Combat talk

[Burns]

Make a proposal about all, then.

 

Seen from a basic point of view, something about a creature needs to get better when it upgrades, otherwise you'd not have any purpose in upgrading it anyway. Most get more health, but that's just not enough. To get somebody hooked on combat, there needs to be an achievement when you go to the next level. And if all creatures just hit single targets, you don't need half as many creatures as we have, just keep the one with the best stats and there we go, diversity is dead.

If not all creatures are single hits, we need multi hits. Multi goes for 2-4, so far so good, but with the drawback that it doesn't hit singles. Imo, that's a very valid concept that opens some nice options. But do you really want your best creeps to come with a drawback like that?

No, the best guys should do something a little more special than that. Out of all my fancy creatures, i get this extremely awesome option only with 2 basics, and with the drachorns. I'd almost dare to say that all is an extremely rare option, with only 3 out of 21 (based on my inventory, might be a few more overall) available families getting it, and those on the highest levels.

 

How do you remove all, but keep those selected few creatures a tad better than the rest, as they are intended? 

[rikstar]

I don't know that much about combat, but I think that Ary is right that defend is basically useless. I have found another reason why it is. Because when you look at the ability intoxicate, then you can clearly see that you will always prefer intoxicate above defend. Intoxicate lasts for 4 rounds and defend for 1. Intoxicate drains more stats. Intoxicate helps for each attack of that given enemy creature, wheter defend only helps for an attack on one creature of yourself. Also note that I think that increasing defence of one of your creatures gives the same result as draining the attack of a creature from the enemy.

[Ary Endleg]

Make a proposal about all, then.

 

I started talking about it from first post. I really feel like repeating myself over and over, as if nobody reads it all. But well this is all around combat talk.

 

 

 

 

Seen from a basic point of view, something about a creature needs to get better when it upgrades, otherwise you'd not have any purpose in upgrading it anyway. Most get more health, but that's just not enough. To get somebody hooked on combat, there needs to be an achievement when you go to the next level. And if all creatures just hit single targets, you don't need half as many creatures as we have, just keep the one with the best stats and there we go, diversity is dead.

 

It's not as you said we have target multi.

 

If not all creatures are single hits, we need multi hits. Multi goes for 2-4, so far so good, but with the drawback that it doesn't hit singles. Imo, that's a very valid concept that opens some nice options. But do you really want your best creeps to come with a drawback like that?

 

Why would it be a drawback if you could chose? Like maxed angien gives you the option? Why would upgrading the creature give you more powerful targeting mech or ability when instead it could give you more varied arsenal? Low level for example restricts you from using target random, next level adds you target multiple, max level unlocks all of it.

 

 

No, the best guys should do something a little more special than that. Out of all my fancy creatures, i get this extremely awesome option only with 2 basics, and with the drachorns. I'd almost dare to say that all is an extremely rare option, with only 3 out of 21 (based on my inventory, might be a few more overall) available families getting it, and those on the highest levels.

 

How do you remove all, but keep those selected few creatures a tad better than the rest, as they are intended?

 

They should be more special but not this special, see above :P

 

Point is to make as many combinations viable for combat, target All restricts this.

 

Oh to add a few things onto Rikky's reply, actually... intoxicate is bugged, there is report in bug section I believe. It only drains stats onto profile, creature stats in combat aren't affected! My toxico does intoxicate on your drach, you as player will be intoxicated in triggers, but your drachs stats in combat will stay the same, unaffected. If it worked, yes it would be how you describe, but... giving defense to one of your creatures is actually less than intoxicating enemy's attack stat of his single creature, because that creature can hit some other creature hence effect is "bypassed", all okay with that. But then we have target Multiple and All :p in those cases intoxicate would be superior to defend since defend shield one creatue, while intoxicate lowers stats of one enemy who could attack more than 1 of your guys.

[powle]

instead of dividing damage to how many targets it actually hits you could divide it by 6 no matter how many creatures it hits. that way it would still be a very powerfull damage dealer when the enemy uses 6 creatures but it would be much weaker against single creature rituals. i think if you look at creature stats it is kinda allready like that. high level single targeting creatures (especially those more "rare") will have higher attack than creatures that target multi or all (at least as far as i have seen). the problem is that those stats get insignificant compared to player stats once you do a bit of grinding. for multi targets i would divide the damage based on how many targets it actually hits (because nerfing only creatures that do damage to all would just make those that  do damage to multi overpowered instead). this would make multi targeting creatures deal even higher dmg than target all in some special cases but the drawback of using multi target is in my opinion allready strong enough that it could work that way.

[Rophs]

I'm going to write up a really big stupid overhaul and it'll be super broken, but if I'm lucky it'll be more balanceable than what we have now.

