Hm. I'm not 100% but there may be a use of corruption as a source of power. Don't delve too much into that though, it was only a after thought to the predator class trailer.
Well if you think about it gravity is determined by mass and mass = earth.
I was thinking about stab and such last night. If you imagine a cube it has a point and edge or a face. Depending on which one of those you hit with determines stab, cut, smash. I am honestly struggling to define how we get four versions. Slash and cleave are kind of the same. Unless we are saying one has more weight behind it implying speed vs power.
But then you could argue well stab could be a fast dagger or a bih heavy spear too.
@Shirikuryu@Rune_Relic The typical physicals I usually see are ya piercing(arrows and such) crushing(maces, warhammers etc.) and slash(THE MIGHTY SWORD and various other weapons.).
For all the shield talk I agree I see most of these attributes like parry, dodge and blocking as actives. Passive effects on those shouldn't really be around for classes that arn't heavily evasive as is like rogue kits etc.(so if your built to avoid then even your fighter can get passive dodge.)
As a general rule with things like that and that this is a real time game. If you have played Tera I like how they handle blocking for the most part(although their timing is a little delayed making me take hits through my shield on rare occasions.) So as long as mechanics like that are "clean" enough to function at proper speeds and not be spammable(LOOKING AT YOU DARK SOULS! 3 in particular...)
So basically if you use one of these 3 you avoid it entirely. With block and parry in particular I'd like to see a short window bonus for a riposte or counter strike. Simply because you parried doesn't mean your opponent is stunned for 5 seconds...(again wtf dark souls.) It also doesn't mean your counter strike will always hit. So a damage buff for like 1.5seconds depending on the games speed and overall flow.
It really comes down to me wanting these to be skill based actions. I think it's rather pointless to have mechanics like this be either omnipotent or worthless. So doesn't it make more sense to have them as sort of game changers in that particular fight? If someone with no skill gets insane amounts of dodge or can block for eternity. Well it makes it practically impossible to progress that fight effectively and eliminates all your hard learned knowledge and practice.
The damage types I think will be the standard elements and probably a few unique ones on top of either a single physical type or the split we discussed.
SIDE NOTE!!!!!! I'd say use a similar mechanic to Dark souls( I know I'm dropping it a lot -.-) for the shield side of things. with the resistances it grants while blocking being variable. So all large shields blocking 100% physical and differing %s of the elemental and pure arcana lines of damage.
I think i answered pretty much everything? Let me know if I missed something guys.(and gals if applicable!)
Yeah, stab in concept is concentrating damage to a small point. Like a tip of a sword/spear. (or a point on a cube)
To simulate stabbing in a tab-targeting(?) game, you can factor several parameters such as pierce coefficient, power level, animation(cast time), accuracy(?). If we are to broaden stabbing from it's attack type, it would overlay over other physical attributes in the broad category of physical attacks.
We can say stabbing could be fast but weak, or slow and strong, or even a middle ground. But then the same could be said for smash, slash/cleave.
In reality, these different attacks have different hitbox which is not really possible to implement since it's tab-targeting. Attack range can be played around a bit, but that's mostly tied to weapon, not so much the method of attack.
If they can play with the hitbox, then we can imagine a smaller hitbox for stab attacks vs a wider hitbox for slash attacks.
Other things we can play with is attributes that are associated with the attack types.
Stab - align with pierce, bleed/poison effects, high crit Slash - align with AoE, minor bleed Smash - align with stun/concussion, armor break
I hear you. I haven't played darksouls but I did play abit of tera and similar games.
Action style mmorpg, one of the mechanics is positioning and i-frames (invincible frames). You don't have the passive dodge ability by%, you have to actively dodge attacks which is what I love. This game still has the possibility to do this as they said its a blend of tab-targeting and action positioning.
One game I'm playing now is vindictus(for fun, i don't actually like the game that much). One of the character I play is Fiona, the shield tank. There's no "block" in the sense of % chance, but instead you actively have to put up your shield (in the right direction too) as the enemy attack animation hits. This ties hitbox with attack animation very well, I would be interested in seeing something like this implemented and not a passive % chance of getting a block/dodge even when the animation connects to your body.
Though this isn't a discussion about tab-targeting vs action combat, I think tab-targeting will aid players with attacking, while defensive moves will be more action combat.
I think Lord Sharif said they are doing a sort of mix system? With soft tab or something I can't remember if someone has more info please by all means place it here. If so they could very well do hit boxes effectively while still allowing people who like tab target to function it. Personally I prefer action combat so I'm all for a skill based system where you need to know weapon ranges and attack patterns + how your skills hit and speeds.
Ah I remember Vindictus it does have a decent action system. See I think we have an agreement here action based defenses and counters make for skill based tanking/tactical patterns. If it's all "in the background" it really does nothing but let people passively play the game... Don't get me wrong I love my passives I'm typically a skill focused person with a small list of skills I use like 5-10 + any specialty skills I have on a side bar or something.
Tab target vs action combat is actually a big part of this when you think about it. The 2 systems aren't exclusive but drastically change how a game can be played. While mixed and done right we could cater decently on all fronts.
The stab, slash, smash thing (the 3 S's of beatdown) I see how your doing it. I always thought of stab as more of an action though. I like your set up for the physical damage types in general however and have no complaints. They all fit thematically with what each weapon was actually designed for in the first place as well. Such as the flamberg or "flame blade" style of swords were rather effective at ripping through and causing severe bleeding.
While daggers, rapiers and the like were designed to slip between armor plating or quickly drop an unarmored target. Precision basically and daggers obviously have that long history of having nasty concoctions coating them.
Then maces, warhammers and great weapons of all kinds were designed to smash plating and topple knights. Even a plate helm had issues sustaining a good hit from a mace.
