Forums: Developer Talk

How does everyone feel about the length of time (i.e. number of turns) it takes to complete a battle? One person has suggested to me that it’s much too long, and after thinking about it, I think the easiest way to speed up battles would be to tweak damage and effect formulas across the board so they are stronger. This change shouldn’t give anyone any advantages, since it’d be an across the board increase (meaning increased for NPCs as well). It’d probably be something along the lines of a 20-50% increase in damage and strength of effects.

The foreseeable side effects of such changes: (A) you wouldn’t have as many chance to gain skill points in a battle (but since battles end sooner you could feasibly get through more battles in any given amount of time, so the skill gain would even out) and (B) increased gains in equipment and gold (i.e. more completed battles means more loot)

Thoughts?

I feel quite the opposite actually, I like that the battles take a good amount of time. I’ve found that if a battle is taking me too long, then I should probably be fighting an easier fight until my characters are ready for the next level. Also, with the longer battles, I find it’s easier to change your plan of attack in the middle, whereas in a shorter battle, if you go in with a bad battle plan, then you’d most likely lose the fight.

Just my two cents

I agree with Espeaje, and would like to add that if someone wishes to win a battle faster, they should think of how much time of having fun here they would miss out on.

I believe the battles are a perfectly acceptable length. They don’t take long enough for me to get bored, but they aren’t so short that a bad strategy kills me. I say leave the damage formulas the same.

i agree, but why is the maximum damage you can do 75 there should be critical hits or something so you can improve skills by more than 1 each time

Skill Levels can increase with each hit/action, and each hit can increase a multitude of different skills (3 to 6). That’s quick enough, and if your skill levels are a lot lower than those of your enemy, you WILL get your skill increase on every action you do, and that’s plenty in most fights. Do not let the report fool you that lists every increased skill once: It doesn’t show numbers, but each of the skills may well have improved by 6 or 7 levels (or, in longer fights, probably even more).

Against normal (similar to your own level) foes, you will rarely do maximum damage anyways, and that maximum damage of 75 is designed to keep players and NPCs alike from one-hit-killing each other. There is a range of damage that can occur on a specific action by a specific character, and it can be improved by effects on him and his foes, but nothing should enable you to critical one-hit-kill a foe by doing 200 damage. Always remember: The NPCs would be able to do that, too, and if they had no chance to use their AP before, they may well do two or three strikes – that’s enough to almost kill a character now, it would be certain death with critical strikes and without a damage cap.
Plus, the damage cap allows us to freely invent effects and actions that improve your fighting and overall damage, we don’t have to worry that somebody can find a wacky combination of attacks that deals 1000 damage to all enemies on an odd occasion. Someone who knows how to use all effects to their greatest potential will, however, likely get (close to) the 75 damage on every strike, which is very effective, as it can still kill a foe in two to three strikes.

So, yeah, there are good reasons, although Sheck could likely explain this a lot better than me.

i can do 75 to some enemies with one strike

Yeah, me too. I can do it against enemies of lower levels, without preparations, and against enemies of my level, with preparation. I cannot do it against enemies of my level without preparation, and I guess the same would go for you…

I agreed with the majority, that I’m comfortable with the length of the battles to death. I just mention my suggetion I made on the sug-thread. You can add shorter "training/honor/tournament battles which only last until first blood for any character. This could be a way to add shorter battles without changing the damage factor and the gameplay.