 

Crappy preview to make all more not broken:

Replace all with three options::

• greater multirandom hits 3-4
• current multirandom hits 2-4
• lesser multirandom hits 1-2

they have crap names but whatever, and to prevent spoilers i'll use generic names for some creats to cover umbrella topics (eg drachs will be dragons)

 

 

 

 

@ary if you want a tactical choice every round and to battle 6 creatures against 6 creature i'd reccomend pokemon

[Ary Endleg]

@ary if you want a tactical choice every round and to battle 6 creatures against 6 creature i'd reccomend pokemon

 

I haven't said such thing anywhere. Do you know how whole combat round system underneath works? I bet you don't, but that's what I was talking about when I mentioned rounds and actions. They basically govern over the course of combat, how it flows and how long can fight actually lasts. Have you ever wondered why your alliance fight lasted only 3 rounds while it should have been 5 since neither side killed off the other? Answer is combat actions, the part of combat system that hasn't been changed since 2007! Which also means it didn't get readjusted as new things were added to combat, such as freezes. (I've been busy last night digging in announcements :D I'll be posting soon some more stuff that I think should be addressed)

[Ary Endleg]

Lets address some stats. I'll be talking about Volition, Tradesense, Energetic Immunity, Power, Regeneration, EP, Luck and VP. I'll mainly question their usage and softcaps.

 

Volition

This stat is part of something that is still waiting to be implemented, although not much is said except "The current plans are to allow this skill (that means also will power) to be gained in other activities as well and to use it later for mixing will and wish to turn ideas into matter (items)." My current question is, why is volition which seems like a rp/harvest stat applied to creatures in combat, which you can notice while using skillvamp aura.

 

Tradesense, Luck and VP, EP

Excuse me but I don't really get idea of "LUCK, you found 5 vp on the ground". Obviously VPs are used for recruiting and upgrading creats as well as buying stat boosting gear for that... other inventory. What exactly is the point of VPs nowdays and how does that concept of them matter today? Same question can go for EP, once you have seen scene, those EP are only for creats, not really explore-ish anymore. Tradesense, now this baby works quite weird in first place. It affects how much VP you spend on recruiting and buying gear, it does not actually lower the VP price but instead refunds VP upon purchase. 100 tradesense is softcap, meaning if you got more it's useless. Oh and this is something that can be viewed as useful in early stage of game, but once you get this to any effective level, lets say 30 or above, you just won't need it anymore. This stat is the first one in which you reach softcap since it is so low considering the stats in millions today. I don't see much use for tradesense, EP nor VP in game. In my opinion only good thing about VP mechanic is that it prevents fresh player from recruiting grasan, lol. The problem is that VP is heavily integrated into almost everything combat related.

 

Energetic Immunity

This one has one softcap that is same as tradesense, but this stat is way more useful than tradesense. With 100 EI you ignore land damage, which in my opinion according to today's standards of high stats is very low and should be readjusted. This baby also has another use in resistance to certain spells, which is very nice and this use has no softcap! Would be nice if more spells are affected by both this and Power stat, as well as intoxicate resistance. Besides if Attack has Defence as it's counter balance, would be fun to have EI as counter balance in combat for Power :P

 

Power

Ah the nightmare stat. This baby is useful for just about anything, some abilities have it capped like lifesteal, some spells are empowered by it and gives headache to angien users. In 2007 the Power-grind nerf was put in place and that's why Power is so hard to get nowdays, but back then power based abilities especially lifesteal were super strong and that's why such nerf was put in place as well as cap on Power use for lifesteal. Honestly the only reason why this nerf is still useful is because of angien's energyburn where you pretty much want to burn down the opponent in one go but problem is that too much Power can result in VE cap for energyburn to malfunction, because if you have so much Power but not enough VE to fuel it, your angien will kill himself in process and that's the only problem with grinding the power stat. Really that nerf should be removed and energyburn... readjusted? :P Would be nice if they only consume up to certain amount rather than to go kamikaze.

 

Regeneration

Nothing wrong with this one, except I wonder why it has no effect on regeneration intervals (regen timer ticks) and "healthy strolls" in your land?

Edited June 19, 2014 by Ary Endleg

[Ary Endleg]

Major update regarding antifreeze tokens.

 

After wasting a couple of hours on the damage of Darky's employer :p we came with following results. Antifreeze and Blooddrop2 are not super OP tokens, it figures out, they are on other extreme side, of being effectively useless. All types of auras and tokens I consider now tested for this relation of "who goes first". All tokens go before auras. That means if you don't enter combat with frozen creature in advance, your tokens won't work at all. There are only 2 ways for such thing to happen, either you are mp3 or mp4 who upgraded his creature beyond MP cap limit or somebody casted prot-freeze on you (which really never happens). Now due to so many antifreeze auras and the fact that you will be hit with prot-freeze once in a thousand lifetimes, makes those 2 tokens totally useless for mp5s and every other mp3 or mp4 who doesn't waste WP for bringing the creat above the cap. Funny thing in this story is how those tokens are described both in shop and token descriptions.

 

 

SHOP

Anti Freeze tokens to give it a chance against freezing attacks.

Blood Drop Tokens ... or even unfreeze ability depending on token level and principles combination.

Token Description

Antifreeze gives a chance for creature to escape freezing during combat

Blooddrop2 gives permanent immunity from freeze

 

So the above descriptions are false, since it only removes pre-combat freezes and not during-combat freezes. Moreover Blooddrop2 also gives Initiative boost of 10%, trick is... it shouldn't boost init at all!

