Goblin Squad Member
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Adrenaline, eh?
So, would it be an active thing (activate to get +20 max stamina in exchange for a faster stamina decay rate for a few seconds) or reactive ( if you take at least X damage from one hit your max stamina goes up by Y)?
If I were going to try and model it I would write in a one time temporary boost to stamina that would kick in after the stamina normally is about gone, but only if the character had not used such an adrenal boost in the previous X amount of time. I might also want to factor their hunger state: well-fed enables, hungry disables said boost.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Some thoughts. The system described is workable and sounds like it will achieve most of the goals GW has described for the system. The system doesn't sound terribly fun for me personaly, at this point. I will however conceed it tough to know that for sure before seeing it in actual implimentation....so I could well be wrong about that.
The following are observations about MY PERSONAL preferences only, for whatever they are worth. So please don't jump all over me for beating up GW's design...I'm not, I'm simply telling them what my preferences for a system would have been...for however tiny amount that may matter. Perhaps it may help give them some things to think about in terms of refinement/tweaking of ideas.
1) I do not like the attack as often as you want whenever you press the key model, either. It seems to make things too "spammy" and too "twitchy" which I was hoping would be the opposite direction of the way PFO would go. I would have prefered combat be slower paced and more tactical based with restricted movement and restricted frequency of attacking while in combat. Perhaps this still can be partialy achieved depending upon the length of animation sequences and animation lock.
2) I generaly don't like the "race to the bottom" hit points model...that's just me. I would also prefer less perdictability in combat. I would have much prefered the possibility of clean misses and more powerfull (or critical hits). That to me, makes combat both more fun and more tacticaly deep, because you can't always count on recieving specific results from attacks and are forced to adapt to the changing situations. I LIKE the idea of not being certain whether you are outclassed or simply having a terrible streak of bad luck. For me, that level of uncertainty is a GOOD THING.
3) There does seem to be a rather significant power step between Tiers...I don't like that either. In fact, I really don't like the concept of "Tiers" at all. I would prefer a much more gradual increase in both characters and weapons powers as they level. You could still allow lower level characters to be effective in combat by simply having the variance in the RNG exceed the variance in difference between lowest newbie character and highest veteran. You could do something like throw 10 d20's and SUM them to achieve the results for all characters then add character skills and modifiers to the total...that way you'd get a bell shaped result set but still allow for the possibility of extremes at the top and bottom.
4) I don't like all weapon types doing the same RAW damage with the only difference being Tier. I'd much rather have model divergence in weapon damage by type and armor reducing raw damage. You could then make lighter weapons like daggers or rapiers functional against heavy armors by introducing special attack manuvers (with appropriate costs and modifiers) that bypass some or all of that armor protection. Frankly going into a toe to toe fight against a guy with a longsword, shield and heavy plate when all you've got is a dagger should be a REALLY, REALLY bad idea unless you've got some special circumstance (like surprise, constricted fighting room, etc) that lets you bypass alot of the heavy fighters advantages. The light dagger weilders role really isn't normaly to engage directly in a stand up fight in the front line of battle....and if they don't have some way of slipping that dagger past heavy armor they should generaly expect it to be going <tink>.
5) The system strikes me as allowing for too little variation in the different types of combatants within a given Tier.
Again, the above are just my OWN personal prefences....not an attempt to tell GW that thier system can't work or is inferior. Just what I personaly would have liked more. YMMV.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ GrumpyMel
Well, I don‘t know if I‘m qualified to throw answers at you, but this is what I think.
1. You can‘t attack as often as you want. The stamina system restricts you to 3-4 attacks every six seconds. And that‘s probably if you use only basic attacks. Using things like power attack would probably reduce the number of attacks, while equiping two weapon might double the attacks for the same amount of button presses. Although I would like a slightly slower pacing, such as full stamina every ten seconds instead of six.
2. There will hopefully more to it than just spamming attacks till one combatant drops. There was mention somewhere of certain powerful attacks lowering your max stamina, while debuffing your target gives resistaince against similar debuffs later on. As such, you need to claculate on either to stun now and make later stuns smaller, or save your stuns for when you really need the full effect.
3. There‘s hope that by having lots of keywords on high-end tier 1 weapons and not so many on low-end tier 2 weapons will offset the boost from the die rolls.
4. I‘m not positive on what you‘re saying so I‘m not going to reply.
5. I think different keywords will really change how someone fights. You probably will barely be able to hold onto your weapon when fighting someone with a disarm keyword, whìle a trip keyword person will keep knocking you over.
Hope that helps. Or at least doesn‘t hurt.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... Mike Tyson would probably get his butt kicked if he were swarmed by a random sample of 5 male college students.Hrm. Today maybe. Not in his prime. !0 of them with pool cues? Okay, sure.
I won a $100 bet when he beat Ali. Accepted a night at the bar since we were both in college and dirt poor.
Mitch 'Blood' Green tried Tyson on for size in an alley after he lost in the ring. Tyson put him in the hospital. Green is bigger than 5 random 'Fantasy and Science Fiction Society of' members
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mitch 'Blood' Green tried Tyson on for size in an alley after he lost in the ring. Tyson put him in the hospital. Green is bigger than 5 random 'Fantasy and Science Fiction Society of' members... Mike Tyson would probably get his butt kicked if he were swarmed by a random sample of 5 male college students.Hrm. Today maybe. Not in his prime. !0 of them with pool cues? Okay, sure.
I won a $100 bet when he beat Ali. Accepted a night at the bar since we were both in college and dirt poor.
Still, having five times the attacks might help. Although if Tyson got the first punch, he would probably have a good chance, as the random guys probably don‘t have much resistance to damage. However, a better compairison for this game might be Tyson vs. 5 entry level boxers. Because most low level players will still have a few feats to throw around.