My main question is this though: What about the weapons that encompass more than one of these areas? Like the war pick or longsword.(which was also designed to work as a thrusting weapon.) Or the halberd which often had an axe like head with a long spike on the top. Will they simply be in multiple spheres? Split damage is a thing I want to see it really makes you think about your spread and removes the "OH, $#!@ I can't break this resistance and I can only do ice damage!" scenario.
Some weapons should have split damage types, like an axe would have crush and slash, but others should have the ability to do different types of damage, eg the longsword, if thrusting should do piercing, if slashing it should do slashing damage
DnD typically did this to multi-type damage. Instead of splitting it or boosting it's effect it worked as a bypass modifier. So skeleton has 20% resistance to pierce but -50% to blunt, crush etc. Your weapon does 2d6 damage and counts as a blunt and piercing weapon. So it's selected to function as a blunt weapon because that is the most effective in this situation.
Personally I think I'd prefer the split function especially since we are considering absorption and overcapped defenses. As well as penetrations in %s.
Skills I think would function like this: Fire strike for say a spellsword would be, deals weapon damage + 50% weapon damage as bonus fire. Or converts 50% weapon damage to fire passively. The function could easily be either a basic attack modifier that simply splits the damage or a 1 attack buff with bonus damage tacked on.
For physical effects I'd say it simply be a % increase to base damage type/types. So Brutal shield slam on a Tank would be: Attacks dealing 200% weapon damage and disorients the enemy for .5 seconds. However in that scenario I think you would switch the damage type in your system to smash considering it's a shield.
Realistically people would used a weapon differently depending on the situation. So it would be good if a sword (example) would carry both stab/slash properties.
This innate benefit should be balanced out? Some weapons might have only 1 property, example hammer: smash. Should a hammer have more base damage to compensate or should it carry extra bonuses like increase stun duration or armor breaking properties? Or should we go with hammer just has one property, making it less appealing than weapons with 2 or 3 properties?
As for skills like fire strike, i would vote for bonus damage. So base damage + 50% bonus fire damage. I would also like to see a sort of fire buff that has a duration on the auto attacks, + 15% bonus damage as fire attack for example. But that's outside of this topic.
For physical effects example you gave, would you say a "smash skill" could be used without a "smash weapon"? Like "Brutal Shield Slam" is possible with a sword, or would be by weapon locked to only shields?
Actually having a primary property in many situations can be more beneficial than say a weapon with all 3 of our physical traits. Your hammer might only do smash damage but odds are it's better at it. So the benefits to a singular type might be +dam +armor break or something like you said.
On the other end split damage would be a benefit against well rounded defenses and half way targeting a weak point. So you might not do that full 15 damage in one type like the hammer but you do 5/5/5. So for say something weak to piercing(50% like the skele example) you might do 7.5/5/4 =16.5. Slightly more damage than the hammer but it benefits from armor break which you might not get as much of a benefit from due to your split.
Specific examples though split damage is detrimental in many areas too. Like if something has extremely high defenses all around and no weak point in your categories. This could be bypassed with your buffs and junk though. Or elemental damage weapons etc.
I like your skill example though the fire buff is nice and simple. Would it be duration based or a toggle at a cost/hit or 1 overall cost then on forever?
That skill was mostly an example itself I'm not really sure how they plan on handling skills and if any will be based on weapon types at all. If it's not weapon based then simply change it from "Brutal Shield Slam" to Brutal Slam". However as it's a crushing force attack I'd still make it at least convert X% of weapon damage to smash or it could tack on more bonus damage instead.
Ok. I understand you example for multiple defense better. I think that would be a nice system. If that is the case, we probably don't need to add bonus modifiers for single attribute weapons. Since it will be strong against DefStab and DefSlash but weak vs DefSmash.
As for the skill, personally this is what I would like to see:
Fire sword lvl.1 (duration 1 attack, 15 bonus fire dmg, Cooldown 10 sec, mana cost 50)
Then this skill will branch out with 4 different ways to level it up.
1) Increase duration from 1 attack to 1 second. 2) Increase dmg + 5. 3) Reduce cooldown -0.75 sec. 4) Reduce mana cost -5.
You then choose how to advance the skill, if you choose to put 10 points into 2), your skill will be
Fire sword lvl.11 (duration 1 attack, 65 bonus fire dmg, Cooldown 10 sec, mana cost 50).
If you choose to put 10 points into 1), your skill will be:
Fire sword lvl. 11 (duration 10 seconds, 15 bonus fire dmg, Cooldown 10 sec, mana cost 50).
I'm open to more skill points, but I think a cap on how many points per skill is necessary for balance.
Essentially, instead of static increase of a skill from lvl 1 to lvl X, I would like to see a more flexible approach to lvling up a skill.
Ah i see how your skill pattern works I like that. Variable design in function so from your example either a 10sec burn effect or a large boost in singular damage. Basically a slow powerful hit vs a weaker but lingering effect. Your only issue for that is to balance the max points well enough to even out. Preventing one from being considered better than the other.
While also making mix/matching(I'm assuming this is part of what your talking about?) to also be effectively viable.
As for the defenses part yeah, It really just ends up being knowing the proper weaknesses of monsters and fishing out/finding those of another player. On the other hand you can choose to hyper focus a damage type and still hurt pretty well all around. It doesn't really put anyone in a particularly bad spot unless they neglect a defense entirely.
Definitely can mix/match in my dream skill tree. I would also think that such a system would complement the augment system really well. As we choose our 2nd class, we unlock additional branches for each skill to specialize further. (maybe 3-4 new branch on average?)
