Development:Stunning and knockback

This article collects information regarding the conceptualisation of the gameplay of The Mana World

This article is currently only a proposal

The features or design guidelines described in this article are only a proposal made by one or some persons. It has not been evaluated or accepted by the core development team yet. Feel free to add your personal opinion about them or make counter proposals.

Intense testing of the new game mechanics by the HMC dev group has lead them to the hypothesis that stunning a being for a short period of time (and thus making it unable to move or act in any way) when hit would enrich the gameplay.

The problem with this is that network latency would frequently lead to the situation that a being is on different positions on the server and the clients when stunned. This could lead to implausible events. Attempting to correct this by sending the position together with the stun messages would ineviteably lead to a sudden "jump" of the being.

For that reason I would suggest to combine stunning with a knockback effect. This means that the being is hit away several pixels from the attacker after getting hit. This has the advantage that it justifies and conceals a slight dislocation of the being and that it makes combat feel even more action-laden.

knockback effect mechanics

Knockback distance should be influenced by:

• Used weapon (blunt weapons should have a larger knockback in relation to their damage than sharp ones)
• Attackers strength
• Victims strength
• Additional factor by special attacks (a property of some special attacks could be a better or worse knockback)

Proposed formula:

knockback_distance ~ (1 / weapon_penetration) * (attacker_strength / victim_strength) * attack_factor

stun effect mechanics

The stun time should be inflienced by:

• Used weapon (blunt weapons should stun longer than sharp ones)
• Severity of the hit (in percent of total HP)
• Target vitality (already covered by the last point considering that HP is derived from vitality)
• Additional factor by special attacks (a property of some special attacks could be a better or worse stunning)

Proposed formula:

stun_time ~ (1 / weapon_penetration) * (damage / max_hp) * attack_factor

Game balance considerations

stunlocking

When it would be possible to use the stun effect to immobilize a being permanently it would be quite a game-breaker. To make this impossible the stun time should not be cumulative. This means that the stun time of a being which is already stunned can not be increased by hitting it again while already being stunned. This would mean that the only way to permanently stun a being would be to always hit it exactly in the moment it recovers from the last blow. This would require considerable timing skill and thus would rather enrich the gameplay instead of breaking it.

"holding off" with knockback

When the attacker got a long range and a fast attack speed and the defender got a short range and a slow move speed the attacker could be able to keep the enemy outside of its attack range by permanent attacking.

This method would not be failsave because it is impossible to have a 100% hit probability (unless the enemy got 0 evade) but could still make combat against some enemies very easy. My suggestion to minimize this effect would be to avoid giving long-range weapons a high attack speed. A fast attack speed would be implausible for most long range weapons, anyway. Projectile weapons need to be reloaded and long range melee weapons have to be very bulky.