Big Downgrades - Game is too dumbed down

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Stamm
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Big Downgrades - Game is too dumbed down

Postby Stamm » Fri Mar 05, 2004 5:51 am

Invokers - Remove all areas above clouds but one.
Remove thunderblast.
Leave all else the same.

Illusionists - Remove displace, give them blur. Remove all their stunning spells.
EDIT : Should read remove stun from all of their spells.
Elementalists - Embody should remove the hps it adds when it expires. Or have them not affect hps - have them make affect you in other ways. It should in no way be able to heal. PWB should not be permanant.

Clerics - Remove greater realm of protection.

Enchanter - Remove blur. Downgrade dragonscales to be stoneskin with a longer duration/last more chips.

Shaman - Remove stunning effects from spells.

That'd be a start!
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Postby moritheil » Fri Mar 05, 2004 7:55 am

How about just making the mobs smarter?
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Postby Stamm » Fri Mar 05, 2004 7:59 am

Because mobs get upped, then players get upped, then mobs get upped.... it's a vicious circle that's been going on for some time.
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Postby fotex » Fri Mar 05, 2004 8:46 am

removing spells from the game probably isn't easy to do. instead, you could just change displace's effect, make displace not stack with blur, and make blur very weak.
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Postby fotex » Fri Mar 05, 2004 8:48 am

changing mob ai probably creates more problems than it solves - more crashes, more ways for players to exploit, and i imagine, is very very hard to balance.
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Postby Areandon » Fri Mar 05, 2004 12:07 pm

The mud as a whole is not too easy. It's unbalanced. Low levels are way too hard and higher levels are way too easy.

That said I mostly agree with Stamm's solution. Damage should be reduced, and just about every one is saying this. The stacking of protection spells is too powerfull, I agree.

I have a problem with 2 aspects of the solution:

Removing blur fro chanters will remove half of the defining spells from the class. Chanters can only cast protective spells, they have hardly any offense, so if you remove blur the class will be further diminished. I can imagine adding other protective spells to an enchanter, like MR or making blur only affect spellsaves, or add ac or something.

Removing realms will hurt newbies most. Most veteran players can get these prots with eq. This will result mainly in a lot of burned eq and bags, and will hardly make the mud more difficult, it will make it more annoying.

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Postby rylan » Fri Mar 05, 2004 1:32 pm

Haha remove greater realm of protection? I think the whole point of that spell was to make spellups quicker for groups when you're doing dragons. If you think I'm going to sit there and cast 5 prots for everyone in the group you're smoking crack. Basically I just won't to do zones/fights that require realms to be kept up.
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Postby Sylvos » Fri Mar 05, 2004 1:35 pm

Removing realms does nothing for difficulty stamm. Clerics still have the individual protection spells. Realms is, honestly, nothing more than a time saver; one that if you've ever spelled up for tiamat without realms is very very welcome.

More tedious does not equate to difficult. Forcing clericals to instead cast five 4th circle spells (higher for druids/shammers) just draws things out.
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Postby Sesexe » Fri Mar 05, 2004 3:37 pm

If you remove so many ways of speeding up doing zones, you remove ways of shortening the duration it takes to do a zone.

How many threads have we had here with people complaining about zones taking too long because most of us are adults now and can't stay up all night?

Want the zone to be harder? Take less invokers, or don't have a scaler, etc.

But I'm sure you won't see my point, and then 2 months later you'll post the contrary in another thread.

wtf
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Postby moritheil » Fri Mar 05, 2004 6:07 pm

When was the last time all of you did beholders? Paracs?

If you're doing them regularly then fine, but last I heard noone would touch those fights with a 10' pole.

If there are fights that you (or most people, for that matter) can't handle, how is it that you sit here and complain that things are too easy?
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Postby Dranix/Straxin » Fri Mar 05, 2004 6:10 pm

Actually, prots are 3rd circle for druids
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Postby moritheil » Fri Mar 05, 2004 6:20 pm

Heck, weren't 90% of highlevels who knew about BC recently seen agreeing that BC was too hard due to cheesy bleed procs?
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Postby Gura » Fri Mar 05, 2004 9:09 pm

BC isnt TOO hard but yes its challenging which is good. but the zone itself is so damn repetitive. i don't know who said it but someone did... "oh look! another group of barbazu's"
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Postby Stamm » Fri Mar 05, 2004 10:59 pm

moritheil wrote:When was the last time all of you did beholders? Paracs?

If you're doing them regularly then fine, but last I heard noone would touch those fights with a 10' pole.

If there are fights that you (or most people, for that matter) can't handle, how is it that you sit here and complain that things are too easy?


Paracs is no problem, beholders are done regularly. Neither scare me.
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Postby Stamm » Fri Mar 05, 2004 11:00 pm

Sesexe wrote:If you remove so many ways of speeding up doing zones, you remove ways of shortening the duration it takes to do a zone.

How many threads have we had here with people complaining about zones taking too long because most of us are adults now and can't stay up all night?

Want the zone to be harder? Take less invokers, or don't have a scaler, etc.

But I'm sure you won't see my point, and then 2 months later you'll post the contrary in another thread.

wtf


Sorry, but it's any players job to do things as well as they can. This means taking a scaler to zones.

I do see your point, I just disagree that it has any merit.
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Postby Stamm » Fri Mar 05, 2004 11:04 pm

rylan wrote:Haha remove greater realm of protection? I think the whole point of that spell was to make spellups quicker for groups when you're doing dragons. If you think I'm going to sit there and cast 5 prots for everyone in the group you're smoking crack. Basically I just won't to do zones/fights that require realms to be kept up.


Perhaps remove the chance to nuke equipment at the same time as removing realms.

The idea of having dragons breathing different types of breath, and spells and various effects doing different types of elemental damage is wasted when there's a spell freely available which covers all.

Hope you see what I mean.

But removing realms was just a small part of the general theme I'm suggesting here.
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Postby Demuladon » Fri Mar 05, 2004 11:31 pm

Attention all spellcasters - start leveling a lich. :P

Seriously though - the only thing you need to do is remove area spells and the game difficulty will jump by a couple of orders of magnitude, and things like targeting will become mandatory. Keep breathing mobs as only areas-effect damage in game.

