Capture Logic

in Holozing Communitylast year (edited)

Let me begin by saying that this game is quite complex, especially on the backend, something one of the devs working behind @poshtoken has learned to know about me is that I like complex projects. I guess in the same wave you could say Hive is very complex as well but similarly it also tries to make it as easy as possible for the end user to do their daily thing, which is what we aim to do with the game as well. Having said that this is causing a lot of additions towards the game which is going to delay some of the previous written out roadmap, I will have to give it an update on the Whitepaper soon but I think it's better to do things properly than to rush them, especially when there's no one pushing us to rush it.

Similarly to many other aspects of the game, the capture logic won't be that simple. In this post I'm going to try and write it out in terms for anyone to understand because quite frankly I wouldn't be able to lay it down in other ways neither. Thankfully our gamedev is well prepared to formulate the math and equations to make my rambles work well together. :D



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To explain part of this as a comparison to other games, here's one of the formula's of how capturing works in games like Pokémon:


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Source of the screenshots



With A, we see that in Pokemon they multiply the max Health Points by 3, subtract current HP x2, then multiply that by the unique Pokemon's rate and multiply that based on what Ball was used to capture it while dividing it all by max HP x3 again. That whole number then multiplied by a status effect on the Pokemon. They then move those numbers over to B where they divide the square root a few times, this action represents the "shaking" of the ball in Pokemon, where each shake determines if the monster is caught or moves onto the next shake if not, until it either is captured or breaks free.

While we won't have a "shaking" mechanism, at least not this early on, a lot from the first formula can be used in our logic as well with many more additions. :P



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Here are some of the things that will affect your capture success chance in Holozing.

First off, compared to Pokemon, we will also place weight on the monster's current HP compared to total HP, meaning that the lower the monster is, the higher your chance to capture it.

Then, each Holozing monster will also have its own unique rate, this will depend on how rare this monster is to spawn/appear in encounters or other possible lore/storyline reasons to make it harder or easier to be captured.

On top of that, which doesn't exist in Pokemon as far as I can tell, monsters will also have a rate that depends on their stat rarity, the closer they are to max stats the harder it becomes to catch them/higher the chance to fail to catch them. This is a hidden stat of which the players won't be aware of unless they capture it.

Furthermore, the monster's status will also be a factor but not as extreme as the effects in Pokemon. Naturally, if you get the enemy monster frozen or asleep, it'll be easier to capture than if it's paralyzed or confused or other weaker status effects. Some of these status effects will also alter the chance for the monster to flee, which gets us to our next point.

Monster rate and other stats will also determine how likely the monster chooses to flee rather than to attack you, this is also affected by it's low health, if the health is lower it is easier to be caught but the chance of it fleeing increases as it wants to escape danger.

Now let's get to the fun part, items.

Items in Holozing will have most stats that affect healers and their stats, but some will be different, one such stat will be called Luck which will affect different scenarios with one of them being the capture rate.

Your capture device will have Luck stat, this will range based on what rarity your device is and what kind of device it is. There will be slightly different devices (imagine guns) with different effects on the creatures they're trying to capture while at the same time increasing your capturing success rate.

Similarly, capture laser ammo will also increase your chance of a successful catch. These will also have rarities with unique material costs for professions to craft and will add to your overall capture success rate.

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With capturing being a big part of the PvE aspect, we wanted to make sure we add all the crucial logic to it early rather than rushing with a simple concept and alpha testing that. This will allow us to run the closed alpha test a bit longer once it's ready to test both PvP balancing, PvE balancing and capturing which will push us for an open alpha faster where we'll aim to also have converted a lot of our assets into 3d and into the game. Hope you all understand why we'd want these things included as early as possible to make the game as unique as possible with our ideas and vision to stand out not just as a web3 game you can earn in but also have potential as a web2 game.

Let us know your thoughts, if you think this is too complex or if you won't mind as long as you won't have to find out about it when playing. :D

Thanks for reading and hope to soon be able to share more news and snippets here and there.

Images created with Midjourney for this post alone.



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This was an interesting read. I played pokemon as a kid, and I didn't really get into all the nitty gritty of it. I didn't care about stats, and most of my monster's abilities were offensive ones. When I grew up, that was when I heard about shinies, and optimal stats for pokemon; but I wasn't playing it anymore. So learning about the capture rate is very enlightening. But now I am curious, how hardcore is the game going to be. Can this still be played casually and get a good experience, or will casuals be stomped every battle.

