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

[Strider]

I can agree cRPG hasn't been as fun lately as it used to be. This is because of all the deadly nerfs that have been shoved on every style of gameplay. But these suggestions will not help cRPG.

The solution is simple. We need to stop nerfing(start buffing), stop listening to whine, and we need to find a way to give every player an even choice between every class. (Also buff hybrid classes)
Right now I am playing 2 handed (seems like the most powerful class at the time) and I still get really bored. I don't know why. Maybe it's because of my lack of individuality in my character. I want to find a different, fun, and effective build that I can level up and grow at a reasonable pace with. With the way cRPG is at now, I don't think I will be able to do that. All the classes look like crap to me.

[Taser]

Try torch class. Or brawler class. Or dagger class. Etc. I;m sure most of us have tried various builds but its fun enough to have random alts. I have an alt where I'm trying to be somewhat proficient in 4 weapon proficiencies. Its not too bad especially since its supposed to be a class that just finds random weapons on the battlefield to use.

[Leshma]

cRPG needs Mount&Blade 2 with stamina, inertia, better physics simulation in general.

[Falka]

cRPG needs Mount&Blade 2

So.... what is the release date for M&B2?

Oh! and what's the release date for Project Asinus?

[Smoothrich]

I wrote like 10,000 words while cracked out on Adderall about all the flaws of Battle mode, how it burns out veterans and turns off new players, and how well Conquest mode would fix almost every problem with cRPG and give it a ton of new life. 

http://forum.meleegaming.com/suggestions-corner/conquest-gametype-combine-strategus-siege-and-battle-into-1-bad-assed-mode/

Read through this thread for some high quality drug-induced insights and suggestions.

[Vibe]

What cRPG doesn't need is ranged.

We should really just remove ranged. Imagine a ranged-less cRPG.

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[Leshma]

I agree Vibe. First thing that pissed me off last night was Tenne's arrow from 200 meter distance and I didn't even see it coming...

Ranged in cRPG is extremely annoying, there is no other game that has rage inducing range class like cRPG.

Although there were some really cool folks playing last night on EU1, playing cRPG feels like beating a dead horse.

Also horse riding.. do you have any idea how silly that looks like after you come back from a long pause? Yes, cRPG is the only game with mounted combat but horse riding is a joke.

Mount and Blade 2 needs to improve a lot. I'll be truly disappointed if they change a thing or two and realease it as a sequel.

If you play Warband regularly, game seems perfectly normal. But if you forget about it for some time, first contact after that is horrible but it's gets better after some time because you get used to it. This is 4th time that happens to me.

Graphics are perfectly fine, a bit outdated but I don't mind it at all. But everything else is... actually only good thing is complexity of the gameplay. Animations, the overall feel of the game is card box fighting, always been it's just that you get used to it. They need to heavily improve on that.

Also night time has to go or there should be put torches on the battlefield every few meters. I've never liked Thief like aspect of M&B.

[Kenji]

Keep lobbying for a range-less cRPG, maybe the devs will host a Christmas No-Ranged cRPG for everyone to try it out.

Then we'll see if we miss ranged or the whole gameplay actually improved without them.

[[ptx]]

Protip: Melee-only server. Oh, it was fun... nōt.

[SoA_Sir_ODHarry]

lol its just obvisously that the singel thing that can revive crpg are new Battelmodes.

[Vkvkvk]

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.

You trust the dev team enough to competently code any of that shit? Lel.

[Grumbs]

I agree Vibe. First thing that pissed me off last night was Tenne's arrow from 200 meter distance and I didn't even see it coming...

Ranged in cRPG is extremely annoying, there is no other game that has rage inducing range class like cRPG.

Although there were some really cool folks playing last night on EU1, playing cRPG feels like beating a dead horse.

Also horse riding.. do you have any idea how silly that looks like after you come back from a long pause? Yes, cRPG is the only game with mounted combat but horse riding is a joke.

Mount and Blade 2 needs to improve a lot. I'll be truly disappointed if they change a thing or two and realease it as a sequel.

If you play Warband regularly, game seems perfectly normal. But if you forget about it for some time, first contact after that is horrible but it's gets better after some time because you get used to it. This is 4th time that happens to me.

