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| - 001 As a complete code idiot, I feel that I have little to contribute when it comes to reviewing the combat system. I enjoy it far better than the combat system I've played in other mu*s. My compliments to Hazard. Sorry this is such a dumbass review. 003 The combat system is ace and makes it easy to punch people in the face. The only downside is that sometimes I fail to punch people in the face, so if it could be rigged to make my face punching (and only mine) more effective, that would be great 004 Hello, This is Wreck-Gar, I don't mind about being unknown or whatever. [haz: reviews are always anonymous by default] Anyways i've got to say the combat system itself is fantastic at it's base it's a great system and does everthing it's suppost to, the problem is with the stats that people seem to have. I've heard rumors of characters stats and taken them with a pinch of salt but since the olympics it's been hard to ignore, from what i see characters have been statted back to the tech-specs, But the staffer who restatted them to the new system seemed to stat the characters attacks/effects to their own mind. And it does seem that some of the staffers might have gone over board, I know i spoke to haz before about Hot Spot and my bad memory fighting against slag. But looking back at the logs Slag is ment to be a power house, thats a given but the amount of attacks he had and the effects linked to them (it seems there is no way to confirm myself it's only what i've seen) seems a little excessive. Also during other contests it seems like when people have been reset instead of being given the minimun and allowing the player to upgrade to what they think the character needs the characters have been given everything straight off, and i think it's really out balanced the system a little. This is my opinion nothing more. For an addition to the system, I like the system alot I can't really say a bad word against it. I'm just worried that the characters are too powerful with the system. Thanks again for all your work. 005 I would like to start out saying that I love the new system. The amount of options and character customization it allows for is incredible. Thanks to Hazard for getting this up and running for our enjoyment. All in all I think the system itself works great. It's not terribly hard to get used to, just needs a bit of time to get all the tricks down but that happens with any system. As a whole I only see two major issues with TACS. First are the stances. I think that at times depending on who is involved that this gives a huge advantage to the high agility, high accuracy people who can sit protected against slower less accurate opponents and just blast away with little worry. Not only would the slower person need to compensate with a less defended stance of his own to possibly hit but he's now even more vulnerable to attack himself. I feel this is a bit of a weak point, not totally game breaking but it can be upsetting to see. The second and bigger issue I have with the system is balance. Now I will admit that I do not have full behind the scenes information but it appears from what I have gathered and been witness to that things do not add up right. Some seem much weaker than they should be (Scourge, Sky Lynx, Jetfire) while others seem to be far beyond what balance would suggest (Slag, Soundwave, Shockwave, Astrotrain). In other cases it seems that effects do not fit attacks and were added at a whim or converter bias. This I feel is a major issue, balance is key especially in a player vs. player environment such as we have here with competing factions. Again I would like to express my gratitude for the new system that is both well made and easy to learn while providing new and exciting options to the players. Thank you. 006 Blue here! I'm a huge fan of the combat system. It can work on two levels, just like the old one, or with different dials and pulleys, absolutely no complaints here, and I dont think it is too complex at all! I love effects, just be sure to keep stuff expensive so we are not swamped by them, since by their nature effects should be special. It would be nice to see more [things to spend AP on] too, hint hint. But as far as combat goes, don't worry that it is too complex, I've not really seen anyone not 'get it', and as much as people have to learn it, they have to learn /any/ system. More abilities and fun effects are in the "testing" phase right now, so keep an eye out. 007 so yeah. I've had hands on experience with TACS since before it went public, and I've enjoyed testing and playing with the system a lot!! It provides details, options, and complexity, all in a simple package. some parts are more complicated, such as some abilities and thier multiple command baggage, but overall it is very easy to use AND provides lots of options to make fun stuff, and is flexible enough to support many of the techspecs information we were previously missing(hot spot being resistant to fire, Strafe's wild shots, Kup's laser acid musket, ect).... there are some new features i'd like to see, ESPECIALLY a global !cover command. also think a system to let 'the people' decide which new features get added would be cool, a round of suggestions followed by a round of voting and such. or whatever.