For casuals the PvE aspect can be very easy as they would "play it like Pokemon", i.e. they would choose fire over grass type for easier battles while disregarding the effects it has on their level up.

For PvP they would also be able to match up with other casuals in their own league, if they then would want to try something more competitive we have some other things in mind where they won't have to rely on their "wrongly trained monsters" alone. This could act as a bridge where if they get interested in competitive battling they would then have to start leveling new creatures they've caught in the "correct" way which is harder, more time-consuming and more resource-consuming.

Casuals would also always have a chance to encounter rare monsters and monsters with rare high stats and have a chance at capturing them, it would definitely be a lot harder but possible, which means they could get lucky and capture something very rare they notice goes for a lot of zing on the markets but since they aren't interested in the competitiveness of the game they'd trade it off.

Great question!

Thank you for the detailed answer. I like how you will have different leagues, and have a lot of things for casuals to do as well. I can see myself as a rare monster hunter, instead of grinding for the optimal stats.

Let me start this by saying the heaviest I got into Pokemon myself was playing Pokemon go for about two weeks only because there was a battle place at the park near by lol

That doesn't mean I don't like the game in fact I loved it but I realized I was sinking a ton of time into it. That's what motivates me a lot about web3 games is that that time can at least present some revenue so fun plus earning even a little is pretty awesome I think.

I like the break down of the capture rate explained here and I don't think it's all that complicated. It's really going to come down to how it's explained in the UX/UI design of the game. The more polished and clear to the point it is the more attractive it's going to be to the masses. Too complicated of structures or understanding can really hurt player base. But with more detail you often get much more dedicated players so it's important to find a middle ground.

Yeah I definitely agree, we want everything to be as simple and quick for the end user as possible. Something that came to mind, for instance say you have a certain amount of items in your inventory, a certain set of gear items you want to use for PvE (where you have as much luck in your different items as possible) you should be able to quickly equip it even if it's not literally happening on-chain. It'll be enough that the game and website know you own these items and the game server checks you still own them to let you use them rather than relying on the chain as some other games do that I've noticed. Being able to swap quickly between PvE Luck gear to PvP gear or a more tanky/lasting gear and other combinations should be as easy and quick as possible for the best UX.

A lot of actions we definitely want to keep on the server rather than blast chain transactions constantly cause not everything needs to be verifiable and immutable.

Just a thought: it's already rare to find a creature with max or near-max stats. You've mentioned it's not a uniform distribution, which makes sense. However, if you then also make max stats harder to capture, you have two non-linear (and multiplicative) factors contributing to overall scarcity. This is going to be a bit harder to dial in.

In addition, the combined effect could frustrate players. If it's already rare to find good stats, then missing them is going to feel bad. If anything, I'd make it harder to find max stats but easier to capture. That may not make sense from a lore/world-building perspective, but it does for player enjoyment. You could dial it in to the same expected value even, but players may be happier.

So no penalty (for simplicity) or even a bonus to capturing is the thought.

Good points, thanks for the input!
It's true and as I mentioned in the comments we don't want to be completely evil, it's also a reason why those at max stats will be one of the few that will tell the players they are max stats so they don't zone out and just defeat them while not checking the damage output/intake or giving it any thought.

We may change it in a way where they're just more likely to flee rather than harder to capture, the idea would be for players to be patient and wait for the right moment to use "hard to obtain" ammo that took a long time to farm the materials and may have a cooldown of creation by those with the professions and schematics. So they can increase the odds of catching the right one or what they believe to be the right one when the time comes.

We will definitely have to still test and balance everything but I don't disagree with your point!

On top of what I mentioned, we'd want players to be in their optimal "catching" gear when facing encounters or going on a capture hunt where they have maxed out their available luck and their monster roster exists of both tanky and creatures with moves that help immobilize other creatures to prevent their escape. If they find rare creatures they believe to be strong they're going to be very ready to throw the odds as much as they can their way.

We also have to remember that it can't be too easy to catch these, the game is meant to be a long one where we won't see max-level healers and monsters at max stats since but more of a mix of some great/close to max healing items, few great/close to max creatures and/or some great/close to max creature moves. This will also ensure that when players get lucky enough to get great items or a creature they won't just quickly sell it off but realize that they can use this to do very well in the game and that it's actually exceptionally rare and hopefully utilize it as much as possible before they consider trading it off while we try to balance the earnings players with rare items and good gameplay can earn over time compared to a quick trade.

Good points. I also love the idea of suiting up in your best catching gear. Reminds me of putting on magic find gear in Diablo 2. You could push yourself to see how many raw stats you could give up in exchange for the chance to find better stuff.

