The big Balance Thread. Pets vs Footfighters. Mounted Players vs Footfighter. Ideas how to balance the combat

Anabolic Man

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Sep 7, 2020
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Over the years, more and more mechanics have been balanced in MO1, but not perfectly balanced.
Every playstyle should be perfectly balanced in MO2. We don't need a rock paper scissors system, but a well-balanced combat system.
At the moment the animals and Mounted Archers are too strong. Mortal Online 2 should not get a Mounted Combat Online, or a Pokemon Online game.


How to balance Pets ? My ideas would be the followig.
I hope that many players will come up with ideas on how animals can be balanced without making them useless!


Here are all of my suggestions that came to mind. Suggestions that would not make animals useless, but not too strong either.




How can Mortal Online be prevented from becoming a Mounted Online?

Many players have this fear. Also in my guild and many believe that footfighters only shine during Sieges.
I watched the following podcast.


Viknuns is of the opinion that Mounted Combat is by no means overpowered.
I do not share this opinion.

Mounted Combat is not particularly strong in 1 vs 1 for the costs, but very strong in group fights, especially when the mounted fighters are accompanied by mounted mages and mounted archers. Then the footfighters are at a disadvantage.

Of course you can dismount the players. Kill their horse with a bow, cast earthquake or dismount the player with a heavy hammer. But the footmages are a victim as they are busy healing themselves when shot at by Mounted Archers.
If everyone pulls out a bow to focus one of the armored horses, they cannot block the damage from the incomming mounted warriors.
In addition, their horses are quite tanky with their Horse Armor. If a horse is killed, there will be many more mounted players in the group.

I think Footfighters are at a disadvantage,
and there is a lack of choke points. There are nowhere near as many Escape Points for Footfighter as Viknus claims in this Podcast.
I think the terrain still needs to be expanded.

But now to the question of how Mounted Combat could be buffed in 1 vs 1 and in general, how Mounted Archery and mounted Fatmages could be nerfed and how the fight between footfighters and mounted fighters could be better balanced.

Viknus addresses the costs associated with mounted combat and the time to level the Horse. I also think that these costs are way too high compared to a Mounted Archer or a Mounted Mage.

First of all the horses should level significantly faster than in the first game. It is annoying if leveling the Horses take too long.

The weapons, or at least the weapon heads, should cost significantly less of the expensive materials used in the manufacture of those weapons.
A heavy lance should do chip damamge through the block.

Compared to the mounted fighter, the Mounted Archer and Mounted Mage don't have to venture into the fray and will stay on distance.
To balance that we need is a ranged dismount. This is where the crossbow comes in. It should take some time to reload and the crosshairs should wiggle back and forth, so it is hard to aim for the head of a mount, like with a sniper in shooters when the player is not using a Stady Aim. Stady Aim should cost a lot of Stamina. Perhaps as much as a player using a bow above their str level.
The crossbow should not be able to be cocked from the horseback.

A headshot from the crossbow should dismount ! A dismounted Player should not be able to mount again.
The horse should run away, not listen to commands and be exhausted for at least 1-2 Minutes.

The Mc could get a Jecelin throw to dismount the Mounted Archer.

I want Players to build Hybrids between mounted Combat and Footfighters and that every Build have a chance in 1 vs 1. The fight should begin on Mounts and end on Foot, if their horse got killed, or if they got dismounted. For that, mounted combat should be much cheaper and the leveling of the Horses should go much faster. If the ranged Dismount from the Crossbow turn out to be too strong the mechaic could be changed, that it only dismount, if the HP of the Horse drop under 70 % Health or so.


I think a hit on the horse's head hitbox should deal significantly more damage. Maybe even double or triple damage.
Horse Armor should make the horses much more tanky, but it needs weak points.
I think this is justified if horses can be healed with magic from the horseback and can probably be bandaged as well.

I think every player should be able to deal damage with a bow and with his weapon while on horseback. Mounted Combat should be a secondary skill. The ability to ride faster should cost primary Points, aswell as Lances, which should be the best moutned Combat Weapon. Higher Speed will give you more Damamge. Mounted archery should be a secondary skill and marksmanship should be a primary.


I think we need a new Category of Bows called mounted Bows. These Bows could deal less damage, if the Player hot have skilled Maksmanship, that deals twice the damage if you get a headshot.

A mounted fighter should have enough points to be able to fight on foot and a foot fighter or hybrid should also be able to deal some damage from the horseback, even if he cannot do it as effectively as someone with the skill lance, as someone who can ride faster and someone with enough strength and maybe should be forced to use a Weapon Hilt to do so.
I think footfights are the most fun. Mounted Combat is fun too, but not nearly as fun as a good fight on foot.
Battles should begin mounted and end on the ground. Horses should be cheep and the gear should not be that expencive.

How do you see that. Write your ideas under this post.
 
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Jackdstripper

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Jan 8, 2021
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Anabolic, just a friendly observation: your posts are too often dizzyingly long. Most people dont have the patience to read all that. If its more than 3 pr 4 paragraphs people will skip it.

you might very well have some awesome ideas but….tldr.

i suggest a larger time spent concising. More people will read your posts.
 