As for defense, the introduction of penetration can help alleviate problems with countering specific type defense but this opens up the problem of making the stab/slash/smash system obsolete.
So this requires a balance aspect. If we can get 100% stab penetration, there's no need to diversify in different weapon types.
I guess going for the extreme on the defense will require some penetration. Defense should trump penetration to encourage weapon diversification.
Yes my set up for resistances would technically apply to physical combat as well. However the difference being I don't think absorption would play a part on the defensive side. Your weapon system with typing against armor I think would even it out.
Like due to the nature of these weapons stab would more often have modifiers for penetration. Slash would have modifiers for DoT's and smash would have armor break. 2 of those effectively weaken defenses in combat against the physical damage types. With the split system though their not mutually exclusive either. You might have a sword that's particularly good at thrusting like a smiths custom design or something.
Maybe, you picked up a warpick? Not only is it a smash weapon but also a piercing one granting you a double stack with penetration and armor break. Or a spear with a serrated head designed to bleed an opponent out adding slash damage and a bleed modifier to the mix. Now obviously we don't want to make a tank unstoppable in any situation just really hard to kill =3.
So with that mix of potential mod rolls on weapon classes and types with reduced bonuses with mixed types. I think you could get away with 100% reductions being a potential issue on all sides. Simply changes the game your an adventurer gotta learn even on the fly right?
Makes you think, "Hmmmm, that tank seems to have specialized in physical defenses... I don't think I can get through that armor even with my piercing benefits. Welp! Guess it's time to pull out the firebombs and ice swords." No one should ever be helpless(except well if your fighting a guy 50 levels above you lol.) as getting max defenses across the board for a tank would be a feat on par with being immune to a gods wrath lol.
Edit: Whoops! Forgot to answer your main question! I think penetration should require specialization like everything else. To tell you the truth I don't wanna see anyone with 100%. Really I'd have it set to roughly 70-80% on the extreme end which with everything still leaves max defenses with 40-50% reductions.
SO back to the original example: Ice mages have max ice defense and focus on ice magic. Their specialized with max pen too. Now even though they have little else to fall back on they can still fight everything rather effectively. Including each other. At least that's what I see with this.
It's a fair approach. In the case of adapting to the situation, would you consider the idea of switching weapon mid-combat (example: GW2 had a dual weapon system)?
Some games lock switching gear mid-combat (for whatever reason). If ashes had the same restriction, adapting on the fly would be somewhat difficult. What do you think?
IMO, I used to play a mmo where i wield both a bow and a sword. I would aggro mobs with my bow and as I get 4-6 monsters, i switch to my sword for the AoE. No restriction, no cooldown, free switching. A lot of games I play nowaday require you to be out of combat before you can switch weapons.
Oh most definitely would let people switch weapons. Not armor or gear etc. but a weapon sure. It's an applied tactic why have that archer carry a dagger if he's never gonna draw it? Or why would a swordsman carry a smaller backup blade. This obviously would be a bit different since it's well a game lol but the principal is the same.
So yes I agree on weapon switching it's an arbitrary mechanic that really doesn't make much sense unless your class weapon locked to one style. Incidentally ESO allows weapon switching too. Course they have a limited action bar setup so you run short skills my tank has a kit for the front line defense and a kit for twohander dps.
That reminds me of some tactics people would use in dark souls though lol. Baiting out monsters with a bow cause their AI would make them charge in if they weren't ranged.
This mechanic harkens back to 1999 when Asherons call introduced it. To overcome undead you needed fire based weapons and spells. Banderlings required lighting, Olthoi with there hardened bug like bodies bludgeoning, other slashing, piercing, fire, acid, frost, lighting etc. You could kill a mob with sheer force of will but it would take forever with the wrong weapon or spell. In some cases it was not possible. The first diamond golem we encountered had such high magic resistance we could de-buff him or hurt him so we had to run for our lives. It was months before we were close to being ready to take one on as a party.
Some players would spec magic resistance and high creature magic they were called Greif mages back in the day for obvious reasons. They didn't do huge damage like a war mage but after they DE buffed you to hell and back you were toast. and if they landed straight off on you in group pvp and vulned you for bludgeoning look out for a (or a war mage with a bludgening spell)unarmed melee guy coming at you with a cestus etc.
@Uzial That's why a strict hardcap needs to be placed on the maximum amount of resistance that can be. In the example we had set I think 120% being the maximum. With specializations have a drawback of weaknesses in other areas. We also set a split damage function more recently to combat the exact thing your talking about.
Unless a developer just generally wants you to suffer they shouldn't be dropping a monster with high health and resistances/absorption on the majority of the fronts. Keeping a hardcap of 120% defenses in there with the max penetration rate of 80% even on a perfect defense boss you could do 60% of your maximum damage rate. That's hardly an unstoppable monster but I do understand your concerns.
A mage being good against magic I agree with though. It seems more like the balance in general there was messed up. No dedicated caster should have maximized defenses in multiple areas. It's a total lack of trade off when a game has no proper counter to that.
Do you think passive skills should give defense bonus along with armor? Example: Skillwise you can obtain up to 40% armor. While the remaining 80% is from equipment? Or maybe we can extend part of it to stats. 20% from stats, 20% from skill, 80% from equipment. Thus the highest end equipment is 80% defense.
I'm not really certain tbh. Stat wise could work but if the ratio is to high it makes it where squishy builds could get realllly tanky in a lot of areas. Skills could work pretty well and I do feel tanks and fighters should have passive buffs to things they can take. While casters and ranger should at least have elemental resistances due to their understanding of it.
This also raises the question of racial benefits to resists. As you'd think elves who are generally attuned to arcane means would manipulate and resist it better. While dwarves living in the mountains would have increased fire and physical resistance. That might be a little to much going in depth with it though.
