Make Player Skill More Influential in Combat

[Elirian]

Just a quick thought before I head out the door.

Take it with a grain of salt as I have limited experience with the combat system, but it seems as though a lot of work has been put in to coming up with all the different moves and abilities, to little effect, because your basic combat skill has a dramatically larger effect on the outcome than the tactics you adopt.

My stats and unarmed are low.

I can take a VI boar with just jump and punch.

If I figure out the moves to use in order to make the best use of each round, maximizing my attack and defense gains with regard to cooldowns, initiative, and how to spend initiative, taking appropriate reactions if the enemy gains combat advantage... I can take a VII boar.

Not much difference there. Feels like the combat system has so much depth, but I just can't get to it.

[vikingdragons]

combat against animals is ridiculously easy (killing a X boar in a single punch). combat against players has horrible risk vs reward and is totally unbalanced.

[DatOneGuy]

The problem is that while it's easy, it's not favorable to 'figure out', unless you have a lot of trial and error the tooltips will just make you bang your head on the desk, and trying to look it up will come with some semi-decent information (Dataslycer's guide is good though), but being able to figure it out is usually half the battle. I agree, more strategy needs to be implemented.

[theTrav]

PvP mechanics against animals are always going to be fairly uninspiring.

I reckon there's a little bit to strategy within the combat system as it stands, however it could be emphasized more.
I have yet to see any strategy guide that contains multiple tactics, I'd love it if someone wrote one up.

[Elirian]

Sorry, obviously didn't highlight the particularly relevant information well enough, people seem to have misunderstood what I am saying.

My unarmed combat skill alone lets me handle level VI boars. I'm assuming with 1 in unarmed combat, a level I boar would beat me. (Can't verify, never seen one)

Understanding the enemies moves, the moves I have available, what allows each of us to deal more damage and be more accurate, figuring out what the best sequence of moves is to take advantage of that, when to interrupt that sequence and with what, and applying that understanding, allows me to beat level VII boars, but not level VIII.

This means that my 70 UA combat skill allows me to beat boars that are 6 levels higher than I would otherwise be able to, while applying all of the information I have available and using it appropriately allows me to beat boars 1 level higher than I would otherwise be able to. In other words, the combat system is heavily weighted towards having higher numbers, rather than making best use of it.

Hopefully that explains it a little better. If you see what I'm saying you'll see how pve or pvp isn't really relevant, as the issue I'm discussing is the system itself, not the application. Obviously having stats weighted so heavily is going to carry through to pvp, and a player with 200 melee is going to annihilate a player with 150 melee, even if the 150 player uses the combat system to its fullest, while the 200 player just charges and stings.

It's not that the combat system lacks depth or strategy, it's that the depth and strategy are of very very little importance compared to pumping the fuck out of your combat skills. There's no point trying to apply any of the available strategies or adapt them on the fly because the combat has already been decided before you begin. Unless by some sheer fluke of coincidence both combatants skills are within 10-15 percentage points of each other.

I'm just not sure if it is intentional or not. Hearing stories about people oneshotting well geared dedicated combat characters whilst already engaged and at low defense makes me think that it does provide some scope for silly situations, but perhaps there are drawbacks to changing it that are not immediately obvious, and it's a conscious decision to have stats being so much more important than strategy because of those drawbacks.

[theTrav]

I now understand what you are saying and fully agree that the system is overly stat dependent.
Jackard has been calling for the removal of skill values as an influence in combat since I can remember, I agree that they should be removed.


Once that is done you will still get an un-true reading from animals compared to vs players because
1 - The animals have different moves to people
2 - The (smarter) people will use the system in VASTLY different ways to animals

I got hooked on that distinction, which is a bit of a red herring. I agree with your core assertion.