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Limb Damage

AhkanAhkan Member Posts: 2,375 ✭✭✭✭✭
Limb damage is popping up in a lot of threads and it's actually gotten 'better' as of late for a few reasons. I figured we can bicker about it here.

Limb damage has always been awesome. Limb damage is a time bomb affliction that has a payout of at least 6s of salve balance that can stop standing, attacking and parrying. With the way the game has developed, you can't stop the limb damage train. I'm going to break an arm, a leg, or an arm and a leg at will and there is little to nothing that you can do to stop it. The only sure fire way is to keep me from hitting one limb for 60 seconds. That's not going to work because there's another arm or a leg I can run the same game on and you can't block both. This gets more complicated when capable people can track 2,3,4 limbs at a time and set up double (12s), triple (18s), and quad-breaks (24s) set ups. The reason this is is because the affliction doesn't manifest itself until the limb damage threshold, which is predetermined. The offense has 100% control of when and under what circumstances that happens.

Another problem you run into with limb damage is that limb armor is pretty useless now. Back in the day, when people could hinder and push an offense the 5-6s limb armor bought you could be put to use keeping the attacker from attacking. Since we've nerfed all manners of this approach, limb armor really only buys you seconds before you're screwed anyways. Leather limb armor may as well not be a thing. Chain limb armor is kind of ho-hum and plate armor makes an already annoying, tanky class more annoying and more tanky.

You can capitalize on limb damage as almost every class and 'good' fighters have always been able to work it into their repertoire. The bar for this has recently been lowered with 1/3 and 2/3 damage messages. It's so much easier to track now and this is a good thing.  Limb damage just gets crazy in teams. There's just not enough salve balance to handle 2-3 people breaking a limb each. 

Building classes around this mechanic is, in my opinion, a pretty bad idea. For two reasons. One: The defender can't stop it. The way the mechanism is designed, I can't cure it until it's too late. If the setup is right, I'm dead and there was nothing I could have done to stop it. This is a bad mechanic in my eyes for the same reason bards are dumb. The fight was really pre-determined and all my opponent had to do was cookie cutter me into a setup I really couldn't stop. Second, if we make the limb damage set up to exorbitant, you never see the kill mechanic used. Triple bbt much?

First, I think we need to step back and look at the way weapons deal limb damage.
1) Sabres doing an appreciable amount of limb damage is just silly.
2) Limb damage needs to be scaled BACK on slashing weapons. All of them. No exceptions.
3) The x2 blunt damage buff probably needs to go away and exist on the high end of the damage spectrum.
4) Some skills just don't need to do limb damage at all.
5) I'm sort of loathe to say this, but I think we need to port pre-restoration into Imperian in some incarnation.

Basically, the BASIC mechanic behind pre-restoration is that you can apply restoration to a limb before it's actually 'broken' and it will cure some, or all of the limb damage up to that point. I'm not sure how we'd implement it, but I think you could the case that for 6s, you can cure 2/3 and reset it to 0. Before you start crying, this forces people to use toxins better and penalize people for pre-restoring (6s of salves is 2-3 attacks). This mechanic gives the defender some way to INTELLIGENTLY cure something they know is coming. If Bad-Warden is only hitting my right leg...I can pre-restore and avoid the break/sleep combo and switch my parry. This forces him to realize I have 3 other limb targets, or keep hitting into my limb which he'll never break because he's bad.

Comments

  • IluvIluv Member Posts: 703 ✭✭✭✭
    I think doing 1-4, without 5, would be a feasible way to see positive change.
  • AzefelAzefel Member Posts: 730 ✭✭✭✭
    Restoration is only 6s with butisol
  • AhkanAhkan Member Posts: 2,375 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Yah, I left it that way most non-monks can butisol on break.
  • RynokRynok Member Posts: 19
    Thread died two weeks ago? Wish I saw it earlier. I agree with Ahkan though, limb breaks have always been a pain, both when I was being on offense and defense (in previous classes).
    Even though I love the new 33% and 66% stuff (using math skillz you can pretty accurately guess when a limb is going to break before it actually breaks), I think the limb breaking classes would benefit more from an overhaul to the mechanic in general. No ideas on what that might look like, but preferably something with a lower learning curve than limb breaks currently have. While anyone can hit a limb, being good at them is a challenge. Setting up double+ breaks, getting through parry/shieldparry with minimal impact to offense, knowing when to feint and when to just target another limb and wait...it starts to add up. Combine that with the fact that limb breaking isn't ALL you do, and it can become quite a chore.
  • AzefelAzefel Member Posts: 730 ✭✭✭✭
    I'm sure it'll be in the AUTOFFENCE ON thing that should be here soon.
  • AgeranuAgeranu Member Posts: 16
    Ahkan said: Before you start crying, this forces people to use toxins better and penalize people for pre-restoring (6s of salves is 2-3 attacks). 
    How would you implement this with monks, who don't have toxins to use? I forsee monks never being able to kill with smart pre-restore, their damage nowadays isn't enough to get close to a pure damage kill.
  • AhkanAhkan Member Posts: 2,375 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Monks kill in games with pre-restore. Aetolia has classes that kill with limb damage and they have pre-restore. Of course, they're more developed and have some better skills built to capitalize on limb damage when it succeeds.

