Game Meta by Arionthe

[Arionthe]

Instead of littering the forum with many suggestion posts, I will just start a thread to collect whatever suggestion that happens to hit me. Critiques of my suggestions are always welcome.

After the patch, warrior's deficiency in the tanking department is rearing its head earlier than before.

To address this, and the fact ppl tends to favor offensive passives... here is the revamped:

Endurance

Lv1	Lv2	Lv3	Lv4	Lv5	Lv6	Lv7	Lv8	Lv9	Lv10
11% HP	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	19%	20%
Flat DR by Vit/10	Vit/9	Vit/8	Vit/7	Vit/6	Vit/5	Vit/4	Vit/3	Vit/2	Vit

Flat DR: Flat damage reduction. This means after all forms of damage mitigation, the final damage is reduced by a number that's computed by Vit/X.

Tough as Nail

Lv1	Lv2	Lv3	Lv4	Lv5	Lv6	Lv7	Lv8	Lv9	Lv10
11% Armor	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	19%	20%
Flat DR by Armor/100	Armor/90	Armor/80	Armor/70	Armor/60	Armor/50	Armor/40	Armor/30	Armor/20	Armor/10

Flat DR: Flat damage reduction. After all forms of damage mitigation, the final damage is reduced by a number that's computed by Armor/X

For endgame, Vit at 2k is within reach. So Endurance Flat DR can be 2k per hit. For DW, an armor rating of 11-13k is common while SW probably gets 21k+. So DW can get 1.1-1.3k flat DR while SW enjoys a 2.1k flat DR. If there are multiple sources of flat DR, they are just added together to compute the final DR.

Additionally to further entice players using BOTH TaN and Endurance together, perhaps an additional bonus: Endurance bonus increased by 20% if TaN also equipped. Same for TaN.

Warriors starve for stats due to the need to pack on defensive stats. Here are two ways to help build a more tanky warrior. The two passive bonus is also a warrior exclusive (don't think other classes can have both passives together), further differentiating the classes.

Now flat DR should work against all forms of damage. Probably still not enough to deal with armor bypassing attacks like drain and fire bar.

But with changes to these two passives, at least a step in the right direction.

*diablo4 has arsenal system that allows barbarian to carry 4 weapons into the battlefield. This is their solution to the issue that melee chars requires greater stat budget to deal with similar mobs as a ranged char. So giving melee class in Eternium more help isn't out of question from a game development consensus point of view.

[Arionthe]

Resource system for skills.

Not reinventing the wheel here, but currently the only resource for skill is time. That is when a skill cool down is finished, it's castable again without any other conditions attached. This leaves off a lot of potential build diversity/trade offs that can be had.

Suggestion: Generic Mana Resource

Active skills will also cost mana pts in addition to obeying the cool down mechanic. This adds another layer of strategy to skill usage/loadout.

Life Regen is borderline uselsss as a stat. Actually, it is quite useless. Let's change it to Mana/Energy instead. Works like Vit to determine the size of the mana pool as well as a build in regen factor. As in mana regen/s = energy / some constant. (energy being the stat).

So skimping too much on mana, you can have skills ready but still not castable due to lack of mana. This also allows developers to further modulate a skill's power vs its cost. A nuke skill can have a relatively short CD (for a nuke skill) but with high mana cost. When a short CD spammable skill is ready, a player has to think whether to use that skill or hold off and use the mana towards the nuke skill that will be ready in another 3 secs. These tactic decisions will allow greater skill impact on TL outcome.

Current system is you spam everything.. very little tactical element exists in the process.... let's make Eternium slightly more a thinking person's game.

Probably the biggest benefit from going this route is making 4th active skill slot a reasonable setup, giving players more possible combos to try out on the battlefield.

[Xeros]

I think this would be a better solution than the MCD idea. Mobs can drop mana orbs just like they currently drop health orbs, it would prevent skill spam for stuff like Devastate, and the mage's big attacks (DFA, Singularity, Blizzard, and maybe TW), and same for BH but I don't know much about them.

What if Vitality determined the size of both health and mana and regen stayed fairly as is but also applied to the new resource. I think this would be easier for the devs and it wouldn't require repurposing a gem or keeping the new resource without a gem for jewelry/socketing purposes.

In conjunction with some of the things we talked about in the other thread, what if they make passives truly passive, so they don't need to be equipped to a slot to receive their benefits. Take certain passives and make them "auras" (glass cannon, pathfinder, maybe some new ones, etc) change one passive slot to an active, give it the symbol 'N', turn the remaining passive slots to "aura" slots, and make auras reduce the regen rate for mana based on the aura chosen to balance the power/benefit it gives. Battle rage on warriors should be moved to the "aura" slot and modified so that instead of haste it makes normal attacks hit twice, gives a flat 20% damage increase but lowers health, also no blazing speed. That can be made into either another aura with a heavy mana regen penalty or incorporated into an existing skill like charge/WW or a new one or scrapped altogether for a flat movement speed boost and essentially make BR a cross between pathfinder and glass cannon. Currently the only drawback to BR is that it means warrior builds essentially only have 2 slots for abilities to work with.

