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Increased chance to escape from fights

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Good2Go

If others agree, it would be nice if players had an increased chance to escape from a fight using the escape (flee) button. Right now, players nearly always have to fight which can be distracting when on a quest. This is particulary true with "random" fights. Nothing worse than being 15 minutes into a quest only to die in a random fight and have to start all over. With "fixed" fight locations, it would be good to be able to flee, regroup and retry rather than having to fight your way back from the beginning again.

Reginald

I do agree, fleeing does need to be a bit more reliable. I'm not sure what it's based on, but if it hasn't been formulated yet, perhaps base it off things like Agility and Class of the party leader? This could be thought about a bit further, I suppose.

- Regi

Good2Go

Plus it does not impact gameplay for other players, Players that choos to fight every fight may do so and player that choose to flee may do so.

Silver

Fleeing seemed to be much more reliable in the original games, with the exception of fights where the player or party was hopelessly outclassed, at which point they were also likely dead. Also, I might be remembering having a character with higher agility that could get away more easily, instead of the one I'm playing now.

ZaneDubya

It's obvious that my current formula is not working. I'd like to issue a call for opinion here: If we're considering an algorithm that will determine the chance of fleeing...

What should increase the chance of fleeing?

What should decrease the chance of fleeing?

On the players end, we have all the statistics you have access to (class, level, stats, number of people in the party, etc). On the monsters end, we have the monsters HP and monsters strength, and maybe the level of the dungeon?

The easiest solution would be to set the flee chance at a set amount for random encounters (50 percent? higher?) and a similar set amount for set encounters (25 percent? higher?). Then we could increase the chance where the player group is very strong, and decrease this chance where the player is outclassed (maybe compare the total strength of the party, including bonuses from items, against the total strength of the monsters, and decrease the flee chance where the players are outclassed?)

I am hesitant to use Agility, because there is no direct stat that monsters have that I could compare Agility against, whereas monster strength is directly comparable to player strength.

Grobrak

I say use Agility and don't compare it to an enemy stat per se, compare it to the number of enemies within the battle instead. The number of players in the party should count towards this too. Like... Let's call it "Overwhelmed":

The party is Overwhelmed if the enemy outnumbers your party by a certain margin. This margin is up to you to decide, but for the sake of argument let's say 3 enemies per player in the party. This means that with a full party, you'd need at the very least 12 enemies in a fight for your party to be Overwhelmed if you have 4 members.

To let Agility play a role here, the character's (as in, the character currently trying to Flee the battle) Agility should be taken into account as a threshold. Again, it should be decided by you, but for the sake of argument let's say every 6 points of Agility counts as 1 extra party member for the sake of calculating if you are Overwhelmed.

This means that if you play with a party of 2, you try to flee with 12 Agility, it calculates it as if you had 4 party members. If you're fighting anywhere between 1-11 enemies, you're able to flee somewhat reliably. But if you fight 12, your party will be Overwhelmed and so your chances to flee are substantially lower.

This also means that you can kill a couple of opponents to make fleeing from battle easier as you will no longer be Overwhelmed.

With all of the calculations above being made, let's say...

80 percent chance to flee when not Overwhelmed

30 percent chance to flee when Overwhelmed

What do you think?

Edited Mar 17, 2020

Reginald

Grobrak's idea is pretty good, though I'd also like to toss in one more variable here, the reliability of each class in retreating as well.

I'd think out of all the classes, there should also be a calculation of retreat chance based on the class, maybe a set value per class. As for values, I would think in order of least able to retreat to most able to retreat, it would go thusly:

Least > Knight > Cleric > Barbarian > Wizard > Ranger > Thief > Most

It doesn't have to be a penalty or anything for a class if they're lower on the totem pole, just less of an advantage to escaping when attempting it. It would make for having each of the classes more helpful in the party, and hlp in discerning who should be the party leader, and what benefits they can get from being as such. A Thief would obviously be more capable of escaping combat, whereas a Knight would be more apt to stand fast and fight...they can most certainly retreat, though it wouldn't be as efficient as a Thief would attempt in the same predicament.

This kind of comes up with a new ideas on my side...what benefits each class could have to being the lead of a party; right now only Knights really get this bonus, and they should remain the most beneficial with it; I think other classes should have their own quirks and benefits too.

(Sorry for this topic going a little off the rails; my ideas kind of wandered.)

- Regi

Grobrak

Good idea Reggie, Class should have an impact on the flee success rate, I agree!

ZaneDubya

I disagree with not counting enemy stats. The difficulty of the enemy you encounter should be more important than the number. You should find it more difficult to run away from two dragons than two wolves.

Grobrak

I understand that, the problem is that currently we have no way of telling how powerful an enemy is while we can tell how many we're facing. It's also somewhat counterintuitive from a design standpoint as you are more likely to want to flee from hard encounters that you can't handle over enemies that you can easily defeat. However, I do also understand that you want to just flee through fights when revisiting earlier levels that you are simply too powerful for.

You know how old games like Lords of Magic had auto-resolve for fights? I feel like if you and/or your party is vastly superior to the enemies on a floor (say, a level comparison between characters vs the floor depth) then encounters should either stop or be heavily reduced. That way you don't have to worry about fleeing from easy opponents anyway.

If you really insist on comparing enemy stats above all else, maybe Agility vs Initiative could serve as a base factor? Or possibly Initiative vs Initiative, as it were.

Edited Mar 18, 2020

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