Battle Stress

Suggestions
Battle Stress
effort 4.333333333333333 3 quality 4.0 3 reasonability 3.5 4
1

Arcane Odyssey has a planned feature called Injuries—a system that would impose penalties on players who participate in excessive combat without engaging with the rest of the game.

https://trello.com/c/KgbBw8gV/143-m-injuries

The trouble is, Vetex is unsure how such a system would be implemented. He did not want injuries to be applied randomly, likely due to such a system feeling unfair or randomly punishing. The intent for injuries was to encourage players to engage with other aspects of the game, rather than as a random punishment for participating in one of the game’s major mechanics. I have a solution to this dilemma: a system called Battle Stress.

Battle Stress

Battle Stress is a statistic that determines if a player will get injured when taking damage. It is intended to be managed, so that players can have an idea of their own risk of injury. It’s sole correlation is the amount of time the player spends in combat. The system would have no random factor besides the injury being chosen (All of which are equally undesirable).

The player accumulates Battle Stress while in combat. It does not matter if the player is dealing or taking damage, only that they are marked as in combat. This means that even experienced players and grinders will face the system, not just novices and those who bad at dodging. While a player’s Battle Stress is below 50, the player cannot gain any injuries. At 50 stress, however, they can now gain an injury should the player take 50% of their max HP as damage in 2 seconds. The higher the player’s stress, the less damage is required for them to receive an injury. At 90 stress, the player only needs to take 20% of their max HP as damage in 2 seconds to be injured. While the player is at 100 Battle Stress, they will receive an injury should they directly take any amount of damage.

Battle Stress decreases while not in combat. Alternatively, if the player must fight for extended periods, they can cook certain meals that would increase the rate that the stress depletes. Finally, stress is reduced to 0 when a player gains an injury, as so that the player does not gain another right after healing from their current injury. (Also, maybe have it be reduced when a player reaches a boss fight for the first time, so that Calvus doesn’t make an army of cripples out of the poor souls that charge him right after the previous story plotline.)

TL;DR: This feature would add a system of implementation for the already planned Injury feature. It would be based on the player’s time in combat, and would encourage them to explore and engage with the game in other ways.

2

Seems like a fine idea for implementing the injury system, at least after potions are added. However, I don’t like how stress is gained and depleted. It just slowly ticks up while you are combat tagged, and slowly ticks down when you are not (or if you decide to eat a food or potion, which has another issue ill mention later). Battle stress should slowly tick up based on movement during combat (high jumps and dashes, this is mainly for pvp), ability usage during combat, and damage taken alongside slowly ticking up. Stress should stop ticking up at around 20% or higher so sweeping low level enemies puts you slightly on edge. Stress gained from taking damage should start tapering off at 50%, and completely stops at 85%, so you don’t have a constant negative feedback loop. Ability usage and movement starts tapering off a bit after 40%, but doesn’t stop until max stress. If you keep on gaining stress over a large period of time, maybe 20 or 30 minutes, then stress from abilities, damage taken, and movement starts being amplified. I think this would be better than a timer slowly ticking up, and I think it will help with slowing down grinders and constant bounty hunters or gankers.

For gaining injuries, taking lots of max HP dmg in 2 seconds is a fine requirement but I think there should be another. Taking [max hp * {positive integer}] in 10 minutes (or some other period of time) leads to an injury. The positive integer will be something like 1.5 or 2, and it lowers depending on stress. This is so attrition can also lead to injuries and not just taking lots of dmg at once.

Food or any consumables is a major issue IMO. People already hoard food simply because it is super easy to make decent food and it takes a while for hunger to deplete. People will hoard stress reducing foods and munch on them way too often, trivializing the stress mechanic and injuries as a whole. You can make the food hard to make but this goes against Vetex wanting to make it a low-inconvenience mechanic. A way to fix this is to make stress reducing food less effective in combat and less effective when used too often. There should also be an option to reduce stress at an inn, and make it take a few seconds… maybe you can do a 30 second breathing minigame or smth? It should do the job of preventing players from fighting too much.

Yeah that’s all I have to say. Didn’t expect someone to help Vetex implement a mechanic, but it’s not half bad for what it’s worth.

2 Likes
3

Thanks for the thorough feedback, wasn’t expecting such a response as the first comment.

I actually like your idea of having different things affect the system to different degrees, and having them tapper and stop at certain points. It feels more reasonable, especially given that combat with lower-level enemies is basically unavoidable if a player hopes to be doing anything.

