Topics

1

Historical Discussion / How was real melee like?

« on: July 05, 2013, 04:11:45 pm »

Hi!

My question is rather simple: how was real melee like?

Of course it heavily depends on the time period and so on, but I don't think this should stop us from trying to get a picture.

What I am interested in mainly is the cohesion while fighting. You surely all know the Bravehart battle scenes, where both armies rush full speed into each other, and then there is a huge clusterfuck and enemies coming from all sides.

Or is it more like the battle in the movie Troy, where they wait in front of their citiy walls, first repell them and then drive the Greek back? In that scene you can clearly see how they are holding some sort of line.

Of course certain tactics like Phalanx or shield wall automatically imply a certain level of cohesion. But still I'd like to know how it was percisely. Did the Normans beat on the Saxon shield wall constantly like mad men, or were they like in some distance with their own shield wall, and rather cautiously attacking with spears and so on, waiting for one of the Saxons to make a mistake and stab him behind his shield? I bet keeping distance could have been problematic with all the other guys in the back pushing forward. But did they push forward? Have people been so eager on fighting that they knowingly caused trouble for their fellows at the front by pushing them into the enemy?

I know from several reports that tactics in medieval times were basically about placing your troops at the right spot and then hoping they would wait with their charge for your command. But once the attack was released you could only wait for the outcome, without further possibilities of infulencing it.

But since many fighters tended to join medieval battles in some kind of "lances", where a knight had his squires around him (I know often parts of the lances were assigned to different units, e.g. pages joining the light cavalry and so on), I suppose at least those small groups of about 3 to 10 men kept some kind of cohesion. Once the enemy was repelled a bit they for sure regrouped, listening to the leader or his commanding "officer". Did those people at least look for after the course of the battle, and deciding where to engage next, or did they just charge headlong the nearest enemies?

You see, those are a lot of different questions with even more answers. Now does somebody of you know some reports or researches about melee, which can clarify the matter for a certain period? E.g. did the Normans support the man next to them, or was everybody just beating the part of the Saxon shield wall in front of him?

I am also interested in other details e.g. how much did your fellows care when you got hit and went down? Have people made special efforts to support their buddies, like on those illustrations when a Landsknecht was jumping into the pikes, grabbing as many of them as he could and lifting them, so his fellows could charge under them? Or similar to the battle of Rocroi scene at the end of Alatriste, where fighters "dive" under the pikes of the enemies, cutting and stabbing the defenseless pikemen, have there been Normans going down and trying to cut the feet of the Saxons, relying on their Norman fellows to protect them from blows to the back of their head?

2

Suggestions Corner / Possible solution for reward system - kill multiplier finally!!!

« on: May 13, 2013, 11:18:31 am »

Hi there.

Me keeps text short. If don't wanna read, take penis -> knee -> fuck. Try read, looks like long text, is not. Many notes, little text.

If still too much, read from first red part to last red part. Not much. Not much.


Requirements for reward system:

- rewards good skills
- rewards teamplay
- rewards not completely dependent on the performance, to keep noobs and baddies motivated
- rewards need to be as little dependent on your team as possible
- rewards need to reflect the effort

Problem: contradicting requirements.
Solution: compromises.
Conclusion: will never be perfect.
Recommendation: lower your expectations.


First things first: this suggestion is assuming that the conquest mode is already implemented. That's why I will repeatedly refer to flags and flag areas.

Flag area: the area around a flag within you can capture it. Who would have thought it?

The system:

1. Class based.

The community will be divided into the following classes:

- 1hd/throwing + shield = Shield infantry
- throwing = Throwers (which means that throwers with shield always have two classes)
- 2hd/2hd-polearm = Heavy infantry
- Pikemen/hoplites, perhaps 2d-Polearms = Defensive Infantry
- Crushthrough infantry = Shock infantry
- archers/crossbowmen = Ranged infantry
- melee cavalry (lancers/1hd-cav/2hd-cav) = Cavalry
- ranged cavalry (Horsearchers/horsecrossbowmen/horsethrowers) = Skirmisher Cavalry


2. Area based

Some classes get kills only within a certain area around them. Which means we go back to the old system.

3. Kill based

Dead enemies grant rewards. This is again a step back to the old game. More about this later.

4. Multiplier based.

All the rewards you collect during a round are put in a "pot". At the end of the round you get a certain percentage of the pot (= multiplier), depending on manifold factors.


____________________________________________

Getting rewards:

Getting points for your pot:

All rewards are distributed by "points", and at the end of the round the points get transformed into gold and XP. As said, you collect a pot full of points during the round.

Deaths:

Whenever you get points for a killed player, your "value" (= level, generation & equipment value) is being compared with his value. The more the value of the enemy is bigger than yours, the more rewards you get. And vice versa, of course. 

Flags:

Conquering flags grants points, obviously. The less teammates and the more enemies are around that flag, the more points you receive.



Getting more out of your pot with the multiplier:

Your multiplier determines how many points you can actually get out of your pot. It is even possible to get more points than what you had in your pot.


Surviving teammates/enemies:

The more teammates and the less enemies survive the round, the bigger your multiplier. (Note that due to conquest mode you can survive the round and still lose)


Time passed:

The shorter the round lasted, the bigger the multiplier for the winner. The longer the round lasted, the bigger the multiplier for the loser. As soon as the amount of living players of the teams exceeds a certain relation, e.g. 2:1 or 3:1, the time calculation stops, to prevent useless prolonging/delaying of the round by the losers. As soon as the relation jumps back to a more challenging value, the "frozen" time gets added again, and runs on.

Flag areas:

Whenever you get points for a killed enemy or something like that and you and/or the enemy was within a flag area, the points you get for it get multiplied by a certain value.