A couple of weeks ago I was involved in a CR from UM without an invoker (through the one way door into the area with all the undead and the duergar vampire). Took two pops for us to get out and it was borderline whether we would survive at all since we could could barely clear the way to the door within the 40min pop time.

At one stage we we're surrounded on all sides and all casters were out of spells, with continual walk-ins no one could mem.
EDIT: I had to wield a dagger for first time in 50 levels!
I gained 7% xp during the CR, an I admit it was *alot* of fun.

That was a taste of life without area's (well we had enchanter, elementalist area's they barely count).

Remove all area's, keep invokers as the most powerful single target damage casters in game. Give other classes single target damage spells to replace their lost areas. Watch the corpse pile grow.
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Postby Areandon » Sat Mar 06, 2004 12:24 am

I do agree with Stamm on this one. A zone which takes 6 hours to complete isn't neccesarily difficult, it is long. If I understand correctly Stamm is asking that zones require more skill and more risk to complete, not more time. Most of us have lives and can't spend a whole day to run through a zone. The mud should accomodate those people as well in order for it to stay interesting.

Think of the newbie that comes to this mud. He first has to spend ages levelling his character to a zonable level, and then he finds out he needs to put in 8 hours to get to the coolest zones.

Because players are so powerful compared to mobs the only way to raise the risk of zones is lengthening them. You can agree or disagree with Stamms solution, but he is trying to find a solution for this.

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Postby Deltin » Sat Mar 06, 2004 1:23 am

Perhaps remove the chance to nuke equipment at the same time as removing realms.

The idea of having dragons breathing different types of breath, and spells and various effects doing different types of elemental damage is wasted when there's a spell freely available which covers all.

Hope you see what I mean.

But removing realms was just a small part of the general theme I'm suggesting here.[/quote]

Actually I think you are on to something, get rid of the nuking gear thing and realms (except for gas) and you've made dragons a whole lot tougher as they should be, that is if realms helps reduce damage as well as stop the nuking.
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Postby rylan » Sat Mar 06, 2004 4:16 am

I don't mean to only pick on Stamm's point about realms (since I think he has some other good points), but as a cleric I feel I have some valid input. Even if you got rid of realms and dragon breath nuking eq, clerics would still have to spellup prots for dragons on group members to avoid the large amount of damage from their breath. High level dragon breath still isn't a thing to laugh about even with prots, especially if you fail your breath save (which is relatively common unless you've got a crazy amount of sv_br gear). I'd just rather not be a bigger spellup whore than enchanters :P

Now, the interesting thing comes with removing areas... since assuming this would also effect mobs, wouldn't that actually make the mud easier? You're not going to lose a whole group from several mobs casting areas. However what might happen is the mobs will decide to always target the chanter or cleric in which case it will get pretty annoying for them since they'll always die and also have the hardest xp tables.
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Postby Delmair Aamoren » Sat Mar 06, 2004 10:38 pm

actually, if more mobs targeted spells at rogues/casters/etc i'd bet the mud would get a hell of a lot harder. if your enchanter got hit by two volleys of force missiles... no more dscales, ... bad news! I think adjusting the caster mob AI would do something to make things more difficult.

As for removing those spells or altering them. i think rylan is right on about realms. the idea is prots = low level spell, so why cant a high level spell be a better (easier) version. by stamm logic, the spell true sight, given to illusionists shouldn't exist either, because it blends in detect invis/magic/good/evil and possibly even infra/sense. heck, i forget. anyway, there definately are some changes that could make things more challenging. but a lot of these suggested changes would only make things more tedious.

With shaman spells removing stun, i have discussed this before, but most of the shamans were like 'f that, i'd quit' if that change happened. Shammers seem to be just about fine, they've already had stun chance decreased on most of their spells. the REAL stunners are the illus.

Basically, nothing against the players that play them, but illusionists are what messed everything up. well, that and rogues. i think dividing up some of their spells like sequester and true sight, and a few other choice spells to other classes would be a good move. that would remove displace, fold, etc. without fold, since moonwell doesn't work extraplanar, things like muspel invasion would be more difficult. and yes, i mean difficult, not tedious. all those walk-ins are the true danger there.

without displace, dscales wouldn't need a downgrade. the only true remaining problems would be area dmg from invokers. down that a bit, and elementalists. the solo champions. don't know how to address this. embody made a huge impact on difficulty. perhaps tweaking that would be a good start. not certain how to address that issue, but thats the end of my ramblings.

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Postby Mitharx » Sun Mar 07, 2004 1:01 pm

This was a double post thing. I don't think the message was important enough to read twice.
Last edited by Mitharx on Sun Mar 07, 2004 1:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Mitharx » Sun Mar 07, 2004 1:02 pm

Wanna make the mobs harder just gotta give them three things

In - fern - os

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Postby Lenefir » Sun Mar 07, 2004 4:31 pm

I have said it before, and I'll say it again... If you remove/downgrade blur & dragonscales to oblivion, can I please change the class of my character?


1) No blur:
Hmm... Too bad... Less work during spellup, more corpses to the pile, and I get to cast fireball :P, but then, why bring an enchanter to cast fireball when there are other classes that do much more damage...

2) No scale, or scale downgraded to stone effectivity:
Crits through stone happens a lot ofter. Casting of dragonscales fail quite (too) often (10th circle failure, and yes, I have spellcast enchantment at 99 :P). So... If you change it to be like stone, but with a longer duration and/or like a stone that can take more punishment before dropping, you are basically back at dragonscales (that is what dragonscales are doing already compared to stone), with the exception of now having a "stone" you can fail casting and getting critted through more often, making much more work for the healers (if they are still alive). Oh, and you make enchanters obsolete since we now can't blur and you can bring the elementalist/shaman to stone instead since you don't need to bring an enchanter to just cast a stone that lasts a tick or two longer, and you can get the lich to globe or have the elemenatlist cast ward since wards are much better than globes anyway.

3) Removing displace:
Wonder who will notice it most. The warriors that tank, and get stacked with all the protection spells (oh, wait, you just lost blur, scale & displace... guess you have to rely on your maxed tanking skills and stone), or the other classes that get frequently switched to but now much less likely to get a stone?

