Teras Kasi Archive

OK, Thunderheart has asked that I take our 4 correspondent posts (state of the profession [SoP], bug, gameplay and balance) and consolidate them into one Monster SoP post that he can print out and take to the developers.

I've tried to include just about everything. Schwartzwind, There are some things you've asked for that were a bit radical. Eliminating defense (which will soon be very important) when using VKs, and the force seeking abilities you talk about are pretty new issues here, and I'd like to give the community some time to discuss them before representing to the devs that those points are the desire of the board as a whole. Cool?

Also, It looks like the board is leaning towards "yes" for an inclusion of a request anti-kiting skill/ability of some kind, so I have it in here.

Overview: State of the Teras Kasi Profession

If I were to sum up the state of TKAs in one word, I'd choose "progress". I think we've seen great progress in the last month or so in terms of getting this class to the point where it's effective for the way the devs intend it to be, and the way we want it to be. For example:

• We're received a number of damage upgrades. The total damage bonusfor TKAsis up to 250.


• The Devs are actively focusing on making us better tanks. The "Center of Being" tank skill is a huge stride. It's a clear sign that the devs are working towards the resolution of the tanking issue.


• The Devs are aware of the out of range issue, and although I can't give specifics, I can tell you that they are offering a solution that I believe will meet the needs of this board.


• They're focusing on improving the Med branch. The changes to PB were just what the skill needed, and if we get our way, FoW will be a great skill as well. The med branch was extremely weak before, and it's great to see them giving it attention.

Of course, progress in no way indicates perfection. There are a number of unresolved issues including ineffective specials such as the combo attacks, the pesky out of range issue (although they are working on this), as others ranging from PB occasionally incapping you to the more complex issue of balancing melee professions against ranged professions with pets. Clearly this isn't all the issues, but these points serve to illustrate that while there has certainly been progress, there is clearly more work to be done before the class is truly functioning at 100%.

Even if they do address all of our balance and bug issues, there are other things we'd like such as TKA-only emotes, Katas, VK-alternatives, and a slew of other "fun factor" improvements that take the profession from functional to fantastic. We want the TKA profession to be fully functional, but that's just the beginning; we also want it to be fun, and cool, and immersive, and rewarding.

Like I said, I believe we're moving in the right direction, but there's still work to be done.

Balance Issues

1. Ineffective specials:




1. Combo 1 and 2 are still useless skills. There is no reason that anyone would want to spread their damage over multiple pools. One suggestion is to have these skills apply multiple debuffs to the target in a single attack. Blind/Stun for example. The combo attacks should have a better chance of "sticking" the special than you get with the unarmed brawler skills.


2. Body Hit and Leg hit don't do enough damage to be worth using at the level they are received. They need to have their damage multiplier increased. Another recommendation would be to add a brawler debuff or posture change attack effect to the pool-targeting skills to make them more desireable.


3. Unarmed Hit 3 uses too much HAM for the damage it does. The general consensus is that UH2 is a better skill overall due to the efficiency. Suggest reducing the HAM cost for UH3 or having the skill grant you a +1 bonus to your attack's AP rating.


4. There are reports of our (TKA) knockdowns not working often enough compared to ranged KDs. Melee knockdowns of all types should be more effective in general than ranged KDs.


5. FoW as it is on TC is not a satisfactory change. Assuming that FoW is going to stay more or less in it's current form, we have a number of requests for alterations working within the the skill's present format. Our concerns and suggested remedies are presented here in order if importance:




1. 1 hour timer is too long




• Concern: This will kill the skill. Many people would prefer to have the skill remain as it is rather than have a 1 hour timer on the skill. This is not to say that people do not want the skill improved. I’m just trying to illustrate how strongly people oppose the 1 hour timer.


• Remedy: Adjust the timer to 15 minutes. A 15 minute timer will get you out of a bad situation once, but you couldn't use it more than once in a regular battle. A compromise here would be to run the timer so a TKA with master med would have a 30 minute timer, while a TKM would have a 15 min timer. This is a deal-killer. Keep the 1 hour timer and the reaction will be highly negative.


