Re: class balance
Posted: Fri Jan 31, 2014 12:04 pm
Hi,
I haven't been active for a while and have not much PvP experience, but I'd like to throw some new light on the entire concept.
Each character should have it's unique skills, as noted before.
Dwarf should be strong, ogre durable, archer precise, and I would think sword should be mixture of those. So as there are already weapons for each class respectively, there could be class-specific armours shields and gadgets as well.
As you may know from medieval movies - archers would not use shield, but rather hide behind melee fighters. Same mages - they rarely fight on their own - unless one famous bad-ass mage against another. They are rather sort of usefull companion - say slowing down enemies so swordsmen can finish them off.
Swordman would be a person that holds not only a sword and shield, but also a dagger by his belt to finish off his opponent in last moment (say after five or ten consecutive succesful hits with no hit back). On top of that when engaged by swordsman there is no way for archer to shoot. He may try to hit opponent with the bow, but that's it - not much strenght - unless he has a sword as well - then it does not matter if bow is single or two-handed.
These are reasons I think that more than equalising this may be good idea to look for a way to make characters cooperate, so there would be no sense of making mages only or archer-only armies. That would make the game so much more "life-like".
This way it would also make sense to develop character according to its purpose e.g. max out str for dwarf or arm for ogre, so they have to join mix-class clan, to be more usefull than on they own. This would make battles so much cooler and planning more sophisticated. In other words - what would make mixed clan stronger than single-cast clan.
to take this thought further:
archer can shot and run, but it takes time to aim, so this would be wise to make archer stand to use fully it's dexterity, this would give sword time to come up.
So archer should not be able to atack alone, but should be super-strong if he has companion (say ogre) who will keep swordsman at bay. Ogre does not need to move fast to protect standing still archer, but the more armor he has the more usefull he would be. While sword struggles with ogre, dwarf can come around to bring down dangerous archer unless there is mage slowing down dwarf, giving archer time both to move and aim. So mage with poore killing skills could still be a valuable addition to any clan as a healer, slow down spells caster, could weaken enemies, or give strenght to allies. If the other team has a mage - he can try to weaken ogre, make dwarf spell resistant, or heal his allies.
Mage needs to say his spell and focus, to cast stronger spell - point being remote attack should be performed by standing character - the longer he stands the stronger the attack.
dwarf - for a balance - can be the person that can not only grab his opponent by the hand, but also sit on him and hit few more times when he's close and with enough dexterity.
ogre could be able to "force tanking" i.e. you have to attack him first if your opponent is next to him, so there is no easy way to break defence line to get archers.
I know there are cast specific skills introduced, just telling those stories to give full picture of what I think.
Also equalizing may be understood two ways. It takes different time for different characters to level in the first place. Maybe than it's smarter to compare players that were leveling for 500 hours each rather than compare lvl to lvl (still it can be made known publicly what levels are equal on average.
All in all PvP is ment for clan members mostly.
In all this story swordsman can be an universal character for players who want to play on their own, Interacting on occasions only.
Finally in this world equality would mean equal chance to escape in 1 on 1 duel, (so melee atackers would have enough time to run away from remote attack, but also archers and mages would have walking speed advantage). On the other hand in this world different characters would have different ways to lvl up. Mages by effectiveness of their spells - say for amount of healed wounds, total slow-down time, amount of HP taken from oponents under weakenining spell and so on. Ogers would score on hits taken from oponents killed of by them or companion later, dwarfs would score more if killed enemy who was actually atacking other player (so no injury taken), only sword would get standard lvl.
These rules would force cooperation during missions, but cooperation would make those doable earlier.
I understand that all those ideas are too blown up for android devices, but my aim was to show that equal means different things in different situations.
Also I think equal does not necesarily mean that clan with same amount of each cast members will be the strongest. That's fine, if say the best combination would be 20 swords, 17 dwarfs, 15 ogres 12 archers and 8 mages.
You still can play as a mage, but there may be no need for you in any clan, or you need to level up to beat the competition.
Finally I see that introducing all of those things would change game totally, so maybe it's an idea for entirely new game rather than for adjustments? Map can be the same, just call it "forgotten tales - clan stories" and maybe offer current players some free XP for joining the other game.