Teamhits/teamkills:

Every teamhit lower your multiplier a bit. Every teamhit which is being reported lowers it quite a good bit. Every teamkill lowers it a lot. Note that these punishments are permanent for that map, so they are being kept from round to round!

Won rounds:

For every round you won in a row you get a higher multiplier. But unlike before, the value is much lower, it's rather something like x1.1, x1.2 and x1.3 instead of x2 x3 or x4. But the limit can be raised to something like x2 at the most.

Dying:

Once you die you still keep on getting points for killed players and other stuff, but only at a certain percentage (like 50% or the like). It's easily determined by the time you lived. ([time you lived]x1 + ([round time]-[time you lived])x0.5 for example). This multiplier can be different for the classes, depending on how likely it is to die. (So infantry will probably get a higher death multiplier than archers or cav for example)

Generation:

The generation does not directly affect your multiplier. It affects the rate at which points get transformed into gold and XP. The higher your generation, the more valuable your points are.

Motivating the classes to play "properly":

Problem with rewarding kills directly:

Now the biggest problem doing so is directly rewarding kills. It would lead to a lot of kill stealing, teamhitting and teamkilling, and would support a general attitude and behavior which is definitely not desirable.

Old class balance problems concerning infantry:

There were always a lot of complaints and lobbying in the community, concerning class balance. And usually it was either infantry complaining about ranged or infantry complaining about cavalry. This has a lot of reasons, some of those have to do with the game mode, others have to do with the general way infantry players tend to play, and others have to do with the special gameplay requirements of infantry compared to the others classes. Whatever it is, the reward system should do something about the "infantry problem".

The core point of my suggestion:

Infantry receives points for enemies which have been killed within a certain range around them. If this happened within a flag area, they get even more rewards. BUT:

Infantry does not get rewards for killing enemies themselves!

Next to this, infantry gets a higher multiplier for every other infantryman who survived the round, compared to other teammates:

Infantry should be interested in protecting their infantry colleagues.

And finally, the most interesting point of my suggestion:

Every infantry class gets a target class. You never get ANY rewards when your target class is killed, neither by you nor by your teammates!

Now what does this mean?

You are encouraged to actually protect your fellow infantry mates, instead of racking up kills. You want THEM to make the death blow, you don't want to do it yourself, because you would not get rewards for it. And you want them to survive, that's why you look after them and support them whenever you can. But as you want to kill something, too, you will focus on your target class, because you don't get rewards for it, anyway. The big advantage of this system is, that you don't get greedy for kills, because you don't lose anything if someone else kills your target class. The focus of the game is shifted from making kills to actually helping and protecting each other. I think the gameplay can only benefit from it.

Examples for target classes:

Defensive infantry targets cavalrymen and horses.
Shock infantry targets shield infantry.
Heavy infantry targets defensive infantry and eventually horses.
Throwers target shock and heavy infantry and cavalry + horses. (Probably need some multiplier assistance due to the amount of targets which grant no reward)

Shield infantry target throwers and ranged.
Shield infantry are a special case, as they also get additional rewards for surviving friendly archers and being around the flag. This is to represent the (much underestimated) importance of shields for infantry. You see it's rather meant to be a defensive class (by me).

Weak parts of my suggestion:

I don't see any other reasonable solution for archers and cavalry than to directly reward them with a higher multiplier for kills they score, and bonus rewards for their target classes, which means that ranged and skirmisher cav target melee cav, melee cav and sirmisher cav target archers and so on. In return to prevent them of going apeshit on their teammates, their punishment multipliers for teamkills and teamhits could be bigger than those for infantry.

3

General Discussion / About the forum censor - what is censored, how and why?

« on: March 25, 2013, 07:06:53 pm »

Hi there!

I would just like to know out of curiosity, which words are all censored (try to describe them or work around the censor somehow  ), which is their replacement, why those words got censored and, most important, why all those weird replacements?

I know of Hitler being replaced by Einstein, and fag being replaced by bundle of sticks. But I don't know why. And what about the thing which gets replaced by that long... poem?

4

General Discussion / That lobbying has to stop - we need to change our attitude in cRPG

« on: March 22, 2013, 03:53:30 pm »

(Note: I reworked the text a few times, shortening it radically. I spent much more time shortening it than writing it, and this is the best I could make out of it. So pretty please, give it a chance, it's about a complicated and abstract matter. You won't need longer than a few minutes, anyway)

People tend to behave like CoD-kiddies in the cRPG community. Both ingame and on the forums.

Ingame they want to play an entirely skill based game without a lot of interaction with teammates. the problem is that this doesn't apply to cRPG, which has a lot more depth. You are free to play the game in a more "mindless" way, for relaxing purposes and whatnot, but as long as no REAL teamplay takes place, you are simply playing the game wrong, or, to say it a nicer way, you are not playing the whole game. This is fine, as long as you are aware of it and don't base any buff or nerf suggestions on YOUR way to play the game. Playing without tactics removes your right for suggestions, easy as that. cRPG is just not a game for immediate gratification, you have to work towards ending the round successfully, it's about winning the battle, not making kills.

And on the forums you also have to check if you are behaving like a child. Children are not capable in putting themselves into the position of others, and so do many community members seem to be. They don't want to understand or accept that the other classes have a justification for their existance, and that they have the SAME right for fun like your class. And people also like to play down the fact that their class could possibly annoy other classes and even frustrate them in some situations.

And then the cRPG community should ask themselves, how much they should involve themselves into lobbying for balance changes. How much do people understand of balancing? I really saw some shocking definitions on this board of what balancing seems to be for people. And do they have any other idea than buffing or nerfing? Because especially nerfing others seems to be a popular solution, leading to the nerfing spiral we currently have, and as you can see with the latest patches it hasn't stopped yet.

