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stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: May 2017
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Hi all,
First of all let me say that I am loving this game, what a gem. The detail in what you can do /different approaches really stands out and I genuinely feel like I am on an adventure - something that can't be said for many RPGs today!
I have come from a background of different styled RPGs, strategy and competitive games of several genres. While I am experienced on similar games I have not been so caught up in this exact style so I thought my opinion might be a breath of fresh air maybe? (not trying to sound full of myself :/)
From my point of view there are a few glaring balance issues with the game before any minor balancing should be looked at: . (1) Burst damage is too high. . (2) CC is too effective. . (3) Hybrid teams are discouraged. . (4) Positioning means very little.
In detail: . (1) There should always be somewhat of a balance of Burst-damage/Tanks/Sustained-damage. High burst is countered by having a tank to defend against it, tanks are countered by sustained damage and sustain is countered by burst.
At the moment there is no reason to have a tank as they can't peel or protect an ally - their team will just die around them. The meta is just to build wits until highest in the fight and burst. Having a full 'burst against burst' meta discourages teams with variety.
The solution would be to stop fights being decided on turn 1 (half AP on turn 1 maybe?) and replace the shield ability with an active ability to peel or protect an ally (think Opportunist but dashing towards and taking damage for said ally once between turns, after activating it for an AP cost each turn).
. (2) Everyone has CC. Mages have CC, Warriors have CC, Rangers attach non-aerodynamic attachments to their arrows to have CC! (And of course the ground has CC).
CC lasts too long for the availability. If I destroy a team's shields then I can stunlock them with no counterplay. The problem would not be fixed with changes to the cost or proc chance (still would be able to stunlock).
The solution would be to make using CC feel rewarding if pulled off. I would suggest instead of missing a turn a stun would move you along in the turn order, giving the attacker a smaller window to act in.
. (3) The shielding system is simple, fun to play around and gives a limitation to balance teams around. It makes the game have a personality and I would not like to see it scrapped in favour of a different system. However, there is no point in having a mage on a team with 3 physical damage characters, etc.
If I am doing pure physical damage, there should be a benefit for also using magic. Currently Warriors and Mages are playing in separate mini-games.
The solution would be to allow a relationship between Armour and Magic-resistance. If it were up to me I would have any attack damage the corresponding shield type as it is currently. Damage to health would also occur based on the attack multiplied by the percentage of both shields missing (each type contributes 50% regardless of max value weighting). And of course adjust health values to balance it all.
Examples: . (1) I have a Ranger with full Armour and full Magic-resist and your Warrior attacks him for 10 points. Damage to his Armour *10*. Percentage of shields missing *0%* (0% of Armour missing, 0% of Magic-resist missing), so damage to his health = 10 x 0% = *0*. . (2) I have a Ranger with 40% Armour left but full Magic-resist and your Warrior attacks him for 10 points. Damage to his Armour *10*. Percentage of shields missing *30%* (60% of Armour missing, 0% of Magic-resist missing), so damage to his health = 10 x 30% = *3*. . (3) I have a Ranger with no Armour left but full Magic-resist and your Warrior attacks him for 10 points. Damage to his Armour value can't go past 0 and no damage is 'carried over' to health. Percentage of shields missing *50%* (100% of Armour missing, 0% of Magic-resist missing), so damage to his health = 10 x 50% = *5*. . (4) I have a Ranger with full Armour but no Magic-resist left and your Warrior attacks him for 10 points. Damage to his Armour *10*. Percentage of shields missing *50%* (0% of Armour missing, 100% of Magic-resist missing), so damage to his health = 10 x 50% = *5*.
. (4) There is little value in positioning.
Just like CC being abundant, there are many gap-closers and dashes with high range available. Additionally the only way to hide behind cover is to stand vaguely behind it or abuse stealth/invisibility.
The solution would be to share cooldowns for abilities that have dashes and teleport skill/glove/scrolls. This would reward good positioning by removing the 'get-out-of-jail-free-card's.
Additionally I would add some kind of counterplay mechanic for invisibility (some kind of light?) and introduce a new cover mechanic to reduce damage based on nearby walls in the path of the enemy. This would make combat seem less 'black and white' compared to the current "target not in sight".
All in all I think the current game is fun and I would like it to keep its identity, but so long as these elements are in the game players will level a few times and realise their character cannot compete in a game balanced around 'All-physical' and 'All-magical' burst teams and be put off from continuing without rerolling with a team composition that they would prefer not to play.
