If we are going to talk about movement combat, I guess we should break things down a bit.
- With the current combat system, high stated character still has a large advantage over average ones, however, it is no longer definite as people had first. The square root gives a diminishing return to each combat stat combined with the incrementing LP cost. When raising a combat character, keep in mind that the stronger the character is, the less benefit you get per effort. This isn't taking account of 2 skill that will remove a fixed amount of defense from a target regardless of combat stats. That being said, it is very difficult to take down a powerhouse/titan especially when escorted by decent squad-mates and if left unchecked. However, if the character is killed, the impact and effort loss is more severe than losing several mini-fighters. This is assuming that the player themselves are at least competent with the combat system that they don't destroy their own defense with Death or Glory.
- Now many favor the movement combat system because it allows lower statted character to have a good chance against powerhouses described above. Again, we assume the pilot is competent with the regular system. It also allows many of the skills that would be otherwise useless in normal combat as well. Finally, it adds another element that causes battles to varies more. That being said, there are several defining flaws within this system as well (not counting that it is completely unintentional). First of all, it partially ignores combat stats allows farmers an option to take down seasoned warriors. Many will argue that it makes the combat system much more skill based. However, this will also gravitate more emphasis towards gears which not as easily to circumvent (at least as far as I know) while de-emphasizing character development which is what Haven and Hearth is suppose to be about. Quoting Jorb "I'd like it if the characters required at least some investment of actual time spent playing. If people are more concerned about their helmets and rings than about their characters then I think something is wrong."
However, this doesn't even take into account of lag. It is very easy for someone to die simply due to one misclick that causes them to move the wrong way and suddenly die before they can respond to their character's unintended action.
Moreover, the curio system in its current incarnation allows people to obtain 2000 ua after several months of gameplay. There are no sufficient limitations against this, and it's pretty fucking stupid. Allowing people to train stats indefinitely without limitations only discourages newcomers because they can never have any hope of becoming equals. Furthermore, people with these stats tend to be griefers who run around killing everyone in their path and making the game population drop to almost nothing. Since people have no hope of becoming equally powerful, they cannot successfully defend themselves. In the end, they are killed by faggots, and everyone quits.
I've already spoken in length on how the curiosity system will decentralize character development into several combat alts and make death trivial (if Einherjar has not done that already) in
this. What I have not mention is that it also gives more emphasis to materials and resource location. There are two types of curiosities, foragables and craftables
- Foragable quality is determined by the quality of their respective resource node (assuming the character has enough survival). These curiosities are harder to monopolize or improve on than craftable due to being no way to improve the quality of nodes. However, villages can set up crossroads to have easier access to the area.
- Craftable quality is determined by the materials used for the curiosities as well as as some structures and tools that is required to make them. These curiosities are easier to improve on through improving the quality of the materials, mainly plants (especially fibre plants) and trees though some things such as clay and metal deposit do determine the tools and structures that are avaialble to make the curiosities.
The "unable to catch up" is not directly from the curiosity system itself but due to having such nodes as well as having better resources, which means better curiosities.