Crowfall Experiments with armor

We’re going to do a quick update for you on some changes that we’re trying out relating to the combat system!

 

Many of you have noticed some of the experimentation that we’ve been doing over the last few builds. The biggest changes relate to our role stat bonuses, health values, regen values and armor values. Our technology has reached a point where it is important for us to start testing how traditional RPG-esque stats interact with the combat system, so let’s talk about some of these changes and what caused them.

 

For those who may not know or remember, these are the basics of armor in Crowfall:

 

1.Every archetype can wear any style of armor: leather, mail and plate. (Yes, even spellcasters!)

2.You can also mix and match various types (i.e. leather gloves + scale helmet + breastplate).

3.The idea was for these sets to be different, not just “heavier armor is better” in our first iteration. We don’t feel like this difference was noticeable enough.

4.When a player is hit, a location for the hit is randomly rolled (sometimes skewed in the power, i.e. ground fields always hit the boot slot) and the resistances are used that match the piece of armor in that slot.

5.Bigger slots (torso) are more likely to be rolled to be hit than smaller slots (head).

6.There are multiple damage mitigation types: slashing, crushing, piercing, fire, ice, disease, poison, bleed and Hunger.

 

You may also know that each role—tank, DPS, specialist and support—has a series of statistical modifications to their mitigation and damage values. While these put the roles into buckets, they tended to cause scaling problems with the more defensive roles like the tank when combined with plate armor.

New Calculations

 

To prevent some scaling problems (and to make armor choices more impactful and interesting), we have changed a few of the calculations relating to damage resistance:

 

Health and Mitigation Changes

 

Armor mitigation bonuses and penalties have been replaced by adjustments to player hit points.

 

These new base totals are:

 

Ranger - 50000

Knight - 62500

Champion - 41750

Confessor - 41750

Legionnaire - 45500

Combat Movement

 

Combat movement is now 80%.

 

Damage Adjustment

 

We have increased the damage output of most archetypes.

Damage Resistance Adjustment

Here is an updated grid of the various armor resistances, by type:

 

Enchantment Testing

 

Although we don’t have a crafting system in place yet, one of the ideas that we’ve been toying with is “armor set enchantments,” which would likely manifest as a new branch of the crafting tree.

 

The basic idea is that you would collect a particular set of armor pieces (gauntlet A + breastplate B + boot C + helmet D) and then you can enchant that set with a particular interesting spell effect that only triggers when the entire set is worn by a particular character (i.e. the effect might only work for characters of a particular archetype, discipline or with certain skill prerequisites).

 

We can’t actually enable the crafting of the enchantments yet, but we CAN try out some of the interesting enchantment/power effects with armor sets.

 

For ease of testing, we made these set bonuses that trigger when a player equips a matching set of plate, leather or chain. Currently, the collection mechanism is totally broken since we are randomly dropping loot in Hunger Dome and providing the pieces on NPCs in Siege Perilous. Eventually crafting and collection will come online. If this system turns out cool and we decide to keep it, the tie-ins are relatively straightforward.

 

Note that these set bonuses are all “nice to haves” -- noticeable, but not overwhelming from a balance perspective. Right now they are also ties to very simply collections (“just get all leather pieces”) but in the future could also allow for more varied combinations (“mail torso + leather boots and gloves + viper mask = Serpentine enchantment that increases stamina regeneration and poison resistance).

 

The key is to make these desirable and interesting, but not to make “one single best” enchantment that every player of a particular archetype will want because we don’t want every player to look the same.

To Repeat: This is just an experiment! None of these enchantments, nor the way they are being applied, will be in the final game!

 

Here are some of the sample ones you may see in both HD and SP this week. To activate them just wear a full set of an armor style. (We will put up a buff icon to show you the effect is active.)

 

Champion

 

Full plate - Reduces time to activate Hateful regeneration effect.

Full leather - Ultimate Warrior increases critical chance by 15% per activation.

Full mail - Applies Daze effect to targets on each swing.

Legionnaire

 

Full plate - Eternal Rage increases attack and support power by 150.

Full leather - Recover 25 stamina when Rear Kick becomes available.

Full mail – Battle Cry also removes Armor Break status from group members.

Confessor

 

Full plate - Fervor no longer reduces your armor and knocks down enemies in an area around you.

Full leather - Righteousness procs increase critical chance by 5% for 30 seconds stacking to a maximum of 50%.

Full mail - Enemies afflicted with Sin who strike you in melee are dazed (30 second cooldown).

Ranger

 

Full plate - Rapid Fire and Slice n Dice add 3000 Barrier while active.

Full leather - Using Spin Step boosts your movement speed by 20% for 3 seconds.

Full mail - Generate 15 energy when struck with a melee attack (up to once per second).

Knight

 

Full plate - Resolve kicks in at 25%.

Full leather - Pursuit boosts movement speed by 20% for 3 seconds.

Full mail - Shield Slam increases your critical chance by 20% for 10 seconds.

It is really exciting for us to see how our systems are beginning to interact with each other and to finally have enough functionality online that we can start experimenting with connecting the different game systems in unique and interesting ways!

 

A lot of these changes are already in, so you should be able to start testing all these changes in the next Hunger Dome and Siege Perilous playtests. (If you aren’t able to participate in the playtests yet, there are lots of live streams and player-made videos that will show you this stuff in action.) Let me know what you think and see ya in game!