Some summing up, and some thoughts.
1) There's too many attacks/moves. The plan we've had is to introduce a system in which you would have to pick from the available attacks and construct a "combat school" comprising of somewhere between 8-10-12 combat options in total. Per some character stat/stats, you might be able to have more moves. The school would then be all you had available for any specific combat. The school would then, after some time, perhaps, acquire some identity of it's own -- be given a name, be possible to teach as one unit, maybe even receive some qualitative bonuses if used unmodified. Also, as it is, a lot of you must reasonably have gotten every new attack pretty much immediately, where the thought has obviously been that you'd gradually get more attacks, and thus have some time to familiarize yourself with each attack as you get it. Under any new learning system, attacks would most likely be learned one by one.
2) The system is over complex. This might be accurate. The idea we've wanted to realize is one which basically says that actual player skill should be as important as character stats. I think that, in order to realize that idea, the system needs to have a certain amount of complexity. What I am concerned about is that the complexity that is in isn't always very meaningful. Intensity is more or less irrelevant. We've tried to amend this by attacks and moves that play off this dimension, in order to make it meaningful, but we've probably not been entirely successful. In the case of intensity, it might be the case that this could be amended by more attacks playing off of it.
Balance is obviously a critical dimension. What the balance-meter says is relevant. The concern I have with it is that it might be stupid to have inherent feedback loops in the system. As it is, you gain balance by winning, which can obviously quickly lead to you winning even more, and thus gaining more balance. When fighting bears I've found myself using seize the day + bloodlust in a not so super-interesting tug-of-war with the bear over balance.
Offense and defense were put in so as to set up the fundamental logic that you cannot simply use attacks. The idea was that you should have to build up a resource, offense, and then expend it to throw an attack, reducing you opponents defense. It also adds in more fight local variables that the attacks and moves can play off, and modify. One particular interaction I do like is that between "Charge!" and "Flex", where you can build up initiative points using charge in order to "unlock" a better offense-gaining move, flex. It means spending some time building offense at a slow pace, reducing defense, but then being able to use a better move later. Interactions like that add a certain amount of strategy to the system.
3) Fighting animals is boring. Constructing an AI for this system is a fairly daunting task, so we decided to give the animals attacks that simply make them difficult, rather than intelligent. The system was always designed with PvP in mind.
4) The moves aren't fun. I don't know. What I like about the new system is that fighting is a responsive ordeal. It is not simply the case that we both stand looking at one another, throwing punches without much concern for what the opponent is doing. Attacks need to be timed, etc. If your opponent starts gaining combat balance by using moves, you will have to counter that at some point. It might be the case that these interactions suffer from a tug-of-war syndrome. While damage from weapons, and armor soak, might not be optimal as it is, I do think that the new math apart from that works fairly well. As warrri pointed out, you will almost always win in a one-to-one fight if you have a decent lead in stats, but you still have problems if you go up against multiple opponents.
Keep posting your thoughts. I'm humble about it, so feel free to spout as much abuse as you like.
by jorb » Sun Feb 14, 2010 11:22 am 
