by AnnaC » Tue Nov 19, 2013 11:32 pm Ninijutsu wrote:AnnaC wrote:A one-handed metal Axe, basically an upgrade to the stone axe, with the combat base damage less than a Militia Sword; would be useful still as a new option for using shields and being able to use cleave and chop... also useful on an economic side and makes sense as metal axeheads were well sought after trade items when metal technology came around.
If it did less damage than a sword, then there's no reason to use it, because chop is just a sting that costs twice as much initiative, and cleave is essentially useless. Could give it a lot of penetration maybe and make it a poor man's way to hurt armored individuals.
But Chop has and will always have more armor penetration than Sting ever will, and it's also a useful tool on its own. The only reason it should have less base than a Militia Sword is because that would make Militia Sword even more worthless than it already is (only useful for hermit hunting, and fallback emergency self-defense weapon). If a one-handed tool the same size had just as much power it'd make it worthless as it would have the niche of the militia sword already (Chop is slower to set-up than Sting, but it is still doable), and be better at self-defense PvP because it can break armor much more than a militia sword. That's why I suggested it be a little weaker; it'd be a slight tradeoff with hunting animal/low-armored hearthling speed combat, but payoff with being a treechopping tool and having more armor penetration.
Linkpwns wrote:The real issue is that if you fix one problem it causes another. Haven and hearth has been developped and changed so many times in the years of its existence that if we really want a good "fix" we just have to rebuild the combat system (or any system) from the ground up. And thats why development on HnH has slowed down and the devs presence has been seeminly lacking because they are getting ready for Haven 2.0 and Im sure salem is taking up some of their attention still. So if you have any issues w/ the combat system. Instead of a simple change of "buff this" "nerf that". How about we discuss new and original ideas for haven 2.0, like jorb asked. There has been some really good debate and ideas but its best we start fresh.
But the fundamental combat system is good, and extremely interesting (one of the best in MMOs). The main downsides come from bad balance of individual moves, so what is on-paper a system that has a wide potential of options given a combat situation, comes down to only a few moves and methods used, because a lot of the other individual options aren't worth it (because they aren't balanced to be worthwhile, even in their niche). Sure this is a constant balancing act to get these down, but that's the point of an alpha. The downsides to this of course, are methods that are easiest with the most bang for their buck get overused almost to the point of exclusivity, but the only other option is to rely on stat grind and go with the simple methodologies, trusting to the stats (this isn't as efficient when fighting a veteran player, but is useful enough generally); this is something the interesting, robust combat system in Haven & Hearth should avoid.
I don't think this is an original idea, but something widespread that could be implemented is some sort of softcap on extreme stat discrepancy. Not that Hearthlings that grinded their stats shouldn't have that inherent advantage, the extent of the discrepancies could be capped to maybe 4x or 5x difference. Of course, how stat growth is atleast with quality, it takes longer to reach the next factor up, so there is some inherent balance to growth built into the game; so it's possible this is already the case naturally in the system, I'm not sure on (as I said I'm not that experienced in combat comparatively, and I'm not the biggest fan of checking out the maths behind the game as for me immersion and escapism is the point of the game; not that there is anything wrong with the more analytical-minded players in the community.)
