Anti-PG methods

[Misjbar]

What I meant with the first part is: It would be the most logical/easiest thing to do. But hey, I'm no sword fighter I suppose. Nor someone who would smash people up with axes.
Maybe you are related to one?

[John Irenicus]

Sorry about the misunderstanding John, that was kind of embarrassing.

No problem, it will have been the fault of my crappy englisch.

Wouldn't that result in people powergaming their RP points? I mean, I could just do "#me ashuhg oughasg jough hogh aohuogh hsdouh. Hgouha hodugh ouah odhgoeuh." And gain RP points. Or did you have something else in mind?

No I had not, but today people hit each other 20 minutes without a #me, where is the difference between doing excessive #me's and that? Those people can be found and punished, like it is done with other powergamers.

[Moirear Sian]

If you link intelligence to skillcap / skillgain the base of this calcualtion should be 9,5 int points.
Everything below this value is considered as having a disadvantage.
1 int is practicly brain dead (undead monster use 1 point).

Good point, I do agree.

Level 3 Fighter beating up Level 16 Fighter is already possible and happens everyday.
Mummies for example have attributes in the range of 1 to 3, so a player character that has not distributed his attribute points is equal to them (in case we do not compare equipment).

I think everybody of us has ran more then one time from two monsters attacking him.

Yes, but I specifically meant player character vs. player character. Pre-wipe for example, I saw a situation where a high-skilled character ripped through seven low-skilled ones in a row, not even breaking out into sweat. Works in the movies, but sounds unlikely to me. Just my two cents.


@Blood: Reviving an old combat thread is not bad to seperately deal with the combat imbalances, imo; because the matters here seem to be growing off-topic.

Intelligence should be a small determining factor,

I agree with Gro'bul here. It is impossible to have a good fighter if he has to have a huge intelligence to learn how to smash someone with his axe. Mages already need intelligence for the spells, so they would have a benefit when creating their chars.

Not only that: The path to gaining spells as it was in the last client was immensely difficult and arduous, while a fighter could just get any random weapon and be of "use". Then on the flipside, when a mage got all the spells in mani, the only "over-powering" spell mages had after that is Paralysis (which is too powerful, imo; paralysis should end as soon as the paralyzed character takes any damage). Any other spell was equal if not effectively weaker than a thug swinging dangerous objects at a target.

How about "rp points"? Everytime things you write are longer than 10 letters or so, you gain one rp point for every letter after it. #me's of that lengh give 2 rp points for a letter. When a certain limit of points is reached, you get the bonus. People who like to train the whole day gain skills, and people who like to talk and rp a bit more will gain skills, too. Of course those limits should be high, otherwise you gain those bonus in one long evening. With those bonus, skills can be raised slightly. A rule could be to only raise skills which fit to the character and which are at least usually trained technically, so it fits to the role, too.

Perhaps as a sub-method to #2 that I originally suggested?
What do other people think about this suggestion?

[Keikan Hiru]

Yes, but I specifically meant player character vs. player character. Pre-wipe for example, I saw a situation where a high-skilled character ripped through seven low-skilled ones in a row, not even breaking out into sweat.

Its not very easy to compare player versus player combat, there are a vast amount of variables that come into account at this.
Your above example could also fall into the category of "bad played".
Since every hit (unless blocked, dodged or missed) will cause damage, so the character may have been injured but the player decided to show off and play unharmed because he won in the end.

We have to wait a bit and see how quality, item breaking and maybe limited production will affect the equipment and combat abilities of characters.
With the right idea the seven low-skilled character are able to wear the one high skilled down, I think.

To your "Murder Point" idea:
How do you intent to prevent that I take a second character (may it be my own if I intend to cheat anyway) with me, kill monsters until I reach my cap and from this point on I let the other character deal the leathal blow while I just injure the monster heavily ?
Right now we cannot save who dealed damage to a monster.

[Moirear Sian]

About the PvP situation, yes, it was the category "badly played", just thought I'd mention it.

To your "Murder Point" idea:
How do you intent to prevent that I take a second character (may it be my own if I intend to cheat anyway) with me, kill monsters until I reach my cap and from this point on I let the other character deal the leathal blow while I just injure the monster heavily ?
Right now we cannot save who dealed damage to a monster.

a) It could be stored as temporary data within the character data
- attacking target --> serial number
- damage dealt to target --> numeric value
b) Good thought about how to cheat there. Right now I do not have an idea how to prevent it; but this would fall into the category of rule breaks, and I do think the majority is too lazy to make the efforts to play two characters simultaneously. For the exceptions, this could be controlled by the GMs (so they have something to do after the possibility of "PG" is narrowed down to be equal to "cheating" ) if the user IPs are logged.

[John Irenicus]

Any other spell was equal if not effectively weaker than a thug swinging dangerous objects at a target.

Not really, an iceflame could almost kill a character with low essence and magic res.

[Moirear Sian]

The iceflame was only powerful if the target was paralyzed or lagging. While the "actual" flame of fire was very weak in comparison. Not to mention that if you, say, had a full-fledged fighter with a double-axe attacking a pure mage who was either incapable to use paralyze or too stylish to use it, the mage was damned to lose.

I think magic system discussions would be a good thing for a thread alongside with another thread for discussing the combat system, off of this one.