What changed after all that nerfs? Compare the classes to what they were one or two years ago, and then compare the amount of complaints and lobyying. If anything, things got worse. The philosophy of fixing by buffing or nerfing has failed, it's time for creative solutions. I hope the devs are currently working on a new battle mode, similar to the new siege mode they introduced. (Something where flags are recaputrable, in difference to the current conquest mode). My hopes are that this mode could fix a lot of problems, because in my eyes the root of all evil in cRPG is the horribly plain, loveless battle game mode which is nothing more than a round based team deathmatch. It has no soul, no charm, and favours some classes over others. Infantry is as much suited for battle mode as cavalry is for siege mode. But you need to think outside the box to see that, and this is what I am missing in the biggest part of the community. Everyone is sitting inside his box and tries to poke or shoot the others in ther boxes.

I'd like to suggest ten commandments, which everybody is free to follow, but always keep in mind if you are not agreeing, that you should not ask what the community can do for you, better ask what you can do for your community. Yes, I misused that famus sentence once more. I hate myself for it, trust me. 

1. Accept that other classes have a right of existance, just as much as yours.
2. Accept that other classes have a right for fun, just as much as yours.
3. Accept that your class can possibly annoy and frustrate other classes.
4. Be always kind to your fellow community members, and try to understand their point of view.
5. Don't hate on other classes, they play to have fun, not to ruin yours. Nobody here is malevolent.
6. Don't suggest nerfs. Ever. If anything, suggest a buff.
7. Keep up discussion discipline. Don't become unobjective, insulting, provocative or something like that. Try to solve the issue, not to "win".
8. Always try to play WITH your teammates on the server, not only along with them. Give teamplay a try. The game gains quality with it.
9. Stay always kind. It's really a basic and obvious rule for a good community, and yet people forget about it regularly. Don't get yourself driven by emotions. What are you? A girl? (Sorry, girls, this one was on you  )
10. Praise the devs. They don't do a perfect job, and they often behave like dickheads, but if you criticize them, criticize their work, and don't insult them. I think this is another important aspect, as it has impact on how good, how fast and how long your mod will be supported and further developed.

5

General Discussion / Give us conquest mode, already! Dammit!

« on: February 16, 2013, 03:28:36 am »

Hi!

As most of you know for sure, the complaints about archery have increased again lately, at least that is what I have experienced in the forum. Infantry complains about archery, archers defend themselves and both complain about cavalry. Both archers and cavalry have been nerfed to oblivion by the devs, and yet they couldn't really deal with the hatred between the different classes, and the basic problems are still existant, although not to the extend they used to once, but still.

Smoothrich already suggested it, but his topic didn't even get over one page, so here is my try to finally get the attention of the devs.

Why we need conquest game mode:

- Infantry complains about cavalry and especially archers all the time
- On one hand the complaints are justified, on the other they are not
- Infantry requires much more teamplay and coordination to maximize their potential, which archers and cav do not require. If infs used more tactics, they would suffer less.
- Cavalry and archers enjoy a higher "flexibility" in a few aspects. What sounds like something very blurry and abstract has a massive impact on your gameplay and especially on your perception of fun when it comes to the objective of killing all enemies. Short: in battle mode infantry is the idiot because of missing flexibility and higher teamplay requirements
- As a result of these borked mechanics and the following complaints, archers and cavalry got nerfed again and again, without really fixing the source of the problems

Solution:

Implement conquest mode, with the following important conditions:

1. It REPLACES battle mode (at least for some time)
2. It is still round based, which means everyone has only ONE life
3. The maps need to be designed carefully, and it is much better to have a few good maps than a shitload of random, unbalanced maps

It works this way:

- Every team has a "battlefield control"-ressource you can name any other way you like. Each team starts with 10.000 units of that ressource
- On each map there is an uneven amount of flags. The more flags, the more small skirmishes you have, the less flags the bigger the central battle. Either 3 or 5 flags sounds reasonable to me.
- These flags need to be placed absolutely evenly on the map, which means that both teams need the same time to reach the same amount of flags.
- Once players enter a certain, rather wide area around a flag (25-50m radius?), they start capping. As soon as enemies enter the area, the flag starts getting uncapped again. You need the double amount of own troops to "ignore" enemies in your flag area and restart capping/keeping it capped.
- As soon as one team owns less completely captured flags than the enemy, they start losing the battlefield ressource. The bigger the difference of the captured flags, the faster the ressource drains.
- Next to this the ressource drain is increasing exponentially. So the longer you need to capture a flag, the more likely you will lose.
- Perhaps the amount of remaining players could also be taken into account, but I am not sure about this one and how it could be implemented. But hey, I don't have an answer for everything.

Once a team reaches 0 ressource points or has no players left, it loses. If one team loses, the other team - who would have guessed it - wins. If the time limit is reached before one team reaches 0 ressources or loses all players, the team with the higher amount of ressources wins. Only if both teams have exactly the same number of ressources, it's a draw. This has the nice sice effect that draws will be something really rare in the future.

There could be even room for buffing archers and cavalry again!

Now why do I want those 3 conditions I listed up at the beginning?

1. The game mode has to replace battle, because otherwise...
... we would split up the community too much
... classes which have more advantages in battle mode would still stick to it (probably), turning conquest into a boring infantry only spamfest
... people should be forced to actually try the game mode and adapt to it, so we can have a representative result. If people try it, but for some reason many say "naah, that's not for me, it's so unfamiliar", the game mode would be dead before it even had a chance to fix things
... we would not have a unique game mode which would be the core gameplay element of identification for cRPG 

2. It has to be round based, because one problem infantry always had was missing teamplay. With the new focus on the flags infantry will hopefully play together more, instead of everybody chasing after his target of choice, scattering infantry all over the place and provoking all the problems infantry is constantly complaining about. But if you had several respawns, death wouldn't be so much of a problem, and the advantage of the game mode - encouraging teamplay - would be negated again.

