Defense Nerfed

[Doppelganger]

Is it discussion about etiquette?

Want me to quote Halaster's remarks from different topics through the forum to consider if he is polite enough for his point to be taken into account?

I haven't seen anyone jumping on Halaster, Morgenes, Xygax or any other staffer personally. If there was sarcasm and excessive passion then it's all about particular change, not about it's implementors.

If you don't want any discussion on the matter then lock the topic. People usually get the message.

[jmordetsky]

Woa. Good post. I am inclined to add my 2cents though it may add nothing to the conversation . If I had my way, we would restart this whole thread with this post.

:arrow: Fights progress much more quickly.

PRO Less 15-minute spar fests, spam hunting, and untouchable warriors.

CON Less reaction time, room for emotes, and a more difficult time describing the flow of combat due to both its brevity and a player's need to keep an eye on the code.  

I had considered this as well, after I was done crying to baby jesus to give me my old combat stats back. I actually like the fact that fights *end* faster, but I don't like that they *move* faster. I feel if I am in the wastes that I am playing "keyboard" quake and that I need to hover over the word flee. I've macroed "f" to make attempt to spam flee in all directions. Seriously.

Prior to now, combat was a little less stressfull because you were hit less. Lets say, (I'm making these numbers up) prior to the new change you were being hit 2/10 attacks and you could stand 6. You had 8 "attacks" worth of time to breath, emote etc + you still had 4 hits you could stand and the fight would still keep going. Now it's more like you're being hit 5/10 rounds, and that room is gone, so the fight ends faster but so do you chances to emote etc.

So I was thinking, what if we just slowed down the rate of scroll and made hits much more dangerous? That way you would have plenty of time to flee, emote etc but at the same time if you did choose to push it, you were risking a lot. This seems to me like it would really balance out combat on arm.

:arrow: Attributes play a much larger role.

PRO New players with high rolls might feel like they are able to immediately produce or contribute.

CON Some players might begin to seek high attribute scores in lieu of a practiced technique for survival and place an unhealthy emphasis on the code's importance to a "role".  This may encourage players to select stat orders that encourage higher survivability over an accurate representation of their character, as well as more race combinations that provide better starting statistics.

Not a fan. I think the con here vastly out weighs the pro. Ugh, how much more often will we see n00bs suiciding for better stats? And do we really want that 1 day d-elf with a good roll to really beable to pown an older bynner with crap stats? Ick.

:arrow: Desert mortality rate will likely increase.

Lone hunters, travellers, and small groups will likely experience more situations where someone has an accident.  Dazed by a carru, swarmed by gortok, overpowered by scrab.  I am unsure if brand new characters will advance more quickly in their defense, or if the change has created a system where blows simply land more often across the board.  If the second option is the case, then it will favor the stronger animals of the desert.

PRO Some may feel that this change is realistic, forces people to respect the dangerous nature of certain creatures, and creates a "harsher" feel for the desert.

CON Some may feel that this makes the desert seem too dangeorus, makes more difficult a role many enjoy (the lone hunter), and hurts the game by encouraging more NPC vs. PC death - which one could get from any game.

I'm tossed up on this. I like a dangerous desert. But I hate getting insta smashed my npcs. I think more dangerous npcs with more room for players to enter commands might be nice. (see point 1) I also think daze introduced enough new danger without the defense change.

I'd rather suffer the 15 minute spars, the spam hunting, and the untouchable warriors of the world if it lends more opportunity and time for players to interact with players (and the world) during training and/or live combat.

-LoD

I am inclined to agree.

[Quirk]

I suspect things are worse right now than they'll be in the future. PCs haven't been failing at defence nearly as frequently as they would have been had they lived their entire lives under the new code. This means their defensive skills are correspondingly weak. The next wave of PCs will have stronger defences for the same time played, and it's impossible for us as players to tell now what combat will finally come to look like.

[naatok]

You know,

I'm sick of people griping about how code changes or bug fixes negatively impact (or potentially negatively impact) their characters.

Want to know why?

First, these gripes almost ALWAYS come out when new code changes are released BEFORE any players have had experience with how they do or do not affect their pcs.

Second, Alot of the changes are fixes or attempts to fix perceived imbalances with existing code.  I see people bitching and whining about 'Magickers are too powerful'  We can't defend ourselves against them and they're untouchable...even to a mighty 70 day ranger.

Well.  You know what?  Here is your freakin' balance.  Staff LISTENS to us and they LOOK at the code.  CONSTANTLY.  They work it and play with it on test ports and then they fix the things we whine about.....so some people can whine about the fact that it was fixed.

This code is a FIX to a problem with the combat system that has existed for as long as I can remember.  So your bad-ass isn't so bad-ass anymore?  Sorry about that.  But, guess what?  EVERY other badass in the game was equally as affected (or not, depending on the case).  And guess what?  Maybe your bad-ass SHOULDN'T have BEEN so bad-ass in the freakin' first place!  Because what made him or her so.....was a freakin' BUG in the code!

*sigh*

I'm sorry if I seem irate.  I am.
I've been playing this game for the past 13 or 14 years and I've NEVER seen a code fix or a code change that was implemented that totally screwed characters in the game (except maybe the soldier speed at responding to criminals....but there was GOOD intention and GOOD reason for that, thanks to some pretty twinked out criminal types).  Glad to see that has been normalized somewhat, and I HOPE there aren't any people out there just waiting to spam steal/pick/backstab/throw poison knives just because they think THAT change will make it easier to get away with.   :evil:

Let's just wait and see what happens in game play before we go off the cuff about changes (ESPECIALLY changes that FIX existing problems with code!!!).

You know, I see alot of the same jumping to conclusions and instant reactionism that I've heard players complain about from staff.  Well, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, fuckers!  Give the staff a chance!

Not a SINGLE one of us can honestly say.....with any sense of integrity whatsoever that the Arm staff has not CONSISTENTLY improved our enjoyment of the game.  Unless of course you're a pkilling, twink, code abusing scumbag.  And I feel safe in saying that the vast majority of us do not want those types around anyway.  They can go infest Harshlands for all I care.
:evil:

[Nusku]

I suspect things are worse right now than they'll be in the future. PCs haven't been failing at defence nearly as frequently as they would have been had they lived their entire lives under the new code. This means their defensive skills are correspondingly weak. The next wave of PCs will have stronger defences for the same time played, and it's impossible for us as players to tell now what combat will finally come to look like.

I was just getting around to this thread again to post something almost exactly along the lines of what Quirk just said. Since Quirk already said it, I'll just quote him for emphasis, and then extend it slightly with a theoretical example to demonstrate.

Imagine that you have the Silt Snorting skill. Due to a bug, around the time your Silt Snorting skill hit 40% of its maximum, you stopped failing except very, very rarely. As a result, your Silt Snorting skill never got any better. The immortals find and fix the bug; suddenly, you're failing Silt Snorting a whole lot more. Everyone screams, "Silt Snorting is NERFED!" However, the truth is, after you've used it for a while, your Silt Snorting skill will be up to par again, and the next generation of Silt Snorters will probably never even realize anything was ever wrong in the first place.

[Eternal]

I like Naatok, this is the 2nd time today he's made me think that.

The Staff (Morg and Halaster in particular) have been -awesome- at revealing almost any change, no matter how major, to the playerbase at large.  Often before it even goes in place.  While I question the effectiveness of this, as it does promote (like the Munkey said above) pre-guessing and complaining about 'possible' effects... I greatly appreciate a more transparent way of doing things.  I'm still on the fence on this one, but I do think it is a solid fix that will result in better combat overall.

They aren't out to get you, any of them, and especially not those like Hal and Morgenes who work so hard on both the code and play aspects of ArmageddonMUD.

Lord Templar Hard Nose shakes his head in disgust.

Edited because I realized I was including thoughts from the other recent changes thread.

[LoD]

This code is a FIX to a problem with the combat system that has existed for as long as I can remember.  So your bad-ass isn't so bad-ass anymore?  Sorry about that.  But, guess what?  EVERY other badass in the game was equally as affected (or not, depending on the case).  And guess what?  Maybe your bad-ass SHOULDN'T have BEEN so bad-ass in the freakin' first place!  Because what made him or her so.....was a freakin' BUG in the code!

I am sure that the Imm Staff did some testing before putting this bug fix into effect to make sure that it wasn't going to completely change the way the game played.  So they should have known how it was going to effect the players.  Much of this could have easily been avoided by an announcement prior to the change letting them know the details.

Code Select Expand

Dear players,

We have located a bug in the combat code system that has been inflating numbers when calculating a character's defense.  We have fixed this bug.  As a result, several characters may experience a decrease in their defensive ability because this bug was basically preventing advancement in that area.  

Please be careful in the near future as encounters with NPC's and PC's may have changed with the fix. (i.e. A character who could blow through scrab might now find himself challenged.)

While this bug addresses a problem in the calculation of one's defense, it does not alter or change a character's ability to eventually return to their previous level of proficiency.  Your character may require some additional time to develop now that the bug has been fixed.

We will be monitoring the behavior of the adjusted code in the next few weeks to make sure everything is working smoothly.  Please email the mud account if you notice anything out of the ordinary.

Something like this might go a long way to let players understand what is going on, instead of simply moving forward without a single word.  Players had no idea what was going on, and came to the boards to gripe.  Just talk to us.  Tell us what's going on.  You don't have to give us all the dirty details, just let us know what is important.

EDIT: Reply to Eternal removed.  No longer needed. :wink:

It's not that people are upset that there's a new rule.  It's that the rule was changed in the middle of the game without warning.  There's a big difference between these, and I think that a post like the one above could've alleviated a lot of the guesswork, griping, and assumptions.

-LoD

[Eternal]

Sorry about that LoD.  I removed that part when I realized I was talking about the 'daze' thread.  Heh.

[Morgenes]

Re: Posting>

  We all try and post changes as soon as they go live.  Occassionally crashes happen and code is moved live before we intend it to.  It's just a fact of life right now.  Why don't we post before hand?  Often we will see a jump in speculation and the like on what this code will mean to the game overall, and we'd rather people have the ability to try a change before posting on it, instead of posting without knowledge of it.

We do appreciate those of you who have waited and tried the code before posting on it.  We are still listening, and as always the gears are turning behind the scenes in the ever changing landscape of Armageddon.

[jmordetsky]

I suspect things are worse right now than they'll be in the future. PCs haven't been failing at defence nearly as frequently as they would have been had they lived their entire lives under the new code. This means their defensive skills are correspondingly weak. The next wave of PCs will have stronger defences for the same time played, and it's impossible for us as players to tell now what combat will finally come to look like.

I was just getting around to this thread again to post something almost exactly along the lines of what Quirk just said. Since Quirk already said it, I'll just quote him for emphasis, and then extend it slightly with a theoretical example to demonstrate.

Imagine that you have the Silt Snorting skill. Due to a bug, around the time your Silt Snorting skill hit 40% of its maximum, you stopped failing except very, very rarely. As a result, your Silt Snorting skill never got any better. The immortals find and fix the bug; suddenly, you're failing Silt Snorting a whole lot more. Everyone screams, "Silt Snorting is NERFED!" However, the truth is, after you've used it for a while, your Silt Snorting skill will be up to par again, and the next generation of Silt Snorters will probably never even realize anything was ever wrong in the first place.

That actually makes me feel a lot better about it.

[jmordetsky]

You know,

I'm sick of people griping about how code changes or bug fixes negatively impact (or potentially negatively impact) their characters.

I don't think that's fair. There is a good deal of griping on this thread but there is also a good deal of feedback and a general request for trying to understand what happened and why it happened.

Unfortunately these threads tend to get pretty passionate, but thats not to say that those passionate cries aren't accomplishing anything. *Alot* of people were *really* unhappy about this change, and this as really our only outlet for discussion of such.

That said, some of the posts on here are flat our nasty. I agree and the nasty posters are poop faces. Dirty, dirty poop faces.

BUT!

Just because someone looked at the code change negatively and speaks out about it doesn't make them a griper or a poopface. They are just expressing dislike and should, (imh loving of democratic process o) be heard.

[Dresan]

Nusku post brings me back to my original questions in my post.  I don't understant the nature of the bug.  I'll try to elaborate. Lets assume a PC had a combined maxxed defence score in all skills. For arguements sake lets say that total combined score was 60.

With the bug were they fighting at 60/60 defence or 80/60 defence?
Without the bug will my PC ever reach its old defence potential? Again before the bug was fixed i was making sure my PC was getting trained well. While i can understand that the bug hindered it a bit, i'm slightly skeptical to the actual amount that it has. Therefore with my PC i think i'm actually seeing what it would be even without the bug. I must admit its not as bad as other people's since i did put alot of work into making sure it was getting trained. People are now slowly kicking his ass with just a shield in his hand as opposed to barely touching him like before(therefore it might not be as bad as some people think). Coincidently i find it interesting that he seems to be getting hit just as much if not more when he finally wields his weapon and begins fighting back, might just be me though.

I'm not actually asking for answers, since it is going into the code alot(thought wont complain if i get them). This is just food for thought. While i am sure getting hit more will make it easier to increase defence skills and balance it out a bit like before i am not quite sure if the bug was boosting up a person's defences up to its max or would have done so beyond it. If its the first then we just need to suck it up until it balances out like it was before, might take longer but we'll eventually get there however if its the latter then we need to give it some time and then see if this is the type of combat we want to be seeing in the game.

