Poll

Falling the maximum distance should...

Kill you. They call it terminal velocity for a reason.
7 (33.3%)
Hurt you. I prefer to die to monsters, not physics.
14 (66.7%)

Total Members Voted: 0

Author Topic: Fall damage poll  (Read 5329 times)

Offline Terraziel

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 314
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #15 on: February 29, 2012, 07:40:32 am »
No, there are, and I put it in Mantis and was told it was supposed to be like that and wasn't going to change.

Offline Toll

  • Sr. Member Mark III
  • ****
  • Posts: 452
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #16 on: February 29, 2012, 07:47:39 am »
If you go to a settlement and open the list of settlers, you can see their base health. I've seen as low as 38 I think, but that hardly means there isn't anything lower.

Offline Minotaar

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 272
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #17 on: February 29, 2012, 07:59:57 am »
Oh well then, guess I didn't hit any of those yet.
Could go back to the 'unintended' behaviour: % of base HP, 100% max. I wouldn't mind that.

Offline BobTheJanitor

  • Master Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,689
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #18 on: February 29, 2012, 09:12:10 am »
To be fair it's not as if there are many 100% damage cliffs, in fact are there any?

Possibly not, but what about being mid fight with some fairies and already 20-30% injured and misjudging your double jump over a deep pit? Wave goodbye, Wile E. Coyote.

Offline TechSY730

  • Core Member Mark V
  • *****
  • Posts: 4,570
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #19 on: February 29, 2012, 09:20:28 am »
IMO, fall damage (the actual amount, not the ratio) should NOT scale with the current max health. Falling from a certain distance (enough to trigger fall damage of course) with no enchants should do the same amount of numerical health damage no matter what your current max health is.

Of course, fall damage should be allowed to surpass your base max health, and if you fall far enough, maybe even surpass your current max health. That way upgrading your health can impact how far you can fall. (This would only be fair if the double digit base health characters are no longer generated, which from what I have heard, their existence is a bug)

However, to prevent abuse, the amount of fall damage you take should be super-linear to the amount of distance you fall (or how hard you fall, or whatever the variable it scales over is). After all, doesn't kinetic energy scale squared to your velocity?

This way, if you double your health, you don't get to be able to double how far you fall, but rather, say 1.2x the distance you can fall. And the returns get even more diminishing as you go on. This should allow boosts in health to increase fall durability without leading to "I can fall from the stratosphere and still live" without using an absolutely insane number of enchants. (Possibly, never reaching that, if the amount of distance you can fall turns out to be asymptotically bounded given the fall damage equation)

Offline TechSY730

  • Core Member Mark V
  • *****
  • Posts: 4,570
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #20 on: February 29, 2012, 09:22:33 am »
To be fair it's not as if there are many 100% damage cliffs, in fact are there any?

Possibly not, but what about being mid fight with some fairies and already 20-30% injured and misjudging your double jump over a deep pit? Wave goodbye, Wile E. Coyote.

Obnoxious, yes, but something I see entirely fair in other games with fall damage that also have bosses. I get frustrated, but not at the game, but at myself for forgetting about the hole, or misjudging it, or whatever. (Unless the fall damage equation is completely out of wack for that game, which right now it may be for this game, but that can change)

Offline Terraziel

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 314
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #21 on: February 29, 2012, 09:26:18 am »
To be fair it's not as if there are many 100% damage cliffs, in fact are there any?

Possibly not, but what about being mid fight with some fairies and already 20-30% injured and misjudging your double jump over a deep pit? Wave goodbye, Wile E. Coyote.

Personally I feel that is an entirely valid way to die, that makes your death the result of a combination of skill, environment and enemies.

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #22 on: February 29, 2012, 10:01:03 am »
For the next version:

* The amount of falling damage, lava damage, water damage, and temperature damage, etc, that players take has been reverted to the amounts prior to the last release.  The consensus wasn't exactly universal on this, but it does make good sense that having upgraded health should make you more resilient to various environmental factors as well as to enemies.
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for pushing this one.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline Mánagarmr

  • Core Member Mark V
  • *****
  • Posts: 4,272
  • if (isInRange(target)) { kill(target); }
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #23 on: February 29, 2012, 10:12:50 am »
As has been said before, dying should be the result of a series of mistakes, not a single one. I would be slightly annoyed if I accidentally slipped off a ledge and died just because of that.
This. Absolutely this. I'm honestly quite against any substantial falling damage just for this very reason.
Click here to get started with Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports.

