Combat talk

[Ary Endleg]

Most of this is coming from http://magicduel.com/pages/help.info.php?p=creatureabilities so lets start.

 

Defend
The creature will increase the target’s defence attribute for the next round based on its power attribute.
It is a temporary effect; it starts the next round and lasts for 1 round.

Martyrism / Protect
The creature gives the target creature a huge defence bonus based on the power attribute. In return the creature sacrifices a portion of its own vitality.
It is a temporary effect; it lasts for 2 rounds and every time it is used it will give the initial bonus.

 

 

Sounds pretty useless to me unless you want to burn VE on purpose. Martyr ability plus the fact that power stat boosting defense stat can't compete with attack stat and weaken ability makes Defend totally useless. Why Defend doesn't work in exclusive hybrid mode (1)? With all the millions and millions of stats this kind of reduction would just level the playfield! Even better I would dare to make it instead of boosting defense to prevent percentage of incoming damage for next turn based on power stat which would have logarithmic scale(2). Why doesn't any higher tier creature (maxed) have Defend ability and why doesn't any creature at all have Defend Multiple?

 

(1) Absolute or percentage boost depending which is higher; when I say absolute I mean on absolute minimum which would be defined by creature's stat without addition of other stats from player. See how some shop items in permanent boosters work. For contrast, inclusive hybrid mode is Aimed hit which sums both percentage and absolute.

(2) Scaling of the percentage part would be done according to logarithmic value of related stat.

 

Heal
The creature will restore vitality to the target creature based on its power attribute.

Regenerate
This ability will make the target creature recover a percentage of its current vitality the next two rounds based on power attribute of caster.
This cannot be greater than the maximum vitality.
It is a temporary effect; it starts the next round and lasts for 2 rounds.

 

Now this is a bit better but... why not make "overheal" ability which wouldn't be capped by creature max VE but rather cap would rise in correspondence to players personal VE? Effectively able to heal not only creature as outcome of fight but also player himself. This ability would also enable victory outcome way more easily than current Heal on it's own. Scroll down for another question regarding Heal.

 

Weaken Defence
The creature will lower the target’s defence attribute for the next two rounds.
The effectiveness is based on the attack attribute.
It is a temporary effect; it starts the next round and lasts for 2 rounds.

 

With stats in range of millions is it really smart to have Weaken work as it works now? To keep stacking debuff on enemy indefinitely? If person has negative stats, once combat starts it acts as having 0 stats, so why then in hell can defense stat go negative due to this ability? What is there to lower if you don't have any defence left to lose? Moreover wouldn't it be better to have Weaken work as exclusive hybrid ability (scroll up for explanation) in relation to current defense stat? Which would mean that each round target would lose let's say 30% of it's current defense based on attack stat of creature that performs Weaken, this would lower down the multiplicative damage stacking of Weaken delving into the negative(concept that doesn't exists anywhere else in MD and where it does it is nullified).

 

All
The creature selects all creatures available of the target player.
It is often the case that clumsy high level creatures with powerful attacks, have this devastating option, or high level healers.

 

 

First of all, where are those high level healers, we don't even have healer with target Multiple? I want Barren soul lvl 3, let's call him Foregone Soul :P

 

Secondly, why each time you want to obliterate enemy, target All is so OP that it is autopicked? Why it doesn't have any downside to it to balance it out? If you really want to do some damage you won't be picking creatures that can't target All, ever!

 

For those of you who are pointing out at freeze, "But you could totally freeze such creature." yes... [spoiler]Did I mention that the very same creature comes with antifreeze auras? Max antifreezes in ritual is 21 and max freezes are 9, on the bright side it's much easier to get this 21 than 9, so freezing isn't the counter to it and it definitely isn't a "skillful" counter.[/spoiler]

Edited June 13, 2014 by Ary Endleg

[Syrian]

on the topic of freeze, its also worth noting that auras apply attacking player first and if you attack with antifreeze auras you have no chance against freezing because your antifreeze goes before the freeze and makes it entirely useless anyways

 

Sy

[Ary Endleg]

on the topic of freeze, its also worth noting that auras apply attacking player first and if you attack with antifreeze auras you have no chance against freezing because your antifreeze goes before the freeze and makes it entirely useless anyways

 

Sy

 

and antifreeze tokens come after auras....

