Thoughts on damage

[nils]

Skimming through the walls of text on the current active thread I’m feeling the urge to comment on the current damage system. As I see Arman is back in a debating mood I’ll reiterate his words; “Genesis is a descriptive game”, and while the phrase stands true to describe the very nature of the game, it is no longer true for battle descriptors.

Before the first change to white hits, special attacks were all the rage and based on description and subsequent “health enemy” you would eventually get a feel for how effective you were. Then came the new reality where all damage mattered, and where one before more or less ignored the white hits, they suddenly became something to pay attention to and even get a feel for as well.

Certain complaints were made and movement inhibitors were disabled. Though, despite a few hiccups and sudden, violent deaths - all was well, but a consequence of the increased damage was also increased (well, rampant) growth rate. While any reduction to growth would feel like a massive nerf, the right thing was to curb it and such global damage was slashed in half. Effectively slowing down growth significantly, to a snail’s pace some might say. Predictably, it felt like a massive nerf, but ultimately it came with certain side effects – hell, some might call it unintended consequences.

By reducing damage, the time spent in one location increased, effectively making the game “bigger”. While some might applaud this fact, the consequences are less travel, less socializing and less competition resulting in more (relative) growth and lastly (but maybe not essential) less incentive to create more content.

By reducing damage, the game has indeed become less dangerous, and PvP as a whole has taken a massive blow because of it. While some might applaud this fact, the consequences are less conflict (well, the one we want anyway) and.. well, more boredom. PvE has suffered too, as before the latest change people actually died if they for whatever reason didn’t pay attention to what was happening during regular grinds, but also certain mobs could do single hits that would annihilate in a single swipe given the right circumstances.

For me though, the biggest drawback with the current damage reality is that battle descriptions no longer give me a sense of effect, no “feel for” the damage I do (or don’t do) or receive. Any successful hit comes with a descriptor that has the wording of something gruesome happening to my opponent, yet no distinguishable change in my or the target’s health can be observed. Battles, be it special attacks or white hits, are now manifestations of the proverbial “death by a thousand cuts”. Obviously, this effects also carries over to my ability to gauge an unknown weapon's efficacy.

I’ve previously voiced that a better option would have been to reduce the experience gained from each kill rather than slowing down the fights themselves. I still think it’s a better solution than the current, though a middle ground might be even better. I’d wager a 25% increase in damage paired with the equivalent reduction in experience per kill would
• Increase danger overall without going death trap mode
• Increase competition for experience by effectively shrinking the game and increased need to travel between grinds
• Increase players’ ability to assess weapons more accurately/effectively
• Observe discernable effects from both white hits and special attacks

All while retaining current growth rate.

I took the time to revisit this topic now because we’ve been teased with the return of movement hindering abilities, and any changes to global damage or experience modifiers would be much harder to execute after reactivation of said abilities.

Consider it?

[Aria]

Now I think you make a good point, especially at the end, about experience being cut in half. It makes PvP suffer less, and guilds which require PvP, by that effect, also suffer less. (Looking at you FK) PvP for many is an essential part of genesis, and the lower damage makes it more of a “fake” act. You hit each other until one reaches suffering, then you spam west and run away. Even the reenabling of CCs makes less difference than one may think when you can just… wait out the hits. That is triple for minstrels, locks etc. Anyways thats my two copper coins. Back to not playing and doing my homework.

[Arman]

I'm not against that suggestion of increasing damage and decreasing experience gain.

I'm not part of the Balance or Admin team, so you just have my moral support in this. And i'm not sure how best to implement... I'd like to see special attacks be more noticeably meaningful again, Maybe occupational guilds get an increase in combat aid of 25% and global xp decreased by 25%? If we ratchet up white hits by 25% specials become less meaningful. Anyway I'm not really sure what would be the best way to do it... but then I don't have to come up with a solution

[serander]

Not playing as much nowadays, but I totally agree.

Specials are now more like a nice contributor to the overall damage,
but they don't feel special in terms of damage, so I agree on that part.