Chef

Active member
Sep 17, 2021
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Anabolic, just a friendly observation: your posts are too often dizzyingly long. Most people dont have the patience to read all that. If its more than 3 pr 4 paragraphs people will skip it.

you might very well have some awesome ideas but….tldr.

i suggest a larger time spent concising. More people will read your posts.
If people cannot take the time to read a thought out post, their opinions do not matter.
 
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Tzone

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May 16, 2021
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I was going to work on my own balancing thread because the state of the current balance in the game is incredibly harmfull to the longevity of the game. It needs to be fixed and tested before release. Lots of players dont want to play or stopped playing due to FFs having to deal with pets/mounted.
The core part and best part of MO2 is the foot fighting. Pets and Mounted disrupt the enjoyment competitive players have when they look for skill based fights.

I just going to say again and repeat say no to cross bows. Cross bows will cause more harm to the foot game then they would do good to counter issue against mounted. Crossbows in every game have been gimmicky weapons that disrupt the game. They do not produce new playstyles for people to main which is what you want when you put work into implementing new. They allow easy unavoidable high damage which is a issue we have with mages right now being able to focus town people with out counters to it.

It is a bad decision that has hurt pretty much every game crossbows have been added to, to include shooters. It is only fun as a gimmick and not enjoyable for more competitive players to use or be on the receiving end. Archery once fixed can have mounted counters added such as long bow dismounting with repeated headshots.

Caltrops is a area of denial tool that footies can use if implemented to soft counter mounted while not harming the foot fighting. I go over them in the posted link below. Caltrop will allow FFs to create choke points on the fly temporarily.

Its really too soon right now after the horse changes to say what nerf is needed against mounted. We need to give that a little more time. Right now it should be focusing on how to provide counters to every class. What counter would swords players have as a example. Its still mounted online.


I come from shooters so my take on hold breath mechanics is that they are dumb. It slightly raises the skill floor a bit with a annoying unfun mechanic.
Archery in general is already difficult to hit players with the slow moving arrows because of the unpredictability of player movement past close range. People barely get head shots because the risk of missing is too high and easy for the person on the receiving end to dodge. The rate of fire is so low that it doesnt make sense to add more stamina drain, especially when bows suffer from crippling stam reserve drain already.

If any more sway was added to MA it should only be up and down. Side to side sway is horrible and destroys the ability for a shooter with slow projectiles to land prediction shots on players attempting to be hard to hit by strafing.
 
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AssassinOTL

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Mar 23, 2021
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They allow easy unavoidable high damage which is a issue we have with mages right now being able to focus town people with out counters to it.
there are counters to magic so that's not fair to say that if you don't use it then that's a different conversation
and for as much as the FFs are asking for counters to everything that's put in the game, they never consider that some of these things are put in the game because the FF also needs to be countered, these are no longer balance conversations, it's "how to make FFs beat everything else in the game" conversations
 

Anabolic Man

Well-known member
Sep 7, 2020
1,126
732
113
I was going to work on my own balancing thread because the state of the current balance in the game is incredibly harmfull to the longevity of the game. It needs to be fixed and tested before release. Lots of players dont want to play or stopped playing due to FFs having to deal with pets/mounted.
The core part and best part of MO2 is the foot fighting. Pets and Mounted disrupt the enjoyment competitive players have when they look for skill based fights.

I just going to say again and repeat say no to cross bows. Cross bows will cause more harm to the foot game then they would do good to counter issue against mounted. Crossbows in every game have been gimmicky weapons that disrupt the game. They do not produce new playstyles for people to main which is what you want when you put work into implementing new. They allow easy unavoidable high damage which is a issue we have with mages right now being able to focus town people with out counters to it.

It is a bad decision that has hurt pretty much every game crossbows have been added to, to include shooters. It is only fun as a gimmick and not enjoyable for more competitive players to use or be on the receiving end. Archery once fixed can have mounted counters added such as long bow dismounting with repeated headshots.

Caltrops is a area of denial tool that footies can use if implemented to soft counter mounted while not harming the foot fighting. I go over them in the posted link below. Caltrop will allow FFs to create choke points on the fly temporarily.

Its really too soon right now after the horse changes to say what nerf is needed against mounted. We need to give that a little more time. Right now it should be focusing on how to provide counters to every class. What counter would swords players have as a example. Its still mounted online.


I come from shooters so my take on hold breath mechanics is that they are dumb. It slightly raises the skill floor a bit with a annoying unfun mechanic.
Archery in general is already difficult to hit players with the slow moving arrows because of the unpredictability of player movement past close range. People barely get head shots because the risk of missing is too high and easy for the person on the receiving end to dodge. The rate of fire is so low that it doesnt make sense to add more stamina drain, especially when bows suffer from crippling stam reserve drain already.

If any more sway was added to MA it should only be up and down. Side to side sway is horrible and destroys the ability for a shooter with slow projectiles to land prediction shots on players attempting to be hard to hit by strafing.


I agree that Footfights are the most fun. Caltrops sounds interesting, but mounted Players need to see them and Caltrops are very small.

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