How to address the PC/Mobile movement gap

[BalthasarHohenheim]

So, if the problem is emulating moblie on PC then my second proposal to differenciate by wether or not a mouse/ keyboard was used should still work right?

That might be the better way to begin with, since checking for Android/iOS would discriminate againt windowsphone/ -tablet users (if they exist).
If a person emulating moblie on PC was forced to use touch input he/she would loose most advantages and it would be fair again. They would just have a slightly better pointer-accuracy and a faster system. Both of those aspects aren't equal among mobile devices too (larger displays give better accuracy and if I ran Eternium on my potato of a tablet instead of my Galaxy J3 it would be unplayable) removing the PC vs. moblie aspect of the equation.
Of course you could equalize the accuracy/ system-specs as well by calculating how much in-game-area an "average Fingertip" covers on an "average Smartphone-display" and give the poiner/ mousetip itself an diffuse hitbox of that size and limit the FPS at a low level but that would just make the game worse in my opinion.

[Buppy]

Buppy -
I pretty much disagree ....

Someone campaigning for special treatment because they can't afford a PC is no different than someone doing so because they can't afford to spend 30+ hours in a week on a game. We all have the same options. Even if our particular life situations limit some of them, they still exist. It's not that I don't care about my ANB results, it's that I understand I have limitations and I don't expect the rest of the world to be forced to share them just to make me feel better.

And inequity is not the same as inequality. Maybe in an ideal world the only inequality would be skill, but in practical terms it's more complicated. The fact that our real lives can impact how we perform in a game; that we as people may not be equal; does not make the game unfair.

[lama75]

Someone campaigning for special treatment because they can't afford a PC is no different than someone doing so because they can't afford to spend 30+ hours in a week on a game. We all have the same options. Even if our particular life situations limit some of them, they still exist. It's not that I don't care about my ANB results, it's that I understand I have limitations and I don't expect the rest of the world to be forced to share them just to make me feel better.

And inequity is not the same as inequality. Maybe in an ideal world the only inequality would be skill, but in practical terms it's more complicated. The fact that our real lives can impact how we perform in a game; that we as people may not be equal; does not make the game unfair.

Lol, no one is campaigning for special treatment. This line ends any more discussion with you on my part. It's obviously pointless.

[Nhat]

So, if the problem is emulating moblie on PC then my second proposal to differenciate by wether or not a mouse/ keyboard was used should still work right?

Not necessarily, although I don't have enough experience with emulators to know whether the following is correct or not.

From my understanding, the whole point of the emulator is to fake the other platform - in that it is translating the PC's inputs into that of the relevant platform and then passing those "emulated inputs" to the actual program. So, when the player move the mouse and click on the screen, the emulator takes take the coordinate of the mouse and then translate that to a "finger press" at that coordinate, and that's what the Android version of the game receive, not that mouse click, but a "virtual finger press".

Similarly for keyboard keys, which is why abilities that need to be aimed doesn't work properly with the keyboard keys for emulators. The game expects to get the drawn symbol in the direction relative to the Hero for it to direct the ability, where as a "key press" doesn't have the required target coordinate, so it may be using the "last known" press coordinate and direct the ability there instead.

Again, these are all just my own thoughts on "possible" reasons. I do not have any experience with mobile games, all my work are more server side/systems design related.

[Arionthe]

Arionthe -
I understood your idea. I just don't think it will address the problem. I think you're trying to convince yourself that the PC experience can be finessed high to make or similar to the mobile experience. Mobile players are perfectly capable of dodging arrows and incoming ranged fire. What we're NOT capable of is the precise movement and attacking possibilities that PC is capable of. These differences are easy to see, rather than explain, unfortunately. Nekromant posted some video of himself beating kara with a mage in story mode without having first beaten any of hey acolytes (this was Coda's challenge I think). He was able to move in a constant, repeatable pattern around kara, dodging her fire the entire time and keeping her minions at bay as well. Watching it, I realized it was simply not possible for a mobile player to duplicate the playstyle. Finger touches on the screen are only so accurate and coordinating the movement with attacking and skill deployment all with 1 finger make it an impossible task.

Increasing the hitbox size would only have the effect of nerfing everyone's gameplay, imo. While still maintaining the PC player's inherent advantages.

ADDED:
I think the big difference between PC and mobile boils down to a simple, a defensible, design decision for the PC version of the game : mapping skills to keys. If a PC player had to draw the same runes that mobile players do, i think game results would be much closer. I still think PC has the movement advantage and it would still be an advantage when switching between primary and secondary attacks since that's just a mouse button press, but the gap would be significantly smaller.

It could be my lack of experience of PC play. As you said PC players are effectively playing a different game with the platform they have. Perhaps it is pie in the sky to try to narrow that gap.

The skill spam advantage can be addressed rather significantly if a version of my autocast idea is implemented (although mages will still experience a larger gap due to most of the skills need targetting).

