World of Wesnoth (MMORPG add-on project)

[alex23]

Edit quote

You can combine defense skill and absorption, but make sure, that defense is used to define type of armor, while absorption - its quality.

btw i have now no idea how that lnk appeared there... and i was/wanted to quote xudo
I think dugi showed us that this thing is too unbalanced/too difficult to balance
and why dont you like my concept of movement reduction? I think its the most "realistic" if you let it depend on level, strenght and endurance

[Xudo]

I just do throwing more ideas.
Your concept looks good, but it assumes, that characters can equip anything. Movement penalty might not be enough to balanse resistance gain.
Clerics might get heavy armor with high resistances and light armor with no penalty. He can switch to heavy to survive in some cases and to temporary protect teammates. Light armor might be used for movement.

[Dugi]

@Xudo The reason why I don't want to force characters to carry maximum level armours is that having some good and useful modifiers also on mid-level stuff, making it useful to carry around also on higher levels increases the variability.

@alex23 I am not quite sure what were you quoting, I surely didn't post any pop-punk videos around. I sometimes listen to punk rock, but not frequently enough to post videos of it around. I listen to heavy metal usually.
I would like to know what did you want to quote.

My opinion about movement penalties for heavy armours - wearing a heavy armour requires higher strength. This means investing valuable attributes into strength. If your character is strong enough to carry it, he should not be (much) penalised for it. Slow walkers are a huge pain for the whole party, because the party is as fast as its slowest member is. Two heavily armoured party members would annoy all the members of the party. They would have to switch gear every time they move into another battle, and it would be super annoying.

[Xudo]

@Xudo The reason why I don't want to force characters to carry maximum level armours is that having some good and useful modifiers also on mid-level stuff, making it useful to carry around also on higher levels increases the variability.

Can you give some examples of those "good and useful modifiers"? Are you talking about set-bonuses and this kind of stuff?

Why can't we create items with same "good and useful modifiers" for both mid and high level armour?

If modifier on mid-level armour is better than modifiers on high-level armour, then it is overpowered.
As long as I have no examples of items, I give you other example. If skill, which require 15 barbarian level, is more powerful than skill, which require 30 barbarian level, then you going to tweak them, aren't you? If you are, then why do you accept overpowered armor modifier?


I like the variability within a level, but variability across huge range of levels will be very hard to balanse.

[Dugi]

I am not intending to create mid-level things that would be generally stronger than high-level things, just telling that these items might have some modifiers stronger than high-level items, making them more useful with some specific selections.

Example:
Effects on a mid-level unique armour:
Penetrate Fire Resistance 20%
Resist Cold 20%
Magical damage increased by 5%

Effects on the most similar high-level unique armour:
Resist Fire 10%
Resist Cold 10%
Resist Arcane 10%
Magical Damage Increased by 15%
Increase Intelligence by 5

The high-level one is clearly better, both offensively and defensively, but if the character already has good resistances to fire and arcane (from other items equipped) and relies heavily on fire magic, he would prefer the mid-level one. He would be forced to wear the high-level one if the absorptions were too significant. I like your last version of absorptions' idea, but it should be a bit combined with usual defence-resistances thing.

Also, I don't like the idea of 'armours increase resistances to physical damage, robes and rings increase resistances to magical damage'. This is quite a limitation, robes, rings and amulets should have various magical modifiers, including modifiers adding magical resistances, but also armours should have a variety in magical modifiers, including magical resistances.

[Xudo]

To decide whether statement "absorptions will force players to use only high level armor" is true or false, we need to playtest this RPG for some time.
So far, I don't get why Wizards will be forced to use armor with highest absorptions at the expense of the other modifiers. They can use spells from distance. As long as this game is cooperative, there will always be someone who can protect them.

Assuming that you accept absorptions as armor modifier, I propose to use my system. If they will be overpowered, then we just tweak them on some items in playtesting stage. It is always easier to nerf properly than to buff properly.


I don't like the idea that "heavy plate mail will not always benefit you with physical resistances". Is it made from glass or from paper?
Rule of design "armor increase physical resistances" is logical. Heavy armor give you better bonus, while light armor - smaller.
Though, I accept small magical resistance modifiers in addition to physical resistances on any type of chest armor from robes to plate mails.

