I love the combat system, BUT...

I love the combat system, BUT...here's what needs to change for it to be balanced.

I played a few different builds tonight, not extensively, just enough to hurl in my mouth a little at the lack of balance. (Yes, I know it's pre-alpha. If you want to waste time telling me it's pre-alpha I'm powerless to stop you. Please enjoy your seat of superiority by making this obvious statement of Durrrrrrr.)

What you have to understand before you read any further is that it's my belief that adding numbers to the problem of combat balance is a fools errand. I'm going to say that again because many people, including sometimes the devs, seem to believe the opposite is true. That somehow if we just increase DPS here and decrease cool down there, it will eventually balance.

It won't balance this way, the game is fundamentally broken from a balance standpoint and as we add more skills and spells it's going to become more unbalanced and more broken. I'm saying this based on my own personal experience of seeing this happen in every game I've ever played that tried to balance a combat system by tweaking numbers. Please just stop and think about it, you must know it's true.

Now then, let's begin...

1. Spells and arrows automatically target and hit other players. I know in the recent dev hangout there was talk of having cover and distance play a role in this. Good. But as I get further into my observations and recommendations, I believe this is going to have to change. (keep reading at #4)

2. Shields will have to be more than just stats. Shields will have to be more than just animations. People are currently (continuing from every game ever made) min maxing damage verses protection. So right now the strongest of armor and buffs are almost too powerful to hit against without using the most powerful weapons (two handed whatever's and DOT magic at range). But instead of thinking about this like some kind of math problem, what we need to do is think about it more qualitative and less quantitative.

What does a shield do? It freakin blocks things. So if a guy with a big two handed sword swings at me and I'm holding a shield...why am I taking tons of damage? Shouldn't I just block the idiots weapon and then stab him with whatever I have in my sword hand? I mean seriously, it's not rocket science here. I shouldn't be taking ANY damage unless something "special" is going on that makes me forget or unable to bring my shield arm up a few inches in front of my body.

Yes, this is a little more complicated than massive spreadsheet that says shield is worth 50 defense and giant sword does 100 damage so 100 - 50 equals 50 damage. How sophisticated.

We can do better than this, and really it doesn't need to be very complicated. Shields block stuff. If you get blocked, you're now open to getting attacked unless you can Parry, or do something else that people with swords do. The point being, it's not a numbers game it's a move/counter move game. At least, it should be.

3. Timing. The internet is not a place where twitch (latency) works. It doesn't work. What I see on my screen is not what you see on your screen. It's almost never the same thing. Which is exactly why when some looks like they're on a hill 20 feet away from me, I'm actually getting stabbed in the back for 40 points of damage! That doesn't have anything to do with skill. It has everything to do with one person using a "best build" and clubbing another person over the head with it in real time.

To counter this, you have to give up on the idea that the game is ever going to be balanced in a "real time" environment. What I mean by that, is that if players can move around, jump, turn to face different things while in combat, that's all great for the ILLUSION that they're being skillful, but it does nothing for the reality of the games balance.

I have a good internet connection, a great PC, and I still get plenty of moments in combat where I thought I was in great position only to find out that I'm now a sitting duck. I don't enjoy this. I don't think the average person enjoys this. I think it breaks immerssion, it punishes people that are trying to use strategy and not just FPS "skills", and it's unfortunately a reality in online gaming....UNLESS you develop more of a turn based system. Then you don't have this problem.

MUDs have always used a compromise that involved a delay between combat moves. It wasn't entirely turn-based, but if both players were actively engaged the end result was that both players got to take turns attacking and defending themselves.

I think we should do this here. (let the flames begin)

4. As I'm being pelted with flames inside the game and out, I'm reminded that there are no active defenses in the game. When someone casts fire arrow at me, my defense is NOT DYING before I kill the other player. This means that I can heal myself, or I can just do a lot of damage to the other player. But it unfortunately does NOT mean that I can BLOCK the fire arrow spell.

The auto-targeting and hitting is easy enough to resolve. But the problem is still much deeper than this. Even if we remove all auto-targeting and make the spells require aim by the players, the damage still can't be blocked. It's just a move you have to live with and adjust to reactively.

This is completely lame for a lot of reasons, but I'm going to give you two of my favorite here:

A) Suppose you are going to the Fire Arrow Monster's Den to kill the Fire Arrow King and you know that the King uses only Fire Arrows to kill his victims. Using the combat system as designed, you would plan ahead by saying "I hope I kill him before he shoots too many fire arrows at me!" This is not much of a chess match, or a checkers match, it's more like a game of 52 pick up.

