Suggestions for balancing.

[Sneaky]

I've been thinking about recent discussions about skills, abilities, and the recent balancing that's been going on. Most of us have seen or have been told of someone or something whether it be a player or npc who was almost impossible to hit. It's no secret that given enough time, a player can work a defensive skill up to the point where they can take on about 99 percent of everything you throw their way and come out looking pretty. This post is to suggest a way to bring that idea to it's knees and introduce some touching to these untouchable ideas.
Dodge:
With each successive strike in a round the target's defensive dodge roll is reduced. This would more than likely be an exponentual decline. A more severe penalty could also be applied for any successful hit. It could look like this.
m: 500 vs D; 1600. Miss.
M:500 VS D: 1200. Miss.
M:500 VS D: 800. Hit.
M: 500 vs D: 200. Hit.
Pretty crude way of presenting it, but I think it's easy to follow. If not I can clarify on request.
Parry:
I think with parry, the number of potential successes should be determined by the balance of the weapon, as well as the number of strikes you're able to perform with that weapon. Rapier can parry up to 3 strikes, longsword up to two strikes, staves up to 4 strikes etc. I don't have a set formula for this, maybe number of parries can be equal to the number of strikes the weapon has plus a numarical value assigned to the different levels of balance. With blade slap, I think the number of parries should be calculated much like the strikes are calculated, that is to say each parry attempt gets harder to pull off as the number of attempts goes up. So a brawler might be able to parry 3 times in one round, 6 in another, 2 in another, and 7 in yet another.

block:
I think blocking should use the same mechanics that were outlined for dodge, since they're very similar in use.
I really hope these suggestions are taken into consideration, because I think they'd go a long way towards balancing out things. I look forward to feedback.
Thanks for reading.

[Lavi]

I like it actually. To say that someone is going to have the same easy time of it every time something is thrown at them isn't really true. And it's roll pools. so If you have a four thousand roll. you'll still be pretty amazing even after eight attack chances on you. So it does keep the work involved into play. I'm concerned for those training that if you have a pool of 600 dodge and something swings three times that your ending result would drop to 100, but you could tweek it and things.

[Sneaky]

Their dodge roll would drop to 100 sure, but they'd still have their parry rolls as well, and block rolls if those apply. This just makes it so that a single skill doesn't become the end all for defensive strategies.

[Jirato]

We have something similar to this with surround mechanics already. Though it's more individual rounds, not strikes in a round, that matter.

[Dorn]

Was actually thinking about this earlier while my mind was otherwise unoccupied.

-The Soft Cap
Just like Sneaky posted about given enough time, a player can work up a defensive skill the same can be said of offensive skills. Using stances, they can usually do it without much danger either until they eventually reach a point that far surpasses whatever the greatest attack/defense challenge they can find in terms of creatures. It is then possible to manipulate that further, by training against another player who has reached the same degree and surpasses creatures.

It's the nature of Clok's soft cap to skill system, and with enough time and dedication anyone can reach that point. To make things even more of a headache for balancing, you can then throw on % bonuses on top of already ridiculous scores. With the way it is, even ridiculous hard content which may to begin with require a group for the current playerbase to manage will eventually be soloable by 1 person. It may not happen quickly, but it will happen.

Some ideas on how to counter this...
A) Simplest idea, implement a hard cap for skills. Only allow temporary effects to put a player above the hard cap and possibly add diminishing returns to those effects. (Think attack strengths are bad now? Wait til you see someone who has mastered every weapon they can to buff Melee all the way up, mounted, Templar in the group, and bottled Fury. That Melee will be through the roof.)

B) Implement a diminishing returns for combat skills. On its own, this won't do much as you'll still run into people eventually getting to the point of uberness. It will take them longer though, and will also mean Ridiculous Skill Number + Good Buff won't be as uber as it was.

C) Get rid of Skill Gain manipulation. A while back, a few things were removed that you could use to artificially lower your combat skills so you could get gains off easier monsters. I think this was a good thing. Dive into it fully. Get rid of Stance Manipulation. This may seem a little extreme, but actually takes care of a lot of issues with player growth.

First of all, you'll see a spread of population and a slowing of easier gains. No longer will everyone always go to SoandSo to train SoandSo on this mob, because it has the weakest attack. You'll still get it, but it will be people whose skill range is in the area and not those miles above.