Can you clarify for me, whether you accept alex23 proposal about penalties for wearing too heavy armor or not?

[Dugi]

To decide whether statement "absorptions will force players to use only high level armor" is true or false, we need to playtest this RPG for some time.
...

It would suck to redo armours giving fixed bonuses to resistances to something else. Therefore, I suggest to use a defence number that would determine the exact resistances according to a formula. The formula I am suggesting is:

Code: Select all

bonus to resistances = 100 * (1 - 2 ^ ( - 0.02 * defence ^ 0.6 ) )

(note that the defence is meant to be the total defence from all items equipped)
Resulting resistances:

Code: Select all

Defence	Resistance
10	5.4
13	6.3
17	7.3
22	8.5
29	9.8
37	11.4
48	13.2
63	15.3
82	17.7
106	20.4
138	23.4
179	26.8
233	30.6
303	34.8
394	39.3
512	44.3
665	49.6
865	55.1
1125	60.9
1462	66.7
1900	72.4
2471	77.8
3212	82.8
(80% is the cap anyway)

Lighter armours would have defences like 10-70, medium armours like 100-200, heavy armours like 300-600. Light armours would require strength like 8-12, medium armours 13-20, heavy armours more than 20, but there might be some super heavy armours with strength requirements over 40.
Armours made of better materials would require more strength, higher level, would give more defence (but not much more), but their major quality would be their better absorption.
This is based on your idea, so you should not have issues with it.

I don't like the idea that "heavy plate mail will not always benefit you with physical resistances". Is it made from glass or from paper?

You did not get me right. All armours would increase physical resistances, magical resistance would be a possible extra.

Can you clarify for me, whether you accept alex23 proposal about penalties for wearing too heavy armor or not?

I am sorry for being ambiguous, I disagreed. One slow walker would annoy the whole party, and people would prefer lighter armours.

[Xudo]

I'd like to keep this simple. Exponentation can not be performed in the mind. Wesnoth is all about small integers.

Instead of exponental formula, you can use

Code: Select all

resistance bonus = defense / ( defense + 50) * 100%

Results:

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

Defence,    Resistance
0	,	0,00
5	,	9,09
10	,	16,67
15	,	23,08
20	,	28,57
25	,	33,33
30	,	37,50
35	,	41,18
40	,	44,44
45	,	47,37
50	,	50,00
55	,	52,38
60	,	54,55
65	,	56,52
70	,	58,33
75	,	60,00
80	,	61,54
85	,	62,96
90	,	64,29
95	,	65,52
100	,	66,67
105	,	67,74
110	,	68,75
115	,	69,70
120	,	70,59
125	,	71,43
130	,	72,22
135	,	72,97
140	,	73,68
145	,	74,36
150	,	75,00
155	,	75,61
160	,	76,19
165	,	76,74
170	,	77,27
185	,	78,72
190	,	79,17
195	,	79,59
200	,	80,00

Assume that light armor defense between 0 and 20, medium armor defense between 20 and 40 and heavy armor defense between 40 and 60.

My proposal about resistance budget still can be applied here. Heavy armor doesn't have to be heavy against all types of physical damage. Wesnoth have built-in support of several damage types. I think we have to use this feature.

[Dugi]

I don't like your formula. You must consider that helms, gloves, boots and shields will increase defence as well. Some will have magical modifiers that further increase it. This way, they would get too close to the 80% resistance. Also, the reason why I need exponentials is that power functions increase too fast. If you equip two items that would decrease the damage taken by 40%, the resulting damage taken would always be lower than 36% of the former damage, making all items' defences stack synergically. Also, I have damned written that already, so an exponential is not a problem. Also, with exponentials, the defence simply will not get too high, and you don't have to care about limiting it too much.

My proposal about resistance budget still can be applied here. Heavy armor doesn't have to be heavy against all types of physical damage. Wesnoth have built-in support of several damage types. I think we have to use this feature.

I had a slightly different root in the exponent in the resistance to impact formula, because blunt weapons penetrate armour better.

[Xudo]

Main problem of your formula is that it is completely not userfriendly. Tell me, how much time it takes to solve following problem using only your pen and paper.

How much additional resistances (in %) I get from new chestplate if...
Old chestplate defense = 436, new chestplate defense = 472. Defense from all other items = 219.