What concerns me about the way it's presented (the combat round system) is that you would basically figure out the most economical attack sequence and spam that combo until target drops. If the different attacks cost different amounts of Sta, then 1 combo should result in the least wasted points at the end of the round.
One good thing is with the Pit fight, they will be able to test all this stuff and make changes before it goes into the game. Hopefully if there are unfun parts, or things that don't work, they can be fixed before they are locked into the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mitch 'Blood' Green tried Tyson on for size in an alley after he lost in the ring. Tyson put him in the hospital. Green is bigger than 5 random 'Fantasy and Science Fiction Society of' members... Mike Tyson would probably get his butt kicked if he were swarmed by a random sample of 5 male college students.Hrm. Today maybe. Not in his prime. !0 of them with pool cues? Okay, sure.
I won a $100 bet when he beat Ali. Accepted a night at the bar since we were both in college and dirt poor.
And yet Tyson in his prime lost to James "Buster" Douglas who was by all accounts not as strong a fighter as Tyson. But due to overconfidence, poor tactics, and a reach advantage to Douglass, Tyson lost. In order for the underdog to win, he had to not play Tysons game of trading punches, but to dance out of reach, and hit with fast jabs repeatedly to wear him down while Tyson kept trying to land one hit KOs and missing. Which is likely what a Tier 1 player will need to do to defeat a Tier 2.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What concerns me about the way it's presented (the combat round system) is that you would basically figure out the most economical attack sequence and spam that combo until target drops. If the different attacks cost different amounts of Sta, then 1 combo should result in the least wasted points at the end of the round.
This is true if my only options are to deal damage to my opponent. However if I can also disrupt them (debuffs, status conditions, etc) and more significantly counter or thwart their attacks, then it becomes more involved.
How can I act or respond to my opponents at this moment in time such that I can regain or continue to have the advantage?
That's the kind of question I want to be asking while in combat.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And yet Tyson in his prime lost to James "Buster" Douglas who was by all accounts not as strong a fighter as Tyson. But due to overconfidence, poor tactics, and a reach advantage to Douglass, Tyson lost. In order for the underdog to win, he had to not play Tysons game of trading punches, but to dance out of reach, and hit with fast jabs repeatedly to wear him down while Tyson kept trying to land one hit KOs and missing. Which is likely what a Tier 1 player will need to do to defeat a Tier 2.Mitch 'Blood' Green tried Tyson on for size in an alley after he lost in the ring. Tyson put him in the hospital. Green is bigger than 5 random 'Fantasy and Science Fiction Society of' members... Mike Tyson would probably get his butt kicked if he were swarmed by a random sample of 5 male college students.Hrm. Today maybe. Not in his prime. !0 of them with pool cues? Okay, sure.
I won a $100 bet when he beat Ali. Accepted a night at the bar since we were both in college and dirt poor.
Yeah I guess the analogy would be Tyson didn't slot the right weapons/skills and Douglas did. Of course your example brings up the question of dodge and missing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I find myself agreeing with the concerns of GrumpyMel.
1. The fatigue effect will probably limit the "Spam" attack...but if your opponent is getting close to the bottom of his HP pool it may well be a valid tactic to finish him/ her off. Also with the secondary effects always hitting to some extent it could be useful..?
2. See 4 below
3. The keywords may alleviate the noticable step from one Tier to another...but at what point do the keywords just get plain silly? My "Pointy Silver Hefty Balanced Mastercrafted Chopstick of Doom"...even if every Keyword augments the base damage of the "Chopstick" is it really necessary?? I mean...really?
4. Agree entirely. I hate weapons doing the exact same damage as a base. If that was such a great system then why hasn't it been used in other PnP games? The variables in combat are what makes it exciting as a player. Sometimes luck is a great thing (and yes...it cuts both ways) but I think getting rid of all randomness just sounds boring. If you know how many hit point's "Bob" has...then you can get an idea about how long you'll last in a fight with him if your sword always does the same base 30 damage. Misses and big hit's are what makes the crowd cheer...not the boring exchange of love taps.
5. At this point I think it just remains to be seen. Until we have even a rudimentary working model to look at...it's just too...something..to call. Not "close" or "vague"...just that step from theoretical to practical application that has to be witnessed to complete calibration.
Just my nickel's worth.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Golnor,
I appreciate your responses and again, this is just a bit of my feel on things as described....it'll be tough to really appreciate it until we see it in action.
1) The stamina system may help with the "spam" effect to some degree, although it remains to be seen if there are any 0 cost attacks and even 6 x 1 cost attacks in 6 seconds seem pretty "spammy" to me...guess we'll see when it's in action. Also doesn't seem to do much about the "twitch" factor, being able to fire off stuff whenever one wants as soon as one wants...and of course the move in, move out or circle straffe kind of nonsense that is so prevalent in many MMO's today. We'll see..perhaps the animation lock thing can help address that if it's long enough.
Personaly I would have prefered more of a psuedo-round sort of thing where you keyed up one thing to go off in a "round" and moving generaly canceled that. You don't wait for anyone else to "take thier turn", everyones actions go off each round at the same time and if you don't key anything you don't do anything. That's just me and my preferences though.
The big turn-off for me will be if the pacing ends up being too fast and combat is still subject to the same downfalls that exist in most MMO's (circle straffe fights, jump in and jump out, or run through somebody and then turn around). YMMV.
2) Hopefull as well...but thier goal of greater predictability on each attack runs directly against my preferences. I actualy like some degree of unpredictability as it forces one to adapt to the situation as it evolves. YMMV.
