If you’ve been looking through the v1.12 balancing changes topic, you may have seen my wall of text and screenshots regarding the April Fools additions to the balance doc. Inside this wall I have a moment where I just break entirely and say this:
Now, while there’s definitely more to the mini-rant I had here, I’ve decided that it’d be better for me to turn it into its own topic, where practically rephrase what I said while using proper grammar instead of sounding like a lunatic.
Disclaimer: I will refer to these as affinities even though that doesn’t look like it’s the actual word for it. I’ve seen the word thrown around in the doc a bit, so I’m saying that instead of multiplier.
What are these supposed to mean?
The magics with the highest impact damage in the game right now are Earth and Metal, with their damage affinities listed as 1x. Every other magic’s impact damage affinity varies from 0.975x (Sand) to 0.75x (Poison), with most having a damage affinity of 0.825x-0.925x.
To me, though, it just doesn’t make much sense to have it set up like this. Why is 1x damage only given to two magics in the game? Wouldn’t it make more sense to apply 1x to the most common damage affinity (which, from what it looks like, is 0.925x) to make the higher damaging ones stand out more? The speed affinity and destruction (to a lesser degree) already sort of do this, varying from 0.5x all the way to 1.8x, with most of the magics resting nicely at 1x magic speed. (Meanwhile, magic size screws it up, too, with the most consistent size being 1.15x. What?)
Now, I get the feeling that these are all supposed to be based off of something, but…
Just what is the 1x affinity based off of?
It’s certainly not the maximum amount a magic can do something, as Light goes all the way up to 1.8x speed, almost double 1x.
The maximum damage affinity is 1x, so the idea of it being the average is out of the window.
It’s not the most consistent one, either, as there’s about five magics that are hanging out in 0.925x, while 1x only has two magics.
So, what is it? The only thing I can think of it being is some element we don’t know about (that I’ve decided to label as Pure Magic) that just has 1x stats in everything. That can’t even exist, though, because it’d be super unbalanced due to having Metal’s damage, Fire’s speed, and Plasma’s size. (Not listing destruction as a balance problem with this, as the only time you’d be concerned about it is when you’re doing the sky pumpkin/Iron Leg quests.) That is a disaster and a half.
TL;DR:
guys are stat affinities based off of anything or are they weird for no real reason