Dev Journal / Fireside Chats with Sic: Vol. III

Announcements, updates and news concerning the Requiem project.
Post Reply
User avatar
Sic
Aeolian Staff
Posts: 368
Character: Isidor Abendroth

Dev Journal / Fireside Chats with Sic: Vol. III

Post by Sic » February 26th, 2021, 6:23 pm

Dev Journal: Combat

Hello everyone, I wanted to take a moment to share with you guys our major changes to martial combat for Act VI as to help alleviate some questions that keep coming up in the Discord and shed some light on what we’ve changed and why. This will try and cover the majority of things we’ve done for Act VI in terms of martial combat - magic will be left to Rex to cover. Let’s get started.

Armor Classes and Foci

Armor classes are the first thing we took a crack at with Act VI. In Act V, classes were lackluster and only handled penalties and the maximum amount of resists you could manage to acquire. All in all, they were an underwhelming mechanic that didn’t suit our anticipated level of quality for the project.

In Act VI, we’ve greatly expanded upon the armor class system. Each class of armor now has a variety of shared and unique bonuses that help augment the playstyles commonly associated with the armor in question. These new perks and bonuses help bring more flavor to our armor system and all in all give the meta of combat a more signature and personalized experience. These bonuses include passive perks such as critical hit chance bonuses and the like, to more active perks, such as bestowing a chance to evade spells and ranged weapons.

Armor in the lands of Vitaveus are organized under three different classifications; Heavy, Medium and Light. Your choice in what class or combination of classes that your character will adorn requires many different factors to consider.

Heavy Armor


Heavy Armor constitutes the heaviest, most well-protecting armor known to man. Comprising types of armor such as Platemail and Splintmail, Heavy Armor is unmatched in its’ ability to protect its user from sources of potential injurious damage, and provides the highest potential resistance values to forms of Melee and Magical damage. Additionally, Heavy Armor enjoys various perks and bonuses that bolster the vitality and survivability of its user, to include the highest hit point bonuses of any armor type.

Heavy Armor weighs the most out of all available armor in the game, and is subsequently the most expensive, material wise, to craft. Equipping a piece of Heavy Armor reduces a character’s Stamina, Mana, Intelligence and Dexterity values by 3 points each, for a total cumulative penalty of -18 to each stat. Heavy armor disallows many skills and abilities that rely on dexterous movement and mental concentration, and users whom opt to adorn themselves in Heavy Armor will be unable to perform stealthy or hiding abilities, use Dodge, cannot Sprint, and regenerate mana at a very reduced rate.

Set Bonuses:

Critical Abatement II: Stalwart armor reduces the impact of critical hits you suffer while in combat, reducing their effectiveness.
Reduces Sustained Critical Bonus Damage 30%
Corporeal Fortitude II: Your choice in heavier armor has afforded the benefit of being less susceptible to incurring bodily injuries upon knock-outs.
Reduces Chance of Injury 30%
Focused Vitalitism II: The mental assurances gained from your armor choice affords you a better ability to regain your breath and corporeal vitality.
Increases Natural HP Regen 20%
Ranged Deflection: Simply due to the sheer design of the heavy armor that adorns you can, in rare circumstances, cause ranged attacks to be completel deflected, harmlessly skipping across your armaments like a rock upon water.
10% Chance to Deflect Martial Ranged / 20% Chance to Deflect Ranged SWM
Juggernaut: The mental effects of feeling nigh invincible in such heavy armananets can sometimes sway the course of battle, emboldening the heavy armor user in the midst of battle.
20% Chance to regain 20% of received damage (after resists) returned as stamina and hit points: can only occur once every seven seconds

Medium Armor

Medium Armor comprises what could be considered the most prevalent and widely embraced armaments any serious warrior within Vitaveus utilizes for most encounters. While not as protective as Heavy Armor, Medium Armor is superior to that of Light Armor, and is tailored and designed to accommodate the average warrior well. Often taking the form of Ringmail, Chainmail and even bone armor, Medium Armor is an excellent pairing for any warrior worth their salt.

Medium Armor weighs less than it’s Heavy Armor counterpart, and is less expensive, material wise, to craft. Equipping a piece of Medium Armor reduces a character’s Stamina, Mana, Intelligence and Dexterity values by 2 points each, for a total cumulative penalty of -12 to each stat. Medium armor allows for the use of many skills and abilities that rely on dexterous movement and mental concentration to at least a mediocre extent, and users who opt to adorn themselves in Medium Armor are able to perform stealthy and hiding abilities at penalty, may use Dodge in certain circumstances, can Sprint with reduced effectiveness, and can regenerate mana at reduced rate compared to that of can in Light Armor.