B) Suppose you are fighting against someone that shoots a fire arrow at you using manual aim (I know this doesn't work like this currently but lets just pretend). You dodge this spell and there's no impact to your character. But while you were dodging, the other player was casting ROOT or STUN (for which there is also no counter) and now you can't dodge! So guess what spell you're going to see next? That's right, fire arrow! Ever heard of the term Foolsmate? It's where you win the game in two to four moves.

5. All spells should require reagents. For those of you that have read my complete volume set on this subject, I'll spare you some rehash and give you a quick summary.

I spent some time fighting a guy that used 3 or 4 spells to stun me over and over again. He didn't use reagents and because I was purely melee, he could unload his bow and magic on me at range. Anytime I got close to him he would just recast a stun and move away. Again, there's no active defense. I had put skill points in the "active" skills that lessened root and stun, but it wasn't enough because I was still getting hit so many times I could never really close the gap.

Anyway, the spells didn't require reagents and the hit to "effectiveness" wasn't enough to make the caster stop using them. Which is really the point of this entire reagent argument. If "balance" means that a person doesn't use something, then why allow them to use it in the first place? Because you're either going to make it so horrible that no one will ever gain anything from casting a spell without a reagent, or you're not. Either way, you can't achieve what you're trying to achieve - having spells without reagents be valuable but not unbalanced.

6. Let weapons do what they're supposed to do.

I created a build where I had a spear and a shield. I walked behind a guy that wasn't in combat and stabbed him with the spear like 6 times using the "puncture" skill that "doesn't care about armor". The spear did like 3 or 4 points of damage each time because YES it was under performing and YES the guy had all the active skills for more hit points and defense, but JEEEEZ. I'm putting a spear through this guy's back! He should be DEAD!

I later created another build where I used two blades. I would consistently attack other players and only do small amounts of damage no matter what skills I was using. Meanwhile, they're all using two handed blades and ripping me in two.

Before you stay "well we just need to raise the damage on your blades or lower the damage on the two handed weapons!" stop and listen to yourself. I'm stabbing people with a sword! They should be DEAD!

Look, if you guys want to play a game where only certain swords are actually "good" at killing things, be my guest. But count me out. This is craziness. I don't care about the speed of a weapon or the weight or anything else. If I walk up and hit you with a butter knife in your eyeball you're not going to swing that two handed sword at me. We need a lot more of THAT in this combat system and a lot less of whatever this damage cooldown nonsense is.

Just to circle back to the beginning of this post for a moment. I said above that the combat system would never balance using numbers. This is why. Because it's inherently wrong. Combat doesn't work like this.

After I had been killed about 10 times in a row I finally asked the people I'd been fighting against how they were doing it. Ya know what they said? Nothing. They gave me a two handed sword and walked away.

Put your spreadsheets down and think outside the box. PLEASE. I'm really begging you.

That is all for now. I hope the devs really consider what I'm saying here as the path we're on seems doomed to repeat a lot of the failures of other games despite the innovation of the glyph deck system.

 

I've played games where if an attack doesn't penetrate your armor, the armor absorbs the damage. The same concept for shields. But that would mean faster armor degradation.

Are you talking about a type of auto-block mechanic? Or active blocking?

 

I'm talking about common sense. There are probably a lot of ways to get there that would be better than where we are now. But in my mind the ideal solution would involve first recognizing that the shield is not just extra numbers that help your defensive modifiers. Shields are not just extra numbers that reduce damage.

A shield actually BLOCKS an attack and creates opportunities that allow you to counter attack. For a big dumb oaf with a two handed weapon that does a Hausssan Chop! (see bugs bunny cartoons for reference) on your shield...well that idiot is about to learn a lesson in sword fighting, isn't he?

We're too caught up in this Weapon X = damage - Armor Y - Shield Z = outcome. That's a very immature way of looking at combat, wouldn't you agree?

 

Yep, I would like combat to be more rounded and less mechanical; I think that will do nothing except make it more fun and interesting in the end. Its not even just about common sense or realism. Mechanical combat might have the aim of making combat more balanced, but it also makes it more boring.. so I'd prefer they find an alternative way to make it balanced.

Shield skills like Deflect could completely block an attack, except they might damage your shield. Enchanted shields might be able to block magic attacks (like a fire shield blocking a dragon's breath), but they'd have to be timed correctly.

