KOTL Forums

Player Forums => Ideas & Brainstorming => Topic started by: Chalgyr on 03/04/13, 09:59

Title: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Chalgyr on 03/04/13, 09:59
Most MUDs use the flag based resistances and imm. We kept that structure on mobiles, but we created one based on numbers. 0 is no modifier, a plus value up to 100 means you take extra damage, and a negative value to -100 means you are immune.

I personally like the numeric system (I'm biased as it's one of the few things I coded in that didn't completely crash us over and over again) - but I recognize it can be flawed too (especially when fights can potentially carry on eternally if both parties are immune to one another's damtypes.

Do you generally like the numeric system?

What would you change and how, precisely?

Do you think mobs should be using it so there is more flexibility in the combat?

Thanks!
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Tylon on 03/04/13, 11:13
Let me start off by saying that I deeply admire the work put into the resist system. You guys started and for the most part pulled off what most developers would view as a balancing nightmare. With that said, my own observations of the system:

I like having a numeric system from a character planning angle. Its helpful for min/maxing one's character. I do think, however, that it allows for some particularly extreme resistances. There should never be immunity to a damage type in a mud, even with as many damtypes as KoTL has. For starters, it tips the balance towards fighters because they have the easiest time swapping between damage types. Fortunately you as developers anticipated this and implemented brands, but even then there are some caster classes that have no brands for their primary attack spells.

An argument could be made that this was done intentionally to promote grouping with other classes that do have relevant brands, but this does not really allow for low player populations as KoTL has been known to experience.

Another consequence of being immune to damage types is the marginalizing of builder content by players. Otherworldly damage types have been used sporadically and some mobs do use brands, but this is more of a work-around of the problem than a solution. "Immune-all" characters do exist and for the most part are able to glide through content at lower levels. Balancing content against these types of characters is what I feel partially explains the gear issues players that avoid questing run into towards the later levels.

There are several approaches that could tackle the situation: Diminishing returns on resists where 100 gear resist would net out to about 75ish, hard caps for resist, etc. How it is done isn't as important as just making sure damage types are never completely immune.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: elios on 03/04/13, 11:35
I for one find the system to be great as it is I would not change a thing  ;D.  As for the rest if a player character falls needlessly it is because the player decided he or she did not want to put effort and time into developing their character properly that is on their heads and no one else.  As the teachers will say "Do your homework!"  >:D
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Tylon on 03/04/13, 11:46
I for one find the system to be great as it is I would not change a thing  ;D.  As for the rest if a player character falls needlessly it is because the player decided he or she did not want to put effort and time into developing their character properly that is on their heads and no one else.  As the teachers will say "Do your homework!"  >:D

Sentiments like this are precisely why new player retention is so low.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Daklore on 03/04/13, 11:56
I agree with Tylon ... or is more he agrees with me?

Either way, having the ability to be completely immune to everything, even if it requires a ton of time and work to do it, is kind of... hard to balance the game against. Because you have builders that are growing up with this "I can be immune to everything" mentality, who are then asking, "How can I make this area challenging -for me-."

Which has led to brand-abusing mobiles and otherworld damage. Which is great for people who are fully customed and stuff.... but then you hit the people who aren't and just explode on contact. Look at most, if not all, RPGs--even MMOs--there isn't (normally) the ability to get immunity to everything. Sometimes, sure, immunity to one element at the expense of weakness to another element, or half damage from multiple elements.

And this is usually limited to just one member of your party, or you spread the resistances around.

Most MMOs probably have some sort of scaling resistance, such as 33% resistance to fire for X seconds(skills/spells/whatever). There -should- be a cap on how effective resists can get... sure, it'd still lead to people over-charging resistances to "block" brands(which could be altered to lower the maximum resistance ability rather than the current value to still retain their usefulness... but this would make brands stupid OP for mages if their spell damage isn't looked at. And by extension almost all damage across the board(damage on skills[kick, bash, palmstrike, etc etc etc] needs to actually be toned -up- because it sucks even against low level mobiles).

