Regulus
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PL: ARCHIVED - XP/PL TRANSFERRED TO EREGLA
Lunakin (x2T)
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Post by Regulus on Dec 13, 2019 14:36:33 GMT -6
Howdy everyone!
So, after recent events, I got curious about just how minion mains stacked up against PL mains. Here are just a few scenarios!
PL main with a temp transformation VS Minion main with a permanent transformation: In this scenario, there are no items and the minion actually has an advantage in PL by a factor of 1.25 (the minion conversion bonus). If the PL main consistently attacks the minion main with an A1 instead of the minion, the PL main WILL win in 4 turns or less 100% of the time. This is because the minion’s options are to barrier into it or dodge into it and attack (an A1 or a UA2), neither of which will stop or counter the PL main’s strategy, and once the minion runs out of KP, the main is dead.
This scenario isn’t actually that much different with the minion main having a senzu bean or repair pill. It just takes 7 turns or 7 A1s to do the job then, but the PL main will still win.
The alternate scenario of PL main and minion main with the same type of transformation just means that the battle will be deadlocked, presuming the PL continuously targets the minion main with A1s and the minion uses 1 KP to defend. If the minion consumes KP faster than the PL main, they will lose as in the first scenario.
All it takes is having one more KP than the minion to win.
The last scenario is where the minion has the advantage in KP with a temporary form, and the PL main has the permanent form. In this scenario, the minion has more of a chance, but again, if they drop below the KP that the enemy has, it’s pretty much a loss scenario.
Conclusion: Honestly, I think the fights should be a little more even than this. This is purely from a mechanical vantage, mind you. As for suggestions on how to fix it... maybe an item that serves as a free block or something for the minion main? Or like an item that redirects attacks aimed at the minion main back at the minion? I think it needs something. I’m just not sure what. Hence, discussion!
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Rook
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PL: 16,800
Overdrive (+x3T)
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Post by Rook on Dec 13, 2019 16:03:30 GMT -6
Well to be fair the minion can enter a threat without the main so its main drawback is the lack of sig.
Not sure for DE but as long as the main is on the planet it can join in the fray so not always the case. I have a few more arguments but they don't apply to minion mains so for now its mote point.
The other thing I hate is the minion goes inactive after the main dies....which is really really strange in a lot of cases if the minion wants to keep fighting it should be able to. In which case attacking the main simply drains your ki till the minion punishes you hard for it. I lets say bulma is the main and Vegeta is the minion do you think he is simply gonna go inactive on seeing her death? Or that he won't try to get the dragon balls to resurrect her?
So form a story point of view its entirely messed up that just vanish the second the main dies. This is a problem since shin minions are not viable due to story reasons...but story reasons only apply to what minions you can have and not to other subjects where it makes sense?
so basically story reasons only apply if the staff want it too and not to other subjects? At least that is what it looks like but I know it was not their intent. They simply have not thought about this subject in depth etc.
If the minion can enter a de on its on as a proxy for its main then its still pretty balanced other then they don't have as many sig options. Although with all the minion augments they have a strength of their own as well.
Summery for me is as follows.
Its pretty balanced if the minions can enter a de without their main but poorly balanced if they cannot. If the main must enter a de the fact that the minion vanishes no matter what if the main dies is beyond problematic and strange even after the thread is over. Mechanically speaking its poorly done as well lore wise with exceptions to player wanting it that way in a thread.
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Post by Aurora Arctos on Dec 13, 2019 16:10:42 GMT -6
To be honest I don't actually have anything of use to add, other than my general agreement. There's a trade off for the boosted PL conversions, such as the inherent weakness of the main, but as it is it does seem to essentially cripple the entire game plan unless the minion is capable of not only successfully clashing with the attacks aimed at the Main, but also beat the attacker before their KP runs out.
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Regulus
Archived
PL: ARCHIVED - XP/PL TRANSFERRED TO EREGLA
Lunakin (x2T)
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Post by Regulus on Dec 13, 2019 16:14:52 GMT -6
The way I understand it Rook is that minion mains are required to enter DEs with their minion. The minion cannot enter without them. |
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Bamboo
Administrator
PL: 185,000
Fauna Princess (x13P) Fauna Queen (x18/x14T)
Tag: @bamboo
Posts: 250 
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Post by Bamboo on Dec 13, 2019 16:19:13 GMT -6
hihi, good post! But, there's a couple things that minion mains can do in order to skew fights in their favor! It's not always that clear-cut, and there may have been some options you didn't consider. I'll post a couple of potential stuffs that the minion main could do in order to even the playing field below.
