Github Fork: Ranged Weapons, Monsters follow player and/or flee.

[Voom]

You're right, it is just a minor issue if you haven't attacked, in which case 100% chance of flee will suffice. But there is the point that once you have already attacked the flee chance can vary based on distance. I believe that is also minor, but slightly more of an issue then the former. Thx.

I just thought of a solution for the "distance" thing.
Maybe when you attack with a ranged weapon, you get the status condition called "exposed" that lowers evasion and maybe increases move cost.

......And it's stackable.

And yeah of course the blockchance debuff from the bow will removed and instead added to the same "exposed" stats condition.

So, I believe this a fair exchange because the block chance debuff is only effective once the creature gets to you and hits you. Also, it is slightly unrealistic to decrease block chance considering that other items have an advantageous effect to counter-balance a significant disadvantage, e.g. Quickstrike Dagger and Blackwater Equipment, as "melee" equipment. It is interesting dichotomy to find attributes that accommodate both combat distance/movement and strengths/weaknesses of the particular weapon. If this works for the better, we could have a whole host of ranged weapons. Many have already given examples like throwing daggers, whips, shurikens, slingshots, stone slingers, darts, spears, shaolin meteor hammer... who knows what else. It sure would make AT a whole lot more interesting.

[twirlimp]

So, I believe this a fair exchange because the block chance debuff is only effective once the creature gets to you and hits you. Also, it is slightly unrealistic to decrease block chance considering that other items have an advantageous effect to counter-balance a significant disadvantage, e.g. Quickstrike Dagger and Blackwater Equipment, as "melee" equipment. It is interesting dichotomy to find attributes that accommodate both combat distance/movement and strengths/weaknesses of the particular weapon. If this works for the better, we could have a whole host of ranged weapons. Many have already given examples like throwing daggers, whips, shurikens, slingshots, stone slingers, darts, spears, shaolin meteor hammer... who knows what else. It sure would make AT a whole lot more interesting.

Well the advantageous effect of ranged weapons is that they increase maximum attack range....

But I see your point.

Also most of the ranged weapons you suggested would have a short range of +3 or even +2 and +1
For example currently the crossbow is +2, longbow +3, mighty longbow +5.
At +6, some small screens are forced to switch to landscape mode to target.

So daggers and shurikens probably won't shoot as far as longbow, and a whip also shouldn't be more than crossbow.

Honestly anything more than a longbow might as well be extraordinary/legendary/rare because any common +5 bow will be nerfed a lot.
This makes sense because realistically, longbows are the height of medieval ranged distance.

Any common bow that tries to get further range is likely to be poorly designed (accuracy decrease off the charts). Unless it's not a common item and E/L/R.

But yeah I'll still add a common +5 to see how much people enjoy a -67% accuracy.

It'll still be fun, and I'm also considering adding a net with a "trapped" status effect that you can throw at fleeing enemies so they don't exit combat. Fleeing enemies can get annoying for someone who is not using auto-aim.

[Voom]

Well the advantageous effect of ranged weapons is that they increase maximum attack range....

But I see your point.

Also most of the ranged weapons you suggested would have a short range of +3 or even +2 and +1
For example currently the crossbow is +2, longbow +3, mighty longbow +5.
At +6, some small screens are forced to switch to landscape mode to target.

So daggers and shurikens probably won't shoot as far as longbow, and a whip also shouldn't be more than crossbow.

Honestly anything more than a longbow might as well be extraordinary/legendary/rare because any common +5 bow will be nerfed a lot.
This makes sense because realistically, longbows are the height of medieval ranged distance.

Any common bow that tries to get further range is likely to be poorly designed (accuracy decrease off the charts). Unless it's not a common item and E/L/R.

But yeah I'll still add a common +5 to see how much people enjoy a -67% accuracy.

It'll still be fun, and I'm also considering adding a net with a "trapped" status effect that you can throw at fleeing enemies so they don't exit combat. Fleeing enemies can get annoying for someone who is not using auto-aim.

I agree, all those weapons I mentioned wouldn't have that long of a distance, but not everything has to be very long, therefore, their counter-balance (disadvantages/nerfings) would be determined as such. Yes, long bows would shoot longer than everything I mentioned. If an item is >+4 range, yes, it should probably be E/L/R. -67% accuracy might enable the condition of Suicidal Tendency... gotta check it out though.

I like the net item and trapped status. If you weren't using auto-aim and an enemy that is fleeing gets out of range of attack, then why wouldn't it automatically cancel combat status so that you can chase it? Isn't auto-aim only concerning entering combat, not exiting, or am I confused about this?

It would be nice if enemies in-range glowed, notifying you that they are in range, but only when bow is equipped, of course.

