EDIT# 3 -
UPDATE Y'ALL (2/24/15):
Just in case you all missed it, I wanted to let you know that the admins are aware of our displeasure with the dodge rates in the coliseum. @Roccy thought to ask about it in the weekly Q&A thread, and the admins responded! Here is the quote from the latest Q&A Answers in the General Discussion forum:
There have been no changes made to dodge and critical hit rates; there is just more discussion about them lately. This could be due to the fact that the Coliseum is running in a much more stable manner than before and Flight Rising having a larger population who uses it. We are, however, reading the discussions and considering the constructive feedback we receive for possible stat adjustments going forward.
Does this mean that changes are going to be made soon? No. BUT, at least we know they are listening :)
So thanks for the continued support, and hopefully we'll see some positive changes to the coliseum in the future!
(beginning of original post)
With the Night of the Nocturne event going on, and the fact that it's basically necessary to grind in the coliseum, we've all been seeing a resurgence of dodge complaints. I've heard it from friends, and experienced myself but, instead of complaining, I'd like to tackle the issue from a different perspective. A League of Legends perspective.
Three years ago when I was still playing League of Legends, the developers made the, then, controversial move of completely removing dodge from the game. (Honestly, I haven't played the game for a couple of years, so it's entirely possible they have reintroduced the mechanic in some form or another). There was such a backlash against the removal of dodge that they made a dedicated forum post explaining their reasoning behind the change. You can find that at http://forums.euw.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=489552.
First, two things:
To quote from the League of Legend developer post:
Obviously the argument exists, that if players were to put points into agility, that our dragons might dodge as often as the AI monsters. Assuming monster stats work the same as dragons, this would be true. However, my dragons currently do twice the amount of damage as the AI. Assuming I were to reallocate my stats to give my dragons the same dodge chance as the AI, my dragons would be doing half of their current damage, and battles would take twice as long, even longer depending on how lucky the AI gets with their dodges. In terms of efficiency and exalt fodder grinding (which is the only point of monster battle, let's be honest here) it makes no sense to put points into agility. Does this make dodge simply a mechanic to artificially slow down the grinding process? If Dominance is supposed to be an incentive to remove dragons from the game, what is the point of making it harder and more frustrating?
We've all had battles that have gone awry because the enemies in the coliseum have dodged upwards of six times in a row. I, personally, still remember with horror the one time I entered the Kelp Beds to grind and lost on my first battle, because the enemies dodged every single attack I made. Being completely shut down in a battle, you previously had control of, due to random chance is no fun.
In the Coliseum we have no reliable counters to dodge in the coliseum. We have soft counters, like abilities that apply damage over time or stun, but first those abilities have to hit (overcoming the monster dodge chance) and then there is only a chance that these statuses will even apply. I haven't used many abilities beyond scratch/eliminate, and the tool-tips of these possible counters are quite unclear as to whether or not they would actually prevent a dodge.
Even so, while dodge is a possible counter to things like damage over time (avoiding direct damage while taking bleed damage), or stuns (avoid a stun altogether), all of these things can be reliably countered by investing points in health or defense. And I don't have to rely on blind luck for either of those to work.
Note: Emphasis in the quote is mine.
I don't have much to add to this point, beyond that while my perspective has come mostly from a PvE grinding perspective, this point applies to both PvE and PvP. I can't imagine it would be any fun losing your #1 ranked spot because your opponent got lucky with their dodges.
Dodge is just a bad mechanic. it's implementation is just plain un-fun. There is no way I can walk away from a loosing battle, gone awry from enemy dodges, and think to myself I could have planned for that and prevented it, but I choose not to, and lost because of it. Even if dodge rates were lowered, every loosing battle will always be because of that one stupid unlucky dodge.
And that's why dodge needs to go.
EDIT 1:
To respond to those who are not in favor of removing dodge because "unpredictability"
Unpredictability as RNG vs. a strategic move.
Currently, dodge exists as an unpredictable mechanic in terms a RNG - a pure luck based roll of the die. It doesn't matter how high your or low your, or the enemies agility is, if RNG just hates you, a 90% investiture in dodge is completely worthless.