Anyway, thanks for reading and hope I made at least one good point! :p lulose
Last edited by vometia; 13/05/17 06:37 AM. Reason: formatting
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Sep 2016
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I'm not going to claim to be an expert on the design of D:OS2, but here are my own observations concerning the points you have mentioned about the combat system in its current state.
1) "Burst damage is too high."
This is true, but it has partly to do with the fact that burst is preferable to sustained due to the nature of the armor system. The quicker you can remove an opponent's armor, the sooner you can chain CC them and essentially remove them from the fight. It's a very binary system and I haven't encountered a situation yet where I would prefer sustained damage over burst in D:OS2.
As for fixes to this... The easiest way to do this would be to have some kind of damage mitigation or retaliation for "tankier" targets. Skills that reflect damage (like the pain reflection attribute, but as an active you plan around rather than a passive that doesn't encourage decision making), or skills that cap/prevent damage from passing a certain threshold could work (Protective Spirit from Guild Wars: single instances of damage cannot do more than 10% of the target's max hp, excluding conditions). I'd even be in favor of a talent or skill that absorbs all excess damage/CC when your armor drops to 0, similar to how Comeback kid prevents death upon HP dropping to 0. It would synergize well with the existing shield skill. It would have to be properly restricted/balanced in order to prevent it from being something every character dipped into, though.
2) "CC is too effective."
I absolutely agree; any fight can be closed out when you remove an opponent's armor since they are then vulnerable to being chain CC'd until they die. This is a widely talked about problem on these forums but there's never really been a proper solution.
The abundance of hard CC that have no behavioral differences is what I would choose to blame here; there's little to no mechanical distinction between knockdown, stun, frozen, and petrify. There are a lot of skills that can cause these statuses and any one character is likely to have at least three of these available to them in their standard skill loadout. I'd like to see more importance placed upon softer forms of CC that are more situational (Cripple, Blind, Curse, and even elemental statuses like chilled, wet, warm, etc). In D:OS1 elemental statuses had a much bigger impact on gameplay and I kind of miss that. These elemental statuses were also versatile in their ability to protect yourself against certain forms of CC (VS ice, you could warm yourself to prevent being frozen, etc), while also being able to weaken foes to your own statuses. Softer CCs and statuses like these that don't lock out action encourage problem solving from the player, and could be a possible solution to the currently binary nature of the armor system. It was also nice to be able to remove CC with utility skills (Haste removing frozen by applying warm, maybe earth could "ground" shocked characters somehow?), the elemental interactions eased the rigidity of there being an abundance of hard CC by supplying a variety of solutions to the player beyond "have frost armor or fortify".
To be clear, I don't think all forms of hard CC should be removed. It's just that in the game's current state there is way too much of it and it's not uncommon for fights to quickly turn into something where hard CC is king.
3) "Hybrid teams are discouraged."
I feel like this is a larger problem for magic damage than it is for physical: usually physical damage dealers will have a tiny bit of magic damage from their elemental weapon bonuses (which is a bit counter-intuitive).
I understand what you mean about the "two separate minigames" comment, though. Usually with a bit of preparation I've always had access to the kind of damage I've required though, be it through dipping into different schools or by using consumables like arrows, grenades, or scrolls.
However, my most successful character was a staff-wielding mage who dipped into fire and warfare schools. She was able to target both armor types somewhat effectively and play off of the damage types of the rest of the party.
4) "Positioning means very little."
Most of the positional play I found effective was to abuse AI and funnel enemies through choke-points on the map; it felt more cheesy than tactical. I don't think having movement abilities share the same cooldown would fix the problem, it would just feel like an arbitrary rule specifically meant to target the problem, rather than a proper solution.
My suggestion would be to improve the importance of soft CC and controlling abilities. Blind can already prevent movement abilities because it limits the LOS required to use them. Cripple could also be buffed to prevent the use of movement abilities, and could be a possibility for an offensive form of how "Fortified" prevents forced teleportation on allies. Movement crippling effects like Slow and Chilled could also proportionally reduce the distance these skills can be used, but I'm not sure if casting range on specific skills can be applied to scale with movement speed.
