So, there has been talk and adjustments to Daggers and Rapiers, how about some of the other Weapon skills get updated or fixed?

[Nikodemus_Blackwood 1]

Like the title says. I have read through most of the Weapons and their Sword Arts and have noticed that the main issue is that a portion of them have strange SA's that provide 10x1 or 14x1, and then others have no better than a 6x2 or 7x1. Now, while those with the 10x1 and 14x1 have only 1 or two AoE or Stun moves that are kinda meh and the 6x2 and 7x1's have 2-4 AoE and Stun moves, it is still not really balanced.

 

Case in point, a One Handed Straight Sword should be less powerful and devastating compared to a Two Handed Straight Sword since it has more reach, width of blade, and momentum generated by weight and strength of the user swinging the weapon. Same with goes with OHBA and THBA. Then we have Warhammers which are only one handed, and should be either the most devastating as they are the heaviest weapons and are the hardest hitting, and should either be Two Handed only, or have both a one hand and two hand variant, with the two hand being better. Any real game will make the two hand variant of weapon use be stronger, more powerful, and able to output more damage, but cost more stamina, or in this case energy.

 

I think a good portion of the Weapons Sword Arts need a re-look and to be overhauled to be balanced, but worth it. As a player, I am noticing more people either leaning to Raiper, Dagger, or Spear, while Axes of either variant, any sword, warhammers, and other off brand weapons are left behind because they cannot keep up to snuff, even with a fully spec'd build, damage buffs, etc.

 

Thanks for listening.

[Lowenthal 0]

I am in agreement. The sword Art's are grossly uneven (ye' be a fool not to pick dagger or whip)

The weapons back in the day were merely cosmectics, used to just be a cool kid. But now, they have stats. Unbalanced ones at that. I would say I would fix them, but I'm sure I'd just muck them up even further. But I do know that with the current simple multiplication SA system, it'll be hard to keep weapons balanced. A dagger should do less damge per hit, but hit a lot more and use less energy. A GreatSword should deal a great arc of damage, but slowly and taking a ton of energy. With the current system, that's impossible as SA's are measured by your Skill's Power and the amount of time you hit with said SA.

If you Nick, or anyone else have any ideas on how to fix the entirety of the system, I am more than willing to lend a hand and help with it. I can't promise that whatever we make will become what we use, but it will be fun none the less ^-^

[Opal 0]

I feel as though Katanas being an Unlockable Weapon type should have a bit more 'Umph!' in them as well. But I also agree that the sword arts, while a neat system to use, could really use some work and maintenance. At the current moment though, I think staff and I am meaning only TWO GMs at the moment, have a LOT on their plate to deal with. Mack is running around RPIng, and making adjustments to help accommodate PvP and PKing, not to mention they also have to tackle the long list of rewritten rules that needs to be done as well. 

So I think staff in general have a lot on their hands at the moment. As a Community though, if we can bring some people together on this and tackle it one Weapon at a time and present staff with a new change, perhaps that will help alleviate some of stress they might be dealing with already. Instead of asking them to fix it, we should get together as a community and help with getting ideas out there. @Takao Spoke with him on Skype and we were talking about how Sword Arts are just duplicates of attacks of other weapons, weapons themselves have no identities of their own making them desirable only for power output only which is a problem. 

So! Maybe we can get a group PM together and start working on edits ourselves and present something down the line for staff to look at. Takao always has great ideas when it comes to these things; TAKAO 2016!!! 

[Nikodemus_Blackwood 1]

I think Opal has the right Ideal. getting a couple of us who can work on each Weapon one at a time, and work out a new idea would be best. I'd be more than happy to be in that as I have been mulling it over and agree with everything said. Some weapons are just to broken, others should be better, and some are just meh. It is an issue we have seen being brought up more and more, so I'm totally down working with others to fix it. One thing I would like to note already that some weapons like the two handed ones, and the One Handed War Hammer need to have a balance of 1 or 2 AoE or Stuns, with 2 or 3 good high damage dealing sword arts, but ones that cost a large amount of EN. while others should cost a normal amount.

[Rain 0]

I most definitely agreed with Opal. The Katana should seriously have more kick if we're sacrificing a one of our 9 skill slots. Also one way to change the damage a bit could be changing base damage on weapons also. Daggers can have a base of 1 while a 2 handed axe can have like 4 or something. That would mean changing sword arts too of course to balance the damages given out. but yeah. It would give more variety between weapon choices and it'd make more sense. A giant hammer vs a small dagger and they both deal the same base damage? pfffttt

Oh! and I'm most definitely in if you guys are grouping up for reforming the SAs. :D I love thinking of ways to use and abuse weapons. :p

Edited June 7, 2016 by Rain

[Mack 0]

@Oikawa, would you care to weigh in on this?

[XWuZHeAR 0]

well you know uh Martial arts by itself could still be viable if the energy costs went down as like a sort of hey it take less effort to use your mits versus a big heavy sword and also HP is wayyyy to low per level with the maximum damage that could outputted by some sword arts.

