What's the point of mixed attribute chars?

[Robin]

I'm really curious to hear some opinions (even better if it's from the devs themselves) about the idea behind chars that don't have a 4 or 5 attribute but a lot of 3s. Far as I can tell they're just strictly worse, aren't they?
Same with weapons that have like 50% one thing and 60% another and stuff like that. By default this will always be worse than any weapon that has 80% or 90% in one stat.

So am I missing something or did the devs just mess that one up?

[Simple Fox]

Bringing heavy math into the equation, they seem to be innapropriately balanced.

The sum of all heroes stats equate to 12 total points.
http://pixelheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Hero_Stat_Distribution
So, this seems to be the only guiding factor behind their stat distribution.

When we think about any other heroes stats, 2 points gained per level, twice dropped into a +5 stat is 10 points which go directly into damage, healing, or HP.

No other combination of skills can match that, and the heroes with several 3 stats can only gain a max of 6 points per level, regardless of distribution. In no case is it ever more valuable to take a 4 or 3 hero over a 5 hero.

Given the way weapons work in the game, the best outcome, regardless of healing or damage, is to always maximize a single stat. Even in the case you get Death's Scythe, which takes 100% of POW, ACC, MAG, and SPR when calculating damage, the 3/3/3 heroes can't even come close to a single 5 hero.

[Emerald Witch Seraphina]

Wow that is a great write up. I wonder if the devs ever thought about this?

[Shiro]

Maybe to balance it out the 3-stat heroes should get an extra point per level? They still wouldn't gain quite what a 5-stat hero could get, but they could come close enough that they might have potential as hybrids who can make use of 50/50 weapons.

[Robin]

Shiro, it won't help with 50/50 weapons either, cause if you got a total of 100 stat points in one attribute and you get 50% of that that gives you a total of 50.
If you have two stats that are 50 each you'll gain 25 for each and still only gain 50 in total, except your much weaker in any weapon that has a hihger percentage in one attribute.

The only way it would get better is if the SUM of both attributes would be higher than the one attribute of another, but that's not possible if all your level ups make the stat increase less than another chars single stat.
(i.e. if you can put 10 points into strength you get more in total than if you put 4 points into strength and 4 into dex, which would only give you 8 in total)

[Simple Fox]

Being a game designer myself, I find it rather difficult to properly design a fix for the flaw of the split inventment issue. Ideally, split inventment heroes would fill a niche that work well with split inventment weapons. This would give them some quirks that make them stand apart from generic heroes, rather than just blandly balancing them to be another set of 'usable' heroes.

As Robin said, right now 3pt Heroes are 40% weaker than 5pt Heroes, and no matter what kind of weapon the 3pt gets, the 3pt is always at a disadvantage.

A raw damage bonus would bring them up to par, but would not give them any unique qualities or favorable functions.

Perhaps something like synergy would work, which deals unavoidable secondary damage at a rate of Secondary/Highest * Secondary. For a 5pt, this value is somewhere within the range of 10-20%, accounting for skills' starting values. We'll just use a value of 20 for the second highest skill on a 5pt. A 3pt has invested in 2 skills evenly. The 3pt still does lower damage, but in the case the enemy has powerful resistances, it starts to shine.

A 5pt will do 100 damage raw with a synergy bonus of 20%. Calculating 20% of his second highest stat results in a bonus value of 4, but will have it reduced based on enemy PhysResist or MagResist. In extreme cases, he'll only do 1 damage after calculations, but it will become 5.

Conversely, a 3pt will deal (60) 30+30. His synergy bonus, because both skills are equal, will be 100%, granting him an additional 30 points of unavoidable damage based on his second highest skill. Assuming he also deals with extreme resistance, he will do 31 damage.

Granted, I've only thrown this idea together on a whim, it could probably be improved upon, hopefully the explanation makes sense.

[Judge Scrubb]

Originally posted by Fra-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-kow:

Granted, I've only thrown this idea together on a whim, it could probably be improved upon, hopefully the explanation makes sense.

It should also be noted that skill effectiveness scales with level, not stat points (unless I'm wrong and I haven't been paying attention).

[Captain Muscles]

A simple solution would be to disallow putting both level-up points in the same stat. That would improve the balance between the various characters, but it would likely have a significant effect on game difficulty if nothing else is changed.

[0periel]

Originally posted by Captain Muscles:

A simple solution would be to disallow putting both level-up points in the same stat. That would improve the balance between the various characters, but it would likely have a significant effect on game difficulty if nothing else is changed.

that is actually a great idea, sounds as something that was intended to be, i might try that out as some sort of challenge, really interesting, thanks for the idea!