This isn't real life. Why should I have to worry about sheer luck being the basis for whether or not I win a battle in the coliseum? This is what the form of unpredictability I disagree with, in terms of competition. RNG should not play a factor in competition, even against an AI. If RNG can be mitigated or completely removed from competition, then every effort should be made to do so.
In the coliseum, not only is is possible for remove RNG completely but we don't even have a way of mitigating the RNG of enemy dodges. There is no stat that I can invest in that increases my dragons accuracy, to mitigate the RNG of enemy dodging.
But the coliseum also has strategic unpredictabilities: Will that cloud chase save it's breath for disorient or just simply use Zephyr bolt?
That is unpredictability. You can't really know what the AI is going to choose. But if you are worried about disorient you can mitigate the unpredictability by KOing the cloud chaser before it saves enough breath to use disorient. You can't do that with dodge.
That is what makes dodge a bad mechanic inside and out. Dodge doesn't require strategy in implementation or mitigation, but simply hoping that RNG rolls in your favor.
Edit 2:
While many responses in the thread seem to be for removing dodge, there are a few who are not in support for a total removal. While I am still in total support of total removal, I've come up with a few ideas for a middle ground that people might be able to get behind.
1. A neutral ability stone like shred or eliminate, with a 100% dodge chance but needs to be picked as the single action your dragon does on it's turn and costs breath to use.
2. An energy stone, like scratch, with a 100% chance to dodge on next attack and generates a small amount of breath each time it's used
3. Similar to #2, but only, say, 90% dodge rate and generates breath on an unsuccessful dodge
4. An option similar to the "defend" action, with a 100% dodge rate. No breath is gained or lost and it's the only action your dragon takes on it's turn.
Any one of these options reduces the amount of times an enemy can dodge, keeps the "element of unpredictability", and removes the extreme frustration because you know your enemy was using dodge as a battle strategy, rather than being a passive dice roll in their favor.
UPDATE Y'ALL (2/24/15):
Just in case you all missed it, I wanted to let you know that the admins are aware of our displeasure with the dodge rates in the coliseum. @Roccy thought to ask about it in the weekly Q&A thread, and the admins responded! Here is the quote from the latest Q&A Answers in the General Discussion forum:
Aequorin wrote on 2015-02-20 11:16:14:
Quote:
Are the developers aware of the current dodge and critical hit rates and how they seem to have greatly increased since NOTN?
There have been no changes made to dodge and critical hit rates; there is just more discussion about them lately. This could be due to the fact that the Coliseum is running in a much more stable manner than before and Flight Rising having a larger population who uses it. We are, however, reading the discussions and considering the constructive feedback we receive for possible stat adjustments going forward.
Does this mean that changes are going to be made soon? No. BUT, at least we know they are listening :)
So thanks for the continued support, and hopefully we'll see some positive changes to the coliseum in the future!
(beginning of original post)
With the Night of the Nocturne event going on, and the fact that it's basically necessary to grind in the coliseum, we've all been seeing a resurgence of dodge complaints. I've heard it from friends, and experienced myself but, instead of complaining, I'd like to tackle the issue from a different perspective. A League of Legends perspective.
Three years ago when I was still playing League of Legends, the developers made the, then, controversial move of completely removing dodge from the game. (Honestly, I haven't played the game for a couple of years, so it's entirely possible they have reintroduced the mechanic in some form or another). There was such a backlash against the removal of dodge that they made a dedicated forum post explaining their reasoning behind the change. You can find that at http://forums.euw.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=489552.
First, two things:
- I realize that these are two very different games, but I do believe that a lot of their reasoning can apply to the coliseum.
- My perspective on removing dodge is completely from a "Monster Battle" and PvE grinding. I don't PvP in the coliseum.
To quote from the League of Legend developer post:
Quote:
Dodge only starts looking compelling when it can be stacked.
Quote:
But when [dodge is] stacked too high, it completely (and permanently) shuts down a subset of characters.
