Combat System Redesign

[Liberty4life]

umm i must say there is slight counter effect already present ingame, for each active day ya get some uber small amount of few random stats

but seems good thing that for each active day player losses part of his stats under condition that he wasnt trainin in his last active day, btw ya meant 8k nut 8000k right?

[Eagle Eye]

why we want to change the combat system because of EON stronger than ours. EON work Hard and gain the GIFT from MD. why not to try in our own ways not the system.

Edited May 23, 2012 by SkyArmy

[Udgard]

Speaking of creature base stats, there were some discussions back then about something similar which might be interesting to read [url="http://magicduel.invisionzone.com/topic/5286-creature-stat-modifiers/"]here[/url]. Might help spawn more ideas to build on your topic

[Menhir]

First of all I need to say that from my point of view there is always an unbalance in our world but only from our own point of view. Because we behave differently and this creates an “unbalance”. I will explain this as short as possible:
If you are interested in training your body, think of any form - it´s a principle I´d like to show, you will invest different amounts of “energy” into the whole idea! As a martial artist I take my example. I trained a lot when I was young (16-20) and I was good - the best in my town but it came a time when I moved to Berlin the capital of Germany. Thousands of people were training there and some of them trained more intense, invested more money (private training) and had more competition with others than I had in my hometown all those years before, through which they were able to have more different experiences. So I started to feel uncomfortable. Why? Because my position in the world change, of course it was only from my point of view, but it had an effect. So what did I do? I jumped on the train and started training more, learned to train more effective, intense and invested a lot money for private lessons which were so intense and helpful that I was able to succeed others who trained even 10 years longer than myself in a short period of time.
You may ask now what my short story has to do with this here? Simple as that - it’s the same principle working here. You desire something and if your desire is big enough you will invest much more than others to reach your aim and from various points of view it looks like unbalance. Others who have not this strong desire start feeling uncomfortable and they will search for a solution to solve their own uncomfortable problem their ego is producing. I say there is a solution to this, but not the way we are looking at it.
I take the example of Lightsage now. If I´m wrong in what I think please excuse me. He himself just said he was able to raise his attack stats from 8500 to 1000000 (is it really 1 Million or 100000?).
“I went from 8500 attack to 1000000 in no time at all.”
No time at all? I don´t think so. As far as I know one thing you did to reach this, was to sacrifice creatures, fully tokened and with a huge amount of wins on them. Some people don´t even have those creatures because they are hidden in the shop and you need shop resets to get more than one of them. This means you need to play for a long time and invest alot money. From your own perspective it was in no time (the jump from 8,5 K to 100K) but if it is like I think then you put a lot of effort and planning and TIME into it to raise your attack power that much.
So there is a balance even in this.
If I have someone totally new coming to my training and he feels, after a couple of weeks, the big difference between “my fighting skills” and his newly started once, he will mostly be disappointed and many people start losing their interest and stop training. They have not the strong desire which was and still is in me. Same here in MD. Some people are in this “game” since 4-5 years, might have worked a lot on training their creatures, they might have invest a lot in the shop (resets) and the have thought about different tactics and other forms of playing over those years. Now after all those years others who are different are feeling something is not correct. Well its again simple, there is no balance here if you look from your own personal perspective. We cannot take away something from others who worked hard on it only because we want to feel better. Instead we should no think in terms of losing something, we should start thinking of gaining something.
Life is always in balance but not as we wish!
Our EGO tries to be on top all the time and if it´s not possible to reach it as the EGO wishes we call it unbalance, it a nice excuse. There is a solution to that but it lies inside all of us.

After all this above I will give some thoughts and ideas which came into my mind while reading this whole post. It can “cure” some problems but the “unbalance” which so many feel at the moment, But as I said the source for this is from within the people not the surrounding.

1.Idea (negative abilities/stats)

There is a balance in fighting and a very strict limit if you think of the whole win/lost/honor construction. But there is nothing in comparison when you look at the stats. In our RL we have that, why not here in MD too. We all have abilities which are growing our whole life and if you put them into words or onto paper you can call them stats. But we have negative abilities too and they grow too if we are not aware of them and try see their deeper meaning. I´d say leave the normal stats as they are and create “negative stats” as their opposition. At this point I have no idea how to call them and how they should work this should be the work of our community to form this.
An example: If you have a very strong fighter who achieved many things in fighting and he is attacking a new MP5 with all his force, he should be reminded that he should be able to attack in a different way 0if he feels the desire to fight against the newly MP5. Reminded with the growth of a “opposition” stat which affects his fighting against a weak opponent next time, maybe temporary but permanently is better I think. Same like the honor idea is working. Don´t see it as punishment just as figuring out how to deal with different situation.

With my skill achieved through training martial arts I can control an attacker in a total different way after 20 years of training than 20 years ago. I can use abilities which even look soft and friendly to win a fight. Look at it from this point of view. I could write much more about this idea but my post is already long. Let´s brainstorm about it .