Set Bonuses

Critical Abatement I: Decent armor reduces the impact of critical hits you suffer while in combat, reducing their effectiveness.
Reduces Sustained Critical Bonus Damage 15%
Corporeal Fortitude I: Your choice in medium armor has afforded the benefit of being somewhat less susceptible to incurring bodily injuries upon knock-outs.
Reduces Chance of Injury 15%
Focused Vitalitism I: The mental assurances gained from your armor choice affords you a small ability to regain your breath and corporeal vitality.
Increases Natural HP Regen 10%
Unhindered Accuracy I: While only moderately encumbered by armors, you benefit from a slight increase in your martial accuracy.
Hit Chance Increase +5%
Spry Defenses I: Your medium armaments allows you to evade and dodge attacks that opponents in heavier armors would be forced to endure.
Defense Chance Increase +5%
Critical Efficiency I: Free range of movement and preservation of dexterous techniques afford you better finesse in pinpointing critical areas of your opponents, resulting in a small increase in your ability to inflict critical hits.
Increases Critical Chance +3%
Melee Deflection: The physical design of your medium armor can afford you, in rare-circumstances, a life-saving reprieve from an otherwise deadly blow, allowing a melee attack to sometimes deflect harmlessly off your armor.
10% Chance to Deflect Martial Melee / 20% Chance to Deflect Melee SWM
Martial Expertise: Ordained in armaments essentially tailored to a martial brawler, you are able to focus on technique and tactics as opposed to being encumbered by heavier armors, or concerned with evading life-ending blows in lighter armor.
-25% SWM Stam Cost / + 25% SWM Accuracy / -35% SWM Fatigue Time

Light Armor

Light Armor is the lightest class of armor available to adventurers within Vitaveus. Hardly befitting the name of armor, Light Armor is used in circumstances where one may require a semblance of protection, but cannot afford the encumbrance or burdens of traditional aramanents. Found in the forms of primarily leather-based armors, Light Armor is utilized most often by assassins, dexterous warriors and, of course, the occasional magical practitioner.

Light Armor weighs less than it’s Heavy Armor counterpart, and is less expensive, material wise, to craft. Equipping a piece of Light Armor reduces a character’s Stamina, Mana, Intelligence and Dexterity values by 1 point each, for a total cumulative penalty of -6 to each stat. Light armor allows for the use of many skills and abilities that rely on dexterous movement and mental concentration to a masterful extent, and users who opt to adorn themselves in Light Armor are able to perform stealthy and hiding abilities with little penalty, may use Dodge in most circumstances, can Sprint with almost 100% effectiveness, and can regenerate mana at full effectiveness.

Set Bonuses

Unhindered Accuracy II: While hardly encumbered by armors at all, you benefit from a significant increase in your martial accuracy.
Hit Chance Increase +10%
Spry Defenses II: Your light armaments allows you to evade and dodge attacks that opponents in heavier and medium-class armors would be forced to endure.
Defense Chance Increase +10%
Critical Efficiency II: Free range of movement and preservation of dexterous techniques afford you better finesse in pinpointing critical areas of your opponents, resulting in a great increase in your ability to inflict critical hits.
Increases Critical Chance +7%
Arcane Deflection: The physical design of your light armor can afford you, in rare-circumstances, a life-saving reprieve from spells hurled towards you.
15% chance to evade spells
Predatory Exploitation: Ordained in armaments essentially tailored to the needs of the lithe and deadly predator, you are able to focus on methods of attack that cripple and disorientate your victim, infusing you with power upon exploiting their weaknesses.
Increases Critical Status Effects by 25% duration / Restores 15% of total inflicted damage from a Critical Hit as Mana and Stamina


Along with Armor Classes comes the idea of Armor Focus. We’ve had Armor Foci in Act V with the separation of specialized armor - Platemail with resists focused to defend against melee, and Splint Mail with resists focused to defend against magic. In Act V, however, this intended mechanic fell short in achieving what the original intention of the mechanic was; to bring more consideration into gear choices for players, and to not support a meta in which a singular armor set would be suitable for all engagements a character may find themselves in.

