What is going on with combat?????

Expanding my own table, after tests with low-level spells. All-locked deck, max focus reduction with innates:

Code:

Stillness TH EF DT IF FF GU HT
-- 0.9x    4  4  5  6  7  7  8
#1 0.85x   4  4  4  5  7  7  8
#2 0.8x    3  3  4  5  6  6  7
#3 0.75x   3  3  4  4  6  6  7
#4 0.7x    3  3  4  4  6  6  6
#5 0.65x   3  3  4  4  5  5  6

TH = Thrust
EF = Earth Fist
DT = Death Touch
IF = Ice Fist
FF = Flame Fist
GU = Gust
HT = Healing Touch

 

Yea, I generally prefer games where you have limited resources in a fight to games where your survival is contingent on constant healing and regenerating. (And no, a stack of 1000 reagents and 100 potions is not limited resources for the purpose of a single fight.) It simply creates more interesting gameplay and avoids a lot of bad balance. For example, any game where healing is the main means of survival in a fight inevitably creates a damage threshold that you have to cross in order to actually hurt people. That massively skews the effective time to kill in favor of high DPS characters.
If for example everyone in the game heals for 90 health every second, then a character with 100 damage per second only does half as much effective damage as a character with 110 damage per second, even though the second character really only has 10% more damage. That creates a huge balance challenge for the game, because whether they leave it completely open or balance damage deviations and ability costs around the threshold, it still invalidates the vast majority of possible builds simply because a threshold that absolutely defines gameplay but isn't enforced in all characters exists. Differences from gear and buffs that should be fairly marginal can also become inflated to huge importance if a 5% difference in damage has the potential to blow up into double the kill speed because of how much effective damage is shaved off by healing.

 

I also hate healing in combat mechanisms generally, as terrible immersion breakers with virtually no support in source material which inspired fantasy/role-playing games in the first place (sword and sorcery fiction, medieval lore) and almost always overpowered mechanisms anyone is crippled if they do not rely upon. In discussion of life stealing abilities in this thread, the concensus points more to "healing" as the single most necessary ability in the game - in keeping with my experience with healing mechanisms in other games that have it, always the thing "needed" and yet the least realistic mechanism in terms of any source other than games you care to draw upon. Does Conan rely on healing during combat to overwhelm his foes? Does Gandalf keep casting healing on Aragorn to keep him fighting? Heroic/fantasy fiction can showcase wildly powerful magic, yet never seems to fall upon "healing in combat" except in sources derived specifically from games. Yes, I do hate healing in combat too

Healing out of combat, this is different, it does not slow the pace of combat nor keep battles going indefinitely until some healer runs out of magic, and there are examples of fast-healing *outside of combat* through magic, potions etc. in sword and sorcery/heroic fiction so much less immersion breaking on that score. The less of healing in combat - and reliance upon it- that we have in this game, the better for combat pace, ease of balancing other powers, immersion, and build variety (so not everyone must have bloody life magic to be competitive or survive using the same "necessary" crutch). Very many other forms of support role (all without healing of wounds during combat) can be included without relying on heal in combat and deviating so far from sword and sorcery and other fantasy sources.

 

If you weren't speaking in absolutes, I would be agreeing with you. I think there is a PLACE for self healing and heals in combat. Just not one that justifies it being needed for all builds.

In this much I agree with you, making combat a race between dps and ever expanding HP pools is boring. If that was one defense, one way for very particular builds to fight, I could see it. But as is pointed out elsewhere, the devs have included the assumption of self healing into the combat design. This forces everyone to use it, and draws combat out to phenomenal lengths.

Still, I don't want to see ALL healing and regen disabled, I think that is almost as destructive as forcing us all to use it in order to be competitive.

 

More mechanisms to avoid or mitigate (rather than "heal") attacks would be welcome, such as blocks, dodges, and counters (a thrust to the eyes that interrupts an attacker, a blind spell, even a magic shielding spell that blocks an attack if timed well - but hopefully not stuff that just renders a combatant immune to begin with or just heals them up in a flash *after* a great blow has been landed). There are crowd controls in the game, but those also can be overpowering and rather frustrating to player who has no control of their character for a prolonged time (rather than just missing a blow or two). I'd rather see existing crowd controls feel more like brief interrupts rather than potentially stacking, prolonged periods of helplessness and futility for the victim (while of course fun for the attacker). A fight is fun win or lose if you feel you have the chance to land a felling blow, not so fun if nothing you can do has a chance to hit or is just healed up as if it never happened during the fight.

 

Albus, I feel like you've hit the nail on the head there. A lot of food for thought. Great post.

 

I think that heavy mitigation effects should be scattered across the armor and shield trees, so that you cannot just invest in all of them early.

Now, speaking as a regular user of mitigation, I have to say that it should always be buffs and passives. If you are going to make it matter, you need to keep it up. An active ability that blocks the next one or two attacks is next to useless. You waste focus and time clicking and a global cooldown and space in the deck only to have it stop mattering seconds after you use it. At which point you have to use it, or another similar effect, right away. And again, and again, and again. It eats up your combat experience, constantly defending. And if all you do is defend, sooner or later you lose.

