4Game

All this is obviously opinion, and I'd like to hear what you guys think about this as well. This post is meant as a discussion starter, and one player's feedback to the devs.

As I see it, are three main playstyles in combat. I'm assuming a multiplayer setting, since that is the only way I personally enjoy the game.

1. You go to the front line with max health, heavy armor, and a good shield. You rely on a large health pool and blocking hits to tank for your team, occasionally hitting back with a sword or axe. I'll call it "Tank".
2. You go to the front line with a little bit of health and a bunch of stamina, light armour, and a good parry weapon. You rely on quick reactions and trained, precise parry timings to stun opponents and then combo them. Let's call this style "Rogue".
3. You stay back with minimal armour and max stamina, and continually shoot your foes with your bow. Let's call this "Archer".

With this new update, most foods are very heavily skewed towards either health or stamina, which is a good thing in and on itself imo; this way, your food choices actually matter. You can't just chomp down on some Lox meat and sausages and get both amazing health and stamina. However, the food values are also nerfed on top of this change. This means that the total amount of boosted stats you can get by food is almost cut in half, in a lot of cases.

Accompanying this change, is the blocking and parrying behaviour. You now need a big pool of MAX health in order to effectively block or parry.

These two changes combined seem to kill off the Rogue playstyle. Going full Stamina was already a risky choice of combat foods before the changes. Now, however, this means having little health, and that completely thrashes your ability to parry. Now, you kind of have to go for the Tank playstyle if you favour melee, since that is the only way to actually be survivable.

So how could it be resolved? I think I have an intuitive answer that retains the strategic depth introduced by the food changes, while maintaining the possibility of playing a dexterous, fast character.

Make your block power depend on your max health…

And make your parry power depend on your max stamina.

To me, this makes intuitive sense. Blocking has that 'come at me, I can take it' kinda vibe, while parrying is a more precise and dexterous aspect of combat.

What are your thoughts on this suggestion? Do you have a different viable playstyle that I am just missing? Are you liking the food changes?