3) Yeah, that's possible and I guess alot will depend upon the details of implimentation. For me though, that really puts too much emphasis on gear and not on the character. Frankly if a character knows how to "DISARM" or "BLEED" , etc....they should be able to do it with ANY longsword, shortsword, rapier, etc regardless of Tier or what "specials" it had. It feels like they are putting too much emphasis on the gear and whats been backed into it. I would have prefered to have seen a gradual increase in the basic bonus of the gear, specials like flaming, frost, silvered, etc that were pretty much usable regardless of the skills of the character holding the weapon....and the moves you could do with the weapon entirely dependant upon the characters skill and the basic class of the weapon (e.g. you can't "sunder" with a bow). Just my personal preferences.
4) Basicaly along the lines of dagger does 1-4 hp, longsword does 1-10 hp, chainmail soaks 5 hp of damage....however you can do special attacks with a dagger (at appropriate minuses to hit) that bypass the armor soak and do direct damage to the character. Meaning that with small, light weapons you need to be precise when attacking guys in heavy armor...but if you are sufficiently precise those guys aren't any better protected then a guy in a lion-cloth. Big, heavy weapons you don't need to worry as much about precision. You could then allow guys in lighter armors to utilize speed and better manuverability to better effect to not get hit in the first place...but if they lacked the ability/training to take advantage of that speed/manuverability...then standing in front of a great-axe with no armor would probably be a bad idea. YMMV.
5) This is possibly true....but I'd rather not have that variation rely so heavly on the keywords baked into the weapon...unless it's more like ALL longswords always have the keyword "Disarm"...in which case I may be misunderstanding things a bit. Right now though it sounds like variation is way too heavly based on the Tier of the weapon instead of the skill of the character. We'll see though, I could be wrong about this when it goes into practice.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Valandur
I would assume that it will be impossible to completely get away from people using certain attacks in the same rotation again and again, but having attacks that deal more damage in certain situations will force people to have several rotations. Well, if they want to deal as much damage as possible.
One way to break up single rotation-based fighting is to have attacks that increase the base damage, and others that increase the damage factor. So rotation 1 will include attacks that mostly boost the base damage, which will be good against heavily armored targets, while rotation 2 has attacks that boost the damage factor, for lightly armored foes. Rotation 3 has an immobilize for fast moving targets, rotation 4 has a stun for targets with multi-round combos, etc etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Weapons don't all deal the same damage. I think you guys are confusing "base damage" with "damage dealt". As outlined in the blog:
Damage Factor: Every attack has a damage factor based on its weapon and other effects. This is a multiplier for the damage that gets past armor (see below). Any two weapons of comparable tier and quality will have similar Base Damage, but are differentiated by their damage factors. A short sword does less damage than a greatsword not due to Base Damage, but due to a lower damage factor.
If a Short Sword has a damage factor of 2, but a Greatsword has a damage factor of 5, it's going to be a pretty significant difference in damage dealt per swing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah I guess the analogy would be Tyson didn't slot the right weapons/skills and Douglas did. Of course your example brings up the question of dodge and missing.And yet Tyson in his prime lost to James "Buster" Douglas who was by all accounts not as strong a fighter as Tyson. But due to overconfidence, poor tactics, and a reach advantage to Douglass, Tyson lost. In order for the underdog to win, he had to not play Tysons game of trading punches, but to dance out of reach, and hit with fast jabs repeatedly to wear him down while Tyson kept trying to land one hit KOs and missing. Which is likely what a Tier 1 player will need to do to defeat a Tier 2.Mitch 'Blood' Green tried Tyson on for size in an alley after he lost in the ring. Tyson put him in the hospital. Green is bigger than 5 random 'Fantasy and Science Fiction Society of' members... Mike Tyson would probably get his butt kicked if he were swarmed by a random sample of 5 male college students.Hrm. Today maybe. Not in his prime. !0 of them with pool cues? Okay, sure.
I won a $100 bet when he beat Ali. Accepted a night at the bar since we were both in college and dirt poor.
I'd be #5, watch before the end of #1-#4 being beaten to a pulp by Tyson (speed of those fists) and make my hasty exit: Even in his pomp and heyday I reckon I could easily out-run him! Choose your fights and all that.
I'm also wondering about position and player movement now: On melee range and ranged weapon range.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... you would basically figure out the most economical attack sequence and spam that combo until target drops.
This is very unlikely to be effective. There will almost certainly be state changes throughout the combat that you'll need to adapt to in order to capitalize upon. I'm willing to predict the game will reward you for paying attention and changing your tactics when appropriate, but even more importantly, I'm also willing to predict the game will, in essence, punish you for simply spamming the same attack over and over despite the actual "conditions on the ground".
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Goblin Squad Member
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However, a better compairison for this game might be Tyson vs. 5 entry level boxers.
If we're going to use boxers instead of "male college students", I'd be willing to place a bet that no professional boxer would ever dream of getting in the ring with even just two amateurs in the same weight class.
Glad to see they are going with slashing, piercing & bludgeoning that can set up for a rock, paper, scissor type gameplay. It makes people have strenghts / weaknesses, it's up to you to take advantage over them --> skilled and experienced players has an advantage.
Now i have a simple question, will you be able to swap between your 3 weapon types in combat? Because this would negate the whole rock, paper, scissor and making people generalists instead of specialists.
EDIT: This will be the case anyways, since you can just swap weapons when you see an opponent and just pick the weapon that counters his armor... yaaaawn. Please go away with 3 weapon system. People should pick 1 weapon before they go out hunting.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Weapons don't all deal the same damage. I think you guys are confusing "base damage" with "damage dealt". As outlined in the blog:
Damage Factor: Every attack has a damage factor based on its weapon and other effects. This is a multiplier for the damage that gets past armor (see below). Any two weapons of comparable tier and quality will have similar Base Damage, but are differentiated by their damage factors. A short sword does less damage than a greatsword not due to Base Damage, but due to a lower damage factor.If a Short Sword has a damage factor of 2, but a Greatsword has a damage factor of 5, it's going to be a pretty significant difference in damage dealt per swing.
