Yet More Combat Updates (YMCU)

For combat stuff that doesn't fit into any of the other forums.
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Rias
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Yet More Combat Updates (YMCU)

Post by Rias »

More combat changes! I wasn't happy with combat being a game of "build up balance, attack over and over while enjoying the balance bonuses." A common complaint was that using special move that spent balance wasn't particularly attractive, because then you lost your reroll bonuses due to the lower balance. I want combat to be a little more dynamic, and for balance to be a resource people are willing to actually spend on special moves. I also, frankly, want people to be getting hit more often in combat. As it was before, it was a little too easy to balance up and enjoy an extreme number of defensive rerolls when timed right. There was hardly any risk of actual harm in combat, and even when people did get hit, armor made the damage trivial. So, in attempt to address these things:

- Positive balance no longer increases regular combat rerolls (normal attacks, dodge/block/parry). Negative balance does still decrease rerolls, however, so you still want to avoid that and keep your balance above 0.
- Several balance-spending special moves have had their balance cost reduced.
- The True Strike ability has been added, an attack that spends all balance for extra rerolls based on how much balance was spent. This should serve as a baseline "finisher move" that is available to anyone: Pick it up at your local barracks.
- Roundtime-based defense rerolls cap at 3 now, down from 5.
- Armor damage reduction has been decreased for all armor types.

This means there's a little more RNG whimsy involved, so combatants should actively use any moves available to them to stack the odds in their favor. The hope is that nobody will ever feel comfortably safe in a combat situation, and should always be aware that they may get unlucky and suffer a blow. No combat situation should be treated as zero-risk. I'm still kind of on the fence about roundtime-based defenses. I like that they encourage thought about how attacks are timed, but if they make it -too- safe for well-timed combat, I'll tweak it further, or possibly remove it altogether.

What I ultimately hope to see is people starting out by building up balance, ideally reducing opponent defense a bit as well, then spending their balance on "chaining" a bunch of combat moves together to try and take their opponent down. For instance, after building up balance, my Marauder character would feint to reduce target balance, shield bash to reduce balance further and stagger, if that hits then follow up with a tackle to knock the target down and further reduce their balance and keep them staggered, and finally True Strike to try and land a nice solid blow. Followed by any other special attacks, or normal attacks, as necessary while the target is still knocked down.

It's the intent that Warriors will have a lot of combat moves to rotate through to make combat a lot smoother and overall quicker, compared to non-warriors. That's the whole warrior thing, after all. Non-warriors will have to depend more on the basic Feint, Circle, True Strike, and normal attacks, which will be less efficient - but then, they aren't warriors, so combat shouldn't be as efficient for them.

So - combatty people, go combat it up and get a feel for things, and let me know how what you think.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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