The new combat system is coming along pretty nicely. I'm finishing it up and it should be ready for some ptesting this weekend. About the only thing I have left to do is fix any bugs I find and tweak the formulas so they don't unbalance anything.

I'll post here with more details after I'm back in the states.

-Bane

I'm slowly starting to ptest the new changes and they're looking pretty good. In the meanwhile I'll give everyone a heads up on what's coming. My estimation for when this will be live...is at least a week, depending on how the ptesting goes.

The combat system changes will be introduced with version 2.40. The next new major code push will be version 2.50 and for that one I'll be working on a completely magic system overhaul. (More details on that will be released later as I haven't completely hammered out what's coming, but mages, bards, druids, and clerics will definitely be seeing some magic related improvements!)

Anyway so for version 2.40 here's what's coming:

Weapon proficiencies have been completely removed.
They are being replaced with 'skills' as follows:
(Note: Great = 2h weapons)

Slashing:
Swords
Great Swords

Chopping
Axes
Great Axes

Piercing
Rapiers
Spears
Daggers

Crushing
Clubs: General crushing...catch all for anything that doesn't fit in the other categories
Staves
Maces
Great Maces
Hammers
Great Hammers
Bare-Handed

Ranged
Bow
Crossbow
Thrown

Exotic
Whips
Polearms

Old Resist/Vuln/Immune mappings:

Sharp --> Slashing
Thrust --> Piercing
Blunt --> Crushing
Pole --> Exotic
Missile --> Ranged
Cleave --> Chopping

Now as for moving profs over to weapon skills, I haven't coded this yet but what's going to happen is I'll make it so when you first log on, you can choose to move your old profs into the new skills of your choice. We'll also be putting in weapons trainers what will allow you to learn a new weapon category.

As for how they'll work, they are going to be regular skills. You'll have 10 pts possible per level to improve them, with a maximum rating of 300 at level 30. More details on how they'll be used will follow.

AC and Thac0 are also being completely removed.
In there place will be a defense skill, a weapon skill (as mentioned above), and an armor rating.

Your ability to hit or miss someone will be based on the difference between your weapon skill and their defense skill. Mobs will be given approximately (10*level-1)+(1-10) defense and weapon skill, players will have to work their defense/weapon skills up by using them. Defense is a passive ability that will improve when you dodge, parry, get missed, or get hit. Weapon skills will increase as you use the weapon and hit or miss a target.

Armor is changing it's role. Instead of making you harder to hit...it will now only absorb damage.

Think of this example:
A mage wearing a robe, an assassin wearing leather armor, and a knight in full plate.

• Who will be the easiest to hit of all 3? Of course the knight...he's slow and akward in that amount of armor.



• Who will be the hardest to hit? The assassin. He's quick and agile and will be harder to land a blow on.



• Who will be hit for the most amount of damage? The mage: his cloth robe doesn't offer much protection against a big mace or a sword, it'd tear right through the armor.



• Who will be hit for the least amount of damage? The knight. He might get hit more often, but you hit him with a sword and his armor will absorb most of the damage. Pretty hard to cut him if you can't pierce his armor!

Armor absorption is based on two things, the amount of armor you have and the level of the attacker. Armor will be able to absorb up to 70% of all damage. If a level 30 is attacking a level 1....there won't be much armor absorption because the higher level will be more skilled in inflicting pain, however if he's attacking a level 30...there will be a lot more armor absorption. The amount of armor required to get 70% vs a same level mob will slowly increase...possibly being in the 400's for a level 1, but 1000 for a level 30.

This brings us to the next change.

Armor types are being added to the game.
Further expanding on the system oce put in of light/heavy armor...I've gone one step farther and introduced these categories.

Light Armor
Cloth Armor:
Usable by anyone
Mage/Monk/Lich/Werewolf

Leather Armor
This will replace all of the 'light armor' out there.
Assassins, Thief, Rogues, Vampires, Druids, Fighter/Thief, Fighter/Mage, Cleric/Ass, Cleric/Aramon, Cleric/Kamira, Cleric/Ceris - And anyone who can use chain/plate

Medium Armor
Note: I'll allow Medium & Heavy armor to be worn by F/T but they can only use their thieving abilities if wearing only light armor. Also similar restrictions likely for F/M.
Chain Armor
Anyone who can use plate. Rangers: Unrestricted

Heavy Armor
Plate Armor
Bard, Berserker, Fighter, Paladin, Cleric/Ares, Cleric/Enoch
Ranger: But they can't use duel wield or any ranger abilities

Other Types
Ring and Shield types.