4) Stun spells:
Noticed why it is sometimes that nobody, or very few in the group is casting spells? I shouldn't really have to tell it is the effect of mobs casting stun spells or having procs/abilities that stun. (Of course, you also have to options of the rest of the group is dead, paraed, blind, or have fled). Can we at the same time remove stun from warrior skills, like shieldpunch, too please? :P

5) Power word blind:
It was changed from permanent to a limited duration a while ago, but changed back again after a few days (or a week or what it was). Do you really think that just because Someone(tm) spent almost a day on blinding mobs in a certain zone, that this is something that happens all the time? How often have you seen mobs permanently blinded in a battle while zoning? Is it in reality the soloing ability of elementalists you are complaining of, so want to nerf what spell seems the easiest solution, but other classes have too, and actually are helpful when growing up among aggro mobs or doing exp?


And have you really thought of who any of these changes will hurt the most? Those uber 3leet players that have the best equipment on almost all the eq-spots, or those relatively new that haven't had the time or opportuniy to collect decent gear yet. Sure, I can surive a few areas, I can survive getting switched to for a couple of rounds but that is given that I have gotten a vit, and have scaled myself. Sure, stone will work quite well for a lot of zones, but how will those that don't have over 1k hp after a vit and high saving throws feel about doing those fights that already have the highest death tolls now...? You want to go back to having a full 15 group for what now is considered realatively simple fights?

And what is most boring? Doing exp to get back lost exp after (failed) resses (for those of us that don't have a buffer to die a gazillion times), or doing a zone a little faster and more painless than if you nerf a lot of spells?

And how come most people only want downgrades to classes they don't play (any longer) :P?

And as a last and, why the heck am I even writing this?
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Postby Stamm » Sun Mar 07, 2004 6:18 pm

First off, thanks for taking the time to reply and be specific :)


Lenefir wrote:I have said it before, and I'll say it again... If you remove/downgrade blur & dragonscales to oblivion, can I please change the class of my character?

I am in no way attempting to make any class obsolete. But please consider a few things. An enchanter can tank better than a warrior. A warrior can't tank for crap unless he has a pack of tanking spells. Nearly all tanking spells come from the one class.


Lenefir wrote:1) No blur:
Hmm... Too bad... Less work during spellup, more corpses to the pile, and I get to cast fireball :P, but then, why bring an enchanter to cast fireball when there are other classes that do much more damage...


When you consider the arsenal of spells than can be dropped on a tank - armor, barkskin, dragonscales, blur, displace, vitality, elemental form... there's a whole lot that's seen as needed. Do we need them all? And I do think that enchanters are overworked... right now we take very few melee classes to zones in general, but if we were to take a more even split if and when melee is fixed, the enchanters will not be able to cope, and things will slow down.

And don't forget time stop, that spell means you can spellup a group considerably better than any other class, regardless if they have some of your spells at lesser effectiveness.

Lenefir wrote:2) No scale, or scale downgraded to stone effectivity:
Crits through stone happens a lot ofter. Casting of dragonscales fail quite (too) often (10th circle failure, and yes, I have spellcast enchantment at 99 :P). So... If you change it to be like stone, but with a longer duration and/or like a stone that can take more punishment before dropping, you are basically back at dragonscales (that is what dragonscales are doing already compared to stone), with the exception of now having a "stone" you can fail casting and getting critted through more often, making much more work for the healers (if they are still alive). Oh, and you make enchanters obsolete since we now can't blur and you can bring the elementalist/shaman to stone instead since you don't need to bring an enchanter to just cast a stone that lasts a tick or two longer, and you can get the lich to globe or have the elemenatlist cast ward since wards are much better than globes anyway.


I do see what you mean there, but what I was meaning was having dragonscales completely dwarf stoneskin. Having it last a fair bit longer than stoneskin, but have it chip significantly more than stoneskin, so that you don't have to constantly refresh it the way that you do now.

Lenefir wrote:3) Removing displace:
Wonder who will notice it most. The warriors that tank, and get stacked with all the protection spells (oh, wait, you just lost blur, scale & displace... guess you have to rely on your maxed tanking skills and stone), or the other classes that get frequently switched to but now much less likely to get a stone?


Again it's that there are too many tanking spells. I do feel that tanking (with spells) is too easy. The only thing that will drop Stamm in a fight is either just too many mobs fighting him, or a caster being killed. It really does feel as if I'm just a target for your spells.

Lenefir wrote:4) Stun spells:
Noticed why it is sometimes that nobody, or very few in the group is casting spells? I shouldn't really have to tell it is the effect of mobs casting stun spells or having procs/abilities that stun. (Of course, you also have to options of the rest of the group is dead, paraed, blind, or have fled). Can we at the same time remove stun from warrior skills, like shieldpunch, too please? :P


I'm suggesting we go back to where it was with warriors being the ones to stop casters. There are only two warrior skills which can stun. Headbutt (and if you can headbutt you can bash, bash is and always has been the ultimate spell killer), and shieldpunch. Shieldpunch stun is rare, and shieldpunch is unreliable. A shieldpunching warrior isn't going to be rescuing, and compare shieldpunch to spook. Spook is fantastic in comparison. And nightmare can stun an entire group.

Lenefir wrote:5) Power word blind:
It was changed from permanent to a limited duration a while ago, but changed back again after a few days (or a week or what it was). Do you really think that just because Someone(tm) spent almost a day on blinding mobs in a certain zone, that this is something that happens all the time? How often have you seen mobs permanently blinded in a battle while zoning? Is it in reality the soloing ability of elementalists you are complaining of, so want to nerf what spell seems the easiest solution, but other classes have too, and actually are helpful when growing up among aggro mobs or doing exp?


Yes, it's the soloing ability of elementalists, mainly. I spoke to Someone(tm) about this, and she felt that elementalists were... hmm. Lemme see if I can accurately paraphrase the intent of what she said... It's a grouping mud, and elementalists skills are most effective when used as a solo class.

You say having PWB not perm is going to hurt people xping? Why is this? If you're xping you PWB stuff then kill it. PWB only works on stuff that is lower level than you (for perm) so I don't see this hurting anybody but high levels.

If you kill a mob then it'll repop. If you PWB a mob then that's it gone for the entire duration of the reboot. Powerful indeed.

