Deck swapping needs love!

So, as of yet, not much polish and love has been given to the deck swapping mechanics in the game. There seems to be an impression that one either has to play an archer or play with a hand-to-hand weapon, but I've been playing with both, and found that not only myself -- but a lot of other players -- have been experimenting with deck swapping between mêlée and archery.

PENALTIES, PENALTIES, PENALTIES

And its a kind of build I'd like to continue playing, but there are a lot of penalties to it that will become even more obvious when we get the final skill progression system in the game. We have --

* 1. A heavy focus penalty; you lose half your focus unless you invest down the line in the Focus tree.
* 2. A slug penalty; your archery deck will almost definitely be much smaller than your mêlée deck, since immediate defensive skills like, and if you have a shield equipped, you won't need your shield skills.
* 3. A hand reset penalty; although with the latest changes, skills you keep across decks can stay in your hand, you likely will have a lot of skills that don't cross decks.
* 4. A skill diversification penalty; this you would expect to get anyway, by giving up skill advancement in mêlée to advance in archery.

And, of course, there has to be some type of penalty. But I think some of this should be thought about a little more. Although the focus penalty can be brought down to zero with Quick Swapping, that's also a fourth-tier Focus skill that players won't be able to get immediately, especially if you need trainers. So, even as magic users can use ranged and close magic right away, and don't even have ammo (reagent) requirements, fighters need to advance four levels in Focus to bring down their penalty to use archery without a big hit.

We also went through a release or two where players and the devs decided it wasn't fun to have slugs in your deck when playing with heavy armor, because it slowed down combat and made it frustrating. But a dual-deck user who switches between hand-to-hand and archery will have to deal with a heavy slug-laden deck. Almost every glyph dealt in my archery deck is currently a slug. I was agnostic on this issue when it came to heavy armor, but I don't feel switching between a bow and a sword should be penalized in ways that heavy armor isn't. So if it was rethought for heavy armor, why shouldn't it be rethought for dual-deck use?

I think that's more important to work on than the change that was just made -- you now can switch decks and keep glyphs that are common between two decks. But I think it makes sense for me to have your hand completely reset when you switch a deck. If you were to pull out a two-handed sword to replace your sword and shield, you should have a lot of opportunities lost, and chances fizzle. It makes sense that swapping decks would completely re-orient you. Moving between a sword and shield and two-handed sword doesn't need any gimmes. However, it doesn't make sense that if you switch to your bow, your new deck would be completely full of slugs.

On focus, an interruptable timer to switch decks, moreso than some of the penalties that currently exists. It should take time to change weapons.

QUIRKY BEHAVIOR WHEN SWAPPING DECKS

There's also a lot of quirky behavior that's been making it a pain. I haven't been able to fully test it out on R18, but it seems to be the same so far as in R17.

If you have two of the same weapon, where one is perfect durability and the other is broken, often the game will equip the broken weapon, leaving you defenseless. So, in that case, every time you do a deck swap, you have to open inventory and juggle your weapons around. Otherwise, you have to drop your second weapon somewhere -- though that's not necessarily a good solution if you carry a second weapon just as a backup.

The same behavior is true if you have two of the same named weapon but with different enhancements. So if you have two of the same type of dagger, but one with a fire enhancement, the game will often equip the one without the fire enhancement.

SWITCHING ARMOR IN THE MIDDLE OF COMBAT

I don't know what the thoughts of the dev team are on this, but there seems to be a consensus among players about this, and it seems like it should be easy enough to fix. Its a bit silly that you can change your armor in the middle of combat; it should only be possible out of combat mode.

Not only that, but it could cause some problems that aren't necessary to deal with if the player is a little negligent. So, say a player has all of his armor break, links his new set of armor, of a different type to one deck, but forgets to link it on his other deck. If he switches decks in the middle of combat, he'll switch to his broken armor. Yes, its the players fault. But it seems like something that's silly to deal with, if you accept you shouldn't be able to change armor in the middle of combat anyway.

NO MEANS TO MANAGE MORE THAN ONE DECK SWAP

Say I want at one time switch between a sword and torch to a sword and shield, and then later switch between a sword and shield and a bow. Or I have a set of decks I use for combat, but then want to go into a social setting and use social decks with costumes. Its a bit cumbersome Just this past week I posted in the general forums an idea to swap deck setups. Of course, this should only be usable out-of-combat.

