Stun resistance

[Mithril]

No, but such a vague idea is certainly less clear and more difficult to discuss, evaluate, or implement than an exact idea.

I do not see why one have to make changes to anything else in order to fix game balance with Sus's idea. Why exactly?

Again, the only objection to Sus's idea is "It is so similar to slow" and that we must have something new. Not that the system would not work or has any flaws.

sus's idea would still have to be extensively playtested, and the individual stun resistances of dozens of NPCs would have to be carefully adjusted. talents and stun duration may have to be adjusted as well. ANY change to a game mechanism as integral as stun is going to have far-reaching effects. and stun was obviously not perfect to begin with. so while sus's system fixes some of the biggest problems with stun, it doesn't ADD anything, either - in fact, it just duplicates an important mechanism already in the game - ultimately reducing overall tactical diversity.
i also think an enemy slowed by 30% for 3-5 turns (ie they lose one turn) is a lot less interesting than an enemy who is exhausting their resources, and possibly a lot more beneficial to stun users, while not being overpowered. as long as a 'knocked out' state is still achievable against most mobs in one stun, i think this could be a great solution.

and flavor-wise, i also think it's a little more in keeping with the concept of what 'stun' should be - you don't do necessarily things more slowly, but do them more poorly, haphazardly, exhaustingly, until you can't really execute any fancy moves (and eventually you're knocked out).

my only objection to this system is that it might penalize stamina and mana users more than equilibrium and positive/negative energy uses (particularly stamina users, who don't usually have a quick way to replenish stamina).

Sus's system mean no change for monster who have no or 100% stun resistance which are almost all cases currently so it will change almost nothing regarding attacking monsters. So why must their stun resistances necessarily be changed? Unless there are intrinsic problems with their values already present in the current system. The same applies to talents and stun durations as well.

It will change things for players somewhat by removing the instant death problem with current stun system and causing speed penalties if you have partial stun resistance. Otherwise no change. Sure, that will have to be playtested, which is why we have a beta, but is a relatively minor change compared to creating a completely new game changing system which will certainly require adjusting major parts of the game.

Why is an "enemy who is exhausting their resources", whatever that means, more interesting than an enemy with a speed reduction? Are you proposing exactly the same system as edge? If so, see my reply to him above. If not, exactly what is your proposal and why is it better than Sus's system? (yes, yes, apart from being something, anything that is brand new as compared to already existing and therefore automatically enormously boring speed system ).

[teachu2die]

Sus's system mean no change for monster who have no or 100% stun resistance which are almost all cases currently so it will change almost nothing regarding attacking monsters. So why must their stun resistances necessarily be changed? Unless there are intrinsic problems with their values already present in the current system. The applies to talents and stun durations as well.

It will change things for players somewhat by removing the instant death problem with current stun system and causing speed penalties if you have partial stun resistance. Otherwise no change. Sure, that will have to be playtested, which is why we have a beta, but is a relatively minor change compared to creating a completely new game changing system which will certainly require adjusting major parts of the game.

Why is an "enemy who is exhausting their resource", whatever that means, more interesting than an enemy with a speed reduction? Are you proposing exactly the same system as edge? If so, see my reply to him above. If not, exactly what is your proposal and why is it better than Sus's system? (yes, yes, apart from being something, anything that is brand new as compared to already existing and therefore automatically enormously boring speed system ).

oh come on, man, most of this has been already covered extensively in previous posts!

sus's system will still require close examination of every monster with both 0% and 100% stun resistance. many monsters with 100% resistance will have to have that reduced (you yourself previously touted this as a benefit of the sus system), and some monsters with 0% stun resistance may need that increased. once you open things up to a nonbinary system, things change a lot. and these changes may additionally effect the way that certain classes use their stun attacks, which could result in changes in talents, cooldowns, stun durations. NO change to the stunning system is going to be very simple to implement. if any changes to the stunning system are being considered at all (other than adding stun resistance to more items), it might as well be a major overhaul.

