Feedback and ideas concerning combat and gear customization

There are lots of thoughts and ideas here, and many of them have been picked up from others. I won't even try to attribute everything. Give your feedback and add your own ideas to the mix.

I like a lot the way how crafting&skills can be used to customize the fighting style, but this could be still improved. Many of my thoughts below will revolve around this.

I have tried to create a hybrid character with bludgeons and earth magic, and it seems to work out quite nicely, although I'm still tweaking the build. Here, I'm liking a lot how the armor customization works. I'm using leather armor with carapacian cloth straps, which gives a quite nice balance between damage resistance and increasing magic damage, since earth magic helps a lot in defence (although crystal shield is quite balance-breaking currently). Fizzle chance is tolerable, since the melee attacks are also available in combat. Cloth straps make magical damage more comparable with melee damage, but I would like to adjust the damage from spells a little. Maybe it would be good to make the damage it a bit larger for beginning magic users, and increasing it a bit more slowly as the character progresses. Number of points spent on a skill might increase the damage a little.

The xp/skill system is quite ok in my opinion, but I would like to see a combination of xp-based and use-based progress. I would still get skill points from xp that I could spend as I wish. But my ability in using the skill would increase slowly as I use the skill. So there would be both 'skill points' and 'use points' accumulated for a skill. This would offset a bit the annoyance of having to spend skill points on a skill that is not used, just to unlock some other skill. This would also increase the realism a bit, as no one would just magically get fully proficient in a skill without using it; so xp would just
'unlock' a skill and then it would be honed by use.

Also, I would like to see xp being awarded for inflicting damage on opponents, instead of killing them. This would solve the problem of who gets the xp for a kill; everyone would get some depending on the damage inflicted. Of course there
could be an additional bonus for the kill as well. Maybe even killing specific kinds of opponents could give the character a bonus in combat against that opponent type.

The current balance in leveling and xp/skill points is quite good. I can progress quickly in the beginning and build my character, then more and more points are required to gain levels, and less and less skill points are awarded. This allows me to mix two or three schools, but not more. This is good. No-one should be proficient in more than three schools. It will be interesting to see how the leveling will work in crafting trees.

I like where the armor crafting is going, although I'm missing the recipes for helms/hoods and gloves, pretty please? And could we have straps in these too for more customization options? And in boots? Maybe the materials could have slightly different effects in different pieces. I could imagine that for hybrid characters there might be stronger magical advantage when using cloth straps in gloves and helms/hoods, or even using cloth pieces in hands and head and stronger armor elsewhere.

I'm not sure what the mechanisms behind magic are in the lore of this game, but would it make any sense to improve the 'grounding' of the character by adding some customization to the boots? Maybe for earth magic at least? Improved
lightning resistance? Improved air magic with enhancements to hood? I believe it would be beneficial if each character can choose a couple of schools to focus on, and select armor customizations accordingly.

Concerning enchanted weapons. I have a hammer with a sapphire, giving air magic damage bonus. This is cool, but what if I could enhance this effect with some skills from the air tree? Larger damage bonus from certain skills, maybe ability to shoot lightnings from the hammer with a shorter casting delay compared to ordinary lightnings? Would it make sense to add a 'core' to the handles of polearms and bludgeons to give some of the effects of staff/wand for hybrid magic use, with some attack speed penalty due to larger weight? Different metals would give improved bonus for specific school?

Assuming that there will be a gem that gives some earth damage bonus, it would be great if the gem would allow combining some earthquake effects to the shockwave strike where you hit the ground with the hammer; kind of
magically-enhanced shockwave with shorter casting delay than ordinary earthquake. Stronger power for the crush+fist combo if using earth-enhanced weapon, ability to shoot obsidian arrows from the hammer with shorter delay?

Will there be enchanted armor? I guess at least embedding metal threads to clothing, what about gems too? Here I would like to point out, that we should be able to wear tunics on top of the armor, at least leather and mail armor. Maybe we could add some metal threads to the tunic for some additional magical benefits, with some added fizzle rate due to layering. Magical resistance could be useful for improving the balance between mages and melee fighters, that seems to have tilted currently towards the side of mages. Armor pieces themselves could be enchanted also, of course. Plate pieces could accommodate more metal, increasing the effect, offsetting the disadvantage of not being able to wear a tunic? To prevent tilting the balance too much towards melee fighters, maybe critical magical hits would bypass most of the protection? AKA hitting the opponent in the eyes, or vulnerable spot between armor pieces?

