C'mon CODOG... say or do something!

[Mad_Bombardier]

PS. 1.5 Handed Fighting... LOL... if I had another margarita last night at dinner, I would be explaining to the QA manager this morning why I changed all the feats names and descriptions. "Improved 1.5 Weapon Fighting" *chuckles* You cracked me up. I wish that guy at DDO1Liners was still making his comic. He would have a field day with that.

Glad I could help.

Seriously, though. Even in PnP, it's "1.75 Weapon Fighting" until you reach Epic and get Perfect TWF bringing it back up to 2:1 attacks/round ratio.

7:4 attacks/time ratio for a Fighter/Ranger becomes 6:4 when you consider the slower TWF animation. For a 3/4 BAB class like Bard or Rogue, you don't have access to Greater TWF yet, so are stuck at 6:4 slowed to ~4.5:4. From a DPS standpoint, there's basically no reason for a Bard/Rogue to even bother.

I was really hoping that you wouldn't add Superior TWF/5th attack and that Bards/Rogues could catch up by level 16. Sadly, you are including Superior and Bards/Rogues are behind again. More feats to spend to get little benefit, and locked out from ever getting Superior TWF (BAB+16 required). Fighters/Rangers will be 9:5 slowed to ~[7.5-8]:5 (perhaps slightly faster ratio than now) and Bards/Rogues will be 7:5 slowed to ~[5.5-6]:5. But, neither are at the full 7:4 (1.75x) ratio of PnP. Will we ever catch up? Is there any hope for TWF attack rate/DPS? Or must we rely on shared weapon attributes and other bonuses to eke out a living?

Edit: /doubletake. Am I reading the above correctly?

With two weapon fighting,

Attack 1 has RH attack hook.
Attack 2 has RH, LH attack hook.
Attack 3 has RH attack hook
Attack 4 has RH attack hook
Attack 5 has RH, LH attack hook.

Improved TWF adds a LH attack hook to attack 3.
Greater TWF adds a LH attack hook to moving attack 1 (weird that it doesn't for standing... I'll be checking with design) and LH to attack 4.
Superior TWF adds another RH attack to attack 5.

TWF#5 will get right and left hook. Then, Superior TWF will add another right hook at highest bonus! 10:5 ratio, even with slower TWF animation means close to PnP 1.75x attacks. Oh, happy day!

[Mad_Bombardier]

People keep telling me that I wasted a feat on Greater Two Weapon fighting (maybe I made one of the 'large number of bad choices you can make'?) as they say I don't actually get seven attacks - but I count them and I do appear to get seven and the wiki confirms this...

Garth, see my post above. You do indeed get 7 attacks, but the TWF animation is slower. The net result is about 1.5x attacks of a sword and board guy in the same time.

[Vinos]

You have officially surpassed my four year old in questions per day! I'm not sure whose are harder to answer. This morning in the kitchen while getting the girls ready for school this conversation was overheard in my household.

Audrey: "Can you get mommy pregnant so that she has a puppy?" I snarfed my latte up my nose when she asked that one. My wife won't appreciate my answer. ( She reads my posts! )

Codog: "Technically, it is probably possible with the marvels of modern science."

And for once I can say, I already answered your question in another reply on this thread. Seriously though, a mentor of mine used to say that the only stupid question is the one left unasked. I especially appreciate your efforts to clarify things that are ambiguous in our game. I'll be looking through the feat descriptions sometime to see if we can clarify them some more.

Best regards,

Codog

Best Dev ever. Thanks for communicating.

[tihocan]

I wrote this last night, but I lost power in a thunderstorm. Luckily I write responses in notepad and save often.

Good habit. I guess I'm lucky too then

(...) This left systems design with a troublesome set of animations to wrap D&D combat and advancement around.

Big thanks again for sharing all this. Now I understand much better why it's not as easy as it seems. It's still a bit disappointing to learn that not much can be done, but who knows... maybe in the long-term someone will figure out a solution?

This being said, we often supplement these weapon styles with glancing blows and feats that add more attack hooks for offhand and glancing blows.(..)

Yup, I was more worried about discrepancies within the same weapon style (with the specific weapons I cited previously).

Thanks again, it was great to receive such a detailed reply!

Edit: I'd be curious to see what happens if you speed up a very little bit the greatsword animation, and add a very short interval between the greataxe swings (in the hope of bringing their swing/sec rate closer). Can you do it on Risia and let us experiment it? (I guess it's a no, but hehe, I tried)

[MysticTheurge]

The unfortunate truth to this is that when decisions were being made about the aesthetic look and feel of combat, not enough regard for the intellectual property and how advancement works in D&D was taken into account.

As depressing as this is, it's good to actually hear someone say it.

