Battle dynamic , Evil and Nice.

[Arenti]

I really hope this will get rejected as giving the possibility to kill someone in one hit will totally ruin the game. I'm certain of that.

[SekoETC]

A character trying to get itself killed could just get force-fed healing foods.

That's a good argument against it.

[Caesar]

A character trying to get itself killed could just get force-fed healing foods.

That's a good argument against it.

I had to think for a while to find an argument against it that would be easily understandable without me typing pages of text.

[SekoETC]

If healing foods didn't provide instant healing then there would be no need for critical hits that would allow someone to kill a person in one hit because if somebody was wounded, they would also remain that way.

But to balance things out, the target should only get weak after a day has passed from taking the damage, to give them time to retaliate even if they weren't online when they got hit. Or strength could gradually decrease during the hours following the hit, matching the full state of weakness after a day has passed. Not because the initial wound was getting worse but because you can expect the victim to be full of adrenalin and endorphin after being hit, and also in real life someone wouldn't just sleep for hours after being hit, they would strike back at once.

It would also be nice to see more random variation in damage. In real life it would be possible to wound someone seriously with a knife or with your bare fist, but in Cantr no one ever holds back their blows because they know that you can't accidentally hurt someone too bad. It gives the impression that violence is safe and harmless because there is a certain cap and you'll never do more damage than that.

[Piscator]

and also in real life someone wouldn't just sleep for hours after being hit, they would strike back at once.

Well, you know my favorite solution...

It would also be nice to see more random variation in damage. In real life it would be possible to wound someone seriously with a knife or with your bare fist, but in Cantr no one ever holds back their blows because they know that you can't accidentally hurt someone too bad. It gives the impression that violence is safe and harmless because there is a certain cap and you'll never do more damage than that.

If we would add a random variation of +/-50% (optimally not linear) a crossbow could do a new maximum of ~95% damage. That would be pretty hard, but couldn't kill you in one shot, especially when you take a shield into consideration. (Which could be much more effective than we're used to, if the random multiplier would be applied to defense values, too.)

[Cogliostro]

Yeah, guys, the main problem we're trying to address is the "safety" of the current system. It's so safe it's too safe. There's nothing dangerous about shooting crossbows and swinging claymores because of that cap that says you will never, ever, kill any of your enemies in one hit - even if you're the meanest character in all of Cantr.

But if you can't, then they will always heal-up, escape, or whatever else. This is why a 60 percent damage hit with a battle axe is powerful, but it isn't a critical hit at all - it can't kill a full-health character, ever. This cheapens the combat dynamic and makes it so that even weak characters rush into battle willingly knowing nothing can really happen to them as long as they aren't dragged away anywhere. Just as with the "whispering" recently, it would help greatly to have a rare critical hit chance that changed all that, so that players subconsciously feel wary about ALL combat. Even though the chance is only small, players will still have to be uneasy about fighting anyone strong and well-armed - any hit of theirs MIGHT be the last for the victim character (but 90% of the time it won't).

I don't personally buy the argument against auto-eating healfoods that Caesar put out. (that this would allow characters to force-heal suicidal characters) Why? Because under the current system we are allowed to force-feed characters who are on hunger strikes, and that's perfectly OK. In what way would healing food be any different? It wouldn't.

[SekoETC]

It would be different, but characters on hunger strike could pick up 15 kilos of sand to avoid people being able to pass them healing food or daily food. And besides, if someone was already wounded when given healing food, I assume they wouldn't auto-eat it until they're struck again...

Overall I don't like excessive eating of healing foods. At least there could be a daily cap in kilos if instant healing wasn't completely removed.

[Cogliostro]

By the way, that was an interesting idea BZR sent in. About limiting the daily amount of healing possible with heal foods. I'm not 100% sure about it, but something to think about there definitely.

I just love this part of the forum. Only here do you get these threads where the OP says: "Combat is too easy for the good guys, let's introduce the chance of instant death", and then somebody like BZR comes and says
"No way. Combat is too easy for evil characters, let's remove death completely."

[Cogliostro]

The right way to look at the problem here in "Suggestions" would surely be the broad, general way. People suggest a lot of generally useful and fun things and we can't everytime let it get tied up with all of these objections of the form:

"BUT what if -MY CHARACTER- is a transvestite spaceman allergic to onion who is on hunger strike and hates sand?"

The subtext being that the suggestion limits the player unfairly in what character he is able to play. But this way any suggestion whatsoever can be shot down, since there's no limit on what character somebody might think up.

We just have to be practical about it, instead of anal retentive, in my opinion - and then it'll all work out just fine for all types of characters!

