Idea for spicing up melee

[katriell]

The changes announced here: http://ryzom.com/forum/showthread.php?g ... st&t=16672 seem to do a lot to nerf magic, a little to enhance melee, and almost nothing to make melee interesting and attractive in and of itself.

I've heard that the "Aim" stanzas are almost useless.

Melee seems to be mostly about collecting higher and higher Increase Damage and Accuracy stanzas, making a single one-size-fits-all combat action, and double-clicking.

What if it took actual knowledge and experimentation to fight effectively? Mixing and matching aims, damages, accuracies, bleeds, etc to create a set of actions, each tailored to a specific animal, animal type, and/or stage of combat.

For example, say Bolobi have vulnerable legs. You use a legs aim as your opening action to cripple the Bolobi, then hack at its body until it dies.

Now to add a further complexity: say only certain weapon types are efficient on certain types of animals. Like, piercing would be most efficient for kitins, slashing less, and smashing almost ineffective because of their hard shells. And, to contrast, smashing is most effective with small animals like Yubo.

You'd have to experiment and build different actions for different animals etc.. There would be actual skill and strategy involved in melee fighting.

Elemental magic already has something like this, to some extent. For example, Cold works on kitins but Acid doesn't, and Fear doesn't work on plants.

Also, IRL, if you hit something in the right place hard enough (e.g., the head), it will die instantly. That doesn't happen in Ryzom. You can hack at seemingly vulnerable places for a while and it won't make a very big difference. With the better Aim stanzas I'm talking about, you could kill things a lot quicker if you knew where to hit them, and hit with enough damage.

[pr0ger]

Hi,

What if it took actual knowledge and experimentation to fight effectively? Mixing and matching aims, damages, accuracies, bleeds, etc to create a set of actions, each tailored to a specific animal, animal type, and/or stage of combat.

Some people made experiments in the past, and somehow the back legs were a bit easier to hit on quadrupede, but i dunno if it's still true.

Now to add a further complexity: say only certain weapon types are efficient on certain types of animals. Like, piercing would be most efficient for kitins, slashing less, and smashing almost ineffective because of their hard shells. And, to contrast, smashing is most effective with small animals like Yubo.

That is currently the case, since kitin have a great "armor" (shell) against piercing damage (spear/pike), and most of others against slashing (sword/axe). Only smash damage can crush their exoskeleton (staff/mace).

Elemental magic already has something like this, to some extent. For example, Cold works on kitins but Acid doesn't, and Fear doesn't work on plants.

Well, that involve that meleer have to get 3 specialization starting at level 100 : slash damage branch, pierce damage and smash damage. Sounds fair enough, but when an ele magician have all kind of damage possible in one branch (off magic), meleers have 3!


In the past, one strategy in melee was to turn around the mob (side shift and still aiming at the mob) when hitting it, since it greatly helped the accuracy (or it reduced greatly the mob's dodge/parry success rate). Nowadays it doesn't work.

There is 2 anothers, way weaker :
- "pushing" the mob away : when the aggro mob more likely to hit the magicians, the tank can taunt and walk "into" it and the mob will move backward a little
- "2 at once" : if the tank is away enough of any other people, using circular attack 1 or 2 (stanza in addition of his usual action) let the meleer kill 2 mob at once without the 2nd mob running at healer/nuker, and also w/o having to taunt one then the other alternatively.

Also, IRL, if you hit something in the right place hard enough (e.g., the head), it will die instantly. That doesn't happen in Ryzom. You can hack at seemingly vulnerable places for a while and it won't make a very big difference. With the better Aim stanzas I'm talking about, you could kill things a lot quicker if you knew where to hit them, and hit with enough damage.

True, and i like the idea ! you should post it into the feedback forum about revamp !!!
Currently, doing a critical hit on the head you'll stun the mob. A critical hit on its legs will reduce its dodging. And prolly, on its forelegs, will reduce its chance to hit you. Being able to do a critical hit that double damage (like torbak or kizoar's one) would be helpful.

[sidusar]

Yep, all interesting ideas and similar things have been suggested before I believe. But I'll comment on things in order.

The changes announced here: http://ryzom.com/forum/showthread.php?g ... st&t=16672 seem to do a lot to nerf magic, a little to enhance melee, and almost nothing to make melee interesting and attractive in and of itself.

Stop saying that, they don't do a lot to nerf magic. Only two aspects of magic are nerfed: The double missile and the heal life spell. On the other hand the heal sap spell, the heal stam spell, the bomb, richochet and spray effects, and the magic resistances are all getting a boost.

Melee seems to be mostly about collecting higher and higher Increase Damage and Accuracy stanzas, making a single one-size-fits-all combat action, and double-clicking.

I agree, and I would like to add magic is exactly the same. There it's mostly about collecting higher and higher versions of the spells (whether they be healing, elemental or affliction) and making a single one-size-fits-all magic action, and repeatedly clicking.

What if it took actual knowledge and experimentation to fight effectively? Mixing and matching aims, damages, accuracies, bleeds, etc to create a set of actions, each tailored to a specific animal, animal type, and/or stage of combat.

For example, say Bolobi have vulnerable legs. You use a legs aim as your opening action to cripple the Bolobi, then hack at its body until it dies.

Yep, this would be great. Enough said.

