the fatigue/limb system and overall just feels much better to play in.
In response to Callencice
Mmm, Say I was to go through with your idea of letting Regen and recovery be passives again. What would you say would be your theoretical max, and how strong would that modify your base Regen and recovery?
In response to Manly-pink
Manly-pink wrote:
The Cyborging passives (minus Self cyborg) Should have infinite scaling, but that also means that the costs infinitely scale as well.

What is the purpose of putting more passive points into Cyborging/Android if it just linearly increases the cost but lowers the quality percentage required? The reason why androids and cyborgs in Generations could never be balanced was because of the passive point system circumventing needing a high QP to actually build an effective droid/borg.

Cyborging/Android passives should only affect the success rate of building them. Quality Percentage should be the only correlating factor on how effective the droid/borg is.

Quality Percentage already struggles alone with having not much use to anything other than weights. Also, it's easier to restrict cyborgs/androids to a certain % threshold so they don't get out of hand rather than just systematically nerfing everything about them trying to make them work because passive points.

I don't know how energy deflection works exactly, but the reason why I'm asking for a cap for the combat related passives is because after a certain diminishing point, they become extremely inefficient to invest in and just become a noob trap.





In response to Manly-pink
Manly-pink wrote:
Mmm, Say I was to go through with your idea of letting Regen and recovery be passives again. What would you say would be your theoretical max, and how strong would that modify your base Regen and recovery?

Early on, it should be in the extreme decimals, just like how it was in DBG. Nearing the cap point, it should not be any higher than like 2-4 vitals a tick. Of course your regen mod should also multiply how much you're able to regen, so it could be a little more than that for people with higher regen mods.
In response to Callencice
So, long term, something like Maybe 1.5x to perhaps 2x increase of the Regen/Recovery mod at cap right?

Also to address your other stuff concerning Cyborging. The thing with the passives is that, each level in Cyborg/Implants/Andriods/Parts, made the part better at the same QP. It meant that yes, You could make a part with 5 points at 5 points in each and have a 2K% part. But somebody with 10 of that would be far better at 2K% than your 2K% part. I'm not going to say it would be directly double (Since that math is REALLY obfuscated.) BUT the whole point of it was that every point allowed you to make the same part but better than somebody who had lower points making the same % part.

When it comes to combat passives, I actually agree with you. No they shouldn't be capless they should have a 100 point cap and just work all the time at 100 points. And just have the chance of you being able to deflect attacks to other limbs, or attack the limb of your choice just be chanced by how many points out of 100 you have in that passive.

Now with Energy deflection, like I explained before, With the passive itself, that only controls the chance it procs (the chance Energy deflection goes off and blocks an attack) But the damage you take to your energy should be the same energy you would of taken through your HP before Energy Efficiency (Don't remember the passive name off the top of my head sorry) kicks in and reduces that total cost. However Energy Efficiency should be like techie Efficiency in that it's exponential meaning the more points you invest into it, the lower the return on investment. Meaning you'll never hit the mark where Energy Deflection means you have "infinite" HP.
In response to Manly-pink
Manly-pink wrote:

Also to address your other stuff concerning Cyborging. The thing with the passives is that, each level in Cyborg/Implants/Andriods/Parts, made the part better at the same QP. It meant that yes, You could make a part with 5 points at 5 points in each and have a 2K% part. But somebody with 10 of that would be far better at 2K% than your 2K% part. I'm not going to say it would be directly double (Since that math is REALLY obfuscated.) BUT the whole point of it was that every point allowed you to make the same part but better than somebody who had lower points making the same % part.

5 PP cyborg vs. 10 PP cyborg
2K% borg = 1k% borg
2k% borg cost = 1k% borg cost
It was redundant. Cap it at 100, for 100% success rate. Let QP directly affect borg/android effectiveness.

When it comes to combat passives, I actually agree with you. No they shouldn't be capless they should have a 100 point cap and just work all the time at 100 points. And just have the chance of you being able to deflect attacks to other limbs, or attack the limb of your choice just be chanced by how many points out of 100 you have in that passive.