3. The maps need to be designed carefully, so that ALL classes have a chance to influence the battle at ANY flag on the map. Which means, at least in my opinion, that the area around each flag has to contain one half which is open, plain ground, and another half, which offers cover and protection. That way cavalry, archers and infantry can all participate to the same extend in capturing a flag. On the other hand the area AROUND the capturing area needs to contain both open plains and "difficult terrain" at the same extend, to allow the enemies to attack effectively. On the other hand, the widest areas around the flags, let's call it something like the "third circle" around the flag (first circle is capturing area, second is "attacking area"), needs to be open plains, so that archers and cavalry have a chance to interrupt or stop enemy movement between the flags.

I think it is pretty obvious that it is pretty much borked up if the closest flag to your spawn would be on an open field next to a small castle on a hill which will always be reached by your enemy first. This would move archers and cavalry more into the acting roles, while infantry would again be only playing the easy targets on open terrain. And even if on the other side of the map you have another castle on a hill next to a flag with the roles switched, it would still be a shitty map, because infantry players would have less fun than the others. That's what I mean with "carefully designed maps".

To put a little bit of voice behind this topic I will add a poll, and feel free to vote on this post as well, if you like.

6

General Discussion / What cRPG needs (IMHO) - yet another emotional principle discussion

« on: November 21, 2012, 01:18:33 pm »

Hi there!

I would just like to sum up the changes I think cRPG needs to reach 1.0-status. I will keep it as a list, so feel free to agree or disagree on single points, and if you disagree even offer another solution:


1. Change battle mode to conquest mode.

3 carefully placed flags on a few well designed and balanced maps, 1000 ressources per team, the team with less flags losing ressources (perhaps the less players the dominating team has the faster the ressources dwindle?), if ressources or living players reach the value of 0 the team loses. Would fix ~80% of all class balance problems cRPG has.


2. Implement a commander system.

Make a commander system with commanders which don't need to be elected, and every payer having the system activated by default (= you don't need to join on purpose), perhaps even with small rewards for carrying out orders. I suggest forum vote to create a commander ranking, and commanders being in charge as soon as they join the server, always being balanced equally on the teams. If there are more than two commanders the ranking decides about who's in charge, if there are less than two commanders the system is disabled. Would again fix a few balancing problems.


3. Rewrite team balance.

The game checks the classes of the players regarding their skills and their equipment. Some information can already be prepared on the webside. It also tracks the average score/ K/D / W/L ratio/ eqipment value of players and their generation. Basing on this information balance is calculated. Class>skill>clan is the order. If there is a majority of one class in one team, and there are not enough players of the same class for the other team, the game fills it up with their counter class, which means GKs will have to fight a lot of pikemen whenever they join the server in masses like they use to do.


4. New income system.

I don't have a proper suggestion for this, as there are many possible solutions. I guess if the score calculation becomes a bit fairer you can base gold and XP income on it. I would just like to add the idea that the rewards could be modified by the class you are playing, which means you get bonus rewards if you play a rare class. Could grant a little bit more diversity on the servers. Bt one thing is for sure: that terrible modifier and its leech friendliness have to go!


5. Remove upkeep.

The system was always crappy since it got introduced. It added worries about your remaining gold, you were restricted to certain equipment, devs were forced to make some items more viable than others to support the upkeep system in its attempt to grant diversity and limit the players on mid tier equipment, and finally it didn't help the balance at all, because temporarily restricting a certain powerfull equipment build doesn't make it balanced once it is used on the server. And as we all know, the introduction of the marketplace already removed the upkeep system as item limitation system, as there were no limitations any more for people who sold loom points.

I suggest to replace it with the "wealth skill" system. A new, attribute-unrelated skill is introduced, called wealth. Every player gets a certain budget for items he can equip, which is represented by the item value. The item value is NOT the item price in the shop, it's a seperate value, similar to its slot value. The value is raised by each level and by every point of wealth skill, but even on top level you would be restricted on very basic and cheap eqipment if you have welath 0. On the other hand, if you have wealth value 10 or 15 or whatever, you can constantly equip a plated charger, full plate and a heavy lance, going Finn style. But your skills will suffer heavily, balancing it out. Equipping more than what your budget is leads to items not being equipped at all or the next cheapest item, just like in Warband MP. That way you can decide to go with good skills and poor equipment, good equipment and poor skills or mediocre skills and mediocre equipment. We will have a batter balance (good items "costing" skill, which is a limited ressource is a way better base for balancing than items costing money, which is an unlimited ressource and thus basically unbalancable), more diversity in builds and finally more fun for everyone, because you can ALWAYS run around in your favourite eqipment and be recognized by the others.

Gold income would be reduced massively, and buying a new piece of equipment could become an event again, like in old days.


6. Make the game more deadly/raise the level cap.

I guess some players won't like the suggestion above with a wealth skill, reducing the effectivity of their builds. But it's only half as bad as it seems on the first glance, because suggestion 5 goes hand in hand with raising the level cap to 36, 39 or even 42. The game is very slow at the moment, and you need a lot of hits to kill somebody. Raising the level cap would be a very easy way to solve that problem, it would stretch that motivating "character progression part" a bit, would allow more builds (especially some interesting hybrids) and would increase the level span of the "peasant" classification, which should be a good argument for most players 


7. Buff armour.

Currently there is only little use in using light armour, as the protection is close to wearing no armour. On the other hand there is little use in wearing plate armour, because heavy armour offers almost the same protection. Stretching the range of armour values and implementing a small "jump" between cloth armour and light armour could improve things a bit. That way you can actually FEEL the armour you are wearing. I am perfectly fine with increasing the weight of the heaviest armours to implement a tradeoff.