Now to add a further complexity: say only certain weapon types are efficient on certain types of animals. Like, piercing would be most efficient for kitins, slashing less, and smashing almost ineffective because of their hard shells. And, to contrast, smashing is most effective with small animals like Yubo.

This is already the case. I haven't tested much with it, but off the top of my head I remember that torbaks are vulnerable to slashing while cuttlers are very resistant to it, gibbai are more vulnerable to slashing than frahars, and psykopla are resistant to slashing but vulnerable to smashing, just to name a few examples.

You'd have to experiment and build different actions for different animals etc.. There would be actual skill and strategy involved in melee fighting.

Unfortunally not, since after level 100 the melee tree splits into slashing, piercing and smashing and you have to choose one. Unless you train them all, there won't be any switching damage types depending on the animal you're fighting. (In fact I believe the benefit of ranged combat was supposed to be that you could do all three kinds of damage with the same weapon just by switching ammo. Too bad the low damage of ranged weapons and the hassle of needing ammo far outweigh this benefit at the moment.)

Elemental magic already has something like this, to some extent. For example, Cold works on kitins but Acid doesn't, and Fear doesn't work on plants.

It's true, for elemental magic below 125 you have to switch between acid, cold and rot depending on what you're fighting. But unfortunally once you get the racial spells (fire, lightning, poison, shockwave) that just doesn't apply anymore. Just pick the one of the region you're in and that one's best against everything. It's almost like they forgot to add the resistances for those spells. (Yes, I'm implying that I'd like to see some more variety here too.)

Also, IRL, if you hit something in the right place hard enough (e.g., the head), it will die instantly. That doesn't happen in Ryzom. You can hack at seemingly vulnerable places for a while and it won't make a very big difference. With the better Aim stanzas I'm talking about, you could kill things a lot quicker if you knew where to hit them, and hit with enough damage.

Another thing that has been suggested was modifying the aim stanzas so that using one would always result in a critical hit (and increase the cost accordingly, ofcourse). Most of their uselessness comes from them only making a difference if you place a critical hit, which doesn't happen often. Giving creatures weak spots would be another good way to make them usefull.

[kashius]

I've tried to address this issue in a couple posts now. Melee is pretty uninteresting and seeing as how it's my 'thing' in this game, that gets on my nerves. Since I doubt anyone wants to read another of my drawn out posts I'll summarize my issues with melee:

- No differentiation between weapon types (moves/skills in skill trees)

- No real option to use anything but HA with slow big damage weapons

- Dodge/Parry not able to be boosted enough to act as viable defense

- No way to up critical

- Jewels help magic resist but no option to help melee skills (Dodge/Parry/Crit)

- Weapons have no Dodge/Parry/Crit modifiers on them (Except 2h Sword)

Brief summary of the main issues with melee. If the OP would like to see a bit more of my thoughts on that refer here: http://ryzom.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16224

-Kash-

[boinged]

Melee IS like how you say it could be

Even using a pike there are a few creatures I like to hunt so that I don't have to use ignore armour (to make the healer's life easier and so I can use max dmg and acc attack). When levelling you usually stick to a certain group and type of animal so it isn't even a case of bringing your big bag of weapons so you've got the right one.

I sometimes forget I can edit an action as I need it (e.g. in harvest change the material specification depending what I'm digging) - so if you've got the SP, it would be worth it to get some aim stanzas and select the appropriate one for your current prey. You just need to put in the time to see which "aim at" to use in each case, or wait for BM to do it for you

With 'attack after', 'feint' and power stanzas you can really have some fun with melee. Well I do

[katriell]

Ahhh, cool.

I haven't been able to experiment with different damage types because I haven't found anything that does decent damage other than a 2h sword.

Stop saying that, they don't do a lot to nerf magic. Only two aspects of magic are nerfed: The double missile and the heal life spell. On the other hand the heal sap spell, the heal stam spell, the bomb, richochet and spray effects, and the magic resistances are all getting a boost.

I should've said that a lot is proposed to change magic, and little to change melee.

But after reading these posts, it seems melee doesn't need much change.

[kashius]

Yes, it does.

-Kash-

[sidusar]

- Dodge/Parry not able to be boosted enough to act as viable defense

Aen armor gives +24 parry, and a shield gives a max of +30 parry, so that's +54 parry combined. Creatures your own level should barely be able to hit you anymore.

I should've said that a lot is proposed to change magic, and little to change melee.

But after reading these posts, it seems melee doesn't need much change.

It's okay, just got a little tired of people seemingly only paying attention to what's being nerfed and ignoring what's being boosted, sorry to take it out on you.

And yes, yes it does. I still think your idea of giving creatures weak spots, or even a weakness to hitting certain bodyparts in sequence, like hitting the front legs of a kincher first will cause the next blow to the head to inflict double damage, would make melee a lot more interesting.

And please give elementalists something similar too. Like making one type of creature vulnerable to temperature changes so that alternating ice and fire spells on it does extra damage, another type of creature vulnerable to the specific chemical makeup of a combined poison/acid double missile, a type of plant vulnerable to first being rot and then blown apart by a shockwave, etc etc.

[kashius]

Thanks for pointing that out. In that set of armor's case, it's a step in the right direction. I still believe that the melee needs quite a bit of work. It seems like it's prety unfinished as of right now.

-Kash-