Cold damage: still necessary?

[Angry Andersen]

After the changes in the development version, only very few units (all of whom are in 2 factions) use the cold damage type. These are:

- Dark Adepts and all of its advancements
- the Ancient Lich
- Saurian Augur and all of its advancements
- Ghosts and 2 of its advancements

So it seems cold damage has become just as special as holy was in version 1.2.

So my question is: would it be reasonable to replace cold damage with fire or arcane damage in these units in order to get rid of this damage-type entirely?

[tsr]

Hm, some quick thoughts:
- it's nice to have 3 physical damage types and 3 abstract (ok, fire is not that abstract but anyway)
- it's not only about who deals it, it's also about who recieves the damage.
- Removing it would require some heavy rebalancing of all factions since cold is the major damage dealt from UD vs Drakes (or at least it should be )
- imho it would be cooler if cold underwent the same refactoring as holy did, but I suspect that is for 1.5 or 1.7 if at all. I mean being used more instead of less.

/tsr - just throwing in some random thoughts

[Velensk]

I realy don't see the point in removing it, yes cold is a somewhat mysteriouse damage type but this makes sense when you think of it. Anyone can destroy something by pouring to much energy into it (fire), but magics that kill by stealing heat are much more viciouse. Neither arcane nor cold are unnessisary, and both have their own flavor. Another important thing to take into consiteration is all the user made content that uses cold.

[[PA] NotUncleDave]

cold magic gives drakes a big weakness- taking it out would mean the drake mirror and drake vs undead matchups would have to be messed around with. but the main change would be the effectiveness of the dark adept- cold magic is neutral against most enemies, where arcane isn't. it would nerf undead vs. loyalists and knalgans and boost them vs. rebels, assuming youd switch out the cold magic for arcane. if not, how would you keep everything under control?

[Shadow]

Why do people insist to remove features.
I can understand if they argue for further ones.
To remove them is beyond me.

[Elvish_Pillager]

"A designer knows when he has achieved..."

[mameluke]

Why do people insist to remove features.

I don't think that it's wrong to think also this way. It's even quite important to remove things. Maybe not this one, but discussion should be ok.

[irrevenant]

Why do people insist to remove features.
I can understand if they argue for further ones.
To remove them is beyond me.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” (the quote EP was alluding to).

If you can achieve the same aims with less complexity, that's a good thing.

Whether that applies in this case is debatable though.

[turin]

So it seems cold damage has become just as special as holy was in version 1.2.

Um, not at all... holy in 1.2 was used by only three units, one of which was level 2 and two of which were level 3. Cold is used by 11 units, two of which are level 1 - meaning the attack type actually shows up a considerable amount.

By way of comparison, how many units have attacks of the different types (done with a simple grep, so might be off by a small amount if some units have more than one of the same type, but nothing major) -

Code: Select all

blade - 115
pierce - 109
impact - 80
fire - 26
cold - 11
arcane - 21

Sure, cold is slightly underused compared to other attack types, but not by nearly as much as holy was in 1.2 - and, as the above list shows, damage types are used in different amounts - we're not going to remove fire just because it's used 1/4th as much as pierce. Cold also isn't nearly as whacked with respect to any specific faction as holy was w.r.t. undead.


Plus having 6 damage types, 3 physical and 3 non, is much more elegant than having 5 damage types IMO.

[Velensk]

Another good point is that there is a much greater veriety in resistnaces to cold than to holy. Holy had 2 diffrent reistances I think 20% and -100% while there are allot of difrent reistances to cold.

[TL]

And on top of all that, holy was still replaced in place of a newer, broader damage type rather than being dropped entirely in favor of the other existing damage types. If holy merited being replaced rather than cut, why would cold need cutting when it sees much wider use and has much more varied effects?

[Shadow]

@Irrevenant

This might apply for good and slick software but not to this extend for a game else I can also roll marbles.

[Angry Andersen]

So it seems cold damage has become just as special as holy was in version 1.2.

Um, not at all... holy in 1.2 was used by only three units, one of which was level 2 and two of which were level 3. Cold is used by 11 units, two of which are level 1 - meaning the attack type actually shows up a considerable amount.

By way of comparison, how many units have attacks of the different types (done with a simple grep, so might be off by a small amount if some units have more than one of the same type, but nothing major) -

Code: Select all

blade - 115
pierce - 109
impact - 80
fire - 26
cold - 11
arcane - 21

Sure, cold is slightly underused compared to other attack types, but not by nearly as much as holy was in 1.2 - and, as the above list shows, damage types are used in different amounts - we're not going to remove fire just because it's used 1/4th as much as pierce. Cold also isn't nearly as whacked with respect to any specific faction as holy was w.r.t. undead.

You do have a point here: the comparison to holy in 1.2.8 was slightly exaggerated.
Still I think it might be possible to get rid of cold damage entirely. Only 2 factions can deal cold damage, and only these two factions have big variations in cold damage resistance in a broad range of units.

A less radical idea would be to hide resistances to damage types that can't be dealt in the current match, just like defense and movement values for terrains not in the current map are not displayed.

[irrevenant]

@Irrevenant
This might apply for good and slick software but not to this extend for a game else I can also roll marbles.

Very few principles are absolute. But this one almost always holds true. The key is to take as simple approach as possible that achieves the goal.

In this case, the question boils down to "will the quality of the game be reduced if Cold Damage is removed". I'll let better minds than mine answer that question.

P.S. I don't really understand what you mean by the marble comment.

[TL]

A less radical idea would be to hide resistances to damage types that can't be dealt in the current match, just like defense and movement values for terrains not in the current map are not displayed.

Ug. When did it start doing this for terrains? I know I'm a bit of an information junkie, but still... what an annoying "feature" :/

You do have a point here: the comparison to holy in 1.2.8 was slightly exaggerated.
Still I think it might be possible to get rid of cold damage entirely.

Er... possible, yes. Necessary, no. Practical, no. There is simply no way to eliminate the cold damage type without introducing far-reaching balance changes, unless you care to add a replacement (and for that matter, from what I can gather holy was replaced with the intent of deliberately shaking up the game's balance). Your proposals haven't even touched on any balance ramifications. Now I'm hardly the game's foremost balance guru, but c'mon. You can't just say "hey let's eliminate cold damage" without some kind of plan for how and why.

(Well, obviously you can say that. It's just not going to be particularly constructive.)