2. Idea (championship)
Create a championship like we have in all big sports in the world. Twice a year. This competition should be for those who like to invest a lot of time and fighting skills to pleasure their desire for fighting. Let it be something ongoing the whole year. I played another game which was (and still is) badly constructed but one thing worked good. This idea comes from there. There is a championship and you have to fight a lot against a group of other players. There is no need that both players are online to fight. You just set your defence and attack and then you could log off. Your opponent had some days time to do the same. Once both were set, the system created the fight like it did when both were online in a normal tournament. I have no idea if it´s possible to implement here in MD but the Idea is here to discuss. I even thought of opening the MP levels for this. Let´s say MP6 (losing it 30 adepts of course this could be MP7 then) is the level for the participants in the championship. They have some restriction when the fight against normal MP5 outside of the championship (how - needs to be discussed). And a normal MP5 can attack but he should be aware that he is facing a fighter who was able to qualify himself for the championship. A lot more can go in here.

3. Idea (creating things)
Maybe this is a very strange one but it´s an idea. What about creating other sorts of expansions in MD in which people can invest a lot of time effort and energy to fill their desire to be someone in MD and show it in the world. Something more visual than politics. Let´s say housing. The resource system is already there (needs maybe fixing I don´t know I´m not into it). Create a housing area where people need to achieve access, once have access they can purchase (or through a long quest) a plot to build a house/home. From this point on you need drawing artists who are able and willing to create individual houses at different stages of building and once building is finished the whole interior. A LOT OF WORK! But if you think of it as a long term project, were people could do whatever they want, with of course huge investments (time and effort) it´s a nice idea to create something and enjoy afterwards. And I think life is about creating and joy. This Idea is very abstract and hard to implement and sounds to me very huge, but I like to let all the ideas and thoughts out, which I was able to catch when they were crossing my consciousness.

Let´s be open and let´s try to brainstorm because a big “change” always needs time!
Menhir

[apophys]

Vitality is not an issue, because it has very effective counters already (UPs & elems). If, hypothetically speaking, stats were irrelevant, rituals dealing with vitality would have a rock-paper-scissors system:

high-vit damage rit < UPs & elems < low-vit damage rit < high-vit damage rit



What any fix to the system needs to deal with is a massive smash before any counter is possible. I.e. the issue at hand is monster stats (by tokens or by %influence), to which there is no counter.


____________________________

@Rannel - If you only fix personal stats, then tokens would be absurdly overpowered.

In my personal opinion, tokens are currently fine with respect to personal stats; they both need to be scaled down equally. And by a lot.

____________________________

@Udgard - That's a very useful link.
[quote name='Rendril'][b]c[/b][b]reature's stat in the battle = creature's stat[/b][b] * (your personal stat / 100 [u]+ 1[/u])[/b][/quote]
It looks like my concept is simply a better scaling version of Rendril's. Times have changed - in that thread, high stats were quoted as being about 3000.
It strikes me how similar our equations are, though.

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@Menhir - Your idea of an opposition stat does not change the fundamental problem that huge stats on creatures cannot be defeated, or the lesser problem that creatures with more targets make others of their kind obsolete.

Edited May 24, 2012 by apophys

[Liberty4life]

yeah i must say again, that this change we are proposing DOES NOT affect yoar amount of training invested, if ya are stronger nuw than somebody, with this change of system ya are still stronger than him, it just brings back the element of using TACTICS, rather than just brute force which is everythin nowdays, combat in md was created and advertised with moto: EVERYBODY CAN BEAT ANYBODY BY USING PROPER TACTIC (and nut just brute force)

since i still think mine idea is best i will probably make full draft that covers every situation by end of week, and maybe even write php functions

[Rendril]

Skill bonuses in combat have gone awry, they need to be redesigned but there are other elements of combat that need attention.

This is my interpretation of how combat was envisioned:
Battles are fought with heat.
Principles define the rules of combat.
Creatures are the conduits for a player's will and experiences in battle.

With those core elements one can see where combat may be lacking.

These are some aspect of the game that may yet - and I feel should - be included in combat:
-Group/team combat - more than 2 players taking part in a battle (perhaps someone can find Mur's post about the next combat level from a few years ago?)
-Species - creatures have an affinity to certain other creatures.
-Land loyalty - the incorporation of land relations and allegiance to lands.


Interesting discussion so far. There will be plenty of food for thought.


@apophys: Indeed it's a much better scaling version. I don't know what possessed me to exclude logarithms

[The Warrior]

Perhaps if the combat system needs to be scrapped and reinvented to fit the original vision, it could be implemented for MP6+ only with everyone else with the current combat system. This will give a chance for players on the brink of MP6 to try it out and if they don't like it drop back down. This would allow those who work hard to gain their stats have a better idea of the original vision. If a consensus is reached that the original vision was better than current, it could be rolled out globally.