Topics

16

Game Admin Feedback / [NA] San

« on: January 16, 2014, 03:47:51 am »

"You'll get no sympathy from me."

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Friendly neighborhood tall black man here. If you ever need a shoulder to lean on after getting couched/ranged/lolstabbed/etc, I am always available.


Catch me by posting here or PM mostly.


I'll mostly be focusing on leechers/delayers, but if something gets out of hand or you're looking for admin assistance, I'll be sure to step in.

17

Game Balance Discussion / Let's say the ranged weight nerf is reverted...

« on: December 16, 2013, 07:15:16 am »

How would you prefer ranged movement to be balanced instead?

After reading this:

Quiver weights are a crude workaround to slow down archers. I don't like it either but it has to be there for now. Also, those depleted uranium tips are quite heavy.

Seems to me like simply increasing the quiver weights may be changed at some point if the opportunity becomes available. Could be months, maybe even never, but I think it'd be nice if we could think of some things and give balancers some nice ideas to think about.


I saw this idea before, but I agree with this:

I think that if you have a ranged weapon equipped or on your back, you should lose sprinting mode. Losing sprinting mode only affects kiting and shouldn't affect melee fighting all that much. That way, ranged would have great short-term acceleration and ranged-melee hybrids would be more fun without having to give them extra wpf for melee and the like. It would also take additionally more time to reach and occupy strong defensive positions on battle mode without the help of melee and cav.

I think this would be very simple if modding allows for such a change while keeping ranged strengths.

A harsher and more complex additional option is including speed tweaks while moving and shooting/throwing. I think that it may have quite a few effects on ranged vs cav and ranged vs ranged, but it might be good, maybe even necessary, for ranged vs infantry. That would limit the amount of shots that can be fired while running away, but would definitely make it less fun for ranged. Should speed up moving when blocking for shielders instead. *nudge nudge*

18

The Chamber of Tears / Fix late overhead hitbox

« on: November 21, 2013, 04:17:35 am »

Was running at a guy who just missed an overhead and received 80% damage as my leg brushed across the weapon as it was at rest on the ground. Please fix.

19

Suggestions Corner / Penalty for failing commander poll

« on: November 20, 2013, 06:32:29 am »

3 hour penalty for failing the commander poll. You won't be able to initiate a poll again until the time is up.


This sounds simple enough and it won't spam the server. Increasing penalties and the like also sound nice, but the above is simple and effective.

I had a 24 hour penalty at first and reduced it. Do people like 24 hours better?

20

General Discussion / Will IF be too weak after the WM change?

« on: November 09, 2013, 05:08:55 pm »

Similar to strength builds foregoing WM, I believe that after the change that IF will become too weak. Maximum hp will go down as strength/balanced builds scramble to get some WM into their builds. This mixed with the upcoming power increase for agi builds as they maximize WM, I feel that IF will just get squeezed out by all but the hardcore strength builds and high level balanced builds that have extra points. I'm at 0IF myself and losing it was already an easy decision, even when my previous builds had 8+IF.

Currently, IF and WM have a niche where they are pretty bad individually, but when comparing 6-7 IF/WM to 1 point in PS/Ath, the tradeoff becomes more difficult to choose since there is a decent improvement once stacked.

I suggested once that hp should increase by strength/2 instead of strength, IF should give 3 points in hp instead of 2, and the base hp should be reduced by ~5. However, Paul pointed out that:

HP stuff is too hardcoded iirc.

Instead of letting things play out, I felt that discussing this early would be helpful. Do you think anything can be done? Even so, do you think anything should be done or will IF be just fine?

(click to show/hide)

This is more preemptive patch discussion than simply game balance.

21

Suggestions Corner / Additional run tier when holding block/chamber

« on: October 22, 2013, 09:55:58 pm »

It's somewhat odd that you have to release block and run a little bit to catch up to a backpedaling holder, or if you barely miss someone you're chasing and the gap increases by a fair margin. I propose an additional run tier when moving forward and holding attack/blocking for a few seconds for both manual block and shield.

Run modes should smoothly switch as long as you continue to move forward.

According to Waltf4

Moving forward while blocking or chambering an attack increased run time by 17% + or - 1%. Back peddling increased run time by 52% + or - 2%.