Rework the damage on a skill or two for each class to be their huge damage/massive mana drain "nukes" and keep certain other skills spammable given the appropriate cooldown reduction/alacrity and regen rate.

Stuff like Celerity, Endurance, Intense Training, Fleet footed, and Tough as Nails (which should be given to mage and BH) should be the truly passive skills and stuff like S&B, Power Infusion, (the BR idea), Glass Cannon, Mage Armor (if it's made into something useful), Pathfinder, and the ammo types should be auras.

Toss in new set and unique items and now you have massive potential for build diversity, an incentive for rolling a different stat (besides CR, CD, Haste, AR), establishes "special attacks", and ability spam is reigned in.

[Arionthe]

I would separate vit and energy stats since the key to balance is making sure no stat's importance is overwhelming. Different classes can have different scaling based on the same energy stat. Intuitively mage should have highest scaling off energy and warrior worst (just like warrior has best scaling off vit vs other classes). mana orb is a good idea, adding some randomness to energy recovery.

I agree on having high mana cost nuke skills and low mana cost/low cd spam skills. That was one of the main purpose for having this system. MCD is also integral to this vision. Otherwise mana becomes the only limiting factor then we just trade one single factor system for another single factor system.

Builds become far more intricate under a two factor/multi factor system. This tends to lead to no clear cut winning build which is precisely the environment needed for build diversity to flourish

[Arionthe]

Juggernaut Set revamp, goal making it WW centric and buff it to be competitive in higher TLs

Set 2: WW also triggers BR (works like butchery buff so WW enjoys BR during its animation but also grants full 5secs of BR after WW finishes. This basically puts Juggernaut on equal footing with Wl2, also preciously free up an active skill slot)

Set4: WW damage increased by 50%, CD shortened by 30%, and Cyclone Armor lasts 3secs longer.

Cyclone Armor: replacing that WW's 15% damage debuff to enemy hit for 2s per weapon. Instead 2500 Deflect Rating, 40% damage reduction per equipped weapon for 5secs. This is an absolute necessity for WW to be usable in higher trials.

Set6: BR also grants increase to Power equal to Vitality (making Juggernaut truly a fortress of strength and endurance).

So WW becomes the signature skill for Juggernaut. This still leaves open two active skills, allowing many possible combos.

Shield wielder -> DT, WW, SB, probably competitive with a full defender build

Bladestorm set -> Charge, WW, xx

Vampiric set -> Charge, WW, SW

Opens up many possibilities.

[Anjaeka]

A minor suggestion for mage: They either need to seriously revamp Apprentice and Adventurer sets so that they are relevant or have them drop as legendary in very low trials to benefit new players. Otherwise, just remove them from the set rotation along with Elban’s Scepter and Necro. Right now they are just shy of worthless.

[Arionthe]

What's missing in the combat mechanic is MISSING. (forgive the pale attempt at humor).

Issue: Since nothing misses, meta is distilled into nothing more than what hits the hardest and fastest, preferably both. This limits optionality and potential build diversity.

Here is a redesign of the combat resolution. (borrowing liberally from tabletop dnd)

Combat Stats:
Offense Category
Chance to hit
Chance to crit
Crit multiplier
Damage type
Elemental type
Elemental pierce %
Weapon damage range
Attacks per second
Base damage multiplier

chance to hit: the chance to hit a comparable level enemy with avg armor/defensive stats. It's really a d100 roll. rolling 95+ will be an auto hit no matter what. Rolling anything less will actually compare the target and the attack roll. If the attack roll is higher, it's a hit. If not it's a miss. Rolling anything less than 5 will be an auto miss. On the char stat screen, it offers a % against a comparable level enemy with avg defensive stats. So that % is lower/higher in practice depending on the enemy in question.

chance to crit: Just a separate roll to see if crit hit landed

Crit Multiplier: X% applied to a crit

Damage type: pierce, blunt, slash. This comes into play for additional damage multiplier/mitigation depending on enemy weakness/strength. For example skeleton suffers 200% damage from blunt but 50% from pierce and 100% from slash. All mobs have a type that rotates through those 200% 50% and 100%.

Elemental type: fire, ice, electric, poison, void. Enemies have elemental resistances ranging from -100% to 100%. 0% means normal damage. -100% means double damage and 100% means no damage. This number is modified by elemental pierce stat. Certain powerful set bonuses can ignore a target's elemental resistance and treat it as X%. Elemental type combines with Damage type. for example a flaming blunt hit against a weak to fire skeleton is essentially 4X damage before anything else comes into play.