1. Multiform Technique
A minion player, with their starting techs or bonus techs, can invest in the Multiform Technique, which splits their body between two or four copies. This technique would mean that the minion main's body is split into 4 parts- all of which need to be defeated before the main body can be harmed. This could essentially give the minion main 3 'extra lives' before they needed to start spending KP to protect their core form. Furthermore, attacks against these afterimages are attacks which are not being used against the minion itself- who doesn't need to spend any KP to protect them!
2. Assist Sigs, Item Sigs & LTO's
There's a few assist sigs, specifically the sensing ones, which give you free SU1's (or SU0.5's, in the case of Super Instincts). These free dodges can be used to move in front of the primary player for an attack! Specifically, the Super Instincts SIG can be used twice to block for the main body. The Scouter item SIG can also be used to block for a player. While you could argue that using a SIG to circumvent damage on your primary player instead of using it for 'real' combat is a bit wasteful, but remember that minions can't get Power or Defense signatures; this leaves them with a bit of room to grab another Item or Assist sig to help out their main body. Other items, such as the Bansho Fan and the Power Pole, offer a free B1 or a free SU1, respectively, adding another method to help keep your main body safe.
3. Racial Traits
These ones are decidedly a bit more situational, but they're relevant enough to mention. Specific races of both player and minion give access to some nifty traits which they can use to protect the main player. If you're playing an Android player with an Android minion, you can use the Android minion's super trait to merge together and avoid attacks coming towards the main body. Namekian minions gain a free B1 or SU1 which can, again, be used to help block for the main body. There might be even more options here which I'm forgetting, but racial traits can help a lot when it comes to main character protection!
While I get where you're coming from with your concerns, I do think there are ways in which your specific scenario can be disrupted. However, I do know that there isn't too many minion mains, and thus, not too many situations to work with when discussing practical balancing. For now, though, I think Minion-only players have some unique benefits and unique drawbacks that don't necessarily need to be tweaked, at least at the moment. If any tweaks are needed, I think they should be on the smaller side.
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Rook
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PL: 16,800
Overdrive (+x3T)
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Post by Rook on Dec 13, 2019 16:37:54 GMT -6
Then yeah story wise the current method is not supported and in game mechanics grossly favor pl mains to the point minion mains are just not balanced.
I never really considered the dodge due to the reason it could not change the course of the attack so should still hit the main. But even if there are free dodges the pl main can also get it and the free dodge on a sig attack.
problem with multi form is that they might lack the power to deal damage or defend as well. When the main has 200 pl or so the first thing that makes it though is instant kill.
HOWEVER
IF the main and minion are both amazing strong it favors the minion owner
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Bamboo
Administrator
PL: 185,000
Fauna Princess (x13P) Fauna Queen (x18/x14T)
Tag: @bamboo
Posts: 250
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Post by Bamboo on Dec 13, 2019 17:00:22 GMT -6
problem with multi form is that they might lack the power to deal damage or defend as well. When the main has 200 pl or so the first thing that makes it though is instant kill. This is multiform on the minion player rather then the minion themselves! If the PL main themselves had 4 bodies, each of them needs to go down if you want to target the PL main rather than the minion. |
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Rook
Archived
ARCHIVED - XP/PL TRANSFERRED TO XANATHAR
PL: 16,800
Overdrive (+x3T)
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Post by Rook on Dec 13, 2019 17:26:45 GMT -6
hmmm that seems to defeat the fun of playing a minion main and almost feels like your exploiting the game. Although......I just thought about this but could you not be a pl main but make your minion the character the story is all about?  Like it would swap out every single issue O.o |
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Regulus
Archived
PL: ARCHIVED - XP/PL TRANSFERRED TO EREGLA
Lunakin (x2T)
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Post by Regulus on Dec 14, 2019 0:46:57 GMT -6
You bring up some good points, Bamboo but lemme follow up with some thoughts on them.
Ultimately, I believe that minion mains shouldn't have to build a particular way to avoid certain death. PL mains don't have to do that, after all, and its not exactly fun to be pigeon-holed into getting certain techs or assist sigs or items or what have you. But I'll address each point individually.
Multiform: Even in the case of three extra lives, it feels... bad to force the minion main to use their tech slots like this? To have a chance at winning? I don't think this is a solution so much as a stopgap measure for people who want to be mechanically competitive.
