Battle length

[Chisul]

I love the idea of battles lasting longer.

I think most players panic recall because of the very real possibility of being killed on entry. As we get used to the longer battle dynamic, I think more players will stick around to fight when they otherwise would have just pressed eject at the first sign of an ambush or trap. This will just take some time to adjust and will cause some of the PK antics of a few to be rethought. I hope this change makes the lightning strike more of a strategic measure where the attacker must wait for the precise moment to strike rather than just poofing to any old group at any old time (see mage bomb).

This also got me thinking of the idea of battle momentum. Adding an effect to the mud where melee damage of some classes gain an incremental and stacking bonus to damage the longer the combat lasts.

1 - 10 rounds = no bonus
10 - 20 rounds = +1 Hitroll and +1 Damage
Every 10 rounds of combat the Hitroll and Damage increase by one.

I swagged the numbers to illustrate a point and I'm certain it would require some tweaking. This could apply to all classes but it seems to make more sense for certain tank types. If we do it with casters, maybe the bonus is to spellpower.

If we REALLY wanted to shake this up, each class could get thier own battle momentum bonuses. This would still make for exciting PK, because as the battle raged on, the risk would go up. This also helps solve the insta_death problems we are dealing with now. Just lower the overall damage output pvp, but work in a battle momentum mechanic to allow things to pick up pace as the fight goes along.

[Aristox]

I don't dislike the idea, just the implementation.

I would rather see it tied to a skill every class gets (leadership?) and possibly be more configurable (you can choose your bonus based on the pre-battle setup, possibly switching mid fight).

Not something I see happening in the first pass, but I will drop it in the list of things for later on.

[suf]

I always remember the big fights close to the beginning of the wipe being the most fun. Casters weren't nearly as useful, but were brought along because they were better than nobody at all. The fights lasted many more rounds because no single character could do enough damage to quickly kill another. Caster area damage was minimal, a mage with color spray would be feared as a vicious area caster!

Not sure I completely like this idea, but how about putting PvP damage on a separate scale from PvE damage? Make PvP damage match up to some sort of log scale, additional +damage and higher level spells would do more damage, but the more +s any single character has, the less marginal advantage it would give. The specifics would need to be tweaked to make it work well.

The other issue I see is that later in wipe casters have a huge power imbalance versus later in wipe non casters. I don't know that casting level really made a huge difference in this.

What about making spells themselves be tied to actual items? To be able to relocate you need to have the magic hat of relocating. Make the hat limited or not depending upon the spell, have it decay as a normal piece of equipment. Maybe make some hybrid system where the bottom half spells are books that are acquired as now, and top half spells exist as equipment only.

I would also seriously consider just eliminating or severely toning down the effectiveness of all area spells / skills. The only real disadvantage I see to this is it limits the ability of a smaller group (say of 4) trying to take down a larger group (say of 10). Maybe leave the only area effects that exist as currently in the game as consumable wands or items?

Quite honestly if beginning of wipe balance could be maintained for most of the wipe, with only the ILLUSION of character progress existing to provide some motivation for continued PvE exploration and zoning.