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

[rijackson741]

How about this:

Any monster in a spawn area of only one square is a sentinel (probably easier to check this than add a new property to every monster?), and is immune to ranged attacks. The player gets a message such as "your attack has no effect", or "your attack has no effect from this distance"

If you engage a monster from distance 0 (or 1, depending on how you want to count distance) monsters may flee or follow you if you flee, but only within the bounds of their spawn areas. So safe areas are unaffected for melee combat.

If you engage a monster with a ranged attack, then you just took the gloves off. Then it can flee anywhere, and chase you anywhere.

With the above rules nothing about existing combat would change, and ranged weapons would therefore only add to the game, rather than changing the existing game. If a player decides to shoot a vile plaguestrider from a distance with the new ranged weapons, and it follows them into a safe area and kills them, lesson learned

That would be more coding for sure, but it might be an acceptable solution.

[rijackson741]

The current default for "rage distance multiplier" is 1.0 which means after combat ends (and you flee) they'll follow you for a number of steps equal to the distance when you first attacked them.
So if you attack them once and flee, and stand still, they'll walk until they're exactly in your old position and start attacking.

I meant to comment on this too. I hope this is a misstatement on your part. Currently, if you stand next to a monster, or it moves next to you, there is a 15% chance it will attack. That chance is reduced by 5% for each level of Ev, so with Ev 3 it will never attack. If it moves onto your square, rather then next to you, that's different, and of course it attacks. So if I hit a monster, back up one square, and it then moves one square towards me, it should only have at most 15% chance of attacking. Did you change this so that it always attacks?

[twirlimp]

The current default for "rage distance multiplier" is 1.0 which means after combat ends (and you flee) they'll follow you for a number of steps equal to the distance when you first attacked them.
So if you attack them once and flee, and stand still, they'll walk until they're exactly in your old position and start attacking.

I meant to comment on this too. I hope this is a misstatement on your part. Currently, if you stand next to a monster, or it moves next to you, there is a 15% chance it will attack. That chance is reduced by 5% for each level of Ev, so with Ev 3 it will never attack. If it moves onto your square, rather then next to you, that's different, and of course it attacks. So if I hit a monster, back up one square, and it then moves one square towards me, it should only have at most 15% chance of attacking. Did you change this so that it always attacks?

No I did not.

They just move towards you, and I did not mess with the attacking part.

Except that, of course, when they're in a fleeing state they don't attack.

[twirlimp]

How about this:

Any monster in a spawn area of only one square is a sentinel (probably easier to check this than add a new property to every monster?), and is immune to ranged attacks. The player gets a message such as "your attack has no effect", or "your attack has no effect from this distance"

I like this one.

Even if we decide to make moving sentinels (certain bosses) then it would be easy to override.
Easier than changing properties for most monsters, like you said.

If you engage a monster from distance 0 (or 1, depending on how you want to count distance) monsters may flee or follow you if you flee, but only within the bounds of their spawn areas. So safe areas are unaffected for melee combat.
If you engage a monster with a ranged attack, then you just took the gloves off. Then it can flee anywhere, and chase you anywhere.

With the above rules nothing about existing combat would change, and ranged weapons would therefore only add to the game, rather than changing the existing game. If a player decides to shoot a vile plaguestrider from a distance with the new ranged weapons, and it follows them into a safe area and kills them, lesson learned

That would be more coding for sure, but it might be an acceptable solution.

This is a bit perhaps similar to an aspect that I coded but perhaps overlooked mentioning.

With the current system I made, if a player attacks with melee then he'd be followed for a very little number of steps.
The way this works is that each monster has the aforementioned "rage multiplier" that determines how many turns they're "enraged" in terms of the distance between you two. And (here's the new part I forgot to mention) this starts to deplete only after you exit combat.

So a melee would be followed for, say, 3 tiles after he flees (3 x 1), but an archer would be followed for 6/9/12/15 -- after he flees combat, which means the monster he attacked is probably already close to him, most likely not greatly harmed because of the bow inaccuracy, and you have accumulated stackable "exposed" conditions with -10% block chance each.

Melee will be followed for a really, really low number of steps, unless someone decides to specifically change the rage value for that monster -- and it become even greater for ranged no matter what you do.

As for fleeing with melee, well, if you really want to flee for good, just move 3 more tiles after combat and you're free.
For ranged, you're pretty much going to be forced to 1v1 with a debuff on your defense if you can't get out of there Asap.

So in effect, people who attack with ranged are most definitely not overpowered. To be honest, anyone who uses ranged weapons will be doing it for fun and I am sure will still be challenged as usual. It's just going to be a different play style, that's all.

As for safe areas, well these will be over-stepped by one or two tiles if you attack with melee, but that's no big deal. Also note that most ranged weapons aren't so far-reaching -- the maximum for any common item is going to be +4 -- so there's a hard limit over how much disturbances the player will be causing in monster movement.

All in all, I advocate that the current testing weapons should be scrapped (specifically the +5) one, and for the next release we should focus on the common +1/2/3 weapons such as whips, throwing daggers, shortbows, and crossbows. Leave the rarer +4/5 for later. I'm not even worrying myself with +6 atm.

Safe areas will be barely changed unless you were already standing on the border, so it's just the issue of sentinels that needs to be addressed. With at least one exception like this, we'll have to do some manual work if we want to make sure everything is balanced.