Makes even more sense in this game. Capture gear for capturing and then training gear to fight against the toughest opponents for best leveling.

Unless another player catches you in your luck gear when capturing/finding mats and challenges you to a duel you may not be able to refuse. ;)

My God, I'm impressed with everything that this game will bring us, I like the idea of how you can increase the possibility of capturing a monster, of course by applying the negative effects like freezing or others the possibilities are even greater.

Here I continue watching the development of the game, this looks great, many successes in this development my friend.

It's always great when games make every attribute count for something and use formulas that at first will be hard to understand, but with gameplay experience will become normalities to the player.

It's awesome that you are taking inspiration from Pokemon as they have really nailed the whole system of capturing wild monsters.

Capturing will be one of the most important parts of PvE I think, at least for the players, and it's great that there will be different elements and complexity behind that mechanism.

I think it will be very important as well and something many will really love/hate about it, the balance between getting a creature to low HP and immobalized while trying to keep your creatures alive with heals while at the same time trying to catch it hoping it won't run away having made you waste a lot of mana and ammo on failed attempts will be interesting.

Thankfully the players won't find out what they missed out on (its stats) if a creature flees, we're not that evil. xD

When I saw the computation image I suddenly stopped and told myself not again 😄. Glad that I read it thoroughly, it is complex for sure as there's going to be a hidden stat that can be seen only when captured but as a so-so gamer calculation and other stuff isn't something that I will be worrying. As long as the game will be running smooth I am all good. ( I am expecting bugs and downtime during testing phase but cross-fingers it isn't that much)

The complexity is more towards the developers but with the in game experience, most of the players will understand it and alternative strategies will be like the only way to learn in future. So, what is seems much complex bow will be less with the passage of time when we play the game with real experience.

It looks really complicated, I'm not going to lie, but it's the same with the Pokemon games and I love them. I don't have much luck with these kinds of games, but we'll see. Maybe my luck will turn back with this game :P

Sounds pretty cool to me. I look forward to seeing the finished product whenever it comes abvailable!

I think it will eventually be a probability case while capturing the monsters and bonuses will just improve the rate of capture. Can we add an element of rolling dice to reduce or increase the capture rate?

I mean basically it will roll the dice pretty often, every turn it'll roll it to decide if enemy creature attacks or flees (unless immobalized), and then if you catch it or not based on it's capture rate and your luck/capture chance. It's just that you won't see the exact numbers yourself, you'll just know if you caught it or not.

That's quite logical and I think mostly players only care about increasing chances of capturing the creature, so mostly they will focus on increasing bonuses. But, there should be certain events that sometimes would increase the rate of capture in the game.

Wow I didn't know Pokemon had such an interesting formula for the catch! I always thought it was just a few simple multiplications hehe! Thanks for sharing!

I guess, the complexity will make the game more interesting ? I don't play games, but that's what I have seen when kids play.

I admit that I understood half of the things you wrote, especially the Pokemon catching formula 😁. I am sure that by testing the game in alpha or beta, many things will be clearer and above all we will better understand every post published up to then.

Will this delay in development also affect the sale of the starter pack within the next month?

We're trying our best there but without having contracted artists it's difficult to estimate how long things take.

Just use AI to generate some placeholders in the meantime. 🤣🤣🤣

Could be a way. :p

Ok, I'm going to need false swipe to get them to one up, sleep powder to make em asleep and a carry item to prevent monsters from running. Kthnx ^>^

No such thing as carry item planned. :p

I may not have paid a lot of attention, but is it a card game or an actually game where we can move and such like pokemon? :D

The team is still quite small so while we do have plans for an open world, potentially 2d to start with, we will begin open beta just with the website to unity battle encounters. I.e. you will get notifications of a creature being nearby so you can log into the website and battle or capture it along with challenging other players in your ELO range to battle.

Ah! Okay cool cool!
ye, I was wondering if 2d was in the plans, that would be cool! :D

It's not a card game in that sense, the cards are just the holders of the creatures, like pokeballs but easier to flip through. ;p

Makes sense :D
So not just another Splinterlands ;) Thats good :D

I have always heard from experts that Pokémon is an easy game but I feel that’s a lie, lol
I see it as something that is extremely difficult

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@speedtuning(3/10) tipped @acidyo

Um pouco complexo, mas fico feliz quando vejo os responsáveis pelo game preocupados com sua estruturação. se for para preservar a economia do game estar valendo.

Share this game link. I want to try.

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