combat...still a little flaky?

[Chronicle]

I have to totally agree wth LoD, especially about the part where stats are effecting combat to a degree which I believe to be -too much-. Agility for a person now gives them a HUGE edge over combat. Even with someone with just a little more agility than you will now -beat- you after the code changes in a sparring match, where before hand you would beat them. I've noticed also that I get less attacks in per round, dunno why but it's just like that. But I'm not complaining becuase it's all the same to me, doesn't effect how I play or the things I do IC, because if you don't go out and do stupid shit that would be unrealistic for most people IC and OOC alike, then you won't have to worry about the new code's 'disadvantages'.

[jmordetsky]

I think the combat system is just fine now, personally.  After looking at your PC, jmordetsky... yep, it works just as it should.

Well it's good to know it at least it's working as planned. To be fair, I'm less concerned about my pc getting beat down as it's still fairly young as I was when I heard about the older character.

That said, UnderSeven has a point and that inquiry is best suited for an email. I just want to hear opinions now that the tweaks have been in place for a few days.

[jmordetsky]

I have to totally agree wth LoD, especially about the part where stats are effecting combat to a degree which I believe to be -too much-. Agility for a person now gives them a HUGE edge over combat. Even with someone with just a little more agility than you will now -beat- you after the code changes in a sparring match, where before hand you would beat them. I've noticed also that I get less attacks in per round, dunno why but it's just like that. But I'm not complaining becuase it's all the same to me, doesn't effect how I play or the things I do IC, because if you don't go out and do stupid shit that would be unrealistic for most people IC and OOC alike, then you won't have to worry about the new code's 'disadvantages'.

That's odd. I agree with LOD as well, but not with the observation that agility gives advantages. It seems to me that strength now plays a key role in that because it's easier to hit, you can accumlate much more damage much more quickly.

I'm not sure if that's wrong, but it's what I see.

[Gimfalisette]

I think it's probably still to early to tell what the ultimate fallout of the parry bugfix/change/whatever it was is. If characters' defensive skills were artificially low in comparison to their offensive skills due to the bug, then I doubt anyone has played enough yet post-fix to bring their skills up in line...so yeah, them noob characters are probably going to get some blows through. I suspect this will even out over time as the experienced characters bring their defensive skills up to par with offensive, and things will begin to look different and feel more logical again.

Then again, just conjecture.

[Chronicle]

I concur Gimmy, that's precisely what LoD said in his first post about this as well - that if everyone continues doing what they've previously been doing than the offense will eventally level out with the defense once more. It -is- just like starting almost all the way over defense wise, so it doesn't bother me at all. Afterall, skills aren't everything :-P

[Dalmeth]

When a brand new combat character, non warrior class, can regularly land hits on an extremely accomplished and long-lived combat character, it feels a little like cheating.  It feels jarring and unsettling that they suddenly have a prayer against someone that should be chewing them up and spitting them out for lunch without a second's pause.

The thing is, despite a few scratches, the experienced character is still chewing them up and spitting them out.  I'll admit, lucky hard hits are a bit more common, but most characters can take one or two of those.

Also, a note about ritikki :  Those things have always been a bit dangerous.  I'd personally never would have taken on two with a character capable of taking down duskhorn even before the change.  They had a way of getting in lucky hits, and I would think that's only worsened with the bug fix.

[Halaster]

I think the combat system is just fine now, personally.  After looking at your PC, jmordetsky... yep, it works just as it should.

Well it's good to know it at least it's working as planned. To be fair, I'm less concerned about my pc getting beat down as it's still fairly young as I was when I heard about the older character.

If it's really true that a 100+ combat-oriented person was beat up by a newbie warrior, please have them email me and I'll look into it.  That shouldn't be the case, but without more information, I can't do much.

[jhunter]

I think LoD has made some excellent points that I agree with.

[a foreign presence]

Dunno exactly how the code works, but as for strength vs. agility, here's my observation:

Strength gives you higher damage and helps with a few skills such as bash and subdue, however the size of your character means a lot more there. It also helps you carry more, thus allows you to wear more/better armor before meeting the encumbrance penalties.

