Weapon Balancing

[Mickey Kudlo]

The weapon rating system was the average damage a weapon can do in 10 seconds. It did not take into account 2-handed, range or special effects like stamina damage. And the system gave the monetary value based on rating alone so it kinda missed some "details", I believe.

I have a good idea what to do with ratings and balance. For the most part, range does less damage than melee because melee has the backing force of your arms where the missile starts to lose power the moment it leaves the hand/bow. Thinking missile should do 50% less damage than a comparable melee weapon at middle range. Short range items like throwing spear would be 75% and longer range missiles would be 25%. But the only long range missile is the cross bow and it has range and power so would stay at 50% at long range but the cost would be burden and/or load time. Load time would be 2 seconds for bow and 4 seconds for xbow and 2 seconds for short range throwables.

Oh... but missile weapons require ammo so that wrecks my idea. Maybe increase damage 10% and let all ammo be recoverable, not just missed shots. When a target dies, it drops them all. Ammo would wear out and break though like everything else.

Nerfing missile would offset the risk factor that melee ppl take getting up close. Hmm, but melee ppl always get more XP from combat since they attack and defend where missile ppl just attack and run, run, run!

I think V1/V2 just needed a melee versus missile balancing mainly. V2 I think I balanced melee pretty good with melee.

I also would like to see missile weapons not usable at range 0 and your player switches auto to a melee weapon. Thus you would have 2 slots for weapons: melee and missile. And I want to give Dagger skill away free.

Just vomiting thoughts.

[hazze]

A free low damage skill would be very useful for traders having to kill dogs or sheep or whatever intruding on their land, and if it's trainable, maybe low level monsters just to clear their land. It wasn't very fun playing and not being able to remove low level spawns within a reasonable time (like a full minute to kill a cow hitting 1 damage and running out of stamina)

What are your thoughts on some of these?
- Ammo % - ammo has usability, you can fire higher level things more than once as long as you remember to loot them. This way super high level ore tips have more "durability", but degrades on each hit (5 bonus damage -> 4.5 bonus damage -> 4 bonus damage -> etc)? This would incentivise people to pick up their ammo and makes ammo more valuable. There are problems with this, but just an idea

- Damage on missile based on number of factors, like how close you are to the enemy, if there are any items in between that don't block line of sight, missiles with travel time (attack speed would vary slightly based on how far you're shooting; some weapons can be good for certain distances like longbow vs shortbow and worse for closer distances, etc)

- Ammo weapons can imbue ammo, such as a flaming quest bow might be able to make all ammo placed in it deal elemental damage maybe?

[Greatest]

you're forgetting armor penetration and such...you whack a guy in full plate with a sword you just ring your hands.  you shoot a guy in full plate with a bodkin(armor penetrating arrow head) hes probably going to die. 

also xbows don't have as much range as longbows...remember the battle of agincourt where french knights were slaughtered by english longbows because the french xbows didn't have enough range to hit back?  so if you're going to get into doing a lot of balancing based on how a weapon should work(less damage at longer distances) you'll need something about armor penetration as well.

as far as point blank range with ranged weapons: they should be able to be used, and do a little more damage.  as you said a missle loses velocity as it goes, so closer means more damage.  think of a small caliber pistol, you shoot a guy in the head from point blank range the other side of his head is missing.  you shoot a guy in the head from 10 yards away with that same pistol and the bullet may not make it out the other side at all.

[Roarion]

The weapon rating system was the average damage a weapon can do in 10 seconds. It did not take into account 2-handed, range or special effects like stamina damage. And the system gave the monetary value based on rating alone so it kinda missed some "details", I believe.

I have a good idea what to do with ratings and balance. For the most part, range does less damage than melee because melee has the backing force of your arms where the missile starts to lose power the moment it leaves the hand/bow. Thinking missile should do 50% less damage than a comparable melee weapon at middle range. Short range items like throwing spear would be 75% and longer range missiles would be 25%. But the only long range missile is the cross bow and it has range and power so would stay at 50% at long range but the cost would be burden and/or load time. Load time would be 2 seconds for bow and 4 seconds for xbow and 2 seconds for short range throwables.

