cRPG
cRPG => Suggestions Corner => Game Balance Discussion => Topic started by: KaMiKaZe_JoE on July 03, 2011, 01:58:05 am
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Once upon a time I created a thread in the suggestions forum. In it, I bitched about cavalry, stating that while balanced, the means of achieving that balance was fucked up. I pointed out the the only horses being used with great frequency were the extremely fast and maneuverable ones, with bundle of sticks lancers astride them. I proposed that horses get their speed and maneuver nerfed, but their HP buffed. More survivability, less ninja pussies.
Fuck that, its a dumb suggestion.
We already have horses with high HP and armor, but low speed and maneuver. There is no need to fuck with the stats of horses. I was right when I said that they were balanced, because they are: they fast but killable. The problem is, cavalry itself is unbalanced; there is no Yin to the Yang, for the god damned Yang is too fucking expensive to realistically consider using.
The current pricing of horses is stupid. Instead of making the best horses the most expensive--as one might expect--the horses are priced regarding style. Tank horses are really expensive, but nimble horses are affordable. This doesn't make any fucking sense. Neither horse is better than the other, they're just different sides of the same coin. Different paths to the same destination. Yin and Yang. Superman and Batman. Penises and helicopters. You get the fucking idea.
Here are the horses listed by price. I seperated the tough ones from the fast ones with pretty colors (NOT EXACT, JUST GENERAL):
Sumpter, Rouncey, Palfrey, Steppe Horse, Desert Horse, Courser, Arabian Warhorse, Destrier, War Horse, Large Warhorse, Cataphract Horse, Charger, Mamluk Horse, Plated Charger
When one looks at the list of horses, arranged by price, there is a clear line between the fast horses and the surviavable horses. I'm not saying the Destrier should be as cheap as the sumpter, or that the Courser is equal to the Mamluk Horse. I am, however, saying that horse prices should make sense and reflect their relative awesomeness, rather than their HP.
Discuss. This isn't an official suggestion, not that anybody seems to give a fuck about keeping the balance and suggestion forums seperate. I just desire opinions.
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PLENTY OF REPLIES
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You are a genious sir. Perhaps the destrier should be cheaper I would say... Maybe reduce speed since its still ninjacav
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I think a lot of the horse hate(an I'm a footman) is because, like you said, the majority of cav players see are the fastest ones. I really should say they don't see them because some of these are so fucking fast that unless you are dedicating 100% of your time to watching for horses one 3x arabian or courser will kill you, forget if you are spending any focus on trying to kill other players.
I think maybe decreasing the price on the Destrier and the warhorse would lead to more cav behaving like cav instead of all being super fucking fast. If you want maybe reduce the speed or manuver on the warhorse. But yea something needs to be done so that 90% of the cav isn't super speed cav.
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I agree heavy cav is underused due to price but your balancing is off.
Destrier is a compromise between the two and is a great horse.
I do feel warhorses really should be cheaper considering how effective they are.
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Especially the warhorses should get a lot cheaper yes, and the cata more affordable too.
Still i dis-aprove with this topic because i don't like the colors you picked.
But seriously, you are right, cav is balanced towards other classes, but not from light cav towards heavy cav. I don't care how bad my scores would be if i would always ride my large warhorse, but i love it sso bloody damn hard. It is a freaking awsome horsse!
And there have been some suggestions about coated horses, how expensive should the be?
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Heavy horses ARE effective, even very effective in hands of good players. I would loathe playing against multiple elephants for sure. It's like stating that plate should be cheaper because it's not more effective than gambesson.
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They really arent that effective, you're a bigger and slower target. You can't make get aways from melee so fast, HA's will rape you. The stats are balanced, prices are not.
Just becaise you see something bigger than you doesn't mean you should immediatly think they pwn
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UrLukur-- Never said they weren't effective, rather, they are effective in a way which is different than the faster horses. And like almost every single item in this game, a heavy horse will be effective in the hands of a good player. Makes sense, being that the player is good.
I'm not proposing that heavily armored horses be CHEAP. I doubt very that much we would see a massive influx of "elephants" if this suggestion were to be implemented, because the faster horses wouldn't dissappear or anything. The faster horses would still be superior in cavalry vs cavalry encounters, and the style of nimble-bundle of sticks-lancer would still be a viable one.
