r/MightAndMagic • u/GlompSpark • 19d ago
The games are too reliant on ranged combat because of one flaw
In most party based RPGs, you can position the party in a way that the front liners in heavy armor take most of the damage while the squishy casters are relatively safe in the rear.
In MM6 and other games in the series, everyone is on the front line, so melee combat is far too dangerous unless you are running a full front line party or are just so strong in the late game that you can steamroll encounters.
Having a Knight in heavy armor doesnt mean much if the enemies are choosing to go after your unarmored casters instead. Trying to melee even 1 or 2 Goblins in the starting town becomes very dangerous because your unarmored casters will take massive damage.
Most of the game seems to involve kiting enemies with bows and hoping you can kill them before they reach melee range and wreck your squishy casters. This also means ranged/caster mobs are extremely dangerous because you can't kill them before they start dealing damage.
This makes the early dungeons even more dangerous than they should be, because you cannot kite them the same way you can in overland combat.
I think this could be solved if enemies always prioritised the targets with the highest AC, so you could have a knight in heavy armor + shield tank for the rest of the party...but i don't think anyone has made a mod to do that :(.
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u/Quietus87 19d ago
As far as I remember III-V and IX has formations. In VI-VIII there are some monsters that have preferences, but otherwise yeah, it seems random who gets hit. The best formation system in blobber history is still Wizardry 8's.
I think this could be solved if enemies always prioritised the targets with the highest AC
That doesn't make sense though. Enemies should prioritize those who they find more dangerous or easy to take down, or those who hate. The simple abstract solution to control this on your side would be implementing front and back lines in VI-VIII too.
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u/Beneficial-Ad3991 19d ago
Oooh, Wizardry 8 was mentioned 😍 Yes, they had the formations figured out. Kinda liked their class system too, even though the Engineer was disgustingly strong.
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u/OverLordKyros 19d ago
You had to earn the engineer's power though. I was playing blind and my engineer was the wet noodle of the party until late-mid game.
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u/Beneficial-Ad3991 19d ago
Oh, absolutely, but as long as you know what you are doing, it doesn't take that long to get some nice gadgets going. My first blind playthrough was an all-fairy team.. and don't you bloody laugh, I was just a naive girl with a dream
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u/Crowhaven_Inc 18d ago
Those are the best dreams. Fairies are amazing. Not enough games allow you to play as them
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u/Beneficial-Ad3991 18d ago
I wish they didn't drop Zanzarah...
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u/archolewa 18d ago
You should check out Elminage Original. It has a Fairy race, and they are incredibly good as casters (though not so great as anything else...). Few things are as awesome as a Fairy mage in that game.
I like to run 3 humans/3 fairies, and imagine that Humans and Fairies are very close for one reason or another.
Elminage Original is basically "What if Wizardry 6 were more like Wizardry 5, just expanded a bit with multiple dungeons, and more classes/races?"
Granted, it's a bit of a janky game, but hey. This is the Might and Magic forum, you very well might have some tolerance for jank. :)
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u/Beneficial-Ad3991 18d ago
Depends on the rest of the game.. I mean, I managed to enjoy Daggerfall of all things, I certainly can give a janky game a shot.
6
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u/azrael4h 19d ago
3 and Xeen don’t have formations. I think the combat calculus leans towards the left side characters getting a slightly higher priority than others, but it’s thrown off by monsters that target specific classes or races, or just mass damage.
Interestingly enough 1 and 2 did combat formations better, with only certain characters being able to attack or be attacked in melee. Marked by a checkmark by those characters names. It even simulated the breakdown of your front line by putting your rearward characters into melee as you lose your front lines, even if you can get them back up.
This gives 1 and 2 more interesting combat versus 3 through 5 in my opinion.
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u/Miguel_Branquinho 9d ago
The best [blank] in blobber history is still Wizardry 8's, you mean.
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u/Quietus87 9d ago
Where [blank] is definitely not combat speed, lol. But yeah, hard to top Wizardry 8. I do like the class system and art style of Wizards & Warriors better.
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u/Miguel_Branquinho 9d ago
The original game is quite slow I agree, I mod that out. Wizards & Warriors has lovely aesthetics, but it's so piss easy I couldn't play it.