[Rog]

Hey CoDog you rock man i think what your doing with this thread should be the model for the entire dev team. I know the you have family and a real life and so does the rest of your team but what your doing is great and i ty for it. I believe by knowing what problems you have in fixing the bugs we can provide you with great feedback and any other dev that would share there problems with us that we can in turn make your life easier and more productive and get a better game which makes everyone happy except the true blue flamers they will never be happy
lunarsong
silentfoot
oakwrath
shortii
allon
swordsponge
p.s my spelling sucks

[Missing_Minds]

Thanks so much for telling us how the animations were coded and about the weapon attacks. It really explains a lot of things now, and can help several of us actually give better details in bug reports.

Also, your daughter about made me spit my drink out with her question as well. That is one precious kid you have there.

[Club'in]

While we're on the subject of animations, someone brought up a point earlier, and it tied in again as to the kiting aspect of ranger fighting.

It can be very frustrating to try and time switching weapons to melee, after popping an incoming monster with a few ranged shots. I think this contributes to rangers feeling the need to continue kiting. I would like to suggest that two things be performed immediately, interrupting all animations and attack sequences; switching weapons or weapon sets, and shield blocking. I almost never see melee fighters using their shields. And it's partly because of the animation sequences. You're right clicking away, maybe strafing a little bit. And you see the giant rearing back for a big swing, but there is no way you're gonna get that shield up in a timely fashion because your character is trying to complete its animation sequence. So why bother? This is especially crippling for us ranger types, cause the animation sequence we're talking about is the reload animation. I think that ought to be immediately interrupted by the weapon switch command. Those two things would go a long way to enhancing our fighting experience.

[Spectralist]

Those two things would go a long way to enhancing our fighting experience.

I agree entirely. Especially about shield blocking, but especially about swapping during reload animations

[NJDaniels]

This affects repeaters. No worries friend.

Codog

Ok Codog,

I did some speed tests. I bought a stack of regular bolts and went to a nice secluded tavern where no server lag could bog me down and tried a few things... You are correct in that the Black Dragon Armour works with Repeaters, thank goodness! But what about Haste? I thought that was supposed to work on ranged attacks?

Without the armour on and without Haste I shot 100 bolts in 1:06 (this is with of course all my feats and BA of an 8 Fighter / 6 Rogue).

With Haste I shot 100 bolts in 1:06.

With the armour on and without Haste I shot 100 bolts in 55 seconds.

With Haste I shot 100 bolts in 55 seconds.

So clearly Haste isn't working on Heavy Repeaters. I can't use Light, so I can't declare it doesn't work on them.

Any thoughts?

[MysticTheurge]

I can't use Light, so I can't declare it doesn't work on them.

Anyone can use any weapons in the game (barring race or alignment restrictions). Non-proficiency merely confers a -4 penalty on your attack roll.

[mocat]

Anyone can use any weapons in the game (barring race or alignment restrictions). Non-proficiency merely confers a -4 penalty on your attack roll.

As far as I know, this doesn't apply to repeaters.

Non-proficient means you shoot one bolt - reload - shoot one -reload - etc.

At least that was how it was the last time I checked about 3 months ago.

[Missing_Minds]

Anyone can use any weapons in the game (barring race or alignment restrictions). Non-proficiency merely confers a -4 penalty on your attack roll.

Mocat is right on this one, MT. Non proficient means you get only 1 shot.

[MysticTheurge]

Non-proficient means you shoot one bolt - reload - shoot one -reload - etc.

Wow, who knew.

[maddmatt70]

Ok Codog,

I did some speed tests. I bought a stack of regular bolts and went to a nice secluded tavern where no server lag could bog me down and tried a few things... You are correct in that the Black Dragon Armour works with Repeaters, thank goodness! But what about Haste? I thought that was supposed to work on ranged attacks?

Without the armour on and without Haste I shot 100 bolts in 1:06 (this is with of course all my feats and BA of an 8 Fighter / 6 Rogue).

With Haste I shot 100 bolts in 1:06.

With the armour on and without Haste I shot 100 bolts in 55 seconds.

With Haste I shot 100 bolts in 55 seconds.

So clearly Haste isn't working on Heavy Repeaters. I can't use Light, so I can't declare it doesn't work on them.

Any thoughts?

After looking at this - I have to test it with a bow. I should really consider getting the black dragon armor for my ranged character is the unescapeable conclusion.

[maddmatt70]

After reading Codog's explanations - it seems to me that you basically have to have good first person shooter skills in order to be a quality ranged player. I have never been a first person shooter gamer so I tend to have the auto attack on with ranged (never with my melee). It would take quite a learning curve for me to perfect mouse view first person shooter style combat. Considering that even if I perfect this style ranged combat is kind of gimped it leads to the question for me of why play ranged other then pure enjoyment of ranged combat. I think that i have a good "dps ranged build", but who has fallen into the I use bows generally only when multishot is ready and melee otherwise with my ranged fighter.

