Subject
[Stats, Curves] 5*+20, attack stat soft cap, general game design soft cap, hard cap and overwriting buffs [Math]
Background
Click for discussion about 5*+20 tanks making a single hero in your roster more critical than 30x 5* 4.80 heroes
A god is born
I disagree.
A center defense hero Telluria with EMBLEMS is god tier center defense hero.
A god is usually born when a belief becomes widespread. Telluria is the embodiment of all Empires defense decisions come to life to haunt the game and be worshipped by the players. I really wish this was hyperbole to get the Devs attention. But it has been one decision after another.
This has been noted for years that the current raid center defense hero carries a much more weigh than the other four in raids ( see notes ). Diamond raids appear to be the second best way to acquire 4* ascension items after titans. Especially with Path of Valor II having a raid challenge.
Setting a single defense team for war, but requiring 6x attack teams for war, gives a much bigger weight to the single defense team’s center hero. see coordinated tank color in war.
5* heroes require approximately 3x the emblems of 4* heroes. But rare 14* titans are a huge source of emblems so we are finally seeing 5*+20 defense builds. There is very likely an attack stat soft cap. Defense stat is not linear. And 5*+20 get a multiplier of x1.2 for defense stat ( as @Garanwyn pointed out about 5*+20 heroes more than a year ago ).
We will skip over the mana speed problem with the current meta. That is impossible to analyze with my math skills.
If Telluria is nerfed. Another hero will eventually take Telluria current place in the game meta. Telluria is a symptom of balance issues, not the cause of the balance issues.
The question is, will SGG address the underlying issues.
I would be very surprised if the above issues killed Empires, the pandemic had been good for mobile games. And 5*+20 heroes is definitely an Elder user issue.
But the issues above have been seen for years.
Notes
Click for notes
War tank color
(Search results for 'war tank color ' - Empires & Puzzles Community Forum)
We miss you @Garanwyn
Likely attack stat soft cap versus non-linear defense for 5*+20 heroes.
HP versus Defense
Defense formation
Attacking team
([Guide, Wiki, Tactics] Placement of heroes when attacking - titans, bosses, raids, Jabberwocky, Gato)
War matchmaking error buffers
Tank posts
(Search results for 'defense tank ' - Empires & Puzzles Community Forum)
Emblems
(https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VQNZpzlYICcFQoES9d8_HiAYwVrl0k8Rb-Uf1KxOj2w/htmlview)
Mana speed
Soft cap
Q:
Do you think that some of those things (like damage softcap) were designed initially with the intention to be fail-safes?
A:
The only one I am sure of is standard soft cap practices. Soft caps try and guide player behavior instead of giving you a single upgrade path.
Theoretically soft caps make more balanced play styles more efficient and thus more powerful.
They never work that way since stat curves are complex and then have even more complex interactions ( do not get me started on healing potion game metas ).
Fight higher titans
Empires is designed around fighting titans
Devs add a soft cap to encourage players with upgraded hero tiers ( 4* → 5* → 5*+20 etc. ) to fight larger titans in their alliance ( 10* → 11* → 12* ) for better loot instead of mercing smaller titans ( 10* → 9* → 8* ) to optimize loot drops.
Example ( not actually stats )
If the 3* titan has a 10% softcap at 300+ attack stat for attackers but a 6* titan has a 10% soft cap at 600+ attack stat for attackers, then a hero with 800 attack stat will actually do more damage per attack versus the 6* titan. 350 effective attack stat against 3* titans versus 620 effective attack stat against 6* titans.
This is very visible with defense stats ( with or without a defense cap ) as high hero tiers ( 4* → 5* → 5*+20 etc. ) take little damage from fighting beginning titans ( 3* → 2* → 1* ).
But especially with grindy MMOs, instead of single player games, it is all about using the game economy, and combat rules, to guide player behavior.
Player choices
But a standard soft cap design is to encourage players to spread points among several different stats. If adding 10 more points to attack stat effectively gives you 0.5 points but adding the same 10 points to defense effectively gives you 5.5 points, users will consider adding the 10 points to defense. Some users will still give the 10 points to attack, since even a small increase in attack is good for their play style.
This could be very important for emblems.
Not only does Empires appears to only have the attack stat capped, but with no feedback to the user, decision cannot be driven by the soft cap formula.
Add color stacking on attack but no color stacking on defense only makes decisions and consequences more muddled and murky.
Hard cap
A hard cap is a fail safe.
Example
critical hit chance 90% hard cap. Any points added to critical hit chance above this are lost.
This is the difference between a soft cap and a hard cap. Soft caps slow down increases in an ability stat. Hard caps halt increases in an ability stat.
The most common hard caps are speed, critical hit chance and critical hit multipler.
Empires does not have an adjustable speed or an adjustable critical hit damage multiplier.
Empires does have an adjustable critical hit chance - since troops were added - but most hard caps for critical hit chance are high compared to Empires- 50% or 75% or 90% depending on the game meta.
Overwriting
Overwriting is a fail safe.
Instead of a hard cap on various stats, Empires has buffs, and debuffs, overwrite each other making it more difficult to hit soft caps, and generally removing the need for hard caps.
FIN