Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[Angelus_dead]

Every deviation from core rules has caused some issue down the line but the response is always to introduce some new half-assed system on top.

Why not use the ruleset you have paid for?

For the record, the D&D 3.5 core rulebooks do not remotely work without rule zero.

[sephiroth1084]

This statement is not 100% accurate.

Low-level barbarian easily outdamages any twf-user, because TWFers lack the feats for they style.

You're comparing apples to oranges here: compare any character with TWF vs. essentially the same character with THF, not TWFers in general vs. a barbarian with a 2-hander. Also, in the early game differences between one character and the next are much lower than later in the game, which is part of the reason that people focus more on end game stats when discussing balance (the other being that people typically spend much more time playing at endgame than at any other point in the level spectrum).

By the time both toons are flagging for Shroud, twf catches up, but then *ding*. TWFer need 2 metalline of pg khopeshes where THF need only one greatsword/greataxe/falchion. Do I have to mention that khopeshes are exotic and therefore much more rare than twohanded options? and the demand is 4-5 times greater? Next *ding* comes when THF has ALL Greensteel weapons, but got enough scales to craft weapons for one hand.

By the time they both have several GS items/weapons, TWFer might have got a little better DPS. But guess what? Epic SoS is not that far away as it once was.

Equipment is a completely different issue, and largely works itself out given some time, barring a few exceptions (ESoS).

Not quite sure on that... I have wondered why they had not addressed twitching before ... is quite a well talked about topic in many a dps thread... My mind tells because attack sequence breaking is also an intended game mechanic and may be a reason why they have not pressed to address twitching.

Well, when the devs rebalanced attack speeds and otherwise fiddled with the attack chains back when DDO:EU hit, they did talk about twitching, and claimed to have reduced the impact of doing so, though their success in that realm seems to have been minimal.

[krud]

Not quite sure on that... I have wondered why they had not addressed twitching before ... is quite a well talked about topic in many a dps thread... My mind tells because attack sequence breaking is also an intended game mechanic and may be a reason why they have not pressed to address twitching.

One of the devs biggest concerns was keeping animation and attacks close to sync. (Appearances oh so important) ... To eliminate twitching would mean increasing the amount of movement one may take without breaking chain... possible results... BaB meaning lessened in relavance... SA feat meaningless and most likely a few other things to oversight.

One thing I find surprising is the Devs increased the number of procs on THF for glances, turn around and propose adding glances to Bastard swords and dwaven axes when used one handed with a shield ... then turn around and tell "we're going to reduce hitting and procs of twf off-hand to reduce the DPS lag... surely tell's me be more a bloody matter of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Yet deny that people do not twitch and presume is an unintended exploit or game mechanic when clearly the idea of breaking attack sequence is an intended functionality... the scope if the current positive "to-hit" within attack sequence was intended to be an encouragement to stay within attack chain... yet they removed mob AC to the point where nothing in the + in sequence really matter much until epic... thurn around and state we'll tweak the animationand attack due to liking of the player base last time they messed with it... I see no intent in practice on their part but only care about the asthetic and care not of who or what is balanced among class nor feats... they figure once the lag returns they'll switch the balances back again... matters not to them if twf thf or what not be balanced just that people play

of course, breaking the attack chain is an intended function. Twitching is fine, it's an integral part of DDO, but that's not the issue. The problem is that doing so in this case yields more attacks, where it really shouldn't. What is the combat related tactic in THF twitching?

Twitch to dodge a ray - fairly obvious. Twitch to flank an opponent - ok. Twitch to avoid an attack - certainly. But the THF twitch? What is it doing in combat terms? It's just mashing buttons with nothing in real life or game terms to back up the functionality. It's simply taking advantage of some quirkiness in the attack animation sequence. That's the problem I have with it.

[Emili]

Well, when the devs rebalanced attack speeds and otherwise fiddled with the attack chains back when DDO:EU hit, they did talk about twitching, and claimed to have reduced the impact of doing so, though their success in that realm seems to have been minimal.

I believe because it counter intuitive with the movement system...