Resistances are nice, but when they become a required to play.... meh. Without decent resists and some sort of sustain(which is in the form of healshield, mostly) you'll get ripped apart pretty quickly. Without healshield, and manashield/earthbarrier, Arthenon will generally chew a person apart on his melee attacks alone in a few rounds. Unless they're me, then I just cast power heal and lulz. Arthenon's melee damage is actually -good- considering his role as a legendary mobile.

Normal mobiles against a -10 resistance(the resistance to otherworld I normally have because of aura) should not be doing that kind of damage--and they can and do.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Thalia on 03/04/13, 14:01
note: 3 messages moved to new topic since they really were off-topic, but not without merit.

 8)
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Thalia on 03/04/13, 14:10
I'll also toss in that I really don't like the full immunity feature either. 

Since people tend to have healshield and/or other things to improve health regen rates, even >90% can pretty much keep you alive except for a series of extraordinarily unlucky die rolls.

((And, pst, Chal -- mobs now run with "numbers" based on the immune/resist flags and their level.))
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Chalgyr on 03/04/13, 14:38
((And, pst, Chal -- mobs now run with "numbers" based on the immune/resist flags and their level.))

True - but it doesn't quite have the full gradiant of using something like -22, right? the flags plug in a predetermined amount at certain intervals or... am I forgetting some details? which would not surprise me.

Question to Dak:

If there were this diminishing returns on the amount was blocked (right now a -50 would cut in half I believe, -100 be immune) and it was something like (-50 cut by a quarter and -100 was as far down as you could get and it would drop you to 50% damange taken)... would you want some option for being completely immune? Is it a change to the scale that is done (for example, no one could get to -200 in everything)?

Also in doing this, and we made the customs a BIT less needed, what happens from a mob standpoint? cut their overall damage in half? to a quarter? I'm just trying to see the big picture and list of changes that would need consideration.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Chalgyr on 03/04/13, 14:51
A piece of feedback from a player who emailed me:

i think resistances are fine. but you asked whether water and drowning are redundant? they aren't while it may sound redundant on the surface think about it this way. water lance or water bullets shooting at a person that's how i have always seen water. always doing direct damage with attacks. but with drowning i have always seen it more as a suffocation rather than water damage because in reality if you're drowning you're suffocating because of a lack of supply of air. that is how i have always seen the two types and that's how they should be viewed.

mental vs harm and poison vs disease. I suppose on on the face of the subject you could combine harm and mental and same could be said for disease. And in some cases i could be for that. and the reasons are to be honest harm what kind of damtype is harm when you do any physical damage to someone you're harming them right? well the same could be said about mental. i think harm needs to be a more defined damage. just being labeled harm is rather silly. i'll admit i think both giltian and vizantius both have harm type custom weapons. but needless to say with every other dam type you do harm to someone as long as their resists are normal even poor. but lets move on.

I think poisons and diseases need to have some new kind of random variance to each other. like if you are using a poison or disease type weapon that you could inflict the mob or player with a random type of disease or poison. each poison could make the enemy slower but hit harder, faster but hit weaker disorientate the person so that they lose a round of swings or casts. where as a random disease could be acquired through a disease weapon. such as Ebola or SARS or a bunch of varying disease. each disease would have their own ailments that would affect them differently like each different type of poisons would.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Daklore on 03/04/13, 15:47
Scaling resistances would, in theory, never reach 100.... but come close. But it should require a large resistance value to even get close to 90-95% resistance.

I think a better way would be to just hard-cap the maximum value. No mess, no fuss. Sort of like D2 where it's hardcapped at 75(and raises based on your gear, which shouldn't be viable in kotl).

As for mobiles.... damage overall can be hard to judge. First, I think you should look at the quality of normal gear and the game from the perspective of a non-customed character. Balance the mobile damage on that. Then move on to spells and skills in a PvP perspective and resistances from there.

Right now, the game is -very- difficult, if not impossible, to play without customs, which generally means a lot of resistances, even if you're only rolling at -50 to 10-12 elements. Normal gear, if it even -has- a resistance value, usually doesn't even hit a -10. Compared to customs which you can get a -50 in each. Normal gear needs to bridge some of this gap and bring resistance values into the frey... or just simply n*** mobile damage so you don't need resists at all and customs will just make you a god.