 

It would be more useful, more interesting and would be making a whole lot of more sense if freeze tokens go at same time as freeze auras. Due to influx of antifreeze auras, that still seems a bit silly but I can remind you that you could in such a case create ritual with different creatures who don't have antifreeze aura at all. Those tokens have next to no use for this intended purpose of them for now. Currently they are only good for increasing sacrifice values and blooddrop2 still has the other principle combination use, but antifreeze purpose is effectively useless.

 

Another thing that should be addressed is creature sacrificing. Why so many creatures don't have their sacrifice values configured? Why so many of those that give stats on sacrifice do it on same template? Meaning many creates would not only give same type of stats but their values would have same scaling. This doesn't take into account at all how hard it is to grow and train certain creatures in comparison to other creatures, which is bad concept. Why some of stats aren't actually scaling at all, particularly Luck stat, have anybody saw it being gained by more than 2 luck from sacrificing? Not that I know of!

[Pipstickz]

I have a couple...uh... certain creatures that haven't been trained very much (but they do have 280% token bonus) that give me three luck each. Not sure how much it would go up with more training, but I'll try to find out. First must lower heat.

[Ary Endleg]

Yes, it's pretty much one luck in base value. I was referring to base value :) of course tokens can increase that. Also I got told bird's sacc stats don't scale either.

[Ary Endleg]

Beware! It's Ary the forum necromancer. :p

 

I've got some more stuff to talk on this matter, some of which I planned to talk about earlier but forgot about. In this post I'll be bringing up certain issues regarding the uncommon loss of honor, win imbalance and negative VP as well as negative stats. As most of you know, those are issues I'm facing personally, but I got to ponder on their meaning and purpose as well as design flaws. I'm not complaining about my current bad combat situation which I'm working on to fix it, rather I'm challenging the purpose of those parts of system for possible future improvement of currently flawed system.

 

Loss of honor

In here I will raise the issue of uncommon loss of honor, the slow leech of it from unnoticeable source, or should I say sink. We all know the usual ways of how one can lose honor, however there is one interesting way that many don't know about, losing honor in case of losing the fight. Yes you might lose honor when losing fight, but that isn't noticed by many because in order to lose honor in such way there are some prerequisites. First off, this doesn't apply to losing the fight in attack (at least not when I try it although ancient announcements claim otherwise but it might be so because I'm at -3500 honor), because amount of lost honor is calculated from the amount of honor gained by other player and since players can't gain honor in defense, neither can you lose it in failed attack. Second requirement is the one that makes this hard to notice, because the attacking player needs to have less sword balances and/or (not so simple confirm which one exactly is the case, announcement says it's only for wins but some people state it has to do with total recorded fight ratio) less total amount of balance outcomes (sword balances + sheath balances) than you. It's time to check original announcement regarding this mechanic in order to understand the purpose it is intended to fulfill.

 

 

Ann. 81 - [2007-10-22 01:45:02 - Alpha 4] Posted By Muratus del Mur
Honor penalty is now applied to strong players that suffer a defeat to a weaker player. Be carefull now who you will offer free wins or healing fight. This measure was taken to prevent players from offering free wins and do facke fights and also to add a way to lower someones honor , like for example if you want to take down an alliance leader.

 

From that simple conclusion follows. It was intended as a measure to prevent stronger players from aiding weaker one, in other words train. Whole combat system initially was conceived not to allow training and grinding we see and do today, and sure as hell not to encourage any altruism related to combat. Such things are unthinkable in MD we play today. So far that mechanic isn't fulfilling it's purpose, it's incapable to be any sort of punishment for those specified actions, in addition to fact that it doesn't work when you attack and lose (99% sure it doesn't happen as far as I recall) as well as honor ain't used for determining alliance leadership anymore.

 

Secondly this mechanic just like many other assumes that player is strong by number of sword balances. We all know that's a terrible way of determining such thing due to ability to stage fight outcomes and control the amount of fight outcomes that get recorded by system and ability of achieving perpetual balance which effectively freezes your fight outcome recording result in theoretical possibility of player being the strongest in realm and yet having the balance of 100/100 or 0/0 if he uses WP.

 

Finally, this mechanic has no active purpose, sure it can be semi-damaging to honor-farms by possibly disabling their heat dumping abilities with priests but if honor-farm is aware of this mechanic, it can be easily countered in number of ways (won't disclose them) even if honor-farm has the biggest win difference in whole game by tapping into uncommon sources of honor. In addition, this is the only method that can make your honor drop further once you delve under -500 honor. Possibly discouraging player who got himself into this position further from combat aspect of the game and adding additional punishment to his current position.

 

My suggestion is to either reword this mechanic or concept around it in way that it is able to fulfill given purpose. I also suggest that there be implemented bottom honor cap at -500, because really there is no point in further punishing the player in prolonging his bad position.

