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I find this to be the biggest issue with the current combat system.
I understand that physical and magical armors were implemented to prevent spamming of "CC" abilities instantly but it makes the game a bit too focused on breaking armors initially rather than using all the cool abilities.

Instead in my opinion, armors should increase resistances by some percentage and that percentage should drop when the armor reduces.
As an example, magical armor could increase all elemental resistances by something like 80% and that percentage should drop the more you destroy that armor. In that way you always have at least a small chance to apply effects to targets with armor.

So as another example, if you fight a fire elemental which has -20% water resistance, it will have 60% of that initially. So you'll still have a 40% chance to apply water effects on it at the start of the combat.

I really believe that is a better approach and should be considered asap

Last edited by Jimmious; 18/09/17 07:27 PM.
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I agree that it needs change, if I understood you correctly something like this?:

At 100% phys/magic protection = 100% immune
At 75-99% = 80% chance CC will be resisted
At 50-74% = 60% chance CC will not be resisted
At 25%-49% = 40% chance CC will not be resisted
At 1%-24% = 20% chance CC will not be resisted

At all of these = add current % magic resists to the roll

This would neither make you or enemies completely immune, just a lower and lower resist Vs CC. It balances itself out because it also applies to you. Second: This still adds a tactical layer. Do I gamble/take the chance it will CC? If it fails I wasted these AP.

As a sidenote I find it REALLY strange that provoke does not bypass resist by default. "Hey dickhead! Attack me!", "Your insults does nothing to be bro! MY PLATE ARMOR MAKES ME IMMUNE TO YOUR TAUNTS!" Literally makes zero sense :P

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20% will not be resisted? I think the 'not' is to much in the bottom three, they kind of make it the opposite of what it should ^^

The armor system was implementend to avoid any RNG regarding CC so I'm afraid, they will hardly change it back. frown

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Ouroboros26 I can't talk with specific numbers, that needs a lot of research. But yes, something along these lines. Currently it feels too... "gamey"?

Kalrakh I just think that armors that simply block everything until depleted are breaking some aspects of combat. You almost never use skills to initiate combat anymore because they will never "go through". Some middle ground should be found smile

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I prefer it to be both gradient and deterministic, something like CC with 50% armor left -> losing 50% AP regeneration.

Also there really should be some benefits to get a target's both physical and magical armors down. It could suffer greater damage or longer CC etc.

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I think armor should just prevent the hard CC but not the soft CC. In other words it would prevent burning but not warm, frozen but not chilled, stunned but not shocked. There could be a few other soft debuffs thrown in for other kinds of CC.

And since an enemy is debuffed before his armor goes down the CC would effect him as soon as an appropriate spell broke through the armor. Like an opponent is chilled and becomes frozen once another frost spell breaks through the armor.

The softer debuffs from spells are good in and of themselves most of the time. They debuff resistances and other things, which would make it easier to damage with other spells to take down the armor faster.

Last edited by rickbuzz; 18/09/17 11:11 PM.
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CCs could have some physical/magical synergies. It would make narrative sense if being chilled/frozen would make a character's physical armor more vulnerable to physical damage, or a knocked down character would suffer greater ground effects than a standing one.

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I think the big issue is they didn't completely think this through and were so concerned with making the game "predictable" without any chance that they didn't really maneuver with the system.

Then again my theory is early on armor wasn't really meant to be the "Second life bar" but rather a sort of small shield meant to break off eventually... Yet that changed early on in the design process due to Source Skills (meaning there was now a need to have large gobs of armor) and other huge flashy attacks.

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Mechanics wise, it seems Larian's games really tend to be loosely designed and full of obvious flaws. I guess it's up to modders to fix the most of them in D:OS 2.

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I don't mind the armor system much, but I really dislike the fact that it renders most attacks moot, and makes health practically worthless.

What I would like to see is armor only provide a reduction to damage based on how much of it remains, and see offensive moves damage armor in addition to health.

In example:

The enemy has 50hp and 10 physical armor.
You hit them with a sword for 10 damage.
They take 5hp direct damage, and lose 5 armor.
On the next hit, they take 7hp direct damage, and lose 5 more armor.
On the next hit, they would receive to full 10hp damage.
Instead of recovering armor, they choose to heal for 22hp.
Now they are open to CC since they have 0 armor remaining.
You knock them down, and deal 20hp damage over the two turns that they are knocked down.
When they recover from the CC, they recover half their armor.
The enemy now has 30hp and 5 physical armor.

That makes armor into more of a composure type deal, and prevents CC chaining. So normal attacks feel like they have weight, and CC still has a purpose. You can just hide behind armor with impunity, you have to balance HP and armor.

With that said though, it's still kind of boring to just be immune to all debilitation, so maybe some secondary criteria on certain skills to apply weaker effects. Like instead of crippling an opponent when they have armor, they become slowed. Instead of being knocked down, they become off-balanced or dizzy and have a decrease chance to hit. Just as examples, just small debuffs to give you a reason to use the skill at all. It's not like you would spam them either, as it'd be much more effective to still wait until you've broken their composure so that you could hard CC them. All of this along with smaller moves that allow the player to expend AP to rid themselves of these minor effects at the cost of more progressive action. It'll make you decide whether you think it's worth it to forgo curing the effect to attack, or play defensively.

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From a balance perspective, it's probably cleaner and more flexible to completely seperate damage to armors and damage to vitality, armors would only function as protections against CCs this way.

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If they would split damage between armor and vitality, either it would be even harder to get them ccable or they would die before you even get to CC them, making CC even more pointless.

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[quote=Kalrakh]If they would split damage between armor and vitality, either it would be even harder to get them ccable or they would die before you even get to CC them, making CC even more pointless.[/quote]

That is why I was proposing that lesser effects be given when the target still has armor. That way you can still open up a fight with CC, but it's not going to be as effective as it otherwise might be if they had no armor to resist it's effects in the first place. This, along with normal attacks damaging armor would allow you to weaken the enemy at the start, wear down their defenses, and then be able to get some of them with a hard CC which could lead to the end of the fight. In order for that to function smoothly, there might have to be an implied debilitation added when armor is initially broken that delays it's recovery. Something like a stagger effect that prevents the player or NPC from regenerating their armor immediately on the next turn, which will help capitalize the significance of HP, and CON.


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