[Rophs]

 

and antifreeze tokens come after auras....

Using a 'premium feature' to balance out something such as that when there are better solutions seems silly.

 

Perhaps have auras/tokens apply in different orders depending on the auras

 

freezes > antifreezes > vampires > statboosts

1. Freezes hit, disabling creatures and their respective auras
2. Antifreezes remove freezes, a frozen creature should be able to unfreeze itself
3. skillvampire / vampiricaura steal skills and vit
4. Statboosts apply, amplifying the effects of skillvampire

 

I don't dabble in combat as much as I should, if this idea is completely and utterly dumb please don't just tell me that is is. Explain why.

[Ary Endleg]

The thing is... (I made mistake in first post so here is the actual number) you can field 4 creatures with single Freeze and 2 creatures with Doublefreeze which makes a max of 8 freezes you can bring into combat (and not 9). Creats with Doublefreeze are also super rare, which means that best majority can do is 6 freezes. Antifreezes can be deployed 15 from creats (9 come from rare creat that has tripleantifreeze and other 6 come from doubleantifreeze), 6 from tokens that have 50% chance to unfreeze and another 6 from tokens that always work if you have specific principles. This means max number of antifreeze is 27 (not 21).

 

Considering the above mentioned orders of battle (how it currently works), in short it means that if you have tokens you're pretty much safe from Freeze entirely no matter what especially if you have principle antifreeze token working. I must admit I haven't specifically tried to test it in practice since I never had means to do it (didn't had antifreeze tokens nor freeze aura) so I'm following common logic of what I know and how I observed the auras and tokens work in combat from logs that I can read, but I'm still highly certain that I'm not wrong. This means if you have tokens you are immune from Freeze entirely regardless of you being attacker or defender, OPness of premium feature eh?

 

Lets consider you don't have tokens but lets deploy above max numbers without them, 15 antifreeze (with that you can also deploy 3 freezes) on one side and 8 freeze (with that you can also deploy 4 antifreezes) on other side. If you attack with those 15 antifreeze, they won't matter since enemy freeze comes after they are used which means... enemy can pretty much freeze all of your creatures and unfreeze all of his since his 4 antifreeze come after your 3 freezes, of course if luck says so. Reverse scenario is that you attack with 8 freeze setup, max potential outcome, it's highly possible that everything you freeze will be unfrozen by enemy and he can if he is lucky freeze 3 of your creats. For those of you who don't know... if freeze is applied to already frozen creature, which can happen, nothing happens, same goes for antifreeze, basically it's all luck it doesn't target only "viable" targets but any creature regardless of their frozen or not status.

 

Now obviously this puts defender into favoring position, I don't see anything bad about that, after all defender doesn't get juicy combo applied, but this means antifreeze aura is useless in attack and freeze is too strong in defense if tokens aren't in play, so this system is working badly. However above doesn't really matter because antifreeze tokens will be in play and because they not only go last but also unlike auras aren't applied randomly but directly to the creature that has it, auras pick one of your creats to unfreeze and can unfreeze same unfrozen creature over again.

 

Now you made me wonder Rophs, I'll be testing that... vampiricaura/ve-tokens, skillvamp/boost-auras&boost-tokens. But so far by following the above logic, #2 has problem due to tokens, #3 and #4 need to swap places, if you use SW stats will be slightly in your favor but you won't have boost auras, or if you do the enemy will have more of them and if that multiplicative boost happens after skillvampire, you just made SWs completely useless. That's why I would put #4 in front of #3, you just have to apply vampiric auras after boost auras and boost tokens, regardless if it's stat or ve boost, otherwise those vamp auras don't do their job.

 

Now, somebody tell me if I'm wrong about something.

 

EDIT: Just tested vampiricaura/ve-tokens, aura is applied after token bonus is calculated, which means it's all good, I think same goes for skillvamp, but freezes I'm highly skeptical.