 

Win imbalance

How currently system works, this situation is simply unseen in day to day play. Only the newbs and honor-farms will enter this position, everybody else will avoid it like plague because of so many downsides when entering it and because of ability to stage the balance ratios due to ability to control the fight outcomes (the fact that sword balance for one player doesn't mean sheath balance for another and the other way around). I'm perceiving that entering into win imbalance was meant to be inevitable and spontaneous for "stronger" players, like having winning and losing cycles, but that is definitely not the case. System allows you to absolutely avoid it. Balance is useful and being under balance is useful too. But there is no individual benefit in being the above balance. The designed benefit of it was, that if you are above balance, you are stronger player, something that isn't possible in current game. This results in lack of win deviation. For example delving under balance eventually became so powerful that many nerfs were applied such as reduced heat gain from excessive honor, capped lost fights difference, stat damage for too high lost fights difference, while being above balance has no such downsides because being in there has no individual benefits.

 

If you have thing such as win-loss balance, it's only natural that you have deviations on both sides, it's both expected and and meant to happen yet due to design flaws it doesn't. Whole balance thing is a mess compared to original intention. This is just an observation about it, players won't really like the change to what it should be from what it is, people like to train, being friendly and helpful to each other and to be able to control the system. However such concepts seem to be important to Mur. But fact is that system built and designed with specific workings in mind, we clearly see today that it doesn't operate as such.

 

Negative VP (and stats)

In here I'm talking about receiving negative VP, with emphasis to having personal VP under zero. You all know, or should know how you get it, so lets focus on effects of it. (You can refer to mechanical meaning of VP somewhere in this topic.) Once you gain negative VP it is subtracted from your current personal VP pool. This is okay thing, it's mirrors and counterbalances the gain of by same means. However, you can lose more VP than you have, thus putting you in negative. This is where problem lies because you are then unable to buy weapons and armor as well as recruit and upgrade creatures. If you receive gigantic amounts of it, you can be stuck in there for quite a while, paralyzing you from some essential combat related actions. This is extremely dangerous for new player (mainly fresh inexperienced MP5 or allied MP4) where such problem can easily lead to immense frustration and distaste for combat in individual. Basically if you have some millions of negative VP, you are newb, you don't have lifestealers and you don't have big strong veteran friends or if you are in totally remote timezone and your life schedule prevents you from being online when players who have the power to help you out with your problem are playing, then you are in world of a hurt. Additional problem is it that it is very likely the case that you didn't got it due to being careless, but by being bullied, which can possibly lead to receiving more and more of negative VP. If somebody wants to force negative VP on you, there isn't much you can do to prevent it.

 

Now I beg the question, how can you lose something that you didn't have in first place? Does the secret MD VP banker come to you and tell you: "Boy you owe 20mil VP, Aramory and other places no longer accept your MasterCard, btw nor does your barren soul and other creatures you have and want to upgrade". This sort of system behavior just punishes player way more than it should for no real reason or purpose. VP is the only stat in whole MD which you can have negative and yet it is being counted as negative! (Negative stats I'll talk about bellow, but they aren't used as such. I also heard a rumor about shop item that can throw your temporary Ve into negative potentially killing your creatures at start of combat, but I can't confirm this claim, so rumor it is and if it be true then it would be bug.)

 

I suggest that negative VP is reworked so that it doesn't go below personal zero, meaning no negative personal VP. I don't see it fair, as well as many other people, that somebody with ability like Eon can come by impose such a punishment to anybody he wants with a mirror ritual spell, simply because you can't counter it or prevent it. If you don't want to remove negative personal VP, you at least should remove negative VP gain from being hit by mirror ritual because there is no way you can defend from that. No countermeasures or preventive measures exist! So it is a problem. Third solution would be, implement preventive or counter measures for such action, but still HOW DO YOU LOSE THAT WHICH YOU DON'T HAVE?

 

Negative stats

As follow up to negative VP, are negative stats, you all know how it works and why it works that way and the purpose of it. Let me repeat the purpose of losing stats, just to be clear. Losing stats has a purpose as a counter reaction to gaining the stats, therefore satisfying the laws of balance. What happens when your stats drop below 0 and you suddenly have negative stats. Nothing, in fights it is counted as if you had no stats, it's not counted as negative! But you can still keep losing stats even though you are under zero. Meaning it will be increasingly harder for you to get out of this already bad situation, it disables your ability to grow, further punishing player way more than it should, as well as possibly frustrating and making him lose interest in combat. This obviously leads to following questions. How can you lose that which you don't have? Why punish a player so much?

 

I suggest that players shouldn't be able to lose more stats than they have, in other words it stops at 0 and doesn't go below. After-all negative stats have no impact and no beneficial purpose on mechanics, only to severely punish player by making him harder to gain stats due to possible high accumulation of negative stats. Again, one should not be able to lose that which he doesn't have nor his playing experience should be punished in such extreme manner.

 

Since I touched the subject of stats, I want to bring up one more thing. When player registers for game, all of his 9 base combat stats are initialized to 0 even before any of it is gained by story mode, is there any specific reason for other stats, such as the ones used by tools, not being initialized to 0 as well?

[Ungod]

I read the whole post, but you could have written on one subject at a time...:) because I can focus on one thing at a time. About the honor loss and the idea that a stronger player shouldnt help a weaker one...I agree with it, as principle, BUT ...what if you are in the same alliance (or even land) and you want to train your comrade? This is one instance where it should be allowed. The other problem is, ofc, that if you dont have a constant flow of new players (or even alts), there will be combat only between weak and strong players and the honor loss would become an issue. 