Honestly, I don't even know how these passive works. Maybe bone breaker and deflection shouldn't be capped and it should be your bone breaker vs. their deflection passive. Not sure. Laceration should have an internal cool-down per proc since it's a bleed/damage over time effect or capped to a point where the proc % isn't high enough to be spammed in a fight.


Now with Energy deflection, like I explained before, With the passive itself, that only controls the chance it procs (the chance Energy deflection goes off and blocks an attack) But the damage you take to your energy should be the same energy you would of taken through your HP before Energy Efficiency (Don't remember the passive name off the top of my head sorry) kicks in and reduces that total cost. However Energy Efficiency should be like techie Efficiency in that it's exponential meaning the more points you invest into it, the lower the return on investment. Meaning you'll never hit the mark where Energy Deflection means you have "infinite" HP.

Sounds like an energy deflection rework. Only problem is eventually your energy manipulation would lower the cost of energy deflection to an extremely low amount so that it hardly costs anything (Hence, capping energy deflection would make it easier to balance). It was also capped in DBG but it was never specified what the cap limit was, so it became a PP trap.



In response to Callencice
You're acting like the math is exactly Linear for cyborging (or any of the other Tech Cyborging/Android passives) but they weren't. I only used my example to say that it had an increase, I'm not of the EXACT increase, perhaps it was double, perhaps it was more, perhaps it was less. I wouldn't be able to know unless I got the source code to DBG to be able to check. BUT IMO QP% shouldn't be the only identifier that gets used in Cyborging/Android making. I think both things should get used, as it allows for non tech characters to EVENTUALLY be able to make their own cyborgs or androids if they wished.

Also for your combat passives I actually agree, maybe having Bone breaker vs Deflection would be a good thing. and Yeah I actually agree with the cooldown on Laceration per proc (Something like a 5-10 second CD per proc) Perhaps instead of doing DOT it stops regen? Either way Yeah I agree with the cooldown.

Honestly personally, If it were up to me, I'd make energy deflection a skill instead of a passive. Heck just route the Physical parts of it into Energy shield or something. It really doesn't make sense for it to be a passive.

And I actually agree also with what you said about the drain eventually getting to a point where it doesn't matter, I think in that case it should have a hard cap at 1% per attack, maybe slightly lower at like .5% or something. That way when you get Energy manipulation (the passive) to a point where nothing drains, it still has a floor cost where it's not infinite.
In response to Manly-pink
Manly-pink wrote:
You're acting like the math is exactly Linear for cyborging (or any of the other Tech Cyborging/Android passives) but they weren't. I only used my example to say that it had an increase, I'm not of the EXACT increase, perhaps it was double, perhaps it was more, perhaps it was less. I wouldn't be able to know unless I got the source code to DBG to be able to check. BUT IMO QP% shouldn't be the only identifier that gets used in Cyborging/Android making. I think both things should get used, as it allows for non tech characters to EVENTUALLY be able to make their own cyborgs or androids if they wished.

Yeah you're right. It wasn't proven to be linear like that, but as if it wouldn't be like 10x better just for the QP alone to matter. It can finally be balanced and not as confusing for both players and the coder. Sure, non-techie races will have it harder. But it should be harder since they're fighters. Harder doesn't mean unable to, especially if the QP% of the android/borg is extremely costy. They wouldn't need much QP to make an effective droid/borg.
In response to Callencice
Thing is, All of the balancing issues with Androids (and Cyborgs) wasn't related to the Passive point system. The bug that happened in the Redwind wipe was because Liens forgot to adjust how upgrading worked for Cyborgs (and Androids I think) Meaning you could get super strong through upgrading, but the initial creation was how it was intended. And the original bug that caused Androids to get nerfed in the first place, was that the QP of the android determined it's mods. I guess you can tell how that turns out bad as well.

Ultimately the system worked fine, it was just when accounting for balance changes, he never adjusted upgrading mostly cause nobody ever used it. It was kind of left forgotten until it found out that it needed to be adjusted.