Quality of Life Changes to /hide and Backstab Mechanics

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Tucker
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Quality of Life Changes to /hide and Backstab Mechanics

Postby Tucker » Sun Jun 11, 2017 5:31 am

Curious what the community thinks of redoing Hide, Sneak, and most importantly the /backstab mechanics.

As I understand it the concept of not being able to /hide in the same square twice was originally a balance mechanic rather than an immersion based change. Problem is this is balance by frustration essentially. This seems to be a strange fix since as we all know you will immediately move out and back into the square to repeat backstabs.

This mechanic is mildly annoying for PvP but really annoying for leveling and PvE. It seems like most players are in the same boat of dreading leveling Assassin's due to this mechanic. It drags mobs around every single turn, delays leveling, and is generally annoying as hell.

Builders are having to build cheeky fake room moving mechanics that instantly let you move out and back into the room without really leaving which is a clever work around but only applies to the room its built in. It is a great band-aid fix but why not just fix the core issue?

Proposed Changes:

Make backstab a 2 endurance command. It is a 2 endurance command that either attempts to crit for 4x or 3x depending on the class. (You could call it something else for the bow crit I guess too or even rename the mechanic to something to indicate a more general critical strike?)

This could potentially leave room to tinker with the /hide and /autosneak mechanics if anyone wanted to do so. It is weird that sneak and hide are both stealth mechanics that behave a bit differently but with /hide being unnecessary for backstab you could combine the functions into something sleeker like /sneak essentially replacing /hide at one endurance cost for sneaking in the room causing you to become hidden. /sneak could have directional triggers for sneaking costing endurance.

The whole hidden vs invisible mechanic seems very weird that you can be invisible via sneak or fade yet attacked. Thematically and with gameplay reasons it would make more sense to combine them into just one hidden feature and balance as needed. Sneak could actually be a hidden state that you have to search for to attack but costing an endurance per tile. Fade can be balanced easily as well (afaik the attacking without breaking fade thing was fixed).

Devils Advocate Arguments:

This would buff classes that use the backstab mechanic since they would now be entering one command instead of four and bumps their dps.


Simple: Nerf the endurance regen a touch for Assy/Slayers to mimick the changes. You could leave Thieves out of it and let them enjoy a small buff and I'd wager the community would be happy. You could ship this change with a nerfed endurance regen to the Assy/Slayer class or simply wait to see if the buff is impactful enough to deserve a small balance nerf.

What about locked down rooms that are build to prevent more than one backstab? This would break that mechanic. Staff/Builders might want certain Event, OAD, or Quest rooms to not allow backstab for balance reasons possibly.


There are so many ways to balance this that are all pretty simple. Events? Don't allow the class. If you prevent Slayers from backstabbing in an event they won't win or enter it anyway - just ban the class. Or use a room that doesn't allow for backstab commands. For OAD, quest, or event rooms you can simply balance it by making a room not allow backstab or making the Mob take reduced damage from backstab. This all can be determined case by case as is needed. I don't think backstab is that crazy op but if it is deemed so just balance it like any other mechanic.

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Lissy
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Re: Quality of Life Changes to /hide and Backstab Mechanics

Postby Lissy » Sun Jun 11, 2017 7:54 am

my biggest complaint about this is that you'd lose the tactical ability to hide on your last stamina point then backstab for one attack at the start of the next round. I think you could fix this more easily by just allowing /hide again in the same room, possibly making it have a failure option based on int or something. I'm not really convinced it needs fixing, but I haven't played my assassin enough to really have a perspective on this.
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Tucker
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Re: Quality of Life Changes to /hide and Backstab Mechanics

Postby Tucker » Sun Jun 11, 2017 4:12 pm

by just allowing /hide again in the same room, possibly making it have a failure option based on int or something.


Yeah, that'd be a really good fix I kind of like the idea of /hide having a failure chance. You could actually use that as a balancing mechanic as I mentioned with like OAD rooms or event rooms having a higher failure rate than your average forest, sewer, cave, whatever. The rate could be like very low potentially 1-5% for 10int heroes but even less for higher int. That could scale with the custom rooms maybe multiplying the int stat success rate bonus or something. That'd be cool too since there's not much stat versatility for the class atm since they have like no MR to boost with wis and int only helps prevent being found.

Edit: It's definitely a QoL change but leveling Assy's is pretty annoying compared to the other classes mainly do to dragging mobs.
Last edited by Tucker on Sun Jun 11, 2017 4:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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daedroth
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Re: Quality of Life Changes to /hide and Backstab Mechanics

Postby daedroth » Sun Jun 11, 2017 4:15 pm

Discussed to death. Check the forums.
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Re: Quality of Life Changes to /hide and Backstab Mechanics

Postby Tucker » Sun Jun 11, 2017 4:24 pm

daedroth wrote:Discussed to death. Check the forums.


Yeah, wild, it's almost like the mechanic sucks and people dislike playing the class as much with it as is :P

The official word I'm seeing from the Hawk man is this:

I don't think I'd give slayers 4x + 10% without that delay though. The delay helps balance it out really, since you use two attacks, you get 4.5xish in damage as a return. (in general /hide then attack, but then 4x damage.)


