by Autismus » Thu Dec 07, 2017 6:11 pm However, because of some core features (and problems), I can't play it for too much time. I have played for 3 months straight like a mad man but then got tired of it because of some current features. I managed to test basically everything, got friends with strong people that helped me out and ended up stopped playing simply because if became boring. In this thread, I'll focus entirely on core mechanics, appointing the problems and giving suggestions to improve it. It also has a BIG combat overhaul suggestion. Take a drink and relax before starting the read. It's kinda long. It took me some hours to think about everything and write up.
Remember that this is my point of view (shared with a few others). Your own point of view is also important, that's why I wanted to discuss with you guys about it.
It may have some errors and other problems, so please tell me if anything feels strange. Be welcome to refute my suggestions and give better ones.
Attributes, FEP and Crafting
- Charisma and Will need to go away. Or at least be merged together.
How to solve it: IMO, delete both. If not, keep only Charisma. Will has literally no place in this game. Allocate everything in crafting to either Charisma or other attributes/skills. If you are removing Charisma, give more rewards to quests. I like this idea, honestly. Charisma has been a long lasting gimmick that still didn't find a niche. It's sad, but it needs to go. It could come back later, of course. - Total FEP needed to level up takes into consideration your highest attribute. This not only makes having all attributes leveled up together the best choice (most noticeable in fighters) but also makes characters that had to eat a lot of the same food wasting more food until their lower attributes catch up to the highest one.
How to solve it: Make the total FEP needed to level take into consideration an average of every attribute value. This means that if you have all stats at 100, it will be WAY MORE expensive to level your attributes than if you have 1 stat at 100 and all the others at 20. This will fix a lot of issues with scaling. - Hunger reduction from Symbels is way too much. It needs to have a hard cap. Right now characters can be fed undefinitely until the player gets tired of managing its bot army.
How to solve it: Make the maximum hunger reduction be 10%. Right now it shows that 1% is the limit but it goes below this. 10% is a fair number IMO.
Credos
- Credos themselves. They are good in concept but not as much in the current implementation. First, they feel more of a mandatory thing more than a specialization. Some credos can't be skipped. If credos are here to give players choice about building their characters, "metagame" credos should go away. Credos should be slight improvements and quality of life changes.
How to solve it: Mandatory/metagame perks of Credos should be either removed or become a baseline feature, without the need of getting that specific Credo for that. - Credo quests. The grind is intense and some quests are basically impossible to achieve. People just skip it because it's not worth. These tasks need to be changed. Quests overall must be more balanced with each other and impossible tasks should be one time only (if they exist) instead of, say, 3 times.
How to solve it: Remove impossible tasks or make it one time only. The other minor issues need to be balanced based on feedback (ie how long it feels to do an specific given task).
General Combat Problems
- Bucket sprinting. One of the most frustrating mechanics in the game. The famous bucket metagame is there for a reason and it needs to go away entirely. Seriously. For those who don't know, Sprinting (4th speed toggle) while drinking water is faster than 3rd speed toggle (Running).
How to solve it: Force Walking (2nd speed) upon drinking water. This will make players think carefully before using Sprint while also reducing the overall bucket mobility. Monsters will probably need their stamina drained more quickly or have their sprint movement speed reduced to balance the changes. - Target selecting. It's a really annoying feature. But easy to fix.
How to solve it: Make you select the closest target to the center of the mouse reticule when you click. If there is a bat at 0.4m from the reticle and another at 1m, it will select the 0.4m. Of course, if you click the exact bat you want, you will also select it, simply because it's the nearest. Will also work for Shoot (suggestion below). - The combat skill bar overrides the default skill bar. This shouldn't happen. Sometimes you need to do something that's not combat related in the middle of combat and it's pretty frustrating, especially for non-combat characters.
How to solve it: Make combat have a separate skill bar from the default one, using, for example F1-F5 as key bindings. Or you can turn it around and make 1-5 the combat bar and F1-F12 the general skill bar. I like this idea more. Of course, we'll need customizable keybindings. - We need a quick way to swap weapon sets. Currently, we need to manually equip them from inventory. It will be really important for an overhaul in the combat.
How to solve it: Add 2+ weapon sets that can be binded to keys. For example, you could use a Sword + Shield for A set, Two-Handed Axe for B and Bow for C. It should also changes your combat skill bar, so I recommend using the current skill sets for this purpose. Swapping will, of course, give a long cooldown (like 5-10 seconds) before you can do anything to avoid abuse in the middle of combat. - We need Credos for fighters as well.
How to solve it: Add them. With the suggestion I've made, it's easy to have ideas on what Credos to put.
Openinings
Although it feels like an OK system at first, it has several flaws. I'll list individually them and give an overall suggestion at the end. With the suggestion for ranged combat, it will also affect them.
- Openining stacking with multiple attackres. In group combats, the openings stack with each other. This makes combat not dynamic at all because groups will tend to use the same types of openings to quickly build and finish the target without much reasoning.
