Tweak Affix Descriptions #7709
Tweak Affix Descriptions #7709
Conversation
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Should we just say "Armor" instead of "Armor Class"? |
I think we can keep "Armor Class", it was probably borrowed from D&D: https://www.modularrealms.com/blogs/news/how-to-calculate-armor-class-in-dnd-5e |
It's still an extraneous word that conveys nothing. I also think D2 saying "Defense" was a futile change. It's basically a "Dodge Rating" and no one wants to find heavier armor that adds to their "Dodge Rating". So we lie and just say cool stuff like Hit Chance and Armor. My main issue with D1 (and D2) is the inconsistent phrasing. They just randomly use colons and put numbers last for some reason. The word "to" is also used a lot, I could go either way on that one though. For example, Hit Points: +30 Resist Lightning: +50% Chance to Hit: +30% +15 to Strength Adds 20 Points to Damage |
Not the same, there's no player expectation of armor on a sword. Stating 0 damage prevents players from thinking there is unstated base damage. Wouldn't a "-100% Damage" modifier further clarify that adding an oil would do nothing? Not that oils should have ever changed base stats to begin with. |
Yeah, that would actually be a good solution for Blitzen and Flambeau to discourage use of oils, rather than the "unusual damage" modifier. |
I've noticed that the Diablo 2 phrasing I took inspiration from seems to use "to" when the affix power adds to the player's stat sheet directly. However in cases where the affix power modifies the item itself, it forgoes it
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To be fair, one could validly interpret armor or defense as being "the higher the value, the lower the chance that the attacks will hit the character instead of hitting the armor and dealing 0 damage", so it is not limited to an interpretation of "dodge chance" necessarily as it would still be "hitting the armor" and the "armor would be absorbing the damage". |
I prefer Defense, but that is too big a change for Diablo 1. Armor Class is an inherent term the playerbase is used to. |
For the most part, but not for stamina or resistance bonuses. I dunno. Either I'm missing something or it's relatively useless. The word "to" may be longer in other languages so it may help shorten translated strings.
But it looks and sounds like evasion. When you take damage, it's steel clang and "ugh", when you avoid damage, it's a whiff. Arrows also fly through you when your armor supposedly "stops" them. |
Diablo 1 takes heavy inspiration from DND mechanics. In DND, Armor Class directly influences the difficulty of landing a damaging hit, rather than evasion. The more Armor Class you have, the more effective your armor is as preventing damage altogether. A lore-friendly explanation could be that a heavy plate armor may cause the attacker to have much more difficulty landing a clean strike, resulting in no damage. It's also likely a design decision to not give the player visual and/or audio feedback from failed attacks, as it could be really frustrating for a player to receive confirmation they were hit via visuals and audio, but end up seeing the attack in fact was unsuccessful. The Diablo series is Action RPG where a lot goes on and very quickly, so it's mechanically simple in many ways to not confuse or frustrate players. Spamming visuals and audio in this type of environment causes sensory clutter and makes it a lot more difficult for players to mentally process what's happening at the pace the game is moving at. Achieving as much realism as possible is not conducive to a fun gaming experience in all cases. |
We don't translate each word individually. The translation applies to the whole phrase. For example... It makes no difference to the translator whether the English string is |
Oh, don't get me wrong... I agree it definitely looks inconsistent with that underlying possible interpretation. I was just pointing out it was a possible interpretation that would justify viewing it from an "armor" angle instead of "dodge", but I also am not a fan of how it was implemented, regardless of whether it was based on D&D or not. @kphoenix137 does have a point in overloading the game with sound effects for "0 damage hits" though... that's likely something I'll have to eventually deal with myself as I intend to completely eliminate the "armor as chance to hit" mechanic in a mod. Maybe just reducing overall monster attack speed and maybe monster density might be enough though, we'll see. |
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Probably also worth mentioning that when you are playing a tabletop RPG, your group can ad-hoc agree via discussion that the claws connected with the fighter's heavy armor. But when making a game, you may sometimes be compelled to trade realism for usability and ease of development. From a design perspective, the sound and visual effects are the only feedback that the player gets with regard to whether an attack connected, and any sounds or visual effects used to indicate that the attack connected with the player's armor without doing any damage would be a complete waste from a UI perspective. Honestly, worse than that, it would create ambiguity between attacks that connect with armor and attacks that actually do damage, interfering with the game developer's ability to provide adequate feedback to the user. One might still argue that if they're changing the way that armor class works for the purposes of game design, then maybe they ought to change the terms they use as well. However, it's worth noting the actual armor class mechanic is technically unchanged from DnD. It determines whether the attack deals damage. So it could also be argued that it was better to use the established language in order to convey meaning to their target audience. So disagree with it all you want, I suppose, but...