Elemental pierce %: ability to ignore % of target's elemental resistance.

Weapon damage range: let's actually have some variety here not just everyone weapon avg the same but with higher/lower ceiling/floor

Attacks per sec: heavier weapons hit slower, in combo with weapon damage range, one can properly balance weapons

Base damage multiplier: STR for warrior, Dex for Bh, Energy for mage... or in Eternium speak, Power

Defensive Category
Basically the opposite of offense.

Chance to hit: Chance to miss: Armor rating that increases % to miss
Crit resistance: yes, ability to resist critical damage
Armor type: basically offers differing % resist to piercing, blunt, slashing damage. Plate best against slashing, blunt, normal against pierce. Chain etc etc, leather etc etc, cloth weak against all
Elemental Resist: reduce elemental damage. Getting it above 100% means getting heals from the damage

[Arionthe]

Randomly generated maps.

For replayability, procedurally generated maps (think D2) are just superior. TL is a very simplified version of it. But this can get more involved, like waypts, choke pts, ambush pts. Those points of interests can be hand crafted/static, but the areas linking them together can be random.

I think the game resources can be better utilized if all maps (including story levels) are generated this way.

Example of a randomly generated map.

1: Engine decides on the size of the map (small, medium, large, colossal).
small: 2pts of interests
medium: 4 pts of interest
large: 6 pts of interest
colossal: 8 pts of interest

2: Engine decides whether the map will include a final boss stage
Yes: attach boss area to the end of the map (this also can include some kind of environmental trigger that helps with boss fight depending on how many of the pts of interests a player actually pushes through vs skipped, see pts of interest generation for details)
No: no boss area attached

3: Points of Interest
We can have many types of points of interest. This is where stylized combat takes place.
a: Choke point: bridge, mountain pass, anything that leads to a narrow passage through the area.
b: battlefield: bombardment, supply depot, army encampment, etc
c: natural wonders: rainbow forests, waterfall, lava lake, frozen tundra, shadow realm (these areas have certain buffs/debuffs to player attacks, for example fire based attacks gain 50% potency in lava lake but suffers 50% potency on frozen tundra)
d: ruins: pagan god sacrificial sites, ruined temples, ravaged graveyard etc

Each points of interest has their own set of enemies (doesn't make sense for water elementals to show up at lava lake). Defeating a certain % of enemies for each PoT will mean passing or skipping.

Engine randomly picks a selection of those points of interests and their associated enemy types.

4: filler areas
linear map linking PoTs together

5: Boss stage
Particular boss selection and decide various player buff/debuffs depending on the PoTs passed/skipped. Now it shouldn't be that everyone PoT needs to be passed to garner all potential buffs. Quite frankly let's say Margoth is the final boss. This is a fire demon. So passing a lava lake PoT might gain the player some fire resis, but the increase to fire damage probably does the player no good. On the other hand, going through frozen tundra might get the opposite buff/debuff for the player. So strategic choices are made for the player to skip/pass each PoTs. There could be PoTs that actually further buff the final boss depending on conditions met. Pagan god sacrificial site is a prime example. Let's say a player pass this PoT, terminate all ghosts haunting the site. This makes the sacrificial site working again. However if the pagan god is an enemy of the final boss, this is good for the player (+% to demon etc) but if the pagan god is the final boss itself, then this move will actually hurt the player as the final boss will get a buff from a working sacrificial site.

6: There should be hints on who the final boss is at map generation. Also each boss should have their own symbols so that at certain PoTs, the player can decide of cleansing certain PoT is good or bad or neutral (troll bridge is just a gold treasury chest box) towards completing a certain map.

Adrian (Developer)

This randomly generated engagement area (RGEA) can serve as the underpinning of far greater replayability through additional game modes (that will come at a later post... think protect the wagon/npc through treacherous areas, assault on certain PoTs ala domination, I'm still working out how a captured the flag game mode can work in this game environment)

[Jeverzon]

I have to assume with that random map idea that your still poised to just toss us mobile users under the bus. I'm really getting tired of getting creamed in TL's due to boss fights at 12-16 FPS. To much trash except in Winter map and too many fancy boss FX that don't need transparency, smoke and all that crud you that half the time don't see on an Android based mobile because at 16FPS your dead BEFORE you see what kills you! And YES that's 16 FPS with EVERYTHING stepped to the bottom quality. So for all I care you can make the whole thing 2D if it plays at 30FPS!

And are you ever going to solve the bleed stack issue so mobile users can actually use bleed effect weapons?

Frankly at some point your going to have to release an Android mobile version that's playable without spending as much for a high-end mobile as you would for a PC!

[NoSuchReality]

Re: Missing, essentially that's crit hit/non crit hit is today. Previously about TL80 and now lower a non-crit is effectively a miss. Sure it triggers LoH and maybe alacrity, but from damage standpoint, its a dud. While I like the idea of the complexity (armor miss, crit resistence etc.), in reality it just adds a boatload of calcs to do what crit hit and armor today do with a single calc each and will further hamstring mobile play.

What's missing in the combat mechanic is MISSING. (forgive the pale attempt at humor).

Issue: Since nothing misses, meta is distilled into nothing more than what hits the hardest and fastest, preferably both. This limits optionality and potential build diversity.

Here is a redesign of the combat resolution. (borrowing liberally from tabletop dnd)

Combat Stats:
Offense Category
Chance to hit
Chance to crit
Crit multiplier
Damage type
Elemental type
Elemental pierce %
Weapon damage range
Attacks per second
Base damage multiplier

chance to hit: the chance to hit a comparable level enemy with avg armor/defensive stats. It's really a d100 roll. rolling 95+ will be an auto hit no matter what. Rolling anything less will actually compare the target and the attack roll. If the attack roll is higher, it's a hit. If not it's a miss. Rolling anything less than 5 will be an auto miss. On the char stat screen, it offers a % against a comparable level enemy with avg defensive stats. So that % is lower/higher in practice depending on the enemy in question.

chance to crit: Just a separate roll to see if crit hit landed

Crit Multiplier: X% applied to a crit

Damage type: pierce, blunt, slash. This comes into play for additional damage multiplier/mitigation depending on enemy weakness/strength. For example skeleton suffers 200% damage from blunt but 50% from pierce and 100% from slash. All mobs have a type that rotates through those 200% 50% and 100%.

Elemental type: fire, ice, electric, poison, void. Enemies have elemental resistances ranging from -100% to 100%. 0% means normal damage. -100% means double damage and 100% means no damage. This number is modified by elemental pierce stat. Certain powerful set bonuses can ignore a target's elemental resistance and treat it as X%. Elemental type combines with Damage type. for example a flaming blunt hit against a weak to fire skeleton is essentially 4X damage before anything else comes into play.

Elemental pierce %: ability to ignore % of target's elemental resistance.

Weapon damage range: let's actually have some variety here not just everyone weapon avg the same but with higher/lower ceiling/floor

Attacks per sec: heavier weapons hit slower, in combo with weapon damage range, one can properly balance weapons

Base damage multiplier: STR for warrior, Dex for Bh, Energy for mage... or in Eternium speak, Power

Defensive Category
Basically the opposite of offense.

Chance to hit: Chance to miss: Armor rating that increases % to miss
Crit resistance: yes, ability to resist critical damage
Armor type: basically offers differing % resist to piercing, blunt, slashing damage. Plate best against slashing, blunt, normal against pierce. Chain etc etc, leather etc etc, cloth weak against all
Elemental Resist: reduce elemental damage. Getting it above 100% means getting heals from the damage

[Arionthe]

I have to assume with that random map idea that your still poised to just toss us mobile users under the bus. I'm really getting tired of getting creamed in TL's due to boss fights at 12-16 FPS. To much trash except in Winter map and too many fancy boss FX that don't need transparency, smoke and all that crud you that half the time don't see on an Android based mobile because at 16FPS your dead BEFORE you see what kills you! And YES that's 16 FPS with EVERYTHING stepped to the bottom quality. So for all I care you can make the whole thing 2D if it plays at 30FPS!

And are you ever going to solve the bleed stack issue so mobile users can actually use bleed effect weapons?

Frankly at some point your going to have to release an Android mobile version that's playable without spending as much for a high-end mobile as you would for a PC!

Actually what I believe in game meta would lead to a much better mobile experience. player effective hp is too low compared to mob damage, leading to too easy 1HKO. mob hp is too damn high leading to all out rush to stack offense at the expense of defense. Of course one can't even stack defense high enough to make a difference so why not all glass canon.

So overall mobile experience can be vastly improved when the 1HKO is a far less common occurrence. How is that possible? drastically reduce recovery in relation to hp pool. And corresponding reduction in mob damage. so the overall challenge remained the same. Btw just to be sure, i'm not involved in any shape or form with the development team. Just a fellow interested mobile exclusive player.

[Jeverzon]

Sorry I misunderstood and thought you were a dev.
At this point I'd hate to accuse someone of that crime unjustly.

I'm also assuming the forum has fixed the issue of comments being tossed out as a separate post like my previous one.

The FPS problem on MY mobile is GPU overhead which HAS to be addressed by the devs.

[Arionthe]

Re: Missing, essentially that's crit hit/non crit hit is today. Previously about TL80 and now lower a non-crit is effectively a miss. Sure it triggers LoH and maybe alacrity, but from damage standpoint, its a dud. While I like the idea of the complexity (armor miss, crit resistence etc.), in reality it just adds a boatload of calcs to do what crit hit and armor today do with a single calc each and will further hamstring mobile play.