Yes, I was aware of that. If I'm understanding the situation correctly then weapons of different types (e.g. GreatAxe, Dagger) apply the same amount of damage ("base damage") toward penatrating resistances (e.g. armor for physical resistance) and it's only after that where thier damage factor comes into play.
Meaning that a dagger is equaly effective at penetrating platemail as a great-axe is. But once they penetrated the damage diverged from there.
That's kinda the reverse of what my preference would be...where the basic type of weapon you picked to deploy against a particular armor(resistance) really, really mattered. Here it doesn't....unless there are other special keywords involved.
Not saying their way is "wrong".....just it doesn't match my prefernces. I'd prefer you wanting to select a Great-Axe over a Dagger to go after a guy in heavy plate. Under thier system..."keywords" aside...the armor type( plate-mail or loin-cloth) doesn't factor into the weapon selection. You are just as good choosing a dagger to go after a guy in loincloth as you are chosing it to go after the guy in plate.
You have to move to take advantage of openings, and keep track on whether your target has used his AoO for the round or not.
It sounds like you're referencing more how AoO's work in the normal tabletop game. From what I've seen, AoO's are not 'extra attacks' in PFO, they are simply bonus damage/effect on certain attacks when the target has the "Opportunity" flag on them from doing certain actions.
(I would say "Provoking" would be a better flag name than "Opportunity"...The Blog also suggested that Holy and Negative would be damage types... Better to have either Holy+Unholy or Positive+Negative IMHO).
1) I do not like the attack as often as you want whenever you press the key model, either.
You can't attack whenever you want. You need the stamina first, but each attack/action also has a duration, probably 0.75-3.0 seconds or longer depending on the action. Some of these may be defensive 'blocking' actions.
2) I generaly don't like the "race to the bottom" hit points model...that's just me. I would also prefer less perdictability in combat. I would have much prefered the possibility of clean misses and more powerfull (or critical hits). That to me, makes combat both more fun and more tacticaly deep, because you can't always count on recieving specific results from attacks and are forced to adapt to the changing situations. I LIKE the idea of not being certain whether you are outclassed or simply having a terrible streak of bad luck.
+1
If a Short Sword has a damage factor of 2, but a Greatsword has a damage factor of 5, it's going to be a pretty significant difference in damage dealt per swing.
I wonder if there will be specific pre-reqs to use these different weapons, stat pre-reqs (e.g. STR), or class skill based for certain advanced weapons, etc...
I did notice that the base damage/ damage factor ("damage scaling" is better/clearer term?) has a dynamic such that high level folks wanting to kill lower level ones most efficiently would prefer high damage factor irregardless of base damage, while low level folks needing to fighter higher level ones (with higher resistances) would probably prefer higher base damage since otherwise they are less likely to surpass the resistance in the first place (at which point damage scaling/factor kicks in).
I think many of you are right in bringing up other factors and options instead of just spamming an attack sequence as I had posted. I hope so.
I share many of GrumpyMel's concerns as well, we need more info which hopefully we will get.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Glad to see they are going with slashing, piercing & bludgeoning that can set up for a rock, paper, scissor type gameplay. It makes people have strenghts / weaknesses, it's up to you to take advantage over them --> skilled and experienced players has an advantage.
Now i have a simple question, will you be able to swap between your 3 weapon types in combat? Because this would negate the whole rock, paper, scissor and making people generalists instead of specialists.
EDIT: This will be the case anyways, since you can just swap weapons when you see an opponent and just pick the weapon that counters his armor... yaaaawn. Please go away with 3 weapon system. People should pick 1 weapon before they go out hunting.
A medieval knight typically had access to a Sword, a Mace or Pick/Hammer, and a Dagger and would switch between them as needed. Having multiple weapons is desired, but it makes training which weapon set a real choice.
If you have a Sword, a Dagger, and a Mace then you will need to train pretty deep into each tree to take advantage of all the different keywords each will have. If you are fighting someone who is vurnable to bludgeoning damage, but you spent all your training on Swords, you may want to stay with swords so you can keep your sharp, bleeding, keen, and overwhelming keywords, because you can only use "Bludgeoning" from the mace tree. If you spend equal training on all of them, you can have more flexibility, but you wont be able to use the best keywords of any of your weapons.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel
In regards to #4, the way I see it, you‘re worried that you will deal the same damage every time you hit, correct? However, I think that that won‘t happen. For explaining purposes, let‘s jump to PnP Pathfinder.
So you have a fighter with a longsword. Through the abuse of feats, you‘ve managed to get a 50% hit rate against the local tribe of bugbears. Now for some math. You have a 50% chance to hit, and a 12.5% chance at rolling an 8 on the damage die. Add those together, and you have a 6.25% chance at dealing max damage. Now we jump back to Pathfinder online.
Again, you have a fighter with a longsword. This time, though, you only have a 6.25% chance to successfully hit a bugbear. Bad odds, right? But you need to kill those bugbears. (They won‘t let you do anything else till you have for some reason.) So you wander over to the bugbears and start half-heartedly chopping at them, and, to your great surprise, you kill them. How did you do that?
Okay, let‘s discard the storyteller style. That 6.25% chance to successfuly hit could be taken as the chance to deal max damage. Because, as explained in the blog, near misses still deal damage. So instead of thinking a miss as rolling low enough on you d20 to not hit, but as not rolling the max amount on your damage dice.
For this to work, the AC is going to need a hefty boost.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I'm understanding the situation correctly then weapons of different types (e.g. GreatAxe, Dagger) apply the same amount of damage ("base damage") toward penatrating resistances (e.g. armor for physical resistance) and it's only after that where thier damage factor comes into play.