8. Buff some classes again.

All those changes could create some room for buffing some classes again. I am thinking mainly of archers and cavalry, especially heavy cavalry which is basically non existant in the game. But be carefull with buffing throwers, as they have a few very ugly mechanics which can easily lead to everybody using backup throwing weapons, leading to a lot of ranged spam and degenerating melee to short ranged combat.


9. Revert the turn speed nerf to a certain degree

Weapons should turn slower proportionally to their length and weight. Longer and heavier weapons should turn much slower than for example short 1hd weapons.


10. Implement some of the minor suggestions around here.

Things like making archers and crossbows switch ammo types, implementing "half slots", knocking cav out of the saddle, displaying the W/L ration on the webside and so on.



Dang, again it got a huge wall of text. But it's divided into points, and they are quite self explanatory, and if not there's not much to read for the particular point.

7

General Discussion / einstein and cRPG

« on: November 09, 2012, 02:39:55 pm »

I made a documentation about how players experience cRPG. I started with a random user, called albert H. I followed him a few days with my camera and recorded everything as invisible spectator. Enjoy!

And there is surely more to come.   :wink:

P.S.: I know there is something borked with the ratio. I am going to fix it right now, should be done until today evening.

Edit: Fixed.

8

Suggestions Corner / How about new item flags, for more variety?

« on: October 25, 2012, 01:09:43 am »

Hi!

I feel bored, so here's yet another suggestion thread of mine. Please don't reat it totally seriously, as we all know this won't be implemented. I think we can be happy if cRPG will be patched ever again 

 
My suggestion is directed to the items flags we currently have. Those are:

- unbalanced
- knockdown
- bonus against shield
- crushthrough
- can't be sheathed
- secondary mode
- can't use on horseback
- can't reload on horseback
- couchable


First of all, a few "invisible" flags should be added to the webside, so that people know what they are buying there:

- 1 or 2 hand
- 2 hand only
- can't block


Now let's think about some new, interesting flags, to spice up things:

Nr. 1
Flag: Cruel wounds
Effect: "polestagger" - longer recovery time when hit
Thoughts: this is basically to give a few weapons their polestagger ability back or to give it to new weapons. Those weapons cut terrible wounds, and sometimes you are literally caught in agony, unable to move. Making it damage based instead of luck based would be nice.

Nr. 2
Flag: Cutting
Effect: bleeding effect. You lose more hitpoints for some time after being hit
Thoughts: You will lose a hitpoint every second for a limited amount of time. The hitpoint loss doesn't cause you to be interrupted. The point of this flag is to give more options for balancing, as the overall damage is of a value between the pure base damage and the added base and bleeding damage as overall base damage. (Easier: 30c < 30c + 1s < 31c. The "s" is the bleeding damage, latin for sanguis, as "b" is aready taken for blunt.)

Nr. 3
Flag: horse knacker (?)
Effect: horse rears whenever it is hit
Thoughts: this is basically representing the polearm weapons with all kind of hooks which were used in the late middle ages to deal with knights. The Fauchard would be a nice example for this. Never mind where you hit a horse from with such a weapon, it will rear because of the pain. I recommend to not use it on top tier weapons like halberds or the glaive. Boar spear would be an idea, perhaps.

Nr. 4
Flag: Dismounting
Effect: if a certain amount of damage is dealt to the rider, he falls of the (still living) horse
Thoughts: it's basically already explained. This is meant to represent yet another anti-cav-weapon, other than only long polearms. The impact of the weapon is that terrific, or it has such nasty hooks, that you get simply dismounted, if unlucky.

Nr. 5
Flag: Disarming
Effect: if you chamberblock a hit with it, there is a small chance your opponent will drop his weapon
Thoughts: again pretty self-explanatory. I think we must limit it on a small chance of success, otherwise it would be really OP in the hands of people who are good at chamber blocking and fight anybody without a shield. Of course again weapons with hooks or the like are good candidates for it. I would restrict it on 1hd weapons.

Nr. 6
Flag: Balanced
Effect: the opposite of "unbalanced"
Thoughts: this is for light, fast and as the name says balanced looking weapons with low damage. They are ideal for "fencing". Again this only makes sense for a few medium tier 1hd weapons

Nr. 7
Flag: Only use on horseback
Effect: read above
Thoughts: now this is an interesting one, because it allows the use of weapons which would be OP on foot. My first idea is something like a two handed rider's hammer, we still don't have them as weapons ingame. In German they are called "ravenbill", I guess the English expression will be similar. It would allow the devs to create the completely new class of (viable) 2hd cavalry. And I bet there are a lot more ideas with this flag.


Feel free to discuss particular flags (that's why I gave them numbers), and add own flags, if you find some. Let's see what ideas we can put together.

9

Suggestions Corner / Win/Loss ration on character page + equipment budget

« on: September 19, 2012, 07:44:32 pm »

Hi!

The idea doesn't need long explanations:

I would like to see my win/loss ratio on the character page, just like my K/D. Especially since I think the W/L is much more interesting than the K/D.

And as you are already on it and as long as we still stick to the upkeep and multiplier system, you can calculate your average gold income per minute, and thus display a budget for equipment you break even with on long term. That would reduce the amount of "Upkeep is too high!"-topics...

10

Suggestions Corner / Ideas to buff infantry

« on: August 23, 2012, 03:48:36 pm »

As some of you may have noticed, we already have several topics in the general discussion and the suggestion corner which are about cav+archers vs. infantry, one of the oldest topics in cRPG at all. Since the beginning of the game cavalry and archers made the life of many infantry players really hard and often demotivating, at least to a wider extend than vice versa (you don't see many archers or cavalry complain about infantry).