Modern mobile cpus can handle those simple math calculations far better than doing particle effects, perspective shifts, other graphics wizardry. What I'm saying is that slightly less graphics wow factor will free up more than enough cpu cycles to implement the most complicated combat system one can imagine. Now as for why an involved combat engine is core to a differentiated gaming experience, allow me to give you an example.

current combat engine offers no real trade off. What this means is that there is a single best setup that's the best against all mob types. The reason is that there is no differentiated damage, everything simply acts as a multiplier, modifier on the base damage (weapon dmg range). And all mob types are the same, just with a different skin. The combat ruleset made it this way with its streamlined, simplified calculation. Using an Axe (widest damage range) against a ghost/skeleton/what have you makes no difference compared to using a mace or anything else for that matter. There is a mathematically optimal stat allocation and that is that. Nothing more to see. Even the so called set bonuses are just glorified multipliers themselves, ultimately changing nothing and creating no INTERESTING CHOICES.

Power is straight forward multiplier on damage, so is critical damage (in combination with crit chance), so is haste (for normal attack, for skill damage a slightly adjusted multiplier due to alacrity trigger which all that does is allowing one to output skill at x% faster rate... which by definition is a multiplier).

In an evolved combat engine, there should be differentiated damage thus leading to trade offs which are really just another name for INTERESTING CHOICES.

Let's say ghost type has innate 50% miss chance applied. A slow but hard hitting setup might not be the best way to go. You would prefer fast, but light hitting attacks. Even better maybe some holy garlic powder that anchors the ghost more to the material realm thus reducing that 50% displacement chance.

Against an ice elemental, you want to throw fireballs, fire enchanted attacks which carry innate damage multiplier. However that same setup which felt like world conquering against ice elemental becomes wet noodle against a fire demon. The whole idea behind it is having differentiated outcome depending on the circumstances of the combat. This is what allows trade offs to happen, allows interesting choices being made, ultimately allowing for greater diversity by having no unquestioned the best method.

[TerryDarc]

I would separate vit and energy stats since the key to balance is making sure no stat's importance is overwhelming. Different classes can have different scaling based on the same energy stat. Intuitively mage should have highest scaling off energy and warrior worst (just like warrior has best scaling off vit vs other classes). mana orb is a good idea, adding some randomness to energy recovery.

I agree on having high mana cost nuke skills and low mana cost/low cd spam skills. That was one of the main purpose for having this system. MCD is also integral to this vision. Otherwise mana becomes the only limiting factor then we just trade one single factor system for another single factor system.

Builds become far more intricate under a two factor/multi factor system. This tends to lead to no clear cut winning build which is precisely the environment needed for build diversity to flourish

And ditch dodge, parry, block and deflect. LOH is still valuable.

[Arionthe]

A simple change to improve gaming experience (especially mobile).

No one likes 1HKO. It's also a cheap way to present challenge.

Reduce all recovery stat by 90%. That means CP only gets you 100 LoH. The gear slots grand them at 1/10th the current rate. Reduce Life Regen by half so there is a better balance between LR and LoH.

Correspondingly reduce all mob damage by 85%.

Now the HP size is in much better relation to the recovery stats. 1HKOs should be far less frequent and overall challenge is unchanged.

Of course this also argues for adjust to all HP pool size related recovery (such as bloody sword and shockwave heal).

[Arionthe]

Clean slate.... If I were a game designer, what would be the core mechanics of a mobile ARPG and using Eternium's control scheme. I will periodically update this post to complete this. It will carry core mechanics plus a single class example of using the mechanics.


Core Mechanics

Base Stats

Strength: determines how powerful physical attack can be

Dexterity: determines how accurate and fast one can attack

Vitality: determines the size of the HP pool

Arcane: determines spell power

Each Level Up

Player gets 5 stat points that they can invest into the base stats that their class allows.

Fighter class: Strength and Vitality

Range class: Dexterity and Vitality

Magic class: Arcane and Vitality

Mana

Each player gets 100 Mana pool to power their class skills. This pool size doesn't increase with player level and only very rare equipment offers increases to this stat. Mana regeneration is done by potion and very slow natural regeneration,3/sec. Takes around 30secs for the mana pool to fill by itself.

Class Skills

Special attacks that do nice damage and sometimes with special effects. These skills carry a mana cost as well as a cool down period. Skills level up by being used repeatedly. One can think of them as skill gaining skill xp to their maximum level (10). Skills become available as players level up. Skills are also ranked by their rarity, meaning a particular class skill can have a more advanced version that is offered via a hidden/ascendant prestige class that can branch from the base class. See the class example for details.