[Pendar]

I think we have some really great ideas going on here, but.....!
Many of them boil down to over complicating an over complex system. We have a small player base maybe when we have 50-80 people online at any given time and an active player base of a 1000 we will need to reexamine things.
For now how ever the issue of power gaming is actually a small one. I would much rather see a more balanced combat system, A more exicting range of items to craft that make even bakers and tailors vital to the game or other features. If we go after power gaming with a heavy handed approach or even by making a massive change say for example penalties to low intelligence. We please a few "elite" roleplayers who are of course vital to the game. How ever we also alienate a great many 18 dex/str/ag/con characters there are a lot of them, we need them and many of us rp with them daily.
Any online game is always going to favor those with lots of time to put into it. Life and games are seldom fair, and it is that imbalance that also makes the game special. If every one could master being a warrior in a month we would not have icons and hero's in game like Arist,John, Wiergraf,Zeshyrr etc.
Currently the speed of leveling up combat is not displeasing to me, Pendar is decent in combat and some players who have clocked a lot less game time are better than him. It takes time but not that much time, I dont have a huge problem with it.

That said my humble solution to pging specifically with regards to the combat system are as follows.
Weapon speciliastion- Swords,Axes,Ranged,Concussion,Blunt

Swords: A higher Parry ability,slightly more speed and some what less damage,increased acuracy.

Axes. Lower parry,slower speed,Higher damage,decreased hit ratio.
Ranged,No parry "defence would be worked out via dodge ability",Fastest weapon,low damage/high chance of criticals,average acuracy.

Concussion,average parry,average speed, Damage dependant on armor,but a percent chance to stun "which works as paralyze". Same accuracy as axes.

Blunt/staffs. High Parry, good speed, damage same as swords, accuracy same as swords, How ever parry -25% for every enemy attacking the wielder.

Perhaps more could be added.
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A character may only specialize/learn 2 weapon classes; He picks them when a character is created marking one as a specialist skill which he skills up in at double the usual rate. So in 40 hours training he could master it theoretically. What we have achieved through this though is every warrior should have a weakness. My suggestion was not planned it was all of the top of my head how ever it shows that if every weapon was weak against another. We would in essence escape the untouchable warrior syndrome.
Then the skill would climb fast until master for example when it would slow drastically so we could still have the great warriors emerge with time.
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Another possible method is to have levels of combat which can only be taught by other players make combat rp based find a teacher and he will when you accumulated enough skill..Iniate you into the next level. You may only iniate a level per month, giving you a month to skill up at that level. How ever parry and dodge may still be trained regardless of level so warriors wishing to train extensively "those who rp driven soldiers" can still keep working even if they can’t "level up with there mentor yet".

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Another idea is to take the skill cap level further, If you raise your skill to such a degree. You have to spend an hour in game before you can raise skills again. Make the skills rise fast and then cap off for a "long" period of time. This will mean even people who dont log on often can skill up and those who spend hours in game will be encouraged to rp more than train.
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At the very base let us not look to complicate power gaming away, let us not look to alienate skill based players. If we want to do that then lust us indeed do away with combat and just have a graphical adventure using #me's for combat. Heck I would still play...how ever i dont think many people would like that idea I certainly dont.
So let us seek ways to make skill gaining possible, Assure people need 3-5 months to create a master. As I do feel players/characters should have be known faces and parts of the world which in turn takes time. Before they can challenge the great and established warriors. While at the same time making sure the game remains fun and accessible. With many great features and less complications
Brian

[Bloodhearte]

I can see what you mean on "overcomplicating" a system, but I think combat is a fairly important aspect in Illarion. It would be fun for players to try and figure it out, and interesting for them to have more individual "styles" of fighting without automatically using an overused combination (sword and shield, or two handed axe) for an advantage.

For characters to have individualism in their fighting, something of a balance has to be found so one doesn't conquer all. Sian's Rock/Paper/Scissors comes into mind.

I'll bump up the old combat system thread now.

[Pendar]

By over complication, I meant more let us not begin to have intellegence count to highly in a warriors ability to learn fighting.
Let us not try and find complex ways to limit people skilling up quickly. As skill based players and power gamers will find the fastest way to skill up possible on any system. So all extra complications do is make it a pain the ass for people trying to approach the game in a balanced manner.
By all means lets spice up the combat by adding strengths and weakness, new twists and other fun things.
Brian

[Gro'bul]

I think these are anti-dumb as a rock warrior measures. My warrior is balanced in all features except for one, he has a severe weakness, which is inherent to his background and why his sect of humans dislike and shun this one thing. Intelligence is essential to learning anything, and in fact it will take unbalanced chars longer to skill up, but in the end they will be more powerful with equal weapons and skills than the average chars. So, in essense the less uber-oriented your char is, the easier it is to max him as a warrior but he will be less powerful. SO, uber-warriors take longer to max than an average warrior. I think this is a great thing, so people who want to make an average fighter doesn't have to worry about fighting as a peon in an army and losing much skill. However the uber warrior, who will likely be a leader or basically mind controlled by a more intelligent mage or shaman, will have the respect to recruit and command. This way, people who want to play heroes, will have to play them long term in order to get them to hero status. This is a damn fine thing if I say so, this way everyone could have a rather inconsequencial fighting character for battles, and enjoy this one aspect of the game thoroughly.