Cube World Beta - The Biggest Issue Right Now

I've played the Cube World Alpha for multiple hours and had a lot of fun. With the beta release, I've already spent 30-ish hours. As such, I feel entitled to give my opinion and criticism on the game. Even though I already have like three topics/posts I could write about.

What Is Cube World Gonna Be All About

Screenshot of the Cube World
Pre-Beta Title Screen

You can't give good criticism if you don't know how to play the game. This means we need to figure out, get hinted at, or be told how to play the game. If you look at the game mechanics, there's a lot of items and unlocks that only count towards one region. Additionally, there are a few items that count more globally. These can be found in areas that can be considered as end-game within their region.

With this and the information gained from the game developers, it is clear. This is the goal: Climb up the gear ladder inside of a region and unlock all the unlockables. With the top gear, you collect the artifacts. Afterward, you move on to the next area and start anew. Rinse and repeat.

That's a Terrible System Who Would Come Up Wi-

This is in and of itself is not a terrible system. Look at roguelikes or idle games. These games have been using similar mechanics for nearly forever. If we take the Binding of Isaac as an example. If you die, you lose everything and have to start over. However, you will retain any unlocks you've made or coins you put into the bank. This gives the game a sense of progress and changes the experience each time you achieve something. 

Another example would be the famous Cookie Clicker. Here too you are encouraged to start the game over. But, compared to your first run, you will have it much easier and faster this time around. This allows you to get much further than before.

Now, when we get back to Cube World and look at the artifacts. They do two things. Firstly, they increase your level, which does nothing mechanically. It's basically the count of how many of them you have. Secondly, they'll give you a small stat bonus. This bonus is limited to traveling abilities.

The Vicious Cycle Of Demotivation

That's all nice and everything. To make the game fun, we need player motivation. Motivation in video games is too big of a topic. So, I won't go into detail on that. 

In the current state, I would say, players who seek exploration are satisfied. It's an endless world, and it's unlikely to find areas that are too similar.

People who want to play with friends or want a community should also be satisfied.  My experience in online mode is quite decent and fun. The only thing I could complain about is getting no loot if you died and couldn't get another hit on the enemy. Though the steam servers can't deal with too many people. Thus it would be nice to have the ability to host an own server that can deal with large scale multiplayer.

The third group of players is the issue here. There's a progression inside of a region but moving away from it resets the progress. Even worse, the artifacts only give a bonus to traveling abilities. You don't need a bonus to these if you stay in the area you have been in the whole time. This means there's no reason to get the artifacts. Everything falls apart, and this is the problem why a portion of people complain about the state of the game. This is also the reason those people prefer the alpha release.

The Solution

As big of an issue this seems to be. It's rather easy to be solved. All the game needs is a long-term progression. It's not even hard to implement this. Artifacts provide a bonus to traveling stats. If there would be additional artifacts, which provide a more meaningful approach to long-term progression (such as minor stat increases). It would give the third group of players the incentive to travel and gather the artifacts.

More Issues Targeting This Audience

A few more minor issues, which also target this third group, can be easily fixed as well. For example, completing a region gives no reward, and you don't know when you are finished with it. There's also no big reward for getting the lore to 100%. Also, since it's unknown how many key items the region contains, this can result in the player searching for hours until the motivation dies out.

This can be solved by giving a completion percentage of the region. Providing the player with a special message for completing it and potentially a worthy item. For example, one guaranteed equipment piece for their class, which works in other areas around the completed one.

The unlocks should always be visible but blacked out, so that you know which can be found in the area. This gives away a little bit about the region, but it helps those who are searching aimlessly for something, which doesn't exist. If the quest doesn't exist, it will be blamed on tough luck.

Alright, This Is Long Enough

Now, I have addressed the biggest problem. I still have two blog posts planned about Game Development Lifecycles and the special relationship between players and developers. The blog post turned out to be less of a criticism/review than I had planned. Well, I can analyze problems and try to solve them by giving suggestions using my experience. I'm not good at reviewing, lol.

Balancing in Terraria: The Is-State (Part 2)

A few days ago I made a blog post where I went through the mind and thoughts that go and might have gone through the discussion of balancing. We came up with how we wanna put our classes. Now it would be interesting how far we are off. To determine this we have to analyze Terraria's balance.

Analyzing the Balancing

The factors we looked at when balancing were

• How is the class played
• How much defense should it have
• How much damage should it have

So let's look at the defense and damage that Terraria provides us.