Agility gives you more attacks so in terms of damage output, I think it pretty much evens out with strength. It also helps your defense tremendously, as well as almost every skill, even non-combat ones.

So looking at it like that, I'd say that agility is more important than strength.

[Clearsighted]

Dunno exactly how the code works, but as for strength vs. agility, here's my observation:

Strength gives you higher damage and helps with a few skills such as bash and subdue, however the size of your character means a lot more there. It also helps you carry more, thus allows you to wear more/better armor before meeting the encumbrance penalties.

Agility gives you more attacks so in terms of damage output, I think it pretty much evens out with strength. It also helps your defense tremendously, as well as almost every skill, even non-combat ones.

So looking at it like that, I'd say that agility is more important than strength.

Agility and height seem to have a disproportionate influence on bashing rather than strength. In my sparring with an elf who started the same time I did, he has been able to 'meet my charge' and knock me down pretty much every time. Far more skilled and older PCs have never done that to me. I'm pretty certain if strength was a major (or greater factor) than height, it would not have happened. At least, versus an elf. And this isn't an isolated incident. It is pretty much every time.

Kicking and disarming is all agility as well.

I'd like to see bash take weight into account, moreso than height. Since should mostly equally skilled elves really be reverse-bashing down say, dwarves, with such impunity? Dwarves weigh a couple stone more and are supposed to be nearly as broad as they are tall.  That's really something I'd expect more from trying to bash a mul or hg.

That said. It doesn't bother me. It only matters in 1v1 sparring. I don't think I'm ever going to be in a 'real' fight decided by it. Those tend to be messy and one sided.

Unless you're the desert-wandering loner type.

[jmordetsky]

I think the combat system is just fine now, personally.  After looking at your PC, jmordetsky... yep, it works just as it should.

Well it's good to know it at least it's working as planned. To be fair, I'm less concerned about my pc getting beat down as it's still fairly young as I was when I heard about the older character.

If it's really true that a 100+ combat-oriented person was beat up by a newbie warrior, please have them email me and I'll look into it.  That shouldn't be the case, but without more information, I can't do much.

By two rentarris, not a n00b warrior.

Yes it's true, I'm not in the habbit of making things up to nag you.

And I'll ask them to mail you.

[Flaming Ocotillo]

Agility and height seem to have a disproportionate influence on bashing rather than strength. In my sparring with an elf who started the same time I did, he has been able to 'meet my charge' and knock me down pretty much every time.

Bash is all about size, in my experience. Elves dominate bash because their size category is significantly higher than the other playable races (aside from half-giant). Check out "help size" for a size chart that will show you an actual coded representation of why elves are dominating in bash contests. The elves are a lot bigger than the other races by coded size category, even if their weight is not extremely high. Dwarves have a -horrible- time bashing, even though they are probably the best grounded of the races. Essentially, an elf will knock a dwarf around easily in bash contests, even if the dwarf has the much higher bash skill.

Also, on the topic of strength vs agility and what is more important in the new combat code, I'd have to say that agility used to make characters nearly untouchable with the old code. If anything, the new code makes high agility less "the deciding factor", because it's easier to hit people overall. It makes strength more dominant because hits are landing more often now. So I'd have to say strength became more useful in the new code, while agility is now more rounded with strength for combat, instead of being _the_ stat at "end game" combat, where high agility elf warriors were untouchable in combat at uber skill levels, being beatable only by kick attacks, if they managed to land. Before the code changes, matches against these uber elves could take more than twenty minutes to resolve, because you couldn't hit them as a non-elf, and if they hit you (still difficult for them if you had high skill), it was for low damage on that rare hit. Something had to change. I think the new system both reduces the effectiveness of agility, and makes combat more interesting. The snore-fest parry matches where kick was the deciding factor are now out of the game.

[UnderSeven]

Makes since what Flaming Oct said, but that to me seems like bash is therefore a little broken.  Should elves dominate bash?  Not really, they are tall which means high center of gravity and they are light, thin, lithe, slender, in other words, they don't have the mass.  Therefore someone slamming into them just right shouldn't result in them bouncing off.

