All of the obvious problems have been caught in the internal testing. The idea behind having players test on the testmud is for everyone to work at finding the hidden problems. If I could give a list of what to look for, I wouldn't need to have many sets of eyes on the new system because I'd know what to look for already, and could test for it myself... if that makes sense.

That being said, I can list the processes within the system that you should be paying attention to in order to test:
  • Concentrate - percentage of full rounds of attacks, chance of losing spell, etc.
  • Number of attacks - melee, martial arts, wielding one weapon, two weapons, three weapons, four weapons, amount seen in pets, mobs, etc.
  • Hit chance - anything you can think of, drunk, fatigued, flying, resting, size differences, too much darkness/light, blank weapons, maxed weapons, etc.
  • Number of combatants - fighting one opponent, two, ..., up to fifteen or more. This is probably not relevant for lag tests until we check on live with 10+ players in combat against many opponents each
  • Defensive skills - These happening too often, not often enough, should they give chances to evade portions of attacks (essentially lowering damage taken) in addition/rather than evading all or none, etc.
  • Special hits - poison, fist spells, vampiric blade spells, etc.
  • Crits - Is TW noticable/unnoticable at times? Are there too many/few crits, some weapon(s) should give no crits, etc.
  • XP given from many sources - noticable changes? Should defensive success result in xp?
  • Protection - Does IMPREGNABLE always seem so, or does it seem less/more at times, are there situations in which IMPREG should not be so, etc
  • Crit XP vs Hit XP - Is this recognizable? Does it seem acceptable? Is there something that should give more/less xp, etc
In short, I'm not only asking for you to try and find bugs, I'm asking for your overall opinion on the "feel" of combat. Does it still seem like Darke's combat system? Are there ways it could be improved in your mind? Can you see a fatal flaw? Is there something un-fun or too-fun about it?

Feedback is the key here. If everything seems relatively the same to you, great. If it doesn't, great too. Just give your best effort at making a subjective interpretation of what's going on on test versus what you're used to on live.
_________________________
Please mail your views on balance to:
cerberus@darkemud.com