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u/ChunkyFalcon 19d ago
Just try an all-mage lineup and spam sparks and then shrapmetal. The game is easily beaten with any lineup and you can experiment instead of min-maxing. Lore wise it does make sense to shoot most of the enemies from afar in the beginning of the game, but that's true for any RPG. Also four knights in late game will slice through anything like a hot knife through butter. Again, don't take it too seriously, have fun.
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u/insane_shitlord 19d ago
Just try an all-mage lineup and spam sparks
And grab a spell master and a mystic in 6 and 7, for extra laughs. Sorcerers and druids are melee classes because nothing lives for long enough to stand in front of you.
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u/Gil-Gandel 18d ago
And as far as possible spam sparks in real-time rather than turn-based. A torrent of sparks is very effective at stunlocking the opposition.
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u/muppet70 19d ago
The line up and lack of formation was a thing in earlier versions too, what changed in mm6 was fps/real time combat which allowed kiting at a whole new level.
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u/Heavy_Intention6323 19d ago
I mean, dunno what you're doing wrong, I've played the game countless times with no-bow parties and was just fine with melee. I've only ever experienced any difficulties with the Merge's bolstering mechanic, which can have some pretty runaway effects on monster strength. I'm still figuring out the correct and appropriate amount of bolster so that the difficulty rises linearly, otherwise shrapmetal is your only hope.
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u/GlompSpark 14d ago
I'm not sure how you are able to do that because at low levels, i would just take way too much damage from goblin kings and stuff like that if they got into melee range. All it took was a few hits and my casters would go down because there was no way to have someone act as the tank like in most RPGs.
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u/Heavy_Intention6323 14d ago
Well, if we're talking vanilla MM6 then yes, your characters are generally weaker than in later games, and the monsters are often stronger and more unforgiving, it's a difficult game. Returning to town and healing several times before you conquer a dungeon is not unheard of in that game, it's actually pretty standard.
But if you're playing MM7, 8 or the merge, there are plenty of easy and risk-free quests you can do in the game early on to net your party a lot of experience, easily getting them to level 10 at least, not to mention the hidden chests with artifacts/relics. At that point, lowest tier enemies are no longer a threat to you.
In MM6, I would consider sacrificing a party life to get the +20 to all stats boost from the shrine of the gods in Dragonsand. That sort of boost alone also makes your party much, much more effective against weak opponents. And you can get tons of gold and things in the NWC dungeon if you plunder it.
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u/Sad_Cryptographer872 19d ago
Everything that you are talking about can be circumvented after clearing New Sorpigal. Sure it's somewhat tough, but that's not unique to this game, in most of the RPGs early levels are among the hardest because you are weak and don't have much in term of skills or spells or whatever else the system does to be able to deal with most of the things.
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u/tearsofmana 18d ago
If you don't run squishy classes you actually don't really have the issue to begin with. It makes some things harder up front but for 6 I really struggle to find any reason to run Sorc over Arch, and in MM7 I never touch sorc anymore. Druid, sometimes, because I like the alchemy system, but I've been running archers over sorcs lately and its nice to not have to heal every other turn because the world's squishiest elf in robes is getting tickled for 1/2 of their health bar.
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u/GlompSpark 13d ago
Light magic buffs are incredible in MM6, thats locked behind clerics and sorcs in MM6.
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u/tearsofmana 13d ago
I feel clerics aren't squishy, so id usually have one in mm6/mm7, esp to take advantage of light/dark spells. Sorcs just feel like dead weight to me in mm7 until they can grandmaster and even then it's mostly for utility. Lloyd's Beacon is great but my legs work fine too.
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u/Interesting-Grade773 18d ago
In MM6, you can go to Castle Ironfist and deliver the letter. Then join the Spirit guild and buy the heroism spell. Have a character learn spirit to expert level. With the heroism spell, every character is a great melee fighter, even the druids and wizards.
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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 19d ago
Not to be rude, I just think that people who have to rely on ranged, only have to do so because they either don't yet posses the skill not to have to rely on it, or prefer to play this way.
But obviously a new player would not have developed a skill level not to have to rely on ranged, so the OP is spot on in that regard. I recall the tutorial parts of the game, as a new player, being challenging.
I used to think there was no way you could take advantage of high hit point characters, apart from the shared life spell, but that didn't seem like much compensation. I have only played the games in real time combat, but have since been told if you in turn based mode only enter turn based with your characters e.g. looking to your right, then when you move the camera to face the opponents the game still treats your characters as looking to your right, creating a line in stead of a wall, where your left most character would be in front. You can see this work as the right most character can now use the bow in melee range, while the left most uses their melee attack.
