Battle dynamic , Evil and Nice.

[Dudel]

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.

*heavy sigh* The guy comes out of his magic safe building and hits people at random.

DAYS LATER, or the day after... he DOES IT AGAIN... AND AGAIN... AND AGAIN.

He will, eventually, "win" with this tactic.

NOW... we add in the auto healing. That guy doesn't even have to 'watch his health bar' any more. He can just wait until the thing says "you are out of healing food" or says nothing at all cause he's all healed. He has to check the char for all of 2 seconds a day and once "all is well" HE SWINGS FOR THE FENCES with the hopes of a random magic auto-death.

There is, of course, the chance that those hitting him back MIGHT also auto-hit but they are hitting the same person so their percentile goes DOWN, not up.

In this equation tiredness is REMOVED.... not to mention it doesn't STOP the character from EVER HAVING ANOTHER CRITICAL AGAIN!

All he's to do is swing randomly and run... his characters chance of survival is already almost 100% but now you make those he is attacking at about 50%... maybe 60%.

REPEAT: Let us NOT encourage THOSE PLAYERS any further!

Edit: I'm also done with this topic unless I see it moved to accepted, in which case I'll be throwing my caps lock on full auto.

[Cogliostro]

Huh! Dudel, you misunderstood everything in the suggestion.

There's no magic death chance - just a rare chance of a critical that means that your normal damage (after tiredness!) is multiplied by a factor.

Tell me why the guy who manages to survive inside a building (coming out to hit everyone when he can) should not even rarely be able to kill anyone? For the sake of argument, we're presuming he's armed to the teeth with the best weapons in Cantr.

I guess you were referring to "barricading" where there's too much weight inside his building to enter it. But hey, there's an already accepted suggestion about pulling from buildings which will soon make that "gamey" tactic impossible.

So what you're ranting about, I have no idea!
Seriously, you gotta admit, the fact that some people do not roleplay doesn't have anything to do either way with the ideas we're discussing.

[Caesar]

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.

There's one word I'd like to say about tiredness;


Tea.

Those loners/RP-less killers (Rigels) mostly carry lots and lots of tea with them. Tea kills tiredness.

Which gives them a 100% chance of killing at every critical strike, as their tiredness is no longer a factor.

[Cogliostro]

If a character carries enough tea or healing liquid to do it, then they should be able to do this. That's what tea etc. is for, isn't it? Even right now, that's exactly how it's used - eaten after each hit, to increase the damage potential of the next hit. Don't forget that the energy substances are rare and are used up extremely quick under fighting conditions where you can fill up your whole tiredness bar by attacking just a handful of people.

The chance of a critical in my opinion, should be something like 10%-15% under the most ideal conditions (ultra-expert combatant against an awkward one), and under normal conditions would be more around 3-5%.

So I think your point about "100% chance to kill" is a bit misleading. That's like saying "your chance to end up in a car wreck is 100%" - sure it is, once you already are in it.

[Arenti]

I really hate the idea of that it's possible to kill someone in one hit. It would make killing to easy, and I really ahte the fact that if I go sleep and wake up and check my chars one of them died just because of someone coming into town and attacking for no reason. This Idea will only help one sort of chars and that are the ones who just want to kill other chars. This would also mean that many town leaders will be attacked in the hope of taking them out in one attack. This will ruin the game for many players.

[Cogliostro]

That's why we have this safe system of the present, where all the Redbeard type of guys can be taken out nice and sportive-like, without any nasty surprises for anyone. I agree with your point that insta-kills should not be a regular everyday possibility. That's how it would be (without any critical hit features), if say a strong character with a claymore could do 100+ damage a lot of the time.

But this idea isn't about that. It's about a tiny chance that the attack might be deadly. As you can calculate yourself, in the vast majority of actual game situations, the battle outcome and balance will remain totally unchanged. There isn't anything in it that makes killing on the whole any easier, look at the probability of it, and you will see. The purpose of it is more psychological, to remove the perception of absolute safety in you the player. The latest whispering implementation was what inspired it, it's very similar to that.

I guess you missed where I was pleading with you to keep separate your thoughts about how stupid and evil the Redbeard-types are, and how it would suck to lose a character you play to them. Because the chances of a critical are so tiny, it's really not even about helping evil characters win. It's just about making it less of a perfect safety for the opposite side. Do you like that perfect safety, honestly? Isn't it a little boring that nothing could ever go wrong in combat and as long as you're prepared, you'll always come out the winner and moreover suffer 0 losses on your side? I think it is, that's why I'm arguing this.

[Arenti]

This game is not about killing, I certainly don't play because I want to kill other chars. I am happy with the current battle system. There are to much chars already trying to kill others, this will only increase the amount of those kind of chars.

[Cogliostro]

Neither do I, Arenti. But I'm pretty sure battles are part of the game. So, the idea was that they shouldn't be completely predictable and safe 100% of the time. Dudel like you says that the chance of a critical hit encourages bad characters to appear. Could you explain just a bit more how you think this would work? It's just a chance of things going wrong in combat, and a tiny one, it's not a giant homicide propaganda poster.

What it WOULD do, though, is remove that sense of safety we all know from combat. You like it the way it is, though. OK! What do you say on the idea of adding auto-eating of healing foods, which was supposed to go with this critical hit chance?

