I'd like to remove timed instakills*, and give every class something to work towards as a power cost instakill. Not an RNG "They're in this state, doing this might kill them" but building someone up to a point where you can just pull the trigger and finish them off.
*Yes I'm aware I pit decap a ton, still waiting for it to get nerfed already.
The divine voice
of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations,
Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
Just out of curiosity, for those who are veterans in other IRE games, is Lusternia combat really more complicated or imbalanced than other realms? Is there something other realms do that you think would make Lusternia combat easier to get into?
I've really only fought in Achaea before (granted, it was a couple of RL years ago), but there are miles between Achaean combat and Lusternian combat. Number of afflictions aside, there are also far more types of "afflictions"; warrior wounds, burn levels, blood clots, etc. I won't comment on the balance part, since... well, I'm not a fighter in Lusternia, so it's not as if I can comment on it.
I'm not saying we should dumb combat down to Achaea levels, but... yeah. It is, without a doubt, far more complex.
I like the complex combat. I also understand that having such a complex system with so many variables makes it very difficult to balance. I think something we could do though is to balance combat based on mechanics, and then find a way to bring RP in, rather than trying to balance combat around RP and then trying to bring mechanics in. I think the strong point of RP is that if it can be imagined, it can be done. Combat mechanics don't have that flexibility.
That being said, I think making things fair and balanced is very difficult with the small playerbase. I think if we had a larger playerbase we could maybe apply statistical trackers or something to help understand whats happening in combat.
I played Achaea for a few years. I was never too tier or anything, but yea... There aren't nearly as many afflictions or types of afflictions or curative balances. However, there aren't nearly the possibilities because of it. Combat always felt very stale, where here it feels very fluid and changing. New strategies come and go on a pretty solid baseline, whereas in Achaea there wasn't much room for it.
I don't agree that we should make combat simpler. I think we should make it more accessible. This should be done by lowering the threshold for combat. Bring things like tumble, focus mind, focus spirit, and the like to much lower investment. As it stands, you can pretty much Trans a guild skill for free, an after that, it's not too rough to make money IG.
Most of the complaints are here are from people who can't pick up combat out-of-the-box. Well, sorry. You shouldn't be able to. You should need to spend time learning and immersing yourself first. After all, you don't come out of the womb knowing how to walk.
I can definitely agree that combat should be made more accessible. I've actually often said that in the past as well. Just to rehash a couple of old suggestions I've had:
- Enchantable Green/Gedulah (so you don't need to spend those 700'ish lessons) - A new type of kirigami that mimics trans resilience for the purpose of venom shrugging (after all, afflictions are balanced around people shrugging, I think, 33%) - Afflines for wounds (not necessarily giving you how badly wounded the body part was, just something that tells you "This attack hit your leg")
So far though, nothing has changed with regards to making combat more accessible.
Wasn't combat complexity one of the selling points, initially?
Is this a case of the player base changing and people expecting streamlined systems nowadays?
Not trying to be contranarian, I'm just curious.
What I want is "easy to learn, hard to master."
Making the AB files more helpful will go a long way in making that happen. Right now a prospective combatant (presumably with low credit investment and level, thus can't test things themselves) has to go through a billion different resources and talk to a billion different people, and then work out which sources were incorrect and which were correct before they can even really start to comprehend how combat works. Every source only has a piece of the puzzle, which you need to piece together.
This is very off-putting, of course, and leads to a much lower combatant growth rate than would otherwise be.
You can keep everything the same, but add more accurate, detailed resources and I expect there will be more combatants and a higher general skill level of those combatants. This would lead to more fun overall. Better competition = more fun. Better allies = more fun.
I also come from games like StarCraft, DotA, LoL, Guild Wars, etc. Things are generally very well explained there, and their amateur scene is greatly aided by that, which flows right in to the pro level. They also generally don't sacrifice complexity for that.
To be honest, what other realms do that Lusternia could benefit a lot from is that they add give way more information to the players as far as abilities, skills, etc. go.