I feel the movement advantage is rather significant. As you said, mobile can't duplicate the precise kiting style with little wasted movements/time. I'm asking a rather more philosophical question: that is why allow player movement to actually avoid damage at all? The reason I pose this question is two fold. One: game design. The game has damage avoiding stats such as dodge, parry, block. What are the purposes of those stats if simple, precise movements within the game environment itself can accomplish the same thing. Two: there is a huge damage/toughness imbalance in the game design which eventually show up as a problem when pvp/coop play comes into reality. This movement dodge contributes significantly to this imbalance (ie PC player needing very little toughness/recovery to survive high TL due to this damage avoidance via movement advantage).

So perhaps to address these two issues, let's ask the radical question: why not make damage unavoidable by game movement. The tactical positioning becomes mostly offensive rather than both offensive AND defensive.

Food for thought?

[Arionthe]

Someone campaigning for special treatment because they can't afford a PC is no different than someone doing so because they can't afford to spend 30+ hours in a week on a game. We all have the same options. Even if our particular life situations limit some of them, they still exist. It's not that I don't care about my ANB results, it's that I understand I have limitations and I don't expect the rest of the world to be forced to share them just to make me feel better.

And inequity is not the same as inequality. Maybe in an ideal world the only inequality would be skill, but in practical terms it's more complicated. The fact that our real lives can impact how we perform in a game; that we as people may not be equal; does not make the game unfair.

You write rather eloquently. I will give you that. I would rather keep the conversation focused on what can be done to narrow the platform gap. Your argument is to accept the difference.. or more crudely "join them if you can't beat them".

In life, choice can be illusory. I will stop myself before launching into the whole "The American Dream is but a propaganda slogan designed to keep the masses inline."

Anyway, this game was conceived as a mobile game first. As such its design; hence, challenges offered by the said design has a target audience: mobile players. It was later ported to PC. Basically like we have a bike race but all of a sudden someone with a motorcycle showed up and wants to compete in the same race. So us cyclists should just accept this because life isn't fair? Any competition have rules in place to ensure a somewhat level playing field. There is no level playing field today in Eternium. We are all just race participants. Devs are the rule settters. We can lodge complaints, offer suggestions, howl and protest... but ultimately this will come down to what Devs want for their game.

More than once the Devs have talked about making life easier for mobile players. This indicates to me that they are willing to deploy resources to narrow the gap. I'm just presenting my ideas. Look at the feedback forum, I have had many ideas in the past. Haven't seen many implemented but doesn't diminish my enthusiasm to offer more.

[Buppy]

I don't want to be a jerk, or discourage you from making suggestions. If what you were proposing was "making life easier" for mobile players, I might support it. But what you're really asking for is to make things worse for others in order to increase your odds of a higher ANB finish. That I object to, sorry.

In regards to making damage unavoidable, I may be wrong but weren't the bosses designed specifically so their special attacks need to be avoided? As a means of emphasizing player skill over character power? Looking at Iama75's character on the leaderboard (12th btw, which kind of makes this whole debate seem a bit exaggerated) shows no significant increase in defensive stats. I don't think the difference between mobile and PC comes down to sidestepping arrows, so I think you're moving more into the territory of a fundamental redesign of boss mechanics and player defensive stats.

[ShotDead]

Force the PC players to draw the signs with mouse for active abilities, that should even it

[ShotDead]

On a serious note, if they could create a better way to use active abilities (not that current one is bad) on mobile so that skill spamming (rapid fire eg.) is possible on mobile, that would be great.

[NoSuchReality]

Aside from key binding, isn't the precision advantage between PC/mobile really the same as the precision advantage between a 12.9" tablet and a 9.7" tablet, or 5.5" phablet?

[Arionthe]

In regards to making damage unavoidable, I may be wrong but weren't the bosses designed specifically so their special attacks need to be avoided? As a means of emphasizing player skill over character power? Looking at Iama75's character on the leaderboard (12th btw, which kind of makes this whole debate seem a bit exaggerated) shows no significant increase in defensive stats. I don't think the difference between mobile and PC comes down to sidestepping arrows, so I think you're moving more into the territory of a fundamental redesign of boss mechanics and player defensive stats.

The making damage unavoidable part is directed at the normal attack damages, not specials by elites or boss. Things like melee attacks by skeleton knight, arrows by archers, fireballs from liches, drains from ghosts etc. Not the multi shot, charges, novas, etc.

You are correct, that more I think about this issue, more I lean towards a fundamental redesign of the game meta. I might find time to either post it here or on its own topic about what "I" would like to see.

the short version is this: player HP pools that can take 10-15 hits instead of 2, player non crit attacks no longer feel like wet noodles, scale the LoH/Recovery so most mob encounters are not trivialized, diversity of stat builds etc. I shall expand on this when I have time.