As for how to handle rampant growth, I'm not sure cutting the exp in relation to kill
would do anything to address this, but it would be more fun for sure to feel that
you were not just slowly chafing down enemies. Ofc, the solo experience versus
team experience is another thing entirely....

Won't derail the thread with my other opinions on exp, stats and growth, but
yeah. Make specials special!

[nils]

While I fully support anything that would favor special attacks, this particular suggestion is isolated to the global modifier governing damage and combat experience. Nothing else. I imagine the actual work required would be limited to adjusting a few values, as opposed to giving every guild in the realm a once-over.

Personally I would like to return to the damage before the halving, I found the quick combat and real danger all around exhilarating. However, the suggestion presented is a slight bump – just enough to align the words of battle and their meaning. I suggested a 25% increase (with an equal reduction in experience gained per kill), but maybe a smaller bump would yield the intended results? Or maybe a larger is needed?

In either case, prior to even considering such a change it would be wise to try to shed light on the repercussions that would follow, “foreseeing” as many as possible, if not all, consequences.

What would happen to heals?
Would we see some guilds becoming more playable, like we did the first time around?
Would other guilds suffer? Gain?
Would it upset the work being done to casters somehow?
Would some/particular mobs become unbeatable?
Would certain grinds become too dangerous (global means mobs get the same increase)?
Would a certain type of play style end up better off? Worse?
Would it affect questing? What about our new players? Would certain quests be off limits for longer?
Would our expectations of a more dangerous game even be met?
Is even a more dangerous game something people want?
Or would it all just result in slower growth in total due to more travel and/or competition?

Thoughts?

[Cherek]

Arman/Serander: Like Nils clarified above, his suggestion wasn't too increase special attack damage only. That would in my opinion be a bad idea. I am a little surprised you'd consider that Arman. I mean, you were after all part of the change to fix the broken system with special attacks being too strong compared to white hits, and you argued for how needed it was in another thread just a few days ago. Yes, I also think it's a bit sad specials don't hit as hard as they used to, since it was fun to wait for your special to hit and see it really make damage. However, if we went through all that trouble to make it _right_, why would we even consider making it _wrong_ again?

[Cherek]

While I fully support anything that would favor special attacks, this particular suggestion is isolated to the global modifier governing damage and combat experience. Nothing else. I imagine the actual work required would be limited to adjusting a few values, as opposed to giving every guild in the realm a once-over.

Personally I would like to return to the damage before the halving, I found the quick combat and real danger all around exhilarating. However, the suggestion presented is a slight bump – just enough to align the words of battle and their meaning. I suggested a 25% increase (with an equal reduction in experience gained per kill), but maybe a smaller bump would yield the intended results? Or maybe a larger is needed?

In either case, prior to even considering such a change it would be wise to try to shed light on the repercussions that would follow, “foreseeing” as many as possible, if not all, consequences.

What would happen to heals?
Would we see some guilds becoming more playable, like we did the first time around?
Would other guilds suffer? Gain?
Would it upset the work being done to casters somehow?
Would some/particular mobs become unbeatable?
Would certain grinds become too dangerous (global means mobs get the same increase)?
Would a certain type of play style end up better off? Worse?
Would it affect questing? What about our new players? Would certain quests be off limits for longer?
Would our expectations of a more dangerous game even be met?
Is even a more dangerous game something people want?
Or would it all just result in slower growth in total due to more travel and/or competition?

Thoughts?

Well, those are the questions + anything unforeseen that we'll never be able to think of before we try it.

I mean, in theory it sounds like a decent idea that probably shouldn't break too much. However, we've been doing a lot of big changes and tweaks the last couple of years. I kinda feel when it comes to combat, perhaps we should just let things settle a bit.

