How Evasive is Evasion?
 

Thx to Enio - we put together some interesting facts for everyone to chew on regarding the archer's evasion tree. Enjoy.

Lately I have noticed many many things sneaking through sotw. So I was bored and thought...how good is +1500 resist for spells really? Well, the results were very very interesting to say the least. The results are broken up into things that:

1) Are known to help with resist (sotw)
2) Are unsure to help with resists (spell elude)
3) Are fabled to help with resists (int)
4) Are unsure to help with evades (cat reflex and dodge)

Here are the numbers for each. We did MANY MANY MANY tests (for about 2 hours) but I'm only going to list three results for each that were the most common in occurance.

SOTW
NOTE: We tested sotw, sotw + spell elude, sotw + int, sotw + spell elude + int and the results were not different enough to notice.
1) SOTW(5), 92% resist rate (highest rate)
2) SOTW(5), 66% resist rate
3) SOTW(5), 51% resist rate (lowest rate)

Spell Elude
We tested spell elude, not using spell elude, and using spell elude + int and ALL results were the same and reported ~25% resist rate. So using elude or not using elude showed no real difference

Evasion using Dodge and Cat Reflex
We tested no dodge/cat reflex, dodge only, cat reflex only, and dodge + cat reflex and the results reported ~10% evade rate.

So, what does this report tell us. Nothing really - I was bored. But you can take from it what you will. I take from it that:

1) Level 5 sotw is kind of a waste of mana and points unless your looking to go really really fast.
2) Spell elude or no spell elude - your standard resist rate is apx 25%.
3) Don't bother use evasion buffs as they don't seem to do squat.
4) Int doesn't really help you resist AT ALL.

All in all - I think things in Regnum are entirely too random. I feel that:

1) NO ONE should resist unless they specifically buff'd to resist
2) NO ONE should evade unless they specifically buff'd to evade

This random application of evasion and spell resist makes this game all about luck - whoever has the random generator on their side at the time of the fight wins.

A huge +1.

Nice tests implemented above. Never thought that SotW alone is better, than mixed with other spells

As I've long suspected, half a tree that does nothing.


1) NO ONE should resist unless they specifically buff'd to resist
2) NO ONE should evade unless they specifically buff'd to evade

That would leave 7 more spells on my marks that would do nothing (+/- hit chance.) I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm pointing out NGD filling tree slots with the same stuff over and over.

Thank you guys to share your informations :)

Many spells seems broken yeah.

I like the idea that attributes are part of charcter's behaviour.
So, archers should evade more than others, warriors should evade more or less, in regard of the setup (some passive powers increase dexterity) and mage should not evade a lot from base.

About resist, have you tried with differents armors or without armor ?
The very bad, bad, normal, good and very good attribute for damage type help for the resist ? Don't know :x

MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT FOLLOWS. TL;DR VERSION AT THE END..

I also want to bring up something different, but yet related. I have, for quite some time, wished for Regnum Online to use a more adaptive pseudo-random distribution. Well, to be fully honest, there is no information whatsoever (?) regarding the current random system, but my guess it's something like this:
Where K is some kind of value that depends on the current stats and active spells (both on attacker and target). There is, however, a problem with that system (as we've seen in a few threads in the past), and that is that such a system is - belive it or not - totally random.


Why is this a bad idea in a multiplayer game like Regnum Online?
Well, to begin with, this means that there is nothing that stops a target from evading/resisting all or none of the incoming attacks. It also means that the probability to evade/resist another attack is just as high as it was to evade/resist the last attack. This may lead to much frustration and anger since once in a while someone gets really lucky with the RNG and resists 20 spells in a row.

I will try to keep this post at a very non-technical level (i.e. exclude unneccesary use of math) and just try to develop the more general idea of a random distribution "with memory". What does that mean, what is there for a random distribution to remember? Well, it means that one could create a random distribution that also takes into account consecutive evades/resists (or hits) to make the game seemingly more fair for the players. This means that the total amount of resists/evades can be conserved, but the endlessly boring consecutive evades/resists will become fewer.


This sounds just great, why don't we do it right away?
Well, to be honest, it's mainly because it's kind of messy to do this in a proper way. Ok, we want the total number of evades/resists to be a certain number (above, K). This number could be just about anything, so we need to create or calculate a sequence of probabilities (i.e. one for hit at first attack, one for hit at second, one for hit at third etc.), and this is where we find the big problem.

If we want to calculate this, we need to increase the number of calculations done by the server (or client?), which is not really something we want to do in order to keep the lag down and performance up. Other games that has used such a system (Blizzard used it in their WarCraft III engine) made a few restrictions (only probabilities at given 5% intervals were allowed) and pre-calculated the values in order to make a look-up instead of an actual calculation.

Before we go on, I must admit I don't know the actual impact (performance-wise) an implementation of such a system would have. Therefore, I cannot say that we can or cannot use this kind of system. But I still want to bring it up to discussion in case there is someone with better knowledge about this out there.

Besides, there might be a small margin for exploiting such a system, since you could e.g. find a mob, make it attack you until it hits you/you miss the mob so that the next attack will have a lower/higher chance to hit. But I guess we could live with that.


Can this be merged with Comp's suggestion in any way?
Well, yes, I think it could. If we actually reduce the evade/resist chance to zero and then make sure evasion is discretized to certain values (for which probabilities can be pre-calculated) this would work great! However, it would also mean we have to ditch a great part of the current mechanics in the game, and I have a small feeling NGD is not really happy about having to re-design the entire evasion-mechanics section of their game..



TL;DR VERSION
Make evade chance a function of previous number of evasions/resists.



Some inspiration:
http://www.dotastrategy.com/forum/ftopic18287.html

Some very recent SoW fails. the first three from top was one after another SoW (i ran there 3 times back).
http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/9365/sowfails.png

Something really is wrong with it.. Has anything changed? It was never that bad like it is now..

Nice work guys! +1. But for some reason, I think that regnum is different for everyone... Some say: all my attacks are evaded by mobs. Personally I never had this sort of mob evasion. Also in an early topic of mine, I showed a picture of me, evading 7 normal hits in a row.

Also since last update, I have a hugh evasion rate in war. It's not rare that I evade 4 hits/knocks or spells in a row. And then receive 2 hits and evade a lot again!

it is pretty common for my marks to hit a bunch of the same kind of mobs (normal) in a row then try to kill one and be evaded 2 times for every hit.

Meh one tree i wont bother putting points in then :)

The evasion tree isnt completely useless. Theres still a few skills in there worth sinking skills into

Mobility
I never used to bother with this skill till i decided to try it out at lvl5 one day. itll never left my skill bar again

Evasive Tactics
Never know when you might need the extra protection. i keep this on my skill bar at lvl1 (sometimes more if i have points left)

Acrobatics
No need to comment on the usefulness of this. Throw in strategic possition for a marksman and you have a pretty good ranged defence

Escapist
Even at lvl1 this skill is awesome

Low Profile
Very needed in tight situations. saved my butt so much times. a vital skill in my playing style

Son of the Wind
Still very effective defensive and offensive spell. Also very important for my playing style. the added speed boost is handy for catching runners too

so all in all, even tho the actual evasion part of the evasion tree isnt that great, the rest of the skills still make it worth taking to lvl19. On my marksman i leave it at 17 because Low Profile's all i need