Thank you for contributing to making the game better!

Offline MaxAstro

  • Sr. Member Mark II
  • ****
  • Posts: 345
  • Love, Peace, and Calvinball
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #24 on: February 29, 2012, 10:43:48 am »
I will throw my hat in there as also feeling that %basehp damage values are a sub-optimal solution.  A character with low health should be punished by being fragile; a character with high health should be rewarded by being durable.  Percentage based damage makes your actual health matter less.

Certainly upgrading your health should make you more resistant to falling, but I feel that picking a high-hp character should also make you more resistant to falling/water/lava/etc.

I also feel the 13hp-character is an extreme edge case - I don't think the game should be balanced with hyper-low-hp characters in mind.  Someone who picks such a character is making a conscious (and highly visible) decision to risk dying to a single blow.

EDIT: I also, though, agree with dying-as-a-series-of-mistakes.  Fall damage from a reasonably long fall should probably be about 80-100: Enough to be a serious injury, especially if you have low base-hp and haven't upgraded it, but not typically enough to kill the average character.

I also think %basehp results in too much increase in durability: With only one health upgrade, a fall that would have killed you before only does 50% of your hp in damage.
« Last Edit: February 29, 2012, 10:47:23 am by MaxAstro »

Offline TechSY730

  • Core Member Mark V
  • *****
  • Posts: 4,570
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #25 on: February 29, 2012, 11:30:14 am »
I also think %basehp results in too much increase in durability: With only one health upgrade, a fall that would have killed you before only does 50% of your hp in damage.

I don't know. That seems reasonable to me. Double the HP means half the total HP ratio lost on the same amount of fall damage, because the amount of "hurt" you can take doubled, but in this case, the "hurt" inflicted stayed the same.
What wouldn't be reasonable if after only one health upgrade you could now fall double the distance before being killed.

Incidentally, is there any way to get your actual remaining HP, in raw HP value and not the percentage? Not nessecarily on the main HUD, but a status screen of some sort? (I haven't played for several versions, so I wouldn't know)

Offline Terraziel

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 314
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #26 on: February 29, 2012, 11:32:14 am »
Incidentally, is there any way to get your actual remaining HP, in raw HP value and not the percentage? Not nessecarily on the main HUD, but a status screen of some sort? (I haven't played for several versions, so I wouldn't know)

They already ditched the percentages, now it is just the actual numbers.

Offline TechSY730

  • Core Member Mark V
  • *****
  • Posts: 4,570
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #27 on: February 29, 2012, 11:38:25 am »
Incidentally, is there any way to get your actual remaining HP, in raw HP value and not the percentage? Not nessecarily on the main HUD, but a status screen of some sort? (I haven't played for several versions, so I wouldn't know)

They already ditched the percentages, now it is just the actual numbers.

Yea, I see it now, way back in .548

I stopped playing this around where missions were first introduced, showing how behind I am on actual experience of the game. Everything I've suggested/commented on so far has been on principal, reading release notes, and/or reactions from other players.

Once beta series 3 starts, I plan on at least trying the game again.

Why did I stop playing?
Not because, at the time I stopped, there was little sense of progression or goals, but rather because it kinda hurts you hands to play a shooter/platformer hybrid on a lap-top keyboard, and with only a touchpad for a mouse.

Offline zebramatt

  • Master Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,574
Re: Fall damage poll
« Reply #28 on: February 29, 2012, 12:54:31 pm »
I wanted to see if consensus was forthcoming about the formulation of environmental damage in general, so I made a poll for that:

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9964.msg94572.html#msg94572

I've tried to not step on Bob's poll's toes as I think they both measure a different thing (how much people want to get hurt vs. the method by which they do).

And it covers all kinds of environmental damage at the moment - falling, water, cold, heat, lava, etc.

 

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk