Teras Kasi Archive

Oh I said everything else is perfect for number five but I was totally forgetting the single most frustrating thing about fighting extremely tough cons:

BERSERK FAIL RATE IS TOO HIGH. I know it's been said before but it's important.


Also I use a vibro knuckler because as an unarmed brawler you almost have to, but I think it's silly for an UNARMED specialist to use a weapon. Couldn't they have just given us damage-increasing gloves that take a certain amount of skill to wear? That would still be unarmed but make sense if they had a vibro unit in them. I guess it's a little late for that now. But I do agree it's silly that a novice brawler can use the same weapon that a TKM is limited too.

They can't really just give us damage increasing gloves because of Trandishan's no-glove penalty. It would be silly to fix VK, by gimping the one race that is given large bonuses to unarmed.

Doh sorry I forgot about that. But that could be a way to balance out the 'Dosh being too powerful in unarmed. You shouldn't be forced to play as a specific species if you want to be a TKA and compete with other TKA in friendly duels.

But maybe they could be special "gauntlets" that look kinda like gloves but Trands can wear them. I mean, they can wear a knuckler right? Why couldn't they make an exception for a "gauntlet”?

1. Yes to what others have said about the need for /stick. /follow just doesn't cut it. To make it immersive and something earned in a skillbox somewhere, I'd call it /grapple and have it glue you to your target for a certain duration.

2. Yes to what others have said about increased chances to dodge, evade (what's the difference?), and block, maneuvers that are part and parcel of martial arts.

3. /meditate does not, in my experience so far, seem to have much value for the novice TKA. So far I think I've been hit with a bleeding effect ONCE (didn't have meditate at the time yet), and have never yet been poisoned or diseased. I'd broaden the ability to also reduce the duration of more common effects, such as blind, stun, and intimidate, all of which I seem to get hit with by mobs much more often than bleeding. I'm also looking up the Meditation skill column and wondering what's there to get me excited about it besides Force of Will. Perhaps /meditate itself gets really powerful with wounds and damage and I just haven't experienced it yet, but those boxes look rather empty compared to the rest of the skill tree. Perhaps each skill box could add a new type of negative effect or damage that /meditate can fix; battle fatigue seems a perfect candidate, considering the overall concept of meditation.

4. How on earth does putting VKs on my hand SHORTEN my range? Is it that before my extra-long fingers could extend out but now they're wrapped around the VK handle, causing me to lose those extra inches? It's ridiculous. Get rid of this stupid penalty, and the constant "-5" point blank modifier I see on mobs while we're at it.

5. I agree as well with the idea of adding more types of knucklers along with certifications for them. Since I began in beta the huge number of ranged weapon schematics compared to the minimal number of melee weapon schematics in general has always mystified me.

Thanks for taking the Correspondent job and jumping into it so enthusiastically. I'm looking forward to seeing how the devs respond.

1. VK range. The fact that you are using VK or not should have zero bearing on the range of a hand-to-hand attack.


2. HAM costs on VK's. These seem awfully high. Some may be realted to weaponsmiths not being able to reduce these costs through experimentation, but they seem pretty steep regardless.


3. /stick. As others have said, a method of staying withing melee range is needed. The server to client distance reporting seems to be very far off.


4. When mobs are fleeing from you, they should not be able to keep attacking you. I had a flewt that retrreated across a river and as it was flying across/through the river, it kept hitting me even though I was far out of range.


5. We need to avoid more and more consistently. Unless Teras Kasi stands for I-block-your-fist-with-my-face.

1) Stickiness to a melee target. But you should be able to break off stickyness when target dies not while it is doing its death flip or fall. I don't want to have to wait till it finishes the animation to break off stickiness.