This is clearly false. IMO, it just makes you sound ignorant of both DnD and game design. |
Agreed in the current implementation of D1, but disagreed in general. As soon as the game treats these 2 situations ("hit character" vs "hit armor") differently, having dedicated visual/audio indicators would start to make a lot of sense. For example, imagine that every time a character "hits the armor" of another character, there was extra durability loss in their weapon (and maybe extra durability loss in the target's armor as well), accompanied by an extra staggering/recoil/minor stun effect that would reduce their overall attack speed and make them vulnerable for extra period of time. Ambiguity could also be resolved by having distinct sounds for each and having the player that takes the hit react differently to both types of hits. All that to say that I think this depends. |
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I was indeed talking about D1, because that is the subject we should be talking about in the context of this DevilutionX PR. That said, your example would likely require additional complexities, like an actual stat for dodge rating to differentiate between the three different scenarios of avoiding the attack, armor damage, and player damage. In that case, "armor class" is probably not an appropriate term anymore because the mechanics would be different from DnD. So I don't disagree with your point that, technically, it depends on how the game is designed. Rather, you're framing this argument as contrary, but that was kind of my whole point. From a design perspective, Blizzard's terminology does, in fact, convey something. That said, I don't think you actually do disagree in general. You say that the developer can simply use distinct sounds for different mechanics, and that much is obvious, but what you left out is the fact that the sounds themselves must be designed to feel distinct. I mentioned "ease of development" because reducing complexity is a common design goal to avoid problems like "similar sounds" or "too much audio/visual clutter". I was subtly suggesting that adding additional sounds isn't a net gain, but rather a trade-off. I don't think this is a matter of opinion; it's just how game design works. You must decide for your project whether the complexity adds to your game or detracts from it. And this is getting so far off-topic so I'm going to try to bring it back here at the end. "Armor class" may only convey the proper meaning to people who are familiar with DnD. If we're going to change it, I would maybe go with either "armor rating" or "armor ranking" because I think that's the idea that the word "class" is trying to convey. But I personally think we should just stick with "armor class". |
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Yeah I dunno how this turned into a wall of text argument when I never argued for a change in terminology outside of removing "class" from item affixes like glebm said. julealgon pointed out that a DnD attack roll "miss" isn't necessarily a whiff, but a hit on armor. Fine. But D1 is displaying whiff. And that's fine too, it's an embellishment on their part to give damaging hits clarity and let armor be armor. I have also seen players see CTH go above 100% for the first time and get confused. Then it clicks that it's merely a factor in calculating actual hit chance. But big deal. They always understood that raising hit chance improved hit chance. It's not like D2 changing to "Attack Rating" suddenly cleared up every question about this. https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/144621/how-does-the-chance-to-hit-or-accuracy-work-in-diablo-1 My only opinion is like glebm, I'd rather see "+50 Armor" than "+50 Armor Class". The use of class can remain on the sheet, but in item descriptions it's pointless dnd jargon that gives no greater clarity whatosever. It's equivalent to saying +5 Damage Factor instead of +5 Damage or something. You don't have to change it, it's just my opinion that it can be shortened on items. |
This is anecdotal, but I've never seen a new casual player that didn't assume that percentage was absolute. In many cases (and I've seen a ton of blind playthroughs of D1) whenever the person would reach "100% chance to hit" they would immediately stop putting points in dexterity for that purpose saying "well, I already hit 100% of the time".
This only clicks for people that are already experienced with D&D/RPG mechanics. It is incredibly unintuitive.
I think it was an attempt to make it less misleading. IMHO they succeeded at that but ended up introducing other problems.
I agree on this as well, to be honest. The extra "Class" at the end seems unnecessarily verbose and "formal". "Armor Class" and "AC" should be replaced everywhere with just "Armor" as that's enough to make the point across, is simpler and has less chance of causing confusion (difference between "armor" and "armor class", then "armor class" vs "armor type" for example).