* Cover
* Improved Stealth system
* Better Bombs (hiding, disarming, etc)
* Something else that I forgot 008 All in all, the new system is a huge improvement over the old one. I still think the range of randomization is a bit wide - while I agree that everyone should have at least SOME chance of hitting everyone else, I still see extremely agile jetformers getting punched when they're a jet far more often than makes sense (while I'm sure there are times when jet-punching makes sense, those times should be relatively rare). Also: give me my !protect command (or !shield or whatever you want to call it. That command that lets me jump in the front of attacks aimed for other people). 010 I absolutely adore the new combat system. It's a vast improvement over the old one and is much more fun to use. I love all the effects you can give an attack and I like how you can pull your attacks so you don't have to worry about being considered a jerk for wailing on someone weaker than you. The switch over was kind of hectic but it was worth it. 011 Hooray Combat System! This is a definite plus to the game, and will provide a very attractive feature for returning players and new potential players. I think it was very wise to include players in the development process, as I know that at least one of them (Boomslang) is still very willing to share their knowledge with those that are willing to ask. :) I know that Todd loves his randomization, but a range of 11 points for the damage caused by a single high end attack is still kinda wide for my taste. The stance modifiers are probably one of my favorite parts of the combat system, which adds an element of skill and awareness of your opponent to what is otherwise a number crunching exercise. I think there are a LOT of tweaks you can add to the combat system to make it even more customizable. Perhaps a DEFLECT ability. Just be cautious about what you do add, so that people are not TOO overwhelmed with the system. Toss this one into the positive pile! 012 SUMMARY: Well first of all, the TACS combat system is really amazing, hats off to you Hazard (and your helpers) for such a detailed and well-designed and well-coded system. I think it's already more than enought to fulfill it's purpose and make coded combat really fun and fair and flexible here. Anything you add from here is pure icing (thought we'll still appreciate it of course ;). SUGGESTION: One thing I'd like to see are 'faction objects' or 'faction artifacts'. Kind of like the boosters for *Masters, but given to select people (like maybe the head of the military division in each faction for example) with the understanding that ICly and OOCly they belong to the faction and not the character. Then they could be reassigned to someone else, or else removed if that person becomes less active RPer. The idea would be a way to make a chracter a teeny bit more powerful but be able to 'reset' them back to their previous state POSSIBLE BUG? The one thing I suspect might not working right is the Fearless defense stance. It seems an awful lot like setting yourself Fearless makes you hit more AND dodge more. Maybe it's just coincidence (thought I've seen this happen at least 4 times now) or maybe if some secret 'bonus' to taking the risk of being Fearless but it's a little odd. 013 The new (when will we stop calling it new?) combat system is amaaaaazing and I love it. There are basically two things we do here: social chatty/buildy scenes, and scenes where two or more factions are in opposition, and the old system just did not make the battles interesting! Player creativity can do a lot, but the new system is so much more fun that it has made my feelings change from 'ugh, another fight?' to actually looking forward to battles, even the long faction-turn ones where it takes forever for it to be your turn again. One of my favorite things about TACS is the way that it works on more than one level... if you are a newbie, you can attack badguy=punch and attack badguy=electric gun and so on, and it will work fine for you. If you want to get more into it, you can learn about things like defense stances and special effects and damage types and altmode dodging. A lot of characters who before only had the same Laser or Rocket that everyone else had, now can do strange and wonderful things that give even guys like Pipes a chance to shine and be a hero in a battle to save humanity from the forces of evil! I think that Todd and the lesser architects of TACS have done a good job of balancing the desire to add a lot of new things you CAN know, against the concern of adding too much which is NECESSARY to know. Everyone seems to have adapted well to TACS and even newbies don't seem to have any trouble using it. I am always looking forward to whatever cool new feature Todd is rolling out next! I have only a few criticisms: the wiki instructions for building an OC still seem kind of unclear, and guests still seem to need a lot of help from players to build characters. We aren't at all short of helpful players, but maybe there could be an easier step-by-step process for making an OC. Also, damage types don't seem to do much. It would be neat if what type of damage your weapon was had more of an effect, or any visible effect really, on how your character played in combat. 1.