Lenefir wrote:And have you really thought of who any of these changes will hurt the most? Those uber 3leet players that have the best equipment on almost all the eq-spots, or those relatively new that haven't had the time or opportuniy to collect decent gear yet. Sure, I can surive a few areas, I can survive getting switched to for a couple of rounds but that is given that I have gotten a vit, and have scaled myself. Sure, stone will work quite well for a lot of zones, but how will those that don't have over 1k hp after a vit and high saving throws feel about doing those fights that already have the highest death tolls now...? You want to go back to having a full 15 group for what now is considered realatively simple fights?


Hmm. It's all relative. If the mud was considerably easier than it is now, and players were significantly more powerful, then we would be wearing different gear. We'd all be stacked out in the absolute best available. We'd be wearing the best of slot in every slot.

As well as that. Be honest... does your equipment really matter that much? A warrior needs around -100 ac witout spells. I say that is _not_ difficult to get. It isn't. Sure Stamm has significantly better than that, because he's got a ton of hps in addition. But he still tanks just the same as someone wearing a set of easy to get gear, if they fulful the basic requirements.

And for casters... well. The top level equipment is maybe only 5 hps better per slot than the easy to get stuff. Sure that means 100 hps difference between a stacked player and a player in crap gear. But does that really make a huge difference to what a group can and can't do? I suggest that it doesn't.

And what stuff is really a challenge any more? Be honest about it. The most challenging thing is getting together enough people to trudge through a zone for 4 hours.

Mithril Hall beholders? Not a challenge any more. Just keep em stunned and you're fine.

Attic? That's a fun challenge, but I think people relish the actual challenges and hate the slogs.

Seelie for example, is a slog, rather than a challenge. I've never done BC, but I'll take people's word for it, it's a slog.

Lenefir wrote:And what is most boring? Doing exp to get back lost exp after (failed) resses (for those of us that don't have a buffer to die a gazillion times), or doing a zone a little faster and more painless than if you nerf a lot of spells?

And how come most people only want downgrades to classes they don't play (any longer) :P?


I don't want to make anybody feel their class is worthless. Illusionists for example, I think I made a good point (I tend to talk these things through on acc, before I post them) on the other forum about stunning spells. Even if illusionists got those nerfed they would still be a valid, interesting and varied class.

Lenefir wrote:And as a last and, why the heck am I even writing this?


Because you took the time to respond as fully as you could. Thanks :)
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Postby Areandon » Sun Mar 07, 2004 9:55 pm

Lenefir is right of course for defending our class :) I do think Stamm has an important issue as well. What is a pity is that there are a bunch of problems discussed seperately, which are in fact related:

  1. Melee/Tanks being underrated
  2. Rangers sucking
  3. Mud difficulty
  4. Elementalists too powerful


If you just try to fix one of these problems you just shift the problem to another place. Fixing the melee problem by downgrading chanters, you will get more fun for the hitter classes but chanter will suck. I think if you want to fix the problem you will have to look at the mud as a whole.

As it is now we have a number of specialized classes:

Warriors - tanks
Rogues - CR/Scouting
Enchanters - Protection magic
Vokers - Damage
Clerics - Healing/Vitting/Realms

Next to that we have classes which do a bit of everything:

Druids - Damage/Vitting/minor healing/wells
Shamans - Ghealing/some protection/a bit of vitting/spirit walk/spirits
Liches - Bit of protection (globes/hastes)/minor tanks
Bards - Bit of healing/bit of damage/buffs
Illusionists - Protection spells/Damage spells/Transportation spells
Antis/Pallies - Some tanking/some damage

And we have of course the solo classes:

Elementalists - Protection spells/Damage/minor healing from embody/elementals
Rangers - bit tanking/bit damage

The easiest solution would be to remove all non-specialized classes from the game. It would suck but it would solve most of the problems.

Another solution would be to move some spells and skills around.

Make enchanter the ultimate protection class and remove debuffs like blind, ray etc. and add a stone-skin against spells which gives some MR to replace blur. Maybe add a higher level ac spell so they can solo a bit better.

Remove realms and prots from clerics and give it to elementalists and make elementalists, well mages who work with the elements. Remove stone, ward, blind and maybe some offensive spells.

Downgrade damage for vokers a bunch because I think we all agree it is a bit too much.

Remove displace for illusionists and the stun effects and add ray and blind and make illusionist the debuffers of the game.

Up buffs +hit/dam, defensive bonusses some with bards.

To compensate for the lost melee protection spells (blur and displace) add some tanking skills for the hitter classes, I suggest giving a bonus for having multiple tanks in a group: eg 2 warriors get a 10% bonus to defense. A warrior and an anti or a pally get a 15% bonus to defense. Two pallies or antis give a 10% bonus to defense. It would justify taking diffent tank-types. You could make it dependant on a skill. It makes sense that if you have multiple tanks you defense gets better. Think formations without all the difficult code. Maybe have this effect switch rate as well.

Up melee damage a bit. Remove or downgrade area spell damage for a lot of the classes. This should help ranger damage a lot. Make sure rangers don't have to retrieve their arrows from corpses and give them magic arrows.

The result would be:

Warriors - Tanks
Anti/Pally - Formations
Rogues - CR/scouting
Enchanters - Protection magic
Clerics - Healing/Vitting
Vokers - Spell Damage
Rangers - Melee Damage
Elementalists - Elemental offense/defense
Illuisionists - Debuffers/illusion spells
Bards - Buffers

The other classes would still be mixed classes.

Obviously this will effect mobs as well. I suggest adding some small stuff to the AI to spice things up: make mobs in zones operate in groups more, let the group mages spell up tanks, and let mages use spells like breach and dispel more often. You could have wandering mobs attach to a group of mobs when they wander in. For instance you are fighting a group of warrior mobs and a cleric mob wanders in and assists them and starts healing his buddies. It would make for a lot more tactics in fights. Which mob to kill first, what spells to use, what classes to bring etc. etc.

Codewise this shouldn't be too big of a problem since it involves a lot of spells swapped around and some increases or decreases in spell effects. The AI stuff is probably a lot more work but it can be added later.

My solution is likely not perfect but it is a start. Probably something needs to be done about some of the mixed classes to make sure you don't need a 15 man group for every zone.