[Takao 0]

The idea I had for balancing weapon skills involved reworking the SAs, and giving them all unique traits and abilities. Daggers did less damage on its own but got large boosts when attacking from stealth/criticals, war hammers did bonus damage to high mitigation and less damage to lower mitigation, things like that. Most of that stuff is in a spreadsheet document I have going.

I do like the thought of giving weapons base damage values though. That could be something fun to play around with.

[Kalesh 0]

tl;dr it'd be cool if criticals differed by weapon, damage and energy cost differed by weapon,

I can't pretend that I have any ideas to overhaul the system and totally redo it in a way that would benefit everybody, but things being more unique would not be bad to me. I mean, I am using claws, the only weapon with an actually unique trait. I won't go into how this trait would... become less spectacular once you invest in a certain skill, but I do think that it's strange that ALL weapons critical hit the same way. Daggers ordinarily do lesser damage to other weapons but have higher critical chances or critical damages, an attribute CLAWS got. Similarly heavy weapons benefit less from critical in favor of base damage. Speed/weight could probably be simulated with higher energy costs for greatswords and less for a longsword. Naturally with greatsword having higher 'per hit' damage. Much like how criticals all do the same damage across the board, so do weapon skills. Rank 2 for greatsword and straight sword grants the same boost of +1 damage. Nevermind that mods are 100% identical across every weapon.

It's also a little tough for me to advocate for the use of a two-handed weapon. Sure, they might do 2 or maybe 3 more base damage which is pretty nice, but when SP levels can only get higher and higher, at what point will every single one-handed weapon user have Block using a good quality shield, and what do two-handed weapons get to counter this? I mean, for the moment Block mitigation doesn't apply with tier, much like armor skills, so they will become obsolete eventually as tiers grow and base damage increases... but until that time comes I can't say that two-handed weapons are a logical choice, and when we become that high in tier shield users will regret the investment as enhancements alone does their job. It's pretty much a waiting game right now on which is stronger.

[Rain 0]

With the thought "Katana: A lacking skill until it is maxed, where it becomes a powerful, yet flexible weapon with many options." Here's what I got..

Unique to Katanas - The power of lower ranked sword arts increase with the rank. (Energy cost would follow suit and increase by 1 for each rank) Example:

• Tsumuji Guruma - 1x1 - AoE - (2 Energy) - A simple sword art that spins the user on their heel to slash in every direction. Unlocked at rank 1. By rank 5 it would deal 1x5 AoE.

Well you get what I mean... anyways... yeah... With scaling on low sword arts, that would mean rank 5 sword arts should be more epic. Something that could still blow out the damage from Rank one. I'm not exactly sure where to range the average damage of the sword art... so I'm not gonna work on sword arts yet. Thoughts?

Unique to Rapiers - Continuous landed blows on an enemy increases crit chance by 1. max for 3 hits. (any misses resets counter)

• The first hit, crit chance is 9-10 with 9 giving 1 bonus damage and 10 giving 2. Second hit, crit chance is 8-10;8 gives 1, 9 gives 2, and 10 gives 3. Third hit, crit chance is 7-10; 7 gives 1, 8 gives 2, 9 gives 3, and 10 gives 4 bonus damage.

Kinda sounds OP, but thoughts?

Uh... that's all I got. gotta go peace!

Edited June 7, 2016 by Rain

[XWuZHeAR 0]

Unique to martial Arts: maybe a bonus EVA point or maybe even a cool down sword art that will act kind of like a reverse << concentration>> skill, like instead of adding one to your own BD for one post it decreases the opponents for one post.

[Nikodemus_Blackwood 1]

@Rain, So the Katana thing is something that could be done. Give a couple SAs the ability to grow in DMG as you put more in rank. It would fit along with other weapons having base DMG stats and such. As for the rapier, it would be ok as long as it is continuous CRITs that allow for the increase, with it resetting on misses, and not increasing or decreasing on regular hits.

 

Example:

 

Unique to Rapiers - Continuous CRITS landed on an enemy increases crit chance by 1. max for 3 hits. (any misses resets counter)

• The first crit, crit chance is 9-10 with 9 giving 1 bonus damage and 10 giving 2. Second, crit chance is 8-10;8 gives 1, 9 gives 2, and 10 gives 3. Third, crit chance is 7-10; 7 gives 1, 8 gives 2, 9 gives 3, and 10 gives 4 bonus damage. normal hits (6-8 on first crit table, 6 and 7 on 2, and 6 on three) do not reset or grant an increase. Misses reset counter.

[Rain 0]

37 minutes ago, Nikodemus_Blackwood said:

Unique to Rapiers - Continuous CRITS landed on an enemy increases crit chance by 1. max for 3 hits. (any misses resets counter)

• The first crit, crit chance is 9-10 with 9 giving 1 bonus damage and 10 giving 2. Second, crit chance is 8-10;8 gives 1, 9 gives 2, and 10 gives 3. Third, crit chance is 7-10; 7 gives 1, 8 gives 2, 9 gives 3, and 10 gives 4 bonus damage. normal hits (6-8 on first crit table, 6 and 7 on 2, and 6 on three) do not reset or grant an increase. Misses reset counter.

