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Rock, Paper, Scissors and PvP

 

Armor%20stats.jpg

Armor stats. Glance rates shown in percent at 100 quality.

Damage reduction is not depicted. Three listed armors are not in the game yet.

The stats might or might not be actual as they might be microupdated and tweaked.

 

Disclaimer: Being JK Elevation player without as much experience as others have I might not know every fact about the game. Following post is based on what I have seen and what I see currently in game. While I know how PvP combat in Wurm looks like, speaking from generic gamers point of view I can say it could use some more edge and be much more interesting and colorful. I don't know how it looks on Chaos since I've never been there.

Those are my ideas which could be helpful, but if you think they'll destroy some aspects of the game please quote the parts of my post and respond, as the only reason I'm suggesting them is to improve certain mechanics (like infantry combat, importance of horses) and change current meta, not to destroy the pleasure of fighting others players.

 

I am inspired by combat logic of other games, such as Mount and Blade, as well as common sense. While I know some of the aspects presented might not necessarily be historically accurate, the subject of improving RPS and making it more noticeable is worth discussing.

 

The map itself is a problem as well, but it is being solved in Cobb's brilliant thread right here: http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/100380-an-epic-problem/

Please do not discuss other pvp matters than sole rock, paper and scissors mechanics in this thread.

Stay on topic and avoid being offensive in any way, avoid using memes and try to be constructive.

 

 
What I've seen on Elevation is everyone being forced to play the meta, which is the plate armour plus weapon and shield of choice. People use two-handed weapons as well, but rarely as a main weapon. Archery is basically useful only for taking horses down. Basically no other armour than plate is being used.

 

 

TL;DR: rework armors, make more viable combinations, change the meta
 

 

 

A lot of the mechanics are supposed to work like you want:

Rock-paper-scissors is already there but apparently not noticable enough.

- Rolf, Cobb's thread.

 

 

Here's an analysis of current combat mechanics with possible solutions:

 

Starting with armors:

Why are other choices than plate not viable? Why should they be? I'm going to talk about currently implemented and common armours, as I don't know how drake, scale or the new ones are suposed to work.

 

Cloth:

Cloth is the lightest armour providing little to no protection against edged weapons or piercing. People are not using it for obvious reasons, as it provides least damage reduction, leading to tremendous wounds.

 

Leather and studded leather:

Light armours providing mediocre protection against edge or piercing with pretty good blunt glance rate. People are not using it because of the damage reduction being too low, again leading to being too squishy and focused as first.

 

Chain:

Medium armour, offering pretty decent protection against blades, basic protection against crushing and piercing. Again - not being used because of very weak damage reduction against all sorts of attacks in comparison to plate.

 

Plate:

Way to go now. Being 90+ platesmith I know the effort it takes to make a set of plate in comparison to leather or chain. This one offers the best protection against piercing with much less against bashing or slashing. People are using it not only because the glance rates seem to be highest, but also huge damage reduction provides the best protection.

 

Analysing those four types of armour you can easily see that the problem lies in damage reduction. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't notice differences in DR against different types of attacks. Only thing I've noticed is the glance rate, and looking at the table - plate doesn't seem to glance as much slashing as it does in game.

 

Possible solutions:

 

Cloth:

It won't be your first choice for battle as long as horses pay such an important role. If archery was reworked I'm sure some people would chose it, depending on their team to cover them (will elaborate on that later)

Glance rates could be even lower, but the damage reduction against crushing could be buffed. It should not obstruct your mobility, allowing you to dodge attacks more efficiently than in heavier armours.

 

Leather and studded leather:

Another one that might actually be used after archery rework. DR could be a little bit higher - especially for crushing and slashing, while piercing should provide pretty nasty wounds. Glance rates seem to be fine. Leather and studded should not make you dodge much less.

 

Chain:

I don't really agree with the glance rates. I think it should be buffed against mauls a little bit, being still weak for piercing and a bit weaker for slashing. That being said about glance rates, I think damage treshold should be tweaked as well, leading to slashes and pierces being the deadliest (ofc still less deadly than it is now), and crushing a little more bearable. It should also not make you much less mobile, still alowing to dodge attacks.

People would use it if it was a good substitute for plate, allowing to kite your enemies and still take some damage instead of dropping in two hits. Making iron chain armor multiplier-11 instead of 10 is good step. Make it 12 for steel, 13 for addy and 14 for seryll/glimmer and it's even better. Leave 10 for gold and brass, so material has more impact on it.

