The longer I read the (excellent btw) posts here the more I get the feeling that it is indeed the offensively-used teleport that is the main problem here.

The problem I have with wits, initiative, and RNG is the following: it massively reduces the way you can build and play your character in the RPG.

You want to play an agile and fast melee, hit-and-run style: you need speed, finesse weapons, and preferably murder backline mages. You can zip across the battlefield, but you also better not be there any more when that hulking lumbering dude with the 2h axe reaches his mage friend that you just splattered against the wall.

You want to play a cannon mage: you need good positioning, armor spells and a friend to keep you in the clear with hamstrings etc. when that pesky enemy rogue tries to splatter you against the wall. You also need intelligence to overcome any resistance enemies may put up.

etc. etc.

Removing initiative voids all these choices. My rogue is no faster or more agile than the plate wearer (barring skill choices, of course, but then the warrior has access to his own versions of those too). My mage is no slower than the enemy rogue either. All that means that there is no trade-off, and thus no choice, of adaptability and speed vs. defenses and superior firepower.

Also, making status effects purely RNG based (i.e. a flat percentage chance) is stupid, something I really disliked in D:OS1. Skill and defense go out of the window that way. The D&D way of spell resistance and saving throws rewarded investments so much better, for example, even if I have always had issues with its binary nature and scaling. -- But it needn't be that complicated: Like stabbey's (I think it was, apologies if not) suggestion of rolling some kind of dice into the initiative calculation, you could have a resistance value, an attack value determined by int, and a random element to shake things up. Attack + rng > resistance? Status effect is applied, otherwise it fails and only the damage portion is calculated as per status quo.

A character with 10 int and one point in hydro should not have the same chance of freezing an enemy as a character with 24 int and 10 points in hydro, given the same defensive stats on said enemy. That's just mindboggingly bad game design.

Last edited by Terodil; 22/09/17 01:37 AM.