2) Vibro-knucklers. Keep VB as the unarmed weapon of anyone but add in TKA specific items into the game. Make the Certifications fall into the Precision line so they are not acheived too quickly. As a Master TKA you would get to use the arm Force Shields that Mace Windu was using in the latest book. (Used to block blaster shots)

3) Ham cost of special moves - Need to be reassesed. There is no reason that Beserk 1 should still be the prefered Special when you have so many special moves available. This would go into making the specials actually do something more than just putting its name above the head of the affected individual.

4) Relabel the Mediatation Line - Currently mine just tells me that at each level Mediation adds to hit and defense bonus *boggle* Tell us what it actually does, what benefits are confered at each level.

5) Unique TKA powers (This could work for all classes) when you hit Master TKA. You have to complete a TKA quest and you are granted a special ablility. Storyline would relate to the TKA and their persecution.

Agro or the lack of, as already stated... this would go farbeyond helping just the TKA and other melee professions to, it would help the over all gameplay for every player and is the most important thing needing a sever rethinking.

Well the TKA either has me loving it or hating it. Here are my 5 ''hating it'' gripes.

1. Berserk Failure. With the only real skill that gives an aspiring TKA the chance to do some decent damage failing up to 3 times in a row, thus efficiently reducing your ham by 480-570 and making the likelihood of beating that tough enemy you wanted to solo go from 75% to 10%, there is something drastically wrong. It SHOULD NEVER EVER FAIL WHEN YOU HIT NOVICE TKA.

2. Horrible Accuracy. Tka's by far have the worst accuracy, missing 3 or 4 times in a row with enemies reading out +4 on the accuracy bar. Just an added bit of realism, if a **edit** guy is standing 2 feet in front of you, a retarded kid wouldn't even miss him..

3. Ham Costs and Specials. For the love of God, if an unarmed spin or unarmed body hit is costing 250-300 points of ham to use, at least make it un missable. its just ridiculous that we have to eat all the damage in the first place, and then missing on a damage special while its already costing us an arm and a leg..literally..is just obscene.

4. Ignorant Combat AI. Many a time have I been soloing a group of 3 or 4 giga rasp andseverly wounded 1 of them only to have it run away, and my moronic TKA would stand their looking at it while hes getting his rear end handed to him by the other 3. at least make combat realistic in this aspect, have an auto follow or something when an enemy runs away..

5. This isnt so much a gripe as it is a statement against previously mentioned statements.. Do not make VK's have certification, or at minimal Expert. If VK's had novice TKA, not one person would become an unarmed, as its **edit** near impossible to do without VK's..unarmed damage is horrible in the brawler only skill tree.. period..

1. Yes to what others have said about the need for /stick. /follow just doesn't cut it. To make it immersive and something earned in a skillbox somewhere, I'd call it /grapple and have it glue you to your target for a certain duration.

2. Yes to what others have said about increased chances to dodge, evade (what's the difference?), and block, maneuvers that are part and parcel of martial arts.

3. /meditate does not, in my experience so far, seem to have much value for the novice TKA. So far I think I've been hit with a bleeding effect ONCE (didn't have meditate at the time yet), and have never yet been poisoned or diseased. I'd broaden the ability to also reduce the duration of more common effects, such as blind, stun, and intimidate, all of which I seem to get hit with by mobs much more often than bleeding. I'm also looking up the Meditation skill column and wondering what's there to get me excited about it besides Force of Will. Perhaps /meditate itself gets really powerful with wounds and damage and I just haven't experienced it yet, but those boxes look rather empty compared to the rest of the skill tree. Perhaps each skill box could add a new type of negative effect or damage that /meditate can fix; battle fatigue seems a perfect candidate, considering the overall concept of meditation.

4. How on earth does putting VKs on my hand SHORTEN my range? Is it that before my extra-long fingers could extend out but now they're wrapped around the VK handle, causing me to lose those extra inches? It's ridiculous. Get rid of this stupid penalty, and the constant "-5" point blank modifier I see on mobs while we're at it.

5. I agree as well with the idea of adding more types of knucklers along with certifications for them. Since I began in beta the huge number of ranged weapon schematics compared to the minimal number of melee weapon schematics in general has always mystified me.