Shoot at it.

Naled

PS. Chanters do not tank better than warriors. With all spells i still can't tank the same mob as most warriors i know can do :P
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Postby Stamm » Mon Mar 08, 2004 12:46 am

Chanters do tank better than warriors.

I was meaning specifically solo.

A chanter with decent AC, keeping blur and dragonscales on himself tanks better than a warrior with decent AC and a shield.
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Postby fotex » Mon Mar 08, 2004 8:31 am

Areandon wrote:Codewise this shouldn't be too big of a problem since it involves a lot of spells swapped around and some increases or decreases in spell effects.


Okay, get to work Areandon!
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Postby fotex » Mon Mar 08, 2004 8:51 am

Stamm wrote:Mithril Hall beholders? Not a challenge any more. Just keep em stunned and you're fine.


How do you keep them stunned? certainly not spook...
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Postby Areandon » Mon Mar 08, 2004 9:54 am

fotex wrote:
areandon wrote:Codewise this shouldn't be too big of a problem since it involves a lot of spells swapped around and some increases or decreases in spell effects.


Okay, get to work Areandon!


Give me the code and I will do so :P
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Vote "no" to elementalist downgrades.

Postby Demuladon » Mon Mar 08, 2004 10:40 am

I hate to rain on the "downgrade elementalist" parade, but:

If you downgrade elementalist solo ability, in fact even if you -deleted- every elementalist from the game, it would have little affect on zoning outcomes and no affect whatsoever of stopping the 'dumbing down' of the game.

In fact I argue the *exact* opposite - elementalists INCREASE player knowledge of the game.

Why? Because playing elementalist gives new players a chance to get out and explore the mud, learn where things are, learn the layout of Toril and to have a reasonable chance of getting home safely.

How do I know this? Because I *am* a relatively new player, with a 50th ele and two other 40+ chars.

The elementalist has allowed me to explore places my warrior and clerics could never go. I was keen to explore anyway but I have *had* to explore to complete the elementalist quests. I now have nearly 9000 rooms mapped in my zmud mapper. I have an item list file with thousands of object ID's including mob and location. My quest txt file is 67 pages long atm. I have learnt many many times more about the mud as an elementalist than I ever did as warrior or cleric.

Elementalists *do not* make zoning significantly easier or safer, if they did more that 1 would be invited to any particular zone group. Elementalists *do* help new players learn the mud.

Vote "no" to elementalist downgrades.
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Postby Sarell » Mon Mar 08, 2004 11:46 am

I think vokers with areas is fine.. one problem I do see is that mobs don't switch to vokers. If was Mr Scorp King and had done seelie once or twice and understood how important vokers were in fighting I would switch and poison their ass in a second. That would keep illusionists and chanters a bit more on their toes in actually keeping the main classes (read voker) alive rather than the mob switching to the insignificant druid or 8 trillion hitpoint cleric.

I think many people's sttement in this thread are way over the top 'this is easy, that is hard, vokers are demigods etc'. I see plenty of people getting smitten, my major concern in this is that often it is due to pure luck - read wingbuffet - rather than people doing their job well. I have absolutely no idea how removing vokers areas or realms would help make the game less 'dumbed down'. Lowering hitpoints across the board I think was a good start. Removing vokers areas would just make large fights even more luck based, there would just be even longer for X mob to do stupid proc and kill group. Wouldn't make them harder or more of a challenge, more boring if anything 'cos you would just have to do more runs on them until you got that lucky break.

"Paracs is no problem, beholders are done regularly. Neither scare me." .....yeh, but you're a dorf not a nancy pants not so drunk elf!!!! I have to totally disagree about seelie being a 'slug' btw. I was so happy when warriors actually had to start doing at least something rather than just standing there. I enjoy smiting that zone as a warrior, don't just feel like I should have made a 1000 HP cleric for once.
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Postby Lenefir » Mon Mar 08, 2004 2:33 pm

Stamm wrote:Chanters do tank better than warriors.

I was meaning specifically solo.

A chanter with decent AC, keeping blur and dragonscales on himself tanks better than a warrior with decent AC and a shield.

Lets change it a little... With no spells at all, or no other spells than scales and blur, but in both cases just relying on skills, this is (in my opinion as I think perhaps the cleric-classes has some better defensive skills than mage-classes but hadn't been able to verify) the outcome against the same single warrior-classed mob, just taking on pounding, not any kind of spellcasting or potion quaffing or the like.

Solo warrior with no spells at all or Solo spellcaster with no spells at all:
-> Spellcaster goes splat pretty fast.

Solo warrior with scales & blur or Solo spellcaster with no spells at all:
-> Spellcaster will have gone splat before the scales have even chipped off on the warrior.

Solo warrior with scales & blur or Solo spellcaster with scales & blur:
-> Spellcaster probably has worse AC, but if we think they both have -100, then warrior has (a lot of;) defensive skills that will help him keep the scales up longer than on the spellcaster. The spellcaster will normally take more hits than the warrior in the same time duration and thus scales chipping off faster. As soon as scales go poof, spellcaster goes splat pretty fast.

Solo warrior with no spells at all or Solo spellcaster with scales & blur:
-> Yes, the spellcaster will tank better until the scales drop. The question here is the warrior dead by this time, or how hurt is (s)he, because now the spellcaster will go splat pretty fast.
Last edited by Lenefir on Mon Mar 08, 2004 4:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Lenefir » Mon Mar 08, 2004 3:56 pm

Stamm wrote:
Lenefir wrote:1) No blur:
Hmm... Too bad... Less work during spellup, more corpses to the pile, and I get to cast fireball :P, but then, why bring an enchanter to cast fireball when there are other classes that do much more damage...

When you consider the arsenal of spells than can be dropped on a tank - armor, barkskin, dragonscales, blur, displace, vitality, elemental form... there's a whole lot that's seen as needed. Do we need them all? And I do think that enchanters are overworked... right now we take very few melee classes to zones in general, but if we were to take a more even split if and when melee is fixed, the enchanters will not be able to cope, and things will slow down.

And don't forget time stop, that spell means you can spellup a group considerably better than any other class, regardless if they have some of your spells at lesser effectiveness.