Skill Combos

Skills can be chained together for combos. A player can assign a single class skill to a gesture control or a skill combo. However skill combo will not be ready unless there is enough mana to cast the first skill in the chained skills as well as longest CD skill has cooled down. In effect the longest CD of the skill in the combo becomes the CD. If however the skill chain consumes more mana than player's available pool, the combo will start but stop short of the full chain (ie if enough mana to cast two skills in the chain, it will stop after that).

Critical Hit

Critical hits double the damage be it a class skill or a normal attack. Chances to cause a critical hit is zero. Critical chance is a special attribute that appears only on necklace and rings normally. Special set bonuses or ultra high end unique can very rarely carry this bonus.

Armor

Each non jewelry and non weapon equipment carries an Armor as one of its base attributes. Additive total of all the armor on the equipped gear is a player's total Armor Rating. This armor rating reduces received physical damage by x% based on a diminishing return formula.

Armor Bonus: An attribute that often appears non weapon gear, it offers % bonus applied to the total armor rating, thus the effective armor is equal to total armor rating * total armor bonus.

Example: Total armor rating = 1000 with total armor bonus of 25% means 1250 effective armor rating.

Offense

Player's base strength stat plus weapon's damage stat and all strength stat on equipped gear combines for the Offense (physical) stat. This stat is further modified by the Offense Bonus attribute that can appear on gears.

Offense Bonus: An attribute that often appears on weapons, extremely rarely on other gear.

Example: player base strength stat is 300 (60 levels worth of pure strength stat investment), total gear strength stat of 200 for a strength total of 500. Using a weapon that has 150-200 damage range. Offense stat is represented as a range of 500 (total strength) + 150 (weapon min dmg) to 500 * (weapon max/min) + 200 (weapon max) = 650 - 867.

Let's say the player also has a total Offense bonus of +60%, this means the true Offense stat is 650 * 160% - 867*160% = 1040 - 1387

Armor Breach

When calculating damage, an important aspect is called armor breach, meaning the damage reduction effect of armor is drastically reduced due to Offense stat > effective armor rating. Using the above example of 1250 effective armor rating and 1040-1387 Offense. A lucky 95% roll means a damage roll of 1040 + (1387-1040) * 95% = 1369.65. This is > than 1250 effective armor so Armor Breach is triggered. What this means is that the final damage is actually tripled compared to if the armor wasn't breached. Now if a critical hit roll was also confirmed, this will double that tripled damage for an effective 6X damage.

Arcane Defense

Sometimes an attribute called Arcane Defense will appear on non weapon gears. It comes in %. This is the only defense against arcane power. Effectively acting as a damage reduction against incoming Arcane attack (AOE or otherwise). Arcane attacks that have physical manifestations such as fireball, magic missile can also be defended by making sure those attacks don't actually touch the player.

Attack Speed

This is deliberately slower paced than the current Eternium setup. At most 5 actions per second can happen. The number of actions possible is class dependent. The dexterity based class will be able to reach 5 with heavy investment in dex and stacking of an gear attribute called Attack Speed Bonus

Str based class has a base attack speed of 1/s. Although one can't invest into dexterity with the level up stat pts, sometimes dexterity show up as a gear bonus. The total dexterity on gear is modified by the class dexterity modifier to determine how much attack speed bonus it gains. For example, fighter class has a dexterity modifier of 0.1. High end gear offers a total of 200 dexterity. This means the attack speed bonus is 200 * 0.1 (class modifier) = 20% Attack Speed Bonus. Let's say the gear also offered Attack speed bonus attributes on two of the gears for a total of 40%. Then the total Attack Speed Bonus is added together 60%. This means the fighter now attacks at 1.6/s. Now if the fighter dual wields, there is a 1.5x attack speed modifer applied in the end. So 1.6 * 1.5 = 2.4 attacks / s.

A Dex based class has the same base attack speed of 1/s. But the class can have a higher class modifier on dexterity. Let's say it's 0.5. The same gear as above will yield, 200 dex * 0.5 = 100% attack bonus (dex), 40% attack bonus from gear, This equals 140% bonus or 2.4 attacks per sec. If this class dual wields, than 2.4 * 1.5 = 3.6 attacks / s.

Arcane based class has the same base attack speed of 1/s. It should probably have class modifier that is between STR and Dex based class. Maybe 0.3.

Attack speed however doesn't restrict how quickly a player can pump out the skills. That is only controlled by the availability of mana and skill CD. (NO GCD here). Attack speed is only important in the sense of normal attacks and proc triggers that are based on attacks. Many skills will replace normal attacks with skill attacks that can have multiple hits/AOE which can trigger procs on their own. It's more fun to have splashy skills.. so the balance will tilt towards that.