Thanks for taking the Correspondent job and jumping into it so enthusiastically. I'm looking forward to seeing how the devs respond.

1. It's been said before, and I'll say it again: there needs to be a /stick command that is preferably processed on the server side. If it has to be client side, that's ok, but /follow doesn't cut it. Someone said something about making this a /grapple command and putting in it the TKA tree somewhere. That's fine, too, just as long as I have some way to reliably be close to a mob to damage it.

2. The "out of range" I keep seeing when I'm trying to kill a fleeing enemy, when I'm walking just behind it and am 1m away.

3. Certs for knuckles coupled withdifferent kinds of knuckles sounds like agreat idea. I think the dev's actually meant to do this, but just forgot or something. Every other weapon requries a cert to use. So, maybe brass knuckles with novice brawler (craftable by novice artisans), spiked knuckles with novice TKA (craftable by tier 4 engineering artisans), and of course the vibro knuckler, useable at tier 2 Power Tech or tier 2 Precision Striking. I've seen other TKA masters say that they don't use knuckles at later levels because they can do more damage without them, so it would be silly (without changing the vibro knuckles some) to put the vibro knuckler cert too high in the TKA tree.

4. The meditatebrance is worthless as it is. Sure, once you get tier 4 it's good, and then finally worth while at Master TKA, but this tree isn't even worth a glance until you've mastered Power and Balance. There are skills in it, but they're all crap, and in need of some serious dev love. When I was a novice tailor and was ready to get a new skill box, I had a decision to make. When I was a novice TKA, I not only was there no decision to make, my whole leveling career was already planned out for me (master power which isextremely useful, master balance which is ok, and then master that worthless meditate tree).

5. Martial artists can do more than attack.Any great martial artist has to have a solid defense, not just offensive abilities. Bruce Lee'swas simple: when the hit comes, don't be there. Jackie Chan's isa mixture of dodging and blocking. But no matter who it was, they had a defense of some sort! This includes blocking, dodging, and counterattacking. It seems rediculous that a gnort as any chance in H-E-double hocky sticks of hitting a Master TKA, and this needs to be fixed. So, say ateach tier theTKA would get bonuses to dodge, and at tiers 2 and 4 they get bonuses to counterattacking. These additions could be put in the Meditate branch, since it needs the most attention. Maybe we could change the name to something more accurate to reflect these additions such as Focus or Mental Fortitude.

Other mentionable things:

- Someone else said something about the location of the hit-able model and the mob itself (inching forward to reach the attackable part of the mob, then the mob moves back some, repeat). This is annoying, but didn't make my list because it'snot specifically a TKA problem.

- The constant -5 to hit modifier I continue to see on mob's.

- It would be nice to have a little more melee defense, and possible some more ranged defense. But this kind of goes hand in hand with #4.

Oh yeah, one more thing: putting on knuckles which logically increase your range since they stick out past your enclosed fist should not decrease your range by half. This is completely retarded.

Contributing to the tally.

1) /stick command to stay with the target at optimal damage range. Thisshould notbesomething just for melee classes. Gun users should be able to use it as well. Note: It doesn't increase your range, only decrease. So if someone is running towards you and you are sticking to them, you don't move. However if your pistol's weapon range is 32 and you do a /stick and they move more than 32 meters away, you'll move forward.

2) I don't agree that we should get a speed boost as melee classes. What I think should happen is there is a slight decrease in your overall speed for each level of "weapon readiness". If you just have your weapon equiped, there is a slight speed decrease overall. If you have your weapon equipped and you are in combat, there is a bit more of a decrease. This creates several tactics. One... when you want to flee and not kite, you'll want to unequip your weapon and run. How many movies do people throw their weapon down and run away? Two... if you want to kite something, you have to be prepared for them being able to close that gap if they choose to put away their weapon and disengage combat (I'll address disengaging combat next).

