[crossfire] Project: Slow down combat

[Mark Wedel]

Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote:

> I set up a character on tavern... a gnome priest because that is what I was
> trying on ailesse when I commented on this before.

  As noted, nothing has been done relating to spells, so balance in those areas 
gets odd - things like spells likely do need to get adjusted for the new system 
- exactly how is an interesting question.

  But you're experience does give some interesting thoughts and pose some 
interesting questions, more on that later.


> I suggest testing with a non-warrior... not a warrior, for important observations
> in balance where the new player does not have a good armor class.  Melee with the
> priest and his default two-handed quarterstaff is no match for the orc and his
> bow.  The low hit rate for the priest is pretty much a death sentence.  The orc's
> arrows deal out a lot of damage, and getting my licks in is so slow that going
> physical is asking for death.  Has the orc's firing rate slowed proportionately
> to the player's attack rate?

Other than AC, orcs (and the other creatures) have not been changed - they move 
at the same speed.  What I plan to do next is increase HP for both players and 
monsters (starting HP), as the current starting HP even had problems before - 
while the priests hit rate was better, a couple hits from an orc would still 
likely kill the character, with either new or old combat system.  The changes I 
made didn't really address that.

> 
> Newbie tower's kobolds are seemingly not possible with him even at second
> level even trying to use hit and run tactics...  and this is even with a
> priest who can regen grace by praying.  We do not want to bore people to
> tears at the beginning of the game, or no-one will stick it out.  I'd hate
> to think how a mana magic user would fare with their limited mana regen.

  Can you provide the WC and damage numbers for you're character?  These are 
interesting data points, and helps better understand the problem.

  My thought here, since all combat will be slowed down, is that characters 
starting grace and mana would also be higher.  I'm not sure how to fix the regen 
problem, but and interesting thought is this - within the game, it is known when 
a character is doing and action of being idle.  It would seem reasonable to me 
that perhaps hp/grace/mana does not regen unless the character is idle (or maybe 
  rates are lower if not idle, or a lot faster if idle).  In this way, a 
character would not get many hp/mana/grace while actively adventuring and 
killing things, but if he stops for a short while, he'd get it back pretty quickly.

> 
> This strengthens concern about the feasibility of looking at physical combat
> only.  I think it might be tough to keep disciplined at checking how stuff
> affects all characters.  Testing with a character that uses primarily physical
> combat is going to tend to off-balance those that have to use physical combat
> as a backup because they are going to be affected even more than the warrior
> class.

  I'm interested in having/seeing a discussion about how everything should work 
together, but someone needs to do something more than 'we should have this 
discussion' - someone needs to start it, with the ideas of how they thing it 
should work out.

  But this does lead to an interesting question - how do we deal with classes 
that are not good at melee, especially hybrid classes?

  For example, a character that is pure fighter is lets say level 80 in one 
handed weapon.  That has some pretty well defined bonus (wc, etc).  Against a 
tough creature, hitting probably should not be guaranteed, etc.

  but now lets take a character that is say level 50/50 fighter/magic, but 
overall same level (and therefor, power) as that fighter.  A gap of 30 levels in 
combat is significant - significant enough that hitting would probably be very 
difficult.

  And a character that is pure mage (70/20 mage/fighter lets say) would pretty 
much have no hope in melee.  For this character, that is probably appropriate.

  But that middle case is more difficult.  Obviously, that 50/50 fighter/magic 
character should not be as good a melee fighter as that person that is level 80. 
  There could perhaps be some spells to help him out (increase wc or other 
stats).  The other thought might be to greatly reduce how fast wc increase of 
combat skills, so that 30 level gap is not as big (3 wc instead of 7 like it 
would be now).  Maybe also basically make the target that a pure melee character 
should hit creatures 50% of the time - in this case, a 3 wc penalty would mean 
character hits creatures 35% of the time - a pretty big jump, but probably not 
so big as to make it impossible for the character to kill the creature.

> 
> Also, on a side note, how much sense does it make that my guy is going hand to
> hand and this guy can fire arrows with a bow and kill me?  A bow is not exactly
> something that works well for close combat.  How possible is it for bow use to
> be impeded somewhat when right next to the defender?

  In some sense, probably is a much bigger deal if the person using the bow is 
being attacked - trying to use a bow while dodging, etc, is probably next to 
impossible.

  Changes could perhaps be made, but they should affect players and monsters 
equally - players should not be able to use a bow if next to monster.  The 
simplest fix would just can't use a bow if next to monster (and vice versa) 
whether it is attacking you or not.