[Piscator]

Funny that you say that. The whole suggestion was started to favor a certain type of character in a very special situation. I don't see how that is looking at the problem in a broad, general way.

[Cogliostro]

Then who's the certain type of character in favor of whom I'm posting? I think you won't find him anywhere in what I wrote

Nah, of course a general situation is always made of a large number of individual cases that we just have to "average" and take in at the same time in our mind's eye.

The general situation I was talking about (and am still) is how the combat is castrated and safe because of the damage caps. There's no feeling of exciting danger in shootouts and sword battles, since the pattern goes the same every time: hit the other guy, he eats his medicines, hits you back, you eat your medicines, and so on and so on. Until whoever runs out first, dies.

What I would like is to just use this "critical hit" idea to introduce an element of the unexpected into this. The chance of the killing blow is really low, and you need your character to be equipped with the best weapons in the game for it to kill in one hit, so it wouldn't be introducing anything outrageously unbalancing into the game (Arenti, was that what you were worried about?).

BUT, we as players would know deep down that it COULD happen, under certain lucky conditions that our hit might kill the victim, or vice versa, that we ourselves might be killed on the spot. That will give us a sense of excitement and add danger to battles which wasn't there ever since the damage caps were added, without actually changing the outcome of 95% of battles at all.

Remember also, that all characters are still subject to tiredness. It will not be possible for a character to hit 30 people in town with a battle axe and kill a few of them, simply because after the first 2-3 hits he is going to be so tired as to reduce his damage output to single digit numbers, even if some of his hits luck out and become criticals. I should probably clarify that again, I wasn't suggesting a magical chance that a hit will always insta-kill (I'd be the first one against that idea). Getting a critical would mean that your normal damage (after tiredness reductions) is multiplied by 2.5-3X. This, with the right weapon, would be enough to cause one-hit-death in rare situations.

The reason why critical hits would be in favour of the "evil" side is that normally our "Redbeards" have a ship or locked room - something like that - from where they pop out for a split second to launch their attack and then they are gone again, to hide. With critical hits they get the small chance of killing some of the opposing force once in a blue moon. As opposed to how it is now, when that's just not possible in that type of standoff at all. That's basically the only reason why I said it'd be in their favour - of course the "Redbeards" themselves would also be subject to critical hits from their enemies.

I want to ask everyone who posts their opinions here to please elaborate your ideas more, and not just leave it at "this will ruin the game" which doesn't tell us anything about why you might think that.

And that is the important part. Finding out all the hypothetically possible pros and cons.

[Dudel]

The problem is this encourages the uber violent and bloody skitzo characters while it discourages the guard soldier peace keeper type.

If the character is a thief and/or murder, what do I care if he gets random stricken down by a magic number... I CAN KILL TOWNSPEOPLE IN A SINGLE BLOW!

Why would I bother to hunt down people if there is a almost guaranteed chance ONE of my party members will die, perhaps, from a lucky strike?

THAT'S BAD!

You get some random newspawn a lucky "break" with someone dying or a unlocked door and he comes out and auto-kills a respected member of the city... OH....

Take that noise in Blackrock Forest recently...

...the guy exits his magic building and RANDOMLY SWINGS at people. Out of this chance he kills someone with this random magic number of doom. That person wasn't EVEN AWARE they had entered town or knew that "guy" was inside... etc etc etc.

it is bad enough when "characters" (actually its players) drag people inside and hit them for days on days until they are dead while not RPing with them any.

Add in the "auto healing" and I don't have to do anything to even annoy the other guy upon killing me. All my healing food will be gone anyway... SCREW IT. I don't even have to "babysit" my character while he is being mutilated... so why bother checking the character?

This would DISCOURAGE from RP and ENCOURAGE "those types" that 90% of us DO NOT LIKE!

I repeat: Let us NOT encourage yugo, rigel and the like anymore then we have too.

[Cogliostro]

I was proposing a small chance that one of your party might die in combat with a vicious and well-armed enemy. Seems both realistic and exciting to me. I think you misread it, since you're writing about "guaranteed kills" etc. That wasn't the idea here at all.

[Dudel]

I was proposing a small chance that one of your party might die in combat with a vicious and well-armed enemy. Seems both realistic and exciting to me. I think you misread it, since you're writing about "guaranteed kills" etc. That wasn't the idea here at all.

I'm reading a % vs the amount of people he/she hits.

If I hit MORE PEOPLE my chance to auto-hit goes up. YOU PAY ATTENTION!

[Cogliostro]

Yeah, I am - you are not considering tiredness. You cannot hit that many people without it catching up with you and cutting your damage output, including if you manage a critical.