 

This all seems like good input for the future. I guess that my impression of pre-alpha though is that the goal is to create and prove the concept of game systems for later build out. Along those lines, I would expect a lot of this to come later. The devs have acknowledged that they are focusing on a few aspects of combat at a time and have still have a lot of work to do. So I have faith that we will see issues with things like shields, archery, and reagents addressed. Looking forward to these systems to be more robustly implemented as well.

 

Sure, if that's all they wanted to do was create a combat system that "worked" and was "fun", I think they accomplished that. But the underlining issues that I addressed above are conceptual too. So far, all the talk from Chris and Starr is about numbers. Based on many conversations that I've listened to, I believe there intention is to balance the game by moving numbers around a spread sheet.

For example, I haven't heard any talk of shields actually blocking an attack and making the opponent OPEN (not giving them a reduced defense modifier but actually open) to a counter attack. I like what redfish mentioned about, having the deflect skill complete block an attack (but I would add the caveat that it freezes you and leave you open to a counter attack). The big question then would be "how do I counter the deflect skill?"

See how this becomes a chess match that requires you to think several moves in advance? That's what I want.

 

I also made a couple of points along this line about bows in another thread:

* Bows should be near impossible to use at point-blank range, because the archer would be constantly interrupted. The combatant would either have to recover a distance to continue using a bow, or switch decks so he could use a hand-to-hand weapon. I haven't tried an archer build yet, so I can't say how this works for players, but I've fought elf archers, and they're still getting damage on me with arrows while I'm fighting them hand-to-hand with my sword and shield.

* Bows should be capable of critical shots that do a lot of damage. The rate of critical hits in general should probably be based on the size of the enemy. It would be easier to do a critical hit against a small creature like a rabbit, and harder to do a critical hit against a large creature, like a dragon.

 

Yea, it doesn't have to be timed so precisely as to be twitch based, but the strategy should be more than about math and dealing with your deck.

 

I would add to the whole bow thing the following:

Crossbows should take more time to load than they currently do and if you take damage during that time you're interrupted and you start over. If you MOVE during that time, you start over. So if I'm chasing someone that just shot a crossbow at me, and I keep hitting them, they should never get to fire another crossbow at me until they get out of range AND they take the full time to load their bow.

 

And the strategy elements of combat is one of the reasons I like the idea of requiring an open hand to cast magic. Or if not required, an increased fizzle chance when both hands are taken, and a reduced fizzle chance if both hands are completely free, or you don't have a type of item, such as a staff, that conducts magic. This would incentivize mages to either have both hands free or carry around staves. They could also do a weapon in one hand if they wanted to have a backup, but without the reduced fizzle chance. And it would be difficult to cast magic with both a sword and shield in hand.

Besides some feeling of realism -- or at least, realistic expectations -- it also adds a series of trade-offs that mages have to think about.

And like the fact that an archer would have to swap decks to pull out a dagger if in close combat, a mage could always swap decks to a sword if he ran out of reagents, and if they implement item breakage in the game, a fighter who has his sword break could always swap out his sword deck and equip a dagger deck. Swapping decks in the middle of a fight adds a lot of flexibility in the game that takes away some of the justification for lax combat rules.

 

Well, more than ditching numbers (I know you don't mean that, I just want to express basically the same from a more technical standpoint) the problem is that said numbers should be meaningful in context, and not just generic modifiers.
For example, a shield should block and leave the opponent, yes, but it shouldn't work 100% of times (unless you're a pro and your foe an amateur). Having a shield should have a chance og blocking blows and each blocked blow should have a chance to leave the opponent open. and this is an important part: those numbers shouldn't be absolute, but a function of the skill levels of each combatant. (A skilled warrior knows how to block with a shield, but also how to make attacks difficult to block). Item quality (which represents things like having a balanced weight or a firm grip) would just modify a bit the base skill levels.

So, instead of having X set of "numbers" and just assigning them to "things" as most games do, the best way would be:
-Think, from a logical and functional standpoint, what each piece of equipment does in real combat.
-Translate those action to game mechanics, adding as many as needed. Simplyfiying a bit if required but without doing so too much.
-Finally, add numbers to those mechanics and tune them as needed.

About the other topics, there is a delicate balance that needs to be achieved in a game, and is an equilibrium between "player balance", "realism" and "fun".

For starters, "realism" and "fun" can be opposed some times. Yes, a backstab is lethal in real life, but most players would feel that an insta-kill from a hidden player is unfair. Also, most battles wouldn't last more than a very few seconds, as they are in real life when weapons are involved. It's a kind of thrill that some would like, but I doubt most would. And, in my opinion, it's a kind of play style that works better in single player games than in online environments.