Keywords will have a significant impact on this. Daggers will not have the keywords that make them better at penetrating physical resistance. Great Axes will.
For each keyword shared by the attack and the wielded weapon, the attack treats the weapon's Base Damage as higher (+5 for most keywords, +20 for "Masterwork" and for other high-Tier keywords).
A medieval knight typically had access to a Sword, a Mace or Pick/Hammer, and a Dagger and would switch between them as needed. Having multiple weapons is desired, but it makes training which weapon set a real choice.
If you have a Sword, a Dagger, and a Mace then you will need to train pretty deep into each tree to take advantage of all the different keywords each will have. If you are fighting someone who is vurnable to bludgeoning damage, but you spent all your training on Swords, you may want to stay with swords so you can keep your sharp, bleeding, keen, and overwhelming keywords, because you can only use "Bludgeoning" from the mace tree. If you spend equal training on all of them, you can have more flexibility, but you wont be able to use the best keywords of any of your weapons.
I was never a big fan of putting real life into gaming systems for the sake of real life.
And yes it would be a while into the game before something like i described could happen. A 100% fighter with 3 weapon specializations = 4 years? But then again i am here for the long haul, and rather plan for it now rather than wait and see what happens.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel
In regards to #4, the way I see it, you‘re worried that you will deal the same damage every time you hit, correct? However, I think that that won‘t happen. For explaining purposes, let‘s jump to PnP Pathfinder.
So you have a fighter with a longsword. Through the abuse of feats, you‘ve managed to get a 50% hit rate against the local tribe of bugbears. Now for some math. You have a 50% chance to hit, and a 12.5% chance at rolling an 8 on the damage die. Add those together, and you have a 6.25% chance at dealing max damage. Now we jump back to Pathfinder online.
Again, you have a fighter with a longsword. This time, though, you only have a 6.25% chance to successfully hit a bugbear. Bad odds, right? But you need to kill those bugbears. (They won‘t let you do anything else till you have for some reason.) So you wander over to the bugbears and start half-heartedly chopping at them, and, to your great surprise, you kill them. How did you do that?
Okay, let‘s discard the storyteller style. That 6.25% chance to successfuly hit could be taken as the chance to deal max damage. Because, as explained in the blog, near misses still deal damage. So instead of thinking a miss as rolling low enough on you d20 to not hit, but as not rolling the max amount on your damage dice.
For this to work, the AC is going to need a hefty boost.
I'm not sure you understand me...or really I understand you. I don't want the surety that you'll be able to do some damage on every attack. I don't want the greater predictability in results and I do want the targets defences to have more influence on the choice of basic weapon type (sans keyword)....i.e. you see a bugbear in plate, you know you have to pull out a big weapon...or be prepaired to find some way to bypass his armor (by special attack) with your lighter weapon. Hopefully that's clear....not attack GW's way as "bad" just not matching my preferences.
Edit: I also don't like the concept of "you have to beat those bugbears to progress"...either you beat em or not, game goes on either way..it just goes on differently.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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A couple of comments:
Meta rule for Pathfinder Online: Everything starts simple, and becomes complex through iteration
1: Repetitive use of attack options
In the beginning, you'll have a handful of things you can do, and they're going to be repetitive and obvious, like 99% of all MMO combat.
Early iterations will enable strategy to evolve through things like facing, positioning, and reacting smartly to what your opponents are doing.
Further complexity will happen as iteration causes your actions in combat may be limited by, expanded by, or affected by, the actions of your allies and enemies.
Over time as we iterate this fractal space of options will become very complex and masters of combat will be players who have a highly developed understanding of how to react, moment to moment, to what is happening. Within a reasonably short number of iteration cycles, it will be easy for the "best players" to differentiate themselves from "average" players based on their skill at playing the game. This skill will not, in most cases, be related to their fast-twitch muscles or their hand-eye coordination.
You will still have to press buttons quickly.
When we open Early Enrollment, combat will be simple. It will not remain simple. Eventually, it will be extremely complicated and demand attention to detail and mastery to be "the best".
2: Keywords
The purpose of keywords is not to give a weapon a bunch of stacking abilities. It is to give characters a large fractal space of abilities. A sharp, flaming, undead bane, vorpal, ghost touch, brilliant energy sword could do 6 different things in the hands of 6 different characters. Or it could let one character do 6 different things, but not necessarily all 6 at once.
The more keywords a weapon has the more valuable it will be, not because of stacking, but because the universe of characters that can use it in conjunction with their character abilities is larger than the universe of characters that can use a weapon with fewer keywords. This is an interesting departure from most MMOs where value and power are directly linked. We're creating a system where value & flexibility are directly linked.
RyanD
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I'm understanding the situation correctly then weapons of different types (e.g. GreatAxe, Dagger) apply the same amount of damage ("base damage") toward penatrating resistances (e.g. armor for physical resistance) and it's only after that where thier damage factor comes into play.Keywords will have a significant impact on this. Daggers will not have the keywords that make them better at penetrating physical resistance. Great Axes will.
For each keyword shared by the attack and the wielded weapon, the attack treats the weapon's Base Damage as higher (+5 for most keywords, +20 for "Masterwork" and for other high-Tier keywords).
Nihimon,
- Nihimon, I'm not sure that it's a given that a Great-Axe will INHERENTLY have better keywords for armor penetration then a dagger or it will just be something at the mercy of the crafter to bake-in or not?
- As far as I'm concerned...it shouldn't matter if the attacker has the specific feat to utilize those keyowords...a Great-Axe should ALWAYS be better at penetrating heavy armor then a dagger...even if it's a guy who doesn't fight much swinging it.