- Attacks doing 0 damage but then one shotting. This happens because of the combination of the openings + finishers. You do no damage at first but then you burst a ridiculous amount of damage in a few finishing attacks.
How to solve it: Remove the opening system as it is, completely, and give moves decent damage. Instead, I suggest giving some moves defense reduction effects (that override/refresh themselves instead of adding up indefinitely), mostly for finishers. You could call them Opening as well. It could use the current color system. For example, Cleave could drop a red Opening of +25% for 5 seconds while Go for the Jugular gives a +15% green and +10% red Openings for 3 seconds, making the target end up with 35% red opening and 15% green until the timer runs out. I suggest making the openining duration more or less be in accord with the IP spent (in the example, I used 1 second per IP spent, plus 1 extra second because of the increased +2 cost to activate). - Melee and Unarmed Combat Skills will be useless with the proposed changes, as of now they are basically directly related to openings. What should they do?
How to solve it: Melee Combat will soft cap your weapon damage. If your weapon has 100 quality, you'll need at least 100 Melee Combat in order to do the best damage possible with this weapon. Unarmed Combat can give a flat bonus to STR IN DAMAGE CALCULATION ONLY, limited by your total STR, like equipment bonuses work. If your STR is 20 and your UC is 30, you'll have 20+20 STR at the damage calculation. If your STR is 40 and your UC 30, you'll have 40+30.
Melee/Unarmed Combat specific problems
- Lack of advantages in using different weapons. Currently, you either use a sword (with bucket, lulz) or a B12. There is no other competitive setups. Sword + bucket gives you the silly movement advantage while B12 gives you slower attacks but incredible one shot potential.
How to solve it: Give different class of weapons more identity. Power vs speed, different skills (there are some in the game already, although ignored because of the opening metagame), bonus vs different types of enemies or armor, Credos for specific weapons (Swordsman, Lancer, Berserker, etc). There is a lot of ways of giving weapons identity, really. - Lack of advantages in using different armors. Currently, you start with light armor (no or almost no penalty to agility) in the beginning and then progress to the best armor possible (because your AGI goes up). Most of the equipments have a best in slot setup. Light armor (leather, hide, etc) is ignored over heavy armor at higher levels.
How to solve it: Give armors different defensive bonuses vs different enemies/weapons/attacks and make heavy armor give a flat % in movement speed. Yes, heavy armored units will need to use horses in order to chase people away, like in real life. - Endless attribute scaling. This makes high level combatents invincible. The more food you eat, the more invincible your become. Simple.
How to solve it: Put a diminishing returns on HP gained from CON. Put a diminishing returns on dodge % gained from (2*AGI) + PER (suggestion below). Make STR damage bonus be soft capped by weapon quality and type (heavier weapons have a higher soft cap), CON have. - Cooldowns scaling from AGI. This mechanic is weird. Pretty weird. It doesn't work as intended and has a relative cap. It needs to go away entirely.
How to solve it: Remove it. My suggestion is giving another use to AGI: a dodge %, with diminishing returns, that uses the (2*AGI) + PER scaling (this will benefit archers a bit more because of PER). The formula could be, for example, {[x / (x + 2000)] + 0.05}, where x = (2*AGI) + PER, 2000 is the sum value where you can get 50% dodge (without a flat bonus) and 0.05 (5%) is the flat chance to dodge. With this formula, you could get numbers like this (Pastebin numbers). Of course, a hard cap is needed with this kind of formula. I chose 80% in this example.
Marksmanship (ranged combat) specific problems
The current ranged combat system is simply terrible. It was changed mostly because of bots and ignored until today after this change. I'll suggest a complete overhaul here for this reason. A little of the current system have a place to stay.
- Marksmanship is unrelated to melee/unarmed combat. It needs to go away.
How to solve it: Give combat moves to ranged weapons (bows and javelins), including openings. Weapons can have different attacks depending on the type (crossbow vs short bow vs long bow vs javelin, for example). - You can't shoot and run at the same time. This is mostly because of the static shooting behavior. It's terrible, seriously.
How to solve it: Make the Shoot skill behave the same as Attack, making you select a target. It makes you draw your selected ranged weapon (weapon swap, suggestion will be explained below) and give you your ranged skill bar. Also, force a Walking speed (2nd toggle) while the ranged weapon is on cooldown (realoding/aimining). This will prevent kiting melee combatents. Aiming (discussed below) also makes you slower. - The aimining (charge) mechanic itself is terrible. With low Marksman skill it takes ages to charge your weapon.
How to solve it: Put a charging mechanic at some ranged moves. Maximum charging time changes with different moves. Marskmanship will hardcap your weapon the same way as MC does (suggestion made above). - The attributes behave weirdly in ranged combat. Currently, Perception is the only stat used in ranged combat, vs agility, to determine the maximum ranged damage.
How to solve it: Make it behave like melee for bows (except for thrown spears, that should still use STR). That means PER will give extra damage to ranged weapons (except thrown spears), with diminishing returns.