Foci have been expanded in Act VI to be far more important. In prior acts, you have been able to mix both Armor Classes AND Armor Foci - that is, you could equip and wear any piece of armor with one another as you saw fit. While we still retain the ability for players to wear varying different pieces of Armor Classes within a Foci, players are no longer able to mix and match the two separate Foci. This means that depending on the given circumstances, you will have to prepare yourself when going out adventuring for a focus against melee-based damage or magic-based damage. Foci retain their former meta of having two Primary resists, one Constant resist, and two Vulnerable resists.

These changes have been implemented to help give a greater sense of gear specialization through our end-game systems of Enchantment and Augmentation, and to add more flavor to gear choice and gear requirements. A single set of gear will no longer be the be-all end-all solution to every single scenario that your character may come across in-game; you will need to make choices as to how you are outfitting yourself for the adventure ahead.

Resistances, PvM and PvP

As we mentioned above, a single set of gear will no longer be the be-all end-all solution to every single scenario that your character may come across in-game; you will need to make choices as to how you are outfitting yourself for the adventure ahead. A set of Platemail for instance will be highly effective against melee-based attacks, while weak to magic. Splint Mail has similar levels of resistance to that of Platemail, but focused to defend against magical damage. Through augments and enchantments, a crafty player can help raise the discrepancies experienced through the use of a singular Armor Foci, but can never overcome the innate weakness a type of Armor may have for damage types.

Damage Types have furthermore been changed and augmented into more appropriate, role-playing based themes. For Act VI, the following Damage Types have replaced the traditional types of Physical, Cold, Fire, Poison and Energy:

Blunt
Slash
Corporeal
Occult
Energy (remains same)

Martial Weapons are now concentrated on delivering a combination of Blunt and Slash damages. Swords, for example, deal 100% of their damage in Slash, while Maces deal 100% of their damage in Blunt. A weapon such as an Axe will deliver 25% of it’s damage in Blunt and 75% of it’s damage in Slash.

Through the use of crafting materials such as higher rarity ingots, these spreads of damage can further be augmented out to exchange these default values to Corporeal damage. Furthermore, through the use of Augments, this damage can be further transmuted into 100% Corporeal damage.

Blunt Damage/Resistance

Blunt damage is one of the two primary Melee focused damage and resistance values. Blunt damage is composed of all types of damage that result from a bludgeoning or kinetic use of force, and includes a wide variety of damage forms above and beyond that of the application of a mace, for instance.

Blunt damage can be found on melee and ranged weapons.
Blunt resistance can be found as a Primary Resist on Physical Defense armor.

Slash Damage/Resistance

Slash damage is one of the two primary Melee focused damage and resistance values. Slash damage normally takes the form of cutting, lacerating and penetrating uses of force. One of the most foremost examples of slash damage is that of bladed weapons.

Slash damage can be found on melee and ranged weapons.
Slash resistance can be found as a Primary Resist on Physical Defense armor.

Corporeal Damage/Resistance

Corporeal damage is a generalized form of damage that covers non-descript methods of injurious sources of damage to the body, and can be inflicted from both Melee-based forms of damage as well as Magic-based forms of damage. In addition, environmental and poison-based attacks also checked against the Corporeal resistance value. Examples of Corporeal damage can include anything from internal injuries inflicted via the application of a melee or ranged weapon, blood loss incurred from gunshot trauma, to even more supernatural incidents such as tissue damage from a spell that inflicts grievous rashes and boils or hypothermia from spells inducing drastic reductions in bodily temperature.

Corporeal damage can be found on melee and ranged weapons, as well as certain spell schools.
Corporeal resistance can be found as a Constant Resist on both Physical Defense and Elemental Defense armor.
Corporeal damage is most commonly used by monsters, traps and environmental effects.
Corporeal damage is used to calculate your resistance to Poisons and Toxins.

Occult Damage/Resistance

Occult damage is one of the two primary Magic focused damage and resistance values. Occult damage takes the form of negative energies or manifestations that inflict injury upon the human body, and can range from illusionary spectres that rend the flesh from an enemy, to the trauma induced from burst capillaries a heinous incantation may result in.

Occult damage can be found within certain spell schools.
Occult resistance can be found as a Primary Resist on Elemental Defense armor.