Okay maybe bash isn't broken, but I would say that's an error in the implementation of the skill.  IF that is how it works.

[Clearsighted]

In my opinion, we need a wider range of weight, and weight needs to have as much of an impact on 'size' as height does.

[Dalmeth]

If elves dominate in bash, bash is broken.  Elves may be tall, but they're lighter and significantly weaker.

In my mind, the reason height was taken into account was due to the fact that in humans, being taller generally means you are stronger and weigh more (bone and muscle mass).  There is a slight mechanical advantage as well, but that shouldn't make elves naturally superior to say, a human, in bashing.

[Kalden]

As others have attested, bash seems to be broken. I recently had a stocky, beefy human warrior (exceptional strength, very good agility) who, because he was somewhat short (70 inches?), was knocked down every time he bashed an elf or anything else that was taller than him. He was heavier than the elf in question.

Realistically short, strong people and things would have an advantage when tackling tall, skinny things. It's too bad that's not how Armageddon works.

[jhunter]

Dwarves should be badass at bash compared to spindly tall elves. It always bugged me that a built-like-a-brick-shithouse dwarf sucked at bashing others that were simply taller than them.

[Morgenes]

If possible, could we move the bash dissussion to a separate thread and keep this thread on the topic of combat itself.  Yes, I know bash is used in combat, and can make a major difference in combat, but what you guys are talking about is important, and should be brought up as a problem with bash, and might get lost if left in a thread like this.

[House Rising Sun]

It was two rantarri, not ritikki.

The fact that parry stunted defensive growth in pcs, warriors especially, was pretty widely known beforehand. They started with it, maxed it quickly, and soon enough nothing was hitting them any more, except group-fighting situations, mounted attacks, really really scary mobs, and the one-in-a-hundred lucky hit. Without a weapon, however, they were about as helpless as merchants.

I agree with LoD, as I saw little wrong with that final stage of the parry skill. If two highly skilled armed fighters went at it, they'd be a little while. For me, that made those sort of encounters really exciting, because it opened up all sorts of brutal combat emote opportunities.

If one fighter was unarmed and some dude came at him with an axe, there's not much he could do but run or get cut apart.

Now, even with parry up about as high as it's going to go, I'm seeing more attacks by lesser threats get through than get parried. Fact is, if you take a weapon to a master - not just a hobby fighter or an sca participant, but a real professional martial artist or fencer - you're never going to hit them. I think I can safely say none of us would.

The rapid growth of parry is still a problem, though. Consider the nature of it: to be effective, it has to be a totally reflexive action, yet it's not an intuitive thing to do when you're under attack. To work at all it has to be drilled over and over again. I'd suggest a different learning curve, making it much harder to pick up at first. Once a pc starts to 'get it', it increases more rapidly through the middle range until a point where it seems to be effective now - that is, useful but not 100% effective. Beyond that, development could flatten out again so that only after a whole lot of fighting (ic years) does it become mastered, and around the same effectiveness as before.

That sort of change would allow dodge and/or shield use to develop earlier and become the primary method of avoiding damage, as it should be.  That means anything as simple as springing backwards to get out of range, or just backing away as soon as an attack is sensed and thus preventing it, much like boxers. That's often how serious fights start out, and the first thing people learn.

Like delirium and lod have indicated, very highly experienced fighters should be feared for their scary-high defense, not the ability to dish out more hits than a rookie.. after all, if they survived so long on Zalanthas they must have learned something reliable about not taking the D. It should take planning, surprise, or numbers to hurt somebody like that, not luck and a really big-ass halberd.

[X-D]

I also agree with Lod, but I've made the same statement as he did in this thread when the bug was first fixed.

Now, that being said, I find the current combat code incarnation to be pretty workable in realism and playability. Two evenly matched warriors can once again spar/fight for some time. BUT not exactly as before. Here is a point that I find to be a bit more realistic then it used to be. Before the bug fix, two basicly equal 1day warriors and two basicly equal 50 day warriors looked much the same when fighting. The 1day warriors could spar for a long time because though they had poor defense they also had poor offense and would not hit each other often or for much damage.

