Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[Luis_Velderve]

it Seems They Finally Nerfed The Khopesh. In A Way That Puts The Whole Game Upside Down.

Oh My God This Is It!!!!

[Calebro]

I like the idea, as long as it works.
So I lose out on a little bit of DPS overall. Most of my melees are TWFers. But if it reduces lag like planned (and it makes sense that it would) then I'll also be more efficient with my attacks since, you know, I'll be able to SEE what I'm doing.

Less DPS? Maybe a little.
More efficient? Almost certainly.
And more efficient means more DPS, so the disparity won't be as big as all of your numbers claim it to be. That's my take on it anyway.

I'm all for it.

[KrumpetDog]

If you reduce the off-hand weapon proc rate to the levels you have described you will be reducing most (perhaps not top end) character's using 2wf to below any 2-handed. You appear to not be taking into account the -2 to hit for using two weapons.

Example:

+5 weapons, +6 str damage, +6 damage from other sources. Chance to hit AC of target 90%.

Greatsword 2D6 + 5 + 9 + 6 = 27 x .9 = 24.3 average damage (not including any glancing blows)

vs

(with TWF feat)

Longword 1D8 + 5 + 6 + 6 = 21.5 x .8 (-2 to hit for two weapons) = 17.2

Shortswrd 1D6 + 5 + 3 + 6 = 17.5 x .8 x .35 = 4.9

Total twf damage = 22.1 average damage.

So with these numbers the two-handed weapon user does more damage (and not even including glancing blows) and didn't even use a feat. Not balanced at mid to low level range end at all (where most users will be). Also without the extra damage (+6 bard?) twf falls even further behind. Sure adding a khopesh (extra feat) would increase the main hand damage up but players using more feats on damage should do more damage overall.

[Vhlad]

So to summarize...
TWF gets nerfed 20%, THF gets nerfed 15%, S&B remains unchanged.

Thanks! Do it again if we use 20% for each TWF feat, instead of 15%, 10%, 10%.

[and to clarify, THF twitch gets nerfed 15%, not so much THF in general ]

[curiousgis]

The thing I love most about this game is the combat system. I do not think I'm alone in that. What you are proposing gives me a feeling of impending doom.

I don't understand why you are making this so complicated. Why not just make the one physics detection for both attacks and leave everything else the same?

/signed

[Tolero]

So the server just isn't carrying enough Remove Disease Pots? Maybe it needs a dedicated Paladin or Cleric to follow it around and cast Remove Disease on it.

I'll be sure to forward this to SIG, as his idea of casting "remove disease" is taking things to a shooting range

Cool cool, go go next week...if all goes well. Also, why can't you just make it to where we can transfer our account information from Live to Lam?

This is something we've discussed but is a more complicated beast to tackle. It doesn't mean it might not happen one day in the same sense that we didn't always have character copy on the preview world. For the time being the Lamannia and live Store account information is still separate.

[Siskel]

I like the double strike idea and would like to see an arcane spell added to the game that gave the ability or a percent increase with other items/spells/abilities.

[Khelden]

[and to clarify, THF twitch gets nerfed 15%, not so much THF in general ]

Which THF don't use twitching anyway? I think we all pretty much discovered it on our first day playing and been using it since then.

[systemstate]

Regardless of the fixes you implement to improve on the current lag situation, I just want to say, "Thanks" for being so open with your customers.

Turbine's +2 loot bonus for the recent downtime and openness and trust shown in this thread are a most welcome change.

Whatever the ultimate fix turns out to be, I feel more included and appreciated as a customer.

Thanks very much, and keep up the good work!

[bbqzor]

Thank you for taking the time to post an informative explanation as you did, it is unusual for this game and very helpful in understanding exactly what is (potentially) happening to the game. I wanted to submit my feedback, but the thread is already wildly going off tangent so I hope you have the opportunity to read this one somewhere in the mix.

I have a good deal of experience with this sort of things from other MMOs, and in light of that I have to say this is a good goal to be moving towards. Lowering the amount of 'work' the system has to do for each 'attack action' is a step in the right direction. However I have two main comments the thread has not addressed well.

The first is the given off hand 'attack proc' rates. In your given example, the offhand is happening much lower than it is now (base 55% instead of 75-100%). As the calculations are already being reduced by 'piggy-backing' on the other checks, what reason is there to not maintain the same overall attack rates? I feel you may want to consider starting the base off-hand rate at 75%, as it was back before the previous rounds of TWF changes, with tempest scaling up to 100% at the top. This avoids any undue reductions in attack rate from offhand.

I feel avoiding those reductions is important for several reasons. First, most if not all of the current 17-20 content is essentially balanced around current dps output, and lowering this in a broad sense is going to affect game difficulty. Second, people have invested huge amounts of time into greensteel offhand weapons, or in collecting additional smiters, vorpals, etc which would be reduced in value as well. Rather than see items and hard work devalued, and content difficulty shifting, Id rather just see the lag reduction for calculations reductions with little to no depreciation in the other areas (some depreciation is of course inevitable, and while a loss is acceptable, a base of 55% is just too low relatively speaking considering the investment made to utilize TWF in time and resources).

The second point is the farther reaching effects. This change states it will make TWF very close to THF. In and of itself I am neutral about that, but it also states THF will be changed later. Presumably also lowered (via glancing blow reductions) which makes THF again lower than TWF. Which means the net effect is just everyones dps is lowered across the game. What is the point of this? It seems as though the potential end effect is just a lowering of player output (basically by lowering attack speed across the game) just so the game can keep up with its own math.

