Help melee: Magic resistance

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Areandon
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Help melee: Magic resistance

Postby Areandon » Wed Dec 31, 2003 4:00 pm

I launched this idea in one of the "help the ranger"-threads, and i thought i'd deserved it's own thread.

Changing the way magic resistance works would help melee classes a bunch i think.

Currently MR works as a spell check; there is a x% chance a spell doesn't hit a mob. With all casters throwing area spells this does very little, since 80% of the spells will hit anyway.

I propose changing this to MR taking an x% of the damage caused. The net effect of this would be that on MR mobs area spells do little to no damage. It also means that in order to kill those mobs groups would have to bring the now almost absolete melee classes.

Of course tanks still need to be able to tank a bit better, ranger still have to get their own niche, and all that stuff, but it would help bringing a bit more balance to caster vs. melee damage.

To make MR more common we could introduce a 9-10th circle spell for enchanters to cast it on other players. This way more mobs would have it as well. Mobs should get higher resistances than players though. Maybe replace scales or blur with this spell. Not sure about this though.

Please respond to this with arguments why this is a good or bad idea, instead of just saying it's a stupid idea.

Naled
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Postby Sarvis » Wed Dec 31, 2003 4:42 pm

I recommend ducking. ;)

It's not a bad suggestion, although I think casters _should_ be doing the damage against large groups while melee does damage against a single mob. It sounds like you want area spells to do nothing against groups of enemies... which is odd, because then why even have area spells?

Now that I'm thinking about it, everyone here seems to have the idea that magic should be doing far superior damage. Why?

I mean, if you think about it ... in most games magic has some limiting factor, and something that it excels at. Melee will usually excel at some other aspect of combat. Magic might do a small amount of damage, but against multiple opponents... while melee can hit really hard but only one guy at a time. Or maybe there's a harsh limit on the number of spells you can use. Or a long casting time, which gives opponents time to move out of the way completely (Final Fantasy Tactics).

Here the only limits on magic are amount of spells and casting time. Both of which can be dealt with by frequent rests and quick chant.

I never played a mage, or even zoned... but maybe someone can answer: Do casters have to think about and plan out their spells? Or can they just go in with spells blazing and nuke everything in sight? I've seen some references to the latter on the forums, which must either mean they have to many spells or too many chances to rest.

Of course, simply bringing more casters along also gets rid of the spell limit. Maybe that's the real problem. I know they can't cast at the same time, but hell... they could just take turns or something and only use half the spells a zone writer may have expected.

Lessening the number of spells casters get may help, rather than lessening the damage they do. This gives rangers the niche of providing consistant damage, while the mages can severely weaken mobs with a spell or two and then conserve their powers for the next battles.


Hmm... did any of that make sense?
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Gurns
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Re: Help melee: Magic resistance

Postby Gurns » Wed Dec 31, 2003 4:50 pm

Areandon wrote:Currently MR works as a spell check; there is a x% chance a spell doesn't hit a mob. With all casters throwing area spells this does very little, since 80% of the spells will hit anyway.

My impression is that many mobs have such a high MR already, that 80% of the spells don't hit. This may be vs. mobs > lvl 50, but they shrug 4 or 5 silences before 1 hits, they shrug 4 out of 5 force missiles, etc. And even mobs <50 shrug some lvl 50 spells.

I agree that melee damage is "too low" relative to spell damage. But I don't think the way to fix that is by increasing MR, because MR is already way too high. My suggestion would be to lower MR, lower spell damage, and lower mob hps.
belleshel
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Postby belleshel » Wed Dec 31, 2003 5:04 pm

Sarvis wrote:I never played a mage, or even zoned... but maybe someone can answer: Do casters have to think about and plan out their spells? Or can they just go in with spells blazing and nuke everything in sight? I've seen some references to the latter on the forums, which must either mean they have to many spells or too many chances to rest.


Short answer: No.

Lets put it this way, If you let me multiplay, I could with 14 bots do the majority of the zones pretty easily. Some classes require some though, but very few;(, personally I think enchanters and clerics are the only classes that require real thought to spell usage. We had a thread earlier about trying to make combat much more reactive but don't think we ever got any god reaction. I would love to see ideas that force you to mix up your spells (i.e. fire mobs and cold spells).
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Postby Sesexe » Wed Dec 31, 2003 5:19 pm

belleshel wrote: We had a thread earlier about trying to make combat much more reactive but don't think we ever got any god reaction.


Which thread are you referring to?
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Postby mynazzaraxxsyn » Wed Dec 31, 2003 5:38 pm

Sesexe wrote:
belleshel wrote: We had a thread earlier about trying to make combat much more reactive but don't think we ever got any god reaction.


Which thread are you referring to?


I would imagine your very well written well thought out post that you recently edited and then shevy posted in it curious as to what you had to say.

I personally would like to see that posted re-posted sesexe.
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Postby belleshel » Wed Dec 31, 2003 6:07 pm

I can't find the one I was looking for, its somewhere on Soj3 Archives.
But this one does goes into it on the combat side of things:

http://www.torilmud.org/phpBB2/viewtopi ... highlight=

I thought the discussion was going in the right direction, immortal input would have been nice... *wink*
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Postby Sesexe » Wed Dec 31, 2003 6:45 pm

mynazzaraxxsyn wrote:I would imagine your very well written well thought out post that you recently edited and then shevy posted in it curious as to what you had to say.


That thread became an exercise in futility. It's purpose was to search for improvement via an open intelligent debate about a system that had been well received before ever being posted publically. The intentions of the thread were never realized after 2 months. Therefor I removed it.

mynazzaraxxsyn wrote:I personally would like to see that posted re-posted sesexe.


The ideas once presented there have not died upon the BBS altar because the staff didn't publically respond to it. Whether or not I choose to make the material public again remains to be seen.
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Postby Sesexe » Wed Dec 31, 2003 6:46 pm

belleshel wrote:I can't find the one I was looking for, its somewhere on Soj3 Archives.
But this one does goes into it on the combat side of things:

http://www.torilmud.org/phpBB2/viewtopi ... highlight=

I thought the discussion was going in the right direction, immortal input would have been nice... *wink*


Kthnx. I'm glad he went back and edited his original posts.
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Postby mynazzaraxxsyn » Wed Dec 31, 2003 7:53 pm

Sesexe wrote:That thread became an exercise in futility. It's purpose was to search for improvement via an open intelligent debate about a system that had been well received before ever being posted publically. The intentions of the thread were never realized after 2 months. Therefor I removed it.


Hmm reading it I'm not sure why you say it was an exercise in futility. The only thing posted in it that was really negative was saying that the stuff might be hard to code. Also that was a post from around the time of the split and EQ changes were getting ready to be put in. I know the gods were hella busy.

I think it was a very good post and Shevy said he wanted to know what was originally there.
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Postby rylan » Wed Dec 31, 2003 8:32 pm

I'm wondering.. isn't it the same effect that a mob with 80% MR currently takes 0 damage from spells 80% of the time, versus a mob with the proposed system that took 20% of damage from spells all the time?

current 5 spells at 800hps with 80% MR = 1 getting through for 800 damage
proposed 5 spells at 800hps with 80% MR = 5 * 800 * 20% = 800 damage

I don't see how this would make any differance versus how it is now.
belleshel
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Postby belleshel » Wed Dec 31, 2003 8:44 pm

Yah but it you wouldn't have to hear 'damn mr' nothing is landing, anymore;)

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