[Arenti]

I'm sure there are players who will spawn a char try to get a good weapon and then they will try to take out an older char. If it doesn't work and they get killed they will spawn a new one when they can and try again.

I also don't like the auto healing, I don't mind though if it only auto heals once every cantr hour and only a certain amount so never completely heal someone. Something like 5 procent every cantr hour.

[Cogliostro]

There are limits on spawning and natural limits on the availability of good equipment in the game, which I think make your fear unjustified. It's not really possible to do what you described, when your chances are about 3 out of 100 and that's only if you somehow managed to get a big sword or crossbow and you are an expert fighter on top of it all.

An attack like that if it happens would most of the time be just like it is now, totally suppressed by the established characters. If on some super-rare occasion someone manages to succeed and kills an older guy because he scored a critical, then why not? Why should it be completely impossible to kill him? If for just a moment, you stopped thinking about your characters and how you play, how can you not hate the lethargic fogs of "eternal safety" that do unfortunately hang over the Cantr combat system? It's like clockwork, without any surprises. I'm saying it could be neat to add a little birdie that came out sometimes (super rarely) and suddenly said "coockoo". Think about all the excitement that would bring, how characters can later discuss the heroic events among themselves, where let's say Mr. Goodman shot and killed the pirate leader in a dashing skirmish, saving the hostages. It can work all kinds of ways, since it's just a "birdie", that sometimes breaks the tedium.

[Arenti]

I know I have a few times in the past accidently used a weapon instead of a waster. What if I kill my own char or another accidently with a crit. hit? Anyway I don't think it's much use to continue our discussion as no matter what we say neither of us would convince the other. Look I'm not saying i hate the idea itself I mean I hate the idea for Cantr.

[Cogliostro]

Gotcha.

It's definitely something that intends to make the combat aspects of Cantr "feel" different, more dangerous and maybe "realistic". With such low percentages it has no chance of tilting the tables any on the outcome of more than 90% of battles, so the main change is indeed "psychological" with this. If someone loves the current safe system and uniquely identifies exactly that as Cantr, then no such idea will ever be accepted by that person.

I was just thinking about how many were very outspokenly against the "whispering" implementation and how great it actually turned out to be in practice. Maybe there's something to learn in that, like that there are some very good ideas for the game that huge numbers of people are completely against changing (if we forget for a moment that it's a thread about my idea - don't mean to toot on my own horn at all)

[SekoETC]

I am intrigued by this idea, although I'd be very sad if one of my older characters got murdered, but they could already be killed by scoring a successful hit past the shield and dragging to a boat. I assume people don't try because people who would do such things are generally assholes and such people find it hard to make friends, so by the time they manage to get weapons and a boat, they already have so much that they wouldn't risk going after someone important.

If Cantr system was intended to have it so that a character can't be killed in one day, it would've been made impossible even when people gang up on a target. But even though gaining initiative should give people somewhat of a bonus, the target should be given a chance to retaliate if they don't get killed by the first hit or two. It's silly if you're attacking several people and someone hits you while you're selecting your next target, and you end up doing insignificant damage because you hadn't healed before hitting. Auto-eating of healing food would fix that but I don't like healing food in general, it's artificial and clumsy. In the past people lost health when they went hungry, there were no separate bars, so eating healing foods could also be used to fix hunger damage and thus it made more sense, but then damage and hunger were separated and that makes it less natural. It is or was a very simple system but it's unnatural, like magic. Few people take damage seriously because it can be removed with a few clicks, and even people who might only eat a small amount of healing food a day to heal themselves gradually are likely to be ready to gobble down several kilos of onions if their life depended on it. It would make more sense if damage healed slowly for everybody but could be made less debilitating with first aid.

[Caesar]

I simply hate healing food already.
And making it auto-healing would take away freedom in roleplay.

I could perhaps, just perhaps, be acceptable to it if you'd make it an option, off by default.

Perhaps we can do the same for eating. Your char does or doesn't eat food depending on if it is on. (Although it would be on for regular food.)


Even more extremely would be to remove healing foods altogether, but I know that will upset a lot of players.

[Miri]

I don't like healings and energy replenishers as well. they make me think of that cartoon Popeye sailor geting all pumped up after eating spinach
I don't feel comfortable about RPing them as well. Reason - just as above
I'd be for removing food-healings, or leaving them just as a boosters of natural regeneration... and maybe implementing some kind od 1st-aid kit equipment for (minor) instant healing.
-> more common sence and realism
-> HOSPITALS! already some people are trying to make some kinds of healing centers, but with the implementation they would have a real reason of existance

Also a small chance for critical would make fight more serious thing, and make game more.. lively
But if the critical hits were implemented, I'd also like to see 'guarding' in game. Guarding would be a project similar to draging, but with predefined lenght (like repairs) and visible to everyone on the guarding character page (I think draging should be visible here as well, but..). There would be a significant (50-75%) chance of the guardian taking the hit if the guarded person was atacked. It would allow the rich and well being characters (that poor town leader every newspawn would want to kill after the implementations of criticals, for example) to be almost 100% safe... if they decide that such safety of theirs is worth the expense