Hit or Miss

Not even the greater warrior hits every time. The idea here is that a normally geared player should have a 50% hit rate against an comparable foe. That hit rate can be increased with certain attributes and decreased under certain debuffs. Skill hits generally speaking will start at a 75% hit rate (they are skills after all). So to determine the hit rate, one has to look at the character as well as the target. Only base stat that affects hit rate is dexterity. Each class again has a different modifier for dexterity's effect on hit rate. Str based is 0.1, Dex based is 0.3, Arcane based is 0.2. There is also a gear attribute called Attack Accuracy Bonus which is simply added with the dex based bonus to compute the final hit rate. An example below to illustrate.

Base hit rate 50%
Pluses to base hit rate: If player is higher level than target, +2% for each level difference. Size of the mob also affects base hit rate. For each mob size that is larger than normal, +5%. Mob size tiers are tiny (none), small (Merlock), normal (everything else), huge (Elban, Kara), gigantic (dragons, Morgoth). Mob Tiers also affect the base hit rate. The mob tiers are: Trash (skeleton, zombie), Substandard (footsolider type), standard, elite, boss (dragons, Kara, Elban, Morgoth), ultimate boss (Ragadam). For each tier below standard, +5%.
Minuses to base hit rate: if player is lower level than target, -2% for each level. Mob size smaller than normal also decreases hit rate. -5% for each size below normal. For each mob tier higher than standard, -5% to base hit rate.

First calculate the base hit rate. Let's say the player is attacking Lvl 80 boss Kara.
50% (base) - 20% (10 lv difference) - 10% (boss tier) + 5% (huge size) = 25%

Now calculate all the bonuses to the hit rate from dex and gear.
Assume 200 dex bonus on gear, and 40% Accuracy bonus
For STR class, 200 dex = 20% bonus, 40% Accuracy on gear = total 60%. Effective hit rate of 25% * 1.6 = 40%

For Dex class, 200 dex (gear) + 300 dex (base stat investment 60lv worth) = 500 dex = 150% (class modifier 0.3), 40% Accuracy on gear = 190%. Effective hit rate of 25% * 2.9 = 72.5%

For Arcane class, 200 dex = 40% bonus (class modifier 0.2), 40% Accuracy on gear = total 80%. Effective hit rate of 25% * 1.8 = 45%

A skill hit has a 75% base hit rate. Doing the same calculation as above yields
STR class = 50% * 1.6 = 80%
DEX class = 50% * 2.9 = 145%
ARC class = 50% * 1.8 = 90%

There is a overall cap on hit rate of 95%. So STR will hit 80%, DEX 95%, ARC 90%

Finally a class of modifiers called Avoid also factors into this. This can have names like dodge, displacement (ghosts have 50% displacement). These are computed first to see if the above hit/miss calculation needs to be carried out at all.

For example attacking a ghost with 50% displacement and 20% dodge (guess the ghost was formerly a thief), the game first rolls against 50% displacement, if successful, rolls against 20% dodge. Only succeeding against both rolls will the Hit/Miss calculation spring into action. In this case only 40% of the time an attack will actually trigger a hit/miss calculation.

Finally even though skills have the base 75% hit rate, certain attributes of the skill can further increase/decrease the skill hit rate. For example Relentless Arcane Missile can have a skill description: A relentless ball of energy that tracks the target. If it misses, it will double back and try to hit again. Essentially forcing two rolls of Hit/Miss calculation. Or maybe a gunslinger (dex class) skill called Snipe that at level 10 gains the attribute Called Shot: +10 to base hit rate. It's all possible.

Damage Calculation

STR class has a 1.0 class factor with respect to STR stat and damage.
DEX class has a 0.5 class factor with respect to DEX state and damage
ARC class has a 1.0 class factor with respect to ARC stat and damage.

How it translates to actual damage, one can look back under Offense

The effective offense stat is basically the damage range a normal hit will generate.

Luck

This stat affects many things. How lucky is a person. It's not a base stat so one can't put pts in it. It can be gained as game rewards for outstanding achievements (such as winning leagues, world event MVPs, finishing extremely difficult quests blah blah blah). Maybe, just maybe some end game gear can carry this stat in small measures. This makes a player's avoidance stat more effective, hit for higher damage (bias towards the max instead of min in the damage range), improve crit chance beyond what's seen on the stats (a luck modifier on the computed crit chance).

Blocking and Parrying

Damage mitigation beyond avoidance. Successful block reduces incoming damage by 50%. All physical attacks and magic with physical properties (missiles, balls, basically elemental damage) can be blocked. Only physical attacks can be parried (50% DR). Shields carry base block chance%. Better shields will have higher block chance. Parrying is a weapon stat. Certain weapons have higher parrying chance. Generally speaking parrying chance will be less than 50% of an equivalent tier shield's blocking chance. Duel wielding will avg the parrying chance of both weapons and then add a 1.5x modifier.

Familiar/Pet/Follower/Minion/Mount

Instead of hiring minions, it's more fun to "capture" them in the wild and train them to be one's trusty sidekick. It also offers greater variety. The minion system comes in two broad categories, minions and mounts. The primary difference between the two is... wait for it... you can ride the mount. Well actually there is more..

