Fall damage poll

[BobTheJanitor]

In relation to some discussion on this mantis issue, I thought I'd take Chris's suggestion and throw up a poll about this. The background is that before this version, falling calculated damage based on your base health. So a 100% damage fall would only kill you if you'd not applied any upgrade stone health buffs. This was an artifact of the previous upgrade system, where losing 100% health meant losing a 'health tank'. The newest beta version now changes this to calculate fall damage from your total health, so a 100% fall is just that, a killing fall.

So the question is whether this is what people want. Should fall damage max out at instant death, or should it be more forgiving?

[TechSY730]

In every other game I've seen with fall damage, fall damage can be lethal if you land hard enough. I don't see any reason why AVWW should be different.

Something I am a bit more on the fence about is how fall damage interacts with health buffs.
In most games I've seen with fall damage, health buffs increase the distance you can fall (though if you are using a polynomial equation to determine fall damage, a large amount a extra health may only net you a little extra fall distance)

[Martyn van Buren]

I'd prefer tamer damage; honestly I don't feel any happier about the game because of it. It doesn't really bother me but I don't care for it.

[Toll]

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.

[Dizzard]

Falling damage doesn't usually give me a challenge in games exactly. It only acts to inhibit me and make me more cautious.

Not saying it shouldn't be there, but I would like to be defeated by an enemy rather than making one wrong step and being totally annihilated (1 hit ko) by the ground. It isn't fun and it isn't clever.

[zebramatt]

In every other game I've seen with fall damage, fall damage can be lethal if you land hard enough. I don't see any reason why AVWW should be different.

Something I am a bit more on the fence about is how fall damage interacts with health buffs.
In most games I've seen with fall damage, health buffs increase the distance you can fall (though if you are using a polynomial equation to determine fall damage, a large amount a extra health may only net you a little extra fall distance)

I agree with all of this. I think that losing three quarters of your health rather than all of it, on account of having upgraded it a few times, is as much preparing for the fall as equipping an enchant which will help you float down.

Furthermore, since there's no way to accurately judge quite how much any given distance is going to hurt, it's inherently more risky just to throw yourself off and hope your health soaks it up.

Spending all your upgrades on health should make you feel more resilient to the environment, although it needn't be as tame as before. If you choose to forgo a proper falling enchant in order to max out other stats because you have spent so much on health, that strikes me as a perfectly balanced choice, given the inherent drawbacks of throwing yourself off cliffs with no way to directly heal yourself at the bottom.

In short, I'm all for the idea that on standard health (or on any health, given a long enough fall) you might kill yourself - but it should be based on neither a % of base nor a % of total health. A fixed amount of damage seems more sensible. Same goes for water/lava/etc.

[Minotaar]

Please don't make it any worse than it is. I like to spend some health to be able to move around more quickly. What I would not like to do is having to slowly wood-platform down every time I see a ledge and don't know now long of a fall it will be.
On a sort of relevant topic, does anyone find the 10000% damage storm dash a bit too painful? That along with fall damage and lava are like the only things I ever died to. While I'm not sure you're supposed to be able quickly bypass areas with enemies (though I wouldn't mind that), you can just randomly double-tap into someone and get hit for 30x damage. Not especially nice. And can definitely be the single mistake that you make before dying.

[Minotaar]

Please don't make it any worse than it is. I like to spend some health to be able to move around more quickly. What I would not like to do is having to slowly wood-platform down every time I see a ledge and don't know now long of a fall it will be.
On a sort of relevant topic, does anyone find the 10000% damage storm dash a bit too painful? That along with fall damage and lava are like the only things I ever died to. While I'm not sure you're supposed to be able quickly bypass areas with enemies (though I wouldn't mind that), you can just randomly double-tap into someone and get hit for 30x damage. Not especially nice. And can definitely be the single mistake that you make before dying.

Edit: and five minutes later I slip through a crack during a bossfight and die from 300+ health. Annoying? Oh god yes. Really want this to be a fixed amount.

[Terraziel]

In short, I'm all for the idea that on standard health (or on any health, given a long enough fall) you might kill yourself - but it should be based on neither a % of base nor a % of total health. A fixed amount of damage seems more sensible. Same goes for water/lava/etc.

Unfortunately doing it as a discrete number probably wouldn't work, rather the lowest base heath i have seen for a character is 13, and the max about 200, how do you pick a number that isn't trivial to one end of the scale and instant murder to the other? Which is obviously why we get percentages.

That said I'd agree with having health upgrades increase your resistance, but maybe not to the massive degree it did before, maybe each upgrade increasing the distance you can fall by 10% (I was going to frame it as simply decreasing the damage by 10% but this seems more interesting)

[Martyn van Buren]

Falling damage doesn't usually give me a challenge in games exactly. It only acts to inhibit me and make me more cautious.

Not saying it shouldn't be there, but I would like to be defeated by an enemy rather than making one wrong step and being totally annihilated (1 hit ko) by the ground. It isn't fun and it isn't clever.

I'm with this point of view.  I don't especially find it unfair, just find myself annoyed by it.

[Terraziel]

To be fair it's not as if there are many 100% damage cliffs, in fact are there any? I mean I fell of a huge cliff, one I readily expected to be a instant death and only took 80% damage (the old 80% but still)

Additionally there are a fair few ways to avoid accidental fall damage, enchants, double jumps....

maybe we need a featherfall spell, something that only lasts just about long enough for you to put a platform beneath you.

[zebramatt]

Doesn't it make sense that a character with 13 base health would be worse at surviving falls that one at 200?

Isn't that, in fact, what a health stat attempts to represent in a game? A character's general durability?

I'm still all for discrete values - it just seems to make more sense if health is also displayed as a discrete value...

[Terraziel]

Doesn't it make sense that a character with 12 base health would be worse at surviving falls that one at 200?

Isn't that, in fact, what a health stat attempts to represent in a game? A character's general durability?

I'm still all for discrete values - it just seems to make more sense if health is also displayed as a discrete value...

Does it make sense? yes obviously. is fair to the person playing the character? Not in the least.

My point is that with discrete values a 13 healther will likely die from everything, these people would be dying from what would currently be 10% damage falls, and those are pretty short.

[zebramatt]

Then surely that's a comment on the fact that there are characters with so little health!

By the same token, it wouldn't be fair that some monsters could one-hit-kill that player!

[Minotaar]

There aren't any characters with double digit base health, are there? I presume the 13 was a typo. Right now the range is about 130-200.