[crossfire] Project: Slow down combat

[Mark Wedel]

Nicolas Weeger wrote:

> Yes, both should be taken into account, because we're talking about 
> potentially massive changes in hp/damage/speed.
> I would also consider, even if later, the implications on map. If it takes 5s 
> to kill a "middle-level" monster, we probably don't want a map with 500 of 
> them, could be messy.

  Yes - rooms full of monsters would likely need to be changed.

  This actually has some other dramatic effects - large area of effect spells 
are less useful (if the room only has a few creatures, the spell only hits a 
few, and not a dozen).

  But this also would reduce treasure income quite a bit (probably a good 
thing).  I think exp of monsters would have to be adjusted - maybe not the first 
and second level monsters (where killing them slower menas it takes longer to 
gain a level - not a problem given how quickly one can gain the low levels), but 
when you start to get into mid and higher levels, if the monster count is 
reduced by a whole bunch, the exp for them maybe should go up - dunno.  We can 
sort that out as things get adjusted.


>> SOLUTION (from a very high level fiew):
>> Combat should take a real amount of time.  30 seconds to kill high level
>> boss monsters does not seem unreasonable to me.  I think at lower levels,
>> this time will be less (maybe a few seconds for most monsters?).  I don't
>> think there should ever be case (except with maybe things like rats) that a
>> player actually mows through creatures.
> 
> Well, maybe when the level/skill difference is real high?
> But agreed on the concept, it should take some time to grind through many 
> monsters. This could also introduce new fun spells, "repel"?

  Right - in my times there, I was basically thinking of fighting a creature of 
roughly the same power as the character.  If a level 50 creature wants to go 
kill some orcs, then yeah, I'd expect him to move through them quite quickly (he 
will hit all the time, and most likely, his weapon damage will kill one each blow).

  I'm just thinking that at low levels, having to take 30 seconds to kill a 
creature would be a bit extreme - one reason is most maps are just monster 
heavy, but another is that at low levels, characters typically have fewer 
options (you don't have a choice of weapons, rods, spells, to choose from, so 
the character really has limited tactical offerings.)


> Separating moving/attack speed could indeed help. It can be argued that it's 
> easy/fast to move, but slightly harder to attack - must find weakness in 
> opponent's defence, and such.

  Right - especially given the games scale.  If you figure that for most indoor 
maps, each space is 5', the current system is such that a character can swing a 
sword 2 times in the space it takes him to run that 5'.  That seems unreasonably 
faster, and this is a low level character.  So having weapon speed be below 
movement speed, when one thinks about the scales involved, wouldn't be that 
unreasonable.

> 
>> The characters damage was 9, which means that pretty much every kobold (2
>> hp) is killed in one blow, on average, orcs (4 hp) get killed in one blow,
>> and gnolls (8 hp) need 2 blows.  The starting character WC was 16.  This
>> means that the character will basically hit every time (mechanism is
>> basically ac + d20 > wc means a hit, so tuning wc would also help.  Or
>> maybe tuning creature AC.  If instead of hitting every time, the character
>> hit only 25% of the time, that slows things down by a factor of 4.
> 
> That's a warrior, though, so that could be a reason.

  True, but at the same time, this wasn't a totally maxed out fighter - this was 
a human warrior.  I think a half troll or half orc barbarian would actually have 
even higher numbers than that.  And actually, at low level, it really doesn't 
make a difference - all classes are going to be level 1 in 1 handed combat - the 
things that really would change are the stat bonuses.  I think right now that 
stats are actually too important for many values, and would like to go more like 
a 3rd edition AD&D system, where the bonuses are linear - that also allows 
effectively unlimited stat values, since it is now a simple formula.  I'm not 
sure if that is something to talk about as this point or elsewhere.



>>   I think stat bonuses may also need to be tuned.  But I doubt adjusting
>> this will still be enough.  It would also be nice to try to reduce the hp
>> disparity some, but not sure how to do that.
> 
> Make all living things have the same magnitude of stats/skills?
> What about we make monsters have skill levels matching the player's handling?
> So a level 50 monster could have level 49 one handed attack, and 5 pyromancy 
> (assuming the sum of experience makes it level 50 total), and corresponding 
> hp/gr/sp.
> Granted, it may limit some interesting combinations...

  Making monsters have the same effect as stats on players makes sense (right 
now, the meanings for monsters is completely different).  If nothing else, that 
actually simplifies the code.

  The issue with skills gets trickier, because I may be making a monster and say 
'I want its wc to be -3'.  However, it may not be obvious what level weapon 
skill that corresponds to, etc.

  Certainly for stock monsters, one could update their treasurelists to give 
them the various skills, and perhaps even add some hooks into the magic system 
to denote what level the skill is (just like there is a way to denote how 
magical the item is).  But I'm not sure if that makes things more complicated 
than necessary.

  One thing I think will be useful, and can be determined somewhat by playing, 
is what ac/wc/damage/hp creatures should have to be a challenged to players. 
Right now, that is somewhat guesswork I think, and I have a feeling a lot of 
monsters are not good challenges/balanced because certain of those attributes 
are out of whack (monster never hits, or hits too often, etc).

> 
>>   It seems to me that adjusting base weapon damage isn't really a fix -
>> most starting weapons go from 1->10 damage, which seems reasonable to me -
>> you can't reduce that too much without loosing meaning of weapons (if a
>> dagger does 2 damage and sword 3, that would seem fairly meaningless). 
>> Perhaps a lot more lower monsters should have better armor values, so not
>> all the damage goes through.
> 
> Or more hp? One (partial) alternative solution is to up the maxhp of 
> creatures. Even if you attack fast, you need time to kill due to high hp.