im not sure if and how my proposed system would differ from edge's suggestion.
here is basically what i would suggest:
at 100% stun, you are knocked out (the way current stun works, and the way it would work in sus's system) for a number of turns. stun resistance reduces the percentage of stun you take (the same way it does in sus's system). stuns last for X turns - after X turns, you return to zero stun.
this is probably a major fork from edge's platform: i would suggest that being stunned increases the cost of abilities by double the percent you are stunned. so 70% stun would increase ability cost by 140%. (this makes stun a little more immediately threatening to both player and npc). stuns are stackable.
i would also probably suggest significantly increasing the duration of stuns, maybe by 30% or more, in order to make the fatigue effects felt more strongly, and to somewhat increase the odds of stuns stacking. individual talents may have to be adjusted as well.
most normal mobs would still have 0% stun resistance. elites and bosses could vary. essentially no npcs would need to have 100% stun resistance (and neither would the player).

i think this is actually more beneficial for classes that stun, and more interesting for players that are stunned. in the sus system, a boss with 50% stun resistance might be slowed by 50% for 3 turns. that means the boss loses one or two turns, nonconsecutively. while that's far from paltry, it's not anywhere nearly as powerful as it is now. if a player is stunned for 50% in a boss fight, 95% of the time their IMMEDIATE reaction would be to flee - two consecutive hits from a boss could easily kill, so unless you have nearly full health and the boss is close to death, you run. this isn't a very interesting outcome.
under this newly proposed system, a stunned boss might be spending twice (or more) the amount of their resources for maybe 5 turns (recall i suggested increasing the duration of stuns). this means that after a successful stun, a boss might be very low on stamina or mana, and reduced to using their weakest attacks. and it means that if you're stunned, you need to think twice about using all of your resource-demanding abilities. i find that managing mana or stamina is almost never an issue in this game - you basically just use all of your most powerful attacks, all the time, and rest when you need to. this system would make resource management more of a challenge.
imo, this basically fixes all of the problems initially outlined, plus contributes to a richer combat environment.
additionally, this system isn't just 'slow'!

(however, i think the sus system might work fine as long as the 'lost' turn doesn't occur immediately upon stunning, and that stuns still stack.)

[edge2054]

oh come on, man, most of this has been already covered extensively in previous posts!

And this is why I quit responding several hours ago

[Mithril]

Sus's system mean no change for monster who have no or 100% stun resistance which are almost all cases currently so it will change almost nothing regarding attacking monsters. So why must their stun resistances necessarily be changed? Unless there are intrinsic problems with their values already present in the current system. The applies to talents and stun durations as well.

It will change things for players somewhat by removing the instant death problem with current stun system and causing speed penalties if you have partial stun resistance. Otherwise no change. Sure, that will have to be playtested, which is why we have a beta, but is a relatively minor change compared to creating a completely new game changing system which will certainly require adjusting major parts of the game.

Why is an "enemy who is exhausting their resource", whatever that means, more interesting than an enemy with a speed reduction? Are you proposing exactly the same system as edge? If so, see my reply to him above. If not, exactly what is your proposal and why is it better than Sus's system? (yes, yes, apart from being something, anything that is brand new as compared to already existing and therefore automatically enormously boring speed system ).

oh come on, man, most of this has been already covered extensively in previous posts!

sus's system will still require close examination of every monster with both 0% and 100% stun resistance. many monsters with 100% resistance will have to have that reduced (you yourself previously touted this as a benefit of the sus system), and some monsters with 0% stun resistance may need that increased. once you open things up to a nonbinary system, things change a lot. and these changes may additionally effect the way that certain classes use their stun attacks, which could result in changes in talents, cooldowns, stun durations. NO change to the stunning system is going to be very simple to implement. if any changes to the stunning system are being considered at all (other than adding stun resistance to more items), it might as well be a major overhaul.

im not sure if and how my proposed system would differ from edge's suggestion.
here is basically what i would suggest:
at 100% stun, you are knocked out (the way current stun works, and the way it would work in sus's system) for a number of turns. stun resistance reduces the percentage of stun you take (the same way it does in sus's system). stuns last for X turns - after X turns, you return to zero stun.
this is probably a major fork from edge's platform: i would suggest that being stunned increases the cost of abilities by double the percent you are stunned. so 70% stun would increase ability cost by 140%. (this makes stun a little more immediately threatening to both player and npc). stuns are stackable.
i would also probably suggest significantly increasing the duration of stuns, maybe by 30% or more, in order to make the fatigue effects felt more strongly, and to somewhat increase the odds of stuns stacking. individual talents may have to be adjusted as well.
most normal mobs would still have 0% stun resistance. elites and bosses could vary. essentially no npcs would need to have 100% stun resistance (and neither would the player).

i think this is actually more beneficial for classes that stun, and more interesting for players that are stunned. in the sus system, a boss with 50% stun resistance might be slowed by 50% for 3 turns. that means the boss loses one or two turns, nonconsecutively. while that's far from paltry, it's not anywhere nearly as powerful as it is now. if a player is stunned for 50% in a boss fight, 95% of the time their IMMEDIATE reaction would be to flee - two consecutive hits from a boss could easily kill, so unless you have nearly full health and the boss is close to death, you run. this isn't a very interesting outcome.
under this newly proposed system, a stunned boss might be spending twice (or more) the amount of their resources for maybe 5 turns (recall i suggested increasing the duration of stuns). this means that after a successful stun, a boss might be very low on stamina or mana, and reduced to using their weakest attacks. and it means that if you're stunned, you need to think twice about using all of your resource-demanding abilities. i find that managing mana or stamina is almost never an issue in this game - you basically just use all of your most powerful attacks, all the time, and rest when you need to. this system would make resource management more of a challenge.
imo, this basically fixes all of the problems initially outlined, plus contributes to a richer combat environment.
additionally, this system isn't just 'slow'!

(however, i think the sus system might work fine as long as the 'lost' turn doesn't occur immediately upon stunning, and that stuns still stack.)

The beauty of Sus's idea is that very little changes. If implemented the only thing the player will notice, except for the very rare monsters with partial stun resistance, is that if you have acquired partial stun resistance, then you get slowed instead paralyzed and instantly killed when encountering stunning monsters. Everything else works as before. An elegant, small change to a specific problem.

Now, as a bonus, you can optionally also change monster stun resistances to be something else than 100% since also bosses are now not affected by instant death if they do not have 100% stun resistance. This benefits stun dependent classes. But you do not have to make this change.

Now with teach's system and the changes suggested above accompanying it, implementing it will cause... ...hmmmmm... ...who knows? The consequences are far reaching but difficult to predict. If a monster have a very large amount of stamina or manna it will simply blast/crush on as before without a partial stun changing anything. The same if the monster uses attacks that does not cost it anything. If a monster have a very small amount that is essential for its main attack it could be reduced to target dummy for the player by a single partial stun. So partially stunning a monster could create anything from no effect to trivially defeating it. It will be extremely difficult to try calculate for this possibility when creating monsters and giving them a middle ground of mana and stamina and talent costs. Existing monsters that get partial stun resistance must all have their talents and stamina/mania checked and somehow adjusted, how exactly is unclear. Anyone have a concrete formula for this adjustment?

Now for the player being partially stunned there are other problems. If you are partially stunned by monster without distance attack you can simply walk backward for x turns until the partial stun disappears. This makes their stun often pointless.

Furthermore, this system will likely have a very unequal class effect. In my experience with the new talents for warriors they already have stamina problems and they are melee characters so they will get partially stunned more often. On the other hand, my mages have seldom have had mana problems and they attack from distance with less chance of being stunned.

In contrast, the effects of the old, well-tried, speed system is already known. Furthermore, I disagree that you can do nothing but run if you are slowed by a monster. That depends on the monster and the character. Not all monster do very high damage. There are potions of free action and speed. There are knockback and disengage. You can stun back. There is the possibility of talents that increase defense by reducing attack. Lots of possibilities and possible tactics.

[Grey]

Are you two going to keep repeating the same things to each other ad infinitum? :/

[Mithril]

Are you two going to keep repeating the same things to each other ad infinitum? :/

We are not.

[teachu2die]

you make some good points mithril. i still think there is probably a more interesting solution, but the bottom line is, the sus system will be implemented in the near future. we'll all get a chance to play around with it, and the verdicts can come back. perhaps it's almost perfectly balanced - maybe it's dull or problematic. if the latter proves true, then there are plenty of interesting ideas scattered throughout this thread.

[Vee]

Are you two going to keep repeating the same things to each other ad infinitum? :/

I'll second this.
Although the syntax and argumentation change slightly the basic proposition does not. Although I have to admit only skimming the last 2-3 pages (because of this).

I think the next step should be to try and implement something to playtest. Or DG to just go ahead and make his decision how it's going to work.
AFAIK he already did something in regards to stunning in SVN (see related bug).

V

[edge2054]

He actually mentioned that he had already made a change several pages back.

But since the thread was still going I figured I'd toss out a completely new idea for the sake of trying to push the page count closer to ten.

A little over one more page to go.