Doctor Archive

HAM Revamp Discussion

"From the looks of it you will still be able to buff yourself to 1k+ in your pools but it will never completely negate HAM costs."

If this happens, I can go without buffs using foods (garmorl, accargym, vercupti, won-won, etc.) unless I want to go do some hunting for 3 hours (if buffpacks will still last that long) which I don't do much of.

Message Edited by Chickenbone on 07-23-2004 08:32 AM

A recap of my response in that thread

I remember when this was on test center back in Dec-Jan. As I recall, it didn’t solve the problem. It just changed it.

The real flaw in the combat system, in my opinion, is that so long as a player can heal damage, or be healed, while actively engaged in combat makes balancing the system impossible

Here are two possible ways to balance healing.

For one, make combat work differently. Currently, if someone takes a shot at you, your suddenly in combat whether you can do anything or not, whether they hit you or not. Make combat active only if you’re taking hits. Make healing while engaged in combat a no-go. Let buffs and what not increase the regen rate and/or reduce the specials costs however necessary to balance it out, but remove the ability to heal in combat.

How about if you haven’t been hit in say 10 seconds, break combat automatically until your enemy successfully hits you again. How about a /disengage special move that, if successful, breaks combat for 3-5 seconds allowing the player to catch their breath and heal.

For the second (my personal preference), what about making a players defenses drop drastically while healing to make it tactically difficult to do while actively in combat? Or a success/fail on a healing attempt?

If you have a bantha trying to step on you, hitting that vein with that stim pack has got to be difficult. Have the difficulty based on the mobs level vs. the player’s med usage. A MD should be able to hit that vein more accurately than a novice medic. Right now, it's a given that a heal will go through without a hitch so long as a stim is in your inventory.

If this were implemented you’d see far fewer novice medics at the higher level of play because they’d almost never land the heal when fighting other high level players and mobs. MD’s and Master Medics would become much more valuable to combat groups then they currently are.

Even with buffs, PvP wouldn’t be the stalemate it tends to be right now. PvE wouldn’t be the push over it currently is. Those who retain novice medic would have to last long enough to break combat in order to heal. Against the higher level mobs, that’s no easy task and against other players that’s almost impossible.

Even if you made no other change to combat balance but this second method, it would change the face of combat in SWG and would give the Dev’s a much better place from which to really balance combat.

For some background for this suggestion, I also play Asheron’s Call.

Heals via magic involved casting delays (the wind up) and a success roll (landing). There are serious tactical decisions that have to be made while in combat about healing. There is no free lunch. Will I survive the wind up? Will it land?

Heals via healing kits also involve risks. It forces peace mode, which severly lowers your defenses for a bit and there is a success roll here too. Plus your success is modified by how badly damaged you are at the time. Again, no free lunches here. If you’re down much past half your health it’s kill or be killed or run like hell.

Any thoughts?

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Chickenbone wrote:

Since the maximum level of the specials pool is related to the level of the HAM, then the action and health buffs are still good. We would get a bigger specials pool when buffed (correct me if I misinterpreted TH's post).

Maybe players will just request an action/health buff and use a combination of food/spice for their secondary stats. I really need to see a live test though to see if an all stat buff is still good.

Message Edited by Chickenbone on 07-23-2004 08:32 AM

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I wondered this myself if higher secondaries would increase your overall special attack pool. From the looks of it that's how it currently is. That's also an interesting observation about just getting health and action buffed...that might be an option but I'd imagine people would still want full sets for the regen since armor will be getting a hit.

Overall I think that it's sounding like a good balance. Doctor buffs will lose importance and not negate special costs, but they will still be useful in the new system.

Another question, with those suggested situations Dragonion- if one of those goes live, will people stop going to theme parks? Probably, unless they have a large enough group.

" Another question, with those suggested situations Dragonion mentioned" *

no edit button

Hmmm, I think Combat med use should stack with the normal med use.

So a A doc would have a master medic's med use plus their own. A CM would also have master medic's med use plus their own. A CM/Doc would have it all and virtually no chance to fizzle a heal in combat. Of course if you're not in combat than successful healing should be a given regardless of your skill.

As far as theme parks go, they were rather ment for groups. Not necessarly large groups, but if the suggestion were to go live, some content would have to be re-examined and balanced.

I wasn't implying this would balance combat, but give the Dev's a better jump off point to properly balance the system.

Edit: Boy my grammer sucked. English is my first language, really!

Message Edited by Dragonian on 07-23-2004 12:55 PM

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Dragonian wrote:
A recap of my response in that thread

I remember when this was on test center back in Dec-Jan. As I recall, it didn’t solve the problem. It just changed it.

The real flaw in the combat system, in my opinion, is that so long as a player can heal damage, or be healed, while actively engaged in combat makes balancing the system impossible

Here are two possible ways to balance healing.

For one, make combat work differently. Currently, if someone takes a shot at you, your suddenly in combat whether you can do anything or not, whether they hit you or not. Make combat active only if you’re taking hits. Make healing while engaged in combat a no-go. Let buffs and what not increase the regen rate and/or reduce the specials costs however necessary to balance it out, but remove the ability to heal in combat.

How about if you haven’t been hit in say 10 seconds, break combat automatically until your enemy successfully hits you again. How about a /disengage special move that, if successful, breaks combat for 3-5 seconds allowing the player to catch their breath and heal.

For the second (my personal preference), what about making a players defenses drop drastically while healing to make it tactically difficult to do while actively in combat? Or a success/fail on a healing attempt?

If you have a bantha trying to step on you, hitting that vein with that stim pack has got to be difficult. Have the difficulty based on the mobs level vs. the player’s med usage. A MD should be able to hit that vein more accurately than a novice medic. Right now, it's a given that a heal will go through without a hitch so long as a stim is in your inventory.

If this were implemented you’d see far fewer novice medics at the higher level of play because they’d almost never land the heal when fighting other high level players and mobs. MD’s and Master Medics would become much more valuable to combat groups then they currently are.

Even with buffs, PvP wouldn’t be the stalemate it tends to be right now. PvE wouldn’t be the push over it currently is. Those who retain novice medic would have to last long enough to break combat in order to heal. Against the higher level mobs, that’s no easy task and against other players that’s almost impossible.

Even if you made no other change to combat balance but this second method, it would change the face of combat in SWG and would give the Dev’s a much better place from which to really balance combat.

For some background for this suggestion, I also play Asheron’s Call.

Heals via magic involved casting delays (the wind up) and a success roll (landing). There are serious tactical decisions that have to be made while in combat about healing. There is no free lunch. Will I survive the wind up? Will it land?

Heals via healing kits also involve risks. It forces peace mode, which severly lowers your defenses for a bit and there is a success roll here too. Plus your success is modified by how badly damaged you are at the time. Again, no free lunches here. If you’re down much past half your health it’s kill or be killed or run like hell.

Any thoughts?

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No, I wasn't really assuming that actually. The magnitude of the heal, be it a stim-A or a stim-d isn't really so much the issue. As long as it's a given that it will land, then you'll last as long as your meds do. I know in practice that isn't quite true, but it's close enough.

You have a point though, I've still got a crate of stim-B's from my novice medic days that would heal 400+ at a pop. Now I've got stim-E's that do 1500+ at a whack.

Nerfing, er "balancing", stim pack output would help, but it would still be a given. No chance of failure brings it down to timing.

I dunno, but it's a small change that I think could make a big difference having seen it used elsewhere.