minmay wrote:This is mostly simple to implement with LoG2's scripting interface but kiting would remain optimal behaviour with it in place. Letting the monster hit you for those 1-2 seconds of the cooldown is still preferable to letting it hit you for the weapon's entire cooldown. Even if you froze the party for the entirety of all cooldowns, even with the charge-up time, you'd want to perform kiting-like behaviour because monsters can't attack every frame (moving, turning, facing away, etc). In fact the system you describe would cause an increase in combat movement because you'd backstab the monster on every attack (regardless of whether you even actually have backstabbing) because the monster will take longer to attack if it has finish a move and turn to face you first. And, of course, it won't help at all against ranged attacks.
You can't really solve kiting in the real-time system unless you prevent movement in combat entirely. I'd say if you want to minimize kiting but keep combat real-time and still allow some kind of movement, you should make all monsters faster than the party, and manipulate their attack cooldowns so that a party running away actually gets attacked more often than one that stays in place. For instance a Shrakk Torr that attacks on average every 5 seconds, but always attacks immediately after moves and moves immediately after attacks (if applicable). This is very unintuitive behaviour to the player so you'd also want to explicitly tell them about it, of course. Such a monster is still useful to reposition against sometimes but not to traditionally kite. Of course, it will also be impossible to backstab if it's aware of you.
However, you also need to consider doors and level changes. If you have a door that you're allowed to open/close, you can lure monsters back to that and fight them through the door without ever getting hit or having to move. If you have a staircase/forest exit/whatever you can lure the monster back to that and just change levels when you can't take more hits. So if you still want a "fair" fight you're going to have to make your mod lock you on the same level as the monster and away from any easily manipulable doors, certain ladders, etc.
Those are good points why I chose a misleading title. Of course kiting isn't fully prevented, but a playstyle with heavy kiting would be more difficult. This would concern players, which are not willing to go into extremes with their playstyle. E.g. kite a single monster for twenty minutes to play "optimal".
In the Gamestar review of the game (german editorial department), the kiting aspect was criticized. So I assume, I'm not the only one noticeing this chance for improvement. According to the mentioned source, kiting is so essential in the later game that the monsers have exorbitant high amounts of health points to equalize this.
It's not about turn-based aspects. In my view, for a "normal" palyer (not willing to play extreme styles) the fights would actually be more fast-paced. Monsters coud have generally less hitpoints, because your party cannot attack without recieving damage. And even for extreme player, willing to surround monsters for minutes, a style which enables to deal damage without recieving some wouldn't be always possible.
The fights would be more about quick decisions of item/attack/spell-usage. And the "solution" to defeat a monster would be the right item/spell at the right time, rather than the right kiting technique or the right place to kite. Based on this, suitable items and spells could be defined in a custom dungeon. The whole dungeon/monster/item-design has to be suited for this.
to Grimfan: It would be an exclusive mechanism for specific custom dungeons with fitting monsters. They kill you fast, but you can kill them fast too, if you use the right combination of your stuff to attack.