One thing I want noted and had mentioned in other threads... this games early roots were based on grouping and nearly class dependancies as they openned up and class ability grew the more and more soloable instancing prevailed... fact be I'd wager solo and short-maned instancing be the norm outside raids today...

See I mentioned this in a thread up about raids in general and asked the questions "Why?" when they preferred not to raid what the attraction of the raid were... (obviously the loot) and really early on we used to short-man raids consistantly after we learned them well and when the raid loot mechanic changed the ideal groupping was then turned into filling out as many open spots as possible. My premise though is that much of the lag on servers would only increase with the continued efforts of short-manning and soloing quest... obviously 100.000 people running 30.000 instances a greater server resource then 100.000 people in 16.000.

[Aashrym]

Although adding more feats does increase the total number of possible character builds, in practice it can actually reduce the number of viable options. Non-viable choices do not really count as an improvement to the game, such as when I played Fallout and built a character around melee skills and agricultural science.

Whether you are wared of it or not, you are advocating it for less options, not more.

You might think "But Borror0, if they add STWF they are adding one more feat so that is obviously one more option!" but that is naive thinking. If that was true, there would be little need for the concept of game balance.

Choices happen when there are more than two possible decisions you might take. When a so-called optional ability is so powerful that no one in their right mind would skip on it, there is a choice only in theory, not in practice. That is, while people could take something other than the overpowered ability, the great majority won't and so, for the great majority of your playerbase, the addition of that overpowered feat reduced options.

The same reasoning applies here, except we are talking builds. If a 6 bard/6 wizard/6 cleric is bad, while it's theoretically an option, it's not considered as such by the3 majority of the playerbase. Likewise, if TWF clerics and favored souls get weaker, they will be considered an option by fewer players.

I think both of you hit my only real concern there spot on. Providing more options that are not viable because they may not have alternative choices that have equal value.

I prefer 'optimistic' to 'naive' but you do have valid points. If there is any imbalance that comes out of an addition like that it will lean players in that direction.

I readily concede it may not be possible to create that balance in this case to create more viable options. I do think it may be possible given enough choices, but in an MMO I think there will always be builds considered better than others.

I think it might be a good idea to see how testing goes with whatever changes we're looking at now.

[Borror0]

Not quite sure on that... I have wondered why they had not addressed twitching before ... is quite a well talked about topic in many a dps thread... My mind tells because attack sequence breaking is also an intended game mechanic and may be a reason why they have not pressed to address twitching.

The reason twitching has not been addressed successfully yet is that new animations are costly, which is what would most likely be required to completely address the problem. However, it is untrue to say that they have not done anything to address the problem. In September of last year, they have removed the fifth animation to dramatically reduce the effectiveness of twitching. While it didn't completely solve the problem for THF, it did improve the situation significantly.

EDIT:

Well, when the devs rebalanced attack speeds and otherwise fiddled with the attack chains back when DDO:EU hit, they did talk about twitching, and claimed to have reduced the impact of doing so, though their success in that realm seems to have been minimal.

I wouldn't call the progress minimal. The effectiveness of breaking your attack with THF dropped dramatically after this change. While it didn't completely solve the problem - which I, who created the change, didn't expect to happen in regards to THF - it significantly dropped the efficiency of "twitching."

[Emili]

of course, breaking the attack chain is an intended function. Twitching is fine, it's an integral part of DDO, but that's not the issue. The problem is that doing so in this case yields more attacks, where it really shouldn't. What is the combat related tactic in THF twitching?

Twitch to dodge a ray - fairly obvious. Twitch to flank an opponent - ok. Twitch to avoid an attack - certainly. But the THF twitch? What is it doing in combat terms? It's just mashing buttons with nothing in real life or game terms to back up the functionality. It's simply taking advantage of some quirkiness in the attack animation sequence. That's the problem I have with it.