Minions: There is a small chance that after killing a large number of a particular mob, a Lv1. mob will be generated. This Lv1 mob can be tamed/charmed/tricked into becoming your minion when you use the capture card. I give you Pokemon, capture them all, right inside the ARPG. Now the chance of successful capture is low. Also after a few failed attempts, that Lv1 mob will get extremely angry and self explode. Plus the capture card is a consumable (more expensive ones have slightly higher % for success). This is another nice gold/gem sink, in addition to healing potion and mana potion. The captured mob generally will have one user controllable skill. Who wouldn't want some firebar spewing lich following one around. Upto Elite mob can be tamed this way (lest everyone has Kara following them around). Imagine a mob that has teleportation skill. This opens up far greater depth of strategy. Anyway the potential for this system is vast.

Mount: Animal minions that are large enough to be ridden. The capture system works as above. However the mount also offers stat boosts for each class. Magical beasts (Unicorn) offer ARC stat buff in %, Agile beasts (Panther) offer DEX stat buff in %, Strong beasts (Grizzly) offer STR stat buff in %. Each class has class modifier that determines how much of the buff offered by the mounts can actually be applied. For example STR class will get 100% of the STR buff, but only 20% of ARC buff and 50% of Dex buff. ARC class gets 100% of ARC buff, 50% of Dex buff, 20% of STR buff. DEX class gets 100% of DEX buff, 50% of STR buff, and 20% of ARC buff. Higher end mounts can offer buffs in multiple stats as well as offer user controllable skill. Movement speed while on mount is a given.

Minions/Mounts have their own HP, thus if killed, they will disappear and remain unsummonable for a period of time. Of course any buff they offered will drop until they are resummoned.

So Minions is all about the skills they offer to the player while mount is more general purpose and thus tend to be longer lasting companion for the player. Did I mention mount is more valuable?

ITEMIZATION AND EQUIPMENT

This is a big category.

Offense

Three types of weapons, martial (STR), knives/Bows (DEX), and Wands/Staves (ARC).

Weapons come in different tiers and levels. Levels determine the base range of stats while tiers determine how many stats it offers as well as how much higher the stats can go. At very high tiers, weapons can offer weapon based skills. Those tend to be procs. Some can be just weapon specific skills which then can be chained into skill combos (see above). Weapon specific skills don't use mana but has its own CD.

Tiers: Common, Magic, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Artifact

Common: only class specific base stat (STR weapon will offer some flat bonus to STR)
Magic: all above plus one other base stat. Stat range is increased by 10%
Rare: all above plus one other base stat. Sometimes the base stat also offers % bonus to the stat. example: 40 STR (10%). This means there is a flat 40 bonus to STR base stat and also a 10% modifier to the total STR stat). If multiple % bonuses exist on gear, all are added together before being applied to compute the final stat.
Epic: potentially have all base stats bonuses. Each base stat bonus will come with % bonus. Plus one special attribute.
Legendary: all above plus stat range is increased by 20% and potentially have two special attributes. One of which can be a weapon skill.
Artifact: all above plus stat range is increased by 50% and potentially have three special attributes, one of which can be a weapon skill.

Example of weapon special attribute: Attack ignore 30% of target armor, Increase Attacker speed by 25%, Increase Attacker Offense by 25% (this is raw multiplier after all the base stat + bonuses + weapon range), chance to trigger tornado on attack (doing 75% dmg and randomly moving, see D2 claw tornado)

Example of weapon skill: Apocalyptic Ferrule Strike (Three quick strikes with lance doing 125% damage each while the impact is so powerful, lifting the target into the air. This interrupts any spell/skill casting as well as puts the target into a daze, stunned for 1.25sec while considered being airborne. Being airborne means any dex based defense is ignored and attack also ignores 30% of remaining defense when calculating armor breach).

Weapon skills should be very powerful situational skills that gives an unique solution to any combat situation.

Defense

Similar tier system.

Armor will also come with an armor value. Armor in magic tier or higher will also come with a base stat called Arcane Defense. This is the % damage reduction against Arcane based attacks.

Example of armor special attribute: Increase user defense value by x%, increase user offense by x%, x% damage reflection, +x% resistance to stun, increase movement speed, increase attack speed, increase hp pool size by X,

Example of armor skill: Cyclone Armor (creates an cyclone around the user, 100% immunity against ranged attacks, 20% armor bonus) for 5 seconds.

Jewelry

Similar tier system.

Certain jewelry only stats such as Critical Strike %, HP leech (since damage and attack speed is well controlled in this game, this won't get out of hand).

Ok.. that's really all I can think of... next will be an actual class to give a more concrete example. I now feel comfortable enough to tag the Devs.

Adrian (Developer), Red (Developer)