I haven't fully decided yet if these will be dummy skills you get to allow you to wear the armor, or if they'll increase and raise the effectiveness of your armor. Right now...I'm leaning towards a dummy skill just to let you use it (like conjure skill). This will be tweaked based on player feedback and testing.


More on damage, defense and such
Dodge: Dodge has been given to all classes now, however not all classes dodge equally. It is heavily influenced by both class and dexterity. An assassin will dodge much better than a mage for two reasons. 1) He's an assassin 2) he'll have a lot more dex than a mage. If the mage pumped 250 into dex...he'd probly dodge pretty decently, but I don't see that really happening.

Riposte: Riposte has been replaced with parry. On a successful parry there will be a 50% chance to counter attack and score a riposte, the other 50% it'll act very similar to dodge, just deflecting the damage. This skill will be limited to fighting classes such as fighter/zerker/assassin/rogue etc.

Block: Fighting classes are getting a new way to avoid damage, Block! This is also a passive ability that will probly increase over time. To successfully block you must be wearing a shield and know the block skill. If you manage to block, damage will be reduced anywhere from 1%-100% depending on many factors.

Glancing Blows: These are the opposite of a critical hit and will result in reduced damage vs monsters. They happen FAR more frequently when the monster is higher level than you are, and I believe don't happen at all or very infrequently on monsters lower level than you.

General Mechanics: The combat system will work more or less like this. It'll figure out your chance (in this order) to miss, dodge, parry, score a glancing blow, block, critical, fumble or score a normal hit. Now if all of the percentages before a given thing equal 100%...the chances for that or anything computed later are 0.

Example 1: If you have a 50% chance to miss and a 45% chance to be dodged, and 45% chance to be parried...what will really happen is 50% miss, 45% dodge, 5% parry, 0% everything else.

Example 2: If you have a 20% miss, 20% dodge, 20% parry, 20% glancing, 10% block, 8% critical and 2% fumble, you'd have a 0% chance to score a normal blow.

Kamira Note: Kamira Luck operates outside of these changes. Kamira luck, when it goes off, will turn a critical hit or a normal hit, into a miss. The chance for this is completely separate than the above mentioned chances.

Base Damage: I've also added in something called AttackPower. Attack power is different for each class. Fighting classes will obviously have more than casting classes. It is influenced by strength, dexterity (for roguish classes...thief, ass, ranger, rogue, monk) and level (non mage/lich). How much str/dex/level affects it is entirely based on the class.

For every X amount of attack power you have, your base damage will increase by 1. You will also hit much harder vs mobs lower level than higher level (partially due to armor absorb). A level 30 zerker walking around the square would DECIMIATE everyone. A level 30 cleric would do a fair amount of damage, but not as much as the berserker.

Other changes: Monster special abilities
You guys won't necessarily see any changes at first on this, as this is a major backend overhaul. Basically I've ripped out all of the old monster special attack code (backstab, bash, fire-breath, etc) and replaced it with a generic special attack function. With this generic function, we can customize each special attack for any monster we want. The output, damage, and what it does is completely customizable.

For now, I've taken all of the old specials and if they had that flag set, they got an auto generated special attack exactly the same as they had before. But in the future this will allow us to give each perm a special attack if the builder would like to.

This isn't intended to be more deadly to players, but to give monsters a wider selection of combat abilities and make them more interesting. Although, it will allow us to make some pretty sick special attacks on high level dragons :-D


Random items
Werewolves: I'll have to figure out an exact formula for them, but their natural ac will be replaced with a "tough skin" that absorbs damage.

Monks: Monks will be allowed to wear cloth armor, with possibly monk specific quest armor being added in the future. For now they'll probly be getting a better dodge. They will be getting more attention later, and for now might be slightly underpowered. In the future I'll be reducing their per hit damage, but adding in multiple attacks per round, which the number of attacks increasing as their titles increase. (Think of a level 25 monk with 5 attacks :P ) Anyway...they'll get more work later, same with wolves.