I also agree that having a second trigger would be a good idea. My main concern was that full vitality builds or players with very high HP would be able to basically ignore the system until they had 80 stress or more, and having a longer-lasting limit helps with that.

One quick clarification: food would boost the rate you heal from battle stress in the form of a status effect. It would not reduce the meter like how consuming food gives hunger. The player could maintain the effect to heal more quickly overall, but will not heal from it all at once.

4

Injuries in their current state are cancer but this system works well if they had to be added.

1 Like
5

As it is rn, I do not want injuries in the game

2 Likes
6

Agreed.

7

Yeah, the injuries should definitely be nerfed prior to being added. Right now they basically incapacitate you, which, while realistic, isn’t exactly great game design.

I’d probably nerf them down to the following (assuming starting (50%) severity)

Leg
Reduces speed by 20%.

Hip
Unchanged, though I’d make it deal half damage when the user’s HP is below 75%.

Concussion (new)
Applies mild Light magic blind effect when the user falls from too high, takes damage, or drops to 10% stamina.

Calf
Reduces high jump height by 20%, and dodge distance by the same.

Back
Doesn’t increase damage taken, rather applies a 30% speed reduction for 0.25 seconds upon taking damage.

Chest
When you take damage, you lose just a little bit of stamina. Has a brief cooldown so multihits don’t wipe you out.

1 Like
8

I think leg shouldn’t gut your walking speed, instead maybe put a greater cooldown on dashing, although this might feel worse. IDK, pick your poison.

Also, I wonder if there’s a way to make these feel cooler, like being forced to get over a battle scar.

9

Personally, I don’t think there’s any way to add the injury system and it feel like a positive addition.
I’d still hate it and see it as a completely pointless addition that adds nothing to the game and very strictly makes the experience worse for everyone.

10

hell no, why am I being punished for trying to get good at PVP

11

Hm… maybe if the player didn’t gain stress on arena islands, that could solve the issue for PVP?

Also, there is a chance the injury system will be added regardless of whether or not battle stress is. I’d rather have something the player could track and manage.

1 Like
12

This sounds like a fair implementation of injury reducing food, thanks for the clarification.

Injuries are a planned mechanic whether you like it or not. It’s on the trello and Vetex is not sure how to add it. This suggestion is just a fair way to implement it, and it doesn’t seem that bad (certainly a lot better than RNG). You can make a suggestion on nerfing the injuries or putting a positive spin on them though.

13

:sob: whyy

14

maybe they could turn off battle stress and injuries at arena islands (munera)

3 Likes
15

I dont like Battle Stress occurring when i Deal dammage
i think it should build up as i recieve dammage
(if my spine breaks while i kill a level 20 bounty ISTG)
so my modification is to make it so you build up Stress while taking dammage
also this leads me to another dumb idea
a fighting style that relies on high stress values
a hyper high-risk high reward since you are at risk of crippling yourself in exchange for breaking the enemies spine
also mabey no effects during Bosses since if my back breaks during a boss that would be annoying (espically if calvus)

4 Likes
16

Problem is, if it only builds up when the player takes damage, many players will have it WAY worse than others. Notably fighting style players, which mostly only have melee or close ranged moves. Also, it’s more common than you’d think to get into a bad situation where you rapidly take damage. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve jumped onto a pirate ship, only to take 600+ damage within the first second (admittedly a fault on my part, but nonetheless).

1 Like
17

Also liked the idea , the food problem can be solved by making the fighting stress reducer status can only be obtained from potions (coming next upd) and the ingredients for this potion should be quite hard to get , like spawning in only one island that is hard to reach or not good to stay in (sky islands, akursius keep) , or it could be bought from merchant ships or even be obtained in ingredient bags (the rarer bags) thats my suggestion to fix the food problem

18

well it would build slowly
so mabey that 600 dammage only is like 2 points of stress and it takes like 50
this is meant to prevent you to only be fighting (or consistently fighting)
it would transfer over saves so it is meannt to slowly build up not just suddently your spine is broken

19

Erm, no, it should definitely not transfer over saves. If it did, the entire game would be slower. Imagine grinding Calvus a few times on one profile and then getting another one crippled by Iris. It doesn’t really make sense.

20

I meant that it transferes across leaving/rejoining
not on new saves
sorry for the confusion (so if you do a ton of PvP on your 1st slot, but on the 2nd slot you wont suddently crack your spine for getting breathed on by a bandit)