Which I did mention as finding easy to balance with an endurance regen reduction (we know the mechanic exists due to the racial bonus humans have to increase that). Doing so and leaving Thief's alone would be a buff to them and I bet the community would like that as well.

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Re: Quality of Life Changes to /hide and Backstab Mechanics

Postby daedroth » Mon Jun 12, 2017 3:28 am

Tucker wrote:Which I did mention as finding easy to balance with an endurance regen reduction (we know the mechanic exists due to the racial bonus humans have to increase that). Doing so and leaving Thief's alone would be a buff to them and I bet the community would like that as well.

TBF that is something no one mentioned before in earlier discussions (I never thought of it; my thoughts were attack delay, but stamina regen slow might work) and I think it sounds good.

Or I did until I remembered the mechanics as is. Jump out, jump in backstab. The slower stamina regen wouldnt matter... let me see if i can explain it right.
Without some kind of delay to the attack mechanic an assassin would get off two x4 damage attacks quick, does not matter if the attack costs 2 stamina, they would still get of the attacks very quickly without the in/out hide stabbity bit. They would just take longer to act again. Does not sit well imo.
Combining the /sneak /hide does not quite work either. You would sneak 4 squares then be exhausted.

Its an annoying mechanic I agree. It is just hard to think of a way that would be fair to all.

Previous discussions (happy reading, or not... you better read though I had to look back for these :evil: ):
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1374
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1093
I am sure there was more... probably are, I just give up for now.

I think this:
Backstab has a cool down, before it can be used again.
Do not need to move out/in, but still need to /hide (argument against that is no one has a chance to /search you out, but you need to be extremely luck or have lightning fast reflexes to do that anyway; or assassin user is really slow) or it just does less damage - but then you lose the chance of rounding someone (unless they are lower level or already wounded) or (again) slight delay between /hide and the attack (to simulate the out/in bit).
Flank/critical attacks chance for every normal attack (or flank/critical hit always, but consume 2 stamina and do less damage than backstab). This would be handy if the in/out mechanic is kept and you are in a locked room.
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Tucker
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Re: Quality of Life Changes to /hide and Backstab Mechanics

Postby Tucker » Mon Jun 12, 2017 12:44 pm

You bring up a really good point about the lack of delay between the two backstabs. It would really increase the chance of people getting rounded since there's less chance to heal or pot up between backstabs.

Adding a delay to the stamina regen like you mentioned would keep the dps the same but it would be applied in a tight burst rather than spread out with a bit of response time. I do like the idea of maybe just adding a small delay .5-1 second? I'm not sure how quick a player can go east, west, /hide, and attack but i'd imagine its pretty damn quick so the delay wouldn't have to be a lot. Paired with removing the need to leave the room that might be a really good compromise to balance and the qol fix.

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daedroth
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Re: Quality of Life Changes to /hide and Backstab Mechanics

Postby daedroth » Tue Jun 13, 2017 3:17 am

Tucker wrote:You bring up a really good point about the lack of delay between the two backstabs. It would really increase the chance of people getting rounded since there's less chance to heal or pot up between backstabs.

Adding a delay to the stamina regen like you mentioned would keep the dps the same but it would be applied in a tight burst rather than spread out with a bit of response time. I do like the idea of maybe just adding a small delay .5-1 second? I'm not sure how quick a player can go east, west, /hide, and attack but i'd imagine its pretty damn quick so the delay wouldn't have to be a lot. Paired with removing the need to leave the room that might be a really good compromise to balance and the qol fix.


There have been many times I have saw an idea that sounded good, then i thought, wait a minute what about... also there have been many times I have posted "great ideas" only for someone to point out flaws, and I am thinking oh yeh... I never thought of that *hides* :D.

Anyway, yeh the slight delay would reflect the in/out time and give someone a chance to /search. So it would roughly be the same in the end.

Sadly... due to the fact this has been debated several times in threads, it does not look like it is going to be changed (or it would have been by now... maybe... I mean NH did mention going through each of the classes and reviewing them; as he has with rangers, so maybe still hope!).
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Tucker
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Re: Quality of Life Changes to /hide and Backstab Mechanics

Postby Tucker » Tue Jun 13, 2017 6:26 am

daedroth wrote:
Sadly... due to the fact this has been debated several times in threads, it does not look like it is going to be changed (or it would have been by now... maybe... I mean NH did mention going through each of the classes and reviewing them; as he has with rangers, so maybe still hope!).


It seems like being such a common point of discussion would indicate that the community would like to see this mechanic changed. I've seen a lot of the same sentiment that this class is frustrating to level and PVE which can be remedied by removing the limitation hiding in a room more than once and then balancing in whatever way is agreeable and easy to implement.

Like I mentioned the mechanic was born out of a terrible balancing decision (made like 13~ yrs ago?) . The fact that the game is under new ownership with new development means we can balance the game in more user friendly and elegant changes. Lowering skillcap things for the sake of usability is one thing - but this limitation has never even had the benefit of upping skillcap, just being annoying lol

Edit: Like you said though if this gets revisited hopefully its clear from community response that they would like to see it changed and that it shouldn't be too tricky to balance after removing

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Re: Quality of Life Changes to /hide and Backstab Mechanics

Postby Miach » Sat Jun 17, 2017 2:05 pm

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I like it just how it is with hiding and stabbing.


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