Balanacing an un-balanced combat system

I dont really like it that much but i just adapted best i could and keep trying it out either it will fail, or not well just have to wait and see.

 

Ill train you!

 

too many skills to spread out for melee fighters. Not enough pts to put into skills you really need. I dont know about anyone else but i had my pts spread thin for protection, resist, then had these first level spells of the magic skills that i could hardly cast (waste of points and skill)

 

Which completely doesn't matter, in the end, but could be taken as things are out of balance currently.

 

Im a big fan of the further you invest points down a certain path the more specialised you become. I think jack of all trades work but should have a pay off, just as if you specialise you dominate in that field and nothing else.

Personally I found a heavy armor build that worked and I felt the pay off for the toughness worked...and as Ristra said it is Alpha so it means nothing at this point. But I would like to see, or hope to see, that you need to specialise down a certain path to see the big dividends in a field but it comes at a cost.

Yes in my armor I was tough, Yes I could one shot someone, I struggled against archers unless I could get my hinders and stuns in, most often the DOTS would get me. I invested heavily so I could get to 60 or 70 strength! I think that was fair. When I used the double strike attack and got a double crit it made me cackle like a crazy person! A DOT build should be able to kite a heavily armoured fellow around and wear him down - toe to toe I should be able to control the fight. Its a valid tactic.

We (well I) dont want to see cookie cutter builds where everyone has the same build because thats what works in PvP. Again its Alpha so I guess this ramble is just a design philosophy...my simple 2 cents

 

Good luck, best wishes, check the PvP once it's released. You will likely be surprised.

 

I think the system works but the remaining skills need to be implemented, tested and balanced.

My biggest concern remains the controls and how I need one hand on the keyboard to run and another on my mouse to turn. This makes it difficult to select the available skills without stopping movement for melee combat. This might be one of the reason that blaquerogue feels archery and magery is over powered. A melee fighter cannot properly get in close if they need to stop every time they want to attack. There must be a solution that allows the melee fighter to run and attack at the same time, that way they can chase down and hit the ranged opponents without having to stop every time a swing is to be taken.

Find a solution to this and implement the remaining skills, with a little balancing and I think things will start coming together nicely.

 

On the topic of ballance... there is another issue that will likely come up.

While in PvP the combat styles will be ballanced against one another. I believe before release we will see this. Another way it will be ballanced is in PvE. I've already noticed that some places I was much better in PvE wearing heavy armor and taking cracks at creatures and thugs with melee rather than using spells. Something to do with the numbers of people coming at me at once and the limited room to run around.

The opposite will likely be true too. Ranged fighters like Archers, and Mages will likely have advantages against other creatures or in different locations where melee isn't the best. First thing that comes to mind is the slime creatures. I don't think we are going to want to have our gear wrecked by a lowly slime if we wear a bunch of expensive heavy armor, and a weapon that is susceptible to corrosion. While a mage could use fire or lighting to cause considerable damage to such a creature while staying out of the range of its acid splashes (not to mention the mage's gear might be less expensive anyway).

Animal tamers made the most gold when I played UO. A great warrior could not do that. Actually I think the tamer deserved that gold because it was difficult to become a good tamer. Also the tamer had to exchange some skills (due to skill caps) to be a good tamer. The warrior might be able to beat the tamer in PvP by avoiding the creature and killing the tamer (who might not have had any wrestling skill to avoid being hit by the warrior).

So if there are certain characters that can gather gold more efficiently than others, I'm fine with that. There is give and take in all things. Some people might strive to be the best PvPer in the world and becoming super wealthy isn't their goal. Personally I would like to get fame and wealth in game, but if we can't always have everything it sure would be nice to have enough wealth to keep my career going, while being legendary. LoL Others might also want both wealth and fame, but they would opt for the wealth. There are other paths to fame, and sometimes those will come with wealth as well. Not everybody can be wealthy though. Only a small percentage of people should truly be wealthy. For example let's say truly wealthy is 100mil gold, and maybe only a handful should ever really gather that much 1% of all players. Then there should be some who have considerable wealth 5 to 10 million gold in the bank. The rest of the people should bank under 1million gold. I believe that would be realistic and ideal. I don't expect the ideal, but it would be good if the economy worked that way. (I'm talking about actual stored gold in the bank not the players' cash flow per month etc. Also, some might be valued at more than 100mil with accumulated vanity items, rares, property, and property location... I'm talking only gold.)