Concerning weapon customization, I have been thinking about the different types of damage that I have seen in some role-playing games. If I remember correctly, there have been cutting, piercing, and crushing damage. Cutting wounds (at
least critical ones) would incur blood loss, maybe draining health or focus (or both?) over time. Piercing wounds also, but less so; instead might have larger one-shot hit on health? Crushing damage would have stunning/crippling effects,
maybe one-shot focus loss?

Swords are naturally geared towards inflicting cutting damage, polearms/arrows towards piercing damage, and bludgeons towards crushing damage. But it should be possible to customize the weapons so that the balance could be changed. The type of weapon should affect what attack types are available.

If I create a hammer that has a long spike at the other end and a flat head at the other, I should be able to choose both piercing and crushing attacks, maybe with a focus cost as more concentration is required. Piercing effect should be
stronger than in typical polearms, but with shorter range, lower accuracy and higher focus cost. If I instead use an axe with a sharp blade, there should be a combined crushing/cutting damage. Also the axe could have a spike in the other
end, or a heavy blunt head for increased crushing effect and larger total weight.

Maybe I should be able to choose a metal shaft for bludgeons, requiring insane strength and slowing down attack speed, but higher damage/critical chance? Scimitars should maybe have a better cutting ability but no piercing ability, maybe a slightly better crushing ability as well? A heavy scimitar with only one edge could have a crushing attack without damage to the cutting edge? A straight sword could have a more heavy and pointy end for better piercing ability and less cutting ability? A good cutting sword might be damaged more easily if used for crushing or piercing blows?

Different damage types should of course have different effects depending on opponent. Against skeletons, maybe only crushing attacks should be effective. Against heavy armor, only piercing attacks, though crushing attacks might have
a larger stunning effect. Against soft opponents, cutting attacks would be effective, with high critical chance.

As I wrote in another thread, combat should depend more on timing. Depending on skill, each combatant should have 'vulnerable moments' that could be noticed (some visual indicator) and exploited for larger chance of damage and
criticals. In short, there should be small time windows and attacks initiated in those windows would have better chance of going through. Also there should be a small time window when the attack is being 'prepared' during which the attack could be parried, blocked or interrupted, if a suitable move is initiated during that time window. But of course synching and lag would be an issue in multiplayer. I'm not sure how this should be done, but I would like to see a mechanism for moving away from simple DPS towards more tactical combat involving timing and maybe some cunning. AKA David vs Goliath where a critical hit from a light weapon to a weak spot was decisive.

Concerning damage and repairs. Weapon damage should depend on type of weapon, and should affect what can be done with the weapon. Repairing should reflect this as well. A cutting weapon will lose its edge quickly, especially if used
again metal armor, but can be sharpened quickly and easily. A dull weapon would lose the cutting ability but could still be used for crushing or piercing blows. A large metal hammer-head should hardly ever need repair, but the handle may be broken. If there is a replacement part, this could be replaced easily with some tools. Similar with polearms, although spear heads would get broken more easily. For armors, crushing damage could be maybe repaired somewhat with tools.
Piercing damage could be patched with small leather or metal pieces to help some. Mostly armor repairs should require crafting stations. For metal weapon pieces, I would imagine that sharpening is what would mostly be done, until the
metal is worn down too much or breaks in combat. I'm not sure if re-forging broken swords, as was done for Anduril in LOTR, is really practical (except if some magic in involved). Maybe better to melt it down to recover some of the
metal.

 

I'm going to post here because I was going to create a new thread if there wasn't a combat customization thread in existence.
Playing Pure mage and second character is swords:

While trying more combos I'm finding that stacking is still somewhat important. After a few days of playing using combos I'm findinding that it is not as exasporating as it was when I was locking my deck and keeping all my glyphs stacked to 5 deep.

However, I am still noticing that I am significantly more fatigued playing with combos for the last few days than I was the week before throwing fireballs non stop. Granted the AOE spells don't require me to tab and switch targets, but still i'm finding some frustration every so often when I fail to combine the combination at the last second, have too many wrong glyphs that I need to click off, or because a get a massive influx of glyphs that need to be made combinations.



I know the devs have probably heard me say this before, but since I've given feedback about the less stressful nature of combat recently, I still want to express that I still feel the need for an auto stack, or an auto combo shortcut key of some kind.

I would pay extra for that feature, and eventually somebody will write a third party app that will do it. I would much rather the game handle it though. It sucks to have to install some extra crappiely written 3rd party program that might come with some fun malware.