Energy Damage/Resistance

Energy damage is one of the two primary Magic focused damage and resistance values. Energy damage covers many different facets of magical damage, to include physical manifestation of lightning and other forms of controlled electrical current to even the emulation of kinetic energies and applications of physic-altering power.

Energy damage can be found within certain spell schools.
Energy resistance can be found as a Primary Resist on Elemental Defense armor.

Resistances: How and Why

As to accomodate for these new changes, the meta of PvM combat has changed significantly for the shard. Previously (as well as on other shards), hostile monsters were given various ranges of individual resistances (often nonsensical), and you simply bashed the bad guy until you killed them. With Act VI, we’ve adopted a more unique method of engagement - for the vast majority of all hostile creatures, hostile mobiles will experience a weakness to either melee damage or magic damage. A type of scarab may have an exceptionally hard carapace and thus resist 50% of physical damage (blunt and slash), but will only resist 25% of magic damage. This design is further accompanied by the idea mentioned above that the creature’s Corporeal resistance matches it’s lowest resist value. Furthermore, the vast majority of hostile NPC damage is dealt in Corporeal damage in return.

These new designs help us accomplish two major things with the project at hand. First, we have streamlined the ability for players to create competent gear-sets for hunting the vast majority of our PvM content, and to allow them to specialize more easily into fighting most all common enemies they may come across in the game world. Specialization in Corporeal dealing weapons, of which any major weapon can be transmuted into dealing 100% of, will guarantee the most efficient way of delivering damage to mostly all major PvM encounters on the shard. While we like the changes that were brought about in AOS with the move from a singular armor value to the five resistances, influences upon these damage types were largely derived from resources (Shadow Iron: Physical 80%, Cold 20% for example), and were often underutilized for an RP setting, and a lot of times were nonsensical - in a low fantasy would such as Requiem, it is difficult to rationalize why a creature may be doing Cold or Fire damage to your character, for example.

Furthemore, since the majority of PvM content deals Corporeal damage, players can further optimize gear set choices to ensure the maximum potential of protecting themselves as well. Lastly, this new meta allows our content creators to custom-tailor interesting and unique challenges for special areas and dungeons that can transcend this meta - for example, a dungeon sub-boss that may be weak only to swords (slashing damage) - communicated through OPL single-click information displayed to the player through Create titles and hints. This design philosophy is similar to that of traditional UO in that some special mobs may do an outlier-level of damage to a certain resistance (Giant Ice Serpent 90% Cold), while also having strong defenses to certain resistances. The difference in our new meta, however, is establishing a more clear design criteria for mobs and providing non-typical information directly to the players as to not create a guessing game / whack-a-mole for resistances and weaknesses.

This new meta also allows our developers to create a concrete and solid game design that is instantly recognizable to our players, of which further allows us to build upon with future content that expands upon this foundation further, allowing more specialization and interesting combat content for end-game, as opposed to relegating resists and damage output to a singular goal of attaining 70 points in. For PvP considerations, players now can specialize their defense focuses upon the foe they may be facing. An engagement with a known troupe of legendary swordsmen may go a lot easier if you were to obtain a Physical Focus gearset that focuses heavily upon Slashing defense. Being stalked by a group of rogue magi? Picking up a set of Elemental Focus armor might be a good start. And the wildcard of any engagement still remains; a crafty person may in fact carry about a Corporeal dealing weapon and roll the dice to see if their foe has opted to neglect reinforcing their Corporeal stat in favor of more defense placed in Slashing and Blunt.

Weapons: Meta Changes

With our new design of armor classes, resistances and mob design out of the way, let’s take a look at our changes with weapon skills, weapons themselves, and skills generally.

Weapons in of themselves have been re-balanced for a more realistic and desirable range of options for players. All weapons now deliver a constant, base DPS value comparable to one-another across the board. There are no longer outlier weapons that deliver more DPS than the average, meaning that weapon choice is now all about how fast you want to hit and what weapon moves you’d like access to. Lastly, we’ve added numerous new weapons in for every weapon skill.

Weapon types have different DPS levels, and are listed from least to most DPS average as follows:

Fists
Off-Hand Weapons/Throwing Weapons
One-Hand Weapons
Archery Weapons / Polearms
Two-Handed Weapons
Firearms

One-Handed weapons retain their two special move meta - one drawn from Tactics, and the other from the Weapon Skill itself. Two-Handed weapons retain their four special move meta - two draw from Tactics, and the other two from the Weapon Skill itself. Off-Hand weapons, with the exception of the Torch, now focus on being able to be used in an Offensive and Defensive capacity. They recieve one offensive special move from their patron weapon class (such as Bleed for the off-hand sword), and one defensive special move.