Your comparison with gambeson and plate is a mildly retarted one, though it does possess a margin of accuracy in so far as both items are spelt using letters. I would like to point out that you cannot ride a gambeson. Regarding effeciency: plate is very much a better armor than a gambeson, unlike a charger, which is not a better horse than a courser. Plate armor is the best of the heavy armors. The gambeson is not the best of the light armors, considering you'd probably be better off naked with your dick flopping around, hoping that said dick would offer a +1 bonus to IF. Or strength.
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I can take on heavy horseman with a reasoanble hope of success as a 2her or archer because after they strike they dont get to turn on a dime and hit again or ride off 100 feet before you can even draw a bow, there is actually a possibility of retaliation and the speed bonus doesn't make it an automatic 1-hit kill whether you just stab the lance or couch. Lancing on an arabian warhorse or courser is by far and away the easiest form of cavalry to do well and rack up a huge number of kills.
At this point, anytime im on the ground i constantly walk around with a downblock on the na servers turning and looking every way but i would still say 50% or more of my deaths are to lancers on either a courser or arabian warhorse. We recently were fighting in the desert map with 2 lagoons in the middle and the opposing team was 80% cav (we counted each and every one) with all coursers and arabian warhorses using lances except for 2 warhorse users using sword and shield. They complained constantly and called us camping archers for climbing the hill at spawn (most of us were not archers and had some awlpike and pikemen), but we were raped if we didnt literally camp the highest hill (by the way camping is incredibly boring and stupid but with so many cavalry on na servers since last patch often nothing else to do. Camping has skyrocketed. This scenario was repeated over and over various times of the day and often cav would still win as the hills were big enough they could go on a far side and go full gallop sideways on the hill. Even when you thought it was anon cav map like nord town, cav would still be all the people at the top of the charts as they did laps around the village every 15 seconds once people were busy meleeing.
The advantages are so nice with coursers and arabian warhorses that if you slightly lowered the armored horses upkeep and raised the courser and arabians upkeep to match, most cav lancers would still use the coursers and arabians, but at least it might decrease their ability to use them constantly and would maybe get 15-20% of users to switch to one of the non-best horses in the game. Without changing the stats on any of the horses, this could solve most of the current problems with cavalry if the upkeep on coursers and arabian warhorses doubled to match a new reduced upkeep of a charger. ANd it makes a lot of sense too in that arabian horses were specially bred to be that way and would easily cost the same as another huge warhorse including its armor.
P.S. Oh and by the way on that map the 2 warhorse/1her users got a combined total of 3 kills, the 14 coursers/arabians with lances got 67 over 4 rounds.
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If you did this I think the lower tier horses would need a little bit of buffing or at least reducing of cost. Not to much but enough, seeing as how those are expensive anyway. So you still wouldn't be able to save much money to eventually ride an arabian and courser if they were increased that much because even riding cheaper horses still drains gold reserves fairly well unless you ride around naked :P
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But then how expensive should the warhorses get? 30k? 25? 20?!(and you can't just change the upkeep, the price is bound to the upkeep)
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If you did this I think the lower tier horses would need a little bit of buffing or at least reducing of cost. Not to much but enough, seeing as how those are expensive anyway. So you still wouldn't be able to save much money to eventually ride an arabian and courser if they were increased that much because even riding cheaper horses still drains gold reserves fairly well unless you ride around naked :P
Play with good modifier ? I have total equipment cost around 46/47k and i gained a lot of gold lately.
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^ DAT ANECDOTAL
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This is an interesting suggestion. ROHYPNOL, one of the best NA cav (if not the best), just bought a Champion Cataphract and now uses that for lancing. Even though he doesn't 1 shot everyone, he still does no worse than with his Courser, if anything, he does better on certain maps because the horse can take so many hits. I'm not trying to say that the Cata is certainly a better horse, but I'm not so sure it would be a good thing to have everyone running around in those horses at the very least.
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More Cataphract Horses and Plated Chargers is unconditionally a bad thing. They prolong rounds, they lead to the The_Finn/Lady Gaga style horsebump play. Anything that reduces the cost of these mechahorses is to be opposed.
