Well I just saw you are leaving for the holidays, so I rushed this rather than polish it. My bad, but I felt time became relevant.
Caps can suck
But the ‘natural’ caps create structure which helps players quantify the inherent value of items, imho (yes, an in-game or uo.com tool is needed, to ease the computational requirements from the user’s perspective – I’ve made my own spreadsheet for that purpose, to more easily sort items and determine their combinative effects).
Natural property caps – are currently pre-determined and defined by:
# of items the property is possible on * Max. Quality Range of property
Both of which have inconsistently changed over time which increases difficulty in maintaining balance. Example:
Dexterity(& Cunning GFather blessing):
Max. # Items(& Extreme) * Max. Quality Range(& Extreme) = Max. Possible
=
2(12) * 8(10) = 16(120) Max. Dexterity
(I now know you’re specifically talking about damage, but I’d like to propose trying to keep all item property functions as universal as possible for ease of future design balances as well as ease in user comprehension)
The natural caps also allow design limitations, which seem to me to be a lot more viable than allowing for infinite item property maximums. Because, at least from the user’s perspective, I believe that knowing a limit allows for an easier understanding of the relative value of an item, which makes the game much easier to enjoy in a multitude of ways, not the least of which, I theorize, would be to create less ‘have-nots’, by reducing the difficulty in obtaining and maximizing suits. But it also sets the stage for my theory on maintaining balance, because it allows for the all-important modifier (which is what I like to call the ‘internal sliding scale’ that allows for the maintenance of balance).
(Also, about haves & have-nots. They’ll always exist, but that’s due to the availability of higher-end items as well as many other variables. Yet, making it easier for the ‘have-nots’ to comprehend what they actually have just might bridge the gap a lot more than any other efforts, imho)
Yes, I saw the possibility of bringing back the name terminology for item properties (vanq / invulns). I like that but I also still think that post:AoS we need to continue to have more precise definitions for item properties (best of both worlds theory, eh). If I had to choose it’d be kind of close, but I’d prefer the precision numbers.
My theory is to make it easier on all sides, by adopting a 0-100 scale universally for all item properties per item and a 0-1000 scale (like skills are, but probably without the decimal) for suits.
1000 would be the new natural cap for all properties; accept it would be 1000 cumulative to your suit (to your character).
So, these numbers can appear to be independent from each other, but the maximum total of each item property would ideally be 1000 per suit (per character).
This could also allow room for many cool new items and additions in the future. Robust and flexible make for good foundations.
This way all the various crazy scales, err quality ranges, that are in place would become much easier to understand.
Also with some new kind of item property tool / gump / whatever, we could look up our suit numbers quickly to see how we truly fare per property.
Otherwise less than half of my plan would be utilized, because it would only allow for the UO-Team to more easily balance out all the various properties’ effects.
The problem with that (universal 1000 for char. / suits, per property) is all of the Extremes that were allowed and continue to be created.
Take stats for example (back to Dexterity, for example). Supposed to be only on 2 jewelry items, but I think it actually exists on all slots accept robe & talisman while incl. sash, via Cunning = +10 dex. / GFathered blessing, so 12 items with the grandfathered blessings. I suppose each of these special cases should reflectively break the 1000 suit cap for that property. So:
Ex.:
1000 = Max Dexterity Suit = 200 (since 2 items, by my method) = 16 (currently)
But, we also have the extreme which would be
7500 = Max. Extreme Dex. Suit (120 currently) = 1000(120/16)
All Dexterity bonus jewelry of 8 would change to equal 100, 7 would equal 88, 6 equal 75..
So Dexterity Bonus property would have (7500) listed as its Extreme maximum, even though 1000 is the standard maximum for it as well as every other property, as would become common knowledge.
The main problem with all of this (and the current version) is that new and better items could always upset the balance. Not a big deal though, as long as,
As long as universal numbers were used (100 or 1000), I think you could begin to get away with adjusting the values of items over time.
For instance, FCR 3 is the max right now, so 3 would become 100 per item and 6 would become 1000 for the suit. Now let’s say you want a cool new item, like a spellbook of rejuvy with FCR 5. Well, while that is effectively nerfing the other items, these things have and probably will happen, so why not expose the truth to the player?
So now 5 would equal 100, and all of the other items would have to be readjusted, the old 100 (or 3) would now equal 60 ((3/5)*100).
As well, 1000 for Suit FCR would remain 1000, but instead of 2 Item Slots, it would become 3 with the addition of the hand slot (for spellbook). So, an old max. suit would become 666 out of the new possible 1000.