2. Battle Fatigue is too harsh




• Concern: The 300 wounds we can deal with, but the way it’s currently set up, you have a 40% chance of incurring BF when using the skill. People feel that it’s an unnecessary and unreasonable penalty. We’d incur more battle fatigue for avoiding death than for actually being killed.


• Remedy: Remove BF as a penalty. Why should you get battle fatigue for avoiding death? This is also an extremely important point. BF=Downtime, and there seems to be no real need to have this in there anyway. At the very least, the BF needs to be drastically reduced. 10-15 BF would be an acceptable annoyance. 100 BF is prohibitive.


3. 5 minute HAM penalty is too long




• Concern: A 600 point HAM penalty for 5 minutes is actually worse than 300 wounds. With master meditation, we have a reasonably expedient way to deal with wounds. In contrast a 600 point penalty for 5 minutes seems overly harsh to most players.


• Remedy: Reduce the HAM penalty timer from 5 minutes to 1 minute. You could leave this unchanged and not face open revolt, but it does seem overly harsh.


4. No potential for an exceptional result.






• Concern: There's no fun upside potential. All those penalties, and no possibility of a superior result.


• Remedy: Add the possibility of a superior success. We'd like there to be a 3%-4% chance that using the skill will heal you up fully, rather than equalizing your stats. This would not heal wounds, just HAM damage, and would be for TKMs only. This is not as important as points 1 and 2, but would not greatly alter the power of the skill, and would make the TKAs happy.


2. Limited weapon selection: The primary problem here is that kinetic damage is our only option. We need to be able to deal with a greater variety of creatures/resists. Suggestions include a cold damage weapon, heat damage weapon, stun gauntlets, etc. Another problem created by the lack of weapon choices is that unarmed brawlers working towards TKN have a really rough time. They should get some options like brass knuckles, combat gloves, etc.


3. Many of us still feel helpless trying to use melee skills in PvP because of Kiting. We recognize that ranged attacks have an inherent advantage, but we would like some way of catching up to a kiter. Suggestion include a "stick" command or a mini-burstrun ability. We don't want it to be easy to catch a kiter, just possible. You could balance the skill with HAM costs/timers/footspeed. Of course, this skill, whatever it may be, should be given to all brawlers.


4. Lack of truly high-end VKs: A related problem is the lack of optional, high-end components for VKs. Rancor teath replace as opposed to augment a critical part of the VK. Rancor teeth seem to be the VK version of Kryat tissues, so either rancor teeth need to be seriously buffed in terms of the bonuses they give, or they need to be made an optional component in the VK schematic, instead of a replacement part. Is there any way to get an "uber" VK, similar to the 700 dmg 0.3 speed FWG5 everyone is talking about?


5. HAM Regen while Meditating: We would like some modest boost to HAM regen while in meditation. A popular suggestion would be to add our meditation score to our regen stats while meditating. The boost would be modest, but would help the med line be more appealing.

Gameplay Issues

1. We'd like to have the VK combat animations fixed. Right now you hold a VK in one hand, but all your attacks receive the VK bonus. Turning it into a "pair" of VKs and not having kicks be a part of VK attack animations would help some of the immersion problems created by VKs


2. Many of us still don't like using VKs at all. We'd like some way to feel that we didn't need to use them to compete damage wise. Something along the lines of bare fists doing stun damage, or some other lateral advantage for being truly unarmed would help.


3. We'd like the game to make greater use of the varied combat animations we presently have. Right now we seem to only use a few of our animations unless we're doing a special.


4. We'd like the option to toggle off the "red ribbons" for specials


5. We'd like the option to toggle off the auto defend AI Allow us to meditate while in combat.


6. We'd like TKA-specific animations and emotes, like Katas and a martial-arts sound for warcry.


7. Many of us would like a Dojo, either as a player owned building or as a class-specific theme park type of thing (combat the rival Dojo)


8. We'd like the combat system to be more immersive. This is a big request, but a dev mentioned somthing about the possibility of a combo system, where stringing multiple moves together in a particular would become important. We'd like to know the status of that.