 

Actually the glyphs lighting up every time you are in range helps though. It is better than having words apear over your head saying TARGET IS NOW IN RANGE!!!!!!!!!!! Not that any sane game would do such a thing. I like the subtle indicator of having glyphs that are within range light up.

 

I am a bit late to this reply, however in R9 there were several ways to offset the penalty by focus innates... By selecting the locked deck system it also frees the player to utilize more points. Consider a spellcaster with 20 card deck of 5 fireballs 5 fire arrows 5 fire fist attacks 3 fire elemental cards, just to name a few; compared to low focus drain, and only 1 card per spell needed to assign and lock. Also there are No slugs in this type either.

 

this is kind of a late entry here, but i was just going through all this, i wear full plate and use 2 handed weapon, can barely cast off any spells, while the archer runs around pining me with arrows , or the mage has a fire ele, blasting me while the mage is blasting me too, and i fizzle on my heal spells! Not to mention the health potions dont really heal that much during combat ( i just sold them). So the only way i can actually do any damage to you, is if you happen to run past me or i cut you off and stun you over and over! by the way i was at the coast fighting. "Torniquet Vengeance", was me. I had to break down my armor to not fizzle so much on the healing spells. Carlin was pinging me over and over with arrows and dropping me over and over, so was some mage with his fire elemental. I watched this over and over with others as well, not just me. Thats what i do watch how battles go, see what armor works best for what and what skills people need to have in order to stand and fight others, while everyone else was running around dancing in the Fire Lotus Tavern, i was out fighting things to see how it works and on the releases i was always at the Coast fighting and watching others fight. Personally i could care less about the story of SoTA at the moment, im all about the combat aspect of it all. The story will come later for me. So that was the opening statement that i saw when it came down to combat. Archers and Mages are OP. Im sure they will balance it all out eventually.

 

Yeah the liches axe was badass! I used it once, and i liked it!

 

Always good to know a Dev is watching!!!! Thanks for the update Chris!

 

For me, the combat system ll still unbalanced/broke as long we can not loot the dead.

NP, we are in development.

Thanks Chris for the info.

 

The liche axe and plate were a monster combo in p e as well. In a couple of other threads I've already me turned my journey into Ravensmoor with a melee fighter with this combo and a Mage. Two hour solo run for a Mage to kil everything, including the liche at the end. But only 49 minutes, minus the liche. But I only tried a couple of times with the axe and plate combo. I lost the desire to kill him after spending three ours in there. Never had real good luck in the challenge dungeon as a Mage, couldn't do enough damage running around even with the lower animals. I know others were more successful. Hopefully the rework will allow mages to be more even in damage output so their playability is more line with the melee dudes.

 

since there's no leveling and training yet, I'm not so much concerned about balancing at the moment. I'm much more concerned how the developers will address the stressful urge to look to your ever changing skill bar all of the time and ignore the combat itself (my suggestion: get rid of auto discard)

 

Yeah, it's in the Q4 Release Notes.

 

Very nice, thank you! Can we hope for a little more diversity in weapon/armour stats, so less items share the very same numbers?
Are you going to add a little 'realism' to the skills (it seems odd that your skin would turn to 'plate armour' if you get skilled with a pike - damage avoidance ok, but not damage resistance). M ore diversity wouldn't be a bad thing either. Having five different ways to boost your damage resistance to a total of like tripple the value of a complete augmented plate set is a bit... monotonous.
Last but not least, are you going to try and find a way to flatten the difference on dis-/advantages of static vs. random builds?
An armour heavy build profits a lot more from no slugs than a cloth armour build.

Oh and thanks for your effort, I'm loving it. Could we maybe even get a speific posting on that? I always like the number crunching you're doing!

Yes, DarkStarr did in his Q4 posting.