    Right now, against a smart person the only cure is running and not getting hit for 60s.
  • SeptusSeptus Member, Beta Testers Posts: 781 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Monk in Aetolia is way stupider than our monk, to be fair. For some reason they thought back damage should be cured by time not restoration (so some trollbot monk bbting you off guarding is actually potentially going to kill you, god forbid they actually break a leg), and their damage is ridiculously excessive for unprepped bbt/etc.

    Also kai strike stores limb damage like numbness, then the limb takes it all at the end. (To me this always looked like a "ok pre restore, let's pretend that didn't happen for this class", but I'm a cynic.)

    I.E. their monk is what our monk would look like if classleads never got rejected.

  • AhkanAhkan Member Posts: 2,375 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I was more hinting at werewolves/wherebears from aetolia. Their mechanics seem cooler than monk in achaea, which was always a bag of hax.
  • IluvIluv Member Posts: 703 ✭✭✭✭
    Hopefully we can address the issue of limb damage with the classlead beta. With ciguatoxin and rune changes, damage and limbs will also need to be looked at.
  • MathiausMathiaus Member Posts: 1,039 ✭✭✭✭
    Ahkan said:
    I was more hinting at werewolves/wherebears from aetolia. Their mechanics seem cooler than monk in achaea, which was always a bag of hax.


    I was always mad you couldn't be a werebear in Skyrim :(

    @Iluv I'm hoping so too.

    image
  • XeronXeron Member Posts: 83 ✭✭✭
    Lycanthropes get around pre-resto by just having abilities that are faster than salve balance that automatically raise the level of the current limb break, i.e. mending break becomes level 1 resto break, if uncured level 1 resto break then becomes level 2 resto break. They obviously have further stuff to capitalise off of those breaks, but they basically made that class with the full intent of ignoring pre-resto entirely and making it irrelevant.

    That's pretty much how most of the classes work, if you just simplify it down into one-sentence statements. They either have something that allows them to ignore the fact that pre-resto exists, or they do such absurd limb damage that pre-resto barely matters in the first place, or pre-resto has made them entirely irrelevant and unable to kill anything with how they were originally designed, so the playerbase/coders are trying to redesign the class because of it.
  • IluvIluv Member Posts: 703 ✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2013
    First order of business in my mind is to make limb armour (leather chain) worth wearing and to make removing and wearing limb armour impossible under either the selfharm timer or limb having damage.

    Second thing is perhaps to apply longer balances on repeated shielding within a certain time frame. A person who shields multiple times within x seconds has an increased EQ cost of .x seconds for each subsequent shield. This change addresses more than just limb professions, but all. It would promote smarter use of turtling and allow the offensive party some momentum. Not I'm fully behind this idea yet, but I wanted to put it out here to hear some ideas.
  • AhkanAhkan Member Posts: 2,375 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2013
    (The incorrect stuff Xeron said)
    -Lykes don't get around pre-resto. They force you to choose mending/restoration.  If you ignore restoration, they eventually damage your limb. If you pre-restore, they rend into mending and break from there. It forces a choice and a smart player capitalizes on your arguably poor choice in limb curing priority. You deal with these bad boys by slows, hinders, smarter parrying, and turtling...two of which we're removing from Imperian.

    -Also, there's no class that fits the mechanic you describe in the second paragraph. Monks get kai strike (delayed break).  Teradrim force a decision between mending and resto and play to the decision. I guess you can vivisect on an indorani through warrior. Honestly your remark seems pretty unreliable. I know they're redesigning a lot of classes to be more thematic with the game and less legacy from Achaea. 