(Note that I haven't uploaded the apk with the exposed status yet, currently it's a permanent debuff to BC)

[rijackson741]

As for safe areas, well these will be over-stepped by one or two tiles if you attack with melee, but that's no big deal.

A lot of them are only one or two squares. That makes it hard to figure out where they are when playing, but if you watch the monsters for long enough you can make a good guess. And the entrance and exit squares are almost always safe, but again, often for a depth of only one or two squares.

[twirlimp]

As for safe areas, well these will be over-stepped by one or two tiles if you attack with melee, but that's no big deal.

A lot of them are only one or two squares. That makes it hard to figure out where they are when playing, but if you watch the monsters for long enough you can make a good guess. And the entrance and exit squares are almost always safe, but again, often for a depth of only one or two squares.

I really have to check with others on this.

This is going to be one of those cases where we revert to default and see what we can enhance without de-balancing.

If the monsters are supposed to be hard, this can make them harder, and if the monsters are supposed to be weak then we can lower their rage multiplier so they don't follow much outside battle and flee faster due to HP loss.

With more properties come more combos to test, I guess.

[rijackson741]

Here's an example that might help. I chose it because it was the first one I found with several areas that are good examples:

Spawn area example.jpg

At the entrance (bottom left) there's one row of squares where it's safe. There's a second row of squares where you are not in a spawn area, but you are next to one, so it's moderately safe: if a monster gets next to you, there's only a 15% chance it will attack. The safety of that area increases with evasion skill, and with Ev 3 it's also completely safe. On the bridges there are two isolated squares that offer some safety, and complete safety if you have Ev 3 (now you know why I have Ev 3 ). Beyond the bridge there's a grassy area with more than one square that offers complete safety. After that there's actually one more isolated square that's safe, because monsters don't attack on a diagonal**. Then there's the exit area, where there are several safe squares. If you bash an Arulir and it follows you into those safe areas it would make this map a lot harder to get through.

** I just noticed that monsters only move left-right or up-down, until I get one in flee mode, in which case it starts to also move on the diagonals. Is that also the case when a monster is chasing you?

[twirlimp]

Here's an example that might help. I chose it because it was the first one I found with several areas that are good examples:

Spawn area example.jpg

At the entrance (bottom left) there's one row of squares where it's safe. There's a second row of squares where you are not in a spawn area, but you are next to one, so it's moderately safe: if a monster gets next to you, there's only a 15% chance it will attack. The safety of that area increases with evasion skill, and with Ev 3 it's also completely safe. On the bridges there are two isolated squares that offer some safety, and complete safety if you have Ev 3 (now you know why I have Ev 3 ). Beyond the bridge there's a grassy area with more than one square that offers complete safety. After that there's actually one more isolated square that's safe, because monsters don't attack on a diagonal**. Then there's the exit area, where there are several safe squares. If you bash an Arulir and it follows you into those safe areas it would make this map a lot harder to get through.

I see what you mean and I guess we need to consider if this going to become a feature or be fixed.

** I just noticed that monsters only move left-right or up-down, until I get one in flee mode, in which case it starts to also move on the diagonals. Is that also the case when a monster is chasing you?

Yes they move diagonally in both fleeing/following.

It's intentional and I can change either one if you want to.

Could be me, but I thought it makes sense that they move diagonally now that they actually have a goal.
Is it more fun to you? Also think about the fact that they give up on life at 20% so that's an easy 1/5 of the battle is done before it starts

[Voom]

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.

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.

If there is no reason to aim because monster is fleeing and will not attack you, than using a crossbow to melee is not ideal. Of course, you could switch between weapons, but that's a good amount of clicking before you are ready to hit. I would suggest a button that would go in the toolbox that allows you to switch between your current set of weapon(s) and the more ideal set for the evolving combat situation. This will make it entirely more convenient. What do you think?

I think misclicking is solved, that's good, except when moving b/w areas. Honestly, that's not a big deal for me.

Yeah, I like that the aim button should glow rather than the monster and I also love the placement; the pics are awesome.

[twirlimp]

If there is no reason to aim because monster is fleeing and will not attack you, than using a crossbow to melee is not ideal. Of course, you could switch between weapons, but that's a good amount of clicking before you are ready to hit. I would suggest a button that would go in the toolbox that allows you to switch between your current set of weapon(s) and the more ideal set for the evolving combat situation. This will make it entirely more convenient. What do you think?

That's actually a great idea.
It'll take a bit of work though and I have to prioritize the few tasks I got left.

I think misclicking is solved, that's good, except when moving b/w areas. Honestly, that's not a big deal for me.

Glad you liked it

Well so far I provided several modes -- the normal button, auto aim, and the pressing the hero -- so hopefully everyone can find the one that suits them best.

Yeah, I like that the aim button should glow rather than the monster and I also love the placement; the pics are awesome.

Thanks
I'll try to work on the glow soon but no promises

Currently the features that I haven't finished are the glow, the "Favorites" equipment, and the "reverse" inventory sorting.
I was doing the easy ones first and now all that's left is the really tricky ones

I think I'll work on them in that order, and hopefully our fearless leader will approve the changes.
I'm starting to regret not making several branches, because now everything is in one large place and it could be difficult for him to go through it...