Two 50 day warriors had high offense but matching defense, so also would not hit each other often, though usually for far higher damage when they did.

Now two 1 day warriers beat the crap out of each other as the inexpertly flail at each other.

Two 50 day warriors have high offense but matching defense, so also do not hit each other often, though usually for far higher damage when they do.

I find that this gives slightly higher realism without much noticable damage to playability.

(edit)
And I'm getting plenty of combat code experiance with my current PC and I like House Rising sun's idea and agree fully.

[Synthesis]

I'd just like to point out that anyone thinking he should be able to take on two RANTARRI (not ritikki) by himself should probably go back and re-read the description of what a rantarri actually is.  Then, you might understand why two of these things would (and should) tear almost anyone to shreds.

[Bakha]

I'd just like to point out that anyone thinking he should be able to take on two RANTARRI (not ritikki) by himself should probably go back and re-read the description of what a rantarri actually is.  Then, you might understand why two of these things would (and should) tear almost anyone to shreds.

That was sort of my point as well. I didn't understand what the big deal was about someone being unable to take out two rantarri solo. They're not exactly tregils.

[jmordetsky]

I'd just like to point out that anyone thinking he should be able to take on two RANTARRI (not ritikki) by himself should probably go back and re-read the description of what a rantarri actually is.  Then, you might understand why two of these things would (and should) tear almost anyone to shreds.

After training at combat on zalanthas for 110+ real days, do you know how many game days that is? Come on.

Mas Oyama a korean marshal artist from the 50s. If you google "Mas Oyama kill bull" apparently this dude punched a charging bull in the face and kill it. There is supposed to be a video of it somewhere.

The point being, If an earth guy can train enough to punch a bull in the face and kill it, a zalanthan at 110 day should be able to kill two Rantarri. I'm sorry, rantarri aren't *that* tough. We're not talking about Meks, or salt worms or bahamets here. And we're not talking about 10-15 day character here (although I think they've gotten it the worst).

Let me try to state this a fully as possible:

If a well trained, combat char (burglar, assassin, ranger, warrior) at 110 days of play can't solo two rantarri, gith, raptors any mid-size, midly dangerous m0b, then *SOMETHING IS BROKEN*.

The crazy australian used to wrestle crocs for fucks sake. (rest his crazy soul)

[Dalmeth]

After training at combat on zalanthas for 110+ real days, do you know how many game days that is? Come on.

Mas Oyama a korean marshal artist from the 50s. If you google "Mas Oyama kill bull" apparently this dude punched a charging bull in the face and kill it. There is supposed to be a video of it somewhere.

The point being, If an earth guy can train enough to punch a bull in the face and kill it, a zalanthan at 110 day should be able to kill two Rantarri. I'm sorry, rantarri aren't *that* tough. We're not talking about Meks, or salt worms or bahamets here. And we're not talking about 10-15 day character here (although I think they've gotten it the worst).

Let me try to state this a fully as possible:

If a well trained, combat char (burglar, assassin, ranger, warrior) at 110 days of play can't solo two rantarri, gith, raptors any mid-size, midly dangerous m0b, then *SOMETHING IS BROKEN*.

The crazy australian used to wrestle crocs for fucks sake. (rest his crazy soul)

You're examples don't fit the situation.  They probably were in a controlled environment, especially so if they were filmed.  Not only that, but they were one-on-one.

A large part of the skill in a skilled fighter is not getting into bad situations.  Like a two-on-one.  It's just a dumb thing to do.  Especially on open ground where they can easily circle and surround you.

So your d-elf can't take on a couple rantarr at once, so what?  They're supposed to be frail.  Play with a hint of caution.

[Gunnerblaster]

So your d-elf can't take on a couple rantarr at once, so what?  They're supposed to be frail.  Play with a hint of caution.

Yup, yup. Here's a little quote from the help_elf:

"Elves are not strong -- in comparison to most of the other humanoid
races of Zalanthas, they are quite weak."