Please pardon the extended delay! We’ve been working on recruitment and story development for The Chaos Paradox for the past several months and are making good headway. We have two artists on-board already and will begin headhunting programmers shortly. It’s an exciting time!
Speaking of exciting, who wants to talk about big numbers? Crits?! The thrill of a million points of damage suddenly flying across your screen to let you know just how lucky you are? Sadly, you won’t find a global critical hit mechanic in Infinities—at least not the kind you may be accustomed to seeing in roleplaying games. Traditionally, a critical hit can happen on any ability to increase the damage or healing done by a large amount. In some games, you are able to build your chance to gain a critical hit through gear or specialization. In others, such as Dungeons and Dragons, the chance is relatively static (pray for a 20!). Critical hits just sort of happen passively and often prompt someone to yell, “See how hard I hit that guy?!” In a way there’s a sense of realism in that sometimes you can be lucky, but there is no way to put in an extra effort and be rewarded (or punished…) for your courage.
So, what excitement is there in Infinities without crits? Where’s the luck? Gambits!
What is a Gambit? Think of it as a critical effect for which you choose to gamble in order to be rewarded with an amplification. The key word here is choose. One of our biggest gripes with the idea of traditional critical chance has been its aimless, random property. A player can use an attack over and over and, due to an invisible roll of the dice, suddenly nail a monster for double damage. What Gambits bring is a feeling of living on the edge. Once per 30 seconds, you can press the Gambit button before an attack to put in an extra effort to gain bonuses. When you do this, the attack can critically succeed, succeed, fail, or critically fail. The array of these effects are specifically designed to be appropriate to each ability to make the gameplay experience dynamic and unpredictable depending on Gambit selection and results. We are not talking about results as simple as “multiply by two,” either. Instead, the effects are similar to those you would see from a specialization system such as talents, runes, or feats. To illustrate, here is an example to introduce the concept of Gambits:
End of Days
Unleashes a barrage of meteors in a targeted area, decimating the Weaver’s enemies and dealing 75% weapon damage per second for 5 seconds.
Critical Success (5%): Increases chance to stun to 30% and stunned targets take 50% increased damage from all sources.
Success (45%): Meteor impacts have 20% chance to stun for 1 sec.
Failure (45%): Meteors can also damage self and allies.
Critical Failure (5%): Meteors can also damage self and allies and target area follows you for duration.
Now that you have seen a sample array, something you may realize regarding our Gambit style of amplified effect is the capability for support, utility, defensive, escapes, and other “binary” abilities to have critical effects just like damage and healing abilities. You haven’t seen a teleport have a critical effect before—until now! As with the Tide Meter, making all abilities and all roles feel useful in combat is the foundation of our design philosophy; our Gambit system carries that banner strongly.
As a player, Gambits ask you to make a few snap decisions when it comes to gaining increased effects on your abilities: what ability has a success effect I’d really like right now? Is it worth using my Gambit cooldown? Is right now a time I can risk failure? Our design intent is that a player’s decision to Gambit is one that should be made quickly, but wisely!
Long term decisions are often found in roleplaying games through specialization and equipment. Gambits come into play in these areas as well! In many games critical chance (and critical damage in some cases) can become a must-have attribute that takes the choice, fun, and diversity out of equipment selection. Infinities sports an attribute called Instinct which improves the success chance of your Gambits while reducing the chance of failure. This attribute is useful in making Gambits safer and more reliable, but isn’t as game-changing as a traditional critical hit chance attribute. The same applies to Gambit chance through specialization. It is desirable, but not mandatory to be effective.
In-the-moment decision making, utility for all roles, thematic amplified effects, and build diversity make Gambits one of the unique mechanics we are most excited about introducing with Infinities. It brings a feeling of intent and payoff that is unlike anything you have seen before. For more details, see the wiki page here. If you have any questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to leave a comment here or on our forum!