Aetolia and Imperian, for example, have configurable (i.e. it's an option the player can turn on) balance times, damage types given/taken, and health gained/lost, making testing way more accurate compared to using a player script. Their AB files are also more fleshed out, their AB lists all the skills available (if you know it, it's in white, if you don't it's in grey), and accurately tell you when you gain what skill (not sure here, but I think so).
On top of this, both games' admins make an effort to give the players a sneak peek on upcoming skills/changes and then even let select players beta test them to iron out kinks and work out the major problems before being released to the public. While I understand that this will dampen some of the "magic" of the surprise, I would willingly sacrifice that for a more balanced and less headache-prone game.
Oh, and they seem to design things with an aim to solve a particular problem, update a mechanic, or balance out a skill instead of doing things "because it seems like a cool idea". Aetolia, for example, made a conflict system revolving around nodes/group battles, they made a conflict system that encourages duels, and in between, they've been churning out redesigns of old classes to remove "legacy" skills and update them with unique and effective mechanics and then wrapping them in class' RP. Not to mention Imperian, Aetolia, and lately, Achaea finally implementing a statpack-like system so players can effectively pvp/bash/whatever without having to suck it up and use a race they don't necessarily like being. In essence, they get to have fun without feeling like they took a dump on their RP (and vice-versa). Mechanics first, theme second.
Lastly, speaking of simplicity, Imperian recently removed endurance and willpower. While this would be a lot of work, it does simplify their combat a lot since it involves less juggling of resources. I know you guys wrote this off a few months ago, but I feel that it's worth considering again.
So yeah, if you guys want to make things simpler, should look into what those guys are doing.
In terms of combat simplification and accessibility, I throw my weight behind a lot of Shuyin's commentary. Transparency has always been one of the big things that help simplify and make combat more accessible.
As well, while complexity is nice flavorwise, it muddles the achievement of goals if it isn't grounded in attaining a mechanical result first. This practice might hit a bit of a resistance, but I maintain that it's much easier to weave roleplay flavor around mechanics rather than to make mechanics fit roleplay flavor.
For actual ideas to simplify combat, I'd like to throw the thought out there of somehow lifting the burden of defup scripts from the player's side to the game's side. I know when I'm a newbie, remembering everything I can do is problem enough. Making sure I raise the pertinent defenses without scripting it myself to chase balances and typing each syntax out just adds to this burden as a starter.
Two independent instakills per class independent of their tertiary as per Shuyin, please. Manakill/or a skill that deals health damage based on the difference of the max mana and current for Harbingers, if a second instant is too much.
Viravain, Lady of the Thorns shouts, "And You would seize Me? Fool! I am the Glomdoring! I am the Wyrd, and beneath the cloak of Night, the shadows of the Silent stir!"
Combat in Lusternia is balanced in specific match ups and entirely imbalanced in others.
Nihilist and Illuminati will solo anything, in the case of a Nihilist you can be killed if you attack once at the wrong time. Upgrade to hexes made hexists of either much stronger, in the case of Nihilists they don't have to wait on power regen really now.
Druids versus anything with brumetower is entirely pointless, the druid is screwed basically.
A warrior versus a monk is considerably likely to lose that fight readily because monks are basically built to counter warriors.
Bards are countered by anything with gust, and with the ability to spam movement waiting on earwort you guarantee you can get out when earwort comes up.
We have a list of broken skills but attempts to fix them are met with lack of interest in fixing them (see Paradigmatics - Reality). And some over the top minor things (guardian pets are crazy compared to any other champ arty, specially with their huge buff of thousands of damage) were done without any rhyme or reason.
I think our conflict systems are in far worse shape than our combat mechanics, but combat is by no means balanced. I do not think it is in dire straits (unless you are a druid). Also worth noticing is that the newer orgs have improved versions of older orgs, and for the most part no one is really interested in fixing that. Most would rather just upgrade stuff than fix other things.
