Thoughts on balancing kiting techniques
Elemental Forums
There have been a number of posts over time about the potential abuse of kiting – ranging from the ability to have archers run around and shoot things to death without ever getting caught; to the ability to use Regeneration and initiative to be able to duck in, hit someone, and run away, and thereby defeat the strongest monsters (one recent post was about how someone was able to beat Insane “easily” using this technique, although some tactical battles took “hundreds of turns”); to the OP nature of getting horses or other mounts, partially due to ability to hit-and-run in tactical battles.
So, as part of a discussion on balance, I thought it might make sense to kick around some ideas on how to reduce the ability to abuse these kiting techniques (yes, it is single player, and yes, you can simply choose “house rules” to not use these “tricks”, but thought it would be interesting to get some people’s thoughts on ways to improve the core mechanics in a way that removed the temptation!) My thoughts:
- It has been suggested before, but I never saw a developer response..…reducing the stats of a unit that moves in its turn in tactical battle vs. one that remains in place adds a strategic element to use of ranged weapons and reduces the “obviousness” of using a kiting approach (in addition to being logical – moving archers would seem to be at a disadvantage to dug-in archers). The pushback could be that arrows are arrows – if they hit you they hurt. So my thought is that any ranged unit that moves should have a “significant” reduction to accuracy if it attacks during the same turn. I realize this will not eliminate kiting, only make it take EVEN longer for a kiting range unit to ultimately win, so it may be counterproductive in that regard, but I think in conjunction with other changes this can improve the tactical use of ranged units in a way that makes sense.
- Likewise, it would seem logical that a ranged unit that is mounted would have reduced accuracy vs. one that is on foot…..addressing the “everyone should have a horse” issue that has been bandied about a bit, and further balancing/making it a decision re:having more-accurate ranged units vs. more-mobile ranged units
- As a side note, I would think that reducing the accuracy of melee units that move in that turn also makes some sense/has some value, as it further balances the “first attacker” advantage that always seems to benefit the human player vs. the AI (despite Brad’s hard work)…and also reduces some of the value of having mounted vs. unmounted units.
- Another suggestion that has been made many times before, but never responded to (unless you consider ignoring it the ultimate response!) – archers should run out of arrows at some point in a tactical battle. By reducing their accuracy when they move, and limiting the number of total attacks they can make in a single battle, you greatly reduce the ability to just run around kiting some massive monster you can do 1 point of damage to for 300 turns…..For game play purposes, if believe this makes sense then staffs should also have some limit of attacks per battle – not sure of logic of that (have to recharge?)
- Seems like Regeneration also has to be adjusted to avoid the ability to run around till fully healed and then reattack, thereby ultimately defeating much more powerful enemies – as noted before, coupled with high initiative, this factor seems to make it possible to create a hero that can literally never lose. Some people really hate the “nerf/artificially limit something cause we can’t make it work” approach, which is understandable, but it seems like a logical limit to make regeneration only occur if the unit doesn’t move - i.e. if a unit moves away on its turn it is clearly not resting and recovering, so earns no regen that turn – regen only happens if the unit stays in the same spot during its turn. Again, this seems to have some logic behind it, and would eliminate one aspect of the issue – the constant run-around-until-fully-healed gambit that benefits the human player vs. the AI, and seems like a bit of cheese to me. A unit with enough initiative to have 2 moves before the enemy has one could still move away, rest one turn, then move again – thereby actually just lengthening the kiting process rather than eliminating it. That seems to go back to the potentially OP nature of stacking intuitive/haste/slow…maybe something can be done in balancing intiative that “insures” that the 2+-for-1 move dynamic can only happen x times in a row, not every move, in a tactical battle, so some uberpowered monster could eventually catch a running around hero doing nothing but regenerating HP?