However, If kiting is a desired gameplay design method of play though, then yes... some sort of skill to increase base running speed would be desired. I think the above description is more generic across the board and useful for developing tactics. As a melee class I'll put myweapon away, peace the enemy and sprint after him and then when I get within range I pull out my weapon and then attack(unarmed is at an advantage as they should be as they can hit immediately without the weapon speed loss, but not quite as hard as they can hit if they have a vibro equipped). This gives a gun user a choice. Do I continue shooting and hope I take them out before they reach me? Or do I put my gun away and get the hell out of here to live and fight another day?

3) This is more for everyone, not just us... but when I peace a creature I don't want to continue attacking just because it's attacking me. If I want to peace something and let it keep hitting me until I die, that's my choice. It's very annoying to be trying to escape a fight and have a group member pull the aggro but stillholding aggro because my guy won't stop punching behind himself.

4) All of the close range combat bugs listed (constant negative modifier, creatures backing up constantly putting me out of range even though they can still hit me, vibros having a shorter range, though logically they should have at least an even range).

5) Knockdown to visually match the effect and be more logical as to what it affects and how. A creature will be knocked down and not attacking at all even though A) he is standing in the 3d view, and B) his status bar says he's standing, but I can sit there and stare at him without attacking and he won't swing for several more rounds. This also includes a message when the knockdown itself fails, but if the visuals matched up then it wouldn't be quite as necessary. The final aspect of this is number of legs and weight factoring into how hard they are to knock down. I don't care if the Tuscan king is the biggest mob in the camp, he should be easier to knock down than a Bantha (I use the Tuscan camp as an example because it's likely everyone has experience it at least once). He would have a higher chance of getting up faster than a Bantha... but it's that initial knockdown chance that really matters.

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Doesn't fit into the top 5, but I love the idea of having unarmed certs for Brass Knuckles and working your way up to Vibros or even something higher.

Side note, I have to wonder if the people who say the meditate line is useless know about the /meditate command? Prior to the first level of it my grouping partner and I healed at about the same rate. Now with just the first one I'm always waiting on him to finish healing if we just let things heal naturally.

Blind and Stun are useful as they are. They suffer from the same problems as any RPG where people can't tell if it's helping normally unless they pay extremely close attention. Knockdown doesn't suffer this problem because it has a very obvious visual effect and side effect. Howeverstun reducing attacks from once ever 1.5 seconds to once ever 1.9 seconds is hard to notice and so people think it's worthless. Perhaps simply publishing the hard numbers for what those skills do would help people understand their class better and make better choices than Beserk/Knockdown constantly? I've found very little use for Beserk once I started understanding the other skills.

I don't mind the HAM costs on the Vibro Knucklers so long as damage with them can be significant.

1) HAM Costs. I'm only Novice TK as of yesterday, but already I see that my HAM costs when using VK's is terribly high. As it stands now, my guild Combat Medic is leveling his entire profession off of me during nightly combat sessions. My HAM penalty kills off about 1/4 to 1/2 of my HAM, the monster does about 1/4 to 1/3. I'd really just like to see our HAM costs decreased using the VK's or our Unarmed Damage increased.

2) As I said earlier, I'm only anovice so I don't have Knockdown etc. The only power I have that is "supposed" to stop fleeing mobs is Warcry 1. And that doesn't work. I used it on a fishy Pistol user, and it said "so-and-so has been stopped in his tracks" or something like that, but he just kept running. I'd like to see someway for melee to stun/stop/etc kiting Ranged weapon users.

3) Defense. Don't we get bonuses to Dodge? I lose life so fast it's almost funny. There has to be someway for me to PvP without having my own personal Combat Medic following me into battle. I'd like to see some type of increase to my Dodge, or a way to decrease damage done to me. And since I don't have a lot of personal experience with this, I may be doing something wrong.

That's all from me. In the next couple weeks I should have gained more Experience with this profession and will hopefully be able to offer more in the way of constructive feedback.

Good luck Wulf.

mado