17% is like losing 5 athletics when increasing the running times by 17% on the graphs for higher athletics. After a few seconds, I think it should increase to a 10% decrease, closer to losing 3 athletics + 9 agi. I think it will make chasing and shield charges a little better and is a decent alternative to nerfing backpedaling/ranged movement. Most melee fights will be untouched unless you're fighting a supreme packpedaler.

22

Game Balance Discussion / Spathovaklion

« on: October 05, 2013, 04:58:27 pm »

I really like the stats on this weapon, but I feel it overshadows too many other blunt 1hs.

weapon length: 75
weight: 2
difficulty: 13
speed rating: 99
weapon length: 75
thrust damage: 0 pierce
swing damage: 27 blunt
slots: 1
Knockdown

If you nerf its speed, it will just be a slightly better winged mace. Nerf its damage and it'll just be a slightly better flanged mace.

Here's my proposal: nerf knockdown by reducing its weight to ~0.7 or another miniscule value at +0. In an extreme case, maybe even remove knockdown.

Why?
Current knockdown chance at +3 (2.5 weight) is ~12%, as good/better than most other blunt 1hs and half as good as the heaviest blunt 2h/polearm. The high weight+speed also allows you to stun+spam lighter weapons. At 0.7, it's 3.5% and at 1.2 it's 6%. Lower weight also helps it get block stunned more often, a peculiarity among blunt weapons. If the +0.5 weight at +3 could be removed, a simple weight of 1 would be perfect.

It looks pretty thin, and with less knockdown it acquires a perfect niche: Fast blunt damage with decent reach. I would like to compare it to the military sickle, which gets +1 speed and -1 damage and a secondary mode. I think nerfing stats would do it injustice. Some might not like this, but I don't think people chose this weapon to crutch on knockdown (they would choose warhammer).

Credit to Phew, since I believe he had this idea a long while ago.

23

Game Balance Discussion / Serious 1h Stab Discussion

« on: September 28, 2013, 09:20:05 pm »

As a non-stab 1h player who doesn't feel like he's missing out much with the stab, I am trying to understand people's woes on the 1h stab change recently.

These animations have been changed recently to have better speeds/alignment:

1h stab
1h right swing

polearm overhead
polearm stab
polearm left swing

The 1h stab animation length increase, from what I noticed, helped beat out the non-dedicated stabbing polearms, because by the time the polearm is nearly at full extension, the 1h is closer to middle extension, therefore the 1h can hit earlier at midrange. On the flip side, these polearms have much longer swings with no more "blind spots" like in the past (left swing or overhead = death most of the time), and polearm hits stop the enemy in his tracks. Dedicated stabbing polearms are so long that it doesn't really matter without the 1h player moving much faster. From what I notice, I don't really find any kind of stab easier than the other.

All in all, I don't think it's much of an animation problem, but a stats problem. Some of the 1h stab damages were artificially buffed to compensate for the poor animation. I think that these changes should just be reverted for the longer weapons since the animation is fixed and the old stats were more balanced. The shorter 1h stabs are still damaging, but the natural length is short enough, and they're overshadowed by the current long weapons' damages. That and/or tweak the +3p/+3c heirloom bonus to +3p/+2c.

Changes made:
Espada Eslavona: 30p->31p
                             101speed->102speed (maybe keep this? Its 25c is pretty bad IMO)

Long Espada Eslavona: 28p->29p

Side Sword-> 100speed->99speed
                       thrust: 28p->29p
                       swing: 28c->29c

tl;dr change these back, +3 gives +3p/+3c.

24

Game Balance Discussion / Balancing Strength

« on: September 20, 2013, 05:15:52 am »

I made a topic like this a year back. I pretty much have the same stance, but things have changed and I want to try to get more to the point/see what people think nowadays (more strength builds in EU, etc). This suggestion is mostly geared with melee's balance in mind, but ranged users would be able to wear a bit more armor and hybridize easier. I am not trying to buff myself since I am planning to make a 0IF character regardless, but the balance issue cannot be ignored. I just feel that agility users get unneeded penalties like a weak WM attribute and losing almost twice as many wpf points as strength builds.

• Strength is too strong. IF is too weak.
• WM is weak and wpf is biased towards strength/low wpf builds if you use medium+ armor

With these changes, I feel we'll have a more balanced and faster game. One type of playstyle among melee (strength) won't feel like the dominant choice and both sides will feel closer in viability.

• Strength attribute is too strong

Reason: ~4-5 points in agility = 1 ath. 2 points in strength = 1 IF and you also get strength/5 extra damage.