Edit, cause I'm amused... n*** is still censored. Ha. NARF!
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Thalia on 03/04/13, 19:08
Normal gear is a bad idea because you'll never get your AC up to a good level.   You need that AC=50 that custom gives you. Normal gear at level 200 is still AC-wimpy.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Daklore on 03/05/13, 15:17
Normal gear is a bad idea because you'll never get your AC up to a good level.   You need that AC=50 that custom gives you. Normal gear at level 200 is still AC-wimpy.

Which is why people fail to be able to quest for customs when they realize customs are a necessity.

See the "need customs" as opposed to the "customs are a nice benefit" that they were supposed to be originally? >P
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Tylon on 03/23/13, 00:03
Hello, I've been taking a break from studies tonight and I thought I'd throw some more opinions from previous years on the subject...

"You tell Someone powerful : 'As the mud stands right now there is no strategty to leveling and pkfighting except what resistances to get'" -teric, 2004 TMC

"What it mostly boils down to is this: the resistance and damage types system. A player, by making use of custom equipment, can choose the damage type of their weapon from one of 20 or so different types. Another player can choose to add a resistance to any damage type they choose, again through custom equipment. If you happen to choose the 'right' type, and your opponent the 'wrong' resistance, then you're home free. Otherwise, tough luck - it's time to spend another hundred or so hours saving for yet more custom equipment to keep playing what amounts to little more than a glorified guessing game." -Teylon, 2004 TMC

Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Chalgyr on 03/23/13, 09:09
thanks :) some of those I haven't seen in quite a time

I know one of the ideas I was considering had multiple parts:

- Change the res scale so it ranges 100 to -100 with an impact of 150% to 50% damae taken

- Find a way to boost AC in non-custom gear. Either through a manual fix, or something shifty behind the scenes with code like gear that's not custom gets an AC bost of times whatever

- Lower mob damage dealth by like 2/3 (just a ballpark figure)

Another bit of feedback i have had a ton of from severa players is;

* Priest heal spells should do more healing with less lag
* spelcastlers - mages in particular - are overpowered in PvE because melee fighters can't hit the mobs due ot AC
* Spellcasters - mags i nparticular - are underpowered in PvP because of players having too high of resistances

First, are there strong arguments for or against the above opinions? I've gotten them in part in some form or another by no less than 8 players over the last month or so, and coming form players from a variety of classes.

Would lowering the effeciveness of resistances help with spellcasters in PvP? Would lowering MOB AC in the background (maybe some bit of code that lops in in half, again, just af figure) help balance out the PvE for melee fighters?

*eyes Daklore* does anyone care about priests? :P or would raising some of the healing power and lowering lag be a good call in the opinions of others? Which spells in particular?

Lots to take in here I know, but I'm trying to think of balance while what also makes sense from a time investment standpoint and what you guys think.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Elendil on 03/23/13, 12:23
Well Chal,

I would say there is indeed a need to make the priest class yet another of the many attractive choices the game has to offer.  As for the question about the customs and resistances, I do think it is "all systems go", the numbers are just fine and does help those classes that do not have healing spells.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Daklore on 03/23/13, 14:40

* Priest heal spells should do more healing with less lag


While that would be awesome... I think the lag -needs- to offset the healing to balance the spell. What? I'm at least open to making heal spells balanced and not just stupid OP restore everything so you can never die unless you run out of mana.

Power heal is, obviously, the strongest heal I can do... I think the lag is -a little- bit much. It could do with some lowering(maybe a seconds worth, tops), on top of lowering the mana cost some(500 a cast, even at level 269, 250 if sorcery or whatever procs). On the flipside, lower level heals(cure light, cure serious, cure critical) could use a little buffing for lower level priest play. As they are, they're not even worth it, even GM'd and with a divinity rune. Heal is nice, could perhaps use a little HP buff(it's useless without divinity rune, which is another problem altogether).