PyPlot of Terraria's defense per tier per class

To do this I looked at the defense of each armor for each of the four implemented classes and plotted these numbers using Python and the MatPlotLib module. It does not seem to plot but the x-axis shows the tiers I used. These tiers are: 0 - fresh game; 1 - brain of Cthulu / eater of worlds defeated; 2 - Hell reached; 3 - cobalt mined; 4 - Mythril anvil; 5 - Adamantite forge; 6 - mechanical bosses defeated; 7 - chlorophyte farmed; 8 - Plantera defeated; 9 - golem defeated; 10 - lunar event + Moonlord defeated. To run a little over the numbers the end-game armors that are craftable using Luminate once the end boss the "Moonlord" has been defeated have 78 defense on the melee armor, 68 defense on the range armor, 46 defense on the magic armor and 38 defense on the summon armor. generally, you can see the trend to be that the relation melee > range > magic > summon can be found here again. Which goes perfectly with what we assumed to be the case.

The next information we need to look into would be the damage. Now calculation the damage is a bit tough due to the following reason:

• Weapon damage numbers are affected by weapons bonuses
• We have to calculate in critical strike damage and critical strike chance
• Some items hit multiple times
• There are buffs provided by the armor set bonus that affects the values
• Items may deal a lot of damage but have a huge use time or cooldown

Due to all these factors, we need to sit down and actually test the items. Though this has proven to be difficult too due to these reasons:

• Attacking a target dummy may not provide buffs
• Target dummies are not affected by homing attacks
• Target dummies are not attacked by minions

And yet this is our best bet.

Preparing and Running the DPS Test

To prepare the DPS tests I downloaded a mod called CheatSheet, to allow me to get any item in the game without farming it first. I've created a new character and a new map and gave myself the best items available at that moment to my knowledge. I must also admit that I used the star cannon and the coin gun (with gold ammunition). Tests that can be done on a target dummy were done so. I'm assuming only one target dummy that is hit with no rebound. We're assuming a single target flying boss for these. I know technically there should be extra tests for multiple target and etc. but this should do for a simple comparison since single target DPS is required for the most bosses. any other tests for minion masters and magic buffs were done on bosses with only one hitbox. Additionally, I only changed armor and weapons as well as specific ammunition and necessary accessories like the mana flower or multiple worm scarfs (to negate boss damage). The damage number was guessed given the number shown by the in-game item "DPS meter". An approximate number should not do well then comparing the exact math but for a graph to look at it's enough.

PyPlot of Terraria's damage done by classes per tier

Thus due to the circumstances, the damage numbers may run wild if you try it yourself but it should be near with a few exceptions. Anyways as you can see in the graph we have a relation of magic > range > melee = summon.

In comparison our idea of balancing was magic > summon > range > melee. Now we were right with magic being top, though summon damage is much lower than range or melee in the actual game. I must say that I did not calculate any other items. This was just the plain minion damage. If the minion master would use the other classes items his damage would increase but even then it would not be higher than range damage.

Generally, though all the classes seem to be very similar during the progress for the tiers only splitting significantly after the Moonlord. The only difference is the range class which has a huge damage boost when using the star cannon, which requires farming stars during the night and the coin gun which in the damage tests consumes your gold. both these resources should be easily achievable when the time is put into it. Honestly, I am disappointed by the early mage damage and the overall summoner damage in comparison to the survivability.

Conclusion

So, in the end, it turns out we were right with the defense but wrong with the damage.

Now due to the lack of defense on some classes and the low damage output of them, it doesn't surprise me anymore that I preferred to play tanky melee all the time. You deal almost the same amount of damage compared to the others. Of course, there's no 20% more damage potion for melee or there is less damage increasing accessories for melee, but with that defense difference, I don't know.

I guess in our modding plan we need to mush the damage of a few classes. :P

Balancing in Terraria - Part 1

Balancing in video games is a delicate topic. I've been playing Terraria lot lately - especially modded. I've also started to create a mod with a friend of mine and we're planning on adding new classes and new end-game progression, which requires balancing as well.

First: What is Terraria?

Before going into details let's inform everyone what Terraria is. I don't want to go deep into detail on this one so let's fill you in this way: Terraria can be considered a 2D version of Minecraft in a limited world with a higher focus on equipment progression, much more underground layers and an adventure type of feel with a few elements of hack and slash sprinkled in. At least that's my definition of Terraria.

Basically you start off in a world with a copper pickaxe, short sword, and axe and you have to get new resources, defeat bosses to get better equipment, like mining utilities, armor, weapons and so forth, which increase your stats like maximum health, mana, damage, critical strike chance, critical strike damage, attack speed, life regeneration and more. Of course, you can build houses and other stuff though more enemies are traveling the world than in games like Minecraft, so your building may be interrupted by a horde of zombies and flying eyes at night or slimes at the day.

The Classes

Classes in Terraria are not chosen at the character creation. Instead, they are determined by the items, armor and other equipment you use. Playing Terraria you may come across three to five classes. These classes are categorized by the damage types and the boost given in the game.

• Melee Damage
• Range Damage
• Magic Damage
• Summon Damage
• Thrown Damage

Though, you may find some inconsistency between classes. This is because the summon class was added later in development and the thrown damage class was discontinued or abandoned. The reason for the latter is the similarity to range. The former is noticeable as there are hardly any - if at all - summon items in the early game.