 

As a principle, I agree with the idea behind it. Just as there was a talk about viscosity, this shouldnt be removed, imo. As a short-term solution, it could be removed, but...think, Ary, think! :p (Im no combat expert, I abstain)

[Rophs]

Eon can come by impose such a punishment to anybody he wants with a mirror ritual spell, simply because you can't counter it or prevent it.

 

attacklock

edit: also possibly otherarmy

 

you can also movelock and then walk away

Edited September 14, 2014 by Rophs

[No one]

@Ary:

This whole thread is just a garbage collector. There is no head or tail and you don't wait for any answer on any of the issues raised.

Great, I will complete your junk with mine.

 

 

First of all, separate topics, there is no way to answer to all the problems raised.

Second of all, be coherent, in your first post was great, last one ... it wasn't you.

 

 

So:

 

.. The strong / weak player , anyway you take it is incomplete. You cannot separate the both without making it worse for some.

 

.. The "All" as target is overkill ? YES it was intended to be like that. The "All" is only for some RARE (back then) creatures or was balanced with weak attack. (see the heretics for weak attack & drachorns for rare). Let me know if I missed something about this.

 

.. @Rophs

[spoiler]

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

 

Weak/Strong/Dying/Random would certainly be sufficient

[/spoiler]

See the "proposed creatures" in the past 2-4 years, you should see the "signs" for overpowering stuff. You also want the same thing. Before posting such ... junk, do consider considering the consequences.

 

.. @Rikstar:

[spoiler]

I don't know that much about combat, but I think that Ary is right that defend is basically useless. I have found another reason why it is. Because when you look at the ability intoxicate, then you can clearly see that you will always prefer intoxicate above defend. Intoxicate lasts for 4 rounds and defend for 1. Intoxicate drains more stats. Intoxicate helps for each attack of that given enemy creature, wheter defend only helps for an attack on one creature of yourself. Also note that I think that increasing defence of one of your creatures gives the same result as draining the attack of a creature from the enemy.

[/spoiler]

There are ups and downs for each (defend / intoxicate). Some have longer fights , some have them shorter , some just prefer too have the creatures alive for a longer time or just a bigger punch.

It is just another trick that you have to master it in order to know MD.

 

 

 

 

 

.. @Ary

[spoiler]

Major update regarding antifreeze tokens.

...

[/spoiler]

Freeze/antifreeze , imo, has holes in behavior & implementation, but then I always hated it. 

 

 

.. @Ary

[spoiler]

 

Another thing that should be addressed is creature sacrificing. Why so many creatures don't have their sacrifice values configured? Why so many of those that give stats on sacrifice do it on same template? Meaning many creates would not only give same type of stats but their values would have same scaling. This doesn't take into account at all how hard it is to grow and train certain creatures in comparison to other creatures, which is bad concept. Why some of stats aren't actually scaling at all, particularly Luck stat, have anybody saw it being gained by more than 2 luck from sacrificing? Not that I know of!

[/spoiler]

Can you know "how hard it is to grow and train certain creatures in comparison to other creatures" before the creatures were given to public ?

There are many things to take into account when setting the sacrificing stats for a creature like from the creature itself (its stats, vitality, attack type and more) and outside of the creature itself (if it can be over used to grow easier the player's stats or to grow stats that don't relate to creature's stats or to give the level's bonus).

There are 2 specific cases to remember :

 - angien's (if I remember well) stats were removed because they were used to grow player's VE at huge rate

 - bird's second lvl stats were removed because one gain stats with no ... pain

 

.. How can one lose something he doesn't own ? very simple (you seem to be under age) :one can get a loan and then lose them.

It is ok for some to pay the penalty for not paying attention instead of creating bases for abuses. Do you think that those with neg stats can't increase them or can't prevent it ?

 

 

There are many more things to say but it is difficult to coordinate and most problems will be forgotten by the end of the page. Please open separate topics and you will get more attention

 

-----------------------------------------------

Anyway, it has been a fun topic to read (I did read it all), but it is impossible to respond properly.

[Ary Endleg]

Rophs are you really suggesting that? You do realize that new player who would find such situation of huge negative VP difficult WOULDN'T have access to such spell in first place. But sure let's assume that player happens to have it, it would be 4 casts which equals 32 minutes of attacklock, if somebody wants to bully you, it won't help you, besides you would have to know in front that specific person has such intention, something which said player wouldn't know. Best solution would be to run quickly to sanctuary, something that works better than any of your solutions yet you didn't have the insight to come up with it. But it still has same problem, said victim has to be aware of the danger! Big negative VP thing isn't a problem to us older players because we can fix it one way or the other, but player with under half year play time can struggle with it. It's very possible and discouraging scenario for a player at such stage in game, something that can greatly influence how such player will continue to play the game or not play it should it happen to him and you ain't thinking this for such situation. You are thinking it as if it were happen to you, who (possibly) have needed stuff to counter it.