Beyond power heal, the only spells I know of that beat it are divine healing--which would be the example of an unbalanced heal--and restoration. Restoration .... might be unbalanced, and it might be balancedish. It requires a spell component, costs 2000 mana, and fully restores the target... according to Belrath, anyway. Divine healing, however, costs like 50 mana, has barely any lag, and easily heals 6-7K with divinity(power heal is usually about 5-6K).

Other problems priests face, is a lack of offensive options. Which might be resolvable with lowering mobile AC so they can hit with melee attacks(how few we get), but priests would still need some help. Skill damage needs to go up, definately(kick, bash, palmstrike), and priests -really- need some offensive spell help. I know priests aren't supposed to be mages, but, even in Final Fantasy, white mages usually get -some- kind of -good- offensive spell(Holy). Priests, unless you go with the pastor side of the tier, really only have four offensive spells they can rely on. Harm(ironically, cause critical is stronger...), ray of justice, blackfire and dispel good/evil. The last of those four is actually a multi-hit spell, which -would- be promising if its damage didn't suck at higher levels. It's alright at low level. Harm/Cause crit is a one hit spell that might do around 800-900 damage. Ray of justice and blackfire might pop 300-400.

And... that's pretty much the extent of a priest's options for offense.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Tylon on 03/23/13, 15:35
So if I'm reading this and I understand it correctly, with a 20k mana pool a priest can heal 200k-240k hp before running out of mana with power heal. That's not taking into account sorcery procs, piety mana pool replenishing or healshield going off at the same time? Why is divine healing having better efficiency a large deal? Isn't it given to a class that for the most part is designed to heal and nothing else?

As far as offensive capabilities of priests go, I strongly caution giving too much offense to healing classes. There'a already the potential there with augmenting for some serious powerhouses.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Chalgyr on 03/25/13, 12:33
Any other strong thoughts on the proposed adjustments beyond priests? Obviously there would be some trial and error before we get it 'right' - or do you think it's a horrible idea? Pros, cons?
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Tylon on 03/25/13, 13:57
I like the proposal for resists, though I'm sure it will take a great deal of balancing to get things rolling correctly! Its good to be moving towards a system where resists don't have as large of an impact.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Elendil on 03/30/13, 20:33
I personally am of the "If it isn't broke, don't fix it" school of thought ::shrugs:: At the end of the day, this is your ballgame so your(or Gilly's) word is final.  I think it is fine just the way they are, the resistances.  I know you don't like to hear it, but the priest class seriously needs tweaking of some sort.  I remember once speaking with someone else with a priest char whom remarked that his shield would do more damage that his char could.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: sye on 10/14/13, 17:11
I think having healing spells changed would be nice.
After all anyone can augment them if they want, but only GM ones would be more cost efficient or heal more.

The system does need to be tweeked, resistances should stay, but ways to alter them, in PVE and PVP could be modified.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Jadyss on 01/27/15, 21:14
The scale of resistances is too much and being able to add -50 resist on any custom for any resist is toxic. There should be an element of racial maximums for making sense and for RP. I mentioned it in another post but this complete custom or go home reliance is just plain not good. There should be some limited custom modifications of equipment besides moxes and gems. There should also be racial maximums and minimums.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Thalia on 02/01/15, 19:36
Race selection does impact your base resistance level, as do add-on races (e.g., Vampires take a huge hit to relight and I think resfire).

In general, I think a race gets bumped up in 2 or 3 resists and bumped down in 2 or 3 resists.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Jadyss on 02/01/15, 20:10
Looks like though everyone can reach a perfection on resistance though.
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Thalia on 02/07/15, 18:39
Nope.  not all races have enough equipslots plus mox positions. 
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Jadyss on 02/07/15, 22:04
Nope.  not all races have enough equipslots plus mox positions.

But you can add -50 per each custom item plus there are all the moxes. How can one not reach perfection in each damtype?
Title: Re: Resistances - do they work, or should they be modified?
Post by: Chalgyr on 02/27/15, 15:54
It mostly boils down to combinations of things - like if a person has to use moxes that only modify a couple of resistances because the moxes with 3 aren't needed, or because of a goofy resistance stat on the race, the -50 might be overkill and 'wastes' 25 of those resistance points, etc. Not everyone's starting from a flat zero, and some races have more wear spots than others.