[twirlimp]

I agree, all those weapons I mentioned wouldn't have that long of a distance, but not everything has to be very long, therefore, their counter-balance (disadvantages/nerfings) would be determined as such. Yes, long bows would shoot longer than everything I mentioned. If an item is >+4 range, yes, it should probably be E/L/R. -67% accuracy might enable the condition of Suicidal Tendency... gotta check it out though.

Thanks for agreeing on the range :p

I was afraid people would be disappointed if I didn't make all ranged weapons +10.

Suicidal Tendency sounds like Fun.

I like the net item and trapped status. If you weren't using auto-aim and an enemy that is fleeing gets out of range of attack, then why wouldn't it automatically cancel combat status so that you can chase it? Isn't auto-aim only concerning entering combat, not exiting, or am I confused about this?

Fleeing enemies actually DO cancel combat status so you can chase it. They keep fleeing on their turn every time they're re-engaged, and they cancel combat when they're out of range.

I meant that if someone is using normal-aim then he'll have to Re-press the Aim button Every single time he wants to re-engage the fleeing monster with ranged. (That's why I added an option to move the aim button).
But, since currently fleeing monsters never attack back, THERE IS NO REASON TO AIM. Just melee them with the crossbow.

Anyway if fleeing monsters are made to attack when melee'd, then people would stick to ranged, and since bows have low accuracy... Well Some people might get frustrated with re-pressing the Aim button.

Currently there's already a preference for whether you want to aim by pressing the hero himself. (see pics below). It can be misclicked but that's not a problem because, if you click anywhere on the screen, then it'll cancel and you'll move normally.But it can still get annoying when you're trying to use a door (you can't move between areas in aim mode).

For stronger monsters we should lower the flee threshold to 10% instead of 20% because 10% of 100HP > 20% of 20HP.

It would be nice if enemies in-range glowed, notifying you that they are in range, but only when bow is equipped, of course.

I'll consider this but to be honest I'd rather make the aim button glow. Maybe a green background glow.

There's also a preference for people who want the aim button in status bar next to the HP for faster access. It might annoy people with small screens so I can't put it there by default. But when you're in landscape mode it feels very cool XD (See pics below)


Note that the aim button is hidden when not wielding a ranged weapon.

device-2016-01-10-115731.png

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[rijackson741]

I think the 20% is the chance to not flee, which is why when evasion decreases it it makes fleeing easier.

Yes, I misspoke.

When I say "decrease flee chance" I mean "make fleeing harder" and not easier, so I think the evasion skill will be much more useful.

I know that's what you mean, but it would make Evasion less useful. If I have, say, 2 levels of Evasion, then that cuts my failure chance in half. With 4 levels, I never fail. If the base chance of failing in increased, say to 50%, now 2 levels of Ev only reduces that to 40%, which is not much of a benefit, and I would require 10 levels of Ev to never fail.

The Evasion skill could be adjusted though, so 1 level reduces the chance of failure by 1/4; i.e. a relative 25% rather than an absolute 5%. I think this is moot though, unless ranged weapons are implemented. So on to that.

Well currently, in the version I'm working on, I made monsters non-static by default And they will move towards you. If the path is blocked then they flee away to get out of your range.

Yes, and I think that's a problem. It's a force fit solution that has a significant impact on the current game mechanics and balance. Currently, a monster cannot move outside it's spawn area. There are two principle consequences of that: static monsters and safe areas. The static monsters are guardians that are there to stop players from getting to certain areas before they are strong enough (at least,that's what I have read in other posts). The safe areas make it much easier to get through certain map tiles. The problem is that those two features of the current game are really not compatible with ranged weapons, because then a player can just stand somewhere safe and kill anything that's in range, and the monsters are defenseless. Your solution of allowing the monsters to attack or flee outside of their spawn area may make them able to defend themselves, but at the cost of breaking two existing features. IMO, the most significant of those is the loss of safe areas. It will make it much harder to get through some map tiles. It's hard to say how much harder without playing a new character through a sizable chunk of the game, but it's certainly going to be harder than it is now.

I like the idea of monsters fleeing and chasing you, but only within the current bounds of their movement. I also like the idea of ranged weapons, but I don't see how to implement them in a balanced way without impacting current aspects of the game.

As an aside, you seem to have introduced a nasty bug (or a highly undesirable "feature"?). Some of the skills appear to be hard coded into the game. My proficiency and fighting style skills are wrong.

[twirlimp]

When I say "decrease flee chance" I mean "make fleeing harder" and not easier, so I think the evasion skill will be much more useful.

I know that's what you mean, but it would make Evasion less useful. If I have, say, 2 levels of Evasion, then that cuts my failure chance in half. With 4 levels, I never fail. If the base chance of failing in increased, say to 50%, now 2 levels of Ev only reduces that to 40%, which is not much of a benefit, and I would require 10 levels of Ev to never fail.
The Evasion skill could be adjusted though, so 1 level reduces the chance of failure by 1/4; i.e. a relative 25% rather than an absolute 5%. I think this is moot though, unless ranged weapons are implemented. So on to that.