 

Richy, I'm just saying that piling up honor under -500 has no other use other than making it harder for player to come back up. bottom cap would be good, let's say -1000 or -750 honor that way it has enough of room to prevent possibly abuses that would be possible if cap was to be set exactly at -500. If however you are talking about second part of my post, which is just the observation rather than actual problem or solution of any kind, making the better distinction between strong and weak player, can easily be topic for itself, something that I won't really jump into, but if done properly it would indeed create honor problems for those deemed strong and hence system would work as Mur original intended it to work.

 

No one, nobody replied to this topic in two months, so how long should I wait before reply to raised issues? But yeah this is just a collection of my opinions on the combat stuff open to discussion which I write according to how I know things at that moment regarding it, something that can change over time in light of finding the new things, if I say something wrong, it's here openly in public for everybody to read, get to know possible issues and their effects as well as correct my wrong conclusions or challenge them.

 

.. The strong / weak player , anyway you take it is incomplete. You cannot separate the both without making it worse for some.

 

See my reply to Richy, I'm not even trying to, just saying that system isn't doing what it was originally intended to do.

 

 

.. The "All" as target is overkill ? YES it was intended to be like that. The "All" is only for some RARE (back then) creatures or was balanced with weak attack. (see the heretics for weak attack & drachorns for rare). Let me know if I missed something about this.

 

Um...? I don't understand this, what you mean by weak attack? Low attack stat of creature? Weaken defense ability? Either way how ever it was balanced back then, it's not working today, tokens and big personal stats make creature stats irrelevant besides those creatures with target "all" have usually the highest attack stat, see Drachorn. Weaken defense works quite nicely if used before damage all, it just empowers it, besides target all also works for weaken defense. I don't understand what point you are trying to make here, so yes you either missed something or need to clarify it.

 

 

Can you know "how hard it is to grow and train certain creatures in comparison to other creatures" before the creatures were given to public ?

There are many things to take into account when setting the sacrificing stats for a creature like from the creature itself (its stats, vitality, attack type and more) and outside of the creature itself (if it can be over used to grow easier the player's stats or to grow stats that don't relate to creature's stats or to give the level's bonus).

There are 2 specific cases to remember :

 - angien's (if I remember well) stats were removed because they were used to grow player's VE at huge rate

 - bird's second lvl stats were removed because one gain stats with no ... pain

 

It's good to know that certain abuses were taken care of, my point was to remind that certain creatures lack sacrificial rewards and that current rewards are almost monotonic.

 

.. How can one lose something he doesn't own ? very simple (you seem to be under age) :one can get a loan and then lose them.

 

I disagree, when you get the loan you own the loan, if you lose that cash, then you lost it but it was your cash which you got in first place as part of deal to repay it with interest, hence before you lost it, you had it and owned it. You don't make a loan with VP and neg stats.

 

It is ok for some to pay the penalty for not paying attention instead of creating bases for abuses. Do you think that those with neg stats can't increase them or can't prevent it ?

 

What bases for abuses? Tell me what I'm not seeing. It isn't a point in inability to increase the stats or inability to prevent the loss of stats. You need to remember that combat isn't only thing in all whole game. Let's say a person does only RP in his first year and suffers big stat loss. (This is just a hypothetical situation, there can be many others) On it's second year same person decides to start fighting but has huge downside due to quite an amount of accumulated negative stats, making it's debut in combat increasingly difficult. In such situation person is excessively punished because he didn't involve himself in business of combat when he started the game. I further argument that mechanics that allow accumulation of negative stats isn't good thing due to facts that negative stats are set to zero for combat purposes as well as you can't lose some that you don't have, I never heard of car that has minus 100 horsepower. Only thing is that accumulated negative stats are punishing to player because they prolong his recovery. Said person plays for a year and doesn't fight, in his eyes he thinks that he lost whole year of training by being idle and accumulated negative stats are there to further punish him for lack of training. From perception of that player at the time he decides to start fighting he sees that he lost year and half worth of time while he was in game, year due to not training and another half year he would have to spent in order just to catch up back to positive. Is such punishment really necessarily? I think not, that's why I don't have a problem with losing VP/stats, but them going below zero is something I don't think is beneficial to game or players.

 

There are many more things to say but it is difficult to coordinate and most problems will be forgotten by the end of the page. Please open separate topics and you will get more attention

 

Anyway, it has been a fun topic to read (I did read it all), but it is impossible to respond properly.

 

I didn't really know it would expand this much and it seems to me quite rude to flood the forum with half a dozen topics at once especially if some of them would have connection, so I made single topic. But yes it's like this in it's forum-ish fashion which resulted in it's unfriendly-to-follow nature. Unfortunately I won't be opening separate topics any time soon.

[Rophs]

Running to sanctuary is assumed. During the attacklock/movelock the mirroritual will wear off and you will be able to set a def that prevents huge amounts of negative vp from being dumped on you

[Ary Endleg]

You obviously don't understand that when you are attacked with mirror your def doesn't matter. If you are caught outside sanctuary with mirror, you are getting it regardless of what def you have.

[Rophs]

If they mirror again then attacklock/movelock again.

[Ary Endleg]

If they mirror in different location so you don't see it in chat? If you don't know about such malicious intention? If you are too young to be aware of negative VP possibility and it's bad side affects? If you are idle?

[Chewett]

@Ary:
This whole thread is just a garbage collector. There is no head or tail and you don't wait for any answer on any of the issues raised.
Great, I will complete your junk with mine.

