[Autumn]

I think it'd cause a lot of problems with skip itself, what's wrong with changing the listed status effects to be like guard?

[Neus]

Because if Skip is the common factor in making these skills/statuses ineffective then it points more to an issue with Skip than it does them.

[Rendar]

I mean. Nerfing Skip makes it much less of a "I need this to even be able to exist" in PVP and PVE.

I'm down for nerfing the piss out of skip. It stops people from skipping with 1m to prevent KD, too. So yeah. #DownWithSkip

[Soapy]

Neither of those would actually fix the problem.

Cooldown would limit it, but that would just mean you can only negate a skill every X rounds.

1M would have far more of an impact on the game than either of you suspect, e.g. a faster player being able to force someone to either forfeit 1M each turn or just lose.

Removing skip would ruin so many mindgames I'd probably just end up switching to the RP-only fights where nobody loses.

It's not that skip is a problem, it's that these skills just weren't designed with it in mind.


tl;dr changing skip is, despite being a one step solution, way more disruptive than changing the behavior of these status effects to work with existing mechanics.

[Exxy]

Because if Skip is the common factor in making these skills/statuses ineffective then it points more to an issue with Skip than it does them.

Skip (and Tactician) are both things that heavily play a part in the Meta (and have since they were made, way before I was around, I'm willing to bet).

The way I see it, it presents a risk-reward factor to parties on both sides. Two very quick and common examples:

-The slower person doesn't see the first person who moved used Skip? Prepare for them having 7M turns back-to-back if you make the mistake of running up to them.

-The faster person fails to realize the slower uses the move (Skip)? They get laughed at when they try to Dense Thunder them for a 3M loss, which winds up being 1M instead (or 0M penalty depending on how you look at it, since their next turn is unscatched).


I definitely have to agree with it affecting a good portion of thought/counterplay if it were changed (and I hate to make this thread into something it wasn't to start out as) but Skip is a Trait that should either:

-Be hit with a "smaller" nerf (maybe Cooldown, at -most-, even if just to see how it fairs for an update or two), which would still drastically affect things as they are.

-Have the Trait to be made into a default battle mechanic (along with Tactician, as mentioned a long time ago). Possibly whenever the Trait GR hits.

[Esther]

Or maybe just stop letting slower people counter-skip. It makes little sense from an in-world perspective that the slower person is the one to actually control the flow of battle.

[Autumn]

Or maybe just stop letting slower people counter-skip. It makes little sense from an in-world perspective that the slower person is the one to actually control the flow of battle.

Uh no, there's a reason skip is one of the necessary traits, it's to avoid this.

[Esther]

It's also a big part of the reason why CEL is an undervalued stat. You actually gain benefit for being slower, and give up that benefit for being faster... which leads to a very bad situation where investment in the stat related to mobility, initiative and quick reactions actually leads to your slow, plate-clad opponent having all the initiative, because of where combatants start and the fact that being the one to have to spend their momentum on approach is bad.

Granted, the existence of Charge is also problematic for this, to the point where I would recommend looking into D&D 3.5e's requirement that charges be made in a straight line, and stop upon entering a square of difficult terrain (which for SL2's case, would be sear, cinder, ice, dark water, sanctuary tiles).

[Kameron8]

If skip had a cost of 1 momentum, expect to see people running around with as many resists tacked onto them as physically possible. Then, they'd pour points into cel, be extremely hard to kill, and if you didn't let them double turn you by not skipping, you'd hit a resist with your first attack and only get to do one thing per turn. Not my idea of fun and engaging.

The option to give it a cooldown isn't much better. It's, as stated earlier, still letting people invalidate buffs every once in a while for no reason other than they're faster. If Black Knights weren't supposed to be able to tank up against things faster than them, I've completely misread their lore. Being slow and tough is what they were created to be.

Until a comprehensive change to momentum -- including the cost of skills, resist/weakness/criticals, repeat penalty, knockdown, stun -- is put into motion, I too would like to stress that changing the skills to behave like Guard is a far cleaner solution to this problem. Yes, skip IS the problem. But outside of completely removing Skip from the game, I don't see many good options for tackling it directly.

[Neus]

I don't think the problem is that extreme, Kameron. It's not like Skip is the linchpin holding the cosmos in balance. And you can't deny that the bigger problem here is Skip itself, because it's so powerful without many drawbacks. If it made you give up some of your Momentum, it'd made sense thematically too. Or, alternatively, you're giving your opponents Momentum by doing nothing, giving them an extra 1M and potentially opening yourself up to a lot of pain if you use it mindlessly.