Mmm... I don't think it should be continuous crits. Crits are already hard to come by, we need something constants like how the katana is a constantly growing.

How about this. A crit activates the ability and then from there continuous hits increase the bonus?

 

1 hour ago, XWuZHeAR said:

Unique to martial Arts: maybe a bonus EVA point or maybe even a cool down sword art that will act kind of like a reverse << concentration>> skill, like instead of adding one to your own BD for one post it decreases the opponents for one post.

The with martial arts is tricky though... would the ability be added to the other sword art skill martial arts is added to? or not? if so, that would somewhat break the other skills. i.e. claws and such.

[Khrysaor 0]

Yeah, some of the Sword Arts do need to balanced more. I would like to help out with this as well when I have a bit more time on my hands.

[Nikodemus_Blackwood 1]

@Rain, i think if the second option you mentioned would be workable. It would make it a not to OP thing, but not too hard to get, and since it has a cap of 3, then it wont be to bad.

[Rain 0]

Oh hey @Nikodemus_Blackwood, could we maybe get the title changed to something.... uh... shorter? every notif in this thread makes me cringe from looking at the wall of text... for a notif.. xD

[Khrysaor 0]

I agree with @Nikodemus_Blackwood, the second option that you @Rainhave come up with will be more workable and less over powered.

[Lowenthal 0]

I suggest that HP moves from 4 HP per level, to 10HP per level.

It's not a hard step to make bosses and mobs a bit more, powerful.

 

And we can keep this fix, until a more suitable Combat System is implemented. However, I was(still am) of the lowe damage numbers, low HP sort of combat system. When Damage and HP get into the thousands, like (shows collection of JRPG's) it gets math confusing, quickly.

We as players, and staff also need to have clarification in the rules. Many of the boss fights have been posted poned for a couple hours, even a day because of a 'Would this do this, because so and so has this?'

just my opionin on the matter, atm

[Rain 0]

@Lowenthal makes a very valid point. I've been in multiple 3.5e DnD campaigns where we stopped for a good while just to figure out all the math that just happened.

I do like the increase in HP, it would balance all the damage changes I think, but that would mean revamping most of the combat system if we do go about bringing something to present as a change. Hm... this is starting to look more taxing. ._.

[Nikodemus_Blackwood 1]

Well, it would not need to be a large change. The biggest issue as Lowe had pointed out is when we get higher up on floors, people get higher leveled, and wear tier 5 and 6 armor. Then the math will be complicated as all get out. But, to be honest, by that time it will be complicated as all get out anyway. Higher we go, more powerful bosses will be. I suspect that by floor 21, the normal boss runs we've been seeing where people can pop a couple T2 DMG potions/Crystals, DMG buff food, MIT buffs, etc, and then pump out DMG with their best Sword Arts and best tier 2 weapons, it would probably barely scratch the boss.... This is an issue I have been looking at for some time...

 

Just like most real RPGs, as we get stronger, so to do the bosses. Example for you D&D players: (5E stats)

 

At LVL 1, a basic rolled character will have something around 16-20 HP, an Armor class (Or mitigation) of around 14 or so, and did a base damage dependant on their weapon + any modifiers their class may give.

 

Basic sheet:

Spoiler

Mayor Mcburger:

LVL1 Human Fighter

HP: 17

Hit Die: 3

Armor Class: 13

Damage: 1d5 + STR bonus.

 

Stats: (Just examples, not full)

STR: 15 (+1)

AGI: 12 (+1)

WIS: 8 (+0)

INT: 10 (+1)

CON: 13 (+1)

PER: 9 (+0)

 

Proficiency:

Melee

Ranged

Arcana

acrobatics

Etc

 

Skills/Traits:

Lightfoot: Add +2 to AGI Checks

Small Stature: Creatures more than one size larger than you have a disadvantage on stealth checks to find you.

Etc.

 

So, that essentially means as long as the player rolls a hit, they will do their damage 1d5 + STR Bonus, which is +1 So 1d5 + 1.

 

At level 20, they may have pumped a free 1000 XP into STR to bring it to 19, giving them a (+2) instead of a +1. that means they do better DMG

 

Now, a LVL 1 enemy is a Kobold or Goblin. They usually have an Armor class of 10-13, HP of 8 or 1d6 + 1, and do a DMG based on their weapon, which is usually a club so 1d4 + 1 or a scimitar 1d5 + 1.

 

simple to get over their Armor class and hurt/kill. Now a LVL 20 enemy would be a basic Chromatic Dragon. I'll just use the basic stats.

 

They have around 50-ish HP, an AC of 19 or more, and do around 2d10 + STR Bonus (Which is usually a +2 or +3)

 

This means they will be much harder and have scaled properly with the character. Our mobs and enemies "should" do the same. The problem is that when we get to floor 20-21 ish, then we wont have Tier 3 armor, while the bosses should be scaled to be at that level. this means we will be at a disadvantage and barely hurting the boss. The issue is that as we go higher, so will the bosses and mobs of higher floors, and the math will get nearly impossible.

 

It is an issue we will have to face sooner or later and so if we are going to change the weapon system and such, we should do it now so players will be ready for the new systems and such.