Spells/Physical Damage VS NPCs

[NiteHawk]

I'm not sure if I want to do this, but I would like feedback on this.


Armor can passively negate damage on EACH attack, on top of it's ability to absorb or deflect. While we don't have high values just yet for a few things, it's starting to get there.

Wisdom works similar. It can passively negate damage on each SPELL attack, on top of it's ability to resist the spell completely.

Both work fine, but I may have to look at the armor and actively absorbing/deflecting once we do our level 25 tests to see how well armor actually works.

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NPCs get the same calculations. This means that NPCs will passively negate damage too. I am wondering however if this is a good idea for NPCs to have or if they should only have active absorb/deflect/resist.

This means that you'd be technically doing full damage to NPCs, but less to players, sometimes in heavy armor, a good deal less.


I am on the fence on what is better. Keeping the formula the same for everything is super nice, but maybe the damage might be too much less on end game leveling monsters and it will make leveling more tough. We could technically lower AC on certain mobs that probably shouldn't have so much AC.

So with passive added, we should keep the armor values lower then higher for mobs that shouldn't have armor. Obviously for OADs, quest mobs, etc it's nice to be able to have a high negation rate so we can increase it on these. You would deal less damage per attack, but they probably won't actively absorb as much as the values don't need to be set as high.

With it removed, we can boost armor on some NPCs, so that they actively absorb/deflect more to more standard playerish heavy armor values. You'd do more damage overall, but you might get more absorption or resist effects. I think it's easier to balance this way but might not be as 'standard' and people might get the wrong impression when attacking mobs vs players, as in they'll to learn that you will often do less damage on players etc.


What do people think?

[Kruell]

I think you should keep it simple and builders just stay on the same scale as players. It's like those monsters with 27 agi, never should have happened. Monsters shouldn't have +50 armor on players of the same level either. I believe it can be handled in the npc creation and modification and shouldn't require special code to separate the two. I'd be fine doing half damage to a world monster as long as I knew the reasons why. It's a tough monster, it should be difficult to kill. Doing half damage on a leveling monster though... that's a fail.

[Aieron]

Pretty much in agreement with Kruell.

Only added point I have is that the damage negations from AC can make testing NPC divinities annoying if the AC between mobs varies a lot. It's still doable just not as straight forward as it used to be.

[NiteHawk]

Pretty much in agreement with Kruell.

Only added point I have is that the damage negations from AC can make testing NPC divinities annoying if the AC between mobs varies a lot. It's still doable just not as straight forward as it used to be.

Yeah honestly, I agree with this. 8) Can have a test mob for this in the future, I suppose for this purpose, but eh, it's not hard to figure out I'd say using low level mobs.

[Folder]

I like the idea of armor/wisdom lowering incoming damage in pvp, or at least maybe I do. It sounds nice but needs to be balanced in practice.

Look at the end of the day however you calculate things you're getting the same thing - making a player/npc take less or more time to die. It doesn't matter if you do it with armor/wis/hp. Personally I'm a fan of balancing all monsters with hp. I can understand perhaps some exceptions for high-end mobs, but you're doing the exact same thing if you balance it with less hp but more armor/wis. You could have just put more hp on it, you know?

For players...well I'm not sure. Obviously wisdom needs to have a benefit as well as armor. It's all hard to say without having 25s and equipment for testing. You could make AC/wis passively reduce damage (after making the check to see if the attack missed/resisted), but in the end you could do the exact same thing with HP.

My opinion is that it should be simple. In PVP make armor increase chance to miss/deflect/whatever, make wisdom increase your chance to resist. Balance all the rest with hp/weapon strength. In PVE do the same thing and here it is much easier. Give that dragon mob more agi or wisdom but there's really no point to making successful attacks do less damage because, again, all that can be balanced with HP/AC/Wis.

Also worth adding in my agreement with Kruell on leveling monsters. There should be a variety of monsters and areas to choose from when leveling, ideally. You wouldn't want all casters trying to hit the same mob that's weak to spells, and all physical going for the same mob that's weak to physical. Some variation in leveling mob difficulty is fine but it should be minor, imo.