[rayquaza7996]

There's a final really big issue. From the start, each pet will usually be "doomed" to win or loose. Looking at stats I was able to perfectly calculate winners, presuming no changes, in less than a half-hour. It ended up as:

1. Laroo from MillieTheWarrior
2. Leer from Rayquaza7996
3. Sparky from Celtic

In Pokemon, Monster Rancher, etc, there's a lot of strategy. We don't really have much here - it's just hammer-on-until-you-faint. Like early on, when you only have Scratch and Growl (and who in their right mind uses growl?) It's scratch-scratch-faint.

Like Millie, I'm against this being restarted. I've put, like, a week into this battle xD

Or, of course, we could hack a Monster Rancher game and put our pets in it...xD
*prepares to take notes for writing her own battle system*

[Jaykobell]

To be honest, I'm at a loss. I guess the number of turns (aka, 'time limit') would help to make battles end in a reasonable fashion. But I still want to decrease the number of days. With three days, Celtic's and HUN's battle lasted almost more than 2 weeks with only 4-5 turns. That's a long time and it drags on. Putting it down to 2 days sounds reasonable to me... We're not expecting you to write novels for the battle posts, so I still don't understand why some people think they're so tedious to write. x:

And I know, Ray. The tournaments are usually way predictable.... but I don't know how we could change them. Start including basic Attacks like Pokemon? I dunno...

I don't know. Have smaller level ranges? A pet level 1 seriously doesn't stand a chance against a pet level 10. Stats too uneven? Should Defense be 'always' (read: in most cases or depending on pet species) be lower than Offense in base stats? Extra damage increased?

[rayquaza7996]

The base stats are unbalanced, but changing them would be a pain. It's
Offense: 2 / 12
Defense: 5 / 10
Precision: 2 / 7
Endurance: 5 / 12
Speed: 6 / 8
Fame: 0 / 3
This is a rather egregious example of base stat differences - it'd take several levels for the first to catch up.


And that's a good three level's difference if not more.

You could also use only 3/4s of the defense stat to reduce damage or something. 75% as powerful?

[Jaykobell]

The thing is that obviously not every pet will get the same stats. We can't have a Kuhna have the same, roughly, Defense stat as a Hunter. Likewise, a huge dragon like the Paragons and Hollowhearts can't have a mediocre attack. Pokemon has the same deal; you can't have Rock types have epic speed like your Pikachu. They're not the same, so their stats change.

What's the point of only using 75% of the defense stat, though?

Yes, editing the stats (again...) would be a pain... but we won't get anywhere if the stats are too unbalanced to make any good, challenging, fair tournaments.

I also thought about maybe putting up a set, specific level for the tournaments. Like... only pets of level 10 may enter. Obviously, the level wouldn't change, since.. yeah. :| But... yeah.

[rayquaza7996]

It would decrease total defense, increasing damage slightly. <3 As for that...I know, obviously, I'm just pointing out that in some cases a pet will literally have every stat higher. Which makes having everything at one level difficult - at level 15 that's going to be a huge difference, and Pet 2 will always beat 1. :/

[Jaykobell]

Well... see. That was kinda why we wanted to include minuses to RP areas. We really need to release Training Grounds... This could really help strategically. At the cost of your high Speed, you would lose Defense; at the cost of your high Defense, you would lose Offense; at the cost of your high Offense, you would lose Precision. That sort of thing, you know? This could help even out fights. We also wanted to stock up on Stat items... which would increase (perhaps decrease) your stats. Not by a lot, obviously, so as to not devalue RPing.. but yeah.

And I know what you mean, but still. A pet level 15 is still much stronger than a pet level 5.

... Maybe we should plan tournaments by stat values? Only pets with Offense between X and Y may enter... sort of thing.

[rayquaza7996]

I like the last idea. Seeing Laroo murder Ilex wasn't fun :/ Ilex, by the way, was the leaf. So cute 8D

I like the stat minuses, as well. Especially for the desert, because the desert bonuses are woahuge.

[Freezair]

Maybe there could be a "combined stat cap" for tournaments. Like, if all you stats together equal more than some value, you can't enter. But I think adding in basic Attacks would be the best thing for strategy. Some Battle Traits already fit; we just need a few more. The only major addition I think this would require for stats would be the addition of an MP stat for power points, or we could do the kind of system like they have in, say, Tales of Symphonia were your power points/action points/whathaveyou go up as you attack with regular attacks.

[Freezair]

Derpa-derpa doublepost. But I came up with some more specific ideas for battles generally, going off what Ray said about strategy?

So basically, Battle Traits would be divided up into two, like Passives were: Persistents and Attacks. Persistents are things like Sharp Claws and Stoneblood that are always active. Attacks are things like Pyro and Blizzard, but now they use magic points instead of being limited to once per battle. To avoid having to make a new stat, MP could just be a direct representation of Level, maybe. You get 1 MP point per level you have, with it maybe recovering in battle whenever you use a basic attack?

All pets get one or two basic attacks. There are close range ones and long-range ones, for example, and long-range moves aren't affected by things like Spiked Body while close-range maybe, I dunno, makes certain moves more or less accurate?

In order to give your pet new attacks, they must be a certain level, first! (If the attack's restricted, you have to ask for it like any other. And possibly... you could pay for certain ones! As a KS sink!) Maybe certain element, too? And like Pokemon, you can only have, say, 4 or 5 special attacks at once (not counting basic attacks). If you wanted another, you'd have to delete an old one. But if you were above the right level, I think you could swap between attacks below that level freely (except, of course, for restricteds).