Whereas, if the effect is a buff, say, a one minute buff, then you can put it up and THEN do some attacks, regen your focus, and then renew it. If it's a passive, even better, you can focus your deck on the stuff you do to others. You depend on your combat training, reflexes, technique, and style to defend you. Just like you don't click a button every few minutes to get the benefit of your chest armor.

Back on point, though, I think that getting all the DR talents and effects should be deep investment. Just like fire mage players would be understandably annoyed if all the good fire spells were at the bottom of their tree and everyone bought them, players who want to be tough and tanky have a right to feel a little miffed when all the DR talents are easily available at the bottom of various trees.

As it stands, I gotta say that the current armor and shield trees aren't very attractive. Lots of abilities that only seem to be short term delaying tactics (see above), or passives that I don't need (by which I mean tactically inferior concepts for the point value. I mean, seriously, partially negate the movement penalty associated with shields? I checked, my shield doesn't slow me down perceptibly to begin with. Maybe if there was an awesome design for a tower shield that slowed you down a lot I might, but that talent is more of a placeholder, IMO) or want. Putting better mitigation talents in would be a good step, when the devs have time.

 

Oh yes, we need tower shields!

 

From my perspective the fundamental issue the game runs into is that in a free form system every character needs to have healing powers, but that forces people to all dip into exactly the same skill trees, and it makes support characters largely superfluous.

The thing that really makes this difficult is that basically every character in the game needs to have a survival strategy, and there is currently only one game in town for that, which is: Put the HP back. That creates pretty one sided characters, since everyone has to use life or death magic to manipulate their own hitpoints, and it means that healers aren't actually useful unless you run into a situation where the enemies are way too powerful for "casual healing". This is frustrating for people who like to play support, because it means that they are still a necessity for the really hard content, but aren't useful for everything else. The one thing support players want to be is consistently useful, not pointless most of the time, but a game stopping necessity for some few bits of the game.

There needs to be something every character can do to avoid getting killed in a prolonged battle without having to specifically dip into any particular skill tree to get that thing, because it isn't optional. It isn't something you decide you want, it's something you have to have, so it shouldn't be mixed in with all the stuff you are supposed to have a free pick from.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with building a game around an ebb and flow of hitpoints as you go through a fight. The issue is that if that is an integral part of your system it needs to be an integral part of all characters, the same way that swinging a weapon is.

 

Besides these forms of mitigation, I was thinking as well of active defences, particularly for use against ranged attacks or slow attacks which you can see coming with potentially time enough to activate an evasion or block to avoid entirely; this would not need in every case to be an actual ability of the character, but could involve a sidestep or dodge maneuver, but could also involve parries or shield blocks (say right mouse button lifts shield/parry, begins to drain significant focus if held in place but not so much if used as a quick and timely block). But things which entirely avoid damage if successful, such that reliance upon "healing" is avoided.

 

I really wanted to play a mage in this game. In fact I really wanted to play this game. Who wants to play a mage when they die from one skeleton?

Something is wrong. I really think they need to just create character classes at this point, but with the option to have a secondary/mulitclass. Otherwise we are going to see them raising and lowering the magic user all the time because they cannot figure out balance.


The magic user already is limited to only like 5 spells. What kind of mage is that anyway? So much for arcane might. We may as well not even have magic users.

 

How can you get killed by one skeleton as a mage. . I find it really hard to believe that a mage can't defeat a skeleton. A quote from Scary Movie 2 comes to mind. . "It's a skeleton. .it's just bones! Would you run from Calista Flockhart?" If you truly are having problems with a skeleton maybe you should fight wolves or something until you level up.. .

 

Have you played Ryse: Son of Rome? They have awesome shield mechanics in that game, and they work in a fashion that I think is appropriate for what you describe. It's not a power in the deck, it's a stance. You click it on, you click it off. It represents standing in a different posture that provides protection from arrows and so forth. NOT the kind of thing I want being on a random deal.

 

Hmm I've not played that one yet, almost grabbed it up on a steam sale but reviews suggesting the content/story was very brief held me back. I'll be sure to try it when it comes available at a lower price though, curious now to see their combat mechanics

 

Here are a few ideas regarding potential enhancements/alterations to the deck system.

What if the deck system was modified such that the decks could be hidden from the UI if desired, while still being useable? Suggestions below would 1) remove necessity of glyphs appearing in the UI for those familiar with their deck and slot setup, though they could be shown as desired (and would be shown by default); 2) remove the need of shuffling glyphs about during combat or actively stacking them; 3) expand the use of the “charging” system from auto attacks to apply to all glyphs; 4) have the option to make *something* happen when a slot button is pushed regardless of what glyphs are active (even if the “something” is an auto-attack, although some buttons might not be set to include an auto-attack, at player’s option).