As we mentioned previously, weapons now come in a combination of both Blunt and Slashing damage. This damage will be sufficient enough to cut down normal mobs and animals without too much trouble. For medium level mobs and spawns outside of dungeons and the like, players will be better suited in acquiring Corporeal weapons to maximize their damage potential - this is done through working with a Smith to create a weapon suited to your tastes. Corporeal Damage spreading is done through a Smith by creating a weapon with a resource other than Copper or Iron, and then choosing which resistance you’d like to subtract from. Once completed, you will have a weapon dealing up to 50% Corporeal damage - with the ability to Augment the weapon a further 50% using Weapon Augments.

Corporeal weapons will be suited for the vast majority of PvM encounters - special mobs with special titles or indicators exist in dungeons and special hunting areas that indicate that they are an exception to this rule, and are strong or even impervious to certain types of damage and critically weak to others.


Combat Skills: Meta Changes

Lastly, we can take a look as to what has changed with Tactics. Previously, in Act V, martial combat relied on three major skills:

Weapon Skill (for example, https://www.13thrones.com/skills/swords.htm)
Anatomy Skill (https://www.13thrones.com/skills/anatomy.htm)
Tactics Skill (https://www.13thrones.com/skills/tactics.htm)

In Act V, your weapon damage was dictated through a formula using primarily your Tactics and Anatomy skill to determine how much damage you dealt, while your Weapon Skill determined how likely you were to hit an opponent. Weapon Skill was checked against the defender’s skill in the attacker’s Weapon Skill and not the weapon they were holding. This resulted in far too high of a skill investment required to adequately defend against being hit in combat, and furthermore led to imbalance with magic spells to compensate for the lack of defense chances.

For Act VI, we’ve changed this significantly. Chance to Hit is now based solely upon two skills: Tactics and Two-Handed Tactics. Each weapon in the world is governed by either Tactics or THT, and hit chance is based upon this designation versus the defender’s skill. Therefore, if you are wielding a Two-Handed Sword, your chance to hit is determined by rolling against your opponent’s skill in THT. This has reduced the skill investment for adequate defense chances significantly but further adds a level of complexity to the system that is above and beyond that of just taking one skill to defend yourself against all manners of martial attacks. This also allows you to pick up any weapon in the game and be able to hit someone with it with the same overall accuracy as any other, with stipulations.

Weapon Skill on the other hand is now used solely for determining damage output and the ability to perform Special Weapon Moves. Weapon Skill works off of a curved formula (Skill*0.75)-50 , which results in damage output of a weapon being debuffed until around 66% skill, and then receiving bonus damage to a maximum amount of 40% at 120 skill.

The total amount of bonus damage factored into combat, including skill bonuses, equipment bonuses and magical props is 100%, which is reduced significantly from stock levels. Instead, we have front loaded much of this damage, making weapons more impactful before bonuses and creating a more realistic experience and less of a drastic change of damage increase down the road.

The other sources of Bonus Damage for weapons are that of Strength, which adds a maximum of 30% at 150, and the Anatomy Skill, which adds 12% to the bonus pool at 120 skill. The remaining balance of bonus damage can be padded to it’s cap through Weapon Quality bonuses (Mythic, etc.) and through magical props.

Lastly, critical hit bonus damage has been lowered from a potential 50% bonus to that of a 25% bonus. This has been done due to the significant changes across the board with DPS and Armor bonuses.

Conclusion

While there might be a lot of changes for Act VI, be assured that they have been done in an effort to streamline our systems and content to make it more accessible and distance ourselves from more niche solutions that lacked widespread appeal. Much of these changes will not feel too out of line with what you are familiar with already, as their designs are put into place for more long-term content creation and additions that give the staff more power to create more interesting and diverse content for the future - specifically with the idea of teamplay in mind. Furthermore, due to the nature of the shard and environment, we had wanted to provide players an easier to understand meta to defenses and PVP in so that there are less variables to account for when trying to focus solely on certain builds and defenses. Lastly, we wanted to breathe more life into crafting and resources, giving them more significance and future proofing the need for weapons and armor far greater than what was available before. Here’s to ten pages worth of notes, and we hope to see you in game next week!

Post Reply