Salem

Hello ladies and gentlemen, I used to be an avid haven player, and did quite a lot of 'saleming' in the early closed beta, but stopped after the changes to purity.

The reason for me making this post is that I feel all the fighters of Salem has nothing that adds longevity to the game since the combat system is currently extremely lackluster, and promotes running away way more than actually trying to kill your enemies. This leading to almost all deaths being due to force summons as we've seen in the assorted forum over the last few months.

What I wonder is; "Would you guys be interested in changing the combat to something more aching to havens 'rpg-ish combat' system, which to be frank worked extremely more successfully than the current system both in pvp and pve?"

I know the chances of this happening are basically null, as well as a lot of people presumably giving me **** about this thread. But I'm genuinely interested in hearing the opinion of the masses, especially from all the haven players currently playing this. Anyone who pvp'ed a lot in haven must feel such a void in this game in that department and honestly I think it would be a tremendous population booster while Jorbtar works on implementing the other core features of the game, if it had a combat system that would let people actually duke it out in the field, rather than sneak into ones base at night and ***** them *pardon my french* in their sleep.

These are just my 2 cents, interested in what you have to contribute, please leave opinions and what not here

-Zero

edit: I'm not sure on the rules regarding links and what not of another game, but I could toss in some select threads from Haven's equivalent of House of burgesses to showcase how the Gank threads were generally more interesting (until a certain drop of mental quality in the player base screwed it up in any case).

It would help a lot if someone actually described the Haven pvp system in depth and explained why it's so much better than the salem system and how it would be adapted to fit into salem.

All righty, I'll go into some depth so people who're unfamiliar with the system will understand why I want it so badly.

The combat system of Haven and Hearth is vastly more complex than the salem one, which would of course lead to a higher learning curve to fight effectively, albeit it also results in some much more interesting fights cause the skill cap is quite a lot higher.

Basically when a player attacks another player in H&H, The assailant will start heading towards the victim, if anything is in his way, he'll run into it and stop, this is what we call clipping in haven.

Each player has a defense and an attack bar, representing the amount of a beating they can dish out / take before their armor and health is exposed to hurt.
When a player uses an attack on another player, it will do a certain amount of defensive bar damage depending on the skill of the attacking player in the type of combat he's attacking with, mixed with the "weight" of the move he's using to attack (different moves have different weight as to signify their effect on the defense bar).

To counteract this, there are several "moves" which will let a player replenish his attack bar, and defense bar, as well as gain an entity called "IP" (initiative points IIRC). These points are used for the vast majority of moves and can be obtained both at range and in melee depending on the move you use.

Another mechanic that can be influenced by moves is "Advantage". When you gain an advantage point over the enemy, your moves' inherent weight is increased against the enemy, thus letting you break his defense with less of a hassle, and take less defensive damage from his attacks and moves.

As a whole third mechanic, a player while performing moves will have an active "Maneuver"; a maneuver has an effect that is activated every time someone uses a move on the player that is using the maneuver, an example would be "Oaken Stance", which replenishes some defense at the cost of some attack bar every time a move is used on you.

The fourth and possibly least used mechanic of the combat system is "Intensity", this decides the cooldown there is between each move. This cooldown is also affected by the difference in agility of the two players fighting (This could be translated to say YB or phlegm in salem). And as thus, keeping the combat intensity low can give you more time to think, where as keeping it high will give you a higher effective damage output.

This system translated very well to pvp since mobs had certain maneuvers and moves they used uniquely that you had to counteract, or alternatively, just bruteforce through (in the case of weaker animals like foxes and rabbits).

What really made the system shine however, was an unintended mechanic known as "Movement combat" or "MERVMENT KAMBERTZ" (Hi Viggy baby Which revolved around using certain long range maneuvers to replenish your bars, and constantly try to clip the enemy on terrain, letting you take advantage of one last mechanic I haven't covered yet:

Movement hits. Basically if you're struck by an attack while moving WITHOUT Having a move queued up on a target, it neglects your defensive bar and goes straight to damaging your armor (and in case of damaged armor or being naked, your health).