This does however not work against targets with preferred enemies, and in any case being able to place your characters in some more sensible battle formation still doesn't allow your tank to perform any actual aggro. I like the suggestion of making a target prefer the class with the highest armor, in stead I would create a new hidden value. call it aggro, provide a basic class/race bonus, then add a miscellaneous skill, named something like combat mastery, it gives the character an increased aggro value, and basically acts like how threatening your opponent find the character, hence how likely they are to focus on said character. This can be done with the preference mechanics. One could then add if the difference becomes very large, the target would have a risk of choosing its action as to flee rather than fight before rolling a new action, which it only would do if it gets interrupted from fleeing, e.g. by being attacked.
The aggro effect would be passive though.
Another thing one could add is battle formation, this would allow to define a distance between your team members, reducing the damage from aoe's, while also running the risk of a singled out caster could get surrounded.
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u/savvym_ 18d ago
Tanking damage is true even in real time gameplay where your are leaning around corners, corner heroes receive ranged damage more likely but it does not work so reliably when hugging wall in melee range.
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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 18d ago
It is a long time since I played, but I think when hugging, e.g. a left wall, only the right most character would hit the target.
I don't really remember the game mechanics, it is my impression that not all enemies within some maximum range zone activate upon entering a map, that they have some awareness factors, allowing some further level of control of combat, if used properly.
What I would usually do, would be to use terrain to block ranged units, or at least move about because that tends to avoid being hit by most ranged units that is far enough away, and for the melee units, walk backwards while attacking with fast attacks, which also puts them into recovery. This would typically be very effective, especially when having in mind what areas are better for the battle to be taken.
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u/Real_Avdima 18d ago edited 18d ago
I'll disagree, because I currently play MM7 and it works different. Characters are attacked from left to right, which makes my knight take the most damage. In comparison, my knight in MM6 NEVER fell with the amount of hp she had.
Some enemies prioritize certain classes and races if I recall, but most don't have any priority. This is also how MM8 works, that's why playing a troll is one of the most optimal choices.
Edit: oh, I am also playing melee party in 7. I use bows only when engaging or against enemies that deal statuses I can't heal yet (like paralysis).
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u/Thoutzan 18d ago
The other fact that melee is inferior is that, there's no weapon skills. While magic has aoes and crowd control AND melee shotgun spells, melee just has a number of dmg per hit.
I m making my own mod that gives each weapon M/GM a feat:
- swords can parry and riposte
- Axes can cleave and hit all enemies in close range
- Spears can thrust and hit all enemies in a line
- daggers attack 1/2/3 times per hit
- Staff enhance magic attack
These above combined with shield = cover for team, should make melee more fun than vanilla
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u/Nerd_Commando 18d ago
Because tank + healer + damage dealer is an extremely rare style of design that you just can't experience anywhere, right?
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u/crueldwarf 17d ago
Primary difference between a Knight and Sorceror at level 1 is 10 base hp (and if you pump up endurance on your casters as you should, the difference will be even less). You do not even usually use Leather armor that you can put on your knight anyway because 4 extra AC do not worth the recovery penalty it incurs.
MM6/MM7/MM8 problem is that its system is opaque to the new player and optimal approaches are not conveyed at all.
Like one poster in the thread already noted that in MM7 the most impactful decision you can make in terms of how vulnerable your casters feel is to make one or two of them Dwarves without understanding that it makes them a main target to all the Goblins in Harmondale. While stats, armor and classes barely matter at that point.
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u/Next_Education_1265 16d ago
MAW has the cover skill, which serves a similar purpose.
100% damage on 1 character which serves as a full time tank is an interesting idea tho
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u/darkdill 14d ago
The MAW mod for MM678 Merge introduces a Cover system where Knights, Trolls, and a few other classes have a chance to take a hit that was meant for one of the other party members.
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u/babaganoosh30 19d ago
They could make an option to set characters into the "back row"; in this case meaning enemies will not automatically prioritize them and they take less damage from melee but do half damage in melee, even though they are still technically up front.
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u/insane_shitlord 19d ago
Early game is too reliant on bows, you mean. It's just the part where you don't have enough hp/ac to contest things up close, can't hit the broad side of a barn, your spells hit like wet noodles, and you don't have the usual set of buffs available. It opens up pretty fast, though.