You have two hands and likely only one melee or ranged attack, so there is the option to dual wield and do both, or choose one and have a non combat item, so there is that to consider. There is also the part where maybe that’s just not a combat gotchi? Some gotchis are like barges, imho. You just use it as a mule for the squad. Someone’s gotta bring home the treasure, and survive to the save point…
In the spreadsheet I punched in 0 AGG, 0 SPK and 0 BRN and it gave me this
He still has fairly powerful melee and ranged damage considering the top of the stat range is 200 and the bottom of the range is 50 for the example base stats that I used?
The melee and ranged damage are still separated in the v2 proposal. i.e. increasing melee damage decreases ranged damage. Can you share a screenshot of one of the gimped builds that will be superior?
Every bonus is not cancelled double to the downside because the reduced traits are not 100% reduced. E.g. If you go for all AGG:
- Attack Speed is increased by 100
- Ethereality is only decreased by 25
- Health Regen Speed is only decreased by 25
Note these increase/decrease and base stat factors can be modified. I used 100 base stat, +100 single trait increase and -25 for each double stat decrease as an example only.
I’m still in the camp of combine Melee Damage and Ranged Damage into one Damage stat and swap Ranged Damage for Range but this v2 example was how I see us best balancing what PC have provided as traits.
Regardless of the combination of AGG, SPK and BRN you enter you will always end up with the same final total stat number. E.g.
This seems super balanced to me?
I see the gimp when I compare a 0/0/0 gotchi to an average stat one
This is result of a 20/20/50 gotchi which by BRS is much worse but has very similar final stats. Melee damage & regen are basically inverse but the overall build is quite comparable
In running a few more calcs, I see even a 50/50/50 floor gotchi has the same final stats as a mythical one, so the modifiers need to be tweaked to fit more of a bell imo.
Putting the traits on a non-linear scale is an interesting idea but I thought the objective was to balance all gotchis out regardless of BRS? i.e. high BRS gotchis would be getting an advantage in terms of HP only.
I definitely see where you are coming from though in terms of 0/0/0 not really having a unique build. It makes sense that myth trait gotchis should be a bit more unique. Let’s keep playing around with the traits and see what we can come up with 
100/100/100 also does a similar thing.
Actually, any time your gotchi has the same AGG, SPK and BRN you end up with a balanced build.
Right, so by dialling the Single Trait increases up a lot more we can create significantly more variation for our 0/0/0 and 100/100/100 builds. Note these build are still somewhat balanced BUT they are no longer the same as a 50/50/50 as they will lean towards the side of the curve they represent.
This is a 0/0/0
This is a 100/100/100
And this is a 50/50/50
Note below would be the new max/min stat values.
Finally, let’s also grab an example of a class that maxes out Melee for comparison.
My god they can deal out some DPS and are super tough to hit! But… as soon as you land a hit they go down like a lead weight.
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I think just the opposite: there needs to be some trait leveling goal that actually matters. If every part of the rarity curve is equally good, leveling up my traits becomes very boring. Who cares if I go from 90 to 91 NRG? Sure, I move a little faster, but I equally carry less. People would even be incentivized (especially with NRG) to move their traits in the wrong direction for BRS, which hurts their rarity farming–a pointless lose-lose decision to force on players. We cannot make farming decisions conflict with gameplay decisions.
Instead, it’s important that you some benefit from going further out on each trait’s rarity curve. Moving from 90 to 91 NRG should give me more benefit from speed than I lose in carrying capacity. This is important from a gameplay perspective (how boring is pvp combat without stratification of some kind?), and from a value perspective (let’s let even average gotchis with a mythical trait or two really excel in those and be valuable; and let’s give the rarest 4x and 5x mythical trait gotchis some real power! Not game imbalance, not gamebreaking, but fun! Something for players to aspire to, something that drives value to closed portals, because pulling a natural 580 actually will be more powerful in the arena and the great battles. It’s just a matter of adjusting the curve appropriately.
Maybe I’m missing something, but it really seems like making all gotchis equally good throws a lot of established concepts out the window. To give a different example, are we saying that a “huge” brain is really not less effective than a “galaxy” brain? That being “neutral” isn’t different from being “gentle”? Every part of the gotchi selection process implies that these rarity buckets matter.
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This is such a great challenge, how can average gotchis with a mythical trait or two realise some excellence and fun in game? Will include this point as a research question in the paper two or three
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Another research question I have in my backlog is this point from Notorious. Casting and healing abilities certainly have their place in the trait matrix and my hunch is that these abilities can be included without disturbing any trait balances or gameplay outcomes
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To be honest I very much agree with this but thought the general community vibe was that all gotchis were balanced.
Never to fear! I’ve now introduced some exponential growth/decay in the trait balancing in the attached latest spreadsheet under the “Non-linear” tab. Using these we end up with a 50/50/50 gotchi ending up with 757 total stat points whereas an extreme stat gotchi ends up with 900+ total stats!
The rate of growth/decay can be fine tuned by adjusting the ‘a’ and ‘y’ factors in yellow in the below screenshot.
I really do like using non-linear stat balancing. Like you mentioned @actaeon it really makes getting toward the myth end of the trait spectrum more rewarding.