* Changing combat messages to reflect damage types. So instead of the generic "Hazard strikes Blueshift with his Electric Gun" message, the system would look at my attack's damage type (ELECTRIC) and say something like "Hazard shocks Blueshift with his Electric Gun attack" or "Hazard's Electric Gun attack shocks Blueshift into oblivion!" or... something. This would be pretty easy. The messages would also take into account resistances. So for example if I decide to attack Hot Spot with my flamethrower attack it says something like: "Hot Spot shrugs off some of Hazard's flamethrower attack." You get the idea. 2.
* Having mini-effects for damage types. So, ACID attacks have a 1-in-20 chance of doing a mini-SHATTER. Or SONIC attacks of a 1-in-20 chance of doing a mini-CRIPPLE. Etc, etc. This would take a lot more work on my part. 3.
* Another option is looking at how damage types impact direct damage and properly incentivising people to a) get wacky damage types in order to hurt people more, and b) "buy" resistances to avoid aforementioned hurting. 014 A lot of people feel the combat system is too missy. I think it is probably exactly as missy as it should be, but fights just aren't long enough for people to see the statistics. I don't think the system should be tweaked to be hittier, and I would like to do a thought experiment to explain why. Imagine a character, let us call him Earthquake, with 90 End and 10 Agl. Then imagine Tornado with 10 End and 90 Agl. These are stupidly min-maxed characters. However, they represent the extremes of two archetypes: the tough guy (see Bonecrusher) and the weak agile guy (see Blurr). Now, they are fighting someone who deals an average of 10 damage per turn. Thus, Earthquake would need to be hit 9 times to be KOed. Tornado would need to be hit only once to be KOed. So, for the tough guy and the agile guy to be equally viable builds, Tornado would need to dodge 8 times in a row and then but hit the 9th time, and Earthquake would need to never dodge and be hit all 9 times. However, even now, these are not equally viable builds. At some point in time, Earthquake probably will dodge (even Blot dodges), so he'll last longer than 9 rounds. And Tornado just won't manage to dodge 8 times in a row. I've seen plenty of folks with better than 90 Agl get hit more than 1/9 times. So being a tough guy with bad agility is already better than being an agile guy with bad toughness, even though these are both important fictional archetypes. So making the system even hittier is just going to screw over even more the guys who fall into the fast guy archetype, like Blurr and Blast Off and Jetfire. I suppose that the system could be made hittier and damage could be turned down, but I like damage being high, because it means that when you do hit, it really means something. Being able to hit a lot but having the hits be meaningless would be less satisfying. I suppose the system could e made hittier in a non-linear fashion. For example, the folks with 75 Agl and above (the folks who are really supposed to be agile, given that the average is probably around a 7*, regrettably) could keep the old dodging chance, and the folks with below 75 could made easier to hit, but that sort of devalues Accuracy, and devaluing a stat is to be avoided. I'm really not sure what the solution is. I just want to say that making the system hittier in a blanket fashion is not the answer! We need more +1 and -1 CP effects. Ouch and Overpowered are not enough in the -1 department, and there is nothing in the +1 department! Well, okay, you can add an extra damage type for 1 CP, but that is kind of lame. Some examples. Imagine that you have a level 4 ammo rifle. You can to do some stun darts that run off the same bin, to represent you buying some different ammo that stuns people. The Stun effect is 5 CP, however, so a level 0 Stun cannot share a bin with that level 4 Rifle. You can't do Ouch to make it 4 CP, because Ouch doesn't work with level 0 attacks, and you cannot do Overpowered, because Overpowered does not work with ammo attacks. So you'd have to use a -2 effect or worse, like Wild. But a Wild Stun is 4 CP, so you need to add a CP somewhere to get to 4 CP to share a bin with that level 4 rifle. So you end up with something like level 1 Wild Stun to get to 4 CP. And that is clunky and ugly. You could do a level 0 Cripple Blind, but that is not quite the same as a stun. For another example, say you have a level 6 ammo rifle, and you want to get a stun that runs off the rifle's bin for capturing unblemished prey, because you are a creepy bounty hunter. So you don't want to get a level 1 Stun. So your option is to get a level 0 Stun with two damage types, to make it cost 6 CP. Yawn. Ouch (and Recoil) and Overpowered could be 'fixed' to be made a bit more generally useful, though. Ouch (and Recoil) could be redone so that they do damage equal to the CP cost of the attack + 1, rather than the damage ranks of the attack. So, a level 5 Ouch attack (CP cost of 4) would do 4+1=5 damage to the user, the same as the current