Game Development: Testing, testing.

[Chakravanti]

You shoudl study the move list before commenting. THere are things you can do to gain the upper hand. That aside, Defense is garnered fairly slow especially compared to hwo easy offense is to gather.

Try to get klaue out of defense when he uses oak stance.

Which brings us back to the margin of development....

[stickman]

So I take it I am the only one who feels its very slow? It feels like 5 minutes fighting when such a fight on the current map would be over in < 1 min.

[kLauE]

most games are over in 5 secs when i spar against someone... ktho ftw
the combat system looks interesting in the beginning, but after some hours of testing it is very boring thats right. high chars win easily after seconds and fights with 2 same skilled chars can take minutes with spamming the same combat maneuver.

[Lman8786]

We've been developing, and here's what's new.

...

... well, for the main server that's about it. We have, however, put up a test server on which you can try out what we've got so far on the new combat system!

Bullets
You log in using your normal account and password.
The server is running an old copy of the present game world. Go back in time, see the world as it once was!
You must have had your game account before that arbitrary point in time when loftar last copied the maps to the dev computer.
There are no tooltips (or anything, for that matter) describing the new combat moves, and what they do. However, thanks to some great efforts by kaka, the old text rendering issues should now be solved, so all we have to do is to actually write the tooltips in question. This means that learning the new combat system will be the arduous process of trial and error that you all love and have come to expect from H&H.
There is a new fighting option for sparring. Right click on a character, and pick spar. Damage in a sparring session is not real, and is removed once all fighting relations in sparring mode terminate. Armor still loses HP as normal, though.
Nothing that happens on the test server matters. Your characters are null and void to us, and to yourselves, there. Spar with a friend, or maim and kill, we do not care either way, as long as you report back with your thoughts.

We have not looked into any attacks other than "Knock his teeth out" and "Punch", yet. Melee is still unaddressed. HP and armor reductions also haven't been looked into. Unarmed combat is the only thing we've tested this with. The animals have not been updated to handle this. Note that it is a very early version, and very little has been done in terms of balancing -- especially so with regard to combat between players with different stats and combat between many players

Here's the client you'll use: http://www.dolda2000.com/~fredrik/haven/fighting.jnlp

Well how does the new fighting system actually work?



This is the new combatometer (actually it's a mock-up, but it looks like this). You will notice the blue and red bars. Offense, and defense. Offense is used for attacks, and consumes the defense of the opposing player. These refill on their own, but that takes time. What's more important are combat moves.

Each attack empties your offense meter completely, reload it by using moves.
All maneuvers have new static effects that trigger on an opponent's move -- except shield and dodge.
Some moves can only be used under certain circumstances, such as having enough IP, certain advantage, intensity and so on and so forth.
You cannot miss with moves. They always take effect.

Ask questions, try it out if you feel like it, and have fun.

wow thats pretty dumb I dont wanna use this just stay with the old one! This could ruin the game

[Jackard]

wow thats pretty dumb I dont wanna use this just stay with the old one! This could ruin the game :cry:

you disgust me

be thankful they set up a test server for this so they can find out what actually works beforehand instead of just going ahead with it in the old fashion

[theTrav]

I haven't been playing much but maybe I'll have a crack at this test fighting some time over the weekend, I have a few questions though:

1 - Do the meters take into account combat with multiple opponents? Can I have a noob fling sand at klaus while I hoard my IP to get some hits in?
2 - Is there an intent that weak characters / new players should be able to take down characters who have played for months if the month long players completely ignore them?


To me, "try this and tell us what you think" is a little too open ended for testing. I'd like to see some more specific tests such as:
1 - New naked player vs another new naked player, build 5 strategies out of the moves and play 5 matches with each combination (might be better done as a programmatic test)
2 - 1, 5, 10 and 50 new naked players vs the strongest player in the game, 5 matches each, who wins?
3 - The strongest player in the game vs his doppleganger for 5 matches of each strategy combination, who wins?
4 - The median level strength player vs his doppleganger for 5 matches of each strategy combination, who wins?

I haven't spent long enough studying the system, but here's a few concepts to examine for effectiveness.

Low hp character vs High hp character:
Avoid getting hit, focus on reducing opponents offense and increasing your defense, spam some low chance to hit attacks.

High hp character vs Low hp character:
getting hit probably doesn't matter so much so largely ignore defense, focus on IP for special attacks to take out weak character first

I dunno, I'm struggling to see any paper/scissors/rock style interactions, maybe I need to spend more time looking at it

[Caradon]

DON'T freak out! It's actually a decent system, they just need to tweak a few things. Such as immediately resetting attack/defense counters immediately upon ending a fight.

I'd personally like to see strength have no impact on HP and more affect on damage, similarly if they would add enhanced damage for strength, constitution should have a small natural damage reduction, parallel to the extra damage. This would help balance things as beefy characters who have ignored their constitution would be able to dish damage out, but not take it.

[ElGato]

To your first question, yes.
Me and Nao took kLauE down in a few hits when we worked together

Don't think he was hitting though
EDIT::

This would help balance things as beefy characters who have ignored their constitution would be able to dish damage out, but not take it.

lol, you think your enemies have ignored their constitution?
It's funny that all of Caradon's suggestions mainly concern him in his mind.

[MasterCatfish]

I'm getting a 'connection refused' message each time I try to log into the test server. Is the server just down, or is there something wrong with my account?

[Cain]

I'm getting a 'connection refused' message each time I try to log into the test server. Is the server just down, or is there something wrong with my account?

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