You're right. Personally I think of it as "lowering usefulness of ranged weapons" instead of "lowering usefulness of evasion skill".

Well currently, in the version I'm working on, I made monsters non-static by default And they will move towards you. If the path is blocked then they flee away to get out of your range.

Yes, and I think that's a problem. It's a force fit solution that has a significant impact on the current game mechanics and balance. Currently, a monster cannot move outside it's spawn area. There are two principle consequences of that: static monsters and safe areas. The static monsters are guardians that are there to stop players from getting to certain areas before they are strong enough (at least,that's what I have read in other posts). The safe areas make it much easier to get through certain map tiles. The problem is that those two features of the current game are really not compatible with ranged weapons, because then a player can just stand somewhere safe and kill anything that's in range, and the monsters are defenseless. Your solution of allowing the monsters to attack or flee outside of their spawn area may make them able to defend themselves, but at the cost of breaking two existing features. IMO, the most significant of those is the loss of safe areas. It will make it much harder to get through some map tiles. It's hard to say how much harder without playing a new character through a sizable chunk of the game, but it's certainly going to be harder than it is now.

I like the idea of monsters fleeing and chasing you, but only within the current bounds of their movement. I also like the idea of ranged weapons, but I don't see how to implement them in a balanced way without impacting current aspects of the game.

Well first of all, if this monster behavior is implemented then I highly doubt it will become the default for all monsters. Most likely it will only be enabled for the monsters we want them to.

So, for example, if we set the defaults to be: line of sight 100, rage multiplier 0, hp flee threshold 0, then you basically have the old monsters again.
(They can see you, but won't get enraged and won't flee)

Then, we could change these values for whatever monsters we want only. This is the most likely scenario, I think.

As an aside, you seem to have introduced a nasty bug (or a highly undesirable "feature"?). Some of the skills appear to be hard coded into the game. My proficiency and fighting style skills are wrong.

I'm going to check that out now, but can you tell me how exactly are the skills wrong? Are they zero, increased, decreased, or just random?
That'll make things much easier for me.

[rijackson741]

Well first of all, if this monster behavior is implemented then I highly doubt it will become the default for all monsters. Most likely it will only be enabled for the monsters we want them to.

But then any monster that behaves as they do now can be easily killed from a distance.

I'm going to check that out now, but can you tell me how exactly are the skills wrong? Are they zero, increased, decreased, or just random?
That'll make things much easier for me.

I should have dagger proficiency 1, one handed sword proficiency 1, light armor proficiency 1, Fighting style: dual wield 2, Specialization: Dual wield 1. What now shows are Shield proficiency 1, light armor proficiency 2, Fighting style: two-handed weapon 1. All the other skills appear to be correct.

[twirlimp]

Well first of all, if this monster behavior is implemented then I highly doubt it will become the default for all monsters. Most likely it will only be enabled for the monsters we want them to.

But then any monster that behaves as they do now can be easily killed from a distance.

Yeah I'm guessing that's why there's some doubts regarding ranged weapons.

Perhaps there'd be some "exposed" property to mark monsters as susceptible to ranged attacks (or a "sentinel" property to make them immune)?
That way we can allow ranged attacks on most common monsters in the wild but keep the boss monsters and the like as safe.

Like I said, we can always make everything "old" by default and allow new things when we want to.
That's probably going to happen regardless of my opinion on it

[twirlimp]

I should have dagger proficiency 1, one handed sword proficiency 1, light armor proficiency 1, Fighting style: dual wield 2, Specialization: Dual wield 1. What now shows are Shield proficiency 1, light armor proficiency 2, Fighting style: two-handed weapon 1. All the other skills appear to be correct.

Ah, I fixed it.
I had added two new skill proficiencies for ranged weapons and put them in the middle instead of at the end

It's fortunate that the game loaded at all.

If you download the new apk it should fix the problem as long as you haven't added new skill points already.
Make sure the file ends with 6_a.apk

[twirlimp]

I like the idea of monsters fleeing and chasing you, but only within the current bounds of their movement. I also like the idea of ranged weapons, but I don't see how to implement them in a balanced way without impacting current aspects of the game.

So as a summary.

Monster behavior (and consequently ranged weapons) would only enabled for common enemies and certain bosses.
No messing with the present statics.

How does that sound?
It really wouldn't be hard to go to the data of several monsters (e.g. dogs, snakes, etc..) and setting the new properties to "On".

Sure, it'll require some content-creation manual work, but not as much work as fixing broken content. Amirite?

It'll still be fun as hell to run away from a pack of dogs and/or follow them.
Much more fun than sniping some guardian.

I've read somewhere that the optimal strategy for a game should be fun, so definitely I'm against any solutions that reward the player for un-fun behavior (aka sniping static bosses for 10min).