The reasons for this are manifold, but one of the most important (in my eyes) is the missing teamplay of infantry players. Most infantry players, even the very skilled ones, simply rush towards the closest targets to engage them, and they don't give a fuck about what the rest of the team does, which results in a lot of single headless rambo-lemmings, and single headless targets are the easiest prey for archers and cavalry. But as you can't change the players you must change the system. So here are my suggestions. Some of them can even get combined, and if someone posts another suggestion I will edit it here into my OP, so that we can have all suggestions together in one post.


1. Implement a commander system

Make a system where players follow the orders of a commander. The commander needs to be elected automatically, a player vote won't work. Next to this every player must have the system enabled by default when he enters the server, and there should be some little rewards for carrying out orders, at least in the period after implementing the system. When (if at all) the community changed its behaviour and plays the game more consciously, things can get changed. Actually this solution would aim to "change the players". The idea is to make infantry play together, and thus buff each other by complementing their abilities and nullifying their weaknesses.

2. Add an area buff to certain classes.

Make certain infantry classes grant buffs to other infantry classes, the best way would be that classes, which cover a weakness (e.g. shielders which cover 2hd players from projectiles) grant a buff which is most useful for the particular player (for 2hd that could be PS, for example). The bonus for several players should be cumulative, to a certain maximum, which shouldn't be too high. 2 or 3 points, I would say. This is another try to make infantry not only stick together, but also encourage players to look for classes which provide an effective combination with their own class. This buff should only apply FROM infantry players TO infantry players. If you think a skill buff would be too much, you could also think about a gold or XP buff. Or make it basing on kills the OTHER players around make. WHich would encourage players more to support each other, instead of seeing the others only as extras to your own one-man-show.

3. Change battle mode.

The main strength of infantry is conquering and holding terrain. With a battle mode where not killing but conquering and holding flags would be the goal, infantry would gain importance, and reward calculation could become easier. For example infantry could be rewarded most for being close to the flag and less for killing, while archers are rewarded more for killing and less for staying next to the flag.

4. Give infantry extra skills.

This suggestion is rather extreme. You can click a button on your character screen, which is called something like "Infantry training". Once pressed (and confirmed!) the way you can spend skills is changed. This change can't be made undone unless you retire or respec. The skills "Power Draw", "Power Throw", "Horse Archery" and "Riding" get locked or limited to a very low value (2 or 3 at the most). Already spent skill points get refunded, of course (only of the locked skills. This shouldn't be a cheap way to respec!). Same applies to the corresponding proficiencies like "Crossbows", "Bows" and "Throwing Weapons". Simultaneously you need only two governing attribute points to level the following skills: "Power Strike" "Athletics" "Iron Flesh" and "Shield". (You need to find a solution to prevent builds with unbreakable shields which can still hit pretty hard, though). Additionally the item weight will always be reduced by a certain percentage, something like 30-50%. This would make infantry the absolute kings of ground combat, and with the higher IF and ATH values they should be more difficult to kill.

Edit: a less extreme version of this suggestion would be that you have to choose either STR or AGI, and depending on your choice IF and PS or ATH and Shield become sheaper, the other two remain the same.

5. Rework armours

Currently, top tier armour is a rather bad choice. That's why I would suggest to make the armour values climb more exponentially to the top tier end of the list, while simultaneously lowering upkeep a bit. In exchange you can raise the item weight a bit. That way really heavy infantry could be viable again, and if wearing plate items armour values from 70 over 80 to perhaps close to 90 (with loomed items) could be reached. That way you could have heavy shock infantry at the front of your team, covering the rest against enemy arrows, even without shield. (Which would also, as beneficial effect, add a little bit of realism)


Tell me what you think about the suggestions, which you like or dislike, or whether you have own suggestions. Keep in mind that although the effects are similar, I want to focus on improving infantry, not making the other classes less effective. cRPG had enough nerfs, it's like the old story of a wobbling chair with heavily sawn of legs, because every time you saw off one another one has the wrong length. It's time to stop the sawing and put something under the shortest leg.

If we have enough suggestions, we can even start a poll.

11

General Off Topic / What are you listening to? - no metal, no techno, no hiphop

« on: July 21, 2012, 06:31:30 pm »

Hi there!

The discussion in another music thread in the general forum lead me to the idea of starting yet another music thread, but this time with one/three conditions:

- no metal
- no techno
- no hiphop

And of course no similar genres, I mean the entire group. Telling me it's rap, not hip hop changes little.

Next to this there is not a condition but rather a recommendation: if someone posts a song you like and especilly if you didn't know it before: give the man a plus.

To give you a start what I am thinking of, here a list of songs your Joker enjoys:

(click to show/hide)