Again...just my preferences....not claiming GW is doing it "wrong" or that thier design won't work well....just that there are alot of things about the way they are doing it that I'm not thrilled about. I do admit...that it could end up working out better then I think in practice when I actualy see it implimented....just like the great Yogi Berra, calling em like I see em for now.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nihimon, I'm not sure that it's a given that a Great-Axe will INHERENTLY have better keywords for armor penetration then a dagger or it will just be something at the mercy of the crafter to bake-in or not?
I predict that there will be keywords that increase effectiveness at penetrating Physical Resistance. I also predict that it will not be possible to put those keywords on a Dagger. I also predict that it will be appropriately trivial to place them on a Great Axe, such that virtually all Great Axes have them.
In essence, my prediction is that your assertion below will not be accurate.
... a dagger is equaly effective at penetrating platemail as a great-axe is.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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...Now i have a simple question, will you be able to swap between your 3 weapon types in combat? Because this would negate the whole rock, paper, scissor and making people generalists instead of specialists.
EDIT: This will be the case anyways, since you can just swap weapons when you see an opponent and just pick the weapon that counters his armor... yaaaawn. Please go away with 3 weapon system. People should pick 1 weapon before they go out hunting.
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If you have a Sword, a Dagger, and a Mace then you will need to train pretty deep into each tree to take advantage of all the different keywords each will have. If you are fighting someone who is vurnable to bludgeoning damage, but you spent all your training on Swords, you may want to stay with swords so you can keep your sharp, bleeding, keen, and overwhelming keywords, because you can only use "Bludgeoning" from the mace tree. If you spend equal training on all of them, you can have more flexibility, but you wont be able to use the best keywords of any of your weapons.
Also, remember that this blog focusses on melee, but the concept of 'weaponset' is wider than that. So allowing players to switch weapon sets is not just about changing from sword to mace, it also allows a cleric to switch to their holy symbol and start healing, and it allows a wizard to switch to a evocation spellbook and start blasting.
And the 'keyword' stuff is only one dimension of rock-paper-scissors. There's also switching up range, switching to elemental damage, switching to crowd control, and likely other options to defeat someonewho may be stronger than you in an obvious 'stand and thwack' fight.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In essence, my prediction is that your assertion below will not be accurate.... a dagger is equaly effective at penetrating platemail as a great-axe is.
In real life, a dagger is better than an great-axe at penetrating platemail. A dagger can easily go through the gaps in seams that all plate armor has while an axe is only slightly better at not glancing away than a sword. Especially vulnerable are the arm-pits, eye-slits, and groin. The reason knights carried daggers was to grapple and attack those vulnerabilities when an opportunity presented itself. It's the whole reason the stiletto was invented.
The game doesn't have to be realistic, but I would expect any weapon that had "Piercing" to be better at armor penetration than one with "Slashing".
...a Great-Axe should ALWAYS be better at penetrating heavy armor then a dagger...
The high damage factor weapons do disproportionate damage when they exceed resistance,
so (assuming X surpasses resistance) an attack roll of X with a greataxe does the same damage, or 'penetrates' the exact same as an attack roll of X+20 with a dagger...That discrepancy just doesn't kick in unless you surpass a certain point, but obviously if the greataxe doesn't 'penetrate' armor in the first place, then it isn't going to be that great at doing damage.
All these weapons are doing damage even if the attack roll doesn't surpass resistance.
Even missing by a good amount means you are still doing a signifigant amount of damage.
So I would not even equate 'not surpassing resistance' with 'not penetrating armor'.
Surpassing resistance, and starting to apply damage factor, is where the 'clean hit' or really, critical hit, comes into play.
It seems reasonable that Bludgeoning weapons would be able to do full damage more often (higher base dmg? base damage being a modifier to unified attack/damage roll in this system), but maybe not with as big of a damage (scaling) factor...?
It would be great to have a full range of variation which really made each weapon so different, but if there is already enough factors to juggle, I don't think there is much value in going all-out here. Ultimately, they are trying to implement the flavor of Pathfinder, which *doesn't* apply the full range of weapon vs. armor variation that one could imagine (or which was optional rules in 2nd Edition, etc). The system as described seems similar enough to the base damage/crit system of Pathfinder, albeit with lessened variability for Crits (which is the explicit intent).
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's certainly a VERY workable design and seems to meet the broad goals GW has laid out for thier goals for the combat system.
When it all comes together in practice, live....it may well be more fun then I expected.
So I hope folks don't take my posts as beating up on GW or thier design. I think some folks here tend to get a little sensitive when they see critiques of GW's design decisions.
As I said at the outset, I'm really just expressing my own personal preferences....and I see a systems that, in many ways, doesn't match up well with them (though again, I could be overly pessimistic about that). Can't blame a guy for stating some specific likes/dislikes can you?
That's what these boards are all about.
Now i have a simple question, will you be able to swap between your 3 weapon types in combat? Because this would negate the whole rock, paper, scissor and making people generalists instead of specialists.
EDIT: This will be the case anyways, since you can just swap weapons when you see an opponent and just pick the weapon that counters his armor... yaaaawn. Please go away with 3 weapon system. People should pick 1 weapon before they go out hunting.
People who don't want to have all their expensive weapons stolen/lost if they happen to get killed will indeed not carry lots of expensive weapons around. Check out the threading system explained on GW's blog.
There will probably be a certain character level range where it is feasible and optimal to carry several weapon types with you, with keywords, and having taken the appropriate training in each of them enough to take advantage of the low hanging fruit in terms of keyword-specific abilities. But I don't expect that to be a long-term sustainable endeavor, between enchanting/upgrading those weapons to top-tier, and training the weapon/keyword-specific skills to leverage them: there will simply be too many other demands on your gear and skill training, not to mention the aspect of only being able to thread so much gear/value (so that you don't lose it when killed).