I haven't been active for a while and have not much PvP experience, but I'd like to throw some new light on the entire concept.
Each character should have it's unique skills, as noted before.
Dwarf should be strong, ogre durable, archer precise, and I would think sword should be mixture of those. So as there are already weapons for each class respectively, there could be class-specific armours shields and gadgets as well.
As you may know from medieval movies - archers would not use shield, but rather hide behind melee fighters. Same mages - they rarely fight on their own - unless one famous bad-ass mage against another. They are rather sort of usefull companion - say slowing down enemies so swordsmen can finish them off.
Swordman would be a person that holds not only a sword and shield, but also a dagger by his belt to finish off his opponent in last moment (say after five or ten consecutive succesful hits with no hit back). On top of that when engaged by swordsman there is no way for archer to shoot. He may try to hit opponent with the bow, but that's it - not much strenght - unless he has a sword as well - then it does not matter if bow is single or two-handed.
These are reasons I think that more than equalising this may be good idea to look for a way to make characters cooperate, so there would be no sense of making mages only or archer-only armies. That would make the game so much more "life-like".
This way it would also make sense to develop character according to its purpose e.g. max out str for dwarf or arm for ogre, so they have to join mix-class clan, to be more usefull than on they own. This would make battles so much cooler and planning more sophisticated. In other words - what would make mixed clan stronger than single-cast clan.
to take this thought further:
archer can shot and run, but it takes time to aim, so this would be wise to make archer stand to use fully it's dexterity, this would give sword time to come up.
So archer should not be able to atack alone, but should be super-strong if he has companion (say ogre) who will keep swordsman at bay. Ogre does not need to move fast to protect standing still archer, but the more armor he has the more usefull he would be. While sword struggles with ogre, dwarf can come around to bring down dangerous archer unless there is mage slowing down dwarf, giving archer time both to move and aim. So mage with poore killing skills could still be a valuable addition to any clan as a healer, slow down spells caster, could weaken enemies, or give strenght to allies. If the other team has a mage - he can try to weaken ogre, make dwarf spell resistant, or heal his allies.
Mage needs to say his spell and focus, to cast stronger spell - point being remote attack should be performed by standing character - the longer he stands the stronger the attack.
dwarf - for a balance - can be the person that can not only grab his opponent by the hand, but also sit on him and hit few more times when he's close and with enough dexterity.
ogre could be able to "force tanking" i.e. you have to attack him first if your opponent is next to him, so there is no easy way to break defence line to get archers.
I know there are cast specific skills introduced, just telling those stories to give full picture of what I think.
Also equalizing may be understood two ways. It takes different time for different characters to level in the first place. Maybe than it's smarter to compare players that were leveling for 500 hours each rather than compare lvl to lvl (still it can be made known publicly what levels are equal on average.
All in all PvP is ment for clan members mostly.
In all this story swordsman can be an universal character for players who want to play on their own, Interacting on occasions only.
Finally in this world equality would mean equal chance to escape in 1 on 1 duel, (so melee atackers would have enough time to run away from remote attack, but also archers and mages would have walking speed advantage). On the other hand in this world different characters would have different ways to lvl up. Mages by effectiveness of their spells - say for amount of healed wounds, total slow-down time, amount of HP taken from oponents under weakenining spell and so on. Ogers would score on hits taken from oponents killed of by them or companion later, dwarfs would score more if killed enemy who was actually atacking other player (so no injury taken), only sword would get standard lvl.
These rules would force cooperation during missions, but cooperation would make those doable earlier.
I understand that all those ideas are too blown up for android devices, but my aim was to show that equal means different things in different situations.
Also I think equal does not necesarily mean that clan with same amount of each cast members will be the strongest. That's fine, if say the best combination would be 20 swords, 17 dwarfs, 15 ogres 12 archers and 8 mages.
You still can play as a mage, but there may be no need for you in any clan, or you need to level up to beat the competition.
Finally I see that introducing all of those things would change game totally, so maybe it's an idea for entirely new game rather than for adjustments? Map can be the same, just call it "forgotten tales - clan stories" and maybe offer current players some free XP for joining the other game.