I would take it out as well there. |
At one point I suggested it should be called To Hit Armor Class 0 😄 |
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I think the idea that the word "class" adds any amount of confusion is overblowing the problem. I get the stance that it doesn't add anything (of value). But I find it extremely far-fetched to think that someone would look at "armor class" and not know what that is, but then look at "armor" and understand what it means. If anything, I would think that removing "class" would create ambiguity. "Armor" is the thing that you wear, and "armor class" is something like the strength/effectiveness of the armor. Communicating the difference between those things would require context if we used the same term. I'm not saying it's the end of the world, but if you care about things like conceptual integrity and avoiding confusion, maybe you should prefer "armor class". |
You might be right. But if you want to avoid that other potential ambiguity, I would not call it "armor class" to differentiate from "armor". I would call it "defense" then. You have "armor" that has "x defense", the same way you have a "weapon" that has "x damage". To be fair I don't know where the term "armor class" came from (I'm not personally into D&D) but it has always sounded weird to me... I would expect "armor points", or even "armor level" or "armor value" but not "armor class". Although that might be due to the fact I'm not a native speaker... perhaps the term is more common for you guys? Calling a quantifiable value a "class" is weird to me. Maybe I'm just dumb but I'm not even seeing a definition of the word "class" that would match this usage in the dictionary here on Google. I don't think that rename is necessary though. Personally, I would still keep "armor" due to how familiar the term already is. |
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Armor class was based on classifying different armor protection levels as equivalent. It predates Dungeons and Dragons and is based on war games. |
Armor Class is where you learn how to make armor. "Defense" is an excellent descriptor word and short, and is widely used in gaming as a word for how many points of protection something gives you. I can see why they decided on that for D2. Like it was previously stated, just the word "armor" adds ambiguity to what's being talked about. But the question is making huge changes to terminology acceptable or is it going to be seen as going over the line for project scope? It's important to point out that the stat screen says Armor class and the item descriptions say Armor, which is inconsistent terminology. I figured armor class was the way to go. I don't think we need to optimize everything to death. It's not going to hurt anyone to have an extra 6 characters in a string. |
This is a fair point. I can 100% support making that consistent regardless of the rest of the discussion here. The problem might be on making "chance to hit" consistent though... due to how long that is, on the "cth+damage" affix description (i.e. "King's"). |
Already addressed that in the other PR |
I've adjusted item descriptions to improve them. I've aimed towards utilizing capital letters tastefully, as well as standardizing descriptions in a way where they feel more natural in conjunction with each other. Some descriptions were influenced by Diablo 2 as inspiration, but these new descriptions are not 1:1 with Diablo 2. I took time with each one to figure out the best way to display the information to the user.
Some big changes to point out are:
Indestructible was removed from the basic item information
I believe the lack of a listed durability implies that the item doesn't have durability to worry about. On items that come with the Indestructible item power, this property gets listed in the Unique window, or for magical items, as the affix power. The only time a player will never see "Indestructible" then is if they use oils or shrines, at which point they should be experienced enough to understand the item is Indestructible. This cleans up the info box for items with "of ages" property since Indestructible was listed twice, redundantly.
Charges displays more information
The spell name and level was added to the basic item information. The spell name could be seen as a redundancy, however the spell level being included wouldn't make sense without the spell name. The spell level serves to clear up confusion about the efficacy of the spell being cast from the staff (For example, it was previously thought that staff spells cast at level 1 when the spell wasn't learned). Additionally, some players may be unsure whether or not items like Thinking Cap increase staff spells. This clears the air.
Vague item descriptions were given accurate item descriptions
Some descriptions previously didn't state numbers when numbers were available. The biggest one on the list is the Undead Crown. Hellfire item descriptions were revamped quite a bit to feel more in line with the established Diablo descriptions.
Detailed item descriptions were made vague
Some item descriptions overexplained, which a single word was able to effectively communicate the effect (Knockback, Multishot)
Item descriptions were merged to standardize them
Some descriptions existed separately of each other, such as melee fire damage, bow fire damage. All of these essentially have the same effect that is adequately summed up with a single description.
Items with 0-0 damage don't display damage
If an item has 0 of a property, there's no point in displaying it. We wouldn't display the armor class of a sword. This also dissuades players from using oils on Blitzen and Flambeau. Naturally, these are the only 2 items that players will ever be able to get that have 0-0 base damage.
Light Radius changed from % to flat number
Light Radius as a percentage makes sense on a technical level, but the percentage based system for light doesn't make much sense to the player as it would being applied to numbers on items. Rather, an item that displays it adds 2 light radius makes more sense to the player as they can see it extends their light 2 tiles farther.