... and still is the reason they had not messed with it at all... Long ago the animation artist created the attack sequence animations... and they did so without reguards to attack sequence timing or mechanic. When the devs went to add such in the results were every few levels as you gained an attack your number of attacks/time reduced then grew slowly again... thus a level nine fighter had more attacks in a given timeframe then a 10th level fighter due to mesh of actual attack sychronized with animation. A level nine fighter actually more powerful then a level 10 fighter in game. The last sequences taking much longer in time. Syncopated... The devs could not smooth it out nor the funds to have new animation sequences built. Call me anal but am a musician and sometimes when screwing around with the game I play with my metronome to guage the bpm to the actual hits. Just bloody out of curiosity really. The dev's eventually dropped last sequence and smothed out the animations posting the actual attack sequences within...

There are two keywords in DPS - Damage and Second - the proportion of which play a significance in game... people jumped on Tempest when it became available, why? People jumped on fighter capstone or zeal why? quite simply the quicker the mob dies the quicker you complete a quest, the less resources the cleric needs to watch and the less mana burned... time is a risk and it's a resource. Would you rather run 1 quest tonight or 2 or 3 in a good group? What keeps you from running 3? Time.

[Imnisc]

You want 1 swing every 6 seconds for Bab 0-4 characters? And a little over 1 second/swing at BAB 20? That's pretty darn slow in a video game. I love the D&D rule set, and believe many of this game's problems do come from deviating from those rules, but that particular rule just doesn't work at all in a video game.

The time period can be set to anything, currently it is 1 animation cycle whatever that works out to.
What is important is that number of attacks and other actions obey this period, because all damage values etc. rely on this for balance.

[Garth_of_Sarlona]

I wouldn't call the progress minimal. The effectiveness of breaking your attack with THF dropped dramatically after this change. While it didn't completely solve the problem - which I, who created the change, didn't expect to happen in regards to THF - it significantly dropped the efficiency of "twitching."

so now Borror0 created the combat speed rebalance and A_D created epic content? lol.

Garth

[Borror0]

so now Borror0 created the combat speed rebalance

You didn't know? I don't usually claim ownership of ideas that are oddly similar to a suggestion I made, but that time Eladrin himself said my suggestion was at cause.

[Emili]

The time period can be set to anything, currently it is 1 animation cycle whatever that works out to.
What is important is that number of attacks and other actions obey this period, because all damage values etc. rely on this for balance.

One of the issues is the twf and thf animation sequences do not coincide in sync... twf rely mainly in hooks and the second swing of twf is slightly slower then the second swing of thf...

If you look at Axer's (Shades) DPS portal challenge thread there be a lot mor going on there then his str bonus' at point his twitching leads to 36 more bpm near and at one point in the newer one 48 above that of a non-twitched toon... like playing flight of the bumblebee in presto vs moderato.

[Pyromaniac]

Sounds like eSoS needs a nerf? Eladrin - too scared of backlash to do this?

Why not just wipe all gear/names/plat/XP from all toons and start over. Nuke/nerf the game from orbit.

[Pyromaniac]

so now Borror0 created the combat speed rebalance

Actually yes, Borror suggested the BAB speed change. Not in that implementation apparently, but that killed my 2WF bard.

[Timjc86]

Nuke/nerf the game from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure.

Edit: Getting rusty on some of my memes.

[Coldin]

You didn't know? I don't usually claim ownership of ideas that are oddly similar to a suggestion I made, but that time Eladrin himself said my suggestion was at cause.

Well, let me add on a small suggestion to further fix the twitching problem.

THF grants a glancing blow on the first and second moving attack animation right? Well, just simply remove the glancing blow off that first attack. Then moving isn't nearly so good because you're losing another glancing blow.

[Brennie]

Um....

Rangers provide utility where as Fighters specialize in one area of expertise, thats the reason for lower ranger DPS.

Giving Rangers more base attacks than a Fighter still wont change the 30% haste boost Fighters get.

I apologize for my vagueness earlier. By "best TWF fighters" i meant soley in terms of attacks per cycle.

I'm not proposing giving rangers anythign they don't have already. Tempests *already* have more bas attacks than a fighter and fighters *already* have 30% haste boost. I'm simply pointing out tat the porposed "Fix" would strip tempests of their more-attacks-per-cycle benefit, which is tha main purpose of *being* a tempest ranger.

