Battle dynamic , Evil and Nice.

[Cogliostro]

It's a suggestion about the current combat system. ProgD is understaffed and overworked, so an entirely new system is out of the question. What COULD be done though, with small changes to existing code, to make it more exciting? I'm sure all regular Cantr players have their own pet peeve about the way combats work currently. Mine is that combat is not really dangerous at all and that (as discussed in other threads) it's clickfesty, with the most micromanaged character having a huge unfair advantage over more episodic players.

One of the most beloved sports in Cantr (as everyone knows) is "kill the pirate". This is where a town full of bored older characters is informed that a "deadly pirate" is fast approaching. Everyone packs into a darter or sloop, each man or woman in his 90ies carrying at least 3 crossbows. They dock to the pirate ship and, eventually, (there's no way around it) kill the pirate once they break the last lock on his ship. My main moan is not even going to be about how rough the lonely pirate or evil character has it. It will be about how ridiculously easy those 90-year-olds with crossbows have it. They all know there's absolutely no real danger to any of them, and combat is just a formality, and indeed a zesty, sporting past-time for the older bored characters. They know full well that no matter how armed or how strong, the pirate will never succeed in killing any of the "good guys" - it's just impossible within the game mechanic, as long as the good guys brought any healing food (which they never forget to - they're not stupid).

This is the real disappointing bit, how combat is, for these characters, completely safe.

Well, fine, but what is to be done about it? and remember it can't be hard to code within the current system? Here are the suggestions.

1. Make it so that healing-food is automatically eaten when a character is hit, if he or she has any. This has been discussed in detail in another thread. Result: Much less micromanagement of characters in combat is necessary from the player, so that combat becomes less a clickfest where you have to be awake 24/7 to win. Unfortunately, it's obvious that because of this, evil characters especially loners lose any chance to kill anyone who is prepared for them.

2. Critical hits. Make it so there is always a small chance that any blow will be deadly (2.5X-3X damage). Let the chance be ~1% at "awkward" combat skill and ~15% at the other "expert" skill extreme. The exact boost in damage should be calculated so that a "critical hit" by a character with a powerful weapon has the potential to kill the victim on the spot, doing above 100 points of damage. Note: if the character dies from such a hit, obviously any healing food they had will not be of help to them at all.

Critical hits, as in many other games, can depend on the skill-relation between the attacking and the defending character. The higher the respective skill, the more likely the character is to inflict or successfully defend against a killing blow like this.

Result: Combat becomes actually dangerous, especially for low-skilled characters. Our evil guys (I know we all love to nerf them every Tuesday, but not today!) get a much needed boost of the potential to thin the opposing ranks with a lucky hit and cause real grief to the goodies; a skillful warrior even if he is alone, would now have to be treated with wariness. A single blow of his could kill someone, so you don't go docking to the pirate boat lightly and sit there breaking his locks with impunity. Of course, it's only a small chance that a "critical hit" will occur, and it depends on his skill and the skill of the victim, but now everyone will think twice about sitting there on that darter with everyone else while Red Beard the Pirate swings his battle axe at everyone. It will still be a great sport for the oldbies, killing Redbeard, but at least now some of them will have a small chance of ooops... dying in the process. As it should be, in battle.

Please, as you write your response, try to separate your feelings of righteous hatred for Redbeard the Pirate who has no right to attack your peaceful town on the one hand (in a way, your IC playing preference), and the point of the idea which was to make combat dangerous for all involved and hence exciting.

Fatalities do happen even now under current "safe" rules, I am aware of that, but if we looked at them more closely, I'm sure we'd see that they happen 90% of the time when the "Redbeards" have dragged a person away to a locked cabin and there killed them (or a variation). This isn't what I'm talking about, as it's not even part of the actual battle, but is really just some kind of a minor annoying tactic available to the Redbeards sometimes. If characters are not draggable (they are in a locked sloop), then under the current system they are totally safe. No matter how big of an axe Redbeard has.

I do remember how we came to nerf combat so that it would not be possible to kill a character with a single blow from any weapon in the game. That was done so that those oldbie characters could be in relative safety from homicidal maniacs with battle axes, and was the right idea - here I'm talking about adding a SMALL CHANCE that a critical hit might compromise this safety and kill the combatant, especially if unskilled.

[Ryaga]

I like this.

