| Author | Thread: Improved and Changed Wall |
NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #21459 Posted: Jan 3, 2009, 12:21 am |
There seems to be a "general" consensus that with spells and current offensive capabilities, walls aren't doing much other than making people targets for the score bonus that results from their destruction.
In the interests of making walls better, I'm throwing up the least new code intensive solution I could think of.
If you just want to see the end result, skip to the next section of red.
Rework 1.1: I find losing 7 wall levels to a single attack to be one of the most annoying things in the game, so I'm going to start off with the proposal that walls shouldn't degrade in level.
A wall would have 100 HP per level, with a level 1 having 100 and a level 15 having 1500. When the wall's HP reaches 0, the wall ceases to absorb damage.
Rework 1.2: At 75 resources per HP, the cost to fully repair a level 15 wall would be 112,500. A little nicer of a number is 50/HP, which gives 75,000 for level 15 and 5000 for a level 1 wall.
Rework 2.1: The fact that a level 1 flesh golem could eventually batter down a wall strikes me as odd, when realistically you should expect the flesh to turn itself into goo first. Walls need some form of damage reduction or a way of lasting longer against lower damage. Trying to maintain a decent balance between favouring the attacker and defender is troublesome, but I'm trying to rework it in balanced manner while using the current combat mechanics. The best, reworked mechanic I could come up with without requiring loads of new code is below.
An attacking golem's damage hits the wall first.
The wall has 0.5 points of mundane resistance (rounded up) per level, 0.33- points of elemental resistance per level, and 0.2 points of resistance to minimum damage per level.
A maxed wall would then have 8 resistance to bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing, 5 to fire, ice, and sonic, and 3 resistance to minimum damage.
The wall will soak up to 1.33- damage in each category (Bludgeoning, etc) per level. Any damage beyond this hits the golem behind the wall and is then reduced by that golem's armour.
This does have the PvP balance shift more toward the defender, which is fine, since the attacker currently has a massive advantage anyways.
Examples:
So how would this mechanic affect a combat? Some example hits:
Level 1 Ordinary Flesh hits level 15 wall: Wall takes no damage, golem takes no damage.
Level 1 Ordinary Iron hits level 15 wall: Wall takes 4 damage from bludgeoning, 3 from minimum damage. Golem takes no damage.
Level 1 Ordinary Copper hits level 15 wall: Wall takes 5 damage from fire, 1 damage from minimum damage. Golem takes no damage.
Level 1 Brass with Thunderstrike spell: Wall takes 17 damage from sonic, 1 damage from minimum damage.
Level 1 Brass, maxed strength, thunderstrike: Wall takes 17 damage from sonic, 6 from minimum damage.
With a conservative average of 10 hits an attack (Some golems on this list will obviously hit for more):
Flesh does 0 damage to the wall.
Iron does 70/1500 damage to the wall.
Copper does 60/1500
Buffed Brass does 180/1500 damage to the wall.
Maxed, Buffed Brass does 230/1500 damage to the wall with one attack.
These results show that higher level golems now do more or equal damage an attack than strength enhanced bone/flesh
Please feel free to leave ANY sort of constructive comments. What you like/dislike and why.
Yes I'm aware this looks complicated, but it mostly doesn't involve a lot of code.
Yes, I'm also aware this skews attack/defence more in favour of the defender. That's not wrong.
Edit 1: Fixed pasted quotes/apostrophesLast Edited: Jan 3, 2009, 12:23 am |
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| CommComms Posts: 392
Location: Daylsfeld
Magus Age: 121 years old
| Message #21481 Posted: Jan 3, 2009, 2:41 am |
| Naelwyn said:
There seems to be a "general" consensus that with spells and current offensive capabilities, walls aren't doing much other than making people targets for the score bonus that results from their destruction.
Huh? |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #21515 Posted: Jan 3, 2009, 6:18 am |
Err. I guess a brief summation would be walls not that good, make walls better.
Possible Huh Meaning 1:
I know the rework's main flaw is.. well, I think people can see the convoluted structure, only that it could be tucked away code is all. I'm betting someone could rework it and make it simpler. In fact, I'm quite sure of it. I just tried to keep it mostly balanced, make the higher level golems more effective than the lower ones, and tried to keep the changes to a maniuplation of already existing code.
2:
If you're disagreeing with the "walls aren't all that good" statement, mind at least saying why?
