Forces and ability

[Spellbinder]

I spend most of my time reaching the 2chan threads and wiki's, but was just curious of what Forces here think of the importance of ability (技量) and how much of the stat they have now.

I'm currently level 40 with 298 ability, working on an Apus mag (70 T-ATK / 30 Ability at 100). I'm currently debating if I should put more ability into my mag, perhaps one of my armor pieces, or just leaving my ability as it is.

Anywho, what are your thoughts on ability for Force?

[Sizustar]

I spend most of my time reaching the 2chan threads and wiki's, but was just curious of what Forces here think of the importance of ability (技量) and how much of the stat they have now.

I'm currently level 40 with 298 ability, working on an Apus mag (70 T-ATK / 30 Ability at 100). I'm currently debating if I should put more ability into my mag, perhaps one of my armor pieces, or just leaving my ability as it is.

Anywho, what are your thoughts on ability for Force?

Do you want stable DPS or high T-atk and able to equip the new Rod?

[Spellbinder]

I prefer stability, but was wondering what other people think, hence my asking. :)

[hmaa94]

Uhm, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think your mag is stuck at the three lepus-evolvments considering you got 70 t-att and 30 ability on your mag..? I don't think it can evolve into Apus at that point?

[Spellbinder]

Uhm, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think your mag is stuck at the three lepus-evolvments considering you got 70 t-att and 30 ability on your mag..? I don't think it can evolve into Apus at that point?

If you want, I can post a screen shot as soon as it hits 100. But that's not really the point of this thread.

[Valymer]

Someone posted this for me, so I will pass on the favor:

http://wikiwiki.jp/force/?%B5%BB%CE%CC

Some good testing on 技量 with a Force there. Although he does mention that there is a softcap for ability. The only way to accurately answer your question would be if we knew what the softcap was for 技量 (and for 法撃, if there is one). I don't believe anyone has nailed this down yet so it's hard to say whether you should train more ability, how much you should train, and what the benefits are going to be.

If you notice from the tests in the link though, the tester raised 技量 from 307 to 397 and was still seeing measurable increases in both average hit and minimum hit. For instance:

技量+0　　平均657.9 595-733
技量+90　平均712.7 691-733
法撃+90　平均731.5 656-801

We see that adding 90技量 (to 397) increased the minimum hit damage by 96, a little over a 1:1 ratio. It does not however affect maximum hit at all.

We see that adding 90法撃 (from 1133 to 1223) increased the minimum hit by less (only 61), but also increased the maximum hit by 68. In fact, as you can see by the middle numbers (which are average hits) that in this particular scenario, raising 法撃 by 90 increased the average hit by more than raising 技量 by 90.

However, that is just one scenario. There are others on there so I recommend you review the study and weigh the benefits yourself.

[Spellbinder]

As I said in the original post, I've read the Japanese wikis, and I read the Japanese forums more so than this one. My question, was simply what are other people's opinions on increasing the ability stat for a force.

[Magus_84]

Hi Spellbinder!

I'm going with a mostly-ability Mag, but that's because I'm going to go with whatever ranger/force hybrid (or equivalent) I can get, so I don't want to dump everything into T-Atk.

I'm starting to notice a slight difference in damage ranges being lower, but I don't have a large-enough sample size to give accurate info.

Also, if you're on Ship 2, we should play sometime. I've mostly been tapering off on my playing of Champions Online.

[Spellbinder]

I'm not on Ship 2, but I do have Champions Online (lifetime member from release), but that's a horse of a different color.

After much duress, I've finally got my Apus (70 T-ATK / 30 Ability), and am planning to take it to 120 T-ATK, but my 297 Ability feels a little low to me. There's no way to tell at what point the benefit drops off yet, but I may add a bit more ability on my mag and keep up the standard Ragne + Tech II on all my gear.

[Valymer]

As I said in the original post, I've read the Japanese wikis, and I read the Japanese forums more so than this one. My question, was simply what are other people's opinions on increasing the ability stat for a force.

If you'd rather go by people's anecdotal opinions than raw data, then there's nothing I can say that would help you.

[Spellbinder]

There's nothing wrong with inquiring about the opinions of others.

You never know, someone might come in with more data and make more informed opinions and start, you know, discussion.