Edited June 14, 2014 by Ary Endleg

[Chewett]

This discussion is highly interesting as the combat system does need some changes. Currently you need to remember that tokens and auras were bolted onto the original system and not designed with it. So they are applied in waves and are not nesscarily logically designed.

There is a school of thought that says their application should be merged rather than how they work now. This will require some more unit combat tests to be written and will be summers work too. I want to be able to write bots that can attack and report back information in more coder friendly way. The bot works as a proof of concept and will be integrated into MD. This does not mean we will have more NPC's although there is a possibility once coded in, they will be used for testing.

Edited June 14, 2014 by Chewett

[Ary Endleg]

This makes me wonder how is development done behind the scene. I have to ask are there any written concepts, models, semantic maps, diagrams and so on? How is development organized, documented, performed, cooperated and communicated? It all seems so ad-hoc to me, no models means no ability to simulate tests, leading to live testing or just leaving stuff as they are until something breaks and quality of such outcome is not what it should be.

[Chewett]

This makes me wonder how is development done behind the scene. I have to ask are there any written concepts, models, semantic maps, diagrams and so on? How is development organized, documented, performed, cooperated and communicated? It all seems so ad-hoc to me, no models means no ability to simulate tests, leading to live testing or just leaving stuff as they are until something breaks and quality of such outcome is not what it should be.

 

 

I replied to this as a new topic for discussion. See: http://magicduel.invisionzone.com/topic/15495-how-md-evolves/

[Chewett]

I like this topic, people should reply.

[Rophs]

wall of text quote in spoiler tag:[spoiler]

The thing is... (I made mistake in first post so here is the actual number) you can field 4 creatures with single Freeze and 2 creatures with Doublefreeze which makes a max of 8 freezes you can bring into combat (and not 9). Creats with Doublefreeze are also super rare, which means that best majority can do is 6 freezes. Antifreezes can be deployed 15 from creats (9 come from rare creat that has tripleantifreeze and other 6 come from doubleantifreeze), 6 from tokens that have 50% chance to unfreeze and another 6 from tokens that always work if you have specific principles. This means max number of antifreeze is 27 (not 21).

 

Considering the above mentioned orders of battle (how it currently works), in short it means that if you have tokens you're pretty much safe from Freeze entirely no matter what especially if you have principle antifreeze token working. I must admit I haven't specifically tried to test it in practice since I never had means to do it (didn't had antifreeze tokens nor freeze aura) so I'm following common logic of what I know and how I observed the auras and tokens work in combat from logs that I can read, but I'm still highly certain that I'm not wrong. This means if you have tokens you are immune from Freeze entirely regardless of you being attacker or defender, OPness of premium feature eh?

 

Lets consider you don't have tokens but lets deploy above max numbers without them, 15 antifreeze (with that you can also deploy 3 freezes) on one side and 8 freeze (with that you can also deploy 4 antifreezes) on other side. If you attack with those 15 antifreeze, they won't matter since enemy freeze comes after they are used which means... enemy can pretty much freeze all of your creatures and unfreeze all of his since his 4 antifreeze come after your 3 freezes, of course if luck says so. Reverse scenario is that you attack with 8 freeze setup, max potential outcome, it's highly possible that everything you freeze will be unfrozen by enemy and he can if he is lucky freeze 3 of your creats. For those of you who don't know... if freeze is applied to already frozen creature, which can happen, nothing happens, same goes for antifreeze, basically it's all luck it doesn't target only "viable" targets but any creature regardless of their frozen or not status.

 

Now obviously this puts defender into favoring position, I don't see anything bad about that, after all defender doesn't get juicy combo applied, but this means antifreeze aura is useless in attack and freeze is too strong in defense if tokens aren't in play, so this system is working badly. However above doesn't really matter because antifreeze tokens will be in play and because they not only go last but also unlike auras aren't applied randomly but directly to the creature that has it, auras pick one of your creats to unfreeze and can unfreeze same unfrozen creature over again.