9. We'd like TKA-Specific quests. Some kind of epic mind/body adventure where you quest for some forgotten lore of the ancient Teras Kasi deep in the hidden mountains. The reward could be something like a schematic for a legendary component that you could place in a VK (instead of the rancor teeth perhaps).


10. We would like to know exactly what "Combat Equilibrium" does.

Bugs

1. If you KD an opponent, and then hit him with another KD, he will immediately get right up, even if dizzy.


2. Power Boost




1. PowerBoost can cause an incap when you use it or when it wears off. We recommend that a message be displayed when you try to use PB and don't have enough mind telling you that you don't have enough pool points to do that. We also recommend that the PB downer take you to a minimum of 1 pool point, rather than incapping you.


2. You can super-buff yourself by using PB and getting killed/cloning and then using PB again over and over again.


3. If PowerBoost wears off while you are incapped, you get stat bugs with a lowering of your stats that you can't fix unless you log off for a while.


4. If you apply buffs after you have Powerboosted when the Powerboost wears off, your Health and Action return to their pre-buffed values. They do regen back up to their maximum it's only the current value that drops.


3. Unarmed Combo 2 is registering 1 point of damage done to the target.


4. No accuracy bonus for being at Optimum range. At 1M we should have a bonus to hit, but it seems like we're still getting negative modifiers.


5. It seems that the scout "creature to hit bonuses" apply only to ranged attackers. Want to make sure they apply to melee as well.


6. Berserk Does not show up in the combat queue.


7. We have reports of people being stuck in the meditate state upon logging in if they logout while meditating


8. Dizzy only works on creatures with 2 legs. Need to know if this is as intended.


9. Dizzy, stun, intimidate prevent meditation. Need to know if this is as intended.


10. HAM bars do not display properly when using power boost. If you take damage, your HAM bar won't go down until you dip below your pre-boost levels. Wearing armor may exacerbate this problem.


11. Power Boost buffs (on TC) seem to decrease when you use Center of Being, and perhapswhen you useother specials as well. In testing, each use of CoB knocked 104-235 points off the total PB buff. Unknown whether other specials reduce PB buffs in this way.

• i'd also like to see spin attack2 buffed a lil bit to be effective in pvp.


• new type's of VK's w/ different dmg, maybe poison.


• ability to meditate on fire...there's no water on tat (except for some remote places) so this might give us a boost esp in pvp.

"Dizzy, stun, intimidate prevent meditation. Need to know if this is as intended."

Don't forget blind and on fire as well. All of these states prevent you from sitting/meditating.

As far as combatequilibrium, I recall reading somewhere that is the chance toautomatically recover from a posture change attack.Getting up automatically has screwed me up on a few occassions since I had already issued the stand command whilemy toon hadalready gotten up. The stand command was treated as an attempt at a posture change and made me fall over again.

Speaking of bugs, you might want to bring up the fact thatattempting to do a posture change while already in that stance (ie, trying to stand while already standing) while in a dizzy statecan cause you to fall over again. If you have ever seen people doing the get up/fall down thing over and over again while in a dizzy state it's caused by them spamming the /stand command. It would be nice if the game registered the fact that you are already standing and not treat the additional executions of the command as additional posture changes leaving you open to the possibility of falling over again.

Amazing post Mister_Heavy. Pretty much everything you said is good. Only one suggestion....if they implement some of these changes, especially any overall damage boosts, for any reason, I think they should raise the needed xp levels, for all the skills, especially from TK Student--to TK Novice, and perhaps all the level 4 skills. I'm only at 1-1-1-1 and almost at level 2 power, and quite frankly.....it should take a hell of a long time to become a MASTER of a martial art form. I'm glad it's taken me a long time to even be where I'm at. Although I am very far from a powergamer, you shouldn't be able to get one skill box after level 1 in any less than a week of pretty solid xp grinding. I wouldn't be against takingthree and a half months to become master. Assuming all the unarmed (being generous) will take a week, then a week to make novice, then a week for each unarmed xp skill box. (not the precision tree which is combat xp) And assuming that to get master only requires finding a very generous master to train you.