[Forty Winks]

From what I've garnered from the posts made by the imms (from a player's perspective) the bug boosted your defense to one that portrayed a higher level of the skill then what it really was. So, for example, a "buff-body" skill at 60/100 would have been portrayed at 90/100 (maybe not that much of a difference, just using it as an example) with the bonuses. What the fix did was drop the extra bonuses so your skills would be portrayed as they should be, which in the "buff-body" skill would make it back to 60/100, which is where the percieved drop in the skill came from. In time, after the skill has been used enough, the skill will return back to the 90/100, but this time without the bonuses applied.

I'm surprised people havn't mentioned this already, as it is HUGE for this fix, is that skills that branch from your defensive skills will branch QUICKER. The larger the previous applied bonuses were, the damn quicker your skills will branch. So while you guys are all suffering right now, there'll be some great benefits down the road.

Things like this only come to show how foolish posters look who come onto the DB for rants, gripes, and complaints (especially the disrespectful ones) of BRAND NEW changes or adjustments to the game. Give it some time, test it out with hard-coded experience as the imms have suggested, and -then- post once you have at -decent- idea of what the code will actually do and affect play.

[edited to add] Though I'll have to admit, it -is- a discussion board. Complaints and rants are fine as long as they aren't made in a personal or disrespectful manner, but constructive criticism would be much more productive and better to read to the DB community as well as to those who the post might apply to. What's wrong with some posts (in this thread as well as others) are the fact that they are written mainly as a whine, or a manner to vent anger, out to whoever would read it. I personally think people have the option NOT to read posts written in that kind of language or intention.

-FW

[Dalmeth]

I'm surprised people havn't mentioned this already, as it is HUGE for this fix, is that skills that branch from your defensive skills will branch QUICKER. The larger the previous applied bonuses were, the damn quicker your skills will branch. So while you guys are all suffering right now, there'll be some great benefits down the road.

Newsflash : There are only two defensive skills : shield use and parry.  The weapon types add bonuses as you get better, I don't know if getting hit helps any, and the styles add a static bonus to parry.

[jmordetsky]

I'm surprised people havn't mentioned this already, as it is HUGE for this fix, is that skills that branch from your defensive skills will branch QUICKER. The larger the previous applied bonuses were, the damn quicker your skills will branch. So while you guys are all suffering right now, there'll be some great benefits down the road.

Newsflash : There are only two defensive skills : shield use and parry.  The weapon types add bonuses as you get better, I don't know if getting hit helps any, and the styles add a static bonus to parry.

I'm pretty sure the more you get hit, the better you get at avoiding getting hit, if you have a weapon or not.

So, you would get better faster...You might not branch but.

[Forty Winks]

I'm surprised people havn't mentioned this already, as it is HUGE for this fix, is that skills that branch from your defensive skills will branch QUICKER. The larger the previous applied bonuses were, the damn quicker your skills will branch. So while you guys are all suffering right now, there'll be some great benefits down the road.

Newsflash : There are only two defensive skills : shield use and parry.  The weapon types add bonuses as you get better, I don't know if getting hit helps any, and the styles add a static bonus to parry.

True, there are but two defensive -skills-, but there is also the base defensive skill that -all- guilds recieve, which is affected by this fix in the code, more or less.

A character's defense is his/her ability to avoid getting hit. It can be thought of as an ability to dodge, coupled with the ability to make the most out of whatever meager armor one might be wearing.

Even a fully-developed defense doesn't guarantee against blows landing. One's defense is figured into the combat calculations, and it's sufficient to say that the higher one's defense, the less likely one is to get hit.

This is not the same as armor (q.v.).

So actually, the "Newsflash" would apply to you, Dalmeth. Getting hit does increase your defenses.  :roll:

[flurry]

I think after we have more time to get used to this, people won't see it as such a radical change.

Remember all the dire concerns about stat ordering?   And once it went in and a little time went by, I don't think there's been a peep about it.  This has happened on a few different changes since I started playing.

[Cegar]

This is in no way similar to stat ordering.

[Cyrian20]

This is in no way similar to stat ordering.

Agreed, the players' worries were voiced and promptly set aside by explainations from the staff. Add to that no one lost their three month old character to the sudden surprise.  :evil:

[Quirk]

I think the people who're hating on the haters don't really understand the issue. I hope that's the case, anyway, or we've got an ugly case of sycophancy going on here.

Here's what seems to have happened: there's been a bug that has adversely and apparently severely affected defensive skill gain. Making numbers up for illustrative purposes, characters who've lived maybe six hundred hours and spent three hundred of them sparring are being credited for maybe a hundred in their defensive skills account when they were being credited for four hundred before. The bug's done other things too, but this is the effect that the GDB's turned into a volcano over.