In a zone, there are mainly three (or four) spells an enchanter casts. Scales, blur, globe and (sometimes;) haste. Often you have a necro/lich that can haste/globe. Often the elementalist are putting up wards. Remove blur, and what do you have left? Downgrade scales to stone-similarity, and you might as well bring an(other) elementalist instead that can do the work just as well, and even do damage at the same time. Or you use shaman to stone and (bring a) necro/lich to globe & haste, and you get some nice other spells too.

And time stop is a useless spell if there aren't any pre-combat spells left to cast, as it drops as soon as anyone in the group are in a fight (or even faster sometimes due to some bugs). So spells dropping in-fight any other class could cast just as good. Besides, it is not always feasible to have time stop take up a 10th circle slot that you rather would have dragonscales in, no matter form (unless they get removed all together that is :þ).

Stamm wrote:
Lenefir wrote:2) No scale, or scale downgraded to stone effectivity:
[...]

I do see what you mean there, but what I was meaning was having dragonscales completely dwarf stoneskin. Having it last a fair bit longer than stoneskin, but have it chip significantly more than stoneskin, so that you don't have to constantly refresh it the way that you do now.

Sure, longer duration is nice, but what do you think makes them drop the fastest? The "short" time-length-no-chipped duration it has now, or the fighter-in-combat-chip-away?
(To save people the work of posting yet another post: combat-chip-away unless it is puny mobs.)

Stamm wrote:
Lenefir wrote:5) Power word blind:
[...] Is it in reality the soloing ability of elementalists you are complaining of, so want to nerf what spell seems the easiest solution, but other classes have too, and actually are helpful when growing up among aggro mobs or doing exp?

Yes, it's the soloing ability of elementalists, mainly. I spoke to Someone(tm) about this, and she felt that elementalists were... hmm. Lemme see if I can accurately paraphrase the intent of what she said... It's a grouping mud, and elementalists skills are most effective when used as a solo class.

You say having PWB not perm is going to hurt people xping? Why is this? If you're xping you PWB stuff then kill it. PWB only works on stuff that is lower level than you (for perm) so I don't see this hurting anybody but high levels.

If you kill a mob then it'll repop. If you PWB a mob then that's it gone for the entire duration of the reboot. Powerful indeed.

Remove perm PWB and you will just switch the problem over to other spells. It will not help the soloing ability on mobs above level 50 in any way, which probably most mobs that has caused the grumbling about PWB are. For all the <50 mobs you now will cause a lot of annoyance because you suddenly can get tracked by mobs long after you are gone from them. And it IS useful for doing exp, if you are not the one intended to get the exp, but someone that can't manage to kill a level 50 mob within the non-perm duration it has. Heck, I can't kill off a level 50 mob within that time-limit, unless I get lucky with my spell damage rolls, and having to PWB again so I can mem in peace, or just be able to cast without being bashed or shieldpunched is just plain annoying. And perm duration of tiny-weeny when at level 50, or not so tiny-weeny when at level 1, aggro mobs are quite useful. Removing it will probably just cause more frustration than it will help solo twinking in any way. In my opinion.

Stamm wrote:
Lenefir wrote:And have you really thought of who any of these changes will hurt the most? Those uber 3leet players that have the best equipment on almost all the eq-spots, or those relatively new that haven't had the time or opportuniy to collect decent gear yet. [...]

[...]

As well as that. Be honest... does your equipment really matter that much? A warrior needs around -100 ac witout spells. I say that is _not_ difficult to get. It isn't. Sure Stamm has significantly better than that, because he's got a ton of hps in addition. But he still tanks just the same as someone wearing a set of easy to get gear, if they fulful the basic requirements.

And for casters... well. The top level equipment is maybe only 5 hps better per slot than the easy to get stuff. Sure that means 100 hps difference between a stacked player and a player in crap gear. But does that really make a huge difference to what a group can and can't do? I suggest that it doesn't.

A group, no. But it will have impact on who and how many in the group will die to do the same things. I don't recall the easy-to-get eq gives decent AC, decent saving throws and at the same time decent hitpoints, so who is most likely to be the first ones to drop? The warrior stacked with all (or the not so all any longer) spells, or the other classes that help, but now has to rely plainly on fast rescue, good AC and lots of hitpoints?

And nobody ever answered what they thought was most boring: Doing exp to get back lost exp after (failed) resses (for those of us that don't have a buffer to die a gazillion times), or doing a zone a little faster and more painless than if you nerf a lot of spells?
"Being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you; and if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch [...]. When you do things right, people won't be sure you have done anything at all"

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Postby Sesexe » Mon Mar 08, 2004 4:52 pm

Areandon wrote:I do agree with Stamm on this one. A zone which takes 6 hours to complete isn't neccesarily difficult, it is long. If I understand correctly Stamm is asking that zones require more skill and more risk to complete, not more time. Most of us have lives and can't spend a whole day to run through a zone. The mud should accomodate those people as well in order for it to stay interesting.


More skill and more risk? Hrmm... If a zone doesn't take time as well, what is to stop people from twinking the zone over and over and over in record time once they learn the ultimate combo of classes/abilities to use? If a zone or parts of a zone become twinkable, you get equipment downgrades to the items within the zone. Any zone that can be done in 30mis to an hour and you can bypass 90% of the things put into the zone.. what else could one expect to happen to it?
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Postby Vahok » Mon Mar 08, 2004 5:09 pm

I think another problem is the fact as a whole, I think players are getting more skilled. Even if you change some classes abilities, players are skilled enough to adapt, and change tactics.

People will always find shortcuts, twinks, bugs, etc. to make a zone easier. Zone writers could never fathom every tactic, every trick to make a zone easy. Making the game challenging to all is very difficult. I don't think it is just a case of "remove this, upgrade that". We have all seen first hand how tactics have changed. "Tactic X doesn't work anymore, they changed the mob/room/whatever, let's try Tactic Y". I'm honestly not sure how to tackle the problem as whole. You fix one problem, and possibly create 2 more. I don't think the game is too easy, some places are just simply outdated. Of course a 2004 player will rip through a zone made in 1995. There still are many challenging places out there, and challenging ways to do exsisting places (do a zone all melee for fun and challenge).

