JohnCarver wrote:I still do not like Salem Combat and I'm not entirely sure what to do about it. The speed at which some moves happen, while interesting, somewhat prohibit the ability to 'counter' your opponent and while it is true you can 'win' against an enemy if you know their 'fight style', a player pushing a single button over and over again may only be at a 20%-30% greater chance to lose than the certain defeat I would prefer.
I'd also like to thank Nektaris for getting the ball rolling here.
Combat
Clicking a combat move doesn't have any cost, nor commits your character to performing the attack, but instead brings up a scale with a slider that goes up and then down the scale. The player can move around, but cannot interact with anything until he or she either cancels the move or right clicks, which halts the slider and the attack it performed.
The place where the slider stops on the scale determines a couple of things. The most important of which is what percent of damage the attack will deal. The base damage is still calculated the way it is now, just only a percent of that base is dealt. The closer to the center the greater the percent dealt.
A very rough example.
Each combat move would have a different bar, as in the size of the center would be bigger or smaller (to scale difficulty) and speed the slider moves. Basically the time it takes after clicking the move to it actually going through in game now, would be how long it takes for the slider to get to the center. However players no longer have to wait that long and can rush moves at the cost of the damage that would be dealt.
Critical Damage
RNG and Crit damage where not well received in Nektaris's combat proposal so let me preface that this part can be removed. I included it because I feel it is a further reward to players who skillfully time their moves, and is a slight punishment to defensive players, pushing them to go on the attack (more on that later.)
Critical damage would be a small element of any battle. The closer a player lands the slider to dead center the higher the chance of landing additional critical damage on top of his or her base damage. No more than say 5% chance max, maybe less. This would however require a player to wait slightly longer than what it normally takes for the various actions, so this chance of damage comes at a cost.
Further Nerfs to Move Spamming
All stuns now only work on players when landed in the center. So a rushed move may still deal some damage but will not stun a player.
Unbalance. All moves would create unbalance and would build across moves. Normally the unbalance created by performing a move would dissipate by the the time it would take for the next move's slider to reach center. But that would mean that rushing too many moves in a row could build up too much unbalance and make your character dizzy. Also performing the same move in a row would increase unbalance exponentially. So two stomps would give your character a little excess unbalance, three would give it a lot of excess, 4 much more, and etc.
Defence
There would be three defensive combat moves. They would not require any stances or any of that. They would be the only moves not to have scale bars but would go through instantaneous, though would also be affected by unbalance, which because it has no wait time would increase quickly.
Parry: Would still require a sword, but would be effective against, swords, halberds, and clubs. When timed well a successful parry would negate all damage dealt too that player and deal yellow bile damage based on how poor of an attack it was. In other words is the player rushes their attack and the slider stopped at 25% and it was parried he or she would be dealt more damage than if the player had waited until the attack was at say 99% or in the center.
Block: This would be the equivalent of Parry, but against unarmed attacks. It could be performed with a weapon in hand or unarmed.
However critical damage would not be blocked by a parry or block. So players who turtle could still be dealt damage (if the unbalance didn't do them in first.
Check: This would be a simple body check. It would deal no damage but would cancel any attack that hasn't been commited too. In other words, it would cancel any move where the slider was still moving on the scale.
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That's the basic jist of my proposal. I have a couple other ideas, like Balance, Slider Speed (Agility) and Firearm artifacts and a few interesting moves I will elaborate on later if this idea survives a little while.
