I have been thinking about this stuff quite a bit for some reason
and I think have some ideas that will please 'most' involved and
at the same give balance, err better balance, to the fight (PK)
system. Here goes:
It is known that dex (dex/perc and dex/mind) have a distinct
advantage over other char types (str/xxx and con/xxx). And from
the Q&A's and chat discussions, nobody really wants to downgrade
the 'dex fighters.
It is also known that current +HP gear is out of spec and going
away. It gives so much more to a characer that wearing +con gear.
It is also (trying not to ramble) known that backstab is quite a
weapon. And, with no +HP gear it (and other skills/spells) will need
to be re-evaluated.
So, how can we balance this and at the same time minimalize the effect
on the mud (players and coders)? Well, okay, what these -->
- new spec for +HP gear: 1 stat point = 15 hit points on an item, with
a cap of 45 hit points per item. So, cheetah leggings would be just
5 dex, the kraken would be 4 con 15 hp, the horseshoe could be 2 dex
45 hp, etc - you get the point.
- new +HP formula for con. This would effect all characters, not just
con fighters however it would favor them. The tweaking to this formula
is delicate I am sure, so at first I am only suggesting a slight
increase to say 4.5 per con point (its around 3.7 per con point now).
- new +DAM formula for str. This would effect all characters but
again would favor str fighters. I am suggesting an increase of 50%
to the DAM given from str. So, a 100 str fighter would have 35 damroll
instead of 23 at level 50. This would not effect gear - not sure what
to do about 'old' gear as its a touchy subject and I have characters
on both sides of that coin.
Sorry, but no changes to +HIT. Why you ask? Well, dex fighters
'hit' just fine and don't need more hit roll. That, and the fact that
healing makes balancing even more difficult given the fact that
low HP chacters (dex/perc and dex/mind) already do as much damage
as anyone else.
Well, your thoughts are welcome, flames too but try not to be a pud.
-Shemp
|U6
From: McDonald
Monday, December 18 2000, 04:45PM
I think the key might be in having the rewards for having a stat
be nonlinear.
This should give you an idea, but to be more precise.
Each 10 points of stats, would give more reward.
So the jump from 90 dex to 100, or 90 con to 100, would give
more reward, hitroll, hp, than the jump from 80 to 90.
This would reward fighter chars a little cuz they have more points
they can use.
Also it would be good to make it so having higher stats would make
a difference. So a dex mage with 40 con might want to raise it some
or have worse hp.
Face it, straight fighters aren't much of a threat to mages as is,
and the mud suffers from a problem of people being able to do too
many different things.
So if someone has a real low stat, make the penalty for it higher.
|U6
From: McDonald
Monday, December 18 2000, 04:56PM
What would this do? Well a dex fighter, would have less hp and
damroll. The real problem comes with dex being the stat that
says how often you will hit I think, I don't think things can
be balanced without your primary weapon stat, determining how
often you will land a hit. Hitroll could still be based on dex
but the primary ability to use your weapon should not be based
on dex. THAT is the reason this has always been a dex mud.
You could still have heavy weapons land less often.
|U6
From: Craven
Monday, December 18 2000, 06:59PM
Interesting ideas. Not sure I agree with any of them, but I am
only going to say one thing. The imms to my current knowledge will
listen to your opinion, but on subjects as deep as this, your wasting
your time. It will be done as they see fit and adjusted the same.
Coming up with complete new system and heavy changes is a waste of
time. I'm not saying this to deflate your hopes or discredit imms.
I'm saying this because history repeats itself, and its always been
this way. Good luck, and I hope something definitive is done, we
don't need another election eh? :)
-Craven, the pessamist
|U6
From: Lancelot
Tuesday, December 19 2000, 02:45AM
Skill trees???
|U6
From: Ea!
Tuesday, December 19 2000, 09:47AM
I'm not sure which Q & As you've been to -- I've said at plenty of
them that dex needs to be downgraded -- but I've made a -careful-
distinction -- the downgrading needs to be done in their defensive
abilities, not in their offensive abilities. Too much of the fight
system checks dex to see if someone should miss an attack. Where
it's particularly bad is where dex is checked twice in the same
location.
For example (and this is a made up example, but it's a simplification
of something that happens in the code a few times):
The check for dodge might work like this:
if (randomnumber < playerdex)
it's a miss
if (randomnumber < playerdex + playerperc)
it's a miss
That's a -vast- simplification, of course, but you can see that someone
with high dex gets two chances where they ought to only get one change
to dodge.
This is a problem that's going to take a bit of work to fix, though.
Expect our initial fixes to be in two stages -- the first to go in
with the eq. spec change that Sandra mentioned in an earlier post,
and the second to deal with this problem specifically.
After that, there will be tweaking to fix the imbalances that remain.
-Ea!
|U6
From: Zeppelin
Tuesday, December 19 2000, 01:43PM
Sorry Ea!, but I partially disagree with some of what you said.
Here is the problem (on the offensive side of things - I agree with
you on the defensive changes). Okay, 100 dex hits 'significantly'
harder, i.e. more damage per fight round, than say 50 dex. Problem is,
100 str DOES NOT hit 'significantly' harder than 50 str.
How do I know? I have characters that are both. If I were to rank
them, it would go like this:
100 dex/str hits harderst
100 dex/50 str second
100 str/50 dex last
Others might agree, but I am assuming in the absense of +hit gear,
non-rage, non-bashed, non-stunned basic melee combat.
-Zepp
|U6