I can definitely agree that combat should be made more accessible. I've actually often said that in the past as well. Just to rehash a couple of old suggestions I've had:
- Enchantable Green/Gedulah (so you don't need to spend those 700'ish lessons) - A new type of kirigami that mimics trans resilience for the purpose of venom shrugging (after all, afflictions are balanced around people shrugging, I think, 33%) - Afflines for wounds (not necessarily giving you how badly wounded the body part was, just something that tells you "This attack hit your leg")
So far though, nothing has changed with regards to making combat more accessible.
These are all great ideas. I would also like to throw in Focus Mind and, to a lesser extent, Focus Spirit as things that should be enchantable or otherwise made available without a huge lesson investment.
Give bards a skill that gives a decent resistance to gust.
Viravain, Lady of the Thorns shouts, "And You would seize Me? Fool! I am the Glomdoring! I am the Wyrd, and beneath the cloak of Night, the shadows of the Silent stir!"
Combat in Lusternia is balanced in specific match ups and entirely imbalanced in others.
And it's balanced generally around 1-2 fighters per side. A 'one change to fix them all' solution would be to heavily discourage group fighting, or powerfully encourage single combat fighting, and begin balancing accordingly.
1. Make effects more quantifiable and reliable, less RNG.
2. Expand all the AB files to actually explain what the skill does, instead of just being vague. If a skill has a 20% chance to resist x, y, and z afflictions, say so instead of 'This skill has a chance to resist some afflictions'.
3. Flesh out the WHATISCUREDBY, WHATCURES, etc database to explain what an affliction does and what skill/classes can give it.
4. Delete multiple cures. 1 kind of cure for 1 aff (within reason).
Be more transparent about skills and formulas if you're not willing to make things less random.
Example for 2, 3: I use Healing instead of carrying the standard curatives, but the explanations provided in-game don't explicitly tell me what each Healing ability does, and Firstaid doesn't use Healing. I have to rely on the Lusternia wiki (since I haven't built my system yet).
Additionally for 4: Healing abilities, which mostly follow standard curatives, might be the easiest place to glance and see how much overlap there is.
Yeah, Healing was one of the biggest culprits after reading almost all of the available AB files during my lunch break. I also just recall being asked/asking the same skill-related questions over and over throughout the years, not getting very far, then having to dig through the forums, ask clans, and/or bug envoys to get what I needed. Having the information is key to simplifying your decisions, IMO.
P.S. no idea where the Reality rhetoric came from , but I've written the report months ago and it's even been pending for weeks now (even has 9 comments!). Just because there is a lack of interest on doing things immediately after the forum mob gets their pitchforks out (since I believe that immediate reactionary nerfs are dumb) does not mean there is a lack of interest in fixing it after analyzing the problem, checking to see if the situation remains the same after things have cooled off, and then making the right call.
P.S. no idea where the Reality rhetoric came from , but I've written the report months ago and it's even been pending for weeks now (even has 9 comments!). Just because there is a lack of interest on doing things immediately after the forum mob gets their pitchforks out (since I believe that immediate reactionary nerfs are dumb) does not mean there is a lack of interest in fixing it after analyzing the problem, checking to see if the situation remains the same after things have cooled off, and then making the right call.
No interest in derailing the fun here, but having a report up and never submitting it = not putting up a report... How you can justify submitting an unneeded flavor buff (change to claws) over fixing a really messed up skill is beyond me.
I'd remove random miss from warrior combat and drastically reduce how much impact the RNG has on warrior combat.
1.) Change knight swing attacks to always hit the correct location 100% of the time. i.e. smite down - 100% chance to hit head, smite up - 100% chance to hit gut.
2.) Remove random miss from bashing and combat.
3.) Affs always dealt at the correct wound state unless maneuvers are used. i.e. Heavy Wounds to Head = Slitthroat on a Swing 100% of the time, Critical Wounds to Head = Behead 100% of the time.
4.) Considerably reduce the amount of wounding given by warriors to counteract the 100% reliability and then balance from there.