This essentially has to do with the ineffectiveness of a "tank" character. There should be ways to lockdown an enemy beyond bursting through armor values and chaining hard CC. I've seen people suggest adding a "Taunt" to the game, but Taunt would only just be another form of hard CC which we have way too much of currently. I'd like to see tanks impose their presence through existing controlling effects like cripple, Attacks of Opportunity, blinds, and more dynamic methods. Larian originally wanted to include push/pull effects which would have been great for this, but they weren't able to due to the limitations of the engine. Additionally, your suggestion of having ways for a tank to protect party members through damage mitigation (or even CC mitigation?) is something that would work as well.
For an outside reference, D&D4E had a sort of "soft taunt" system that would place heavy penalties upon enemies for ignoring a tank/protector. I'd prefer something like this to a hard taunt that just overwrites the AI to attack a target mindlessly.
Apologies for the wall of text, but I hope it was constructive, at the very least!
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apprentice
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apprentice
Joined: Dec 2003
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1) The suggestions from ShyCryptid sound good, DONT REPLACE THE SHIELD SKILL THOUGH, it is pretty much the only reason tanks can actually be tanky atm, it gives a lot of survivability, especially due to how CC works. It would be much better to add new skills to the game that aid in defending allies instead, like ShyCryptid said in point 4, some soft CCs, maybe somthing like pain link, but makes you take damage instead of an ally.
2) I mostly agree with ShyCryptid here, although I should add that its important not to weaken it too much, too many games make CC so ineffective that its just a waste of time to CC instead of damage, I like that CC is effective as an alternative to direct damage.
3) again, mostly agree with ShyCryptid, I don't think its too bad, as we do have a number of tools that help with it. I do think itd be good to add some more tools though. Such as physical character skills that convert a % of the damage of a hit into an element, like a 'fire strike' melee skill for example, that bathes your weapon in fire for one round. Equally they could add more spells with a physical damage component (say 50/50 element/physical), this would make a lot of sense for ice and earth spells in particular. Maybe keep fire and lightning as pure energy, but allow earth and ice (along with necro and summoning) as dipping options for getting some phys damage on your caster.
4) honestly I completely dissagree with positioning meaning little, it means huge amounts in this game imo. Having said that though, I wouldnt have any problems with any of these suggestions made by ShyCryptid, they would improve the game certainly. I also agree not to have the shared cooldowns on movement abilities, having the option to make your character highly mobile adds more dept, adding in soft counters (along with the hard counter of blind and other hard CC's) is a much better idea.
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Aug 2014
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Thoughtful analysis. Good first post!
1. There will be a number of tank skills added. I'm not sure if that's sufficient to really drop the effectiveness of burst damage, but it will help. I like Shy's idea of some kind of damage cap skill that would be effective against burst damage but not several ticks of small amounts of damage.
2. I'm well along the "eliminate hard cc" bandwagon. Some CC reducing initiative is a nice, simple solution.
3. Again, I believe there will be a number of skills to help give mages more of an edge and synergize with physical damage, but there still needs to be some kind of major change. Don't know if armor allowing some damage through to health is the solution, but that might help.
4. I like the idea of certain statuses reducing the range of self-teleports. Phoenix dive going from warfare to pyro would help I think. Pyro needs more mobility and warfare has too much.
Soft taunts would be nice. I will reveal that there's going to be a fun "Challenge" skill that might behave like a soft taunt.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Sep 2016
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"For an outside reference, D&D4E had a sort of "soft taunt" system that would place heavy penalties upon enemies for ignoring a tank/protector. I'd prefer something like this to a hard taunt that just overwrites the AI to attack a target mindlessly."
I agree with this immensely. It would give a great "tanky" feel. In D&D4e, which I DM'ed a great deal of, I had stupider enemies attack only the tank when they were taunted, while smarter ones would sometimes choose to take the penalty in order to attack a more strategically advantageous party member such as a healer. Either way, the taunt did make the tank be "tanky" whether the taunted enemy attacked them or not. I feel like, especially given some of the good AIs in DOS, something like this would work here as well.
I also agree very strongly with the overabundance of CC. Don't get me wrong, the ability to use CC, especially in conjunction with terrain effects, is one of the things I really like about DOS and DOS2. However, its duration is too long for most effects and it allows most or all of a party - friend or foe - to be stunlocked. Especially in multiplayer mode, where players control at most two characters, this can make combat seem boring at times when one or both of their characters are stunlocked for several rounds.
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