 

Now you made me wonder Rophs, I'll be testing that... vampiricaura/ve-tokens, skillvamp/boost-auras&boost-tokens. But so far by following the above logic, #2 has problem due to tokens, #3 and #4 need to swap places, if you use SW stats will be slightly in your favor but you won't have boost auras, or if you do the enemy will have more of them and if that multiplicative boost happens after skillvampire, you just made SWs completely useless. That's why I would put #4 in front of #3, you just have to apply vampiric auras after boost auras and boost tokens, regardless if it's stat or ve boost, otherwise those vamp auras don't do their job.

 

Now, somebody tell me if I'm wrong about something.

 

EDIT: Just tested vampiricaura/ve-tokens, aura is applied after token bonus is calculated, which means it's all good, I think same goes for skillvamp, but freezes I'm highly skeptical.

[/spoiler]

 

The reason I'd prefer for vampires to be before boosts is so that if for example I battle someone much stronger than me I can make the battle more 'fair' and then turn the tide in my favor via creatureboost and the likes. A slightly revised order is below:

 

player influence > tokens > combo > antifreezes > freezes > vampires > boosts

 

1. player influence in the form of stats and vit is applied to the creatures
2. tokens other than antifreeze are applied to the creatures
3. combo vit is applied to the creatures 
4. antifreezes apply, each antifreeze negates one potential freeze per creature
5. freezes apply, frozen creatures' auras do not apply, you can set freeze targets similar to other eg all, multiple, dying, random (although for obvious reasons probably not all)
6. vampires turn the tide
7. boosts scape the field

 

I don't dabble in combat as much as I should, if this idea is completely and utterly dumb please don't just tell me that is is. Explain why, if you don't then we're just toddlers screaming at one another. 

[Ary Endleg]

Ok.... let me try to explain again why that isn't a good idea and why it won't achieve what you want it to achieve.

 

Whole point in vampires(specifically skillvamp) is to get advantage over stronger opponent, in other words it's not made to be used against weaker opponent. Also keep in mind how much influence is used, if your "stronger" opponent uses 0% influence and you go 100% influence along with your skillvamp you just fell in your own hole. :p The reason why your idea won't work against stronger opponent and make battle more "fair" is because you just used 3 slots for skillvamp, meaning you have 3 more slots for boosts while enemy has 6 and he will use them which makes his stats again higher than yours and skillvamp becomes completely useless.

 

Problem isn't in vampire auras, they are working fine, I just had a hunch that they might not work well due to tokens which as Chew said are "bolted" onto the combat. Tokens come before vampires so it's all fine. What is not fine is freeze/antifreeze system, especially antifreeze tokens! Current fight order is all fine, but freeze system needs to be redone, probably would be nice to make it be affected by initiative which could partially solve the issue, but super high number of antifreeze needs to be looked carefully in such case. I have no idea what can be done about antifreeze tokens, they target specifically creature which has the token making all freezes useless (as long as you don't use 100% influence and as long as you have principles or get lucky for token to proc). In case of auras it's a matter of a lot of luck if aura will select frozen creature in first place, also aura can fail, token takes all this away because it's targeted and certain unfreeze. I just don't see easy patch to freeze system, it will obviously require full revamp.

 

I didn't intended this topic to go this way exactly, but okay. Although I'm more interested about other issues I brought up in first post. I specifically wanted to see reply from Chew about most of questions raised, especially "where is this high level healer" one.

[powle]

i'm a bit sceptic about vampires before boosts because when you are facing a much stronger opponent i think the chances are high that he Will also have more (and stronger) boosts. in that case your vampirism would level the field and then the boosts would give the advantige back to the stronger player. it's just a possibility though and i might be wrong.

[Ary Endleg]

You are right, that's why they are good as they are, after boosts.

[Rophs]

i'm a bit sceptic about vampires before boosts because when you are facing a much stronger opponent i think the chances are high that he Will also have more (and stronger) boosts. in that case your vampirism would level the field and then the boosts would give the advantige back to the stronger player. it's just a possibility though and i might be wrong.

That's the very risk you take when using vampires. You have to out-mindgame your opponent. They know they're stronger, so if you just fight 'normally' then they will certainly win, so you use a TS, but then they use 0% so that they win, but then you don't, so you win, and then it turns into a giant game of rock paper scissors and run on sentences

[Burns]

No, doesn't, because your crit boost only raises your damage skills.