    Within the context of Imperian, we're removing the slows and hinders that we use to slow down limb classes. Parry isn't really a viable option because of feints and the fact that you'll be off balance a certain amount of time that a smart monk can work in combinations. Unless that limb goes unhit for 60s, that limb breaking is really at the behest of the player pressuring that limb. If at any point you get equal pressure on both limbs, you're sort of screwed. This gets really important when you're looking at things like incendiary, vivisect with the behead backup, breaks into bbt, lartosis, cirisosis (sp), and quarter. Pre-restore allows the limb damage mechanic to be avoidable while also allowing the attacker the option and/or pressure to build a variety of offenses around. Aka, it rewards skillful play both offensively and defensively, something that is currently lacking in limb damage classes. 1,2,3, break, win. 

    To be fair, Imp would be a weird environment to introduce pre-restoration. A large part of the limb damage problem is based in which classes are limb damage classes. Aside from knights, they're all in AM. Also, aside from knights, almost everyone is relegated to crap limb armor that does 0 against limb damage. Which is another avenue you could take in addressing the problem.

    Also, Iluv is spot on with limb armor.
  • SarriusSarrius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 1,682 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Somebody said the classlead beta is where we will fix this.

    Who wrote the limb damage classlead?

    I imagine we need to keep our changes and testing constrained to the areas changed.
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
  • SarriusSarrius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 1,682 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Also, I'm more in favor of a limb damage overhaul as opposed to some sort of sneaky, small fix. I think one of Lusternia's few successes is their limb damage, but that would be a very extensive project.

    For those unaware, limb damage as we know it does not exist there..Instead, you damage a part of their body and depending on the sustained damage post hit, it applies some afflictions. The afflictions are limited to what you have in your skillset. Knights have multiple options of primary specializations, and each spec has a theme for its affs (Blademaster is heavy bleeding, hinders, and tendons or artery damage, Bonecrusher is a mace spec that does a lot of salve affs and light herb pressure that eventually spirals in to bashing your brains out, etc).. as you learn your skill, you gain access to these afflictions. You can tell the game not to apply certain ones on a strike, theoretically allowing for clever play and tracking to optimize which you apply.

    The way you cure your limbs away from these aff thresholds is by applying health elixir to your limbs. AM's classes are far too damaging for that solution, so I'd ideally just say restoration cures some damage if no affs are present for it to cure.
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
  • KhizanKhizan Member Posts: 2,648 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Limb armor is essentially a non-issue. All it does is give the timebomb a slightly longer fuse while doing nothing to solve the actual problem.

    The problem is that the cumulative nature of limb damage rewards degenerate combat strategies that make a 20/80 offense/turtle split an effective use of your balances, and that will take a major revamp to handle.

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • SeptusSeptus Member, Beta Testers Posts: 781 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Pre restore would actually be a pretty huge buff for aff knights that afflict intelligently. A lot of the time I break one or two limbs in knight specifically for that restoration balance rather than going for the dsb (since you can stack calo into a ton on top of that or whatever). It'd screw with monk/pred (because no secondary threat for pre restoring early outside of perhaps cirisosis, although not really since no sure fire way to stick the butisol and 4 s shouldn't really be enough to build the necessary affs assuming you're also stacking limb damage which is a given for the cenario). Rangers would require you to use toxins unlike now, but they'd potentially gain the same benefits as knights (if not more so, because they hit harder and faster).

    Limb armour should definitely happen. I'm pretty anti pre restore (mostly because I think its a mess in the games I've seen it implemented in), but I don't think it'd be a monumental rebalancing project if it did go in. Preds, monks, everyone else toxins or some other form of salve aff (outrider/priest) for duel pressure.

  • IluvIluv Member Posts: 703 ✭✭✭✭
    Khizan said:
    Limb armor is essentially a non-issue. All it does is give the timebomb a slightly longer fuse while doing nothing to solve the actual problem.

    The problem is that the cumulative nature of limb damage rewards degenerate combat strategies that make a 20/80 offense/turtle split an effective use of your balances, and that will take a major revamp to handle.
    I agree that a major revamp is needed to change the timebomb nature of limb professions, but as for right now, we don't seem to have a clear idea how or when this revamp will take place and in which direction. For right now, making limb armour less useless will still be a good thing and most likely be a good thing still when changes take place.
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