Speed Adjustments
I posted this on reddit a few days ago, and rather than derail someone else's thread saying this all again I'll just move the reddit information here. This is not just addressing mods, speed is a problem stat and has been prior to the introduction of mods.
Currently, speed determines both initiative (turn order) and action rate (how quickly the turn meter refills). A character with 2x the speed of another acts first, acts twice as often, and effectively cools down abilities twice as fast and powers through debuffs like stuns twice as fast.
I propose that we remove the action rate aspect of speed while leaving its role in determining initiative in place. Turn order / initiative is incredibly important, having speed also determine action rate is what makes the stat so problematic. If all characters gained meter at the same rate and speed effected initiative only, "slow" character like Maul and Ventress could become playable and speed on mods would still be highly valuable without being so far ahead in power that other stats are almost irrelevant.
----
In response to question on reddit, here's a few clarifications to start with
Q: What about TM Up/Down?
A: If the current speed number determined initiative only and meter filled as a set rate, TM Up/Down could remain in the game unaffected. I'm honestly not sure what the best set rate to use for meter fill at is, that requires testing/QA but it could easily be a nice round number like 100, 150 or 200.
Q: But speed still goes first, wont the meta stay the same?
A: The idea wasn't to destroy speed as a stat or completely flip the meta, it was to tune the mechanic to be less overbearing (getting jumped on and then being hammered twice as often is worse than just getting jumped) and honestly to make the game more "readable" to a new player.
While its reasonably simple for a player to figure out that high speed characters go first, the rate at which characters take actions is pretty difficult to parse. Active effects like speed up/down and TM up/down at least have a visible effect, whereas speed can be very difficult for even experienced players to gauge the exact effect on action rate as is.
Currently, speed determines both initiative (turn order) and action rate (how quickly the turn meter refills). A character with 2x the speed of another acts first, acts twice as often, and effectively cools down abilities twice as fast and powers through debuffs like stuns twice as fast.
I propose that we remove the action rate aspect of speed while leaving its role in determining initiative in place. Turn order / initiative is incredibly important, having speed also determine action rate is what makes the stat so problematic. If all characters gained meter at the same rate and speed effected initiative only, "slow" character like Maul and Ventress could become playable and speed on mods would still be highly valuable without being so far ahead in power that other stats are almost irrelevant.
----
In response to question on reddit, here's a few clarifications to start with
Q: What about TM Up/Down?
A: If the current speed number determined initiative only and meter filled as a set rate, TM Up/Down could remain in the game unaffected. I'm honestly not sure what the best set rate to use for meter fill at is, that requires testing/QA but it could easily be a nice round number like 100, 150 or 200.
Q: But speed still goes first, wont the meta stay the same?
A: The idea wasn't to destroy speed as a stat or completely flip the meta, it was to tune the mechanic to be less overbearing (getting jumped on and then being hammered twice as often is worse than just getting jumped) and honestly to make the game more "readable" to a new player.
While its reasonably simple for a player to figure out that high speed characters go first, the rate at which characters take actions is pretty difficult to parse. Active effects like speed up/down and TM up/down at least have a visible effect, whereas speed can be very difficult for even experienced players to gauge the exact effect on action rate as is.
0
- 61.6K General Discussion
- -35 Developer Q&A Archive
- 2.6K New Players
- 30.7K Arena and Character Strategy
- 3.2K Individual Events
- 5.5K Guild Events
- 4.7K PVP and Rivalry
- 51K Guild Recruitment
- 751 Art and Media
- 4.2K Off Topic
Howdy, Stranger!
Replies
I have been thinking about the problem of speed meta. Some people like the way it is. Some others, including me, believe should be addressed. I feel now is more important to have more speed than a good and balance team.
My proposal would be to apply detrimental effects when speed escalates above basal stats. In terms of: the faster the attack or the action, the less precise it is. It's like giving a penalty to rushing into attack: decreased damage, decreased potency, decreased critical chance, decreased accuracy... Or a tank like STH taking an action like taunting, the faster it is, the less TM gives to the allies (as an example).