What should change: Hp from strength= ceil(strength/2) instead of just strength. IF = +3 hp.

Why: That way, 5-6 strength = 1IF with the small strength/5 damage boost. Penalize low IF builds slightly, make IF more worth it. A 30 strength 0IF build just won't have as much HP as an 18 strength 6 IF build like it does currently. After using an agility melee build, IF is currently pretty useless for it. It's more effective to squeeze an extra point into ATH and just wear more armor so that you move faster and take more hits, which also doesn't make as much sense (ath is very powerful).

Optional (but highly advocated): Increase base HP ~5 so that Max IF builds have around the same HP and 0IF builds aren't penalized too harshly, maybe losing 3-6hp, not much. High strength 0IF loses more hp, but they'll still have higher base hp anyways.

• wpf reduction is too biased towards strength builds

Reason: %based armor reduction heavily penalizes players with decent wpf levels. Wpf centralizes around 110-130. WM only gives 9wpf on a pure build, where only 5-6 points get used. 1WM essentially being 5-6 points is too weak. Even if the wpf curve is changed, most of the playerbase won't notice much if they use medium-light armor and above.

What should change: Make wpf reduction linear- a straight up subtraction.

A central wpf value needs to be chosen where above that value, armor reduction is better than it is currently. I think that value should be 140-> The equation becomes effective_wpf = base_wpf - (effective_armor_weight * 1.4). At 130, it will be *1.3 instead of 1.4, and is more lenient for lower wpf builds.

Why: This makes it so that wpf reduction from armor is unbiased. This change can also be done without messing with any plans for changing the current wpf curve. Hybrids that evenly split ~120 will be very slightly nerfed by a few points, but hybrids with a primary and secondary weapon can shave off more points on their primary weapon while having more effective wpf than they do currently in both weapons.

Pure builds buffed. 0 WM builds are nerfed, but a pure build can manage with 2-3 WM easily. Movement speed reduction from armor is pretty linear with ath relieving you of an extra ~7 weight for each point, so it's natural to believe that wpf reductoin should be linear. Also, don't fret light armor agility users, you guys will be buffed when the staff implements the new wpf curve.

25

Suggestions Corner / [Battle] Auto-move to spectate if one doesn't spawn on time

« on: September 03, 2013, 02:32:57 am »

People who don't spawn have a non-trivial effect on the outcome of a map and future autobalance decisions. I think that it could potentially ruin the fun for a team when a good number of players don't even play that round.

I think moving someone to spectate if they failed to spawn before the timer solves the issue without being annoying for anyone playing or the afker.

26

NA (Official) / Impersonation?

« on: July 28, 2013, 01:39:01 am »

(click to show/hide)

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Edit: Thanks, I was confused. It would be a joke if we were both in on it, but he was just flaming others.

27

Suggestions Corner / Bonus for shield skill above the difficulty

« on: July 15, 2013, 08:58:53 am »

Just a fun little thing I was thinking about recently. Shield skill points above the shield's difficulty should reduce its encumbrance by 20% per point or any other type of curve (exponential, log, etc).


That means that a 6 weight 3 difficulty shield with a 6 shield skill user will move as though the shield is only 2.4 weight, although the 6 weight will still factor in crushthrough and block stun. Lower tier shields typically have lower armor and less health, so they won't last as long as if they used a 5-6 difficulty shield, and bolts will probably go through them easily. I think this will help bring some love to the crappier shields that no one uses outside of those with low shield skill (or in strategus), and gives a better niche for low armor shielders who move slower with +6 shield weight and get killed in 1-3 hits.

Extreme builds such as 12/27 will be a bit faster, but they are pretty weak/gimmicky anyways, and this could add some more fun to the builds that decide to get 9 shield skill and sacrifice in many other areas. + it's only a difference of like 2-4 weight most of the time, not much unless you don't wear much armor anywhere else.


To supplement this, a shield wall bonus buff for moving shielders with a smaller radius than the normal shield wall will allow a group of shielders to move smoothly together.

28

Beginner's Help and Guides / Forcefield from 5->7 shield skill and build advice

« on: June 21, 2013, 05:52:11 am »

Hey, for those who have experienced high shield skill, I am just wondering what experience you had with 7? (Or some other high number). I often get hit over the shoulder or in the leg a lot with an elite cavalry shield. Is 5 to 7 shield skill worth it for the coverage? I like the increased durability, too, but the coverage and speed are more important to me.

