Though the armor system is a step in the right direction, I think most people agree it needs some kind of significant change. The main issue is armor is too binary. Either you are 100% protected or 100% vulnerable.
This creates the issue where many skills feel useless until later into the battle, where they then are really powerful and you can stunlock enemies to death. There's sort of a dynamic where you can choose to use certain skills earlier just for the damage, or wait later for the status, but I think this just feels lame currently, like you're wasting your skills if you use them earlier, so early combat is mostly regular attacks to break down armor. I think it'd be more rewarding if skills always could apply some kind of status to enemies or players, even if armored.
I propose the following system:
All skills and items which apply negative statuses have a minor effect and a major effect. Just think of the relationship between Frozen and Chilled, where if you apply frozen to an enemy with magic armor, then they are chilled.
Thus, if a character has the appropriate armor, then the minor effect of a skill is applied to them instead of fully resisted as is now. No armor, and the major effect is applied.
A new defense ability, Resolve: Each point gives you a 5% chance to downgrade a status from major to minor, or minor to nothing. While 5% may seem small, since so many statuses will be thrown at you, its value will add up greatly over time.
For example:
If you have magic armor and you get a razzle dazzle (blinding) grenade thrown at you, then you become teary-eyed instead (or perhaps myopic ), which reduces the range of all your attacks and abilities by 33%, down to a minimum of 5-7m (that is, it won't reduce the range of melee skills).
Or if you battering ram an enemy with physical armor, then they are staggered instead of knocked down, reducing their defense and accuracy some.
I imagine these minor statuses to be about a third as potent as major statuses. They won't be totally debilitating like major statuses, but they'll still be something to consider, especially if you get several of them. Obviously, these statuses preclude each other -- you can't be blind and teary-eyed, just like you can't be frozen and chilled at the same.
So here's my list ideas for Major – Minor statuses (obviously subject to lots of balance changes):
Knockdown – Staggered: reduced hit and dodge chance by 15-20%, and AOE attacks go slightly off of your intended target, like throwing grenades in D:OSEE without the Pinpoint talent, though maybe not quite that inaccurate
Crippled – Hobbled: -33% movespeed
Bleeding – Scratched: create extra blood when hit (imo, only if standard blood amount created per hit is reduced some)
Poisoned – Woozy/Nauseous: -15% poison resist.
Muted – Tongue-tied: spells cost 1 more AP, or maybe it just reduces your intelligence by 3-5 or something.
Charmed – Impulsive: Spend 1 or 2 AP moving randomly, attacking a nearby enemy or buffing yourself or an ally.
Stunned – Crackling: -15% air resistance, -15% water resistance, walking in water causes air damage
Shackles of Pain – Shackles of Discomfort: enemy only takes 33% of the damage that you take.
Decaying Touch – Sickly: Healing is 50% less effective
Infected – Feverish: -10% all resists, -2 Con
Terrified – Afraid: reduced primary stats depending how close you are to the target that feared you. Perhaps even something like you take small amounts of magic armor damage if you walk towards the target that feared you. Or you just spend 1 AP per turn running away from the character if you're within 10m of them.
Sleeping – Groggy, -33% move speed, -3 to primary attributes, disappears on taking damage.
Now, I understand this is a bunch of work and would throw a wrench in current balance and is really unlikely to happen. But it's still fun to imagine what this would be like.
I also think this could lead to a bit of status overwhelm. If you have 3-4 minor effects and a couple buffs, things could get a bit to calculate. But I think there could be ways to deal with this, like skills that let you purge minor effects. And so long as enemies don't have too many skills at their disposal, I don't think you'd be wracking up more than 3 minor effects on a character unless you were standing in stun puddles and getting hit by explosions and stuff.
Hopefully this offers some food for thought.
Last edited by Baardvark; 20/12/16 09:33 PM.