I like that split though I suppose as long as it's limited benefits we could prevent people from gaining to much of a benefit from stat/skill based defenses. I don't like the idea of any one class being unable to get 30%+ resists across the board though. I'd rather avoid people feeling totally helpless against a large array of attacks.
On the armor/gear side I'd follow the standard build up though with robes and junk being weak to physical. Mediums like leather and junk have low but generally life saving resists across the board. While heavy armors are typically high in total defense but may have a specific weakness in most cases smash would crush plate armor etc.
Still with stats and everything it does allow you to cover for your weaknesses better which is really good for tanks. I'd just hope that it's not to easy to cover for weaknesses and over buffing all the kits defenses. Maybe natural/stat defenses can have a hard cap as well? That 20% you were talking about and buffs from skills would be class based so limited to weak in most dps oriented kits?
I'm not really specifying any particular skill. Just a general idea. Since I'm typing this on explorer broswer, I can't add breaks in my paragraphs so It's going to be one block of text. So I'll try to keep it short. If we hard cap defence at 120%, should we consider that it's possible to have too much defence? So min-max will be involved when considering all possible avenue of defence gain, ie: skill/racial perks/armor/stats?
I'd like to think so. It's the spread that becomes the issue. If you can collect masses of resists no matter the class kit via the things we discussed it might become an "overwhelming" defense. My worry is for kits and builds that aren't meant to get incredibly high defenses but can through usage of these mechanics abuse the system and become practically immortal in many categories.
I just don't want that rogue who might special in stab with shadow magic accents to not only be strong to his own styles. But to be insanely resistant to all the elements and the other physical damage types as well. Now sure they might not have a health pool on par with a tank but with that kind of defensive overlay against mobs it would hardly be an issue.
While also ruining the PvP balance for split damage type users which will probably be majority lower dps builds like tanks so they can deal damage spreads as compensation. Pretty much it comes down to only specialized like that ice mage being able to damage builds like that.
30-40% reduction across the board at cap? Sure totally for a squishy build with 0 resistance stuff. They might build good resists against like fire or ice or even max out a type or two. That still leaves them pretty vulnerable to a lot of things though. The tank however might have pretty close to "perfect" defenses at cap but the sacrifice lies in mobility and dps.
That's just my 2 cents on it though. Also I'm appalled at the amount of word walls I throw at you my apologies. =<
Personally, I would like to see a soft cap via a trade off philosophy.
Since we're limited by a lvl cap, if the skill tree is balanced, we won't necessarily need to impose a hard cap on the % resist.
Example: when you go down a tree, the stronger attacks and defense diverse at a fork. If you want the highest tier attack modifiers, you would have to heavily invest to one side of the fork. Thus closing off the possibility to invest in defense. Vise-versa the same.
Or you can split your points half into defense and half into attack to be more balanced.
I guess you would call this a soft cap?
A hard cap I would suggest would be somewhere higher like 80%. Where it's possible theoretically but pretty much impossible without a huge trade off.
It gets tricky when we factor in other variables like equipment/racial perks/stats.
Well I thought we had a total hard cap of 120% resists? Are you talking the scales from stats/race/class? If that's the case then I could agree soft caps imply diminishing results at higher values. So to hit that 80% actual resistance from those things you might need 200% effective resist. Otherwise please explain in more detail when you can I'd like to see what your after.
I wasn't hard set on any number in particular but I agree with the method of defense/penetration. Sorry for not being clear, I just went with the flow.
Maybe we should look at it from a starting vantage of what balance is:
No defense and no penetration = 1:1 ratio. That's a blank state, and we can work a balance around that?
If defense is given at any value, the same value should be available from penetration.
Arbitrary number, but lets say 120% as you suggested. If it's possible to get 120% defense, then I would like it it's possible to get 120% penetration.
Thus a fully defense player vs a fully offense player will both have 120% vs 120% thus 1:1 ratio?
I know I miss Rune too =\. Edit: @Rune_Relic BABY COME BACK! you can blame it all on me!
I'm not certain full pen vs full defense is beneficial though. Typically offenses run away with things regardless of what you do. People these days are extreme on the offensive mindset in gaming so I'd actually cut pen to a max of 80%. You have factors like attack speed, burst potential, CC, secondary effects and many others also benefiting the offensive side of things.
Normally a defensive build ends up being just: Incoming damage - overall defenses = X damage to HP. With varying things like reflect damage etc. being in there as pseudo offensive or CC measures. It comes down to this though. You negate all a tanks hard work in that scenario. While the dps build is still gonna have dps. So unless their the very specific reflect builds that knock back large amounts of damage then odds are pretty good that tank is screwed at least 90% of the time. Least that's how I see it cause DPS - 0% defense = DPS
There's many avenues of attack modifiers but very few defense modifiers.
The major one would be crit modifiers as most games don't offer a counter crit modifier so I can see why you suggest more defense to offset offense potential.
Since we were talking about penetration, my mind was too focus on that alone. I forgot the overall inputs from other avenues of modifiers!
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As a off topic, I can think of some defense modifiers that may potentially offset common attack modifiers.
1) i-frames: timed actions that will negate all damage for a small window.
2) Shields: A buffer over HP that will absorb incoming damage for X time.
3) Debuffs: Possible every attack buff will have a counter buff.
4) Collision block: Skills have collision detection, they eluded to tanks being able to erect walls.
5) Self heal/regen: Mostly for healer class but possible with healer augment.
I like those I kinda consider shields to be in the i-frames category though due to blocking being a timed action if done well. Again Dark souls and TERA do this rather well albeit a bit off. It also carries the same issues and normal i-frame actions like dodging. For dodging I do prefer actually having to have dodged it.