version. But a level 0 Cripple Blind Ouch attack would do 3 +1=4 damage to the user, if it connects. A non-damaging dart could still have painful recoil to the shooter! Then Ouch and Recoil could be put on non-damaging attacks, and it would open up design space. Meanwhile, Overpowered could be retooled to just make any attack cost 3 more energon than usual. So an Ammo attack with Overpowered would cost 1 ammo and 3 energon to use. For example, you might have a railgun that requires some electricity (energon) to operate but mostly uses ammo (ammo). So that could be Ammo Overpowered! I guess you could also make Efficient just make an attack cost 3 energon less than it would, so an Ammo Efficient attack would cost 1 ammo and -3 energon, because it... recycles its own recoil to generate electricity, eh? But even if Ouch and Overpowered were retooled, some variety in +1 and -1 effects would be good! I think that more abilities need to go on the half off discount list. Who is really going to pay 160 AP to get Interception in two modes? It's just not that useful. But someone crazy just might pay 80+40=120 AP to get Interception twice. Maybe. And I feel that way about a lot of the abilities that aren't on the half-off discount list! Overall, I like the combat system a lot, and it is a lot of fun! Thank you for making it! 015 FC/NFC/EFC levels: In the conversion, I believe a lot has been lost in translation of legacy to TACS. While wanting to stay tried and true to box stats, we may have gone a bit overboard and neutered quite a number of characters in the process. While starting from 'scratch' is good and all for balance to prevent FCs from becoming behemoths they were after years of upgrades, the EFCs still feel a little weak when compared to the FCs and NFCs. Stats, abilities, and attacks have all been altered. Some for the better, some for the worse. A glaring shortcoming is the utter difference between Con FCs and Bot FCs. I'm not entirely sure if two different people were in charge of the differing factions set up, but it's almost apalling to compare the flare and thought put into a regular Decepticon FC, when compared to the dull and boring 'cookie cutter' approach taken with the Autobot FCs. Another strange quirk is pilot and space pilot, whereas a character before could pilot a shuttle, but then magically loses the ability in TACS. I propose that the buyback should be cheaper for those who used to have it in legacy for TACS, a reduction. The solution? Whomever did the majority of the Con !profiles, bravo and I only wish that Hazard or another worthy member of charstaff allows you to do the same with them. If that isn't a viable option, I say some other member of staff should go character by character to 'reset' them to better balance and to make sure they are each their own special butterfly. Also, I think charstaff should do a one-time waver of the 10 AP to change around a NFCs or EFCs attacks, as long as they stay within the limit of the attack already. ie changing a level 5 with accurate and blind to a level 7 with accurate or blind. 016 Hello Todd. [hi!] I find the combat system to be very versatile but the actual experience to be very frustrating due to the lack of standards being used to stat FCs, NFCs, and EFCs. There are also issues with characters who are given no coded abilities to reflect their specialized functions. This is made worst when certain characters who are not combatants are lacking coded abilities to balance out this weakness, it makes for a frustrating gameplay. Laserbeak, who was lacking the scout ability despite being able to infiltrate deep into enemy territories and even in the movie was shown to be capable of observe from afar, is a great example of this oversight until recently where I noticed the oversight. I was also around to hear a group of people complaining about how certain characters are effect heavy, or attack level heavy that goes beyond the level expected of FCs. These anomalies in statting applies to certain Autobot and Decepticon characters. I haven't had the chance to see if all of these complaints are justified, but I have experienced what some of these feature characters being complained about can do and it was disruptive enough to gameplay balance that it motivated me to set standardized attack levels for each category of FC, NFC, and EFC, on the TF MUSH I'm working on to ensure such a thing doesn't happen there. Todd, if you're interested in getting to the bottom of this, let me know and I can give you character names that have abilities or attack power that's way too abnormal for the character category they're in. These are FCs who have powers and effects strong than EFCs, despite their already innate advantages. I'm not Charstaff here, so I can't see everything and show you the entire list of abnormalities since these are information that I do not have access to. I can also offer to help you make a pass at 2k5's current list of characters and fix abnormalities for the sake of balance if you're interested.
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