Attacks would have different accuracy values (affecting your Precision for each one), damages, costs, all that good stuff. Plus maybe special effects! Would make battles a bit more tactical, I think, so it's not just a stat-fest.

[Shieba]

D8 Freezy, that's mad complicated. I mean, I'm a stat and traits geek, totally, but the thought alone of redoing my pen again with such a complicated system for choosing traits...I'd just scream and run away.

Personally, I think things are currently made out worse than they really are. Granted, the current tournament fight isn't all that stellar, but that's mainly because of Stone Blood and the like. With making them restricted - I'd personally would have made them Shrine traits, even - this takes care of one part of the problem.

The other is the stat distribution. And basically, I don't think the system is faulty at all. There are just two pets currently who have the same strategy, which makes it difficult. I don't really think we need negative stats at all - I find myself with very differently leveled pets, ignoring speed most of the time and going either for endurance or attack/defense. One or the other ends up on the lower scale always. The system works. It's just that there are only so many different, intelligent possibilities to level. Ilex getting murdered wasn't fun to watch, but that happened because of a) bad luck and b) stats distribution into speed.

Seriously. Speed is so durn unimportant compared to the other stats.

[rayquaza7996]

Shieba, look at the purple kuhna's stats, then look at, say, Laroo's or Leer's...see the differences? xD The stat system is a bit broken. And yeah, Freezy's idea hurts Ray's poor old overworked head (which should get back to math homework)...I mean, Laroo will murder everything, Leer will murder everything but Laroo, and they can't fight until the last round xD

Want to know what beats speed? Guirella fighter. I spelled that wrong. But now only is it available to all, it's also +2df and move-first.

[Jaykobell]

It's not the stats that are faulty, it's the tournament entry restrictions. Ray mentioned it to me before, and this will be changed for future tournaments: levels aren't an indication of strength. A Bleeder could match a Hunter no problem; but not when it comes to level restrictions. If Leer were something like level 35 against Laroo, it would be a better match. Our mistake was not realizing levels =/= strength.

As Shieba has said, it depends what you train. We will implement (in due time) training grounds where you will get stat bonuses and stat penalties. This will help in training and managing your stats better, hopefully... When we do finally implement it.

As for not making Stone Blood and Carapace Shield Shrine, it's because 3 is actually extremely mediocre in higher battles. Yes, it's there, but when you get to a certain level where you can get up to 15 bonus damage... -3 won't help you very much. And we also haven't figured out everything for Shrine Traits. We have been working on it, but it's not done yet. Still, the thought of putting those two as Shrine Traits is ridiculous to me. xD Though maybe we could implement a new mad Trait for Shrine that cuts down like 10 damage or something. :p

Freezy, I thought that idea was cool... but way complicated at the same time. xD My initial reaction was, "Huh, that'd be interesting. ... Wait, what did she say?"

[Freezair]

I was taking inspiration from D&D, mostly, on how you have to reach certain skills before you can get other skills. XD I think I made it sound worse than it really is. This is all I meant, really:

"Pyroclasm - Fire - An improved version of Pyro that does +10 damage. You must be level 20 or greater to use this attack."

Rodney RPer: Aww darn. My pet is only Level 5. I'll go with regular Pyro first.

Later...

Rodney RPer: YOay, he's level 20 now! I'll remove Pyro and add Pyroclasm!

I think another problem is that Strength is waaay overpowered compared to the other stats. All you really need is Strength, honestly, and while a huge outlier in another stat might help, I still feel like minmaxed Strength will ultimately win. There's another problem--even with stat minuses, people will still min-max; if you have 70 Strength, it won't matter if your defense is only 10 because you'll win in, like, one turn anyway so long as you have one of the Guerilla traits.

[rayquaza7996]

Though desert leveling (woahuge defense and health) with defensive traits + spiked body can be a very annoyingly long version of woahuge attack xD

[ToxicShadow]

I don't know if this has been suggested or not, I've read through some of the posts and I don't think it has, so I'll go with it. When I was working on stats for another forum, it became plainly clear that we wanted to keep things even. How did we go about this? We started off by giving each pet the same exact stats. Now, how did we get the variety to show differences in the pets? Say, a slow pet compared to a fast pet. We had a set number of "extra points" that we had to include. Let me give a very basic example:

First, all the pets have the same stats:
[However one wants to distribute it.]

Pet One, Pet Two, Pet Three:
Health: 5
Strength: 3
Defense: 3
Speed: 2


Then, you have say, 8 points to add to each to make them different.

Pet One is a fast pet without much strength and has a decent defense.

Pet One:
Health: 6
Strength: 3
Defense: 5
Speed: 7

Pet two is slow, but has a very good defense and a decent offense.

Pet Two:
Health: 7
Strength: 4
Defense: 8
Speed: 2

Pet Three has a very good offense, but a poor defense with a fair speed.

Pet Three:
Health: 7
Strength: 7
Defense: 3
Speed: 4

Now, there isn't any unfair distribution. They all have the same amount of points, just all distributed differently. This could be done on a much simpler basis, too, in that each pet just has to have "X number" of points when all added up, but they are all distributed freely to match each pet's description.