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Goblin Squad Member
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In essence, my prediction is that your assertion below will not be accurate.... a dagger is equaly effective at penetrating platemail as a great-axe is.In real life, a dagger is better than an great-axe at penetrating platemail. A dagger can easily go through the gaps in seams that all plate armor has while an axe is only slightly better at not glancing away than a sword. Especially vulnerable are the arm-pits, eye-slits, and groin. The reason knights carried daggers was to grapple and attack those vulnerabilities when an opportunity presented itself. It's the whole reason the stiletto was invented.
The game doesn't have to be realistic, but I would expect any weapon that had "Piercing" to be better at armor penetration than one with "Slashing".
Well aware of that....that would fall under the category of an attack that BYPASSED armor rather then penetrate it (i.e. the dagger wasn't punching a hole through the plate...like a spiked warhammer or milltary pick might or bodkin arrows/bolts...so much as avoiding it).
Edit: Piercing weapons really need alot of kinetic energy behind them to penetrate heavy armor....which you just can't get with a hand weilded dagger....daggers are good at finding ways around the armor, but really hard to do against a target that was fully capable of active defence
right, but if we are using the same unitary attack/dmg roll mechanic vs. resistance for both axes and daggers, you kind of need to be flexibile enough to imagine the same roll meaning slightly different things for each weapon in terms of how it is interacting with the armor. same as with tabletop Pathfinder.
i don't think you're being overly pessimistic here, this is the type of feedback i'm sure GW wants, even if each issue you may raise may be they feel is already addressed (or will be), it's still constructive criticism.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In real life, a dagger is better than an great-axe at penetrating platemail.
I was trying to color within the lines drawn by someone else :)
I'm very curious to see the whole keyword system laid out. I'm hopeful that keywords like "flexible" exist for weapons that can reach around shields, like a Flail.
I have to admit, responding to your posts has taught me the value of doing a little research before hitting submit :)
That's what these boards are all about.
The ebb and flow, indeed.
And yes it would be a while into the game before something like i described could happen. A 100% fighter with 3 weapon specializations = 4 years? But then again i am here for the long haul, and rather plan for it now rather than wait and see what happens.
Okay, so a guy spends four years of gaming to be highly flexible. What's wrong with that? After four years, I'd be shocked if the most advanced players hadn't invested in being ready for anything. Four years is a long time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...a Great-Axe should ALWAYS be better at penetrating heavy armor then a dagger...The high damage factor weapons do disproportionate damage when they exceed resistance,
so (assuming X surpasses resistance) an attack roll of X with a greataxe does the same damage, or 'penetrates' the exact same as an attack roll of X+20 with a dagger...
That discrepancy just doesn't kick in unless you surpass a certain point, but obviously if the greataxe doesn't 'penetrate' armor in the first place, then it isn't going to be that great at doing damage.All these weapons are doing damage even if the attack roll doesn't surpass resistance.
Even missing by a good amount means you are still doing a signifigant amount of damage.
So I would not even equate 'not surpassing resistance' with 'not penetrating armor'.
Surpassing resistance, and starting to apply damage factor, is where the 'clean hit' or really, critical hit, comes into play.It seems reasonable that Bludgeoning weapons would be able to do full damage more often (higher base dmg? base damage being a modifier to unified attack/damage roll in this system), but maybe not with as big of a damage (scaling) factor...?
It would be great to have a full range of variation which really made each weapon so different, but if there is already enough factors to juggle, I don't think there is much value in going all-out here. Ultimately, they are trying to implement the flavor of Pathfinder, which *doesn't* apply the full range of weapon vs. armor variation that one could imagine (or which was optional rules in 2nd Edition, etc). The system as described seems similar enough to the base damage/crit system of Pathfinder, albeit with lessened variability for Crits (which is the explicit intent).
You do make a good point....the system they put together isn't that far off in spirit to the PnP ruleset which doesn't address alot of the things I mentioned. So can't really fault them for it. That's probably my personal bias showing a bit...I've never been all that thrilled about Pathfinder PnP's combat resolution system...particulary the damage portion of it....always liked systems that were a bit closer to Rolemaster in that aspect.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Edit: Piercing weapons really need alot of kinetic energy behind them to penetrate heavy armor....which you just can't get with a hand weilded dagger....daggers are good at finding ways around the armor, but really hard to do against a target that was fully capable of active defence
I see what you're saying Mel here, but it seems the system already lumps together armor resistance with reflex save (active defense), so if the attacker beats the target's defense number... can we REALLY determine whether it was because the attacker found a hole in the defender's armor, or just punched through some steel plate with a lot of force? The system just doesn't model stuff down to that level of detail. Are you trying to say you would prefer a system that does? Maybe a multi-roll system where first you have to hit (harder if you're going for a hole in the armor), and then penetrate separately?
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Goblin Squad Member
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In real life, a dagger is better than an great-axe at penetrating platemail.I was trying to color within the lines drawn by someone else :)
I'm very curious to see the whole keyword system laid out. I'm hopeful that keywords like "flexible" exist for weapons that can reach around shields, like a Flail.
I have to admit, responding to your posts has taught me the value of doing a little research before hitting submit :)
That's what these boards are all about.The ebb and flow, indeed.
Historicaly Daggers were used to BYPASS heavy armor...not penetrate it...and usualy employed against opponents that were already disabled or rendered immobile.... so I think I had covered that pretty well in my "special attacks that bypass armor" mechanic.
The things that saw most effective use against heavy armor were things that could deliver ALOT of kinetic energy...many times it wasn't even so much penetrating the armor as delivering shock and concussion, through the armor to the wearer.
So big heavy weapons...Great-Axes, Great-Swords, maces, flails....warhammers were particulary popular for such use....lances of course (driven by force of the horse, not the weilder).