No one has a very good point. I get your points after re-reading this thread a couple times but its not really structured for me to have a proper look and decide if its a really good idea.

Ideally you should be able to look at one part of an idea and its merits without having to bear in mind the entirety of it, its not really possible as you discuss the different ideas multiple times, slightly differently.

I like some of the ideas, Will I be implementing any of them? No, because I cant form a coherent plan from this thread. It might give me some ideas for my own direction go to but this thread is too unstructured to get a good opinion. Personally I do think you need to make multiple topics.

[Azthor]

Which section of New Ideas, Get Involved and General Forum would be most suitable for the following topics to placed in?

 

- Auras/Bonuses (Creature Boost, Skill Drain, Vitality Drain, Freeze & Antifreeze) & Tokens: Availability, Order & Opportunity Value

 

- Target (All): Creature Diversity & Creature Upgrade Value

 

- Defend, Intoxicate, Martyrism & Protect: Availability, Opportunity Value & Targets

 

- Heal & Regenerate: Opportunity Value, Targets & Upper Limit

 

- Rustgold Drachorns, Reindrachs & Wind Dragons: Mutual Creature Boost 

 

- Unit Limits: Angiens, Drachorns & Archers

 

- Weaken Defense: Lower Limit

 

- Honor & Negative Stats: Lower Limit

 

- Honor & Balance: Intended Function & Current Application

 

A small summary of what was proposed and discussed will be added to the opening of each topic. Please, tell me if I've missed anything.

Edited September 16, 2014 by Azthor

[No one]

[spoiler]

Um...? I don't understand this, what you mean by weak attack? Low attack stat of creature? Weaken defense ability? Either way how ever it was balanced back then, it's not working today, tokens and big personal stats make creature stats irrelevant besides those creatures with target "all" have usually the highest attack stat, see Drachorn. Weaken defense works quite nicely if used before damage all, it just empowers it, besides target all also works for weaken defense. I don't understand what point you are trying to make here, so yes you either missed something or need to clarify it.

 

 

It's good to know that certain abuses were taken care of, my point was to remind that certain creatures lack sacrificial rewards and that current rewards are almost monotonic.

 

 

I disagree, when you get the loan you own the loan, if you lose that cash, then you lost it but it was your cash which you got in first place as part of deal to repay it with interest, hence before you lost it, you had it and owned it. You don't make a loan with VP and neg stats.

 

 

What bases for abuses? Tell me what I'm not seeing. It isn't a point in inability to increase the stats or inability to prevent the loss of stats. You need to remember that combat isn't only thing in all whole game. Let's say a person does only RP in his first year and suffers big stat loss. (This is just a hypothetical situation, there can be many others) On it's second year same person decides to start fighting but has huge downside due to quite an amount of accumulated negative stats, making it's debut in combat increasingly difficult. In such situation person is excessively punished because he didn't involve himself in business of combat when he started the game. I further argument that mechanics that allow accumulation of negative stats isn't good thing due to facts that negative stats are set to zero for combat purposes as well as you can't lose some that you don't have, I never heard of car that has minus 100 horsepower. Only thing is that accumulated negative stats are punishing to player because they prolong his recovery. Said person plays for a year and doesn't fight, in his eyes he thinks that he lost whole year of training by being idle and accumulated negative stats are there to further punish him for lack of training. From perception of that player at the time he decides to start fighting he sees that he lost year and half worth of time while he was in game, year due to not training and another half year he would have to spent in order just to catch up back to positive. Is such punishment really necessarily? I think not, that's why I don't have a problem with losing VP/stats, but them going below zero is something I don't think is beneficial to game or players.

 

 

I didn't really know it would expand this much and it seems to me quite rude to flood the forum with half a dozen topics at once especially if some of them would have connection, so I made single topic. But yes it's like this in it's forum-ish fashion which resulted in it's unfriendly-to-follow nature. Unfortunately I won't be opening separate topics any time soon.

[/spoiler]

... "All" as target

Drachorns are a Rare species, they were designed to be the ultimate creatures. Drachorns were designed to be tough. You should not take them as common creatures and then to compare with the other creatures (as I said before).

Each creature has its place in the evolution and motivation of a player.

 

... "rewards monotonic" / "no bonus statuses for sacrificing creatures"

There is something that you may have disregard while reading : high level creature give bonus stats. "Luck" is such bonus. It was never intended to grow with number of heat / experience or whatever. Imo, the 280x being applied to such bonus stats is an oversight or just a simple bug but it turned be an acceptable feature.

 

...

Each player has the choice to accept or not neg stats / VP and there are a ways to avoid it.

If a noob / new player is accepting these punishements, why should we intervene in their decision ?

If they are too new shy to ask or too noob to know how to avoid it is still thier decision. If they decide that after one year, as you said,  that they don't like it anymore then good, they should work for your decisions.

All players pay for their decisions even if they are new, noobs or experienced.

 

... How can you separate the weak/strong players ? Anyway you separate them, the experienced players will find a way to manipulate the system in their favor.