By which I mean if your not out of the way you still take at least partial damage. It's something that ruins Dark souls quite heavily when you can spam roll get hit 30 times and take 0 damage due to i-frames. Debuffs and backlash mechanics would be nice for tanks and would be a good way to help shift their dps/general combat powers in favor.
The longer a fight runs the deadlier the tank and the more penalties you incur something like that? Collisions? I haven't actually heard anything on that but I find creation of walls to typically be used more to troll than actually help out sadly.
Regen/healing I do want to touch on pretty heavily. I'm assuming from a general stand point for classes without innate healing everyone will have roughly the same regen or potion usage etc. So this factors mostly towards build including the cleric and maybe a couple other class kits. Personally I'm going to be playing a Paladin so I think it's a good thing to get on discussing.
If the ratio of healing is to high well obvious issues arise when a tank has that kind of idiotic sustain lol. Do I expect healing to be an effective means to mitigate damage? sure. I don't want it to be the end all for anyone who doesn't get 1 shot though. If your dropping a target by 90% they cast one healing spell and are back at full there's a problem. Really this is something we need numbers to properly scale though =\.
I like your way of thinking for the dodge mechanics.
Combining i-frames with a dodge roll would not be something I like. I would prefer your system where you have to completely move your character out of the way. < this however involves collision detection, right?
So delve a little more into collision, the devs did mention there will be player and skill collision up for consideration. You see it in their mage trailer how she did a backroll and a mana wall was created, colliding with the monster for a brief moment. Yes, you can troll people, but it's an interesting mechanic as it give rise to a bunker/fort style defense play. As well as human shield
As for i-frames in general, I think they should be more related to skill, like if your a rouge/mage and your backroll becomes you turning into smoke as you tumble backwards. This period while your "smoke" will be an i-frame. Ofcourse cooldown is applied
Yes, the above example is a dodge but I don't mean to make it exclusive to dodge and not a regular dodge at that.
Holding up a shield stance to mitigate damage is cool too, but I don't like i-frame this either. I would much prefer an increase in damage reduction and knockback reduction instead of an i-frame.
I hope they do healing well. I'm going to main cleric/?. Will be interesting to see how they roll this one out, we can delve deeper into this but we're already outside this thread topic lol. New thread?
Comments
Hm. I'm not 100% but there may be a use of corruption as a source of power. Don't delve too much into that though, it was only a after thought to the predator class trailer.
Well if you think about it gravity is determined by mass and mass = earth.
I was thinking about stab and such last night. If you imagine a cube it has a point and edge or a face. Depending on which one of those you hit with determines stab, cut, smash. I am honestly struggling to define how we get four versions. Slash and cleave are kind of the same. Unless we are saying one has more weight behind it implying speed vs power.
But then you could argue well stab could be a fast dagger or a bih heavy spear too.
/scratching head. Help
The typical physicals I usually see are ya piercing(arrows and such) crushing(maces, warhammers etc.) and slash(THE MIGHTY SWORD and various other weapons.).
For all the shield talk I agree I see most of these attributes like parry, dodge and blocking as actives. Passive effects on those shouldn't really be around for classes that arn't heavily evasive as is like rogue kits etc.(so if your built to avoid then even your fighter can get passive dodge.)
As a general rule with things like that and that this is a real time game. If you have played Tera I like how they handle blocking for the most part(although their timing is a little delayed making me take hits through my shield on rare occasions.) So as long as mechanics like that are "clean" enough to function at proper speeds and not be spammable(LOOKING AT YOU DARK SOULS! 3 in particular...)
So basically if you use one of these 3 you avoid it entirely. With block and parry in particular I'd like to see a short window bonus for a riposte or counter strike. Simply because you parried doesn't mean your opponent is stunned for 5 seconds...(again wtf dark souls.) It also doesn't mean your counter strike will always hit. So a damage buff for like 1.5seconds depending on the games speed and overall flow.
It really comes down to me wanting these to be skill based actions. I think it's rather pointless to have mechanics like this be either omnipotent or worthless. So doesn't it make more sense to have them as sort of game changers in that particular fight? If someone with no skill gets insane amounts of dodge or can block for eternity. Well it makes it practically impossible to progress that fight effectively and eliminates all your hard learned knowledge and practice.
The damage types I think will be the standard elements and probably a few unique ones on top of either a single physical type or the split we discussed.
SIDE NOTE!!!!!! I'd say use a similar mechanic to Dark souls( I know I'm dropping it a lot -.-) for the shield side of things. with the resistances it grants while blocking being variable. So all large shields blocking 100% physical and differing %s of the elemental and pure arcana lines of damage.
I think i answered pretty much everything? Let me know if I missed something guys.(and gals if applicable!)
To simulate stabbing in a tab-targeting(?) game, you can factor several parameters such as pierce coefficient, power level, animation(cast time), accuracy(?). If we are to broaden stabbing from it's attack type, it would overlay over other physical attributes in the broad category of physical attacks.
We can say stabbing could be fast but weak, or slow and strong, or even a middle ground. But then the same could be said for smash, slash/cleave.
In reality, these different attacks have different hitbox which is not really possible to implement since it's tab-targeting. Attack range can be played around a bit, but that's mostly tied to weapon, not so much the method of attack.
If they can play with the hitbox, then we can imagine a smaller hitbox for stab attacks vs a wider hitbox for slash attacks.
Other things we can play with is attributes that are associated with the attack types.
Stab - align with pierce, bleed/poison effects, high crit
Slash - align with AoE, minor bleed
Smash - align with stun/concussion, armor break
I hear you. I haven't played darksouls but I did play abit of tera and similar games.