Meanwhile, i outstat you on init due to a 1333 init token on my severely boosted damage dealer, and whatever stats you might have stolen are meaningless as my now absolutely unfreezeable heavy hitter goes crazy on your pesky little vamps. Yes, you might have stolen about half my power, but my first hit still demolishes whatever you got easily.

 

Don't get me wrong, your ideas all hold merit as long as there is an even playground, and combat has once been, and hopefully will again be, rock-paper-scissors...

but it's a futile attempt as long as there is that One Ritual to Rule Them All.

 

Imo, any attempt to readjust combat has to start at reducing the creature limit for drachorns and angiens to 2, and only after that is done you can tweak the numbers until things work out. I have once written a longer piece of text about that, but apparently my reasons weren't convincing enough to the council.

[Ary Endleg]

Okay lets call it ORRTA then :)) I don't think that lowering the creat limit of drachs and angiens would solve it, for angiens it could, but for drachs... I think that weaken needs to be redone as recommended in first post and some kind of downside imposed on target All. Target All is by it's very existence the lazy way out and speaks "I don't need to combine anything or think tactically since my drach will kill everything anyway".

[Chewett]

Imo, any attempt to readjust combat has to start at reducing the creature limit for drachorns and angiens to 2, and only after that is done you can tweak the numbers until things work out. I have once written a longer piece of text about that, but apparently my reasons weren't convincing enough to the council.

 

post/send it so I can read it.

[DarkRaptor]

Why not just permanently remove the personal stats from que battle equation?

If the goal is "everybody can beat everybody" this could be a easy fast solution.

[Rophs]

Why not just permanently remove the personal stats from que battle equation?

If the goal is "everybody can beat everybody" this could be a easy fast solution.

Would tokens turn into cosmetics for that solution?

[Burns]

My outbox doesn't save messages that long, maybe you can still find the original message in the council inbox, it'd be around March 10th 2013.

 

Basically, i suggested to reduce the creature limit of Drachorns to 2 and Archers to 3 to lower the crit-boosting to a more reasonable level. With less drachorn boosting, we could also do with just 2 Angiens per rit, because you don't need to have 3 to counter boosted drachs anymore.

Additionally, we could give drachorns a boost that applies to winds and winds one that applies to drachorns, similar to how angiens and tainted angiens boost each other up. This way wind would get a higher spot in the foodchain, and you can make a meaningful choice when you use drachorns: either more damage with a wind, or more freeze and antifreeze with rust or rein.

 

This might just shift the ultimate power spike from 3 drachs towards 2 drachs, 2 angiens and 2 morphs, but it would definitely reduce the amount of stackable freezes and antifreezes, and lower the upfront damage output of a drach rit by 50%.

[Ary Endleg]

Why are the stats problems? I don't see them as such. Change to creat boost auras I just don't see as solution to any of current problems. You are just replacing oneORRTA with another only twist is will lady luck smile at you with freeze or not, gamble is still very far away from tactics.

[Burns]

Freeze is a gamble in a setting where everybody runs 6 creatures, yes. But have you considered that freeze is also the reason why everybody uses 6 creatures?

 

I still remember the days when i was a small little newbie-mp5 without access to any form of freeze. I could run whatever i wanted, there were people who destroyed me by simply putting all their weight behind a single heavy hitter. Granted, on the higher levels of competition you get angiens, massive walls of ve and crit-boosts and you can't rely on a single hitter anymore, but for the greater portion of the players, it is that simple: I have higher stats than you, so i'll just go ahead and throw them onto my best hitter, and with the init advantage i don't even lose health when i burn you down.

 

That is why you desperately want freeze to exist, even if it opens up the game for some gambling in other directions.

[Rophs]

Freeze is a gamble in a setting where everybody runs 6 creatures, yes. But have you considered that freeze is also the reason why everybody uses 6 creatures?