Overall: Some classes (clerics) might experience a temporary setback in their power compared to other classes...this will not be permanent and will definitely be rectified by the coming magic changes in version 2.50. I couldn't go and change the magic system (since currently EVERYONE uses magic) without first modifying the combat system. The new combat system will allow for some pretty sweet combat for fighters and such. Also you have to remember, there's only 2 people coding and Dom's pretty busy with school and such, plus he does building. I'm looking to recruit another coder possibly and maybe get some more building staff, but for now, going as fast as we can

Clerics physicall damage won't be keeping up with fighters/palys/etc, but they WILL be made up for this when I fixup the magic system. Any nerf is unintentional and will be corrected as soon as possible. (Note: There shouldn't be any major reduction in power, and if there is let us know and I'll see what I can do)

Sub-second delay weapons have been coded. For example: We'll now be able to set weapons with a delay of 2.5, or 1.8 :-D

Version 2.40 is getting closer to being ready to be put live. I'm thinking the next day or two it might be ready. In the mean time here's some more stuff I've put in.

Weapon Delays
As you noticed from the previous post, weapons can now have a fractional second delay. Right now it displays how many seconds (1.5 for example) until you can hit again. I'll make a new toggle option that will restore the old behavior and just round up to the nearest second.


Group Experience and Exp Split
I have finally added in group experience split. If the group leader has the option 'xpsplit' set, it will use the new logic, otherwise it will fall back to the old logic.

For every member of your group you will get a 35% exp bonus for each monster you kill. After that all of the levels of the group are added up, and each player receives (level/TotalGroupLevel)*experience.

To get group exp, a few conditions must be met.

• You must be in the same room as the monster being killed.
• You cannot be idle more than 1 minute
• You must have contributed something to the combat.
  Contribution includes: Damaging the monster, healing a team member, buffing a team member, or casting an offensive spell.

If these conditions are met, it won't matter how much damage (if any) you've done to the monster, you'll still get the same amount of experience. This should encourage people to group up and assist each other. Clerics can focus on healing other members of the group and not have to worry about doing damage to the monster to get exp.

Pet Note: Pets contribute to the damage done, but do not give the owner any bonus exp when group exp is set.


Note: The DM's will also be paying attention, if we find anyone abusing this, we'll jail them and flag them as ineligible for group experience.

Experience in general
Since a level 28 is going to do some serious damage to a level 5-15 or so, we've put in out of level range exp reduction. This is the current reductions, and is at the moment, a very ROUGH implementation. It's open to suggestions and comments and I'm open to adjusting it if given a good argument.

Anyway here's the table: (Note: The absolute value of level difference is used)



Weapons and such
With the addition of exp reduction to prevent people from pummeling low levels for gobs of exp, and the introduction of armor absorption...we'll now be able to put in more higher level weapons with bigger damages. Right now I think it's a little absurd that level 2-30s are running around with the same weapon....stormblades for example. We'll be putting in a wider variety of weapons.

Weapon skills
All existing players will be able to select an appropriate amount of weapon skills for their level. For the existing players, we'll let you select the weapon skills one time, wherever you'd like, and you'll be given (level-1)*10 skill in them. After the initial selection it will continue as it will for anyone starting a new char.

This is how the system will work. Every so many levels (details in a bit) you'll get a new weapon training point, and from there you can go to a weapon's master and train in a weapon skill you don't have.


Fighters will be able to learn all weapon skills (18). Berzerkers will be able to get 16, and the others you can do the math on.

Monks will ONLY get bare-hand, but we'll give them a quest to learn staves later on. Wolves will only get the claw skill, and there will be a few 'claw' weapons.

Weapons and armor show what type they are now when looked at so you won't have any problem figuring out which one you should go with.


That's all for now, I'll testing some more tomorrow and hopefully get it live soon.

-Bane

I disagree with the table for experience given based on level vs level of the monster. There just aren't enough things thats high of a level to kill and level. Most of the mobs that are 22+ are mobs you basically have to group to do (runelords, malevs, oliphants, uhhh idk big perms) and sometimes there are just not enough people on to group. Id suggest as long as something is 10 levels from you, you should get full xp. But I would also suggest some higher level xp spots (I know we need builders too).