The daggers only came out after the heavy armored target was down, subdued, or stunned...as a Coup-de-Grace.
For light peircing weapons to penetrate they really required more force then could be generated without mechanical enhancement (e.g. bows and crossbows firing bodkin arrows...or firearms).
Although interestingly the Estoc was a thrusting sword that was developed specificaly for use against heavy armor.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Edit: Piercing weapons really need alot of kinetic energy behind them to penetrate heavy armor....which you just can't get with a hand weilded dagger....daggers are good at finding ways around the armor, but really hard to do against a target that was fully capable of active defenceI see what you're saying Mel here, but it seems the system already lumps together armor resistance with reflex save (active defense), so if the attacker beats the target's defense number... can we REALLY determine whether it was because the attacker found a hole in the defender's armor, or just punched through some steel plate with a lot of force? The system just doesn't model stuff down to that level of detail. Are you trying to say you would prefer a system that does? Maybe a multi-roll system where first you have to hit (harder if you're going for a hole in the armor), and then penetrate separately?
Yes, that is what I am stating a preference for....again, not beating them up for the choices they made...just getting at the difference in models and thier implications...and stating my own personal prefernces. Thanks.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The more keywords a weapon has the more valuable it will be, not because of stacking, but because the universe of characters that can use it in conjunction with their character abilities is larger than the universe of characters that can use a weapon with fewer keywords. This is an interesting departure from most MMOs where value and power are directly linked. We're creating a system where value & flexibility are directly linked.
The keywords concept is something I have not come across. Maybe it is common knowledge in pathfinder. I really like this idea, however for properties and combining them.
I like these moderate to high axiom shifts^!
I LIKE the idea of not being certain whether you are outclassed or simply having a terrible streak of bad luck.
Just thought I'd follow up on this more specifically, since the damage model is not that subject to fundamental change IMHO.
Not knowing if your opponent has been hitting you hard/shrugging of your blows because they really are that bad-ass, or they are just getting luck, is GREAT game design IMHO. To have it otherwise means that when somebody DOES get lucky, the opponent knows it's just luck, and therefore they are more likely to just stick around the fight since the luck is likely to shift. If you don't know, you are more likely to assume it is because the opponent is powerful, and thus run away if you can. I mean, specifics of the situation will change all that, but I LIKE the emphasis on what you are actually experiencing vs. 'metagaming'.Although to emphasize that more strongly would need the game to NOT 'announce' what specific actions the enemy is using (which would allow metagaming based on the known level of those abilities), but just tell you the end result. (which itself MAY reveal the enemy level, but that is relatively less revealing/metagame-prone) In fact, if it didn't announce your own actual attack rolls, but just told you the end result in terms of damage/effect, that would even more prevent metagaming.
(to distinguish between: I didn't hit because I rolled very low, and I didn't hit because he must have godly resistance/tier).
I'm not sure if that last one is needed/desired, but I feel the general concept should still be one that keeps people guessing, relatively.
A couple of comments:
Meta rule for Pathfinder Online: Everything starts simple, and becomes complex through iteration
1: Repetitive use of attack options
In the beginning, you'll have a handful of things you can do, and they're going to be repetitive and obvious, like 99% of all MMO combat.
Early iterations will enable strategy to evolve through things like facing, positioning, and reacting smartly to what your opponents are doing.
Further complexity will happen as iteration causes your actions in combat may be limited by, expanded by, or affected by, the actions of your allies and enemies.
Over time as we iterate this fractal space of options will become very complex and masters of combat will be players who have a highly developed understanding of how to react, moment to moment, to what is happening. Within a reasonably short number of iteration cycles, it will be easy for the "best players" to differentiate themselves from "average" players based on their skill at playing the game. This skill will not, in most cases, be related to their fast-twitch muscles or their hand-eye coordination.
You will still have to press buttons quickly.
When we open Early Enrollment, combat will be simple. It will not remain simple. Eventually, it will be extremely complicated and demand attention to detail and mastery to be "the best".
2: Keywords
The purpose of keywords is not to give a weapon a bunch of stacking abilities. It is to give characters a large fractal space of abilities. A sharp, flaming, undead bane, vorpal, ghost touch, brilliant energy sword could do 6 different things in the hands of 6 different characters. Or it could let one character do 6 different things, but not necessarily all 6 at once.
The more keywords a weapon has the more valuable it will be, not because of stacking, but because the universe of characters that can use it in conjunction with their character abilities is larger than the universe of characters that can use a weapon with fewer keywords....
This is encouraging. I was concerned about button-mashing becoming the norm for combat. That would be a step backward, even if PFO limited the allowable combat actions to 6 or so per weapon.
I would like to see active combat, as much as possible. Reactive skills, Positioning, dodge rolls, chained skills that lead to better effects, cooperative feats that take more than one person to achieve, etc.
It looks like this is possible, and maybe even planned.
They've given us a general rundown of melee combat. Maybe next week we can get a rundown of how spell casting will work in combat? I'm curious as to how they intend spell casting to work in combat.
]Okay, so a guy spends four years of gaming to be highly flexible. What's wrong with that? After four years, I'd be shocked if the most advanced players hadn't invested in being ready for anything. Four years is a long time.
Meh i've played the same games for 10 years on and off because of it's gameplay. A part of the reason why i am looking forward to this game is that there are so many different roles you can pursue, making you a highly specialized and unique being in the world. I was hoping this would also translate to combat. That you can't fill every role at the same time. That you can't be ''ready for anything''. If everyone are ready for anything, then everyone is equal and that makes for some pretty stale combat.
Hopefully the thread system and maintenance of weapons will stop people from being every card in the deck, from being the rock, the paper and the scissor.