Falling damage: which mechanic?

[zebramatt]

See the following topic for a poll on how much falling damage you should suffer; and for the discussion which prompted this poll: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9961.0.html

I've intentionally avoided overlap with BobTheJanitor's poll as I think it addresses the issue from a completely different angle.

This poll is about which mechanic you think makes the most sense for the calculation of environmental (falling, water, cold, lava) damage.

[Terraziel]

Well to quote myself from that thread

"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)"

[TechSY730]

Copying my comments from there as well.
Although I talk about fall damage, the argument can relatively be easily extended to cover environmental damage in general

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)

[Dizzard]

I haven't voted yet but I'm just wondering.

What is the real point of gathering more health if all damage is just going to fix itself to your new current health? It becomes totally pointless.

[Terraziel]

Because the majority of the damage sources you come across in the game don't scale with your health?

[zebramatt]

I haven't voted yet but I'm just wondering.

What is the real point of gathering more health if all damage is just going to fix itself to your new current health? It becomes totally pointless.

I suppose an argument might be that you're bulking up to fight harder monsters, but no matter how hard you can take a punch to the face, falling off a cliff and breaking your legs, burning all your skin off in an acid pool or having an arm fall off due to hypothermia all hurt about the same.

It's an argument with which I primarily disagree for gameplay reasons, myself (I want a semi-brutal environment which gets less so as you progress) but can see why it might hold some appeal - that is, the world is an always-present danger; it's the stuff in it you can become tougher in comparison to.

[Mánagarmr]

I'm a retard with 0 reading comprehension, thus I pressed the wrong poll. My single vote on baseHP% is supposed to be into discrete numbers.

[zebramatt]

I'm a retard with 0 reading comprehension, thus I pressed the wrong poll. My single vote on baseHP% is supposed to be into discrete numbers.

I'm pretty sure I enabled the option to change your own vote!

[Dizzard]

Ok, some thoughts/ideas on this and where it could go. Not entirely sure if they all solve the issue at hand or make it worse but I'll post it anyway.

* The fatality of the environment could change based on the difficulty level.
* Add a way to use upgrade stones to "level up" environmental damage resistance separate to improving health.
* If all else fails, add plenty of ways that intelligent and well prepared players have the tools so that these fatal occurrences aren't as much of an issue. Reward careful preparation. Nobody survives a trip to the north pole by just saying "ah I'll wear what I have on me".

You could add an enchant for negating fall/environment damage or decreasing it however the problem there is and it happened to me in Terraria, that enchant becomes an absolute necessity. I would never dare leave the house in Terraria without bringing along my Lucky Horseshoe, it just wouldn't happen.

I would start to worry when things start becoming absolutely 100% necessary. In particular when those necessary things take up finite slots. (like with the enchants)

[Terraziel]

There already is an enchant to negate falling damage.

Terraria is fairly good comparison, because you either have to choose the ability to avoid falling damage completely at the expense of a different ability, or accept the risk and use another way round it, i personally I used double jump, rocket boots or the grappling hook to avoid falling damage in Terraria, largely as I intend to here with double jumps and ride the lightning.

[BobTheJanitor]

* The fatality of the environment could change based on the difficulty level.

Not a fan of this. I want the challenge to be a notch or two above default for monster combat, but I would rather have no fall damage at all if given the option. (yes I know enchants, etc. that's not what I'm referring to)

[Mánagarmr]

I'm a retard with 0 reading comprehension, thus I pressed the wrong poll. My single vote on baseHP% is supposed to be into discrete numbers.

I'm pretty sure I enabled the option to change your own vote!

That only proves my point! (changes vote)

[Terraziel]

   

* The fatality of the environment could change based on the difficulty level.
* Add a way to use upgrade stones to "level up" environmental damage resistance separate to improving health.
* If all else fails, add plenty of ways that intelligent and well prepared players have the tools so that these fatal occurrences aren't as much of an issue. Reward careful preparation. Nobody survives a trip to the north pole by just saying "ah I'll wear what I have on me".

In order,
1) maybe make it a separate difficulty slider? that's the general way to accommodate everyone
2) I'm pretty sure the devs would turn this one down as too RPG-ish
3) There are already lots of ways to avoid it, Items, spells, enchants, paying attention...

[zebramatt]

I'm a retard with 0 reading comprehension, thus I pressed the wrong poll. My single vote on baseHP% is supposed to be into discrete numbers.

I'm pretty sure I enabled the option to change your own vote!

That only proves my point! (changes vote)

 

[Martyn van Buren]

I'd be happy with discrete numbers but I think % of base health actually makes the most sense --- if I pick a low-health character I want to rely a lot on mobility to avoid damage.  It seems like it does kind of cripple that playstyle if a bad jump can take off half your health.

Equally, I feel like it's more realistic --- it seems to me that a small, light person is about as likely to survive a long fall as a big tough person.