Morals redesign idea
Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 12:10 am
Moral redesign proposal
The suggestion does not feel like it should be in the balance section but if so sry.
The current experiment on moral gains has highlighted to me how much i think that damage morals (especialy aoe) in the game are poorly designed and detremental to the game, they achiving nothing other than enouraging blobbing and reduce the need for tactics and choices.
Why do they encourage blobbing ? Well the maximum effect of an aoe is to concentrate all the aoe produces into a small area so that they all hit the same targets. That way you can take them down. Best way to defeat this is for those facing aoe to blob and rely on the target cap so the damage is spread over larger number of players so it can be healed though. Ie better for attackers and defenders to blob/zerg. The only thing deciding the fight in this case becomes who brings the biggest gun to the party.
Why do morals in thier current form reduce tactics and choices ? The most effective large scale figh currently is "stay alive long enough to dump aoe moral damage syncronised" . The syncronised bit suggests tactics but "123 dump may be pushing the boundaries of good tactics. The stay alive part yes, but that is what the game should be about, stay alive fight, not stay alive and dump. As moral I will grant that some classes have moral drains and moral pumps .... and there is a sort of mini moral game going on around moral gain, but this has no impact on the impact and design of the morals, its just a gain mechanisim.
Why do i dislike damage morals specificaly ? They ignores all player specing/defences/buffs and debuffs and only care about wounds so completly devaluing players specing and specializing except wounds stats. With it only taking 10 or so seconds to get to M2 aoe moral which can Do 1200 damage on a number of players and players can be hit by syncronised dumps it seems very wrong.
The princeple justification for aoe dps morals i have seen is bottleneck breaking, and small group vs large group, but this is not what they do. They can equaly well be used to rolf stomp at bottlenecks and splat a small group it just depends on who "123 dumps" first gets free kills.
What is my suggestion?
Vision of the suggestion: Rather than a moral gain for living, make the moral gain assosiated with heroisim. How do you calulate heroisim ? Heroisim could be inversly related to number of allies around you. Acting in small groups , doing good things vesus blobs should be considered heroic, even if its only heroic in videos
How could we do this? we try to invert the "binning" of the resulst of friendly players within 30 feet of player
0-3 players blobbed - get base moral rate (1/1)
4-6 players blobbed - half moral rate (1/2)
6-9 players blobbed - a third of the normal rate (1/3)
It is possible that the number should be based on a party (6) instead of arbitary 3, but thats a tweak
Also bands should change on BO’s where 2* concentration , *3 concentration for keeps and something like *4 for Wc
How would the moral skills look if we redisined them ? Well as said before moral damage especialy aoe damage bypasses the normal rules of the game and all player configuration except wounds. does not seem a good design to me. But as we have said that moral points are gained from being heroic the reward should be heroic. Heroisim in my world is saving people from iminit death, taking out key targets and not blind blob aoe.
The morals skills i can see being avalabel would be:
a) buffs
b) debuffs
c) single target damage
d) single target heal
How would the above morals be mapped to exiting Myting morals ?
Moral 1 : Personal buff based upon archtype, heling power, crit, block ..
Moral 2: Single player debuff based upon archetype, crit, negative defense, heal debuff,...
Moral 3: Single target health affect based upon archetype, powerful damage skill (using mitigation) , powerfull heal (using mitigation)
Moral 4: group buff version of moral 1
In short a variety or moral 1 and 2 depnding on class and a choice of Moral 3 for all classes.
The suggestion does not feel like it should be in the balance section but if so sry.
The current experiment on moral gains has highlighted to me how much i think that damage morals (especialy aoe) in the game are poorly designed and detremental to the game, they achiving nothing other than enouraging blobbing and reduce the need for tactics and choices.
Why do they encourage blobbing ? Well the maximum effect of an aoe is to concentrate all the aoe produces into a small area so that they all hit the same targets. That way you can take them down. Best way to defeat this is for those facing aoe to blob and rely on the target cap so the damage is spread over larger number of players so it can be healed though. Ie better for attackers and defenders to blob/zerg. The only thing deciding the fight in this case becomes who brings the biggest gun to the party.
Why do morals in thier current form reduce tactics and choices ? The most effective large scale figh currently is "stay alive long enough to dump aoe moral damage syncronised" . The syncronised bit suggests tactics but "123 dump may be pushing the boundaries of good tactics. The stay alive part yes, but that is what the game should be about, stay alive fight, not stay alive and dump. As moral I will grant that some classes have moral drains and moral pumps .... and there is a sort of mini moral game going on around moral gain, but this has no impact on the impact and design of the morals, its just a gain mechanisim.
Why do i dislike damage morals specificaly ? They ignores all player specing/defences/buffs and debuffs and only care about wounds so completly devaluing players specing and specializing except wounds stats. With it only taking 10 or so seconds to get to M2 aoe moral which can Do 1200 damage on a number of players and players can be hit by syncronised dumps it seems very wrong.
The princeple justification for aoe dps morals i have seen is bottleneck breaking, and small group vs large group, but this is not what they do. They can equaly well be used to rolf stomp at bottlenecks and splat a small group it just depends on who "123 dumps" first gets free kills.
What is my suggestion?
Vision of the suggestion: Rather than a moral gain for living, make the moral gain assosiated with heroisim. How do you calulate heroisim ? Heroisim could be inversly related to number of allies around you. Acting in small groups , doing good things vesus blobs should be considered heroic, even if its only heroic in videos
How could we do this? we try to invert the "binning" of the resulst of friendly players within 30 feet of player
0-3 players blobbed - get base moral rate (1/1)
4-6 players blobbed - half moral rate (1/2)
6-9 players blobbed - a third of the normal rate (1/3)
It is possible that the number should be based on a party (6) instead of arbitary 3, but thats a tweak
Also bands should change on BO’s where 2* concentration , *3 concentration for keeps and something like *4 for Wc
How would the moral skills look if we redisined them ? Well as said before moral damage especialy aoe damage bypasses the normal rules of the game and all player configuration except wounds. does not seem a good design to me. But as we have said that moral points are gained from being heroic the reward should be heroic. Heroisim in my world is saving people from iminit death, taking out key targets and not blind blob aoe.
The morals skills i can see being avalabel would be:
a) buffs
b) debuffs
c) single target damage
d) single target heal
How would the above morals be mapped to exiting Myting morals ?
Moral 1 : Personal buff based upon archtype, heling power, crit, block ..
Moral 2: Single player debuff based upon archetype, crit, negative defense, heal debuff,...
Moral 3: Single target health affect based upon archetype, powerful damage skill (using mitigation) , powerfull heal (using mitigation)
Moral 4: group buff version of moral 1
In short a variety or moral 1 and 2 depnding on class and a choice of Moral 3 for all classes.