Oh... but missile weapons require ammo so that wrecks my idea. Maybe increase damage 10% and let all ammo be recoverable, not just missed shots. When a target dies, it drops them all. Ammo would wear out and break though like everything else.

Nerfing missile would offset the risk factor that melee ppl take getting up close. Hmm, but melee ppl always get more XP from combat since they attack and defend where missile ppl just attack and run, run, run!

I think V1/V2 just needed a melee versus missile balancing mainly. V2 I think I balanced melee pretty good with melee.

I also would like to see missile weapons not usable at range 0 and your player switches auto to a melee weapon. Thus you would have 2 slots for weapons: melee and missile. And I want to give Dagger skill away free.

Just vomiting thoughts.

I think you're going the wrong way with reducing damages so much at a longer range. The damage reduction is ok to a certain extent, but a 50% reduction is a big hit. Let the weapons range correspond to its speed. The longest range weapons could be 5 speed and still have an acceptable damage for PK.

The XP gained from melee people getting swung at is really negligible when you consider people bother to afk defense train all day.

[Mongo]

The XP gained from melee people getting swung at is really negligible when you consider people bother to afk defense train all day.

I can't help but wonder if there's a better way to deal with the defenses. But I think that's outside the scope of this thread.

[Naed]

Throwing weapons should have lower attack damage (low dps) than all other forms of attack.

The reason being it has the best stat gain, and this will land all hits versus an equally matched opponent of another skill.

Balancing here is a simple.

Crossbow traditionally has terrible stat gain, and as such should hit like a truck (higher dps).

Bows land somewhere in the middle, dex/2 starts pretty good but scales poorly. (regular dps)

All melee weapons generally share the same stat gain, and should all deal similar dps, probably similar to bows, less than crossbows, and more than throwing.

The differnce being differing speed and other effects should be balanced as well.

dps and stat gain is in my opinion the best metric to balance weapons.

Logic here is as follows:
- A Thrower will have higher stats, and as such land more crits and miss less. Their potential for dps should reflect this and be very low.
- A Crossbow will have lower stats, and as such land fewer crits and miss more. Their potential for dps should reflect this and be very high.
- A Bower will have average stats, and as such land average crits and miss average. Their potential for dps should reflect this and be average.
- A Melee will have average stats, and as such land average crits and miss average. Their potential for dps should reflect this and be average. Different weapons would have different speeds, attack modifiers should reduce dps if buffing, or increase if debuffing.

Not following this logic will result in and unbalanced system, and frustrated players who did not choose the unbalanced skill.

[Mickey Kudlo]

The XP gained from melee people getting swung at is really negligible when you consider people bother to afk defense train all day.

I can't help but wonder if there's a better way to deal with the defenses. But I think that's outside the scope of this thread.

V5 currently uses the melee weapon skill that is armed as the melee and missile defense skill. But maybe we want a "Dodge" skill that covers both? Oh, could use whatever missile weapon armed as the missile defense skill but *shrugs*

And Magic Defense skill would become Magic Resist ?

[Naed]

Magic resist works great.

The skill might have a passive damage reduction, say 0-25% based on skill? 1000 being 25% reduction?

Coupled with a chance to resist, perhaps the same 0-25%? Adding 0-75% if defense skill is in excess of the enemy's ones offense?

Also heavy armor should reduce your ability to resist magic, or maybe just your current burden level? My thought pattern is that an archer should have an advantage against a wizard, and a wizard vs a warrior, and a warrior vs an archer.


This allows of all sorts of sub classes based purely on armor/burden.

A naked warrior might be advantaged against a wizard.
A heavily armored archer might be equally matched against a warrior, though the warrior should have an advantage in strength and thus armor(normally).
A battle wizard (armored) might be advantaged against an archer.

This is neglecting skill loss due to cross training.

Dodge sounds great, but current burden should effect dodge skill at perhaps five to ten times regular burden. A heavily armored individual should not be able to dodge well. Until very high level of course when strength levels are absurd, and well earned.

Say dodge is in full effect up to 20% burden, then reduces to zero once fully burdened (100/100)?

Sounds interesting?