Also, I am debating on 3 different dream build variants around 21/21 for a pure 1h with max WM where I have
70 HP with 7 shield skill and 7 PS (7IF)
63 HP with 5 shield skill and 8 PS (2IF)
58 HP with 5 shield skill and 8 ATH/WM (1IF)

This is why it's important to know if those 2 points in shield and some HP are worth a point in PS or Ath. I will increase armor to compensate with 7.5 weight leeway. The 8PS build sounds the best, but the 70 HP build hinges on 7shield being excellent over 5 with the best defence, and 8 ath just sounds fun to experience and may offer extra attack/defense with the additional speed. Of course, this build is quite a few months off, but it is fun to ponder what it would be like. The higher PS build can also get 7 shield at the cost of reducing HP to 59.

29

WSE2 Beta / Player Collision Models

« on: February 18, 2013, 06:32:35 pm »

Would it be possible to fix player collision models with WSE2?

Stuff like this:

This does not only apply to shields. There are times when fighting where one may phase inside the model of another player and get free hits or just disorient the other player. With slight delay on turning, this could lead to hitting around blocks.

I like to play on EU sometimes, and phasing through my model is the worst part, since I am defenseless. I wish it could be alleviated in any way (at least for normal ping).


Also, the intangibility when you're in hitstun and while jumping are both pretty odd, but it kind of makes sense as an escape option if you're sandwiched by a bunch of tincans.

30

Game Balance Discussion / Linear wpf reduction- Balancing STR builds

« on: January 18, 2013, 04:25:36 pm »

I think the simplest way to balance strength builds is to make wpf reduction linear. It won't nerf most strength builds, only those that neglect all WM AND use very high armor values. I think this is a good first step before other more extreme methods (such as nerfing HP) should be considered.

Proposal:
Currently, effective armor weight is a percentage-based reduction.

My proposed equation: effective_wpf = base_wpf - (effective_armor_weight * (middle_wpf/10))

middle_wpf is what the middleground should be for an average wpf value. Below this value is a WORSE penalty than what we have now. Above is BETTER than what we have now. A pure build can get 146 wpf at 5WM, so a value of 140 or 150 is good imo.


If it is 140, the equation becomes: effective_wpf = base_wpf - (effective_armor_weight * 1.4)


After looking at this thread on  wpf and damage, it seems that damage tapers off at the sub-100 wpf level quite dramatically.

Now here's the thing- STR builds can easily get both bulk and damage without any effort.


High defence:

Strength builds can have high levels of ironflesh. This is not that noticeable (but helpful) at low armor values. At medium levels, it's pretty great/balanced. At the upper end of middle armor and higher, the mixture of ironflesh AND high armor values can make a 3-9 hit for a low HP, high armor foe to 5-16 or even crazier values (using the damage calculator). With looms, many medium armors can reach these high values.

High IF + High armor = much higher defence than the sum of its parts.


WPF reduction hurts everyone else EXCEPT strength builds:

A medium to medium-high level effective weight is 13-17, after that, it begins to escalate (the >14 weight body armors).

With 17 weight, a 172wpf guy loses ~27.9 wpf, while a 111 wpf guy loses around 18. That's a good 9+ lost, equivalent to a full WM point. A point in WM would give a pure build roughly the same amount of points each time, but then it gets penalized MORE for increasing it. I think it's a double penalization for the already exponential wpf curve.

With my proposed equation, 17 weight will deduct 23.8. The difference seems small, but that ~6 difference is equivalent to 1/4 or 1/3 of a PS. Heavy armor effective weight can reach values of 22+...

STR builds are rewarded for not having higher wpf due to less reduction from armor, when it should be build-neutral.


How this will affect current builds

- Strength Hybrids will be minimally hurt. 
- Strength builds with high armor will be hurt unless they put a few points into WM (not much..).
- The very highest weight plate would be more unappealing since weight jumps dramatically. Plate prices should probably go down a bit, since most would be using heavy-medium armor instead.

- or + Medium armor will be even more popular by pretty much all builds (incl. ranged).

+ Agi hybrids will receive a boost depending on how they distribute their points. It will be better to equalize wpf than having a low wpf sidearm, though.
+ If you wear light-medium or lighter, even strength builds won't notice a difference
+ Doesn't unfairly punish those who invest in WM.
+ Most builds buffed/have more freedom.
+ Very simple change.