People proficient in this could experience some extremely satisfying combat with very intense chases and turnarounds, where one guy could defeat several higher statted players due to extreme levels of skill. Not all that many people mastered this style of combat, but of the few who did, it benefitted them greatly compared to everyone else, and it generally made combat and threads about ganks exciting.

Now, Haven also had several other systems to take into account like several layers of HP (Soft, hard and max) as well as stamina and hunger, all contributing to this very complex system, but it was an utter blast using, and it felt really engaging as well.

In my period of saleming, I eradicated the goons with my buddies in Peterville (back during closed beta first round). What we quicky learned, was that in salems combat, running away is ALWAYS easy.
Basically even with walk speed its rather easy to dodge most abilities in this game, and just walk out of their influence, of course if you're boxed in by 8 players you're screwed, but I personally spend 40 minutes dodging goons while traversing an ocean by foot on walk speed, in the end they left due to boredom and inability to hit me.

The haven system has targeting, abilities and fast reactions required to be proficient, but I cannot stress enough how engaging it is when it's done right, Jorbtar has made a true gem in haven unintentionally, and I feel this game would be infinitely better with that added to the game.

Hope this clears it up somewhat, also please ask if there's any questions regarding what i Just described. Have a good one sirs!

-Zero

Anything to make salem combat less run in triangles and try to thrust in the right direction, while battling the camera at the same time would be a jorb-send.

Ass_Kraken wrote:Anything to make salem combat less run in triangles and try to thrust in the right direction, while battling the camera at the same time would be a jorb-send.

This

See the 2nd part of my sig on how to fix the salem combat. Its way 2 boring and not rpg at all.

But you have to shuffle four different bars that aren't even part of the humor system? Isn't that an awful lot extra to keep track of? Seems to me it would make combat impossible to learn for almost everyone. At least now, anyone has the chance of building up and becoming relevant in the game.

Ass_Kraken wrote:Anything to make salem combat less run in triangles and try to thrust in the right direction, while battling the camera at the same time would be a jorb-send.

Tbh I wouldn't even be opposed to turn based combat, instanced combat or simply a game of chance over the current fighting system.
I absolutely love haven combat though, movement combat is a love-hate thing though. I'd prefer being hit moving to knock your def to 0 but not do dmg though

A crude but possibly not terrible idea might be to include some sort of Rock/Paper/Scissors combat mechanic. A good RPS-er can win fights by properly anticipating their opponent's moves.

Ass_Kraken wrote:Anything to make salem combat less run in triangles and try to thrust in the right direction, while battling the camera at the same time would be a jorb-send.

colesie wrote:

Ass_Kraken wrote:Anything to make salem combat less run in triangles and try to thrust in the right direction, while battling the camera at the same time would be a jorb-send.

Tbh I wouldn't even be opposed to turn based combat, instanced combat or simply a game of chance over the current fighting system.
I absolutely love haven combat though, movement combat is a love-hate thing though. I'd prefer being hit moving to knock your def to 0 but not do dmg though

l2f

Current fight system is awesome all we need is more skills and weapon types. HnH combat system was stupid luck&lag based! And some people say they want realism, what is real in punching guy with armor and making tons of dmg if he is running?

Dallane wrote:

Ass_Kraken wrote:Anything to make salem combat less run in triangles and try to thrust in the right direction, while battling the camera at the same time would be a jorb-send.

This

See the 2nd part of my sig on how to fix the salem combat. Its way 2 boring and not rpg at all.

RPG combat systems suck. Do you really want another "stand there and spam buttons until death" system? Kill that crap because it was dead once network speeds and server processing got fast enough to transmit user actions in real time, which was around the middle of the last decade.

I'm not saying I like the current combat system all that well. I definitely liked the concept of the HnH combat system better, but I'm not sure HnH was any better because for all the potential depth, the actual usage was still fairly limited. (It was definitely deeper than Salem is now, though.) I think a happy blend of the two would be great as the HnH system was definitely lacking in some (several) places.