It's the journey, not the destination. Once I'm a master.....i won't want to give it up for another profession......maybe swordsman. I'd like to see a show of hands of how many TKA's would like to learn any gun profession.....what's that?.....anyone?......didn't think so. We understand that TK is not just a matter of pointing and shooting.....it's a way of life. As is all the melee classes.....it's a much more civilized way. There is no honor in sneaking up to 64m, and then kiting.....and they know....if they don't run, they're toast.

Oh, and honestly, I don't want there to be many TKA's. I think everyone feels that way. It should be hard, and should be special......and if it took halfa year of casual gaming to reach master, I don;t think many people want to put that kind of time in.....and that's a good thing. ;^)

Thanks for the support, guys. I really appreciate it

I'll round up theadditional issues posted here and do an addendum. Looking forward, I'm thinking a weekly Friday Addendum with balance issues, gameplay and bugs would be a good thing to do. How does that sound?

My KINGDOM for an edit button...

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Mister_Heavy wrote:

Thanks for the support, guys. I really appreciate it

I'll round up theadditional issues posted here and do an addendum. Looking forward, I'm thinking a weekly Friday Addendum with balance issues, gameplay and bugs would be a good thing to do. How does that sound?

My KINGDOM for an edit button...

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sounds great. as usual, you are doing a great job Mister_Heavy, thanks for the hard work!

Good post.

I like the idea of some sort of speed boost to help us run after opponents.

Eather a 'mini burst run' or a small mod to our basic run speed.

Some terrain negotiation would also be nice for non scout TKAs, maybe like the +10 that CMs get at master?

After all we are ment to be agile kung fu fighters!

Good stuff, Heavy. On the kiting thing, I'm not so bothered by being kited outright. Rather, I'm concerned about spending time and effort (e.g., hiding behind trees and rocks) to get into melee range THEN be kited. It's absurd for an NPC/mob to go charging off and leave me in the dust. It's equally absurd for a player to run off and generate "out of range" errors due to client/server sync. I'd strongly recommend an irresistable snare skill that can only be used in melee range because a great deal of my problem is getting into range, getting off a KD, getting the KD resisted/immunity message, then getting kited to death...it sucks.

All sounds good and accurate, apart from timer on FoW. Gave so many examples why a timer would be bad for this skill, but seems most want a timer. Guess It will end up with a timer and we wont be able to have a chance to avoid a deathblow, if we are incapped a second time due to the fact we got up with wounds and low hams and got incapped trying to get away.

As said before I would rather get mind wounds for using FoW than a timer, at least we would still have a chance for it to work. And three incaps in 10 mins equals auto dead anyways somakes a timer pointless, Unless the timer is to stop FoW being able to send you to clone for using it to much.

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Spiritunicorn wrote:

Some terrain negotiation would also be nice for non scout TKAs, maybe like the +10 that CMs get at master?

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This wont happen, would be nice, but every other profession would want it as well then. Also combat medic actually gets a total of an extra +50 terrain negotiation, not just the +10 in Master CM. No idea why when everything they do is a ranged heal or weapon.

Excellent MH....thanks for speaking for the profession.

Terrain negotiation allows a player to go up steep hills without a speed drop. Anyone who kites probably has the +50 from scout, which maxes out that bonus. Anything above +50 increases movement speed while prone... which is pretty useless, imo.

Good for the most part:

Three things

1. Only problem i've noticed with power boost is that you loose ham points not potential capacity for ham points, and this is a generic buff problem anyway. Might be giving us negative wound values but if you do the algegra thats a good thing

2. I'd like to see us stop pushing for more dmg types, to me this is on the same lines as if we were pushing for a dot (cough, i did see a posion VK request up higher on this post lol). We get a lot of stuff that is great in a lot of situation but we need to accept that there will be times when tka is at a disadvantage maybe a significant disadvantage. Also, i hate to say it butwe have enough points to easily master brawler or something else if your desperate for more dmg types. No profesion can have it all.

3. At risk of contridicting myself i'd like to see us with somemore Dizzy defence, I mean we have pretty average def vs KD and basicaly no def vs dizzy 5% i might be wrong though