Second, group content becomes easier to put in. No single player will be able to become vastly stronger than whatever content is in place. Higher rolls, but not significantly. Buffs, will still cause issues that are % based perhaps, depending on what sort of numbers you're looking at. But throw in a large HP base for monsters, variety of abilities, and so forth, they're going to be very dangerous for most. Might need to look at incentive for actually hunting them at that point however.

Of course, the second point only remains true if the person uses only one type of melee weapon, or one type of ranged which leads onto the next...

D) On its own, this does nothing about ridiculous numbers well above creatures own defense values but I suggest applying a cap to Marksmanship/Melee based on the highest weapon skill the player has that would use either.

For example, Player Test has 507 Swords, 304 Hafted and 480 Melee. If Test was working his hafted skill, and was getting gains to both Melee/Hafted, his Melee would only continue to rise up until 507 (His sword skill). If Test then swapped to Sword, his Melee and Sword would increase.

Why do this? Really, just to keep player's attack scores in check in combination with some of the things above. It would allow more content to be designed for a group, instead of seeing a player reach a hurdle and picking up another weapon type so he can increase his attack with something else.

E) On another side note, Buffs. When stacking, diminishing returns!

[Acarin]

There are already diminishing returns as skills increase. A skill of M:3000 versus D:1500 gives the same results as M:200 versus M:100. The difference is, I need to gain 1500 additional ranks instead of 100 ranks. This is huge as far as diminishing returns. To fight a drakolin in a fairly safe manner in solo combat in the open, I'd easily need over 5000 skill ranks in primary combat skills. This is not remotely possible due to the soft cap... If someone manages to make it to this point, they deserve it.

Diminishing dodge rolls means that training dodge is pointless. You'll get hit in 2 or 3 attacks anyways so why even bother. Such a change would result in me (and probably others) instantly quitting CLOK and never returning. In a game where a single unlucky roll can kill you, telling us that we can only get out of the way a couple times before we're pretty much guaranteed to get hit is a bit ridiculous in my opinion (and completely unrealistic). Lets not go changing the fundamental mechanics of combat and forcing everyone to wear full plate if they want a chance to survive for more than 2 swings.

Stance changes can be used to train, but such training takes considerably longer (can't train as many things at once), and the risk largely remains the same (If I lower my dodge by going into tactic offense, I can still get hit and killed... I'm not killing because I'm training dodge). I don't understand the issue here. Most hunting grounds are not for the highly skilled (and therefore the soft cap). Besides, while I'm training my low perception skill, why should I not be allowed to train my high dodge when I'm putting myself at risk still.

There are a lot of gaps in critter skill/variety. Until these gaps are filled and a variety of appropriate skill level critters of diverse attack type/body type are available, lets not limit things further. Honestly I would prefer to always train on something right at my skill level as the gains are optimized, but this is simply not possible as it stands. Nothing has frustrated me more about this game in the past when something is removed and an appropriate solution is not provided to resolve the issue. Until we have a situation where doing this would be supported, I don't think it should be considered.

I'm not understanding why it's such a problem when people work and spend a ton of time to get their skills high. If you want to be a powerhouse, work for it. There are still hunting areas that pretty much no one can solo. There are abilities in areas like this that cannot be really defended against (basilisks and their stare for example).

I happen to enjoy the combat system in CLOK. It's largely simple with reasonable modifiers and I am strongly against ANY of the changes suggested in this thread.

[Dorn]

There are a lot of gaps in critter skill/variety. Until these gaps are filled and a variety of appropriate skill level critters of diverse attack type/body type are available, lets not limit things further. Honestly I would prefer to always train on something right at my skill level as the gains are optimized, but this is simply not possible as it stands. Nothing has frustrated me more about this game in the past when something is removed and an appropriate solution is not provided to resolve the issue. Until we have a situation where doing this would be supported, I don't think it should be considered.

I will agree with this, but I also see flaws in the base of the soft cap system and the way training can be done. Better to work at the core of the system, than throw band aid after band aid on it.

That being said, I do think a lot of areas need to be reevaluated in regards to risk vs reward, not just in regards to monetary but in terms of skill.