 

No swapping during combat. I thought that SotA wants to simulate a world with some kind of realism, so how realistic is it to change your armor during combat? In real life it would take a VERY long time to get someone out of his plate mail into another armor.

 

Probably about as realistic as forgetting the basic tenets of hand-to-hand combat and swordplay, I imagine. "I think there's something I was supposed to do to keep you from hitting me clear in the face, but I just... can't... put my finger... Oh, here's the card! Parrying! D'uh, of course..."

Anyway, linking specific weapons and such is cool, and no-way-Jose on the changing of armor in combat.

 

@Lord_Darkmoon,

Not switch their armor, but it is realistic for someone to switch to a dagger when their bow runs out of arrows, for instance. Of course, people expect to never run out of arrows, and enemies never run out of arrows because they don't use a supply.

And, it is realistic to switch to a sword when the enemy comes in at close range, instead of perpetually try to keep a distance, or using your bow at one foot away while the enemy is trying to attack you.

"Pure archer" is hardly a realistic build for a lot of situations, as much as some people want to play that. And its not possible to go out and back into combat mode to switch weapons. You need a penalty for switching, obviously. The question is what's appropriate.

 

Great post and poll options.

There should be no focus penalty when changing in non-combat situations. Really just for the purpose of changing outfits in social settings.

Once you're engaged in combat however, no switching should be allowed.

 

I think switching weapons should be possible but it should take some time.

Also I hope that we will need ammo for bows etc. and that enemies will eventually use ammo, too and then might be forced to switch weapons once they used up their ammo.

 

That's why I put Option 3 for the interruptable timer. You would get a progress bar, and then if its interrupted, you wouldn't switch. Also I think your hand should fully clear, Option 4, because you're completely re-orienting yourself.

 

If people dont like the convenience of swapping gear in the middle of a fight, you could request that different decks be assigned to different pieces of gear you carry but that would be complicated im sure. You could make it where you can only swap decks out of combat, which is kinda what the heavy focus penalty tries to encourage anyways. The quick swapping skill is something you would want if you want to aim to be more versitile on the fly rather than specializing.

Putting a swap timer on would add another penalty to it, which i wouldn't mind personally. But i dont think it should replace the focus penalty. theres already a way to deal witht hat that is relativly inexpensive and only 1 tier underneath the deck draw speed passives you're gonna want to have anyways. It would only be a nuisance to people who only use locked hotbars


As far as slugs go, if you JUST wanna use 1 or 2 archery skills and dont wanna spec any further into it or jsut want the rest in passives, you can assign the skilsl you want to pop up to the hotbar and fill in all slots, with the skills you want to use then fill the rest of your deck with whatever glyphs you got. it will essentially autodiscard any unused glyph automatically and draw jsut the glyphs you want to show up. itll be slower than having a full deck full of useful things but it prevents slugs.

Personally, At my current level i only get Aimed Shot and Disable Shot, and i fill the rest with things like heals, gust, sprint, Airs embrace, Strength of earth, etc. all of those are glyphs i use in my other deck so i usually dont have a problem speccing for a different weapon since there are plenty of cheap, effective utility and buff glyphs

We don't see it yet, but once people are able to use full on fighter specc in combat, i think we will see mages swapping decks jsut to quickly change thier armor to platemail to avoid being hit by melee characters, then switching back once they have regained their range advantage

 

A lot of people I'm talking to, even in conversations outside the thread, seem to agree with an interruptable delay to swap, or a cooldown. I should have maybe worded Option 3 differently.

Too bad you can't edit polls after you've made them.

 

My ideas on the subject..
I had thought of a new and separate point system (actually I thought of around 4 different types) and one of them was a point system for handling the cards, combos and deck swapping could be a part of that. In a way it could potentially be a way to involve luck or a extra "roll" or chance to gain benefits related to using the decks including the possibility of 'spending' those points to do things such as deck swapping.. Eg. using a special combo or highly stacked ability would earn points.. Or something like that.. There is of course the need for hardline rulesets relating to Heavy Armor and Light Armor specs..

cheers

 

What do you mean? I thought ARROWS was ammo for bows ..... and No it should not take time to switch weapons, period ..... jeepers crow, I can switch very fast between a gun and a knife ,,,,, unless you have reflex issues, switching weapons is fast not slow,. leave well enough alone .... IMHO