Unfortunately the new item just nerfed a lot of items, but hey, at least the adjustment was easy for everyone to comprehend (a problem, I figure that tends to separate haves & have-nots). If somebody notices their maximum 100 ring just became a 60, they would likely investigate what was added to lower the value of their ring.. creating a wiser & more well-prepared player, imho.
(People that wanted to know the exact scales used could figure them out easily enough, if you prefer to continue using scales other than 100 for different item intensities (but would it be any more difficult to use 1000 degrees of intensity rather than 6 as is currently used for FCR?))
So in this way people that were concerned with the relative value of an item property & suit properties could easily know by using the 100/1000 external scales.
Diminishing returns via logarithms, aka the Luck method, could work fine with properties. Sure, why not.
A solid design plan seems more important than anything. I mean instead of allowing for infinite property values, why not prepare a plan to avoid creating a luck 2000 anklet, and adhere to it?
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So as for damage:
Make a character / suit property of 1000 Damage equal 100% possible damage and not more.
Make a character property of 1000 Stats Damage equal 100% possible stats damage and not more.
Make a suit property of 1000 Slayer Damage (special PvM mod.).
Make Base Skills Damage bonus 1000 (all combined damage influencing skills equal a possible 1000).
Special Moves Damages become 1000 maximum, per property (so highest current damaging move begins at 1000 until it is decided to add a stronger move).
Change Slayer and Killer Damage currently to become one property (Slayer Dam.) with a 0 to 100(%) scale per item..
If you want the weight of 1000 stats to be double that (like the ~200% now), then just double the modifier on this property.
If you want slayer damage to be half that of regular damage, in effectiveness, then halve the modifier….
The modifier is where the magic comes into play, because people won’t exactly be able to know they can inflict 51 pts. of damage per maximum hit – but they will know that they have the strongest slayer damage killer possible at 1000, and with testing can see how many pts. of damage that would yield, based on the current modifier values; so people can deduce which damage is weighed more heavily, whether it is items or skills (now true real player skills v. items / in-game skills, is a completely different thing / a whole other scene), or flat out made aware if the modifiers were to be made available.
So, damage is a major property. Extreme maximums should not exist. I don’t think any grandfathered items are around, so currently I think damages are as straightforward as stats / skills & item properties effects added together, make it.
So, we have a possible of 5000 for Total Weapon Damage, with 1000 per specific Damage type / property (hopefully I didn’t miss anything).
By looking at the updated item property table, we would easily see all of this.
By looking at the in-game tool, we could easily see where we stand, per property, as well.
If you wanted skills to effect the damage mod. more, then you would adjust the Skills Damage modifier to reflect that.
If you wanted the items to weigh more, do so by changing the Damage & Slayer Damage modifiers.
If you wanted to add a Slayer Damage property to the Item Slot – Robe, then you would change the master table and instead of 2 item slots with slayer damage, there would be 3, which would mean that 300 now equals what we all see as 1000 for Slayer Damage..
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Things could change in time with this method, but the comprehension would remain easy, which is what was greatly lost post:AoS, imho.
Also, probably stick with the monsters receive double damage compared to humans, and then adjust all monster HPs & such to reflect their difficulty after determining maximum player HPs / stats. Throw this on the master table too so if you end up changing maximum possible stats of players, which has already happened before, then it can immediately adjust the monster stats to retain the balance.
The modifier is a key to me.
Each property will have a modifier (I like calling it ‘the internal scale’ – it is what designers could eventually willingly manipulate to find a better ‘balance’).
The properties will all appear in one place, in a master table, so the cause and effect of normal maximums and extreme maximums can easily be seen & adjusted as well.
Creating a master table tool for designers and cool new item adders (including EMs apparently) is definitely another key requirement to providing a balanced PvP/PvM/Item v. Skill scenario.
In the future, if you want to add a umm, taliswoman, to make the total items with damage properties +1 then do so, but the suit total would still max. at 1000 and the other stuff would need to be adjusted accordingly (meaning the weight of the items are now x+1=1000 instead of x=1000, but individual items still range from 0-100. Which also means that instead of 2 items effecting damage there would now be 3, so the other 2 would be less effective. If a player noticed that there 1000 suit dropped down to 666, they could begin the research and ideally goto uo.com item properties to see what was added.
I hope this makes sense to somebody besides me. [tongue]
And that is my free design advice for now; long live UO.
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