Think about "honor" system. It was designed to help players but new players don't know about it and they are punished by it while those with less honor (cathegorised as weak players) are already experienced players that use the system to keep their honor to lower level just to be able to fight more. So, who is favored by the system in this case ? The new players & noobs or the older & experienced ones ?

[Chewett]

Pick whatever section you want, the importance is getting the ideas down and discussed no?

[Ary Endleg]

... "rewards monotonic" / "no bonus statuses for sacrificing creatures"

There is something that you may have disregard while reading : high level creature give bonus stats. "Luck" is such bonus. It was never intended to grow with number of heat / experience or whatever. Imo, the 280x being applied to such bonus stats is an oversight or just a simple bug but it turned be an acceptable feature.

 

 

I was talking about creatures that don't have any stat rewards, such as priests and torments and toxicodendrites and angiens. I'm not so sure about luck being bonus stat and I see it very weird that it's not scaling because of some things that Chew mentioned on how those altars work. Luck being the only one not scaling is anomaly, but I personally see no reason for it not to scale. Unless you want to bring up how hard it is to get luck stat from combat reward because you need to get lucky among other thing. Then yes it would be reasonable that sacrificial reward for luck stays not scalable in order to prevent targeted grind of it from single source. But I'm unsure if that makes much sense.

 

 

... "All" as target

Drachorns are a Rare species, they were designed to be the ultimate creatures. Drachorns were designed to be tough. You should not take them as common creatures and then to compare with the other creatures (as I said before).

Each creature has its place in the evolution and motivation of a player.

 

You just can't use something that was meant to be different than it is today for argument that today's situation is good. In other words you saying that target all is good because it was intended to be used only on ultimate creature while such creatures are pretty much common today. From drachs, rusty is a drach and it's quite common. But what about chaos archer and grasan? They have target all too yet everybody can get them. So target "all" obviously wasn't designed to be just for rare creatures if it is available on those creatures that every new player gets once he comes out of story mode. Now back to the real issue which is that target all is the ability that removes thinking from combat solely to the fact that target all has power to end fight in first action. Fights have what? 60 actions for allied players and I think it's 300, maybe more, I forgot, for unallied players. Target all means that following can happen.

 

Round 0: A's Invincible does damage to all creature of B: all creatures die. A's Lucky Charm can't find any enemy creatures to target. Fight ends. A wins.

 

Everybody is aiming to do that. Makes combat somewhat dull and pointless.

 

 

Each player has the choice to accept or not neg stats / VP and there are a ways to avoid it.

If a noob / new player is accepting these punishements, why should we intervene in their decision ?

 

What if that new player isn't accepting it but is being bullied? You call being bullied a decision? Interesting, do tell.

I also present possibility where there are no ways for noob to avoid it. It's a legitimate problem. If you say it isn't then it's same as saying that disabling regen for losing heat on mp3 was bad move or disabling burned ve from angiens to count as gained heat thus capping newbs who only got 10 wins and two Aramors. Negative VP should by any means be removed from mirror ritual spell.

 

 

... How can you separate the weak/strong players ? Anyway you separate them, the experienced players will find a way to manipulate the system in their favor.

Think about "honor" system. It was designed to help players but new players don't know about it and they are punished by it while those with less honor (cathegorised as weak players) are already experienced players that use the system to keep their honor to lower level just to be able to fight more. So, who is favored by the system in this case ? The new players & noobs or the older & experienced ones ?

 

Yes all this makes finding solution super hard, that's why I didn't yet offered any. Instead I focused on the fact that there are basically no players with win difference because Mur when making that concept thought that strong players would end up there and being strong is the reward for getting there. That's obviously not the case. If one would want to spice things up inside such mechanic then it needs to be tweeked. It's not my intention to do such separation of players by weak and strong, rather to disperse them on both balance sides in order to give that mechanic more meaning. Players are strong without having more wins, that's very clear nowdays, which removes the only reason that existed (or should I say, was designed or anticipated by Mur) for being in win-difference. In order to get some players to that side of balance, there needs to be new motivator for being there, new benefit. Currently there are only downsides to it.

 

I'll be probably opening separate topics in "near future"™.

[Rophs]

~snip~

[spoiler]Which section of New Ideas, Get Involved and General Forum would be most suitable for the following topics to placed in?

 

- Auras/Bonuses (Creature Boost, Skill Drain, Vitality Drain, Freeze & Antifreeze) & Tokens: Availability, Order & Opportunity Value

 

- Target (All): Creature Diversity & Creature Upgrade Value

 

- Defend, Intoxicate, Martyrism & Protect: Availability, Opportunity Value & Targets

 

- Heal & Regenerate: Opportunity Value, Targets & Upper Limit

 

- Rustgold Drachorns, Reindrachs & Wind Dragons: Mutual Creature Boost 

 

- Unit Limits: Angiens, Drachorns & Archers

 

- Weaken Defense: Lower Limit

 

- Honor & Negative Stats: Lower Limit

 

- Honor & Balance: Intended Function & Current Application

 

A small summary of what was proposed and discussed will be added to the opening of each topic. Please, tell me if I've missed anything.[/spoiler]

The Sparring Grounds Forum would be appropriate, and would also prevent clutter elsewhere.

Edited September 16, 2014 by Rophs