Fighters are perfectly capable of extremely high TWF DPS, and i don't see any reason why they shoudl suddenly change the balance of classes to put fighters ahead of Tempest rangers in terms of weapon attacks per cycle with TWF, especially since it requires a much smaller overall investment for fighters to do so (Tempest Rangers spend 14 AP and 4 of 7 feats to get Tempest 3. Fighters spend 4 AP on their capstone, and 4 of 18 feats to get STWF)

I see this as a: Nerf to TWF across the board, big bnerf to feat starved and 3/4 BaB TWFers, and HUGE nerf to Tempest rangers.

You seem to be arguing that rangers need to be knocked down a peg to make TWF Fighters more viable... I'm saying that eliminating the main purpose of one of the most popular prestige lines in the game is certianly *NOT* the way to go about it!

[Emili]

Well, let me add on a small suggestion to further fix the twitching problem.

THF grants a glancing blow on the first and second moving attack animation right? Well, just simply remove the glancing blow off that first attack. Then moving isn't nearly so good because you're losing another glancing blow.

I think is a numbers game... icing on the cake so to say... your frenzied berzerker goes in and hits mob with a 500+ crit and then a little glance on some surrounding mob on a procing glance ... believe was borrow told me a while back people like numbers and wish to see the hits and plenty of them... was when I was *****ing bout BaB and to-hit purposes when most things hit on a two raid buffed ... anyway the glance proc is added gravy and not quite as significant as a proc on a twf build... when you're doing 60 a swing (500+ a crit) with a big axe and the glances are little less than half is shoving in more of the the big numbers are what's attractive on that barb... adding the extra swing in every 2 seconds is what they persue then. So come many mob glance but on one mob twitch.

[Razcar]

It's the only way.

That's it man, game over man, game over! What the eff are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?

[Timjc86]

Game over, man, effing game over

I can't give you rep again yet.

[Halifex]

Eladrin-

Thanks for being so transparent with us on this and giving opportunity for feedback. Here is my feedback, and I am trying to speak for many ... in other words I am trying to predict what the player community's response en masse will resemble.

1. PURISTS: The new proposal deviates further from the d20 rules (obviously). Some purists will complain about this. I long ago discovered that a good MMORPG and a good PnP RPG are not the same and that differences must exist in order for it to be the most FUN. I predict this complaining will be in the vast minority.

2. MUST HAVE THE BEST: If the new mechanics require a bunch of folks to generate new builds to realize the optimum off hand proc rate, I predict several folks will be frustrated. Some of these folks have lots of free time and will complain but will rebuild and re-level and move on and keep playing. Others who don't have as much free time to rebuild will be frustrated and some will leave DDO. I predict that only a small number will leave DDO as a result, since other benefits of reduced lag will offset their complaints. I could suggest free lesser hearts +20, but I know that won't go far given Turbine's history with free respec's.

3. NOT ENOUGH TIME IN THE EVENING: This is the biggest concern. Many of the folks I raid with play in the evening during the week. If these folks complete a raid in significantly more time than they used to, they are not going to be happy. The game will be less fun, because they will feel like their characters became less powerful. The only way to offset the increased raid completion time as a result of reduced DPS is to increase raid completion predictability (as a result of heals landing for example) – up to a point. So, what is significant? Well this is my opinion … if a Shroud pre-TWF-change has a completion time of 45 minutes and a completion rate of 90% (the 10% in this example due to lag causing massive death in Shroud part 4) … and post-TWF-change has a completion time of 48 minutes and a completion rate of 98% then it is good. But if post-TWF-change it looks more like: completion time of 55 minutes and completion rate of 99.5% it is not good. This same point can be extrapolated to quests or running around in slayer zones. Is the person's expectation of how long it takes to perform a certain task going to remain basically the same but with the benefit of improved predictability? Then it is good. If the expectation of completion time increases dramatically, don't bother with the change, we will accept the lag as we have for years.

I myself am in the last category, but am kind of in the second category as well.