Balancing Procedure

So we have five classes now and the easiest way to balance these would be to make them all equal. Ah, that would be too simple. I said balancing is a delicate thing. If you make every class equal, good job you balanced it mathematically, but it's no fun. Games are all about fun, even if it's in weird ways sometimes. Well, our classes should be different. Going by common logic and our three main classes we have a melee that most likely needs to be near enemies and bosses most of the time a ranger that stays at a distance and has to aim whilst consuming ammunition and last but not least a mage or wizard that uses mid to far distance high damage weapons whilst consuming a rechargeable resource.

Applying the Definition

Step 1: Create a Basic Relationship of Defense

By the definition of our melee class, they'll need a lot of defense as they're near the opponent and most likely to get hit. In comparison, the magic and range classes can avoid any contact with the opponent if their maneuverability is good so they don't need that much defense. So, let's check our current state.

Defense: Melee > Range = Magic

Damage: Melee = Range = Magic

Step 2: Build on the Basic Relationship

Another thing we defined is that magic damage is the highest of all in nearly all games, unfortunately, this comes at a cost. For a mage or wizard to be strong they need to be able to use their spells and mana most efficiently. This requires certain clothing, that is light and can be easily imbued. At least that's a common belief, so, let's go with this! We increase the damage of the magic class, decreasing the defense at the same time to keep it balanced.

Also, we're putting range above melee as range has it harder to hit the enemy, due to aiming.

 Our new state is:

Defense: Melee > Range > Magic

Damage: Magic > Range > Melee

Keep in mind this is just an approximation. Even though balancing via formulas and calculation isn't all, it still helps a lot when balancing details.

Adding the Other Two Classes

Step 3: Adding Our Thrown Class

Don't forget about the thrown and the summon class! These are very specific so we have to go with what is in Terraria to get an idea of how they were planned or implemented. The thrown class uses consumables that can be thrown and ammunition consuming items to throw a gravity affected object. Additionally, there are thrown weapons that have been assigned to the melee class instead like infinite daggers to throw, lances and boomerangs and similar. Something noticeable here is that all thrown items do not allow for a distance that's as far as the range class. This limit plays a huge role. We're dealing with a mid-range class. As such they need either more damage to compensate for damage taken than the range class or more defense. Giving them increased damage instead of defense allows for a hit and run styled gameplay that may match something like a ninja, so let's go with that.

With our relationship updated:

Defense: Melee > Range > Thrown > Magic

Damage: Magic > Thrown > Range > Melee

Step 4: Adding Our Summon Class

The way the summoning class has been introduced into Terraria makes it tedious to balance. A summoner uses the same resource as a mage but only once per summon - on the same note: Summons have no time limit, they age until you die or dispel it by right-clicking. They can summon up to 9 or 11 minions depending on the platform you play on and whether or not you use buffs. The problem here is the balancing of the armor. Let's illustrate the issue mathematically...

Natural Diminish Returns on Summoner Minions
x-Axis: Number of MInions
y-Axis: Damage increase in %

If you have a summon weapon that deals 24 damage and you summon one minion you deal 100% damage. That's the base damage. If you summon another minion you have two that both deal 24 damage so in total 48. That's 200% - your damage has been doubled. Now with the next minion, you deal an additional 24 damage, that's 3 * 24 = 72 damage. This is 300% of the damage compared to one minion but it's only a damage increase of 50% since we had 48 damage with two and got only half, 24 damage, with the third. 

This behavior should be familiar to people who know this or read this blog for a longer time. The behavior is called Natural Diminishing Returns. Basically the more you get the harder it is to keep on doubling the effect. I'm not going into detail on this here, but the graph to the left shows the behavior.

By the way, the point where the increase is half of the 100% damage you should check if you find any damage bonuses that give higher damage increase. For example, if you have four minions your next minion will increase your damage by 6.25%. Some armors give nearly or more than that. 

Another factor is that while the minions do the job the summoner can use other weapons in the meantime. This further increases the damage. At the same time since those minions are taking care of the enemy automatically, the summoner can focus on dodging and avoiding attacks. Thus they don't need as much defense as the magic, melee, ranged and thrown classes need. Additionally, due to the advantages, I mentioned here the damage should be far lower per single minion. The total damage should be lower than the magic class, as they aren't forced to embrace the enemy, but with the low armor, it should be higher than the rangers. Also, the minion attack range plays a role here. From what I've seen in Terraria it is about mid-range.

Phew, so, this gives us this relationship:

Defense: Melee > Range > Thrown > Magic > Summon

Damage: Magic > Summon > Thrown > Range > Melee

Preview

Now we've got the basic relation between defense and damage of the classes done. In the next post, we're going to compare the actual in-game defense and damage to check how the balancing has been done in-game and where breakpoints and power spikes are hidden. Additionally, we're gonna compare and assume where the thrown and beginning of the summon class should be.

Until then, GreenyNeko, out.