Action style mmorpg, one of the mechanics is positioning and i-frames (invincible frames). You don't have the passive dodge ability by%, you have to actively dodge attacks which is what I love. This game still has the possibility to do this as they said its a blend of tab-targeting and action positioning.
One game I'm playing now is vindictus(for fun, i don't actually like the game that much). One of the character I play is Fiona, the shield tank. There's no "block" in the sense of % chance, but instead you actively have to put up your shield (in the right direction too) as the enemy attack animation hits. This ties hitbox with attack animation very well, I would be interested in seeing something like this implemented and not a passive % chance of getting a block/dodge even when the animation connects to your body.
Though this isn't a discussion about tab-targeting vs action combat, I think tab-targeting will aid players with attacking, while defensive moves will be more action combat.
Ah I remember Vindictus it does have a decent action system. See I think we have an agreement here action based defenses and counters make for skill based tanking/tactical patterns. If it's all "in the background" it really does nothing but let people passively play the game... Don't get me wrong I love my passives I'm typically a skill focused person with a small list of skills I use like 5-10 + any specialty skills I have on a side bar or something.
Tab target vs action combat is actually a big part of this when you think about it. The 2 systems aren't exclusive but drastically change how a game can be played. While mixed and done right we could cater decently on all fronts.
The stab, slash, smash thing (the 3 S's of beatdown) I see how your doing it. I always thought of stab as more of an action though. I like your set up for the physical damage types in general however and have no complaints. They all fit thematically with what each weapon was actually designed for in the first place as well. Such as the flamberg or "flame blade" style of swords were rather effective at ripping through and causing severe bleeding.
While daggers, rapiers and the like were designed to slip between armor plating or quickly drop an unarmored target. Precision basically and daggers obviously have that long history of having nasty concoctions coating them.
Then maces, warhammers and great weapons of all kinds were designed to smash plating and topple knights. Even a plate helm had issues sustaining a good hit from a mace.
My main question is this though: What about the weapons that encompass more than one of these areas? Like the war pick or longsword.(which was also designed to work as a thrusting weapon.) Or the halberd which often had an axe like head with a long spike on the top. Will they simply be in multiple spheres? Split damage is a thing I want to see it really makes you think about your spread and removes the "OH, $#!@ I can't break this resistance and I can only do ice damage!" scenario.
Srry for the word wall don't hate me =<
Example: Skill slash can be used with any weapon. But using it with a sword/spear/dagger/etc will add a bonus effect?
Personally I think I'd prefer the split function especially since we are considering absorption and overcapped defenses. As well as penetrations in %s.
Skills I think would function like this: Fire strike for say a spellsword would be, deals weapon damage + 50% weapon damage as bonus fire. Or converts 50% weapon damage to fire passively. The function could easily be either a basic attack modifier that simply splits the damage or a 1 attack buff with bonus damage tacked on.
For physical effects I'd say it simply be a % increase to base damage type/types. So Brutal shield slam on a Tank would be: Attacks dealing 200% weapon damage and disorients the enemy for .5 seconds. However in that scenario I think you would switch the damage type in your system to smash considering it's a shield.
It's a good system.
Realistically people would used a weapon differently depending on the situation. So it would be good if a sword (example) would carry both stab/slash properties.
This innate benefit should be balanced out? Some weapons might have only 1 property, example hammer: smash. Should a hammer have more base damage to compensate or should it carry extra bonuses like increase stun duration or armor breaking properties? Or should we go with hammer just has one property, making it less appealing than weapons with 2 or 3 properties?
As for skills like fire strike, i would vote for bonus damage. So base damage + 50% bonus fire damage. I would also like to see a sort of fire buff that has a duration on the auto attacks, + 15% bonus damage as fire attack for example. But that's outside of this topic.
For physical effects example you gave, would you say a "smash skill" could be used without a "smash weapon"? Like "Brutal Shield Slam" is possible with a sword, or would be by weapon locked to only shields?
On the other end split damage would be a benefit against well rounded defenses and half way targeting a weak point. So you might not do that full 15 damage in one type like the hammer but you do 5/5/5. So for say something weak to piercing(50% like the skele example) you might do 7.5/5/4 =16.5. Slightly more damage than the hammer but it benefits from armor break which you might not get as much of a benefit from due to your split.
Specific examples though split damage is detrimental in many areas too. Like if something has extremely high defenses all around and no weak point in your categories. This could be bypassed with your buffs and junk though. Or elemental damage weapons etc.
I like your skill example though the fire buff is nice and simple. Would it be duration based or a toggle at a cost/hit or 1 overall cost then on forever?
That skill was mostly an example itself I'm not really sure how they plan on handling skills and if any will be based on weapon types at all. If it's not weapon based then simply change it from "Brutal Shield Slam" to Brutal Slam". However as it's a crushing force attack I'd still make it at least convert X% of weapon damage to smash or it could tack on more bonus damage instead.
As for the skill, personally this is what I would like to see:
Fire sword lvl.1 (duration 1 attack, 15 bonus fire dmg, Cooldown 10 sec, mana cost 50)
Then this skill will branch out with 4 different ways to level it up.
1) Increase duration from 1 attack to 1 second.
2) Increase dmg + 5.
3) Reduce cooldown -0.75 sec.
4) Reduce mana cost -5.
You then choose how to advance the skill, if you choose to put 10 points into 2), your skill will be
Fire sword lvl.11 (duration 1 attack, 65 bonus fire dmg, Cooldown 10 sec, mana cost 50).
If you choose to put 10 points into 1), your skill will be:
Fire sword lvl. 11 (duration 10 seconds, 15 bonus fire dmg, Cooldown 10 sec, mana cost 50).