Quote:
This then causes us to have to make additional things ... to counter this counter, which ends up using a lot of design space simply to make the statistic fun and non-abusive. While both Critical Strike and Dodge use a similar randomization formula, Critical Strike is still countered in much the same way as Attack Damage and Attack Speed: buy Armor. Conversely, Dodge can’t be overcome by getting more Attack Damage or Armor Penetration like other defenses can. This means that Critical Strike is just a damage multiplier, whereas dodge is an entirely new defense type that doesn’t have a series of sensible counters to it.
In the Coliseum we have no reliable counters to dodge in the coliseum. We have soft counters, like abilities that apply damage over time or stun, but first those abilities have to hit (overcoming the monster dodge chance) and then there is only a chance that these statuses will even apply. I haven't used many abilities beyond scratch/eliminate, and the tool-tips of these possible counters are quite unclear as to whether or not they would actually prevent a dodge.
Even so, while dodge is a possible counter to things like damage over time (avoiding direct damage while taking bleed damage), or stuns (avoid a stun altogether), all of these things can be reliably countered by investing points in health or defense. And I don't have to rely on blind luck for either of those to work.
Quote:
Dodge also has much more potential to remove satisfaction in a noticeable way than the other defensive stats, mostly due to its random nature. Failing to finish an opponent with an auto-attack because they happened to get their 5% chance to dodge is a pretty poor experience for the attacker, especially since the escape isn’t based on a good gameplay decision or skill-based way to survive. The fun to un-fun ratio is poor.
Note: Emphasis in the quote is mine.
I don't have much to add to this point, beyond that while my perspective has come mostly from a PvE grinding perspective, this point applies to both PvE and PvP. I can't imagine it would be any fun losing your #1 ranked spot because your opponent got lucky with their dodges.
Dodge is just a bad mechanic. it's implementation is just plain un-fun. There is no way I can walk away from a loosing battle, gone awry from enemy dodges, and think to myself I could have planned for that and prevented it, but I choose not to, and lost because of it. Even if dodge rates were lowered, every loosing battle will always be because of that one stupid unlucky dodge.
And that's why dodge needs to go.
EDIT 1:
To respond to those who are not in favor of removing dodge because "unpredictability"
Unpredictability as RNG vs. a strategic move.
Currently, dodge exists as an unpredictable mechanic in terms a RNG - a pure luck based roll of the die. It doesn't matter how high your or low your, or the enemies agility is, if RNG just hates you, a 90% investiture in dodge is completely worthless.
This isn't real life. Why should I have to worry about sheer luck being the basis for whether or not I win a battle in the coliseum? This is what the form of unpredictability I disagree with, in terms of competition. RNG should not play a factor in competition, even against an AI. If RNG can be mitigated or completely removed from competition, then every effort should be made to do so.
In the coliseum, not only is is possible for remove RNG completely but we don't even have a way of mitigating the RNG of enemy dodges. There is no stat that I can invest in that increases my dragons accuracy, to mitigate the RNG of enemy dodging.
But the coliseum also has strategic unpredictabilities: Will that cloud chase save it's breath for disorient or just simply use Zephyr bolt?
That is unpredictability. You can't really know what the AI is going to choose. But if you are worried about disorient you can mitigate the unpredictability by KOing the cloud chaser before it saves enough breath to use disorient. You can't do that with dodge.
That is what makes dodge a bad mechanic inside and out. Dodge doesn't require strategy in implementation or mitigation, but simply hoping that RNG rolls in your favor.
Edit 2:
While many responses in the thread seem to be for removing dodge, there are a few who are not in support for a total removal. While I am still in total support of total removal, I've come up with a few ideas for a middle ground that people might be able to get behind.
1. A neutral ability stone like shred or eliminate, with a 100% dodge chance but needs to be picked as the single action your dragon does on it's turn and costs breath to use.
2. An energy stone, like scratch, with a 100% chance to dodge on next attack and generates a small amount of breath each time it's used
3. Similar to #2, but only, say, 90% dodge rate and generates breath on an unsuccessful dodge
4. An option similar to the "defend" action, with a 100% dodge rate. No breath is gained or lost and it's the only action your dragon takes on it's turn.
Any one of these options reduces the amount of times an enemy can dodge, keeps the "element of unpredictability", and removes the extreme frustration because you know your enemy was using dodge as a battle strategy, rather than being a passive dice roll in their favor.