3:
I "thought" (Note quotes) that when an attacker destroys levels of wall they got a score bonus. I could easily be wrong. |
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| CommComms Posts: 392
Location: Daylsfeld
Magus Age: 121 years old
| Message #21519 Posted: Jan 3, 2009, 6:37 am |
| The "Huh?" refers to the quote just above it. Reworks are all well and good, just not sure it's needed. Yeah, a few people go around knocking down walls for the score bonus, but I'm not seeing a problem there, it's not exactly easy to do. And I've heard of no general consensus anywhere that walls aren't doing much defensively. I think they work great, they put me off attacking people quite a bit unless I'm feeling especially vindictive. While it's possible to bring down a strong iron or exotic behind a high level wall, and now more possible with spells, it's still not especially easy. I don't see a problem with walls as they are now and I don't see the proposed changes improving them so much as just changing them. |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #21557 Posted: Jan 3, 2009, 5:07 pm |
| The reason I personally changed my mind on this issue was after I was attacked by a bone with thunderstrike and lost nearly 8 levels on the wall in a single attack. I just found it totally ridiculous that the wall could be taken down in 2 actions without the attacking golem being "Technically" stronger than a stone golem, so I figured It'd be worth a shot to try and rebalance the wall so that It took emphasis off of minimum damage. |
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| Yamikuronue Posts: 1288
Location: Mottonsborough
Magus Age: 116 years old
| Message #21561 Posted: Jan 3, 2009, 5:49 pm |
| The main problem is that the more emphasis on golem type you place, judging by past behavior, the less useful certain types (wood, stone, glass anyone?) become. Fleshies are useful due to low ECL, bone are a favorite among meelee weapon users, clay hold a lot, iron for defense. If you base wall damage on some form of golem hardness based on material, Iron and exotics look even better than they do now, flesh golems would becomes useless for pvp, and depending on the values, clay might also become less popular for pvp. So everyone will just pvp with iron and exotics. Where's the fun in that? |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #21564 Posted: Jan 3, 2009, 6:36 pm |
Valid Point. Was looking for it.
I'm going to agree with most of it, yes this change would put more emphasis on irons and exotics.
I don't particularly think that's a bad thing. They're the hardest to research fully and repairs are more expensive and there should be a greater reward associated with it than being less useful than a fully researched lower level golem.
That being said, the lower levels would be far from useless on offense. More examples would probably help here. As well, once the wall is down, minimum damage is still the prime damage factor.
For one, most of the original ones dealt with a level 15 wall. Bone and Wood especially under this formula do well against medium level walls.
Some other examples:
Bone With Spiked Chain hits level 15 wall : Wall takes 18 Damage from slashing, 5 from piercing.
Glass With Spiked Chain hits level 15 wall: Wall takes 20 Damage from slashing, 4 slashing continues to hit the golem, Wall takes 3 Damage from piercing.
Bone golem hits level 5 wall. Wall takes 4 damage from slashing, 1 from minimum damage.
Maxed Strength Bone hits level 5 wall. Wall takes 4 slashing, 7 from minimum damage, the golem behind the wall gets hit with 1 minimum damage.
With an average of 10 hits (The above with weapons can hit this occasionally, the bone can by far exceed it)
230/1500 For the spiked chain bone
230/1500 For the spiked glass
50/500 For regular bone
110/500 Maxed Bone without spells
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| Yamikuronue Posts: 1288
Location: Mottonsborough
Magus Age: 116 years old
| Message #21569 Posted: Jan 3, 2009, 7:33 pm |
| yes, but your "improvement" makes it literally impossible to hit anyone with a wall with a fleshie. If walls don't get destroyed, that means pretty much everyone in the whole game. Hitting with a fleshie is a time-honored method of earning XP. |
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| Sconibulus Posts: 664
Location: Shuul
Magus Age: 116 years old
| Message #21571 Posted: Jan 3, 2009, 7:38 pm |
| Ok, so a melee clan can tear down a wall, that leaves defense, spell, alchemy, and item just a teensy bit in trouble, doesn't it? Ranged as well, but that's mostly because we don't have any personal spells that can help us yet, once we do we could probably do halfway decently in a setting like this, but it still strikes as incredibly unbalancing. |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #21573 Posted: Jan 3, 2009, 8:18 pm |
Okay. More objection then I thought there would be, but that always just improves things.
