Zelda Universe RPG
Major Scaling/Tiering Issue - Printable Version

+- Zelda Universe RPG (https://zurpg.sephiroth.ws)
+-- Forum: ZURPG General (https://zurpg.sephiroth.ws/forum-18.html)
+--- Forum: Feedback & Suggestions (https://zurpg.sephiroth.ws/forum-10.html)
+--- Thread: Major Scaling/Tiering Issue (/thread-934.html)

Major Scaling/Tiering Issue - WindStrike - 10-23-2015

Something I noticed right after I begun applying the update of adding "tiers" to every spell and whatnot is that the tier levels are practically pointless. I'm mainly referring to how a tier works. Essentially, the first tier of a spell (the Alpha version) will have base values of its Dice & Damage Modifiers and its Effect.


For example:

Random Spell, Alpha
  • REQUIREMENTS: Arcane (Level: 1)
  • COSTS: 4 Magic
  • DESCRIPTION: Random spell thingy, hits one target.
    • Roll your Wisdom +3 dice vs. targets' Wisdom dice
      • Damage: +1
      • EFFECT: Target loses 3 Awesome Points.

Now, we tier it to allow it to have as much relevance at higher levels alongside your items. Here's the next 5 tiers:

  • REQUIREMENTS: Level 10 and Arcane (Level: 2)
  • COSTS: 6 Magic
  • DESCRIPTION: Random spell thingy, hits one target.
    • Roll your Wisdom +6 dice vs. targets' Wisdom dice
      • Damage: +3
      • EFFECT: Target loses 5 Awesome Points.
  • REQUIREMENTS: Level 20 and Arcane (Level: 3)
  • COSTS: 8 Magic
  • DESCRIPTION: Random spell thingy, hits one target.
    • Roll your Wisdom +9 dice vs. targets' Wisdom dice
      • Damage: +5
      • EFFECT: Target loses 7 Awesome Points.
  • REQUIREMENTS: Level 30 and Arcane (Level: 4)
  • COSTS: 10 Magic
  • DESCRIPTION: Random spell thingy, hits one target.
    • Roll your Wisdom +12 dice vs. targets' Wisdom dice
      • Damage: +7
      • EFFECT: Target loses 9 Awesome Points.
  • REQUIREMENTS: Level 40 and Arcane (Level: 5)
  • COSTS: 12 Magic
  • DESCRIPTION: Random spell thingy, hits one target.
    • Roll your Wisdom +15 dice vs. targets' Wisdom dice
      • Damage: +9
      • EFFECT: Target loses 11 Awesome Points.
  • REQUIREMENTS: Level 50 and Arcane (Level: 6)
  • COSTS: 14 Magic
  • DESCRIPTION: Random spell thingy, hits one target.
    • Roll your Wisdom +18 dice vs. targets' Wisdom dice
      • Damage: +11
      • EFFECT: Target loses 13 Awesome Points.

Notice something? Every time any spell or skill in existence (heck, even items) jumps up a tier, it increases by the same amount. Well, that makes sense, how else is it supposed to stay relevant at high levels?
... wait... everything? Well, why does everything scale in the first place? It has to do with stats.
  • At Level 5, you have (including your starting stats) 35 stat points.
  • The value of one bonus increasing say your Courage by 5 = 5 / 35 = +14.2%
  • In order for that bonus to stay relevant, it has to keep increasing over time, and we do that with tier levels. So at the Level 10 tier level, that bonus might increase your Courage by 10. Looking at the Level 10 tier level:
    • At Level 10, with 60 stat points, that's a percentage increase of 10 / 60 = +16.7%
    • At Level 19, with 105 stat points, that's a percentage increase of 10 / 105 = +9.5%
  • Right now, on our current balancing system, those percentage values actually depreciate over time. For example, at the Level 20 tier level, bonus of +15 Courage:
    • At Level 20, with 110 stat points, increase of 15 / 110 = +13.6%
    • At Level 29, with 155 stat points, increase of 15 / 155 = +9.7%
  • Well, somehow there was a slight jump, but overall, it continues to decrease over time. What's currently counteracting that? The higher your level, the items and abilities you come across, along with more passive boosts... which unfortunately results in some serious "dear god, even with my bonuses page, I have 20 bonuses and I can't keep track of this crap". And it only gets worse.

Okay, what's the other alternative to fixing that? Well, something we tried already - making that bonus increase by more than a static value each tier.
  • This is how it looks like now:
    • Level 1 (+4) = +4 Courage
    • Level 10 (+4) = +8 Courage
    • Level 20 (+4) = +12 Courage
    • Level 30 (+4) = +16 Courage
    • Level 40 (+4) = +20 Courage
    • Level 50 (+4) = +24 Courage
  • This is how that exponential increase would look:
    • Level 1 (+4) = +4 Courage
    • Level 10 (+5) = +9 Courage
    • Level 20 (+6) = +15 Courage
    • Level 30 (+7) = +22 Courage
    • Level 40 (+8) = +30 Courage
    • Level 50 (+9) = +39 Courage

So why aren't we using that? Well:
  • It's a pain to actually calculate for each various bloody thing when applying tiers.
  • The difference when jumping tier levels was ridiculous. It wasn't so bad going Level 1 to 10, but it got worse as it went, and eventually, trying to jump from 20 to 30 was like nearly doubling your power level, all bonuses considered. So in order to stay relevant, you had to increase EVERYTHING you had to the next tier level ASAP, but because of our shop system and everything being a gradual increase over time, that... would not have worked. At all.
But in the end, even if we used that system, it wouldn't make a difference because there's a core problem here.
  • Everything that has a value increases in value at the same rate of each other.
  • And, if everything's value has been compared to one another as increases as such values that they all counteract each other, then...
  • THE PROGRESSION OF VALUES BY LEVELS HAS NO POINT.

That said, our real progression in ZURPG comes from the following:
  • Acquiring more stuff, not for the bonus values (since we can only equip a max number of stuff), but for the options they provide.
  • Learning the depth of the game
  • Progression of story & characters

Other problems we're dealing with:
  • Our dev team is really small, only two fully dedicated developers - Orithan and myself
  • Applying tiering is a painfully long and arduous process.
  • Updating anything that is tiered takes even longer as a result.
  • The enemy database is a paaaaaaaain to deal with (which is a major reason why it's so terribly incomplete). Hey, we got Level 10 versions in our database, but what if you need a Level 16 version? Well, you need to manually update all the values yourself to account for that.
    • And if things are jumping per tier, then that means we need to have multiple versions that continually evolve over the course of the game, and then do multiple level variants of those as a baseline, and then still update it again when there's a quest with a level that isn't a multiple of 10.
  • And because of all of this, world/lore/character building is behind on all fronts.
Within the next day or so, I'm going to be posting the first draft of a system rewrite to the game that takes into account all of these issues. There will be an obvious downside to the proposed system update, but compared to all the upsides, I'm taking it. It's not a matter of whether we're going to take the update or not - the idea of the drafts is to see what we can improve and then once finalized, it's getting applied. These problems may not really be screwing with the players that much, but for our tiny dev team, we have to change something, or we're going to drown in constantly being behind and never catching up even once, which is starting to and will really affect the players badly in time.


Note that as a result of applying this system, there'll be downtime. Again. But it'll only be on my part; anyone else that wants to DM in the meantime will still be welcome to, and my downtime should only be a few months, tops.