Assist SIGs, Item SIGs, LTOs: These don't really feel like solutions to me. Sure, you could have free dodges, but what if you wanted to have something else for cool flavor or such? And there's nothing stopping your opponent from also having free dodges given by items or sigs. It's still uneven. The only minion specific sig is the arm blaster, which - admittedly - is a better Z-sword, but that only adds to the minion's combat power. It doesn't solve the problem of the main being targeted.
Racial Traits: I know you admitted to racial traits being really situational, and they really are. In the case of android minions with android mains, the problem is negated entirely, which is awesome... if you happen to have an android minion with an android main. But if you don't... well, guess you're out of luck! And sure, Namekian minions get that free B1 or SU1, but that's not... a solution for every minion main having this problem.
Of the options, multiform is actually the best just for buying time, but it feels really... not nice to me that minion mains basically have to do this or get toasted if we're speaking purely mechanically. Obviously, this is a RP system made for flavor and fun, so people may just pick sub-optimal builds for a minion because that's what they want, and they should! They should have fun with it. But if they come across a competitive situation where people play to mechanics and what's most efficient, they're going to get punished hard for it. Really hard. And I don't think that's very fun at all. There's something to be said for the frustration of not being able to do anything.
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Rook
Archived
ARCHIVED - XP/PL TRANSFERRED TO XANATHAR
PL: 16,800
Overdrive (+x3T)
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Post by Rook on Dec 14, 2019 18:40:28 GMT -6
The multiform is also not gonna be a viable option story wise for ALOT of characters and starts to move to the meta game quite a bit. It also just means they have four more turns to live and really just buys time. And if you have the split sig it does way less. Plus...if who your fighting also has multiform the entire effect is negated entirely as they now attack 4 times a turn towards the main.....
Much like how the minion gets bonus pl if it way over powers the main I think their should be a lot more options for the main to avoid damage. Or have a separate set of rules in combat. For example allow the minion to clash against the attack if their defending their minion main and only him. Like if the main power level is over a 1000 make it no longer a option so people can be a minion main but keeps high levels form abusing it when they get a minion.
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Nashua
Administrator
Queen of Arcose
PL: 250,000
Oozaru (x5P) Ultra Super Saiyan (x17/x13T) Mastered Super Saiyan (x16P)
Tag: @nashua
Posts: 1,193
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Post by Nashua on Dec 15, 2019 5:45:46 GMT -6
Hi, I thought I should add the general staff viewpoint of the discussion lately. Firstly, there's no conspiracy we've constructed where we only let plot affect things when it's convenient for us, as one person suggested.
And I would also like to remind everyone that there is a reason that Carro was consistently one of, if not the strongest character on the site nearly since its launch. His recent defeat does not mean that minions are and always have been bad. If they were, he wouldn't have five times as many successful DEs under his belt.
Minions by and large have a lot of separate advantages to them over just a regular PL main. A lot of species as minions have traits more directly related to combat application, thanks to the training shell. They also have access to a unique set of very powerful items that can be used to further bolster their strength, several of which are so powerful that their PL main equivalents are much harder to access LTOs, such as the Arm Blaster and Z-Sword, which is not even to mention the long-lasting boosted conversions they get.
The current hysteria seems to be stemming from the fact that people have suddenly realized, "Hey, the main can be targeted, too!", which has always been the case. I want to be clear that this is supposed to be a valid strategy, and I also want to discourage players from speaking negatively towards other players who do deploy this strategy. It's the risk you sign up for when you decide you want to make a minion based character, and we're not going to remove it as a weakness, as it counters the many other bonuses minion mains have unique access to.
Almost all big battles are team fights, so your minion is not the only one capable of blocking for your main - your friends can help out, as well. Carro found himself in a situation where his only partner available was too weak to be able to weather attacks for him as well, which, if anything, may speak to the unviability of item mains rather than that of minion mains. One on one fights exist as well, but it's easy to argue that just about any build outside of pumping up your PL as much as possible isn't as effective when it comes to a one on one. There are always going to be some builds more viable than others, but trying to nitpick every weak point and patch it out is how a system becomes overinflated and filled with overpowered sets of mechanics.
That being said, we do agree that minions should be able to keep on going after their main fighter's demise, and have recently updated the site to allow for that. Knowing you'll still have to deal with the minion even after the main is gone will likely help to dissuade people from focusing all their energy on taking the main out, in the future. Thank you all for your suggestions!
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Like it would swap out every single issue O.o
