possible specialty crossbow solution (in General)

i have no idea how to balance the specifics, so this is just about the overall concept and the balancing would likely take some trial and error.

since we have two intrinsics that determine hit and damage and two stats on weapons that do the same thing, instead of the specialty crossbows hitting the intrinsics why not have them target the weapon upgrades. that is where the issue lies with uber upgraded items after all.

so the exbow instead of nullifying strength would nullify the damage mod by a percentage. people with higher mods would have more to lose in this scenario.

Not sure how it would work, but interesting and innovative nonetheless.

it would favor teams with a ranged and melee weapon as the melee weapon would be full power at the start of melee at least.

Lost proposed something very similar to me via CM.

He stated that the exbow should reduce damage by a percent per hit and the axbow reduce PTH by a percentage per hit.

The percentages can be titrated and is based upon damage done vs hp of the target.

Therefore those doing less damage have less to lose.

But the current situation where 1-2 hits is 100%+ strength loss is wrong on many levels in a game like CB.

But a key point would be to understand what Jon meant by "is working as intended" with reference to the exbow.

I can take that as working to destroy all tanks even non-usd ones in 1 shot. And if that is the intention of the exbow, then tanks really have little future in the game. And would be a design flaw of the highest order.

Now, this is a very interesting suggestion and I personally like it. I guess that it only works on the weapon being currently used so if you use an exbow without a melee weapon then you can damage their melee weapon but otherwise it remains untouched until melee.

after messaging ranger and getting him to try a base level elb with his strength i think that we would still have to have some sort of cap that it cannot drain below.

i still think that this idea is more readily able to be balanced than the current system though. once we decide what level is where we go from normal to over-the-top then you set that number as your cap and only those weapons above the cap can be drained to the cap.

if people aren't boosting their weapons past that point, then the specialty crossbows would have absolutely no effect on them. it would also then make it so that a strategy isn't completely neutered by one item.

Definitely enables a better concept. I hope a change at the least similar to this is implemented.

So the axbow would target the weapon PTH? How would you achieve this? If you're talking percentages then the axbow could become a big NW nullifier, given the way PTH is priced.

It would also have to target ToA PTH otherwise you would be making the ToA even more powerful than it is today.

An interesting idea, but one that in my mind would make the axbow an evil and hated thing by the same people that hate the exbow today. Think of a minion wearing DBs and wielding an axbow, it would be like evasion never went away!!!

well you could make it that it never drains below half the percentage of health remaining.
i.e. 90% health remaining so drain could not put the target below 45% of the total stat.
80% health not below 40%. etc.

Well my idea was that example you have a drain of 10% pth per shot but it only affects the remaining pth...
1shot 90% pth left
2shot 90% of 90% pth left which is about 81% of the total...

It would make the AXBow rubbish.

We already have DBs for that.

We need a way to reduce DEX based chance to hit.

But for the EXBow, this could be a very interesting solution. ;)

exbow for the damage mod, axbow for the pth mod. i think the drain would need to target the nw of the mod and then convert the remaining nw to a number.

i do think we need to have a dex based cth modifier or a bth one as well, so not sure about that.

"An interesting idea, but one that in my mind would make the axbow an evil and hated thing by the same people that hate the exbow today. Think of a minion wearing DBs and wielding an axbow, it would be like evasion never went away!!!"

they would still have their bth though and since they still have their dexterity hits it would encourage more dex training perhaps.

also, if we have some base nw that things can't go below, at least they couldn't say..."but what about the non-usd melee folks?" ; )

since you still have all of your strength and dex and a base amount of weapon mods, it wouldn't be so binary as well.

"Well my idea was that example you have a drain of 10% pth per shot but it only affects the remaining pth...
1shot 90% pth left
2shot 90% of 90% pth left which is about 81% of the total..."

i feel that the ratio of drain would need to be more comparable to what we have now(down to the cap that is set).

with the kind of numbers these "aberrations" can put out and the fact we already have slow moving counters, the quick counter is why the specialty crossbows are still in the game, in my humble opinion.

What weapon would be affected? If I was hit by one of these specialty bows would my ranged weapon or my melee weapon or both be diminished?