[Valymer]

You're right. Though I've noticed a general lack of hardcore testing by the import community - not that there's anything at all wrong with that, just an observation.

With the ability number that you mentioned, even if you leveled all of the remaining 50 mag levels as ability, you wouldn't be anywhere near the cap, from what I can tell. Although you might already be into some sort of diminishing returns curve, I'm not sure.

Ability does stabilize the damage of each hit (by reducing the lower threshold), but at the same time it doesn't raise the max hit like 法撃. Additionally, 技量 isn't needed to equip anything except the epsilon-grade sub units, and even for those you are already past their requirement.

I can see the advantages to both, but for me personally I am leveling another mag with a T-Atk and T-Def split that allows me to equip most of the top-end armor and rods, at the expense of some 技量. Once my mag is 150, I will probably do some testing between the two mags (the one now is T-Atk/Ability split) to see what exactly the difference in damage is. But it will take me a while to level this second mag.

[Geistritter]

A little bit goes longer than a lot. I opted for Signo Souls on all of my units, and my mag is a straight split between Ability and Attack, and I feel I have too much Ability now; while my damage is quite stable well into the thousands, removing a unit and comparing didn't make a lot of difference, it seems at least one of my units, if not two, would be better suited toward a combination of an offensive Soul and an attack boost. I do appreciate my variance not being several hundred damage, at least.

[Valymer]

I get your point, Valymer, but data isn't the end all here, nor do we have enough to form universal conclusions. And data is only important if you're trying to answer questions which can only be answered properly with that kind of data. As an example, one could say, "Which stat between the two should I prioritize for the highest possible DPS?" Or one could ask, "Which stat gives more DPS per point, and does anyone know the ratio between the two?"

Yes, those are questions which can be answered objectively using gathered data and mathematics. Using numeric data here is probably the most useful way to answer them. But that's not what he asked, and those aren't the only valid questions he might be wondering about.

He asked, "Anywho, what are your thoughts on ability for Force?" He's asking you to come up with a decent question for yourself which is pertinent, and answer it with your own opinion.

DPS is one thing to consider. From what I've seen, the gap between the two isn't huge. But your balance of these stats also influences playstyle. I would rather have a higher minimum because it gives me more predictability, even if it comes with a slight cost to total DPS. I would rather know for sure that I can kill a given mob with two hits, rather than that value falling in a range of 1-3 hits.

Ultimately, I think I tend to default to recommending the 50-50 split now. Mostly because both stats seem to add a very similar amount of DPS, and doing so gives you a boost both to damage consistency and to your ability to equip weapons. And such mags are _far_ easier to raise than pures.

Yes, I agree. It depends on many factors, including the individual's playstyle, and what they are expecting to achieve. But the way I see it is, right now, DPS is the only thing to concern yourself with as a Force. What other possible considerations are there? This game is built around how fast you can sustainably kill enemies, right? Your methodology for doing so may differ depending on playstyle or skill tree build, but ultimately it all comes down to DPS.

However, there is one additional thing that must be weighed. Training 技量 on your mag will probably preclude you from using the top rods (and armor, which is important to note, but irrelevant to a DPS discussion). Now you might say, well, I can use a "good enough" rod, which is absolutely true. And you could even argue that the majority of people do not even have the money or luck to have an endgame weapon yet, anyway. But this is still something that must be considered when training 技量 on the mag.

But let me ask you this: if 技量 and 法撃 are indeed practically equal in DPS value, then what reason would you have to train Ability over T-Atk, considering that T-Atk has the additional value of satisfying item-equip requirements?

Well, the answer I come up with to that question, as I mentioned before, is that it all depends on the soft caps (if they exist) for these two stats. We don't yet know the golden ratio for 技量 and 法撃, because we don't know the numerical point at which each one begins to lose effectiveness, and at what rate the effectiveness decays. Without this critical information, we can only guess as to the optimal path.

Your proposed 50/50 split, in my opinion, is the best guess to avoid hitting the soft cap for either stat. In addition, Ability is useful for all classes, so people limited to one mag won't have a completely crippled one statwise when they change to another class. As already mentioned, though, it has it's downsides, just as a pure attack mag does, just as a pure defense mag does, just as an attack/defense mag does. Until we know with relative certainty if the softcaps exist, and what they are, there can be no claims of "best build" or "optimal DPS setup," etc. Right now, it seems to really hinge on what items you plan on being able to equip, more than anything.

