11-03-2009, 03:08 PM
If we kept everyone on foot we could eliminate kiting by just making it hard to do ranged damage while running. If you want to shoot your bow with any accuracy or use a spell, you have to stop. If someone starts chasing you, you can run in a straight line and he won't be able to catch you but if you stop and shoot, he'll gain ground. If your running takes you out of the range of the resource you were fighting over then you have "fled" and you take some penalty while the enemy takes some reward (so it would be costly to play the attack-flee-attack-flee game beyond a certain range).
Ideally, the game would have "cover" that impacts accuracy (similar to Warhammer 40k) where other players could count as cover. If there's a dude running around shooting arrows at us, Vllad keeps facing him with his shield up, providing him with a huge degree of cover and Diggles stands behind Vllad, shooting at the target, gaining cover from being near Vllad while the target has no cover.
It would mean that 1v1 you could still ultimately get screwed but ideally you shouldn't be having a lot of 1v1 action. Even if Vllad is there with no other players, in our "Living World" game there should be NPCs there supporting him (or vice versa -- e.g., if he sees an NPC orc in a shooting match with a player, Vllad can run to the orc, position himself between the orc and the player and provide the NPC with a defensive cover bonus. Ideally, he'd actually be joining some other NPC orc shield bearers who are already trying to do this).
Mounted combat could throw a bit of a wrench into the works, since "kiting" seems to be the point of things like mounted archers.
Ideally, the game would have "cover" that impacts accuracy (similar to Warhammer 40k) where other players could count as cover. If there's a dude running around shooting arrows at us, Vllad keeps facing him with his shield up, providing him with a huge degree of cover and Diggles stands behind Vllad, shooting at the target, gaining cover from being near Vllad while the target has no cover.
It would mean that 1v1 you could still ultimately get screwed but ideally you shouldn't be having a lot of 1v1 action. Even if Vllad is there with no other players, in our "Living World" game there should be NPCs there supporting him (or vice versa -- e.g., if he sees an NPC orc in a shooting match with a player, Vllad can run to the orc, position himself between the orc and the player and provide the NPC with a defensive cover bonus. Ideally, he'd actually be joining some other NPC orc shield bearers who are already trying to do this).
Mounted combat could throw a bit of a wrench into the works, since "kiting" seems to be the point of things like mounted archers.