Then there's the "player balance" but, before even considering that, we need to have one thing clear: Do we want "absolute balance" or "overall balance"?
-With "absolute balance" I mean that every play style is equal to any other. A mage can beat an archer or a full-plate warrior, a full-plate warrior can beat an archer or a mage, an archer can beat a full-plate and a mage and so on... the only difference being player skill and player level
-With "overall balance" I mean that some kid of styles are inherently better against ones and worse against others but the sum of strengths and weaknesses is zero. For example a dual-welding speed-based light-armored warrior wold be useless against a full-plate one with a spear. A mage, however, would easily destroy the full-plate one, whereas the speed-warrior would obliterate the mage before he was able to cast his first spell. No class is "better" than the others on overall, but each has its weaknesses and strengths.

I, personally, prefer "overall balance". I think it's more realistic, more tactic and more fun. Some others, however, could prefer "absolute balance". What's important is to know what kind of balance are we going to have here.

 

@Kether,

Yes, I've been advocating what you're calling "overall balance" on some other threads. There should be some situations that put certain types of combat at a disadvantage. For example, if you're in a winding passageway in a cave, it would be difficult to get a straight shot with a bow, making archery near impossible. But if you have a tactical ground and a straight shot, a bow is useful. Removing these types of situations from the game to make combat situations equally fair to everyone would make the game that much less fun.

About realism: of course. First, its something that always has to be balanced against game mechanics. Hit points aren't very realistic in the first place. Nobody in real life has a pool of health that winds down to zero, and then they die. People also have a lot more peripheral vision, and a lot more flexibility and ease of movement than they do in a game. People are also more aware when someone is sneaking up behind them in real life, since its hard to tell the direction of sound in a game and detect a shadow thats coming up from behind you. So its a difficult proposition to even simulate real combat one-to-one using standard RPG mechanics.

What you want to do, I think, is maintain a sense of proportionality. We have a Sneak Attack skill on the Light Armor skill tree, designed for rogues, and the character also has to be stealthed. This shouldn't be necessarily an instant kill, but it should, as expected, do a bit of stinging damage.

What do you think about mages and hands free combat? Should what you have in your hands affect your fizzle chance?

 

Good post, I wanted to touch on this one part...

Here's the thing about the "balance" though. Forget about backstabbing and insta-kills for a movement because I'm not advocating that. Think about this scenario. You have the current system where a guy in leather with two swords is fighting a guy in plate with a two handed axe. How does that balance in a 30 second fight? It's supposed to balance, but can it? Just think about the bare bones mechanics no roots or stuns or special skills...they're just going toe to toe. That can't balance. I mean you have these two things that are diametrically opposed to one another.

1) Light Damage Weapons < Heavy Armor
2) Heavy Damage Weapons > Light Armor

Sure, I know weapon speed is somehow going to make up for the fact that one guy is in a tank and the other guy is riding a motorcycle.

What I'm really saying is that our baseline for "realism" is completely stupid because we make swords that do X damage. Why not make ALL swords do the same damage? Now weapon speed becomes a lot more important doesn't it? (look don't give me a ton of what if's here, I'm not designing a whole system around this one sentence to prove my point). The fact is, if you get hit with any weapon you're dead, so why make the damages different? It's unbalanced from the start. You're always trying to play catch up with all this other nonsense and it's still not going to balance. So we have to look outside the numbers. The numbers are MEANINGLESS.

Look, take the same scenario above...ya know how you balance that? Without numbers like this....

1) If you have a short sword versus heavy armor you have to attack one of four gaps in the armor. Each attack leave you vulnerable to a possible counter attack so choose wisely.
2) If you have a Two-Handed Polearm verses Light Armor you have to attack one of ten gaps in the armor. Each attack will leave you vulnerable to a possible counter attack so choose wisely.

Now it's not about damage and cooldowns it's about choices. If you attack me with a sword sword and I'm wearing heavy armor, you have to pick one of six gaps to attack. So you make your selection and then based on that I can counter attack.

Your opponent can now attempt to protect some of those gaps. If he has a shield, maybe that covers up 2 gaps. If he has a sword, he might parry another one. So now he really only has one gap that you can get to if he's parrying. Can you guess which one is exposed? Can you risk taking a shot at that gap and thus leaving yourself open to his attack or counter attack?

Of course, this can go on for some time as each and everything you and I do impacts the defensive and offensive capabilities that we have in the fight. But there's no damage to calculate, it's hit or be hit, defend or attack.