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This is an interesting suggestion. ROHYPNOL, one of the best NA cav (if not the best), just bought a Champion Cataphract and now uses that for lancing. Even though he doesn't 1 shot everyone, he still does no worse than with his Courser, if anything, he does better on certain maps because the horse can take so many hits. I'm not trying to say that the Cata is certainly a better horse, but I'm not so sure it would be a good thing to have everyone running around in those horses at the very least.
He always one hits me with 56 body armor and 61 hitpoints. A champion cataphract with his 7 riding skill goes about the same speed as an unloomed courser with 4-5 riding so its not a huge tradeoff in speed but a big bonus on hitpoints. It does seem odd though that no one ever seems to run out of money from upkeep anymore even if they ride armored horses or walk around in full plate seemingly all the time. I wouldn't be opposed to raising the upkeep of all horses, just raising coursers/arabians more as you take away 6-7 riding skill from a cavalry person they still are a complete melee skill-setted person. Horses give such a huge huge bonus now with ranged repeatedly nerfed and almost no one carrying pikes/long spears because of equipment slot changes that they should be a privilege for 50% of the time use at most, unless you ride a desert/rouncey/palfrey class (maybe reduce those upkeeps slightly).
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dude. rly? i suggested that last month and looky who was against it.
http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,8409.msg124494.html#msg124494
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He always one hits me with 56 body armor and 61 hitpoints. A champion cataphract with his 7 riding skill goes about the same speed as an unloomed courser with 4-5 riding so its not a huge tradeoff in speed but a big bonus on hitpoints. It does seem odd though that no one ever seems to run out of money from upkeep anymore even if they ride armored horses or walk around in full plate seemingly all the time. I wouldn't be opposed to raising the upkeep of all horses, just raising coursers/arabians more as you take away 6-7 riding skill from a cavalry person they still are a complete melee skill-setted person. Horses give such a huge huge bonus now with ranged repeatedly nerfed and almost no one carrying pikes/long spears because of equipment slot changes that they should be a privilege for 50% of the time use at most, unless you ride a desert/rouncey/palfrey class (maybe reduce those upkeeps slightly).
I see quite a few long spears one round and then a few maps late, I'll be the only one carrying one. It's in my default build, if I am in your server, I spawned with my MW Long Spear. Rohy complains about the upkeep of the cata quite a bit in mumble. I keep telling him that he should just retire and sell his loom point, then he'd pretty much never have to worry about gold.
More Cataphract Horses and Plated Chargers is unconditionally a bad thing. They prolong rounds, they lead to the The_Finn/Lady Gaga style horsebump play. Anything that reduces the cost of these mechahorses is to be opposed.
Cooperation and teamplay should be opposed? I love seeing cav bump for friendlies instead of going only for lance kills.
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you know, the sad thing is i've seen at least 20 cav threads out there, and not one dev has ever replied to any of them, if i recall; i hope this isn't going to be another brilliant idea thread flushed down the toilet.
Is Cav Balance screwed up?
Knights, Historically, were primarily used in flanking the enemy and breaking big groups; this is my thought on balance:
in real life, 1h would not jump up and stab you in the face, killing you instantly off your horse. but since this is a video game, and not reality, horses in NATIVE could take many hits, and could maneuver freely. that is truly OP, and for a time, we had a system like this.
but then pikes, longspears, bows, and throwing were buffed... (cav counters).
native courser: 600 gold, 70 health, 12 armor, 2 riding, 44 maneuver, 50 speed , 12 charge damage.
CRPG courser: 19818 gold, 100 health, 18 armor, 4 riding, 42 maneuver, 48 speed , 24 charge damage.
the price is increased x30, the health +30, the armor +6, the requirement +2, the maneuver -2, and the speed -2, with 2x charge damage.
So its a little buffed, statistically, like you see the "1/10,000 people are infected with hiv bilboards every _ seconds"
there are two types of people that look at this board. the one that says "OMG POOR POOPLE :(", and the ones like me saying, "im sure if you didn't go screwing everyone and shooting up you'd be one of the 9,999 that doesn't have it.
and like the previous, reality tells me that cav is weak, and needs a buff. i appreciate that the CRPG team BUFFED the cav, but they also buffed all cav's opposition without tweaking cav to adjust to the balancing.
