Short Latham Update

This week I've been focusing on the high level plan. What is the basics of the story I'm trying to tell and how is the character going to advance through the game? And I discovered something interesting with the mechanics as I've got them.

My hit mechanics currently work by subtracting the enemies armour from the player's "to hit" and using the result as the percentage chance of scoring a hit. What's interesting here is lets say you have two weapons, one which hits 100 percent of the time for 8 damage and one which hits 75 percent of the time for 12 damage. In this case you would prefer the one which only hit 75 percent of the time, becasue on average it will do 9 damage.

Now, if you meet a monster that has 50 armour, suddenly things change. Doing 8 damage 50 percent of the time is 4 damage on average while 12 damage 25 percent of the time is 3 damage. In other words, which weapon I prefer depends on what I'm fighting.

This is good because it means that there is more choice in the game play. This is bad because it makes it harder to balance. I've been trying to work out how to ensure I've got a good balance to the game while maximizing player choice, but I'm not quite there yet. I've broken out the spreadsheet and slowly my eyes have begun to bleed, but it will be worth it in the end.