Think about it as a bell shaped curve, where in the x-axis is plotted speed and in the y-axis efficiency: the faster a toon will take faster action. In the beginning with some speed enhancement the TM bonus of the speed will overcome the detrimetal effects. However, after reaching a certain speed enhancement (which will be particular for each toon and depending on the team), adding more speed the toon will take more turns, but the decrease in some stats will make its attack/action of less value.
With this system each player will have to balance in its team the speed, and maybe a system to prevent the speed meta.
I'd like for speed to be an important stat, and arguably still the most important stat, I just don't want it to be the only stat. Aside from abilities that effect meter in some way (tm up, tm down, stun etc.) the only thing that currently matters is speed. Speed acts as an effective damage multiplier, causing it to in most cases be more valuable for damage than the actual offense stat.
The issue with the way speed has been implemented in this game is that for the most part damage isn't really balanced around speed. You're right, traditionally the faster a character is the less damage it does per hit. That's not the case here, many slow characters do far less damage than fast characters and the speed acts as an additional damage multiplier increasing the difference in damage. Maul for example acts about half as often as Rey, so while their damage looks similar on paper Rey does double the damage in practice. The game's damage number are not balanced around speed, which is why I'm proposing that speed be uncoupled from action rate. The slow tank characters already have low damage to begin with, and the slow dps characters are prevented from being dps characters because they are slow.
Detrimental effects for high speed isnt a bad idea, and its not uncommon to see, its just much more difficult to implement.
Going all out to add speed to low health/high damage AoE attackers only causes an unbalanced game if you can't go all out in a different direction to beat that strategy. Building a group of very high health, high defense toons who can shrug off damage, and get free counter attacks should be a perfect strategy to fight back. It isn't though.
This is because other secondary stats are too low in relation to speed secondary stats. A heavily defense modded toon isn't getting significant protection compared to the massive speed and (to a lesser extent) damage boosts possible.
That's actually an entirely different topic I want to address that I was planning on bringing up after I got a good grip on speed. Defensive stats and abilities are far weaker then offensive, even if you exclude speed.
Defensive leads give 2-5% damage reduction, offensive leads give 20-50% more damage. Defensive abilities give 5-15% damage reduction, offensive abilities give 25-50% more damage. No real reason to play defensively with numbers like that.
Counter-attacks could also stand to have their nerfs reverted. Counters used to ignore taunt, currently they just faceplant into taunts doing nothing at best and giving the enemy team bonus TM at worst, and not doing enough damage to make up for it.
Equalizing meter gain rate as a baseline (still effected by speed up/down buffs and tm gain/loss) is just a step, their are other issues like defense that need addressing.
This would create even greater customization and strategy to modding characters.
That's also a good option, I was just looking for the simplest, easiest to implement option to get the job done as its the most likely to actually happen. To much work (like having to alter mods or characters) is likely to get shot down on the basis of time required and refunds requested. I'm trying to fit within the existing framework.
Setting the current speed stat stat as initiative and adding a new stat (that doesn't appear on mods) as the action rate stat is honestly a good solution, probably better, its just more work. Preferably in clean, even amounts based say on a light/medium/heavy archetype. The issue is you have to really get into QA and balance testing to make it work, where just equalizing meter gain after the initial meter set by speed requires very little work and looking at the damage numbers is already somewhat balanced. "Tank" and "support" characters have low damage, "bruiser" characters have medium damage, "Striker" characters have high damage, what's out of whack (for the most part, there are exceptions) is action speed.
So if all speed does is determine turn order, whoever goes first will still be able to control the fight through tm reduction and stuns effectively locking out the other player from having a go, the fact all toons will generate TM at the same speed could cause more problems than it fixes? in that the other team might not even get a chance to go.
That all important first turn will still be the focus and where the fight is decided as is the case now 99% of the time
I propose speed could be alternatively addressed in the following ways:
As others have posted make it a % stat or limit the amount on secondary increases
Improve the gains in other stats so damage can be soaked/avoided (tenacity)
Have a sliding scale to stats can only be improved by X amount and turns yellow or something to let us know everything else added goes to waste (bit like gear has max level)
Others hated it but dodge is the natural counter to speed it is more irritating in just about every way though
Give every toon the same base starting stat for speed (don't like this one myself)!but it's an option.