P.S. no idea where the Reality rhetoric came from , but I've written the report months ago and it's even been pending for weeks now (even has 9 comments!). Just because there is a lack of interest on doing things immediately after the forum mob gets their pitchforks out (since I believe that immediate reactionary nerfs are dumb) does not mean there is a lack of interest in fixing it after analyzing the problem, checking to see if the situation remains the same after things have cooled off, and then making the right call.
No interest in derailing the fun here, but having a report up and never submitting it = not putting up a report... How you can justify submitting an unneeded flavor buff (change to claws) over fixing a really messed up skill is beyond me.
Feels like you're delaying.
It has been pending for several weeks, which means it's submitted......
P.S. no idea where the Reality rhetoric came from , but I've written the report months ago and it's even been pending for weeks now (even has 9 comments!). Just because there is a lack of interest on doing things immediately after the forum mob gets their pitchforks out (since I believe that immediate reactionary nerfs are dumb) does not mean there is a lack of interest in fixing it after analyzing the problem, checking to see if the situation remains the same after things have cooled off, and then making the right call.
No interest in derailing the fun here, but having a report up and never submitting it = not putting up a report... How you can justify submitting an unneeded flavor buff (change to claws) over fixing a really messed up skill is beyond me.
Feels like you're delaying.
Or he's actually trying to gather feedback but there's barely any in the envoy comments, so he's taking it for what it was, excessive forum whining.
There's worse skills out there than reality, and they haven't even bothered to make reports to open up a discussion, maybe you should be giving stick to those people instead.
The divine voice
of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations,
Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
I'd remove random miss from warrior combat and drastically reduce how much impact the RNG has on warrior combat.
1.) Change knight swing attacks to always hit the correct location 100% of the time. i.e. smite down - 100% chance to hit head, smite up - 100% chance to hit gut.
2.) Remove random miss from bashing and combat.
3.) Affs always dealt at the correct wound state unless maneuvers are used. i.e. Heavy Wounds to Head = Slitthroat on a Swing 100% of the time, Critical Wounds to Head = Behead 100% of the time.
4.) Considerably reduce the amount of wounding given by warriors to counteract the 100% reliability and then balance from there.
Not sure about guarenteed afflictions, I like the element of chance but it needs a tone down, the issue with reducing wounds done is that you will cure it much faster, which against KatadeflectTattooarmour Monks and Masterplate Knights will make wounding exceptionally difficult.
Yes to #2 though, random miss needs to die in a fire.
Also, your solution with hack up/down means you'll never swing chest.
The divine voice
of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations,
Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
I agree about the random miss chance in PvP. I do think that the RNG is mostly fine on its own. The only RNG issues I have is when I require two specific affs in a combo which is prone to screwup from even the simplest things like rebounding.
I'd remove random miss from warrior combat and drastically reduce how much impact the RNG has on warrior combat.
1.) Change knight swing attacks to always hit the correct location 100% of the time. i.e. smite down - 100% chance to hit head, smite up - 100% chance to hit gut.
2.) Remove random miss from bashing and combat.
3.) Affs always dealt at the correct wound state unless maneuvers are used. i.e. Heavy Wounds to Head = Slitthroat on a Swing 100% of the time, Critical Wounds to Head = Behead 100% of the time.
4.) Considerably reduce the amount of wounding given by warriors to counteract the 100% reliability and then balance from there.
Not sure about guarenteed afflictions, I like the element of chance but it needs a tone down, the issue with reducing wounds done is that you will cure it much faster, which against KatadeflectTattooarmour Monks and Masterplate Knights will make wounding exceptionally difficult.
Yes to #2 though, Random miss needs to die in a fire.
Also, your solution with hack up/down means you'll never swing chest.
Kata Deflect needs to die in a fire, and it would need a change if these were to go through. As would Master Plate - hence why I suggested balancing once the changes had gone through.