I'm open to more skill points, but I think a cap on how many points per skill is necessary for balance.
Essentially, instead of static increase of a skill from lvl 1 to lvl X, I would like to see a more flexible approach to lvling up a skill.
While also making mix/matching(I'm assuming this is part of what your talking about?) to also be effectively viable.
As for the defenses part yeah, It really just ends up being knowing the proper weaknesses of monsters and fishing out/finding those of another player. On the other hand you can choose to hyper focus a damage type and still hurt pretty well all around. It doesn't really put anyone in a particularly bad spot unless they neglect a defense entirely.
Definitely can mix/match in my dream skill tree. I would also think that such a system would complement the augment system really well. As we choose our 2nd class, we unlock additional branches for each skill to specialize further. (maybe 3-4 new branch on average?)
As for defense, the introduction of penetration can help alleviate problems with countering specific type defense but this opens up the problem of making the stab/slash/smash system obsolete.
So this requires a balance aspect. If we can get 100% stab penetration, there's no need to diversify in different weapon types.
I guess going for the extreme on the defense will require some penetration. Defense should trump penetration to encourage weapon diversification.
Like due to the nature of these weapons stab would more often have modifiers for penetration. Slash would have modifiers for DoT's and smash would have armor break. 2 of those effectively weaken defenses in combat against the physical damage types. With the split system though their not mutually exclusive either. You might have a sword that's particularly good at thrusting like a smiths custom design or something.
Maybe, you picked up a warpick? Not only is it a smash weapon but also a piercing one granting you a double stack with penetration and armor break. Or a spear with a serrated head designed to bleed an opponent out adding slash damage and a bleed modifier to the mix. Now obviously we don't want to make a tank unstoppable in any situation just really hard to kill =3.
So with that mix of potential mod rolls on weapon classes and types with reduced bonuses with mixed types. I think you could get away with 100% reductions being a potential issue on all sides. Simply changes the game your an adventurer gotta learn even on the fly right?
Makes you think, "Hmmmm, that tank seems to have specialized in physical defenses... I don't think I can get through that armor even with my piercing benefits. Welp! Guess it's time to pull out the firebombs and ice swords." No one should ever be helpless(except well if your fighting a guy 50 levels above you lol.) as getting max defenses across the board for a tank would be a feat on par with being immune to a gods wrath lol.
Edit: Whoops! Forgot to answer your main question! I think penetration should require specialization like everything else. To tell you the truth I don't wanna see anyone with 100%. Really I'd have it set to roughly 70-80% on the extreme end which with everything still leaves max defenses with 40-50% reductions.
SO back to the original example: Ice mages have max ice defense and focus on ice magic. Their specialized with max pen too. Now even though they have little else to fall back on they can still fight everything rather effectively. Including each other. At least that's what I see with this.
Some games lock switching gear mid-combat (for whatever reason). If ashes had the same restriction, adapting on the fly would be somewhat difficult. What do you think?
IMO, I used to play a mmo where i wield both a bow and a sword. I would aggro mobs with my bow and as I get 4-6 monsters, i switch to my sword for the AoE. No restriction, no cooldown, free switching. A lot of games I play nowaday require you to be out of combat before you can switch weapons.
So yes I agree on weapon switching it's an arbitrary mechanic that really doesn't make much sense unless your class weapon locked to one style. Incidentally ESO allows weapon switching too. Course they have a limited action bar setup so you run short skills my tank has a kit for the front line defense and a kit for twohander dps.
That reminds me of some tactics people would use in dark souls though lol. Baiting out monsters with a bow cause their AI would make them charge in if they weren't ranged.
Some players would spec magic resistance and high creature magic they were called Greif mages back in the day for obvious reasons. They didn't do huge damage like a war mage but after they DE buffed you to hell and back you were toast. and if they landed straight off on you in group pvp and vulned you for bludgeoning look out for a (or a war mage with a bludgening spell)unarmed melee guy coming at you with a cestus etc.
That's why a strict hardcap needs to be placed on the maximum amount of resistance that can be. In the example we had set I think 120% being the maximum. With specializations have a drawback of weaknesses in other areas. We also set a split damage function more recently to combat the exact thing your talking about.
Unless a developer just generally wants you to suffer they shouldn't be dropping a monster with high health and resistances/absorption on the majority of the fronts. Keeping a hardcap of 120% defenses in there with the max penetration rate of 80% even on a perfect defense boss you could do 60% of your maximum damage rate. That's hardly an unstoppable monster but I do understand your concerns.
A mage being good against magic I agree with though. It seems more like the balance in general there was messed up. No dedicated caster should have maximized defenses in multiple areas. It's a total lack of trade off when a game has no proper counter to that.
This also raises the question of racial benefits to resists. As you'd think elves who are generally attuned to arcane means would manipulate and resist it better. While dwarves living in the mountains would have increased fire and physical resistance. That might be a little to much going in depth with it though.
I like that split though I suppose as long as it's limited benefits we could prevent people from gaining to much of a benefit from stat/skill based defenses. I don't like the idea of any one class being unable to get 30%+ resists across the board though. I'd rather avoid people feeling totally helpless against a large array of attacks.
On the armor/gear side I'd follow the standard build up though with robes and junk being weak to physical. Mediums like leather and junk have low but generally life saving resists across the board. While heavy armors are typically high in total defense but may have a specific weakness in most cases smash would crush plate armor etc.
Still with stats and everything it does allow you to cover for your weaknesses better which is really good for tanks. I'd just hope that it's not to easy to cover for weaknesses and over buffing all the kits defenses. Maybe natural/stat defenses can have a hard cap as well? That 20% you were talking about and buffs from skills would be class based so limited to weak in most dps oriented kits?