 

@Baron Drocis Fondorlatos

For starters, I agree that "this sword does X damage and this one does Y" is complete nonsense. There could be a small variation on it (a sharper sword can deal moe damage) but not by much. That doesn't mean all swords are the same, an ill-balanced sword is much difficult to wield than a high-quality balanced one. That's what I meant when I said that all "numbers", which at the end must be due to mechanics, must be meaningful (and in a combat, a variance on your ability to hit has far more meaning that a variance on damage). So the first step is locating all the actual elements in a combat whose variance has real significance, based on actual moves of each weapon. Actually, I think the only numbers which really matters are attack/defense probabilities (you can aim for a spot but fail, even if you're a seasoned fighter) and they should be skill-based (and in my opinion factoring both players' skills), not equipment-based, with equipment making a small (but somehow noticieable) difference, but not as much as skill itself. Numbers here are only a way to model reality, but they are still secondary to actual combat choices, I've never thought otherwise. Now, leaving this aside...

If your scenario, a leather-armored twin-sword fighter versus a full-plate warrior armed with a polearm, happened in real life and both combatants had similar experience, the poor leather guy (were he naked there would be little difference) would be dead in less than 5 seconds unles he got the heavy armored guy by surprise and even then it would be a slim chance. So yes, that is an scenario that, if you want some realism, is impossible to actually balance.
Now, this is a game, so we want to give the fast guy some chance to react to an attack by the plate guy. If it were real life, the leather guy should probably run for his life as soon as he noticed the plate one, but as @redfish said, that's sometimes problematic because of the limitations of the game. So we make him (unrealistically) able to whithstand a couple of hits without exploding to give him time to flee. Hell, we want Epic showdowns! We give the fast guy the ability to evade some of the attacks and aim for the weak spots (good idea, by the way). If the leather player is good enough he can even win the battle. Yay for him! But he will always be at a disavantage against a full plate with a medium-range heavy weapon. Of course, a full-plate player would be at a disadvantage against other kind of player and the leather dual-wield could easily destroy another kind.

So, we have "overall balance", meaning that no combat (unless identical builds in optimal circunstances) has 50-50 chances, but one always have the advantages BUT ensuring that each build has a zero-sum of playstiles against it's good or bad. We however add some "fun" giving the one at disadvantage ways to fight back, making the odds something around 70-30 instead of the 95-5 that would've been in real life (being generous). That loses "realism" but we add a pinch back by making the actual combat choices have sense (aiming for the weak spot, dodging, parrying, each with its chances of success) instead of just doing the plain old "Attack + Damage - Defense - Resistance".

That's the kind of game I'd like to play. And, of course, I'd like mobs AIs being governed by similar rules, so that PvP and PvE styles aren't so different.

 

I agree with what you're saying. The idea that the leather guy can't win in real life irks me though. I agree that there's a huge advantage to the guy in plate with the polearm...but if that leather guy gets the plate guy on his back, or he gets inside of that polearm (which is not impossible) then what's the plate guy going to do? I think that's where the game meets "reality" and the developers can form a bridge between the two with things like "gaps". Again, no damage or defense modifiers needed. It's all player skill because it's all based on choices. Choices in the armor and weapons, choices in which gaps to defend and attack.

 

It's not that he can't win, but has little chances (and that's why I stressed the equal experience part... a seasoned fighter could easily exterminate a novice without the equipment meaning almost anything). That's the idea for making an actual unbalanced scenario "fun" and playable, strengthening the chances that would realistically already be there a bit to expand the chances of winning , while still mantaining a fair disadvantage that, at that particular scenario, should by all means be there, just a bit diluted.
And yes, with choices being the core and secondarily differential skill-based chances to model the success of those choices (that's why it's important that it's differential and not absolute: if defense and attack skill levels are the same, they cancel each other and it all comes down to choices only) but with any "magical" modifier whatsoever.

 

I think having a combat system based entirely on choices (both planned and real-time) would be amazing. It would be a lot like a Magic card game, only with better balance.

 

With "level" just giving more choices, learning new movements that you couldn't otherwise do or even allowing to use "old" skills in situations you thought you couldn't before... Yes, I can see a game like that working very nicely too We'd need a good a mount of skills/skill-situations to provide a smooth training curve from an amateur to mastering a weapon/magic school, which sould take time and effort.

 

Well I hope you or someone other developer steals my idea and makes a great game then. SOTA you're welcome to use this too!