Chain would also be bearable after the archery rework.

 

Plate:

I think glance rates could use polishing (what I've seen in game, not on the table). Needs two changes - weaker glance rate against piercing and much stronger against slashing. That being said, damage reduction should remain as it is, with higher treshold for slashing.

Noone wears lighter armour because you can take it off and put back on in barely 3 seconds.

 

People would have to think if they want to use plate armour after archery and armour rework.

 

Speaking of archery rework:

In current meta archery is basically only useful against horses, because piercing is glancing off plate like nerf darts. Also - shields. After the changes done to armors, shields (will elaborate) archers would be able to provide actual ranged damage, not only to the horses. But that's not enough, as it would make archery much too powerful, it should come with some drawbacks, like these:

 

- Full helmets should obscure vision, thus giving great disadvantage while using all sorts of bows. No archer should wear a full helmet.

- Horseback archery should be possible only with medium and short bows. No BS longbow horse archers. You should also be able to shoot when moving with shortbow, accepting all its drawbacks (less accuracy over range, making difficult shots literally impossible even for the best archers). Medium and short bows would not provide enough damage to bring down armour or barded horses too quickly, so longbows will still be useful, just in different ways.

- Rethink how the tile limit should work for each bow. While you shouldn't be able to shoot too far with shortbows, shooting at closer targets with longbows might be worth considering

- Think about the timers on bows. Short and medium ones should shoot faster than longbows.

- Think about how armor influences your archery skills. You should not only be less accurate wearing medium or heavy armor, but also slower with your ranged weapon.

 

Armourswapping and horsejumping:

Another reason why lighter armours are not used is because you can take off your breastplate, leggings and helmet in 1.5 seconds, and then catch the guy who's not going to run any faster than you.

Players juggling mechanics like equipping armor are also the reason why archery rework won't work untill developers implement mechanics like timers on equipping armor, where obviously heavier armor means longer timers.

You shouldn't be able to get naked and dressed again in your full plate in 3 seconds, it's nonsense. Same with taking your horsegear off and hoping on resstone working.

 

Another issue - horsejumping. People being dismounted after charging in the fight aren't having much trouble backing off, since leading backup horses is a part of current meta. If there was a timer mounting, interrupted by getting hit, it would greatly improve combat immerssion and sense of danger, it would also promote using lighter armours in order to be faster on foot, after being dismounted.

 

Speaking of dismounting:

Polearms are great tools to kill mounts, although rarely used, they sort of work. They could work even better (and thus be more useful) if they had a chance to knock off the rider and would not suck in actual combat.

Their use in current meta is too narrow, since you'll be just as good or even better with two-handed weapon.

After the tweaks done to armours and damage resistances, piercing would be more deadly and people might want to use them against plate or chain. Halberds would be more versatile than spears, horsemen could also wield spears using them as lances;

 

- When charging horse is targeted by a person wielding spear or halberd and it comes in their attack range (being higher than most of regular weapons) it should be hit immediately with high chance of being heavily damaged slash killed, preferably being stalled, working like a shieldbash.

- When mounted rider is targeted by a person wielding spear or halberd and he comes near enough he should be hit immediately ("You open yourself to an attack!"). If hit manages to land on riders shield, armour or hit him there should be a high chance of dismounting him and dealing more damage (bruises from falling, also). If hit missess the rider should not suffer from polearm mechanics. Horse should run for couple of next tiles to make it harder for the rider to retreat.

- When mounted rider targets someone wielding spear himself, he gets free attack whenever he is in move at galloping speed and comes in the attack range, possibly knocking one off-horse, stalling/killing the horse or stunning the person who is unmounted. Damage dealt is highest on horses, spear takes very, very much damage - preferably breaking or being close to break. Halberds don't work this way, as they are intended to be infantry weapons, they make it up in versatility. Cavalry could use polearms offensively, as lances.

 

Two first features should make it possible for the infantry to defend archers from being owned by "hit and run" tactics, and the third one makes spears pretty viable opener weapons for cavalry.

 

Weapons:

Small ones need some love, they're not very useful (to avoid saying useless, like shortswords) due to tremendous damage reduction for all types of damage in armour. Problem might be partially solved by implementing new DR mechanics, although they might need to be looked into. Only small weapon I've seen being used is small maul.

 

Two-handed weapons have too narrow field of use as they still parry too small amount of hits (even 2h swords)

 

Combat:

Aggressive: It is pretty neat now, only thing I'd change would be these two - easier shieldbashing on aggressive and no arrow blocking with your shield. Perhaps some CR bonus for fighting against oponents with shield.

