Nov 15, 2022

6 min read

Game Update: Stat Ranges

Hi, everyone, 👋
This week team BCU has launched the update to the stat system that we have been talking about quite a bit ago.

For a quick refresher, here is the proposal from the

➡️ BCUG Governance Vote

What this change introduces is more depth to the HP-based fighting mechanic in BCU. This allows for more variability in fights, better flexibility of builds, and overall power curve health long term.

This affects items only. Which emphasizes Uniques and Tributes quite well on the overall scale.

Let’s cover what was happening prior to the introduction of the range system for items.

First and foremost, power creep has been an ever-present issue, and creating new content within the game became an impossible task for it to be coveted without breaking anything released before and making those old items obsolete. With this said, power creep never goes away, yet with the introduction of ranges it’s less problematic, and more variety is available on a broad scale.

If that would be left as it was, there were two ways the events would unfold:

The in-game meta stagnates and comes to a halt completely, without anything new or exciting developing as a new type of build with new gear outside of them looking different. Basically, becoming skins.
The meta becomes a constant race to the new gear, deprecating everything released before, creating more and more void behind fresh releases. Devaluing all of the previous items that the players acquired and becoming nothing more than just a nice-looking trinket. A token of an event past.

The change in how ⚔️Attack and 🛡️Defense stats work is aimed at deepening the pool of possible builds and combinations to make it a more robust experience for old and new players alike.

Additionally, this changes how battles are run for ⛰️Dungeons and 🎌Tournaments, especially. The balancing will become a much more approachable thing for the team to make the game elevate the BCU’s mechanics like the aforementioned Dungeons and Tournaments, creating more viable builds for Cuties and many different ways to play.

Now, that the change has been implemented, the community went into research mode, snooping and checking everything they can to see what’s what and how these changes affect them.

The biggest concern at the present is that the change nerfed the strong items and made them useless in the grand scheme of things. Which is not true at all. The change takes effect on the majority of items, with some exceptions where items’ min stat would need a significant boost to work within the introduced system, making the concern of strong items useless a reality.

An important piece of information is that the first implementation of ranges for the items had an error in the formula applied for the ranges, with the latest update that error is rectified.

The overall power structure of the item’s position in the power curves remains intact. The heavy hitters are still the heavy hitters, and weak-sauce items are still the sauce with no flavor to dish out.

Before we dive into the power curves let's cover what the graphs represent. The “Old” graphs have both the pre-ranges data and first ranges implementation iteration. An important thing to remember is that in the “Old” graphs, the 🔴MAX values were the stats prior to the changes the ranges introduced.

The “New” graphs reflect the currently rolled-out changes.

Here are the before and after power curves of all of the items

Let’s start:

🗡️Weapon Slot

💂Head Slot

🚩Accessory Slot

Legacy + Ranges v1 Accessory Power Curve

👕Body Slot

Legacy + Ranges v1 Body Armor Power Curve

🛡️Bracelet Slot

As we can see, the overall 🟠AVERAGES remained very similar to what they were, however, a few issues with progression changes are applied, where on some levels, like for bracelet levels 4 to 5 differences are properly managed now instead of dropping at level 5 by nearly a whole point from level 4 average.
While the average has gone slightly down as a whole, this allows the Cuties to shine brighter instead. Making Uniques, Tributes, and special breeds of Cuties more pronounced in the whole equation during combat and has grown in value.

Additionally, many have been discussing different items and how they look compared to what they were or perceived to be.

Here is a full table, in PDF format, of all of the changed items. The legend for the columns goes as follows:

Attack/Defense 1 = Stat before ranges introduction.
Attack/Defense 2 = Stat at Ranges V1 release.
Attack/Defense 3 = Stat at Ranges V2 fix release.

The file can be accessed HERE⬇️.

The Formula

As an example, we can look at the formula that is being used to calculate new min attack and min defense values based on multiple factors, including the 💎Rarity of the item.

The final Formula looks very simple at the end of it all:

MinAttack = Round(average(A,B))

*This also is used in the same way for Min Defense stat.

The “A” variable is calculated through the following process:

Let’s break it down a little to make a little sense of it.

The Base value is calculated via a formula: -3+((Level¹.75)/5)

RarityLevel is static. The table below illustrates the process of calculating the variable for the formula.

RarityQuality Variable Calculation Table

The “B” variable is simple: (MaxAttack/2).

If at the end of this all Min Attack is equal to or more than the Max Attack, then the item does not get a range and sits at the Max Attack value.

With all that in mind, the team plans to continue working on this aspect of the game, as it is an important core system that is long overdue for an upgrade.

In the near future enchantment of items will be updated as well. Old items like Season 1 gear, Easter items, and OG sets will receive a bit of attention to them.
At this time, it is confirmed by the team that the Season 1 and 2 items will become enchantable. Another question that still remains is up to what level of enchantment these items will be possible to enchant.

That’s about wraps this up for this time :) Quite a bit of info to chew through, for sure.
We will be posting more regarding the game updates and information soon, in the meanwhile join the conversation on our socials below! ❤

Keep rocking, keep exploring, and see ya on Blockchain Cuties!

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