[Valymer]

DPS is one thing to consider. From what I've seen, the gap between the two isn't huge. But your balance of these stats also influences playstyle. I would rather have a higher minimum because it gives me more predictability, even if it comes with a slight cost to total DPS. I would rather know for sure that I can kill a given mob with two hits, rather than that value falling in a range of 1-3 hits.

And I just want to respond to this statement specifically:

Considering the situation of current content - namely that everything other than bosses gets pretty much insta-killed in MPAs - I personally don't find damage stabilization gained through Ability to be all that useful *to my playstyle*. I'm lucky if I can even get 2 shots off on an enemy before it explodes in a hail of Rafoie and Ranger missles. But, I almost always do MPAs when I farm, so people that solo probably have a different outlook on it. Like you said, they might want to have that reliable damage.

But is it really that much difference? Considering:

法撃+120 技量+60(法撃1253 技量367) = average hit of 800.5 (damage range 769-824 in 100 hits)

法撃+180 技量+0(法撃1313 技量307) = average hit 804.1 (damage range 723-869 in 100 hits)

Swapping out 60 Ability for 60 T-Atk on decreased the min hit by 46...while the average hit stayed basically the same.

Whether that is enough to matter, only the individual player can decide.

[Geistritter]

It does indeed scale to your personal needs. I spend most of my time solo or in very small groups, and avoid populated lobbies, so for me, reliable hits have their value, because it sets my expectations on how to maximize my efficiency; it can be mildly annoying when you fire off what is normally a final blow to find you dipped into the low end of your variance and didn't kill off your target.

[Valymer]

I think minimizing the impact of damage stability for solo players is not really the best idea. I think many would say it's worth a small DPS loss.

But even from a pure DPS standpoint, I still think we really don't know enough to even conclusively say which adds more DPS. I've only seen two tests performed so far to tease out the true function of ability. Both have had significant limitations. We don't have enough tests to say one way or the other, and no specific formulae have been put forward which we could try to confirm or reject through testing.

Even for this one test you're citing, I'm not even sure if the difference between that 731 and 712 is significant at a 0.05 alpha. That's assuming those values are the mean of all values and not the midpoint of the min and max. I guess I could run the test and find out, but I honestly don't feel like it. :P

That's what I'm saying, there isn't enough data, and this game is so casual I doubt anyone is going to feel like doing it anytime soon, primarily because there is not much advantage to maximizing your DPS with the ease of difficulty of current content.

In other games, there was a great desire to figure out the optimum ways to DPS, heal, etc., because it might mean the difference between winning and losing.

In this game, so far, such an importance does not exist and may not exist for the foreseeable future (if ever).

[Valymer]

Well, I'm getting to the point where I don't have much else to do BUT think about this kind of stuff. It's not like farming MPAs requires any use of brain cells whatsoever.

The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that it really doesn't matter. It's fun to talk about and I am curious to know how it breaks down mathematically, but given that there is really no need to maximize anything in this game (due to difficulty, or lack thereof), it's difficult to justify spending too much time on it when I could be doing other RL stuff.

Having said that, I will probably do some testing soon out of sheer boredom, provided I don't land this contract which will have me pretty busy for the next few weeks.

On a related note, why the hell didn't they give us a combat log??

[Spellbinder]

One thing has been puzzling me about the figures from the Japanese testing, and Valymer, I have a feeling you read a lot of that information as well and would probably know the answer to this.

When they display their statstics prior to the test, in the case of 技量+0, it's at 307, but no class has a base that high. Any idea how they're doing that?

[Valymer]

One thing has been puzzling me about the figures from the Japanese testing, and Valymer, I have a feeling you read a lot of that information as well and would probably know the answer to this.

When they display their statstics prior to the test, in the case of 技量+0, it's at 307, but no class has a base that high. Any idea how they're doing that?

I assumed it was boosted from a mag, and that they were either swapping it out for a different mag with an additional 90技量 to do the comparisons, or swapping out units with アーム on them. I could be wrong but I don't think they meant 307 base (as you noted that isn't possible at the moment).