[SekoETC]

Hmm... critical hits would make the game more interesting but they should only be deadly with proper weapons if the target is at full health. If it was overdone, people might have to start hiding bone knives in fear of suicidal newspawns trying their luck with killing the town leader. Even if something had the potential to do 50 to 99 damage, it would be a considerable risk even if it didn't kill the target because someone else might be there to finish him off. Except that the auto-eating of healing foods would make that harder, but there's only so much healing food a person can carry. Auto-healing would be nerfing the power of 3-4 person killing groups so people might have trouble bringing enough firepower to take someone out, and it would also make the hit-and-drag tactic somewhat more difficult but the critical hits might balance it a bit.

Also it would be good if all newspawns were spawned awkward (or at least worse than average) and fighting was learned through training rather than given to people randomly. I hate to see newspawns punching themselves (or other people) to test their battle skills straight after spawning, as if it wasn't worth even trying if your character can't fight.

[Caesar]

1. Make it so that healing-food is automatically eaten when a character is hit, if he or she has any. This has been discussed in detail in another thread. Result: Much less micromanagement of characters in combat is necessary from the player, so that combat becomes less a clickfest where you have to be awake 24/7 to win. Unfortunately, it's obvious that because of this, evil characters especially loners lose any chance to kill anyone who is prepared for them.

This would already blow up things for me.
I hate 'healing' in one go by eating so many onions, for example, that your stomach would explode, so I eat them in portions.
By doing this you would force me to drop my style of playing my characters.


About the critical hits, though. I think they would be quite the improvement.
But you'd have to 'roll' them before you 'roll' the chance of missing.


There is something else I'd like to add;

I am not sure about you all, but that everyone manages to safe themselves every single time from every attack using a shield is rather strange.. And while saving themselves using a shield they still get hit!
Shouldn't it be a chance of managing to block, evading, or getting hit by an attack?

[Cogliostro]

Seko, yes you're right. My percentages were just silly ballpark figures. You ProgD geniuses would have to do the statistical analysis and bring us proper balanced ones. But as you were writing about how a bone knife or something else silly had the small chance of doing major damage in skillful hands, didn't you feel a bit of a pleasant spine-chill? Maybe in doing that hypothetical adjustment of percentages we could balance it and yet keep this state of "any weapon is potentially dangerous in skilled hands".

I think the problem with people who abandon weak characters is similar to how there are so many buxom blondes or whatnot in Cantr. If that's what people are conditioned and want to play, heros and buxom blondes, then who are we to deny them that? People should play the kinds of characters they want to. So while I 100% agree with you from a roleplaying perspective, I don't think there's anything we should be trying to do to prevent buxom blondage and conan barbarism. It's useless trying to. Certainly it shouldn't hold us back from making combat skill a more important factor than it is at the moment.

Caesar, I don't like eating a kilo of onions in real life, but in Cantr I'm fine with it, it saves my character from death. It's completely unrealistic, but that's just what we've got. The question is not WHETHER the kilos of onions will be eaten, but when and how. Automatically? Or only when I log in and micromanage my guy? I'd like it to be automatically. Then I can get some sleep. You know?

[SekoETC]

I am not sure about you all, but that everyone manages to safe themselves every single time from every attack using a shield is rather strange.. And while saving themselves using a shield they still get hit!
Shouldn't it be a chance of managing to block, evading, or getting hit by an attack?

I was questioning this earlier and saying wouldn't it make more sense that if someone blocked an attack, they would block it fully instead of some going over the shield? But apparently if you hit hard enough, the impact hurts your arm that's holding the shield, or the shield might slam against you causing pain. It would be cool if while blocking an attack, the shield would suffer considerable damage and could break. Currently if you hit someone's shield, it does deteriorate some but not enough to make a difference. But if you sent several people against a person and could chop their shield into bits, that would make a difference. But weapons that direct force into a single narrow spot shouldn't cause as much damage to the shield, since it doesn't make much sense if for example a rapier could break a shield. But something like a sledgehammer could.

Also there could be fumbles that make the attacker drop one's weapon. Since a person is online when they hit somebody, there would be a very small chance of someone else being fast enough to pick it up, but it could make the attacker's player panic. Maybe this could only be triggered when hitting 100%, then people might hold back one's strength to eliminate the chance of fumbling. Also dropping things like bows and crossbows doesn't make much sense, but it would be interesting if the bowstring could snap, turning the object into a weak melee weapon until a new bowstring is installed.

[Caesar]

Caesar, I don't like eating a kilo of onions in real life, but in Cantr I'm fine with it, it saves my character from death. It's completely unrealistic, but that's just what we've got. The question is not WHETHER the kilos of onions will be eaten, but when and how. Automatically? Or only when I log in and micromanage my guy? I'd like it to be automatically. Then I can get some sleep. You know?