We're one of the very few classes in the game that has even an element of RNG in our combat. But it's not just in one area, it's in almost all areas and it really needs to be drastically toned down or removed. Perhaps rather than 100% chance of giving an affliction at a given wound state it only spreads over two wounding levels. i.e. if you have your target at heavy head wounds then you'll always get a heavy or a medium affliction.
There are some nice wounds on swing chest for most specs (stun wounds), especially for the one handers and Cavaliers. I'd still swing chest, particularly if I wanted to slow down wound curing and have a chance of moving parry or stance away from head/legs.
If the problem is with wounding against heavily-armoured people... why not just make wounding ignore armour? Would level the playing field dramatically. KatadeflectTattooarmour Monks and Masterplate Knights will still have an advantage in that they won't have to sip as often and can better focus on curing the wounds, but silly robes wearer won't suffer just because they can't put 300 credits into tailoring to get a better set of robes than 45/45.
Comments
*Yes I'm aware I pit decap a ton, still waiting for it to get nerfed already.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
I'm not saying we should dumb combat down to Achaea levels, but... yeah. It is, without a doubt, far more complex.
I don't agree that we should make combat simpler. I think we should make it more accessible. This should be done by lowering the threshold for combat. Bring things like tumble, focus mind, focus spirit, and the like to much lower investment. As it stands, you can pretty much Trans a guild skill for free, an after that, it's not too rough to make money IG.
Most of the complaints are here are from people who can't pick up combat out-of-the-box. Well, sorry. You shouldn't be able to. You should need to spend time learning and immersing yourself first. After all, you don't come out of the womb knowing how to walk.
- Enchantable Green/Gedulah (so you don't need to spend those 700'ish lessons)
- A new type of kirigami that mimics trans resilience for the purpose of venom shrugging (after all, afflictions are balanced around people shrugging, I think, 33%)
- Afflines for wounds (not necessarily giving you how badly wounded the body part was, just something that tells you "This attack hit your leg")
So far though, nothing has changed with regards to making combat more accessible.
Signature!
Two independent instakills per class independent of their tertiary as per Shuyin, please. Manakill/or a skill that deals health damage based on the difference of the max mana and current for Harbingers, if a second instant is too much.
Nihilist and Illuminati will solo anything, in the case of a Nihilist you can be killed if you attack once at the wrong time. Upgrade to hexes made hexists of either much stronger, in the case of Nihilists they don't have to wait on power regen really now.
Druids versus anything with brumetower is entirely pointless, the druid is screwed basically.
A warrior versus a monk is considerably likely to lose that fight readily because monks are basically built to counter warriors.
Bards are countered by anything with gust, and with the ability to spam movement waiting on earwort you guarantee you can get out when earwort comes up.
We have a list of broken skills but attempts to fix them are met with lack of interest in fixing them (see Paradigmatics - Reality). And some over the top minor things (guardian pets are crazy compared to any other champ arty, specially with their huge buff of thousands of damage) were done without any rhyme or reason.
I think our conflict systems are in far worse shape than our combat mechanics, but combat is by no means balanced. I do not think it is in dire straits (unless you are a druid). Also worth noticing is that the newer orgs have improved versions of older orgs, and for the most part no one is really interested in fixing that. Most would rather just upgrade stuff than fix other things.
And it's balanced generally around 1-2 fighters per side. A 'one change to fix them all' solution would be to heavily discourage group fighting, or powerfully encourage single combat fighting, and begin balancing accordingly.
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It has been pending for several weeks, which means it's submitted......
Or he's actually trying to gather feedback but there's barely any in the envoy comments, so he's taking it for what it was, excessive forum whining.
There's worse skills out there than reality, and they haven't even bothered to make reports to open up a discussion, maybe you should be giving stick to those people instead.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
Yes to #2 though, random miss needs to die in a fire.
Also, your solution with hack up/down means you'll never swing chest.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
Kata Deflect needs to die in a fire, and it would need a change if these were to go through. As would Master Plate - hence why I suggested balancing once the changes had gone through.