Wang Chung - Space Junk
Gorillaz - 19 2000 Soulchild Remix
The Smashing Pumpkins - The End is the Beginning is the End
Elbow - Grounds for Divorce
Rinocerose - Cubical
Portugal. The Man - Our In and Out and Out and In
Wolfmother - Love Train
INXS - Elegantly Wasted
Bodyrockers - I like the Way You Move
Servant - Cells
Muse - Supermassive Black Hole
Michael Bublé + Mousse T - I'm coming home (I know, Michael Buble, but give it a chance!)
Leroy Miller - Good time
Sharon Jones - This Land is Your Land
The Heavy - Short Change Hero
Paolo Nutini - New Shoes
Allen Toussaint - Sweet Touch of Love
Dandy Warhols - Bohemian like you
Kenny Rogers - Just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in
Stealers Wheel - Stuck in the Middle without you
George Baker Selection - Little Green Bag
Tito & Tarantula - After Dark
The Coasters - Down in Mexico
The Blasters - Dark Knight
Cage the Elephant - Ain't no Rest for the Wicked
Goldfish - Soundtracks and Comebacks
Goldfish - Fort Knox
Mark Lanegan - Burning Jacob's Ladder
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Beat the Devil's Tattoo
Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice
Fatboy Slim - Rockafeller Skank
Fatboy Slim - I have to Praise You
Fatboy Slim - Push the Tempo 
Moby - Why does my Heart Feel so Bad
Moby - In This World
Moby - Natural Blues
Moby - Find my Baby
Moby - Flower
Nirvana - My Girl (where did you sleep last night)
Jamie Lidell - Little Bit of Feel Good
Kosheen - Gone
Charlie Winston - Like a Hobo
Jamiroquai - Virtual Insanity
Woodkid - Iron
Kenneth Bager Experience ft. Aloe Blacc - Sound of Swing
Jarabe de Palo - La Flaca
Electric Six - Gay Bar
Portishead - Glory Box
Aerosmith - Pink
Aerosmith - Dude looks like a Lady
George Thorogood - I drink alone
George Thorogood - Bad to the Bone
Edwyn Collins - Never met a Girl Like You Before
Marquis of Kensington - Flash (from 0:42 on its epic)
Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose - Treat her like a Lady
Bachman Turner Overdrive - Takin' Care of Business
Bachman Turner Overdrive - House of the Rising Sun
Buster Poindexter - House of the Rising Sun (love the part from about 1:30)
Billy Ray Cyrus - Achy Breaky Heart
Robert Palmer - Bad Case of Loving You
ZZ Top - Sharp Dressed Man
Guns'n'Roses - if the World would end Today
Led Zeppelin - When the Levee breaks
Stones - Gimme Shelter
Foreigner - Jukebox Hero
Jethro Tull - Locomotive Breath
Morphine - Early to Bed
Laid Back - Bakerman
Incredible Bongo Band - Ohkey Dokey
Porno Sonic - Unreleased 70's porno music (Yes, this is porno music - look how much better it is than the average released music today!)
I Monster - Daydream in Blue
I Monster - Lust for a Vampyre
Massive Attack - Teardrop
Stakka Bo - Here we go again
Stakka Bo - Down the Drain
Ray Charles - What'd I say
Stampeders - Hit the Road Jack (Better than Ray Charles version, IMHO)
Derek Sherinian - In the SUmmertime (Love how the song climaxes after 2:03)
Hugh Dillon - Lost at Sea (Love how he sings with 2 different voices)
Fountains of Wayne - Too cool for School
Gabin - Into my Soul
Gabin - Doo Uap
Gabin - Sweet Sadness
Beck - E-Pro
US3 - Cantaloop
Calexico - Black Heart
Elvis - A Little Less Conversation
Otis Taylor - Ten Million Slaves
Blues Brothers - John the Revelator
Blues Brothers - New Orleans
Blues Brothers - How Blue Can You Get
Blues Brothers - Looking for a Fox
Blues Brothers - Peter Gunn Theme
Booker T & the M G's - Green Onions

For all those poor fellows like me who live in a country where 9 of 10 youtube videos are locked, google and install "Proxtube" for Firefox. It really helps!

12

General Discussion / Survey - Your basic game preferences

« on: July 19, 2012, 02:23:41 pm »

Hi!

I saw that in the past days several topics appeared which are all the result of one single question: do people prefer more the fight man vs. man, the very act of killing, basing on reflexes and muscle memory, or do they rather prefer fighting in a team, the different classes supporting each other and steamrolling the enemy over a flank with minimal losses because he made a fatal mistake?

I know we have pretty much any preference combination in this community. All I'd like to know out of sheer curiosity is, how the distribution is. This topic is not meant to discuss which is the "right" way to play a game, or how the developers (either from cRPG or TW) meant the game to be, it's just about what is fun for YOU and WHY.

Edit:

Poll added. Please inform me if you would like to have someoptions changed/added. Poll is made so users can change their vote.

Edit2: another way to ask the question would be: do you like killing people or rather winning battles? Because that's not the same. You can be happy with having lost the round as long as you killed a few people, while someone else can be happy having won the round although all he did was scaring away the cavalry of a flank with a pike, and even being shot in the end. Or are you somewhere in between that?

13

General Discussion / Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!

« on: July 16, 2012, 05:08:13 am »

Hi!

In some of the last topics in this forum I noticed some kind of "gap" between the players and the devs, and often some of them felt misunderstood or treated the wrong way by the others.

Simultaneously, the suggestion forum in its current shape always seemed kind of chaotic and of only limited use.

Now my idea is easy: the devs appoint one (or more) community managers. Those members have task of mediating between the devs and the community. Besides of that, they are "moderating" the suggestion area.

Their tasks are:

- releasing news and information about development progress
- writing official statements and answers to current affairs
- asking "viable" community questions to the developers and posting their answers

The suggestion forum will be newly formed. The old forum will be moved into an archive forum, so that for some time older posts can still be referred to. The new suggestion forum will be divided only in "General suggestions" and "Game Balance". The "Realism" forum is rather pointless, because gameplay and balance are always more important than realism. Yes, in some cases you can make decisions in favour of realism, but those cases are that rare, they don't really justify an own subforum.

In the two remaining forums there will be a sticky topic with a list of all created topics, sorted by idea and the dev's response. In the general suggestion topic it could look like:

Archery - Repeating crossbow [Declined]
Archery - Increase bump range against archers [Accepted, WIP]
Horses - Implement heraldic bard [Impossible]
Horses - Taking damage when hitting solid obstacles [Impossible]
Horses - Picking up a second rider [Declined, Impossible]
Shields - Shieldbash [Discussed]

That way you could press ctrl+F and could search for the suggestion you hve, instead of creating yet another topic about always the same ideas.

