Star Wars Galaxies: Combat Proposals

Our system designer in charge of combat, Dan, wanted to put some proposals by you. This is based off of a lot of feedback from these forums and in game. Warning, this is long and involved. [FONT size=2]

Intro and notes:

First, PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE THREAD. There is some information at the top that will hopefully explain the overall direction I'd like to take all combat professions in. These changes are paramount to understanding which issues I've called out and haven't called out.

Although the problems are labeled #1, #2, etc, they are not in order of priority. It's just a random order I made up based on how I wrote the document.

If you are a ranged profession, please read the proposed melee changes. Same for meleers. There's information contained that pertains to both types of combat.[B]

General Combat Stuff:

Combat Combo Proposal:
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One of the ideas that has been floating around here for the past month or so is the idea of a combo system for combat actions.

As you hit a target, I would like to see a system of damage/move efficacy "step-up" for each subsequent successful hit. A miss will remove the "step-up" values.

This will encourage people to vary their attacks and improve the effectiveness of each subsequent move. The number of combo hits allowed will be a value that will scale as you improve in combat ability. A newbie marksman might get a maximum combo size of 2, while a master rifleman might be able to string together 8 attacks.

In addition to these combo moves, I would like to add a few new "generic" combat moves. These would be used for all weapons and would directly interact with the combo system. One of these moves could interrupt/clear a the combo counter, while another could actually steal a portion of the combo counter. I think this would add a nice level of depth to this system, and make it more interesting for PVP.[I]

Melee Defense Proposal:[/I]

We removed knockdown as a "tank" ability. I stand by our decision to do this. However, I think adding this type of gameplay back into the system is valuable.

What I propose is the addition of a "defensive bonus" move. This would last for a variable amount of time (increasing as you reach higher skill levels). The bonus would protect you from a significant number of hits for the duration of the ability.

It is in a sense a tank ability that protects the defender instead of negating the attacker. That will make it much simpler to balance. [B]</DIR></DIR>

Combat Speed Change Proposal:
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So it appears that we have a problem at higher levels. The skill mods, combined with sliceability of all of our weapons results in all weapons (At higher levels), hitting our speed cap. This means that the fastest any weapon will ever be is 1 second, and it dimishes the differences between all of our weapons and skill trees.

My proposal is that we implement a variable speed cap based off of the weapon. So pistoleers and 1hswords would use a .5 second speed cap, while riflemen/pikemen would have a 3 second minimum speed.

The end result is that weapon/class differentiation would increase, which would allow me to enhance the functionality of each class. I could raise the damage on carbines/rifles because I would be guaranteed that they wouldn't be fired as quickly as pistols. The DPS problems in pistoleer could be minimized by increasing the speed mods, as they would have more total effect on the firing speed.[I]

Active Defense Modifiers:[/I]

Across the board we have seen complaints that the defense modifiers (counterattack, dodge and block) do not work properly at higher levels. This is true as the mods and rolls for those abilities do not scale properly compared to the toHit rolls they are being used against.

This is a known issue and we are in the process of improving all of these. However, we are modifying these numbers slowly so we avoid major disruptions to the combat system. </DIR></DIR>

[B]Melee Out of Range issue:
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This is caused by the object on your client being drawn in a different location that it exists on the server.

The proposal to fix this is to increase the melee range of all weapons to a value that is closer to the margin of error between the client/server. This will make combat look a little funny as you'll be able to hit a target further away, but I think this is an appropriate tradeoff.

[I]Melee Damage Output:
[/I]I believe that melee damage is too low across the board. I will be investigating move abilities and look into bringing all melee class damage up to a more appropriate level.</DIR></DIR>

[B][I]Lack of melee weapons:
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I think that we're lacking melee weapons across the board. We added weapon certifications late in the beta cycle and didn't add any extra weapons to our classes. The end result is that there's limited choice, and not a whole lot of visually interesting choices for higher level weapons.

Of course, this doesn't just affect melee. I think we could use more ranged weapons as well, and even more vibroknucklers with varying effects for Teras Kasi. I'll see what I can get added for these classes.</DIR></DIR>

[I]All Professions:
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We don't hate any of you. I apologize for the lack of constant feedback. All combat professions will get some TLC in the future. </DIR></DIR>
[P]Ranged Class Specific Stuff:[/P]
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Pistoleers:[/I]

I'm not going to go into the pistol changes as they have been addressed in the other post. Regardless, some of the general fixes detailed above should help pistoleers.

Carbineers:
[P]Problem #1:[/P]
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HAM costs are too high for carbine special moves. This is actually a problem with the carbine weapons.

Solution #1:

Once we implement the speed limiters for all classes, I would like to reduce the HAM costs. This could be done by modifying new weapons, the actual move data, or a combination. I'm not sure which is the best approach, but I'm leaning towards modification of the moves as it will be less disruptive for existing weapons.

Problem #2:

Legshot 2 is viewed as being identical to Legshot 3.

Solution #2:

Legshot 3 is actually a cone attack. It does 2.5X damage as opposed to 2.0X damage, and should hit targets in the cone instead of a single target. There is potentially a bug in the cone calculations that is preventing this from happening. I will investigate.

Problem #3:

Carbines seem to lack class definition.
[P]Solution #3:
I'd like to see carbines as halfway between the slow speed/high damage of riflemen and lower damage/higher speed of pistoleers. They should have a wider variety of area/high rate of fire attacks, but less "finesse" attacks. Attacks like scattershot will be improved to the point that they are viable alternatives to the focused attacks such as bodyShot.[/P]</DIR></DIR>
[P]Riflemen:
Problem #1:[/P]
[P][/B]Development Hates Riflemen.[/P]