As far as most of the stuff i tried on the ptest server it seems it's just about ready to go live, but i do agree with disaron's concernt for the exp reduction. I do find it a bit rather harsh. I do understand that in the future we can put in more higher lvl areas, more weapons and etc, but i feel that having such a small player base, we want most of the mud to group together and enjoy a multiplayer game. I mean if exp reduction doesn't change, i think i would be discrouge to even group with anyone that can't kill things where i get at least 80% xp for example chars that are in the mid teens or even up around 18 or so.. most chars around that lvl prolly still be killing things lower then them. The current system goes as:


Within 5 levels: 100% exp
6-8 levels: 80% exp {3 lvl bracket}
9-10 levels: 50% exp {2 lvl bracket}
11-15 levels: 25% exp {5 lvl bracket}
16-25 levels: 10% exp {10 lvl bracket}
26+ levels: 5% exp {5 lvl bracket}


But i propost something liek this at least
4
Within 5 levels: 100% exp
6-8 levels: 90% exp {3 lvl bracket}
9-12 levels: 70% exp {4 lvl bracket}
13-17 levels: 50% exp {5 lvl bracket}
18-23 levels: 20% exp {6 lvl bracket}
24-30 levels: 10% exp {7 lvl bracket}

There's a couple issues here:

1) Can we kill stuff that's within 5 levels of our own level?

Right now it's rather difficult, but I think under the new combat system we might be able to. Of course, for low levels, it's no problem at all.

2) Are there enough things to kill?

Yes - and no. They exist, but many are unknown of, or are currently thought of as too difficult. Again, that might change with the new combat system (and hopefully the following magic system).

Some mid-higher level ares to kill:

Runelords @ Lake of Ice Wyrm cave
Malevolent Wizards @ Highport Wizard's Guild and Mage Tower
Oakspire Slave Pits @ Below the pentagon of platforms
Pirate Island Cave Mobs (Earth, Fire)
Swamp demons
Plane-touched in Naimei
Goblin camp between Highport/Gnomebarrow
Werewolf sires/Tradetown wolves
Elder vampires at vampire cove
Vampire lords in Gnomebarrow graveyard
Higher level Pleasure Garden mobs?
Bladeweavers - two types, one in Oakspire barracks, one in Darkhold spider's nest
Ancient Treants, and numerous other Meadhil/Eldinwood mobs that I don't know much about (ask LUMI!) =P
Vicious Ice Wyrm @ Lake of Ice Wyrm iceberg
Magnificent Ice Wyrm @ Lake of Ice Wyrm mating grounds
Slain dwarven lords @ Fort Dregjur
Sand worms in Kakkara Desert
Aboleths in Highport Sewers
Firedrake giants
Githyanki in Githyanki City
Illithids in the mines
Rocs in Dirth Hills
Angry Archdruids in Dirth Hills
Shadow demons @ HP lighthouse

That's the ones I can think of, and I'm sure that there's more. The builders are working on more areas, and we can probably expect that new high level ares will be added in soon.

3) A new proposal for an exp table:

For people under level 16, keep it what it's at right now (within 5 levels 100%, 5-8 80%, 8-10 50%, drops off from there)

For level 16+, within:

3 levels: 110%
3-6: 100%
6-8: 90%
8-10%: 70%
10-15: 50%
15-20: 25%
20+: 5%

Now that's some encouragement to group and kill similar-level mobs! 35% group bonus AND 10% difficulty bonus.

I also like to request for the formular for player lvl vs monster lvl = added bonus % damage.

slains and shadow demons are only level 16 though. Those are my main spots of leveling as an enoch cleric, but at level 23, id get less xp. Most dodgers fight at mug even past level 19, and the highest thing thers is maybe 17? Id be willing to help build more stuff though.

disaron wrote:

slains and shadow demons are only level 16 though. Those are my main spots of leveling as an enoch cleric, but at level 23, id get less xp. Most dodgers fight at mug even past level 19, and the highest thing thers is maybe 17? Id be willing to help build more stuff though.

Once again, we'll have to see what happens in the new combat system - hard to judge leveling based on the old combat system. We take a lot less damage in the new one.

But yes, new areas never hurt. =P