I'd rather get my char killed. It differs for the both of us.
I simply hate to have my character heal itself by eating a huge bunch of onions on top of his regular meals.

[Cogliostro]

Caesar, you are then a very unique player but you're outnumbered by hundreds and hundreds who would rather just have their character be alive, please. We discussed removing and nerfing healing food in the other thread and I think it came to most people just wanting it to stay how it is, even though it's not realistic at all.

You're talking about something like removing healing food and making its use more realistic. I'm not personally against that, but that's a separate thing. After all, even if healing food was heavily nerfed, the question of having it be used automatically in battle still stands. I don't want to stay up and watch my characters at night just so I can be there in time to click the "EAT" button on the healing foods, whatever they are, onions or fine wines, I don't care.

[Caesar]

Caesar, you are then a very unique player but you're outnumbered by hundreds and hundreds who would rather just have their character be alive, please.

It is not the only reason not to accept auto-healing your characters.
It would create more of those situations where things happen without roleplaying, just like;

Char X hits Char Y
Char Z hits Char Y
Char β kills Char Y


You'd get;

Char X hits Char Y
Char Y magically heals.
Char Z hits Char Y
Char Y magically heals.


Most players also RP going to sleep when they go offline.
So someone that is sleeping is being hit.
Yes, it should wake them up, but it doesn't. They continue sleeping. They would only put something in their mouth, yawn and let themselves be hit again, put something in their mouth, yawn again, and continue sleeping.

[Cogliostro]

No, we wouldn't "get" that - not all of a sudden. I mean, in that nothing new would be brought to the game's current situation which isn't already there. That exact thing you just pictured happens now, assuming the fighting players are awake and clicking on their healing foods. That's my point. Players shouldn't be forced to be awake and clicking to survive battles.

There are still other areas that require clickfesting, but hey, if we gave characters autoeating of healfoods, that'd be a huge step forward already, a step away from forcing players to stay awake and babysit.

[Caesar]

No, we wouldn't "get" that - not all of a sudden. I mean, that exact thing you just pictured happens now, assuming the fighting players are awake and clicking on their healing foods. That's my point. Players shouldn't be forced to be awake and clicking to survive battles.

People not awake do not fight. Simple as that.
They die before they can react.

If you expect a fight will be going on, you sit awake for hours. Both in Cantr and in real life.

You don't go sleeping, waiting for them to kill you.

[Elros]

I am not for automatic healing food simply because it would make it too hard to kill people. They would heal after every blow, so battles would go on and on and if someone had enough healing food you might never kill them.

I do however like the idea of critical hits. I personally do not know a lot of the details on how the ProgD has the current battle system set up, but if they wanted to add something like this I would not complain. It does need to be done in moderation though...

[Elros]

No, we wouldn't "get" that - not all of a sudden. I mean, that exact thing you just pictured happens now, assuming the fighting players are awake and clicking on their healing foods. That's my point. Players shouldn't be forced to be awake and clicking to survive battles.

People not awake do not fight. Simple as that.
They die before they can react.

If you expect a fight will be going on, you sit awake for hours. Both in Cantr and in real life.

You don't go sleeping, waiting for them to kill you.

Agreed.

[Elros]

Lets not turn this into a debate over automatic healing foods... We already have a thread open for that. Lets keep this focused on the combat improvements like the critical hit suggestion or any new ones you have.

[Cogliostro]

Just as I pointed out in our other thread, I'll point out again here: All arguments to the effect that "it would be impossible to kill characters who had lots of healing food" are moot if you consider what you're saying with that. You're saying that you'd like the ability to take advantage of a player's inactivity in the game and kill their character before they wake and click that "EAT" button. That's all you're saying, because if the player is awake, they will be clicking that EAT button and you will not be able to kill them. Under the current system!

Basically, yours is a criticism of healing foods as such, which doesn't belong where we discuss auto vs manual healing.

Why do you think that more episodic players should be disadvantaged and their characters killed? They can be just as interesting as roleplayers and everything else as the people who are able to dedicate many hours daily to Cantr alone. It really isn't fair to say that you SHOULD be able to take advantage of their episodic rather than constant logins and kill their character before the PLAYER can react to your game actions.

I really think that wanting to take advatage of a player's delayed reaction due not being logged in is against the spirit of Cantr on the whole. We'd like all kinds of players (episodic and 24/7 ones) to have a more level playing field in this sense. We all don't like the clickfests. Well let's do something to make them moot: auto eating of healing food. That's the entire point of that suggestion.