Defensive: Making it the only stance blocking arrows isn't a bad idea, it would help archers. CR bonus against people with twohanders?

Normal: It is good as it is now.

 

 

 

As you can see implementing these mechanics would help to make the RPS aspect more noticeable and would change the "plate armour weapon shield horse longbow" domination on Epic. I think it would help as horses would not pay such a big role during the combat, but still would have important role to fill. Archers would be more specialized and useful in providing damage and I can already figure out some possible gear combinations and outcomes, with its strengths and weaknesses. The numbers would not be as important as earlier.

 

Keep in mind that each and every one of these changes should be implemented carefully considering balance and rock paper scissors aspect, as it could lead to further frustration. For example - if the changes to archery were implemented poorly the lightly armoured archers could get 1-shot to the face by mobile horse archers (which shouldn't be possible as I mentioned in archery section).

 

For example, person willing to furfill variety of roles can still wear chain/studded combo on light horse with onehanded/shield combo suiting the role and medium bow. It is not going to work as good as specialized "rocks", "papers", or "scissors", but it is still going to be universal, something inbetween.

 

 

Feel free to post suggestions and let me know what you think about the ones I came up with. How do you think PvP would look like if the meta has changed?

Edited by Arkhir
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Bumping for some discussion on the matter. I know it's long but come on :ph34r:


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Tough being a non-pvper to comment. It'll be limited in scope the opinion I can offer. I'm fully aware I don't understand all these mechanics properly, but hey I'm not claiming I'm right either so here goes:


 


Flat across the board DR seems to be an issue as you've pointed out. I'd be in favour of damage reduction being based solely on defense types instead of including armour type. 50% glance against mauling? You get 50% DR against mauling as well. Obviously that'd need to be balanced and calibrated, but I think it'd help open up more interplay between the armours. Any flat DR attached to an armour type will make it better against "weaknesses" than it should be, ie plate of today.


 


Is no eye coverage *really* that much of a disadvantage in PvP? More of an honest question here. I know it's a nuisance, but it doesn't sound like that much of a buzzkill to me. Unless I misunderstand, archer's wearing plate armour seems weirder than just them wearing full helms.


 


Plate armour "should" be good against arrows. Although this is a smidge of realism talking, big heavy metal walls do pretty good against pointy shooty things. I'd be in favour of making plate armour weaker in melee combat as a trade off. Emphasizing light or medium armoured troops for melee effectiveness, but giving plate warriors more defence against support archers. Edit: Directional interception of arrows would be a neat addition into that concept, but probably unfeasible with wurm's state of coding finesse/dev workload.


 


The timer comments all seem sensible in construct. PvE might get annoyed though since we'd suddenly have timers for mounting. Perhaps no mounting horses within X tiles of an enemy kingdom member instead? I fully agree with armour swaps taking time (we switch armour rarely in pve, so that timer wouldn't be a huge issue after the blowhards stop kavitching), but I'd love to see some UI attached with it (take off all button in inventory for example) to make up for it.


 


 


Edit: Those glance rates aren't the entire story I don't think. q30 cotton armour glances 6/7 hits from a black bear for me, but 1/2 for a troll. Similar story for my q70 chain when talking spiders vs wildcats. Either CR, damage amount, or some unknown factor is also at play in my experience when it comes to glancing hits.


Edited by Sevenless

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My eyes started to glaze over the instant I realized this was only about PVP, so I'll say this:


 


As long as NONE of these changes impact my life on the Freedom Isles in a negative way, hey, it's all good.


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Sorry prox, no one mention's sitting on your deed planting flowers and greifing noobs out of your perimeter. I'm sure the general PvE game-play wont be effected  :mellow:


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+1 Great suggestions. Please pin this thread and let know devs about it

Good job!

Please implement It! Specially fix the archery and add crossbows against plates armours. There shouldn't be so mamy guys in plates and with horses on battle field.

Edited by Gamurin

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Sorry prox, no one mention's sitting on your deed planting flowers and greifing noobs out of your perimeter. I'm sure the general PvE game-play wont be effected  :mellow:

 

Well that was a bit uncalled for.  You're playing a game where the biggest things that ever happened to it were multi-story houses, a new crafting UI window, and a new larger PVE server.

 

I'm surprised you aren't on a CoD forum somewhere with all the other Internet badasses, why slum it here with all us "cake eaters"?  