I like these ideas by the way, it's just because of work my default setting right now is troubleshoot. ;)

Removing Weapon PTH is redundant.

We have DBs for that (and to a lesser extent Evasion), which match the weapons you face point for point.

The only time an AXBow would have use is when facing Leadership or ToA PTH, and lowering the Weapon's PTH wouldn't touch either.

"What weapon would be affected?"

whatever weapon is equipped at the time would be my choice.

So my tank would still have full power melee for instance - unless they choose to keep firing the exbow into melee. So archers would be weaker than melee based tanks against these weapons.

Nice!

"We have DBs for that (and to a lesser extent Evasion), which match the weapons you face point for point.

The only time an AXBow would have use is when facing Leadership or ToA PTH, and lowering the Weapon's PTH wouldn't touch either."

well we do have ec for the dex as well so it is redundant now. how about the axbow targets bth? ; )

I like the idea where the weapon in play gets reduced (so a melee weapon could be at full power when melee starts).

Other than that, though, what does this accomplish that simply spreading out and/or capping the STR-drain curve wouldn't fix? If Jonathan implemented this against x in the same way it is implemented against STR currently, it would still send x into the negatives and result in paltry damage, wouldn't it?

I don't see how changing WHAT gets drained is going to help. The issue is with HOW MUCH it gets drained, and right now the curve is too step-wise.

JW, I would have assumed you'd be against this idea, since it would be very hard to achieve a lot of drain (if the curve were changed, that is). You had stated previously that you like the face the exbow can completely nullify STR, and that it would become useless (or a slight novelty item, at best) unless it can really neuter a tank (even with relatively small investment). Has that viewpoint changed? If so, why don't we just change the existing drain curve so it doesn't drain so much?

In summary, this sounds like implementing a larger overhaul where just a tweak would suffice -- something that has happened more than a few times now in CB-land, causing balance to diverge into more problems instead of converging on a solution.

There's a world of difference between targeting the minion and targeting the weapon in my mind. The damage you can do with half of a lot of strength if the weapon is still good is still very high. Hence all or nothing for me there.

But targeting weapons is something different. DBs do it, and so does (although not very well these days) evasion. And if it is ranged/melee specific it leaves some choices open for tanks, especially the lower NW or melee based tanks.

Diminishing the weapon lowers the damage far more than diminishing the strength. Unless you changed how damage and strength interact. So even with a cap in place it would be more effective than capping the way the existing weapon works. That way lies paperweights.

Additionally if there is a cap in place USD based tanks may be happier, and non USD tanks still stand a chance to get to work.


There are far more choices and workarounds (admittedly with more advantage possibly to USD users) and that's a good thing no?

well i did recommend a cap somewhere that would protect a certain amount of net worth.

the reason i think it is worth changing is that we surmise the role of the specialty crossbows is to counter uber pumped usd weapons. they do this though by not attacking the net worth but rather the intrinsic strength stat. with that link, how do you then determine what an acceptable limit is and how do you implement that cap and even if you could do that you are still capping strength and not net worth.

with my suggestion you can determine when a weapon becomes an aberration and then cap somewhere near that level. the melee user would still have full strength but would lose net worth which is what the counter is for if we are correct.

for melee fighters with weapons under the cap, there would be no issue. using strength just makes it extremely difficult to counter only those that need countering while leaving others unaffected.

the usd pumped weapons would still mean something as well and people would still have a reason for pumping them up, they would just understand that with some strategies they will be less affective, but still not neutered.

JW, so you think this would neuter weapons MORE easily. Ranger isn't going to be happy about that. *smile*

I am seeing how this solution can be more surgical against aberrations, though. I like that point. So I can see how this idea is different enough and has a clearer path on how it should work. That might make the implementation easier and more acceptable to balanced gameplay... Interesting stuff! You guys are teh smart!

"how about the axbow targets bth"

Now that, would be awesome! ;)

But BCTH itself might be too much, as in the case of some weapons it's only 40-50%.

"But BCTH itself might be too much, as in the case of some weapons it's only 40-50%."

those mostly aren't the weapons being upgraded enough for it to matter though.