Spoiler:

I think that amount of resistances and absorpitions from helms, boots and gloves (???) will be smaller than from chest armor and from shields.
It would be something like: 5% from helm, 7% from gloves, 4% from boots, 20% from armor and 15% from shield.

Why do you limit resistance at 80% if you assume, that players should not normally reach this value? What do you think about decreasing resistance cap to 50?

I don't see the problem in rate of growth of power functions since we are going to use values from predefined range. I already noted, that resistance gain from high level armor should not be much greater than resistance gain from low level armor.
Difference between them is in absorptions.

I had a slightly different root in the exponent in the resistance to impact formula, because blunt weapons penetrate armour better.

I meant not other root in formula, I meant to use 6 types of defense and 6 types of absorpitions.
Different root for specific type of weapon make things only worse.

[Dugi]

Main problem of your formula is that it is completely not userfriendly. Tell me, how much time it takes to solve following problem using only your pen and paper.

It would take me some time, because the calculation of Maclaurin series is not quick, but I might calculate it and mention it. Both root (we might change it to square root) and exponential with the base of two can be guessed quite quickly.

Spoiler:

A character has 100 defence.
The square root of 100 is 10, so the 0.6th power of 100 will be about 12.
0.02 * 12 = 0.24 = 1/4
2^(-1/4) = 1/2^(1/4) = 1/1.4^(1/2) = 1/1.2 = 5/6 = 0.82
Resulting defence is 18%.
Quite precisely, the error is only 1% (I have calculated this without knowing the result in advance, without using any computational software).

And this is a computer game, so you are using a computer or another computing machine when playing, so it is not a problem to calculate it. Writing a calculator for that as a part of help might be possible too, the formulae I have used to calculate terrain defences is pretty ugly as well.

I did not state that my formula is ideal, I just said that your formula isn't good, and explained why. I was trying various things, but this one was the best so far. If you have an idea about a formula that is better, I will accept it.

Why do you limit resistance at 80% if you assume, that players should not normally reach this value? What do you think about decreasing resistance cap to 50?

The defence is not supposed to get over 1000 unless your character gets some really defence-heavy gear, so under normal condition it should not go over 60%. That is the problem with your formula, if 50% was the usually obtainable value with heavy armours, defence corresponding to resistances bellow 50% increases too quickly (but it has a nice behaviour after 50%, but we cannot move this value, as 100% is its asymptote as it should be).

I don't see the problem in rate of growth of power functions since we are going to use values from predefined range. I already noted, that resistance gain from high level armor should not be much greater than resistance gain from low level armor.
Difference between them is in absorptions.

The predefined ranges are too thin in your case. I want to add a modifier of randomised items that multiplies the defence given by that armour (like +30%, +50%, not multiplying by 3 or something), and thin ranges would ruin it.

I meant not other root in formula, I meant to use 6 types of defense and 6 types of absorptions.

I might multiply it by something instead. And armours should increase only 3 resistances, impact, pierce and blade, the other resistances will rely on magical modifiers that will appear frequently on items (but will not be a property of base items).

EDIT: Item describer is mostly working (that is still quite useless as inventory control except picking items up is not working yet, but it had to be done before inventory control). The item is of course just a test item.

[alex23]

I
about my idea of decreasing movements: it was not supposed to force people wear weaker armors, it only gave them a chance of wearing heavier armor with less strenght for scarificing one movement point.

f.e. if you say a person with 20 strength can wear an rmor with max 400 def than i suggest that he can wear up to f.e. 600 for having one less movement if wearing more than 400

[Dugi]

I had proposed that idea, and it was rejected. Read a few pages back to see why.

I want to limit the movement points of a unit that cannot carry their armour to 1 movement point per turn, to avoid possible problems with equipping things that are too heavy for them to carry without increases in strength they possess.

[Xudo]

Sorry, guys but I need to take long wesbreak. There is an important matter in real life.
Good luck. I believe you will succeed with this RPG.

[Dugi]

Does that mean that you are leaving this project? Damn, you had good suggestions sometimes, you'll be missed.
Anyway, I wish you good luck wherever the life leads you.

Edit: Inventory control is working now, committed. I will make its features wider soon.