 

:lol:

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I don't think this would be only freedom/epic or just pvp


 


I could see it also for normal around freedom things just as easily as chaos or epic


 


if your area has tons of lava animals a armor with resist fire would be nice no matter the server - I think people look at it based off of freedom/epic or pvp/pve as to generalized a concept - I seriously doubt anyone would be upset by a better armor or weapons system - and a more robust combat system as it would make pvp more fun but at same time would allow people in pve to tailor there suits to there environment


 


and before any comments - I've played freedom/chaos/epic so I know how people on all servers play


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I think one of the issues for hunting: swapping armours is a pain.


 


There should definitely be an option that is suboptimal for PvP, but has all around resists for general slaughtering of Wurm NPC denizens.


Edited by Sevenless

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I think one of the issues for hunting: swapping armours is a pain.

 

There should definitely be an option that is suboptimal for PvP, but has all around resists for general slaughtering of Wurm NPC denizens.

I would be all for keeping studded leather as the go to for PVE needs. It would be nice if it had built in fire/frost/acid protections. You could then up chains damage reduction from physical attacks, and it gives chain and studded a bit more character than they have now.

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I would be all for keeping studded leather as the go to for PVE needs. It would be nice if it had built in fire/frost/acid protections. You could then up chains damage reduction from physical attacks, and it gives chain and studded a bit more character than they have now.

 

Well, it's technically Drake. Not a lot of serious hunters, and those that are tend to be wealthy enough to have a drake set. Bit of a gentleman's sport?

 

Not sure what's gonna happen with drake supply in the future, but I doubt it'll be drake for everyone type idea.

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Well, it's technically Drake. Not a lot of serious hunters, and those that are tend to be wealthy enough to have a drake set. Bit of a gentleman's sport?

 

Not sure what's gonna happen with drake supply in the future, but I doubt it'll be drake for everyone type idea.

Yeah. I was talking about plain ole studded leather. I see quite a few PVE folks running around in it while hunting etc.

 

Drakehide should likely go with high fire resists.

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I would be all for keeping studded leather as the go to for PVE needs. It would be nice if it had built in fire/frost/acid protections. You could then up chains damage reduction from physical attacks, and it gives chain and studded a bit more character than they have now.

 

Studded leather is not the go to at all, even in pve i'd say chain minimum atm, not that I wouldn't like more variation but studded simply isn't worth a pinch of salt.

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yeah I use some studded for projects outside wall where I encounter small game - just for the lightness - but anything larger then a spider I prefer my chain mail or plate


 


even when I played pristine I used hybrid armor - chainmail chest and helm - studded rest - for better protection and mobility and if I was going on a trip I switched to my chain mail or plate still


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Thread is about PvP application of armours and rock-paper-scissors aspect of the game, as no armour but plate is currently used in PvP. Also, as I've noted below the table it might not be (and probably is not) accurate.


Edited by Arkhir

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yes but the revamp of armor would effect pvp as well as pve - so all aspects must be debated


 


the easiest answer is just adding more sub types to armor to add +/- stats to allow pvp specific armors


 


like using chain mail as a example


 


Riveted chain mail - (real life) is flatter ring mail that is bolted thus locking the rings - its not as flexible but is harder for arrows or swords to penetrate - wurm stats +10 pieceing and slashing -10 bashing


 


Padded chain mail (once again real life) has a soft cloth backing that cushions impacts but that same cushioning allows pierceing and slashing attacks to do better against it - +10 bashing -5 slashing and piercing


 


this would allow customization for pvpers while leaving standard armors alone for pve'ers


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Thread is about PvP application of armours and rock-paper-scissors aspect of the game, as no armour but plate is currently used in PvP. Also, as I've noted below the table it might not be (and probably is not) accurate.

I agree with Forgedrake on this one. As much as you want to make it just pvp, PvE needs to be considered as well (as goes for all PvE suggestions).

 

That being said pve doesn't need much with regards to armour to make it happy so ehn.

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True, but keep in mind the suggestion is based on my elevation experience and is mostly about Epic. PvE servers don't need change, if you're saying you use every type of armor in game, it's the PvP I'm talking about. Epic PvP.


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Excellent ideas +1.


I hope it's just one day.


good job!


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i ###### love it, i have some small nitpicks but overall you came to the same conclusions as i did.


 


you even fixed horse combat wtf man...


 


...This is a very rare and interesting version of the threads.


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