Also note the trait mapping has been revised! This is a sneak peak at how @lookinghandsome is currently playing with for the trinity triangles for the original AGG, SPK & BRN and I very much prefer this to the one I proposed a few posts back.
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Quick clarification, the WIP trinity triangles referenced here are broken. I broke them on purpose to back test the design principles against the current state gotchi trait map. That is to say that this trait map might not make sense from a qualitative perspective.
From a quantitative perspective it’s interesting to see how growth and decay might be used to balance values. Keen to dig into the quant once I’ve realised any experiential outcomes from studies part two and three
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gm frens.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the NRG = move speed.
imho gimping move speed does not work well with an mmorpg build for several reasons.
- World exploration
In wow, players do everything they can to increase their move speed. pvp and pve environments are one thing, but we also have world exploration. I can tell you right now that I will almost never choose to play my slow AF “tank” gotchi when he explores the world even 10% slower than a high NRG one.
PC said walking the citadel end to end takes about an hour. That means the world map is huge. World exploration as a walking treasure chest is going to be boring and tedious AF
Also, when traveling in groups, it’s going to be a poor experience not only for the slow player, but also for the group who has to constantly wait for their “treasure chest” to arrive.
- Quality of life improvements
As wow progressed in development, so too came with it huge quality of life improvements. Mages could create portals, warlocks could summon players to their location, flying mounts got faster etc etc.
If pve becomes a thing here and we have dungeons etc, we can expect to have similar quality of life improvements. Players will join late and need to be summoned, repairs need to happen etc etc. With the addition of portals, summons, etc. the idea of the walking treasure chest becomes increasingly obsolete. It would be better to simply portal back to town, drop off point, etc multiple times while still being able to capitalise on the increased move speed.
- PvP
Unless we introduce a series of skills like a short cool-down charge or sprint, the slow gotchi is going to be kited forever. A fast gotchi will just be able to run away from the slow one over and over again until it is dead.
As it stands, the game seems to be quite basic without mention of skills or targetting mechanisms. So in the beginning, I suspect a slow gotchi to be kited to death regardless of their power.
The treasure chest might be useful for pve as he helps carry all the loot back. But this to me looks like the group benefits equally at the expense of one player having to suffer a slow gotchi. What I mean is everyone benefits from his carry capacity when it matters, but then when the group disbands and everyone is off doing their own thing, that slow gotchi is left to crawl by himself.
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I’ve had very similar thoughts about NRG.
Discussion has gone on about all the other traits but I think NRG is unexplored, and is too heavily stacked to favor movement speed as you describe.
It most certainly seems high energy will not only be a better user experience, it will also be preferable in PVP.
I would propose that it continues to affect movement speed +carry the way it does, but low energy should also equal high ranged attack power. If we could confirm that there could be classes, targeting, healing, crowd control etc… low energy could equal high mana.
Since in my suggestion LOW (edit) NRG is providing ranged attack power, high BRN could instead be the metric for critical strike chance/ max damage stat.
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A run mechanic could be implemented, instead of move speed. More energy gets you long run time and lower energy raises your carry capacity.
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Something like this makes more sense. High energy has a sprint skill or stamina etc to allow for bursts of higher run speed.
How about adding stamina guage to gotchis? NRG only affects dashing speed and no effect to walking speed.
You raise some really critical points that need to be addressed before we can really continue much further fren.
@coderdan would you be so kind as to shed some light on the following to make sure we’re not firing off in the wrong direction?
Are there design plans for the following?
• Classes and or skills (either selected/specced or defined by wearables)
• A targetting system wherein you can actually click on allies and opponents
• Healing / casting
• AoE / crowd control
These are some of the most critical question marks we’re looking at. If you can just nod your head for us one way or the other, it’d help us tremendously.
Without a targetting system, we can still have healing, it’d just require more aoe casting / aura skills
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The Gotchiverse design is still in its infancy and the initial version will be quite primitive, but future versions will definitely be adding QoL features like targeting, and it’s very possible that wearables could have casting / healing abilities that you could cast on other players.
re: the discussion about stamina/movement speed above, stamina will be tied to the Gotchi’s Health Points, and using stamina to boost movement speed will deplete health points down to 1 while you’re boosting.
I tend to agree that gimping movement speed too much could make it a sub-optimal choice for many situations, but perhaps the combination of stamina boosting + wearables that improve movement speed would be enough to offset?
As we said in the Gameplay Bible, the traits are still quite theoretical and we’re working hard to get to a point in development where we can actually trot them out to see how they feel.
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So wanna design a game based on these traits 
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Very helpful information thank you for sharing fren!
The stamina alpha helps better understand how the mechanics will play together.
Without playing it and testing, I still feel that a fast gotchi would simply also be able to capitalise on these mechanics, stacking wearables himself for increased speed. The slow gotchi would then have to burn his stamina/hp just to reach the fast DPSer, only exacerbating the problem.
If the slow gotchi gets something like a much larger stamina pool that doesn’t drain hp or drains it considerably slower, then that might do the trick!
Perhaps the HP <-> Movement Speed for NRG trade-off I mentioned on discord makes a lot of sense then when considering stamina?
E.g. slow gotchi has plenty of HP and therefore plenty of stamina to help offset his overall slow speed.
Just another thought to throw into the mix.
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