The Mana World Forums

Hi,

Thanks for your impression.

Crush wrote:will only say yes or no to a complete concept posted on the wiki, not one snippet of one without an idea how it works out in the big picture.

I've got a lot of testing in front of me to see how precisely the concept would be viable. That's why, I need to get directions. You know how it can be harsh to build something and let the others blow it up with some counter suggestions.
Then, again, I don't want to get a complete blind answer but rather what you did unconsciously, get a positive or negative impression on my conceptual "snippets".

Now, as this thread's title is about cap (remember? ),
I propose that adding caps upon skills and abilities could be set as a 'maxlevel' parameter in the skills.xml and abilities.xml, whatever the rest of their content is. This meaning that once the player has reached a level, he don't get any other points to it. As skills are defined only id + experience, a simpler parameter could also be 'maxexp' and would work the same way for experience points.

Once we get the concept for skills and a few basic abilities + decided cap system on them, I think we will be able to code it with less worries and get a well balanced beginning.
Or is it wanted to avoid completely abilities for now, and jut push some cap system?

What do you think?

Regards.

Crush wrote:

Bertram wrote:Humm,
Do we at least agree about the fact that some area won't regenerate HP?

I am sceptical about this, but considering how few coding work it means (one additional map property and one line of code to check it) we can give it a try.

I'd just have being in combat stop regeneration. (Doing or receiving damage in the past time x, for example.) Moving could halve regeneration. Sitting could double it.

Crush wrote:

Bertram wrote:If the Energy bar is annoying for the majority, I won't complain, but it's worth the try asking.

Although I believe that it doesn't make sense for magic I wouldn't rule out the possibility of an energy-point based physical attack ability system I would like. Again: Present a completely though out concept and I will say what I think about it.

The special attacks could use the same for both, but this would make attribute specialization very challenging to balance in a way it does not favor omniable hybrid characters. One way to do this would be to have the unit-to-use-skill requirements of magic huge in comparison to what melee attacks need. Since the melee specials require high levels in melee skills and their damage depends on melee related attributes mages wouldn't really benefit all that much from them. On higher levels melee characters would almost automatically gain lower end spells easily and vice versa, though (IMO this is not necessarily bad).

OK.

So far I conclude from all of this:

CR1 will have melee combat and melee combat only. No specials. No ranged combat to make gameplay balancing complicated. No magic. No crafting skills.

So what needs to be locked down for CR1: melee skills. This includes defining how you progress in melee skills, what the skills are and how do we limit character growth in melee skills to a cap where you are not a living god when CR2 content comes out even if you have grinded everything you can to max. Some of this work is already done and just needs to be brought to this table, some of this work is still undone and some of this work requires actual testing and other things to be completed first.

I'm willing to allow the following melee combat approaches for CR1: one-handed, one-handed with shield and two-handed. This should not be too difficult to balance with a rather limited amount of equipment available - it is the tutorial island after all and you should not be able to get equipment with which you're prepared to take down gods.

Hi,

Thanks for summarizing:

As far as we are, I'd see two things to be done:

- Add the maxLevel parameter in skills.xml, which correspond to the max level you can reach in a particular skill.
--> For instance, if set to 3, when you get to that level, you don't get xp anymore. Which basically means that max is level 3, 0 xp.

- Decide which main skills are to be added, and what are their particular caps.

What do you think?

Regards.

Bertram: What happened to the soft-cap approach? Going this route means:

-Adding a "recommended level" to every exp source (currently only monster exp values and one script binding)
-Comming up with a formular how exp is reduced when the skill level is over the recommended-level.

Manasource view: Shouldn't be hard to implement both.

Regarding melee skills:
As far as I know there are two prominent opinions in the development team. Having a skill for each weapon type (sword, axe, spear etc.) or grouping weapons into fighting styles and use these as skills (blunt, slice, precision etc.). I prefer the first option.

Hi Crush,

Crush wrote:Bertram: What happened to the soft-cap approach? Going this route means:

-Adding a "recommended level" to every exp source (currently only monster exp values and one script binding)
-Coming up with a formula how exp is reduced when the skill level is over the recommended-level.

That can be done that way, too, as long as it must stop giving XP at some point, or can be combined with an higher hard cap?

Crush wrote:Regarding melee skills:
As far as I know there are two prominent opinions in the development team. Having a skill for each weapon type (sword, axe, spear etc.) or grouping weapons into fighting styles and use these as skills (blunt, slice, precision etc.). I prefer the first option.

Taken from my personal (little) experience with medieval weapons handling, I can say slicing with an axe isn't the same as slicing with a rapier, or a two-handed sword, etc.
I'm then for the first option, too.

Regards.

As long as we do not end up with 100+ different weapon skills and you being unable to equip a different brand toothpick because your toothpick skill is for the competing brand.

And about the cap system itself?

I implemented reduction of exp after a certain level by giving monsters an (optional) "optimal Level" which can be set in the monster database. The script binding to give experience to characters has this too.

That's the algorithm used to calculate its effect (simplified for readability by non-programmers) EXP_LEVEL_FLEXIBILITY is currently a constant set to 1.0
This is a very harsh setting which means that the exp is divided through the number of levels over the optimum + 1 (one level over = half experience, two level over it = 1/3 experience, 3 level over a quarter experience and so on). Using a higher value would make it more lax. Setting it on 10, for example, would mean that the character would have to be 10 level over the optimum for half exp and 20 for one third exp.

The value is currently hardcoded but I promise to make all experience calculation variables softcoded until cr1.

A hard cap definable in the servers mana.xml has already been implemented by Kage.


From the technical point of view both mechanics are optional, meaning that it is in the hands of the server admin to decide if he wants to use one, both or neither of these mechanics to limit experience.

This is a good start at a softcap system. Does it multiply exp for levels below (ie: 1 level below is twice exp)?

Crush wrote:A hard cap definable in the servers mana.xml has already been implemented by Jaxad.

Kage added that.

Jaxad wrote:This is a good start at a softcap system. Does it multiply exp for levels below (ie: 1 level below is twice exp)?

No, it doesn't. Exp gain below the optimal level is constant with this algorithm.

Kage added that.

Corrected.

Sorry about that, I still have problems to remember which realname belongs to which nickname.

Crush wrote:

Jaxad wrote:This is a good start at a softcap system. Does it multiply exp for levels below (ie: 1 level below is twice exp)?

No, it doesn't. Exp gain below the optimal level is constant with this algorithm.

It would be nice if it did. Maybe a different algorithm or at least different constants.

Humm.

IMHO, I think exp shouldn't be raised when the level is under the cap.

Remember, it's a cap. It must just limit, to make the character earn more xp.

What do you think?

Regards.

What we want to limit more than numbers here, is the battle potential of a character.

What would be a good measurement of this? What to limit in a way it forces you to choose and specialize instead of being able to grind everything to maximum between content releases? What I want here is a natural way to limit and stop character growth within a content release.

Humm,

I see the point better.

What about a maximum of earned level instead, then?

For instance :
The character has got three skills and the potential maximumLevel is set to four:

Now, the player can become level four in skill one, two or three.
But if he's level one in skill one, he will be able to only get level three in one of the other skills,
and every other possible combination.

I know my proposal isn't simple, and maybe a bad idea, but it's a start to get to the point.

Best regards.