YES, CAV IS KERFICKIED.
The price of cav sucks, yes?
Not necessarily. its a variable used by the dev team to balance items. the better it is, the more it costs, and thats how it should go. should charger cost 65k +, um.... not really IMO, but i dont balance games, i dont know. the closest i ever got was 3d modeling and 2d art designing for one.
what is there to do?
well, re balance it of course. i like the idea of less maneuver in favor of more health and armor personally.
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but then again,cav should and needs less manouver, they were a "hit hard, scare everyone off and kill some people, then run away so we can do it again" class, but if we would implement that in-game, it would be a real different game.
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I skimmed through the responces, and I noticed a few things. I saw a reference to history and--go die.
Torben: Yeah, I changed my mind--I was wrong then. Though the last bit of my post did touch on the lavish expensiveness of slow, hearty horses.
Keshian: Your post, while well meaning, seemed to be overflowing with feces--though in opposing what others have stated, you bring to light things that need addressing. You begin with an anecdote about yourself, not the best start. Of course a FUCKING CHAMPION CATAPHRACT, BEING RIDDEN BY SOMEBODY WITH 7ish RIDING SKILL WILL GO FAST. Stop using ROHYPNOL as an example, he's a fucking amazing cavalry player. He's abnormal.
Range repeatedly nerfed you say? The current primary predator of cavalry, besides polearm users, are ranged weapon users. Throwers have been nerfed, but I'm sure they'll be unfucked next patch. Archers aren't nerfed, they're doing great. Just look at the archer whine threads.
The people you see walking about on armored horses and in plate EARN their upkeep. They do not ALWAYS 'walk around' using their most expensive shit. How many armored horses do you see in a server at a time? I don't see many, though perhaps they do not play when I do. They might see that "KaMiKaZe_JoE" is playing, and log off in terror. Why in gods name would you support cavalry having to pay MORE for their mounts? I literally stated in my first post that armored cavalry is TOO expensive, and provided semi-logical support. Thank you for the contradiction, though.
To others: how about we don't fuck with horse stats yet? How about horse prices get unfucked, and if the problem's solved thats good. As my first post says, I believe that horse weirdness stems from an imbalance of the pricing. As Soldier_of_God points out, price is an aspect of game balance, and the better items should cost more. Horses are very valuable objects, and should be expensive. However... fuck just read my OP.
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This is an interesting suggestion. ROHYPNOL, one of the best NA cav (if not the best), just bought a Champion Cataphract and now uses that for lancing. Even though he doesn't 1 shot everyone, he still does no worse than with his Courser, if anything, he does better on certain maps because the horse can take so many hits. I'm not trying to say that the Cata is certainly a better horse, but I'm not so sure it would be a good thing to have everyone running around in those horses at the very least.
As a horseman and a piker I feel that more cataphracts would be bad, but I think that the warhorse and large warhorse need to be adjusted so that cav have an alternative in the lower cost horses. Courser and arabian should be adjusted to be more expensive and maybe stat tweaks.
I think it would be more interesting for everyone(cav and foot) to have cheap and expensive versions of both styles of horses.
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"I think it would be more interesting for everyone(cav and foot) to have cheap and expensive versions of both styles of horses."
This.
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and for everyone that has a long spear/pike, if you come against an armored horse, go for the rider, not the horse in first instance.
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but then again,cav should and needs less manouver, they were a "hit hard, scare everyone off and kill some people, then run away so we can do it again" class, but if we would implement that in-game, it would be a real different game.
You can only implement that in game if you make all weapons that can lance a horse much more unwieldy...and remove the ability for tiny weapons to stop a heavy horse even at full charge. Unfortunately the current game mechanics force cavalry to be the way it is now.
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You can only implement that in game if you make all weapons that can lance a horse much more unwieldy...and remove the ability for tiny weapons to stop a heavy horse even at full charge. Unfortunately the current game mechanics force cavalry to be the way it is now.
rue, but then balance would be distroyed...