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Kalanyr -> Design Notes 13 Nov 2010: Battle Duration (11/12/2010 20:22:22)
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We have noticed comments about how normal battles take too long and are boring due to monsters having too much HP and not doing a lot of damage each round.
As such we'd like to propose a solution and see what you guys think: Halve standard post-sweep monster HP & double their damage, this avoids changing how "dangerous" a monster is while making the battles quicker and more involving (since higher damage means monitoring healing resources is more important).
Problem with this solution: It means Mages are better than warriors Warriors due to this making spells more powerful. This is because battle revolves around 10 rounds (and you're expected to have 2 normal battles or 1 boss battle between heals) and this changes battles to revolve around 5 rounds (still 2 normal battles / 1 boss between heals though). Which means that between heals mages do 12 rounds of warrior damage (4 x 2 = 8 and 6 x 0.75 = 4) to the warriors 10 , instead of the previous 20 rounds of warrior damage (4x 2 = 8 and 16 x 0.75 = 12) to the warriors 20.
This also has the same effect on spell casting monsters increasing their power relative to warrior monsters (a normal monster gets 2 spells in 10 rounds of combat currently, with this change and some kind of compensating change they'd get 2 spells in 5 rounds, which would mean that a spellcaster would do 6.25 rounds of damage in 5 rounds compared to a warrior based monsters 5 rounds ).
Possible solutions to this problem:
Before reading this note that none of these change the power of a mage relative to the power of a warrior (or to a monster). I have made some notes on why.
1) Increase cost of spells (To double. Still 1 spell per 5 combat rounds , but only 1 spell per battle instead of 2 since battles are half duration).
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2) Decrease spell power, to only 137.5% of warrior damage (note that this is below warrior weapon special damage and not much above offensive armor (125%)) instead of 200%.
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3) Other solutions that are in between eg 133% cost and cutting power to 158% (or 135% / 160% for slightly nicer numbers)
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4) Leave things how they are with long battles.
All but 4) would have the (I believe) desirable effect of moving monster damage and HP would move closer to player damage and HP, so effects based on these things would be more equal (they still wouldn't be the same since (relevant, ie the worst 2 or 3,) monster resistances are considerably worse than (relevant, ie the best 2 or 3,) player resistances even at level 0, and as levels increase player resistance gets better while monster resistance doesn't.
For those wondering how this would effect skills:
Skills are based on spells so this would have the same effect on skills as it does on skills. However note that this solution could not occur before the SP regeneration and allowed amount was increased since it involves an engine change, in order to double monster damage and halve their HP, so it wouldn't render you unable to use SP meaningfully.
Let us know what you think in the Discussion Thread The Discussion Thread has been locked and moved for Archiving. Thank you for your opinions.
Please feel free to elaborate on WHY you picked a choice, not just on what it is! We'd really prefer that - it lets us see what people are thinking, not assume it based on what numbers you pick. The numbers are examples, not the only options. ~Ael
(Edit - Oops. I made a mistake in the initial post 2, Option 2 isn't 150% of base warrior damage , its 137.5% of base warrior damage).
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