I just don't want that rogue who might special in stab with shadow magic accents to not only be strong to his own styles. But to be insanely resistant to all the elements and the other physical damage types as well. Now sure they might not have a health pool on par with a tank but with that kind of defensive overlay against mobs it would hardly be an issue.
While also ruining the PvP balance for split damage type users which will probably be majority lower dps builds like tanks so they can deal damage spreads as compensation. Pretty much it comes down to only specialized like that ice mage being able to damage builds like that.
30-40% reduction across the board at cap? Sure totally for a squishy build with 0 resistance stuff. They might build good resists against like fire or ice or even max out a type or two. That still leaves them pretty vulnerable to a lot of things though. The tank however might have pretty close to "perfect" defenses at cap but the sacrifice lies in mobility and dps.
That's just my 2 cents on it though. Also I'm appalled at the amount of word walls I throw at you my apologies. =<
Since we're limited by a lvl cap, if the skill tree is balanced, we won't necessarily need to impose a hard cap on the % resist.
Example: when you go down a tree, the stronger attacks and defense diverse at a fork. If you want the highest tier attack modifiers, you would have to heavily invest to one side of the fork. Thus closing off the possibility to invest in defense. Vise-versa the same.
Or you can split your points half into defense and half into attack to be more balanced.
I guess you would call this a soft cap?
A hard cap I would suggest would be somewhere higher like 80%. Where it's possible theoretically but pretty much impossible without a huge trade off.
It gets tricky when we factor in other variables like equipment/racial perks/stats.
Maybe we should look at it from a starting vantage of what balance is:
No defense and no penetration = 1:1 ratio. That's a blank state, and we can work a balance around that?
If defense is given at any value, the same value should be available from penetration.
Arbitrary number, but lets say 120% as you suggested. If it's possible to get 120% defense, then I would like it it's possible to get 120% penetration.
Thus a fully defense player vs a fully offense player will both have 120% vs 120% thus 1:1 ratio?
EDIT: P.S. Rune_Relic is missed dearly.
I'm not certain full pen vs full defense is beneficial though. Typically offenses run away with things regardless of what you do. People these days are extreme on the offensive mindset in gaming so I'd actually cut pen to a max of 80%. You have factors like attack speed, burst potential, CC, secondary effects and many others also benefiting the offensive side of things.
Normally a defensive build ends up being just: Incoming damage - overall defenses = X damage to HP. With varying things like reflect damage etc. being in there as pseudo offensive or CC measures. It comes down to this though. You negate all a tanks hard work in that scenario. While the dps build is still gonna have dps.
So unless their the very specific reflect builds that knock back large amounts of damage then odds are pretty good that tank is screwed at least 90% of the time. Least that's how I see it cause DPS - 0% defense = DPS
There's many avenues of attack modifiers but very few defense modifiers.
The major one would be crit modifiers as most games don't offer a counter crit modifier so I can see why you suggest more defense to offset offense potential.
Since we were talking about penetration, my mind was too focus on that alone. I forgot the overall inputs from other avenues of modifiers!
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As a off topic, I can think of some defense modifiers that may potentially offset common attack modifiers.
1) i-frames: timed actions that will negate all damage for a small window.
2) Shields: A buffer over HP that will absorb incoming damage for X time.
3) Debuffs: Possible every attack buff will have a counter buff.
4) Collision block: Skills have collision detection, they eluded to tanks being able to erect walls.
5) Self heal/regen: Mostly for healer class but possible with healer augment.
By which I mean if your not out of the way you still take at least partial damage. It's something that ruins Dark souls quite heavily when you can spam roll get hit 30 times and take 0 damage due to i-frames. Debuffs and backlash mechanics would be nice for tanks and would be a good way to help shift their dps/general combat powers in favor.
The longer a fight runs the deadlier the tank and the more penalties you incur something like that? Collisions? I haven't actually heard anything on that but I find creation of walls to typically be used more to troll than actually help out sadly.
Regen/healing I do want to touch on pretty heavily. I'm assuming from a general stand point for classes without innate healing everyone will have roughly the same regen or potion usage etc. So this factors mostly towards build including the cleric and maybe a couple other class kits. Personally I'm going to be playing a Paladin so I think it's a good thing to get on discussing.
If the ratio of healing is to high well obvious issues arise when a tank has that kind of idiotic sustain lol. Do I expect healing to be an effective means to mitigate damage? sure. I don't want it to be the end all for anyone who doesn't get 1 shot though. If your dropping a target by 90% they cast one healing spell and are back at full there's a problem. Really this is something we need numbers to properly scale though =\.
Combining i-frames with a dodge roll would not be something I like. I would prefer your system where you have to completely move your character out of the way. < this however involves collision detection, right?
So delve a little more into collision, the devs did mention there will be player and skill collision up for consideration. You see it in their mage trailer how she did a backroll and a mana wall was created, colliding with the monster for a brief moment. Yes, you can troll people, but it's an interesting mechanic as it give rise to a bunker/fort style defense play. As well as human shield
As for i-frames in general, I think they should be more related to skill, like if your a rouge/mage and your backroll becomes you turning into smoke as you tumble backwards. This period while your "smoke" will be an i-frame. Ofcourse cooldown is applied
Yes, the above example is a dodge but I don't mean to make it exclusive to dodge and not a regular dodge at that.
Holding up a shield stance to mitigate damage is cool too, but I don't like i-frame this either. I would much prefer an increase in damage reduction and knockback reduction instead of an i-frame.
I hope they do healing well. I'm going to main cleric/?. Will be interesting to see how they roll this one out, we can delve deeper into this but we're already outside this thread topic lol. New thread?