  Yes - increase maxhp helps, but I think the maxhp of players would have to be 
increased - I thought that might be controversial.

  The harder part here I think may be balance.  For example, at first level, 1 
or 2 goblins should be a challenge, and if I go into a round and am surrounded, 
I should really die.

> 
>>   But adjusting monster kill rate from players is really only half the
>> problem. The other problem is rate of damage that monsters do to players. 
>> It may be that if it now takes several seconds for me to kill a monsters,
>> I'll be able to watch my HP more closely, but there are lots of attacks
>> that can kill players quick quickly - especially bolt spells if the player
>> doesn't move out of the way quickly.  I suspect if that player to monster
>> hp disparity is reduced, then the damage that things like bolts do to
>> players would effectively be reduced.
> 
> Well, the bolt spell's speed could be reduced, maybe? And change based on 
> casting level?
> Note that, I think, the idea isn't to prevent an instant kill if the level 
> disparity is too high :)

  True - if the level difference is 20, then dying rapidly should be somewhat 
expected, be that if spells or with melee attacks.

  I suspect the problem with spells right now is that most spells do a lot of 
damage, relative to how many hp players have.  The reason is pretty simple - in 
order to be able to kill monsters, it needs to do this damage - otherwise, you'd 
need to cast a hundred spells, and that really isn't very feasible.

  So if the hp disparity between players and monsters is sorted out, and we say 
it is reasonable to cast 10 spells to kill tough creatures, that means it would 
take 10 spells to kill a same level player.  That to me is quite reasonable.


> 
>>   One idea, which is probably controversial, is to increase player HP. 
>> Rather than trying to adjust all the monster HP, maybe we give players more
>> HP.
>>
>>   For example, if players (and monsters) had 50 HP at first level, but
>> damage and other things were unchanged, that effectively slows things down
>> by a factor of 5 (5 times more hp than before).  It also means that unlike
>> right now, where basically 2 hits may kill the player (which if player just
>> gets unlucky and they happen right at the same time and not far apart,
>> player can't do much about it), it would take many hits.
> 
> I'd say to adjust both speed and hp.

  I think if hp is adjusted, grace and mana would have to go up also.  Simply 
because if creatures have 50 hp, and we say the target is 10 spells to kill a 
creature, a player will need to have the grace/mana to cast those 10 spells.

  Some spells may need less casting - ones that are more selective, like holy 
word perhaps.  Also, if the monster count is reduced, that changes the spells 
one might want to use - if you don't have gobs of monsters, cones and exploding 
balls are less useful, and things like bolts and bullets become more useful.

> 
>>   I think under this system, the number of hp gained after first would
>> still be more modest, like in the range of 10.  But maybe also remove the
>> cap, which right now at level 10 or so, means hp rate goes way down - maybe
>> the level 110 people should have 2000 hp instead of the 500 they have now.
> 
> Depending on the various changes we make to monsters.
> Also, maybe we should introduce more attacktypes for weapons, 
> like "bash", "cut", so eg a mass against a skeleton is powerful, but a sword 
> isn't?
 > There may actually be some support for that in the code.

  The typical breakdown is usually something like blunt, slashing, and piercing.

  Other than the changes to the weapons and armor, it really is just adding 
another attacktype.  As you mentioned, support was added for discrete damage 
types, so nothing should be needed there.

  I note that armor would have to be updated here - thus, certain armors may be 
good against certain attacks but not others.  This adds a new mix of things in. 
  But it does require a bit of archetype changes.


> But it will add much complexity to the game, of course - could be left for 
> after speed rebalancing, so you'll have time to swap weapon for the skeleton.
> In the same topic, there is an old patch for "advanced combat" (somewhere on 
> the tracker, in request features, I guess), this may give ideas for more 
> tactical things (slightly offtopic, probably).

  I have a feeling that the advanced combat patch is probably so out of date 
that other than looking for ideas, it wouldn't be very useful.

  that said, general concepts, like I should be able to disarm opponents, or 
parry them, etc, are valid ideas.  I think before, combat was so fast that the 
advanced combat stuff didn't work out very well, because you just didn't have 
time to try those different maneuvers.

> 
>>   Anyways, got a bit off topic, and don't have real solutions.  Relative
>> easy first steps might be:
>>
>> 1) Reduce player speed & weapon speed.
>> 2) Increase creature AC
>> 3) Increase armor value of creatures
> 
> Don't forget to reduce monster's attack, or increase player's hp :)
> Note that increasing player's hp will imply tweaking the various healing 
> spells, and maybe meditation.

  Yes - but looking at things like orcs and goblin, there base damage is 
actually quite low (1 and 3 respectively).  As I think about this more, 
increasing player HP is more appealing.   I'm even tempted to put it in 
something like the settings file (base_player_hp), as that then makes an easy 
tunable for how hard/easy you want the game - tougher servers use a lower total, 
easy servers make it easier.

> 
>>   But before starting work, I'd like to see other peoples thoughts and
>> ideas.  I think this may actually be a very good starting one, as at some
>> point, I don't think doing the solution will be that hard - the harder part
>> will be finding the solution.  This may also branch off into other areas,
>> like if the stat adjustments are redone, we'd need to think about how that
>> works if that stat range itself is redone.
> 
> I think the hardest part will be correct balancing of everything, whatever 
> solution we use :)

  I agree - I almost wonder if we should do this, and perhaps some of the other 
things on the vote before trying to balance everything - it may not make sense 
to try to balance it after this, and then balance again after spell changes, 
then balance again after ...

  But I think we should try to come up with what base values for different 
levels are, so you can basically say 'a level 50 creature should have ... to be 
competitive'.