While I fully agree that lowering the calculation load to reduce dps lag is an admirable goal, and that by piggy-backing the checks you have a great method for working towards that, I do not feel that simply effectively reducing attack speed on the clients end is a good way to achieve that goal.

Please let us know that there is no current intention of re-balancing combat around this new 'slower' standard. And if you can, update your original post with any changed figures as you are able, to perhaps show that the base 55% rate has been adjusted. I know there was talk of adding more numerous but smaller modifications, perhaps this will make it easy for any melee to reasonably get to the 75%+ mark. Rogues are one case where the changes are very pronounced, there is no reason they should not get at least the 75% rate theyve had in the past, if not the 100% they currently have, as one example.

Fast edit to add: Many of the other comprehensive effects being considered in the larger picture are good ones. The Warchanter bonus mentioned, for example, is incredibly inline with the PnP ability Inspire Legion, which is perhaps where you got the idea. This change idea is not a bad one, and only gets better when integrated with other things. But it does need balancing (the goal of this thread) and it would be very nice to have assurance it is not the start of another re-balance. Thank you.

[countesscrow]

I dont like it!

I just finished reading 20 pages of posts.

Almost everybody is against this change.

Change the number of rolls. Dont change the combat mechanics.



Chaotics

[spyderwolf]

this change could drige away alot people who have invested alot of time into this game. i wont be going anywhere but if this change is as drastic as it sounds, all my melees will be lessered and be using epic sos instead of their current setup

[Angelus_dead]

Fighter Alacrity (capstone) now grants a +10% bonus to double attack with the main hand instead of a 10% speed increase.
The Paladin spell Zeal now grants a +10% Sacred bonus to double attack with the main hand instead of a 10% speed increase.

While you're changing around speeds, this would be a good time to fix Madstone. You're gonna have to nerf it eventually, so that may as well get that done before players start testing all this new attack rate stuff.

[Dylos_Moon]

This is something we've discussed but is a more complicated beast to tackle. It doesn't mean it might not happen one day in the same sense that we didn't always have character copy on the preview world. For the time being the Lamannia and live Store account information is still separate.

How about crediting purchased Turbine Points? Take into account how many turbine points everyone has purchased since the game went f2p (including those purchased during the lamannia beta test) and transfer those points to the lamannia store?

Or at least Give me the ~10000 TP I have stored in my account currently on lamannia.

[Angelus_dead]

We plan on having more Lamannia points give-aways for those who are participating in the preview/feedback of Update 5. We're targeting next week if all goes well.

You know, you could even give Lamm points just for things like participating in this thread...

[Coldin]

This is something we've discussed but is a more complicated beast to tackle. It doesn't mean it might not happen one day in the same sense that we didn't always have character copy on the preview world. For the time being the Lamannia and live Store account information is still separate.

While it's not an ideal solution, wouldn't it be possible to greatly reduce the prices in the store on Lamannia to facilitate testing? Like, everything there is 90% off?

[Vhlad]

Which THF don't use twitching anyway? I think we all pretty much discovered it on our first day playing and been using it since then.

Based on what I've seen in well over 2000 raids, I would say maybe 5-10% of the end-game playerbase uses THF twitch properly and frequently.

[Khelden]

I won’t hide that these proposed changes do reduce the effectiveness of off-hand attacks, which reduces the two weapon fighting style’s extreme dominance over two handed fighting. Skipping the extreme outlier of the Epic Sword of Shadows (we got a little carried away there, didn’t we?), estimated damage output over time for the two styles should be extremely close to each other if we go this route. (Which style is superior ends up being heavily dependent on your character's abilities.)

I think many people are missing out this part of his post. The goal is not ONLY to reduce the lag, but also to BALANCE THF and TWF, where, like Eladrin said, TWF is king an THF is nothing but a clown.

[Dylos_Moon]

You know, you could even give Lamm points just for things like participating in this thread...

Or for providing feedback on the lamannia forums.

[donotdirect1]

Nice



If the lag of a thousand prox check rolls
Were to burst at once from the servers
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One
I am become Nerf
The shatterer of TWF

Now we have something WORTH talking about until Update 5, thanks.

The funniest post in the whole thread. Loved it.

To the purposed changes, I say we handle it like you would in PnP.

How did we handle sitting around rolling dice "lag" at higher levels? Simple.

You get half the number of attack rolls, and they count for twice as many attacks in your chain split evenly if you are a twf, round up (aka round to the main hand).

You roll ONCE for damage on extra effects per attack chain (which to me seems so simple it should have been done a long time ago.) You've got 6d6 sneak attack and we've got to wait for you to count your roll up? Nah, roll once use the number over again till your finished, you can roll again next round.

What does this do to twitching? Well... I know I may just be dropping a bomb here but... in terms of PnP Twitching is exploiting. I'm all for the physics check. Stand there, take your full attack action and make your full round of attacks when it matters, but we really don't need to do it with so many variable checks.

Edit: A similar solution to proc effects. Say the proc was 10%, you've rolled under that. Now you make one more check using a handy table (on the back of the DM screen xD). 1-50% 1 proc, 60-80% 2 proc, 80-90 3 proc, 90-95% 4 proc, 95-100% Maximum procs for the attack chain.