[Valymer]

I hear that question often. Why didn't they give us a combat log? It must be an oversight. Wrong. They did it for a reason, and that reason is easy enough to understand.

The first part of it is simply aesthetics. Modern ARPG's often try to avoid screen clutter. They want more to be happening on screen. The less of your screen that is HUD, the more lively the action looks, and the more you see of the scenery. But they could have given us an option to have a combat log, you might think. This gets to what is probably an equally important reason to them.

They didn't give us a combat log _precisely so people like us wouldn't have a combat log_.

Say it with me now, "Casual ARPG." The people who toy and tinker with this garbage are the first actors in an unavoidable chain of events which runs counter to their design philosophy. First we poke and prod. We try to look for something simple: numeric optimization. How does a person, we ask, fiddle with the numbers such that they are the "best" for a specific, objective goal? DPS is often the biggest one. We do it mostly out of curiosity, not because we have some great determination to be uber.

But then everybody else picks it up. And this includes the endgame grinders. These people are after tokens or gold or whatever carrot-and-stick nonsense is dangled in front of them by the developers to keep them playing after they've done all the y'know, actual content. And first they get bored because they're repeating the same garbage, and then that boredom makes them want speed, so they can get more carrots with less tedium. And when they've optimized themselves, they look for the next source of speed: everybody playing with them. They do what they do in the name of the greater good, they say. But really, they just want more carrots. And in the name of more carrots, they will mock, exclude, and trivialize any player who does not fit precisely into what the theorycrafters say is the "best".

They don't want that. They want you to log on, jump into a map, and have people to play with who simply want to _play_ with you. Our glorious, optimized "utopia" is not a part of that.

Well, I didn't mean an on-screen combat log, like you said that wouldn't fit with the feel of the game. Rather I meant a combat log saved to a simple text file in the PSO2 directory, that could be analyzed/parsed after the fact.

I see what you are saying about the snowball effect theorycrafting can have. But what else do they expect people to do at level 40, which is easily attainable in less than a week? Farm meseta to sink into DooDoo's bottomless pockets?

And that's another thing: given the inordinate amount of difficulty required to affix abilities onto items, it makes theorycrafting that much more important. If they wanted it to be a casual game, why make that whole system so insanely frustrating and time-consuming? Considering that grinding+weapon affixing is essentially the "end-game" that we have at for the moment, it only makes sense to really try to understand exactly what these abilities are doing for our characters before we waste days, weeks or months going through the pains of affixing them to our weapons, don't you think?

For a "casual ARPG" the amount of grinding/farming meseta and items required to attempt even the most basic of upgrades (like getting your rares to surpass 5* items in quality) requires quite the sizeable timesink. I can't imagine that too many true casual players would ever make the effort, honestly. The ridiculous difficulty inherent in that system, combined with the very low drop rate of rares, implies to me that the developers fully expect there to be plenty of hardcore players in the mix.

Anyways, I'll just chalk up not having a combat log to an additional "challenge" bestowed upon us by SEGA, right there alongside DooDoo's House of Horrors. Doesn't make it impossible, just makes you want to punch a hole in your monitor sometimes.

[Valymer]

There's just no challenge in such a system, other than the challenge to not quit from boredom. With raiding, even 12-mans, there is a great deal of skill involved if you are actually trying to beat progressions fights (not just farming stuff you've already beaten). With a 12-man MPA in PSO2, there is practically zero chance for me to die. I just feel like I'm playing Dynasty Warriors in space without all the cool lore.

Well, I will find stuff to do, or take long breaks, I'm not worried about it. I just think that this game has much more potential than it currently makes use of. Everyone plays video games for different reasons, of course. My reason is to have fun, but part of that fun is being challenged at least every once in a while. Every game has boring grinding segments, some more than others, but that's ALL PSO2 is right now. Aside from a boss fight here or there (really there's only two that are even the slightest bit challenging to me), there isn't much to even force me to pay attention.

It's not even so much about the level cap, I was max level a month and a half after WoW came out, too. But WoW had PvP, it had tradeskills, it had side quests, epic mounts, a whole bunch of other shit to do once you maxed out. PSO2 has...DooDoo's shop and costumes. You see what I'm saying?