 

I still remember the days when i was a small little newbie-mp5 without access to any form of freeze. I could run whatever i wanted, there were people who destroyed me by simply putting all their weight behind a single heavy hitter. Granted, on the higher levels of competition you get angiens, massive walls of ve and crit-boosts and you can't rely on a single hitter anymore, but for the greater portion of the players, it is that simple: I have higher stats than you, so i'll just go ahead and throw them onto my best hitter, and with the init advantage i don't even lose health when i burn you down.

 

That is why you desperately want freeze to exist, even if it opens up the game for some gambling in other directions.

Perhaps let people target freeze as they would target damage/heal etc.

 

Weak/Strong/Dying/Random would certainly be sufficient

[powle]

also power and powerbased skills (defend, protect, heal and regenerate) are completly useless against attack and the attackbased skill (weaken defence).

 

p.s. i originally wrote a really long post but somehow i deleted instead of posting and i'm too tired now to write it all again. maybe later

[Ary Endleg]

Ofc I want freeze, but Burns why don't you think that target All is the real problem, it makes the number of creatures in ritual used as tactically unimportant, having only role of how personal stats are distributed. If there was no target All, you just wouldn't be able to kill everything with single creature in first round.

 

On the matter of freeze I'll go even bolder than Rophs! Not only put W/S/D/R targeting options on freezes but also make them creature abilities instead of auras, let it work like Defend ability, putting freeze on target creature which lasts 1 round, or even 2 (don't think 2 is a smart idea :D depends on how many you enable and how many antifreezes and so on...).

 

I think we need to address many problems in combat if we are to solve stuff, by getting rid of ORRTA and instead getting 2 supreme rits you just make it a game of flipping a coin.

 

There is so big potential of what all we can do. Just look at how many creats that we have aren't actually used in real fight, simply because they are tactically useless. You mention everybody going for 6 creat ritual, so number of creatures in ritual is again another thing which could play big importance in tactics but it is simply squashed due to 6 creat rit being obviously the best way. Then we have another mechanics which is just there sitting and being completely unnoticed but it's a very foundation of combat system yet it has next to no tactical value (I proved that wrong on one occasion :P), I'm talking about combat actions which define the rounds! (yep I expect that 99% of you have no idea what that even is) Imagine if you could have more control over that. I just see so many possibilities of what can be done to make combat truly tactical experience where your choice actually matters, rather than it being just One Ritual to Rule Them All.

 

For start, I would redo freeze system completely in one way or another, redo Weaken as explained in first post, nerf target All somehow. Once this is done reanalyze things over and do more changes. Imposing creat limits that Burns mentioned is good idea, boosts simply skyrocket which is not good, but by itself is no solution to grander problem. And as Powle noticed in above post, tweaks to those abilities are also needed, something which I talked about in first post.

 

To me target All is the arch enemy here. If there is Damage ability with target All in ritual it has potential to mop the whole floor before you blink! I want such things gone! Especially since it hits ALL creatures at once with same strength as single target creature hits it's target. It's basically a sure win since it makes you care not of how many creatures the other player have, 1,2,3,4,5,6? doesn't matter, target All hits them all no matter what in same turn with same performance. 1 creature on opponent side and I have 100k attack? Okay my drach will hit that dude with 100k, 6 creats same stats? It's okay my drach still kills them all doing 100k to each. If you people don't see problem in target All then you are simply blind.

 

Now if you try to solve that problem by dividing the damage according to how many targets it actually hits you still ain't nerfing it properly. You need to nerf it's reliability and convenience! That's the real problem. If I'm sure that Dmg All is going to work and hit everything no matter what, I no longer care about tactics, my only issue are stats, more and more of stats (and freezes... but that's a separate talk). We need to nerf target All so it's less reliable and less convenient, question is how?

 

All possibilities in combat, all of it's mechanics should be meaningful, useful and able to make a difference. What is the point of having so wast combat system if there is one answer to everything? In that case you can just remove all creatures from game except drachs and it will all work fine just like it worked so far, nothing will change we will just get rid of stuff we normally don't use anyway. (ofc leave popes so people can drop heat from time to time)

Edited June 16, 2014 by Ary Endleg