Game Development: Death

[jorb]

why not AoE attacks?

Attacks that target multiple enemies is a good idea regardless, yeah. We did implement a sword attack on that note.

[Granger]

For (x>1) vs 1 combat here is my 2¢:

How about, instead of one set of active defenses against all, you have one set per enemy, with every one of them getting the defenses you trigger. Moves of the enemies work only on the set exposed to that individual, so alts punching dosn't wear down the defense toward the main. Attacks still go toward the main target (or more in case of storm of swords). IP still stacks per enemy.

Against new enemies (aggro by them) you will get a defense set that is average of all active sets, in case you aggro additional enemies yourself you get an empty set towards them.

Could this help against swarms and group ganks?

[strpk0]

For (x>1) vs 1 combat here is my 2¢:

How about, instead of one set of active defenses against all, you have one set per enemy, with every one of them getting the defenses you trigger. Moves of the enemies work only on the set exposed to that individual, so alts punching dosn't wear down the defense toward the main. Attacks still go toward the main target (or more in case of storm of swords). IP still stacks per enemy.

Against new enemies (aggro by them) you will get a defense set that is average of all active sets, in case you aggro additional enemies yourself you get an empty set towards them.

Could this help against swarms and group ganks?

+1, only thing that could possibly become a problem is keeping track of how your defenses are doing against each single person and such. But that's a fault of the UI, not this idea.

[Potjeh]

I'd like to see "unbreakable" defence cards for dealing with swarms. Ie these cards wouldn't actually block damage so wouldn't get broken by attacks, but would still trigger special effects on attacks they could theoretically block. Give them low defensive weight, and they'll be no use vs a similarly statted opponent, but would effectively counterspam the attack spam from zero investment alts. Effects could be a counterattack for every attack, a la Parry, or a short duration Rage card that fills up a meter with every appropriately colored attack while it's active, and when it expires triggers an AoE attack who's damage depends on the meter. There's lots of room for cool stuff here. The important thing with these is that they should be purely a counter to swarms, ie mostly useless against decent stats so people can't cheese it and have their own alts attack them to trigger these cards vs an opponent.

[LadyV]

I'm no combat specialist in Haven but from what i see we need to make combat moves and such skills. Each one must be learned and each one raised to improve it. If you want to discourage cheap gank squads then make it require a lot of time to make each alt. If you have to spend massive amounts of time and points to train a alt up to break a persons defence skill then you are fairly committed to things. It would weed out the mass alts and mass bots, for the most part. I'm sure someone somewhere would make programs to feed and stat them up over time.

I just think with combat as all skills you fix a lot of issues. I mean you may be great at combat but if someone put more into their defence than you you could still lose. Anyway my thoughts.

[jordancoles]

If people bot combat that just means the combat system doesn't involve enough player skill.

GLHF developing a combat system so intricate that no simple action or sequence of actions is worthwhile. Essentially the same as aiming to remove bots entirely, and problematic-to-impossible for the same reasons.

Aside from the biles, I actually loved Salem's combat system
Aim-based combat will always be far superior in my eyes

Dat feel when you circle a crate, que up lunge and the guy walks right into your blade oh lawd hnnnnngggghh

[bmjclark]

I'd just like to see maneuvers return in some shape or form. Possibly advantage just to add another lair of depth as well. The current combat is very basic compared to what we had before.

[Granger]

On account of death penalty my 2¢:

My take is that an inherited character should regain the stats and attributes of the ancestor progressively over the time of some RL days to weeks, depending on character level.

System based on level points (LP and FEP needed to gain the corresponding level), so you can eat/study while regaining to speed it up at the start, but will get less effective levels back (since level points are deducted the moment of the regain tick, adding levels in between makes the next regained level more expensive).

Progressive in the way that one level on each stat/attribute is regained per RL hour, while level points for each last (points not enough for another level at the end are lost).

You can speed this up by using the grave mechanic, same numbers as now (so 30% speedup possible, reducing the time between ticks). Return to old character spec to not make it into a cheap respec system in case you plan a vacation anyway.

10% of level points (to account for skull study), unused LP and bought skills are lost, as are discoveries (both item and combat moves). Level points not yet transferred in case of additional death carry over to next inheritance. The Inherited character gets 10 instant recovery ticks on spawn.

IMHO this would give a reasonable penalty for death (time, LP for skills, combat and item discoveries to redo) while not crippling the bloodline beyond use. With something like this death through old age could also be reasonable.

Please discuss in a constructive manner.

In case a dev or mod thinks this should deserve an own thread, please split it off.

[MagicManICT]

b) Going wide is preferable to going high. Not only has the game a relatively low player count because of people quitting, there are also no new players joining. That may have a number of reasons, but one is very likely the inability to ever catch up with someone who has played since the world started.

Nah. It certainly hasn't stopped anyone playing EVE or other such games where it takes a year or more to gain truly competitive skills (like for 1v1 or evenly matched squad combat). Anyone that wants to use such an argument is most likely already turned off by something else and this is an easy target to shoot at for a reason to not play. A group is almost always going to gank significantly lower numbers. (There are always exceptions, of course.)

Compare it to a game with explicit levels where a character at level 20 is twice as powerful as a 10, 30 twice as powerful as a 20, etc. Most of them don't take long to grind up, and there is a practical limit as to the processing needed to computer larger and larger numbers. No matter how big the swarm, it's likely the big guy isn't going to get taken down due to several factors (which can vary from game to game). Here, a guy with 90 UA is only 50% stronger than a guy with 40. A guy with 160 UA is only 33% stronger than a guy with 90, etc, if you figure all other stats equal. It's probably not even that if you were to do a true statistical analysis with the combat formulas, and isn't even figuring in player skill which is much more important in the long run. Certain players have boasted of taking down others with much higher stats, and I'm inclined to believe them.

I'd like to see "unbreakable" defence cards for dealing with swarms.

Swarms are what makes an unlimited character progression in this game pointless and counters it. You keep on about implemented some sort of level and stat cap when it the status quo can be countered. I'm in agreement that it does need to be balanced better, but this might throw it too far the other side where you can't counter an unlimited power character with the swarm.

[springyb]

Here, a guy with 90 UA is only 50% stronger than a guy with 40. A guy with 160 UA is only 33% stronger than a guy with 90, etc, if you figure all other stats equal. It's probably not even that if you were to do a true statistical analysis with the combat formulas, and isn't even figuring in player skill which is much more important in the long run. Certain players have boasted of taking down others with much higher stats, and I'm inclined to believe them.

How exactly do diminishing returns work on UA/MC?