The task of the community managers would be to first sort out the totally unrealistic, dumb, retarded and biased suggestions (they get rough instructions from the developers), and have to edit the title of the topic, according to the current state. In regular intervals the CMs brief the developers about certain suggestions, and those give their answers. These answers are forwarded to the topics, and the title is being modified accordingly. If something is techincally impossible or has been declined, the topic gets closed. If the developers are not sure, the topic gets a "discussed" flag, and the developers can follow or even participate the topic, to meet a finaly decision. Accepted suggestions are closed, too. Whenever a suggestion is added or the status of a suggestion changes, the overview topic gets updated, too. (You need a seperate topic with a summary post, because there you can search by ctrl+F, which you can't do in the forum itself, because the amount of topics displayed on one page is limited. You would have to search every forum side an extra time)

That keeps the suggestions rather neat and the developers lose only the minimum time possible to give feedback to suggestions, whereas the community gets constant replies to their suggestions, instead of complaining for weeks that a commonly accepted suggestion is completely ignored by the developers, just to see it implemented in the next patch (as it already happened several times).

But to have this whole CM thing working the developers first need to state a few things, e.g. what kind of game they are planning to make, what's more important to them and so on. How much should personal skill and how much should teamplay have an impact on success? How important is realism? Questions like these.

What do you think? Would the community like to have a few people standing in constant contact to the developers, keeping you always informed? Would the developers like someone to filter all those thread sin the forum only for the important stuff, saving them a lot of time which can be spent developing?

I think the community could benefit a lot from it, given that the CMs are really eager to keep up a stream of information by constantly asking the developers (forwarded) questions, and if the developers would be willing to let the CMs have quite a good insight into the development process.

14

General Discussion / New game modes to make everyone happy

« on: July 03, 2012, 09:01:04 pm »

Hi there!

I just read this topic about missing tactics on the NA servers (and on EU it doesn't look much different), and many people posted various reasons, why they prefer one play style over another.

Some like to play in a team, be only a small cog in the wheel, to have a high multiplier and so on. They have a rather "total" view on the game. They are playing the "macro-game" (No, I don't mean feint macros  ). Then there are other people, who don't care for their multiplier, they rather enjoy the thrill of fighting many enemies, winning duels and so on. As you might have guessed, I call what they are playing the "micro-game".

As you can't change people, and both those aspects are part of the game, I think the best solution to satify everyone would be to implement different game modes. And I mean real game modes, no "fun" stuff like DTV or rageball, I mean something which will be played by the majority of the community most of the time. So something as "big" as battle or siege.

I think I will just suggest two game modes which I think could be suitable for the according preferences. Notice that I didn't make "pure" gamemodes for macro and micro games, as I think nobody is a pure micro or macro gamer.

1st game mode:

Commander battle:

Commander gamemode is some kind of conquest mode: there are three flags on the map. Each flag, once conquered, grants a certain amount of ressources. They are conquered like "master of the field" flags. But once conquered, the game doesn't end. The team which gains 1000 or 10000 or whatever you like ressources wins the map. If no team reaches the ressource limit before time runs out, obivously the team with more ressources wins. Of course, if one team manages to annihilate the other before all ressources are gathered, it wins, too. (My tribute to micro players  )

Next to this, a commander mode is implemented. We had the commander discussions already a few times in the forum, and I suggest that commanders are elected in the forum by vote, and the admins then grant them "commander rights", which works similar like admin rights: when you connect to the server, you have them. You need two or more commander players to enable the command feature, and autobalance will always put the two commanders in opposing teams. When more commanders connect, the commanders in charge are determined by a ranking which bases on the votes in the forum. A commander can retire for a session, of course, if he doesn't want to command or he wants to let another command be in charge. Commands are given by placing flags and displaying messages on the screen of the players. Those can be deactivated, of course, but you need to do it manually whenever you join a server, because you have it activated by default.

I don't know how the new multiplier system will look like, but conquering and holding flags should grant rewards, same as doing the right thing within range of the right commander flag.


2nd game mode:

Domination:

Again you have three flags on the map which work like master of the field. But in difference to commander battle, where the ressource has no other use than being amassed to determine the winner, flags grant respawns. Each team start with a certain amount of respawns, for example one respawn for every player on the team. A conquered flag adds another seperated pool of respawns. Players can choose if they want to respawn at the initial spawn, or at one of the conquered flags. Once a flag changes the owner, the remaining spawns change the owner as well. (That's why it needs to be seperated pools, so that the game knows how many spawns a particular flag has left). The team which first runs out of spawns and players on the field loses. No time limit. That's it.

Kills and assits grant rewards. Nothing else. Perhaps the ratio can add a percentual modifier to it. (Of course 2:1 is not as good as 6:3 or 20:10, don't make it that plain)

As you can see, the first game mode is about tactics and working together, while the other one is more about quick fights. Although I am more a macro player, I guess the micro players who prefer fighting many opponents and duelling with others prefer more respawns and less waiting time, so that's for them. More fighting, less waiting.


Tell me what you think of it. It's only a rough base, feel free to improve or change anything or to suggest completely new stuff. I think it is time to replace the battle mode, because - let's face it - it's incredibly plain.

15

Suggestions Corner / Increase bump range for archers with WSE

« on: June 26, 2012, 04:21:28 am »

The title already says it more or less.

Increase the distance on which archers and crossbowmen get bumped by enemy players. I think it is ridiculous that you can run with your shield up towards an archer who stands still, and after your shield passed the bow mesh, but before the bump is initiated, they can release their shot and headshot you.

I see no justification to keep this bug ingame. If someone with a (board)shield is walking towards and archer, his bow has to be useless by definition. That's how the class balance works. The archer either needs to run or to switch to his melee weapon, because his counter is approaching. But archers being able to attack me on distance AND to attack me in melee with their bow seems kind of retarded to me.

If you support this, please + this post or participate in the vote. Or just write your support (or your refusal) in a post.