Currently, the difference between taking a critical and non-critical hit is massive when fighting things level appropriate / high difficulty, and in the case of monsters, dying to an unforeseen critical simply adds to frustration with no relevant fun factor added to it.
It brings no satisfaction to lose a match due to a random percentage based chance that deals double damage with no player interaction involved and no way to predict it (and while levelling, also no efficient way to avoid it).
Also, players have 0% base critical - which is why it’s surprising for monsters to have base critical chances.
If balance is a factor, increasing monster damage by the equivalent critical chance would make things more predictable and less luck based, with the same average result and less player frustration.
That’s not how you fix this. If we can crit, but our enemies can’t, that would give us the same kind of unfair advantage. Instead, give US a baseline crit chance(say, 3-5% depending on class) so that way the fights can be more fair.
Pretty sure enemy crit exists to stop infinite healing. It is still not efficient to do this, but the removal of crit would make it so a player could infinitely stall without needing barrier.
Block chance has a similar effect, not as drastic as critical hits, but I’ve lost a fight or two when the enemy survived what should’ve been a finishing blow because they blocked it.
I entirely agree with you, that players should have a base crit baseline of about 5%, but that isn’t the focus of this topic, so I was trying to keep those discussions separate They are not mutually exclusive however.
I see it as the opposite - I have yet to find any build that could “infinitely heal” without massive detriment to it - you need to minimize enemy turns, not increase them and with that their risk. I haven’t even seen a spell that can outheal a level appropriate enemy hit.
While Barrier and Stun are a necessity and a massive boost, rendering healing almost useless outside of scoring concerns.
I have yet to see any efficient build with lots of healing tbh. If anything, this would make healing somewhat more viable as opposed to now.
But you do have more time and experience with the game than me - if you have a good example, I’d definitely welcome the opportunity to learn something
I haven’t witnessed it, but theoretically the impact is somewhat lower - when an enemy blocks a killing blow, it only happens to skull damage and only partially. When an enemy throws in a critical, it is a 100% damage increase that happens at any time.
And it is less frustrating than being one or two shot at difficult content, at the start of the game, because your starting board didn’t fill your mana on turn 1. Even more so for players at lvl 30-49, because their gear is not level appropriate and any story or skirmish progression is against things that can 2 or 3 shot you - and you don’t yet have suitable gear colors & types to outlast it.
However, I wouldn’t mind block only being present for monsters where it makes sense, sure.
To that point, I also entirely agree that shields should have a base block % for players (they are currently useless for starting players, yet they gain them at level 2) - but again, let’s not deviate from the topic and just discuss those as separate topics
Not sure if anyone has raised base crit & block chances for players as a separate topic tbh.
Ultimately, I raised this as a matter of plain game design principles. And the core question I always ask is:
Is it fun?
I’d argue not really It brings nothing to the player - on the contrary - and increases complexity to game balancing and the code base. Ergo this topic for discussion
I wouldn’t mind a bit if they removed critical hits entirely, for both the player and the monsters. Getting hit by a critical you can’t circumvent in any way never feels good in any situation.
Granted, I don’t play much high-level content, so maybe crit builds are viable to handle some of the toughest fights.
I’m just spit-balling here and this could be a terrible idea… but what if they made critical hits percent based? In other words, instead of a critical doing X damage it would do a percent of armor+life? This would mean a critical could not kill you.
I don’t know if this idea is doable or even should be. But I also don’t see removing the enemy crit as being balanced. I would definitely agree that being one-shot by an unfortunately timed critical, is zero fun.
They are not mutually exclusive however.
It brings nothing to the player - on the contrary - and increases complexity to game balancing and the code base. Ergo this topic for discussion