Poll

Read the post first. Should armor soak been nerfed and reduce buffed?

No, it's fine as it is.
44 (25.7%)
Yes, slightly reduce the armor soak for less glances and buff reduce in return. Less glances and 1hit deaths.
53 (31%)
Yes, greatly nerf soak and buff reduce decently. No more glances and 1hits please.
28 (16.4%)
Buff soak and reduce. Armor should be worth it and glances are fine.
29 (17%)
Nerf soak and reduce. Armor is too strong currently.
3 (1.8%)
Leave the values alone but lower the interruption threshold(to 0) to make glancing blows always interrupt.
7 (4.1%)
I don't care.
7 (4.1%)

Total Members Voted: 171

Author Topic: Possible change to armor handling: increase damage reduce, decrease soak effect.  (Read 12868 times)

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Offline Paul

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cRPG uses the Native values for armor soak and reduce calculation. They influence how much damage gets through after a hit. Armor soak reduces the incoming damage by an armor depended value that is not scaled with the amount of incoming damage. The soak is mostly responsible for the glancing blows since it often lowers the incoming damage below the interrupt threshold, allowing the target to continue their action even while being struck. Because within the calculation the used armor value is randomized heavily (50%-100%) glancing blows are often frustratingly unpredictable. Fighting against a berserked tin can with a 1h sword with low PS is often enough rather luck-dependant that way because a glance means death if the opponent keeps swing no matter what.

Armor reduce is the second part of the armor calculation. It lowers the damage that is left after the soak subtraction. The reduce scales down the incoming damage by an armor dependent percentage. A reduce of 50% of course has greater effect on the 60 damage incoming from the longaxe blow compared to the meager 6 damage that are left after the soak stole most of the nordic sword slash. A proper reduce has the potential to keep 1hit insta deaths in check.

The problem now is that in Native and in the current cRPG the armor soak is alot more important than the reduce. Soak rules. I did some calculations and in most cases the soak had the biggest impact on preventing damage. This combined with the (from my point of view) often frustratingly random glancing blows gave me the idea to change the status quo.

I suggest now to lower soak values for cutting, piercing and blunt while increasing the reduce values by a good amount. The goal is to keep the average damage the same or even to lower it abit so heavy armor is compensated for the lesser glancing blow thingy.

Advantages:
* Less glancing blows, even with lower PS and cutting damage
  - Less frustations for low levels
  - Less randomness in fights/duels in heavy armor
  - Better chances for agi melee builds
* Less 1 or 2hit insta deaths from heavy hitting weapons + high PS
  - Makes a single mistake less lethal in an armor duel
  - Makes armor more important to survive backrape
  - Good armor helps better against high damage weapons like the heavy crossbows, lancers or heavy melee

Disadvantages:
* Archers with weak bows have an easier time actually doing damage against armor
* Piercing damage will become become better than blunt damage because it overcomes armor reduce best(solution is to lower the damage of piercing weapons like 1h pick, morning star or lances)
* Tin cans will feel more vulnerable because weaker weapons can hurt them which would have glanced before


There is an alternative solution suggested by Shik to lower the interupt threshhold to 0 so every hit no matter what would interrupt the tin can. Advantage here would be that the damage would stay the same. I don't like this much though because every hit interrupting would mean that spam with turning in attacks to the maximum would become viable. We had that in Native beta and I don't want that again.

Offline Diomedes

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I like it, so far as I understand it.  I think the biggest difficulty, were this implemented in the next patch, would be the rebalanced pierce weapons.  It would be cool if pierce became the can-opening class with some handicap (the picks can't stab, the morningstar is imbalanced, etc.) but such major changes are hard to do correctly the first time.  If the devs or someone willing could set up a private server then I think some intense testing should be done before anything major changes. 

If needed I can help test.  Nothing else to do really before Strat comes out  :D

Offline okiN

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Sounds pretty good to me. Let's not go overboard, though; tweak the values a little bit and see how it feels.
Don't.

Offline Belmont

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Urist we can upload the new armor values on our server again if you wish. I thought they were an improvement so I would like to test them out again.

Offline CoWorm

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Voted yes here. Mostly from my own new player perspective and from what I see other new players talk about in the chat.
As we all know it can be hard to feel like a productive part of the team when you're just starting out. Even more frustrating when you finaly manage to sneak up on someone fighting your teammates and stab/bash him in the back only to bounce right of, have him turn around and kill you. If it could at least give a small stun when you hit someone I think it would help newer players feel abit more helpful in opening oponents up for finishing moves by team-mates, and this way peasants would still be easily shrugged off by themselves due to lack of damage.

Offline Seawied

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Would require a lot of playtesting. I'm not entirely convinced that theres a strong need for a change. The old saying of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" seems to apply.
So with PT >10 stones become simple too effective
:lol:

Offline MouthnHoof

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Fiddling with the soak and reduce factors in a problematic business. I would not do that hastily.

I do not see a big problem with armor right now, nor with glancing either. The only players who have serious glancing problems are extreme agility builds with cutting weapons (ninjas anyone?), or long weapons in kissing range as they should.

Offline MrShine

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I think this is a good idea, but like others said I think a slight change at first is good.  It is very frustrating for anyone to die after getting a clean hit in but having it glance and not interrupt the enemy's later swing.  This change will still give tin cans advantage by taking more hits, but they won't be able to simply ignore blocking when going against weaker power strike players. 

Balance issues will certainly abound, may sure to take those things into account as well instead of just changing armor!
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Offline Fluffy_Muffin

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Voted for option 2, imo anything other that a slight rebalance of soak and reduce would suck. 0 interupt treshold would suck big time, a peasent with a pitchfork stagger on a black armor guy would be hilarious. This will indeed have to be tested and fine tuned for the best effect. Im all for making it easier for new guys and reducing randomness but please be careful with this
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Offline zagibu

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The problem is not with the armor, but with how weapon damage and power strike are related. IMO it's a bit silly that I glance with 11 PS and a military sickle. Maybe PS should directly give a better chance to get through armor, regardless of how much damage is applied when the hit got through. Also, armor piercing should be a value separate from damage.

If you really nerf soak, there will be even less tincans around. Even now I feel that plate armor is almost not worth it, if compared to the higher tier mail armors.
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Offline Lech

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+1, implement it as fast as possible. Raising threshhold can help with glancing issues if it concern you.
« Last Edit: June 02, 2011, 08:03:32 pm by Lech »

Offline Ujin

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Hard to tell... i 'd wait for the test results.

Offline Lichen

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Lots of testing required. Could improve things or not.
« Last Edit: June 02, 2011, 07:56:55 pm by Lichen »

Offline Tzar

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A buff to archers and Agi stacking sonicĀ“s just what this mod needs....

Great idea paul lets buff the 2 most annoying classes ingame  :wink:
I've never played a server where people split up as much or as often as on EU1.  No wonder range is having a field day.

Offline BaldRider

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I dare say this would dumben the game down, reducing the effects of good positioning.
For example standing at the very start of someones swing, you can expect them to bounce on you, and thereby earn a free hit on them.