Shrug, just random thoughts...
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Postby Areandon » Mon Mar 08, 2004 6:44 pm

Vahok wrote:I think another problem is the fact as a whole, I think players are getting more skilled. Even if you change some classes abilities, players are skilled enough to adapt, and change tactics.


No doubt. Eventually everything becomes easy. I at least tried to take a shot at getting the classes balanced. I do think that is something that needs to done. Because whatever discussion is made on the boards, it always winds down to downgrade this class to help that class. It's a human thing to always look at yourself first.


Sesexe wrote: If a zone doesn't take time as well, what is to stop people from twinking the zone over and over and over in record time once they learn the ultimate combo of classes/abilities to use?


If you do a zone enough times you will get better at it and will be able to do this faster. On the other hand making zones longer and longer means less and less people will be able to do those zones eventually killing off the mud. I don't think that is what we want. We need to find a solution to accomodate to people who have less time to play.

We could for instance try to make sure the best items require doing multiple zones (make quest eq far more better than zone eq), or make zones be doable in stages.
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Postby Sesexe » Mon Mar 08, 2004 7:53 pm

Please take a minute to think about each situation and all aspects of it's applications. From how it would affect players, to how it would change mobs.

Yes Or No?

If you give melee classes bonuses to area damage resistance (including area stun attacks), which bonuses can increase with the addition of any additional melee classes to the group, does this in turn:

1) Reduce the power of caster area damage?
2) Increase the power of melee?
3) Increase MUD difficulty?
4) Incease the need/desire for additional melee in groups?
5) Reduce the power of stun?
6) Increase the power and need of support classes?

(Take into consideration that the strong majority of mobs on the mud are flagged warrior as well. Ex. Doing gatehouse and having all giants grouped together, how effective would area damage then be? etc.)
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Postby Ashod » Mon Mar 08, 2004 8:17 pm

Ok.. I agree that invokers are way to powerful.... why bring anything but 3 invokers to smash a zone? cause you have no choice and thats about it..

on the issue of taking out invoker area... hmmm well if you do that.. then no one will have time for 4-6 hour zones.. and people will whine about not having time..

I would however like to see invokers loose area because it is way to easy to group 3 of them and turn a zone to embers.. the only suggestion that i might have would be to turn spells like ball lightning, incendiary clouds,thunderblast,meteorswarm... into a target damage spell.. at least leave invokers with there favorite spell inferno as area.

target dmg should be balanced enough so that you can kill mobs fast.. but not so fast that you might aswell have not made the changes

that would leave one invoker to area effect... and the rest having to
target tactically..

something else that might be a consideration is to make invokers to take damage from the area spells the cast reguardless... this might slow them down a bit in an all out assult.. making them have to wait on healing of some sort...
invokers call forth extremely powerful magic.. so much so that it would weaken them greatly... ie.. take hp from them..

this also might make heal potions and such more valueable in everyday zone groups...

just my 2 cents.. weather it is wanted or not.
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Postby Corth » Tue Mar 09, 2004 9:34 pm

I hate to say it, but you guys are kicking a dead horse. Gameplay, rather than being a priority, is an afterthought. They ought to get rid of the forum and replace it with "OOC Logs" or something of that nature. Of course Stamm is correct (in general). People with at least half a brain have been saying so for years now. But its beside the point, isnt it? Hey, we still have from 20-50 people on at any given time.. thats one hell of a chat board!

Don't forget to VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE :)

Corth
Having said all that, the situation has been handled, so this thread is pretty much at an end. -Kossuth

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Postby Shar » Tue Mar 09, 2004 10:31 pm

Corth wrote:I hate to say it, but you guys are kicking a dead horse. Gameplay, rather than being a priority, is an afterthought. They ought to get rid of the forum and replace it with "OOC Logs" or something of that nature. Of course Stamm is correct (in general). People with at least half a brain have been saying so for years now. But its beside the point, isnt it? Hey, we still have from 20-50 people on at any given time.. thats one hell of a chat board!

Don't forget to VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE :)

Corth


Corth, on a good week you are connected to TorilMUD between 20 and 40 hours. You are generally afk aprox 70% of that time. You lend nothing to these boards or mud anymore except lame, acerbic reactions. Contrary to what you (and people with other loud voices just like you) have to say about this mud, you sure do spend a lot of time here. The staff as a whole is very tired of blocking out attacks like these. I *know* the mortals are. Who do you think it is that deals with every single complaint that mortals have? Players are bored with this kind of thing. We get asked *all* the time to remove or edit posts of this kind. This happens within the context of mud gameplay as well.

Regardless of what we "do" or "don't do" here, your comments (as well as the comments of others that fall into this category) generally go ignored by the staff. The sad part about that is, if you have to repeatedly ignore posts from certain posters, you tend to wind up ignoring that poster entirely. This may be the case as to why you may be feeling you arent getting "heard". Threads full of posters such as I described above will be ignored as well. None of the Sr. staff have time to sift through tons of crap to find that 1oz. of gold.

This thread was useful. Your post was out of line.

Your attitude is yours to keep, should you choose to, but your negativity is getting old. You shout at the top of your lungs and people can't help but to hear you. You whisper, and people have to listen to hear. Your posts are like a foghorn in the background. That grating noise on the subway that everyone is used to but nobody likes. Blocked out. How about changing your tune up a bit?

This issue is not being ignored. We have 3 coders. They are *all* overworked. They work here *in spite* of players like you, *in spite* of comments like yours, not because of them. You have good ideas. I *know* you do. I've seen them! Where are they? You are probably thinking -I posted those thoughts a long time ago, nobody cared, and I'm not gonna bother posting them again!- Fact is, we care, we always have and we always will. Believe me or not, it won't change anything.

You'll attract more attention with beautiful posts. Ugly is shunned.

I know you'll respond to this post in one way or another. I'm not dumb. I'm fine with being flamed. I'm even fine with people picking apart everything I say. It happens regardless of anything I think or do, so feel free. Nothing you can say in this tone will make the mud any better. You told everyone in this thread that they were beating a dead horse for having constructive ideas. Well, I say *you* are beating a dead horse by being so blatantly hateful.

