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Design Notes 13 Nov 2010: Battle Duration

 
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11/12/2010 20:22:22   
Kalanyr
Legendary Sidhe of Order


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).

or

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%.

or

3) Other solutions that are in between eg 133% cost and cutting power to 158% (or 135% / 160% for slightly nicer numbers)

or

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).

< Message edited by Kalanyr -- 11/16/2010 21:49:29 >
AQ DF  Post #: 1
11/13/2010 18:41:59   
Kalanyr
Legendary Sidhe of Order


Notes on why relative power is unchaged:

None of options 1-3 change mage power relative to warriors (or to monsters) from what is now (option 4 obviously doesn't).

Halving monster HP and doubling their damage increases a mage's power, since instead of getting 4 spells and 16 magic weapon attacks per 20 rounds (normal space between heals) he'd get 4 spells and 6 magic weapon attacks per 10* rounds (new space between heals), which increases his average damage per round (from equal to warrior damage to 1.2 x warrior damage), options 1-3 just bring a mage back down to the original level of power (essentially moving things so that it says equivalent to 4 spells and 16 magic weapon attacks per 20 rounds, option 1 for example is explicitly 2 spells and 8 magic weapon attacks per 10 rounds, which is obviously equivalent to 4 spells and 16 magic weapon attacks per 20 rounds).

None of them change how often you'd be using a spell in real time (spent in combat) or game time relative to now either, you'd still be using 1 spell per 5 rounds of combat, its just that you'd be using less spells per combat because combats are shorter.

*For those of you not sure why halving monster HP changes things from 20 rounds to 10 , its because if a monster only has half the HP it only lasts half as many rounds even if it is doing double damage.

Extended Example:
If you do 10 damage per round and a monster has 100 HP and does 5 damage per round then it will take you 10 rounds to kill it (and it will do 50 damage), if a monster has 50 HP and does 10 damage per round it will take you 5 rounds to kill it (and it will still do 50 damage).

A mage doesn't do 10 damage per round, they do 20 damage per round for 2 rounds (40 total) and 7.5 damage per round for 8 rounds in the original set (60 damage). In the 2nd setup this means that a mage would do 20 damage per round for 2 rounds (40 damage) and then 7.5 damage for 2 rounds (15 damage) at which point the monster is dead (so the mage has only taken 4 rounds and has also only taking 40 damage), thats why the mages number of spells have to be reduced.

Option 1 however "fixes" that, it makes it so the mage does 20 damage per round for 1 round (20 damage) and then 7.5 damage per round for 4 rounds (30 damage) which means that just like the warrior the monster is dead in 5 rounds and the mage has taken 50 damage.

Options 2 work similarly by adjusting how much damage the mage does in the initial rounds instead of reducing how many initial rounds a mage gets (ie option 2 is like reducing the mage to 13.75 damage per round for the first 2 rounds (27.5 damage) and then doing 3 rounds of 7.5 game (22.5)).

Option 3 is a hybrid of Option 1 & 2 thus reducing both how many rounds the mage can get and the damage per round but as a consequence not reducing either by as much.
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