Thank you very much Codog.

Norg

[Kalanth]

I gave the FPS style of ranged combat a try in a PVP Arena test. Using the Capture the Flag arena of the Quick foot Hideout, I had a friend run right to left and left to right while I remained stationary and attempted to lead the target. I found that I received a To Hit Roll on only 25% of the shots fired. Assuming human error on some of those shots, that is still a dismally small number out of a stack of 100.

I tried this again while taking advantage of Shot on the Run and another stack of 100 arrows. My results changed slightly, again factoring in human error, I got a roll 17% of the time. Either my skills are way off base, or the physics detection was not running up to par.

Finally I tried these tests with the opponent auto targeted and using my personal rate of fire (not auto attack). While standing still I hit each time he switched direction at the ends (translates to roughly 14% of the time) while each shot trailed dismally behind while he was running. When I ran along with shot on the run I received a roll on 94% of the shots because I was largely next to the opponent.

Pretty much, the chances of hitting without the assistance of the system feel so dismally small that it is pretty much without point to manually control the targeting.. I don't see why we can't just change the auto targeted trajectory to fire in front (lead) as opposed to behind (trail) the target.

** Give or take 2% in the results as I left the documentation at home and I am at work right now **

[Lorien_the_First_One]

I wrote this last night, but I lost power in a thunderstorm. Luckily I write responses in notepad and save often.

Bullet #1 - Ah.. yes. These bullet points above were very much my response to being handed these animations as well. Ideally speaking, if I could redo all the animations in the game for combat, I would certainly change a lot of things. I don't know if anybody has noticed, but our avatars skeletons are unique in height, width, and other dimensions. Because the D&D intellectual property is very specific about anatomical details of its races, we couldn't do cheaty art budget saving features like avatar scaling. So every weapon swing in the game is animated for 9 different avatars. Given 11 different melee attack swings (2 mobile attack, 5 standing attacks, 1 sneak attack, cleave, great cleave, and whirlwind) times 9 different avatars times 7 weapon styles, you can see that this adds up quite quickly. .

Thanks for all the feedback in this thread Codog....Not only is the communication nice, hearing the behinds the scenes stuff showing that you are concerned with the same things we are, and then learning why its not easy to fix, is really helpful.

I can see from you post why reanimating every swing would be a bit overwhelming. I can also see why practicality made the dagger swing faster, but there are still some solutions...

Don't reanimate everything, reanimate just the worst of the bunch to bring it closer to the rest. Falchon comes to mind for the 2handers and for the dagger, you could just add a florish/feint animation before each stab. (Really, when fighting with daggers against a great axe you would just jab, you'd be doing some foot/handwork anyway)

I'm currious also about your comments about the limitations on bodyshape/size you were given. There have been a number of threads asking for customization, is this the reason you can't do it? Are you actually not allowed by Wizards to have fat elves, skinny dwarfs, gangly humans, etc?

[Borror0]

You have officially surpassed my four year old in questions per day! I'm not sure whose are harder to answer.

Not the first time I've been told this one.

And for once I can say, I already answered your question in another reply on this thread. Seriously though, a mentor of mine used to say that the only stupid question is the one left unasked.

Yep, I have the same saying... I think it's quite obvious.

I especially appreciate your efforts to clarify things that are ambiguous in our game. I'll be looking through the feat descriptions sometime to see if we can clarify them some more.

Yay!! One fight won, but not the war.

Seriously, sorry to ask so many questions Codog, but when you try to inform others and try to be 100% accurate... you realise there is so many things we don't know about. I'd challenge anyone to edit a spell page on and wiki and be 100% sure of all he'd say. Heck, even some buffs are confusing!

[Borror0]

I was really hoping that you wouldn't add Superior TWF/5th attack and that Bards/Rogues could catch up by level 16. Sadly, you are including Superior and Bards/Rogues are behind again. More feats to spend to get little benefit, and locked out from ever getting Superior TWF (BAB+16 required).

I've always wondered why they haven't changed the BAB requirements...

In PnP, you get additionnal attacks at lBAB 6, 11, 16 and 20. For this reason, most BAB requirement are 6, 11 and 16.

However, they changed the BAb at which we get extra attacks to 1, 5, 10, 15 and 20.

For thsi reason, the new BAB should be 5, 10 and 15 from a logical point of view, also, that would allow bards and rogues to get the feat!

I remember a dev saying it would be the case of STWF and that it would have a BAB of prereq 15... anyone else do remember this?