The idea here is that glyphs would no longer be shuffled around manually in slots during combat, but would accumulate and "stack" automatically. Players would assign glyphs to the up to 10 slots as normal, but only interact with the slots to activate glyphs rather than to move them around or stack them. A given slot could be assigned to multiple glyphs as is the case presently, but glyphs would be assigned an order priority within each slot such that pushing the slot's button would fire off the first available of the glyphs in the active deck (i.e., if slot 1 has "double strike" followed by "thrust", double-strike would be used by priority when the button is pushed, otherwise thrust would be used, or whatever other glyph assigned to the slot was available would be used). With such a system, players familiar with their keys and deck assignments would be able to push buttons for a given slot to activate a type of action they want (assuming they organized similar types of glyphs in the slot, i.e. stuns together, heals together, etc.) without having to actually “see” what is available on the UI (but would have the option to have it visible should they so desire). Slots could include an "auto attack" as the last option in the slot, so that if no actually glyphs in the slot are available the auto-attack would be activated upon push instead.

Additionally, decks could be set up such that a fairly full deck is available the moment a weapon is drawn. Suppose 10 glyphs of different types are always activated when a weapon is first drawn, if you have no more than 10 glyphs assigned to your deck you would be guaranteed to have at least 1 of each available for use at the start of combat. If you had only 5 different glyphs in your deck, you would still get at least 1 of each type with extras “stacking” as usual (so you might get a stack of 2 double-strike but only 1 thrust). Players would not manually “stack” glyphs any more, but whatever advantage is to be gained by stacking would automatically occur if your active glyphs happen to have more than 1 of the kind used in an attack or such. Players wanting to stack a particular glyph could have the UI turned on to see how many of a particular glyph they have up to hold off using it until it “naturally” stacks up to 5 or whatever, while other players (with UI off) could just use their slots freely while still getting a bonus if they slot they use just happens to activate a type of glyph that has stacked up. As for glyphs fading as they do now, I'd suggest only extras (beyond 1) in a stack of glyphs fade, if any, so that a glyph active in your deck does not entirely disappear until you use it.

Also, the “charging” system currently used for auto-attacks could be expanded to be used for any glyph; perhaps every second a glyph’s slot button is held down before release it would gain power as if stacked with an additional similar glyph, such that if you held your button 4 seconds before release you could guarantee the power of a 5-stacked glyph (without having to wait for the 4 extra instances of the glyph to randomly appear in the active deck). If the charging system were used, a charged action would used the highest-priority glyph in the slot available at the time of release of the button, so even if say double-strike was not avaible at the time you first push the button for its slot if it became available during charging before the button was released it would be executed (assuming double-strike is your highest priority glyph assigned to the slot).

If there is interest in such a modification to the deck system I would add more details and suggestions for how to further enhance it, but I’ll hold off from further elaboration on the concept otherwise.

 

I have seen this sequence of thoughts before, more or less. I support the plan. The thing to be aware of is that this would completely undermine the premise of the "random deck" system. While I and others like me are all for such a plan, we have to sell the devs on it.

Now, I do think that this would be a great direction to take the locked deck function, but that means that Portalarium would be supporting two completely different combat UIs going forward, and a lot of us have argued against that, rather persuasively I think.

So, while this has my full support, I think I smell mothballs.

 

I was actually intending to incorporate the random deck function, to a point - but not such that you start combat without your glyphs active. Rather, the random deck would determine which glyphs come back into play and when, which ones stack up, etc., rather than a "cooldown" timer. I like the idea that you have say in deck design in determining how frequently particular glyphs turn up, so kept much of that in place in my suggestion (perhaps too much though ). I like a certain portion of uncertainty in combat as well as avoiding fixed "cooldowns" and think the random deck system works towards such, but think characters should begin combat with many options and not be encouraged to sit out combat waiting for decks to build up before attacking (rendering victims to such preparation virtually helpless). I see it as a sort of middle-ground I propose, to keep much of what I see as good in the deck system while avoiding some of my perceived pitfalls in the system.

It's meant more as an adjustment to the random deck system than a replacement, but if characters are meant to be totally dependent upon random glyphs trickling in from the start of combat rather than having any options of variety - at least some attacks, defenses, etc. rather than just whatever card first turns up - the suggested changes do rebel fairly strongly against that aspect, while applauding some chaos in combat with elements of the random deck and rejecting hard and predictable "cooldowns" (as does the random deck we have now). Or at least such are my intentions

 

I replied to the OP. I don't think it is far fetched to believe that it is being tweaked so much.

The problem is that mages needed to be powerful. The balance issue is never going to be fixed, but surely nerfing magery isn't going to make being a mage any more appealing. It is already a silly profession as it is. It doesn't feel mystical at all. It just feels like another way to deal damage.

 

I have one that will work... ditch the deck system. We know by this point that it is not working and it will never appeal to a wide audience. Just never going to happen. This is forcing a square peg through a round hole.

It drove me away, and many of the other detractors are long gone. I just check in on this site from time to time. I hope for the success of the game, but I'm not 'hopeful' at this point.

 

Oh okay, understood, It looks like you were posting rather than quoting the OP.