My main concerns are:

Things will die quicker, so most likely growth will be slowed down, since you kill more NPCs faster, but get less XP per kill, grinding areas empty out quicker. While this could be fun for competition, it also means people who are already big benefit more, since it'll probaby be slower to catch up due to more comeptition for prime grinding areas/more travel time, etc. Also, by making NPCs hit harder, it could also mainly benefit the already big. We saw that during the original white hits change period. Our goal was to make the world more dangerous, which worked in a way, but if you were big enough you could overcome that and instead kill much faster. While the suggested XP-reduction removes the risk of another growth-spurt mistake, the other problem remains. That is, we could make it harder for smaller players to grow because the NPCs will beat them up, while the bigger players can deal with it.

A bunch of years ago I would be all for slowing down growth for everyone, however, I feel that ship sailed a while ago, and we've lately been introducing things that we hope will speed up growth for sub-myth players. Mercenaries/driders and insignia are examples of small "catchup-mechanisms". Darkness was already that for evils/neutrals, but now we have a few more ways. Overall, I think that's the way to go to even things out a bit. Make it somewhat easier to grow to myth-ish by offering some more grinding assistance tools that are mainly useful for sub-myth players. You suggested change could do the opposite. Make it easier to grow for the big myths, but harder for those below. I don't think that would be good. Now, I am not sure that is what would happen, it could be fine too, but last time we upped damage, that's what happened. It's very hard to know what the sweet spot is, though.

I am not necessarily against the idea, and it could be a good idea, but should we risk messing with this again? It exhausted many wizards (hello Carnak, Arman, Ckrik, Zizuph to name a few) to deal with the aftermath of the last change, and right now we don't really have the same kind of wizard power to handle a lot of adjustments after a big global chance. We have wizards who produce quite a lot of cool content currently (which is great), but fewer active "advanced" wizards who can deal with the global systems.

New admin Cherek would perhaps say "Hey, no risk, no reward, lets go!". Old Keeper Cherek is more cautious because old Keeper Cherek has been burned before

[Arman]

Arman/Serander: Like Nils clarified above, his suggestion wasn't too increase special attack damage only. That would in my opinion be a bad idea. I am a little surprised you'd consider that Arman. I mean, you were after all part of the change to fix the broken system with special attacks being too strong compared to white hits, and you argued for how needed it was in another thread just a few days ago. Yes, I also think it's a bit sad specials don't hit as hard as they used to, since it was fun to wait for your special to hit and see it really make damage. However, if we went through all that trouble to make it _right_, why would we even consider making it _wrong_ again?

I am not suggesting going back to the pre-changes. That system was fundamentally broken, but part of that fix does allow us to spin combat aid dials for special attacks confident we know how much benefit we are providing.

The issue wasn't that specials were too strong. It was that combat aid for combat specials wasn't being properly allocated because of broken formulas. So if a guild had a hypothetical 100 combat aid allocated in a defensive special, it was 100 combat aid. A guild that was allocated 100 combat aid in an offensive damage special, it actually provided something like 180 combat aid (or more.. i can't remember exactly, but it was hugely substantial). The more powerful the offensive special the more the guild benefited for the allocated combat aid... so offensive magic guilds really benefited heavily. Guilds like the rangers and monks were horribly disadvantaged. We could not accurately allocate combat aid and no guild was properly balanced.

So when the changes were rolled out, all guilds got the actual combat aid they were allocated. White hits were more powerful. Specials were less powerful. But the focus wasn't about nerfing specials, but about making sure they got the combat aid they were actually allocated.

So, making specials more powerful isn't inherently _wrong_, depending on what outcome we want to achieve. The changes that were made allows us to do that with confidence we are correctly allocating the combat aid we intend.

So it really comes down to the outcome we want. I may have misunderstood what Nil's was saying he wanted... and i haven't really thought about only modifying the global modifier governing damage and combat experience. I agree with all your concerns Cherek... and am also very aware the impact of any big global changes, not just on the playerbase but on the wizard implementing it. Burnout is real.

[Alorrana]

Wait.. You guys have a working special.. and do Damage ?!

That would benefit AA greatly !