Graphics are perfectly fine, a bit outdated but I don't mind it at all. But everything else is... actually only good thing is complexity of the gameplay. Animations, the overall feel of the game is card box fighting, always been it's just that you get used to it. They need to heavily improve on that.

Also night time has to go or there should be put torches on the battlefield every few meters. I've never liked Thief like aspect of M&B.

The silliness of horse riding is a good point. They're more like vehicles from a BF game skinned to look like horses than actual animals ridden around. Turning on a dime, hit a tree and they just stop, rider face plants and just gets up (while horse models blocks hits), magic shields that protect miles away from where they're held. Bumping that doesn't harm the animal at all or make it stumble and bumps slashes that hit the player far away from where they are. I wouldn't mind if it was for balance, but its clearly not.

[Kafein]

The silliness of horse riding is a good point. They're more like vehicles from a BF game skinned to look like horses than actual animals ridden around. Turning on a dime, hit a tree and they just stop, rider face plants and just gets up (while horse models blocks hits), magic shields that protect miles away from where they're held. Bumping that doesn't harm the animal at all or make it stumble and bumps slashes that hit the player far away from where they are. I wouldn't mind if it was for balance, but its clearly not.

You forgot horses that are blocked when humans stand in front of them. And horses so delicate they don't do harm when they trample people. Also, horses that can be reared from behind with a pointy stick. Horses in cRPG are far from turning on a dime, or at least not when going faster than people, which kinda balances out how the rider can have total and exact control of his horse.

[Gravoth_iii]

Ohai!

(click to show/hide)

1. Change battle mode to conquest mode.

Would be better if it was a separate mode, but yes.


3. Rewrite team balance.
Think balance is pretty good as it is, sometimes it can really fuck you over but sometimes it is just the team not trying to win just mindlessly charging and hoping for the best.



5. Remove upkeep.

Upkeep is fine, I hardly ever lose cash on my midtier set, and if i would ever go tincan i would do it at x3+. If there is no upkeep people will all go heavy armour except a few because heavier armour is way superior to light. (Well atleast IMO, but I dont use it that often either.)


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

Raising the cap would probably be interesting, but then they would have to dish out respeccs and stuffs and devs dont seem to like doing that.



8. Buff some classes again.

Feels pretty balanced right now IMO, cav got a pretty big nerf which was needed. Heavy cav is very good, atleast what ive seen some of the do, but i think the upkeep is too expensive that is basically it.

9. Revert the turn speed nerf to a certain degree

Agreed, 200+ reach should still have the nerf, below should not, or not as significant as a hoplite it is so difficult to poke now its retarded and gets me killed many times. Also mauls should also still have it because the overhead is too crazy otherwise ^^

[Kafein]

Ohai!

(click to show/hide)

1. Change battle mode to conquest mode.

Would be better if it was a separate mode, but yes.


3. Rewrite team balance.
Think balance is pretty good as it is, sometimes it can really fuck you over but sometimes it is just the team not trying to win just mindlessly charging and hoping for the best.



5. Remove upkeep.

Upkeep is fine, I hardly ever lose cash on my midtier set, and if i would ever go tincan i would do it at x3+. If there is no upkeep people will all go heavy armour except a few because heavier armour is way superior to light. (Well atleast IMO, but I dont use it that often either.)


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

Raising the cap would probably be interesting, but then they would have to dish out respeccs and stuffs and devs dont seem to like doing that.



8. Buff some classes again.

Feels pretty balanced right now IMO, cav got a pretty big nerf which was needed. Heavy cav is very good, atleast what ive seen some of the do, but i think the upkeep is too expensive that is basically it.

9. Revert the turn speed nerf to a certain degree

Agreed, 200+ reach should still have the nerf, below should not, or not as significant as a hoplite it is so difficult to poke now its retarded and gets me killed many times. Also mauls should also still have it because the overhead is too crazy otherwise ^^

I honestly don't think heavy armor is really better than medium, or at least not on average. In some situations heavy armor is nice (when having crippling agility is ok) but most often it does more to kill you than to save you. I don't think medium armor is much better either but IMO the upkeep differences have become unjustified from a balance point of view.