To Yami, the wall in no way affects XP gain nor should it. The current wall system also stops fleshies from doing any damage to the defending golem. Technically the new system would allow someone with a fleshie to attack a target to continuously harvest and do no damage whatsoever, which could technically pull up an exp harvesting abuse that I need to think on.
To Scon, who also raises another good point. So far I've shown how someone with any of the elemental damage spells, patience with an iron, or with melee weapons can take down a wall, and you've pulled up the good point of other clan specializations, which I should probably address.
Defense: I can't honestly think of anything a defense clan gains in terms of offense, other than taking less damage, which really makes sense. Of all clan specializations this one really makes the least sense to have a lot of offense options.
Spell: With spells being just out of beta I really can't say much here. They could still change wildly. That being said, there are both defensive and offensive spells that these clans get and some ignore walls anyways.
Item: For one, I believe all the demon bags ignore walls. The items gained seem to revolve mostly around PvM. The item clan still gains fair PvP offensive power in the demon bags, but not more in the long run than ranged or melee clans.
Alchemy: I can't give a perfect statement here, having not been in an alchemy clan. I can however see how a wall-softening device could fit perfectly into the "turn things into other things" idea of alchemy to give them an offensive option.
Ranged: Again, I haven't been in a ranged clan, so my evaluation here is based only upon attacks recieved and conjecture. Ranged weapons add a less powerful but ranged offense. When it comes to wall breaking in particular, I believe these cans have specific wall breaking weapons. No idea of their effectiveness, but a wall change should make these ideal.
So I can see all clan specializations except defense already having either a way through the wall or a developable way through. And I can envision this new wall still getting destroyed quick in any sortof co-ordinated attack.
If there's still an issue, it might be more of one of an imbalance in the usefulness of the specialties.
Again, any objections that raise a good point are totally welcome. They do help to refine the idea.
Edit 1: Typo Correction
E2: Forgot my comment on items. Whoops.Last Edited: Jan 3, 2009, 8:43 pm |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #21576 Posted: Jan 3, 2009, 8:31 pm |
In a previous post Yami showed me a possible abuse of this system.
In an essence, someone puts a headless iron defender behind a level 15 wall, others send in armored fleshies and proceed to earn fast amounts of exp while taking minimal damage from the iron golem and, if present, spikes.
(This is under the assumption that headless golems still earn exp.)
(Also under the assumption that regardless of level, headless golems are still sort of innacurrate, which I don't really know about)
(And technically, this is possible now anyways if the above assumptions are granted, someone could just lop the head off their flesh attacker)
One solution to this problem is just other people. A defender that does no damage is ripe to get destroyed for a bonus.
In fact, the above is a great solution since it also involves no coding and no messing around with other un/re balancing actions.
I'll leave it at that for now. It probably bears further looking into anyways.
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WitchyPosts: 369 Location: Shuul Magus Age: 113 years old Clan: ADV Real Name: Angie
| Message #21686 Posted: Jan 4, 2009, 7:59 pm |
One thing I like about this system is that it actually addresses some of the imbalance that occurs with higher-level golems versus lower level golems. I've been attacked and attacking a lot recently, and one thing I've found is that a level 3 Bone golem is much more useful than a level 5 Bone golem. Likewise, the level 3 bone is more useful than my level 5 Bronze golem. This seems very strange to me since the level Bronze golem is much more expensive (in motivation) to run, and much more expensive (in materials) to repair.
Generally a level 3 Bone golem with Thunderstrike will take out between 5-10 levels of wall. That means that in 2-3 attacks (with 3 attacks being the most a single Bone golem can do before the guard puts a halt to it) you can destroy a level 15 wall... IF your opponent's golem isn't disabled first. If your opponent's golem is disabled, you can often waltz in and take everything despite there being another 4 or 5 levels of wall.
With my level 5 Bronze golem, I can maybe take off 5 levels of wall and do a bit of damage, but it costs me 21 motivation versus the 6 that the Bone golem required, and I can only attack once. Plus, I'm likely to lose massive amounts of XP (I believe the one time I took this golem out I lost 18 xp) against anything but the very highest level golems.
Even my level 5 Bone golem isn't as good as the level 3 Bone golem, because while it does about the same amount of damage, it can only attack once.
The proposed improvements to the wall wouldn't fix all of the issues I see with various golems, but it would at least make the higher level exotics worthwhile to have around for a little wall smashing. |
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