What did this mud ever do to you? Provide you with countless hours of entertainment? Evoke strong emotion, love, hate, need, greed? Gee, I'm sorry it is such a burden for you to come here, you obviously hate it. What I'm not sorry for- what I'm glad for- are all the other posters and players who play/post with respect and dignity. This isn't all that hard to do. I've seen you do it. The staff here even goes out of its way to make sure everyone has a place to voice a complaint. We have several channels open to every single player out there but this BBS is not yours.

This BBS is the way the staff has to keep a pulse on issues that affect the mud. It is a breeding place for ideas, conversation, serious and not so serious discussion. Debate is *sure* to follow many issues. We encourage that. What is not encouraged *should* be known by all. You can read about it in "help rules" online, but if you aren't willing to abide that rule here on this BBS, you'll lose your priveledge here on this BBS.

If you want your ideas implemented, be patient and think things through, like you have in the past. Post. Don't shout. Don't be that annoying background noise everyone has to tune out. If you want to be part of the solution, *stop* being part of the problem. I thought this was common sense.

Every minute of every day is brand new. Never been lived before. Turn over a new leaf. If it dosen't work out, you can always inch your way back underneath the old one.
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Postby moritheil » Wed Mar 10, 2004 12:28 am

1. Sarell, I see you also think that mob AI tweaking might provide more challenge.

2. All good and well, Stamm, but as far as I can tell most people are still leery of such things. Do we cater to the top 10% of players or the rest? Which way is right? This isn't an easy question, but maybe there's a way to increase things for the top 10% without pissing off the other 90%?

3. Let me just point something out. People who write new zones will ASSUME things based on the current level of ability. If players keep getting nerfed, you wind up with zones shot to hell, and then the eq is either insanely good and imbalanced (leading to post-imp downgrades which piss people off), or not worth the fight (because the fights are harder than they were projected to be at the time of writing). There is a considerable turnaround time for new zones, and it really helps coherence if the player power levels do not fluctuate wildly.

4. Corth, as much as I dislike ad hominem attacks, I must agree that I really cannot see the point of your last post. What good is there in being nihilistic about this? It's made by people, and people can fix it.
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Postby moritheil » Wed Mar 10, 2004 12:36 am

PS - Realized I didn't respond Re: Mob AI Upgrades.

See, the problem with your saying 'that leads to a vicious cycle' is that you assume that we'll be upgrading players again. Guess what? We simply won't. Problem solved.
Yotus group-says 'special quest if you type hi dragon'

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Silena group-says 'he was so fat and juicy..couldnt resist'
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Postby Sesexe » Wed Mar 10, 2004 12:38 am

Speaking for myself here.

I don't usually have a problem with Corth's posts. I find them funny and entertaining, because he's putting humor to something I personally find frustrating here. Something that makes everything I do feel so.. so.. futile.

Example of Futility. Writing a 21 page honey worded thought-out post and getting not one staff response from it.

So futility comes from a lack of feeling like you're making a difference or being heard. Nobody is probably even reading this, so I don't know why I'm even bothering to type it. Must be because I still have hope, or I'm just pathetic. I feel blocked out from the staff and players all the time. So I often get angry.

Sure, you can say the old addage that 'honey gets more flys then vinegar', but when you run out of honey, sometimes all you have left is vinegar, especially when you gave all your honey away and noone came back. And even when you try using honey again after selling vinegar for so long, everyone just thinks it's more vinegar. So you make your vinegar even stronger.

I'm trying to use honey nowadays. Really I am. I hate myself for being spiteful and angry more then I dislike being ignored.

I feel like there is no one on my side. Just wish I didn't feel that way. Like someone cared or shared a view. Ignoring a problem or failing to comment on it doesn't make it go away. I just don't understand the big deal about stating an opinion on it, and making it known that it is your personal opinion and not the muds. You're people too, but why do I feel like sometimes the staff forgets that?

When was the last time a staff member posted something to the effect of "I'll take that into consideration." or "I'll think about that." These don't mean you're going to do it, or even agree or dissagree, but lets us know you are listening.

Hi Dalar. I know you can't hear me, because I've used too many words. *sigh*
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Postby Jhorr » Wed Mar 10, 2004 2:15 am

One of the problems in balancing the MUD is that there is no benchmark to tune all the variables to. Do you adjust things so that a balanced group can finish jot in an hour? 2 hours? TF in 3 hours? Hulburg in 5? What? The open-endedness of this game is what makes it interesting.

I'll never say this MUD is too easy until Tiamat is dying on a regular basis. She has always been the ultimate fight on this MUD and, until proven otherwise, will remain so. There are still many fights and quests that are challenging with the current classes. They are just not done as much because it's frankly hard to find the right group for them, especially during the daytime hours. I am thinking of Kazgoroth, Forka, Aralesh, not to mention Avernus/BC, Hulburg, TTF....

As far as downgrading invokers goes, I think they're fine how they are. They are perhaps the most boring class to play already since they are truly a one-trick pony: all we can do is nuke. Their power comes in numbers and frankly taking more than 3 to a zone gets cumbersome in terms of coordinating area spells. Even with 3 invokers, many rounds are lost because inevitably someone gets confused as to which circle they are on, they lag out and lose track, etc. Even so, spells fail and don't always land especially versus high level mobs with MR. And if it's a dragon, forget it unless you have a competent illusionist. Besides, we can't solo anything.

One way this wipe is different than in the past is that the easier zones take less time. The hard ones however don't. Some zones like Hulburg don't accomodate the usual tricks and it's rare a whole group can finish together. It's a considerable time effort, often taking 6+ hours to complete with current groups. Take me back to the days of 4 hour normal jot, 6 hour invasion, 8 hour scorp/seers, 20 hour Tiamat? No thanks.
Corth
Sojourner
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Postby Corth » Wed Mar 10, 2004 2:38 am

Shar:

In all honesty I was not trying to pick a fight with the immorts, though I can see how it would come off that way. Thats just how I react when I see the same good idea for the 20th time, knowing full well that ignoring it the past 19 times explains why the mud is pretty weak now. Anyway, to the extent that you or the other immorts were insulted, I apologize.

Corth (afk MUCH more than 70% of the time)
Having said all that, the situation has been handled, so this thread is pretty much at an end. -Kossuth



Goddamned slippery mage.

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