(I'm basing this primarily on Nusku's confirmation that my take on it was roughly correct. If the majority of the coders don't think that it would have made that big a difference to defensive skill over a thirty-day playtime period, say, then obviously the rest of what I've got to say is flawed - but in that case things aren't going to sort themselves out in time, and it would be good to know about that now.)

Understandably, people are unhappy at seeing a lot of their effort go to waste. Possibly man-years (at standard 40-hour weeks) of work have been lost in total, across the mud. I've yet to see anyone stand forward from the staff and go, "Yes. This is a problem."

Had it been acknowledged that this would be a problem in the first place, before the fix was hurried in, things needn't have come to where we are now. It would have been nice to see a bit of consultation with the players before it was fixed, to see how they felt about the potential effects and to brainstorm ways to mitigate them. And there were ways to mitigate them: the effects of the bug could have been phased out gradually through smaller changes over time (more work for the coder, but vastly less disruptive to the RP everyone else) or there could have been a one-time readjustment script run on the pfiles where new defence skill levels were set based on guild and playtime and possibly some percentage of the highest offensive skill (a poor approximation of what the defence should have been, maybe, but potentially a much better one than we have at the moment).

Saying, "well, once you've lost that character and started a new one, the problems should clear up" or "your character can work back to where she would have been had we not had the bug" isn't a fix. It's a pretty strong "fuck you" to the playerbase. And, c'mon, coders, guys, you're better than this. I'm not personally affected by this much, so I'm not asking for you to apologise to me, but I think it would be nice if you at least said "sorry" to the many long-suffering folk who are affected (as well as the few hot-heads like Synthesis who, like it or not, have a legitimate grievance this time around).

[spawnloser]

Your interpretation, Quirk, on what seems to have happened is wrong.

What happened was that there was a bug that affected how bonuses were calculated for defense.  Noone's skills were affected, except in that they were defending better than they should have, so were failing less often and thus were gaining in skills slower than they would have been if those bonuses had been calculated correctly.  The bug has been fixed, and now it LOOKS like people's skills have fallen, but what really happened is that those inappropriate bonuses went away.

Noone died to a bug, they may have died to no longer unwittingly gaining from a bug that they could not determine was a bug by any means.

[Quirk]

Your interpretation, Quirk, on what seems to have happened is wrong.

What happened was that there was a bug that affected how bonuses were calculated for defense.  Noone's skills were affected, except in that they were defending better than they should have, so were failing less often and thus were gaining in skills slower than they would have been if those bonuses had been calculated correctly.

My interpretation was precisely that, if you read back over what I said. You've just explained the mechanic by which the bug severely and adversely affected skill gain.

The bug has been fixed, and now it LOOKS like people's skills have fallen, but what really happened is that those inappropriate bonuses went away.

Yes; and their skills are also rather lower than they would be if the bug had never existed, which is the point I was making. For the last however-long-it-was, skill gain in these skills has been severely reduced from what it ought to have been. The result is that a lot of old warriors are effectively relatively newbie at defence despite having put in the time and work to theoretically have improved their skills.

[talus]

Your interpretation, Quirk, on what seems to have happened is wrong.

What happened was that there was a bug that affected how bonuses were calculated for defense.  Noone's skills were affected, except in that they were defending better than they should have, so were failing less often and thus were gaining in skills slower than they would have been if those bonuses had been calculated correctly.  The bug has been fixed, and now it LOOKS like people's skills have fallen, but what really happened is that those inappropriate bonuses went away.

Noone died to a bug, they may have died to no longer unwittingly gaining from a bug that they could not determine was a bug by any means.

If these inappropriate bonuses were causing our characters to gain skills at a slower rate than they would have been gaining them at had the bugs not been there, it follows that the slower rates at which our characters gained skills at were also inappropriate.  

The misplaced bonuses have been removed, but our characters' skills were not fixed retroactively to reflect on the appropriate rate of skill improvement. So I suppose that means that our characters are now inappropriately weak because their current skill levels still reflect the inappropriate rate of skill improvement.

The code is the fabric upon which we weave our characters, and if the fabric with which they are interwoven gets changed, our characters will get changed, too.

I really don't know what to say to my fellow players other than that we'll just have to roll with the punches. Maybe we can hope that the staff may eventually see it fit to provide our characters with some amount of skill compensation to simulate the skill levels they would have had if they had developed without the constriction of the bug crutch.

That being said, I hope that I'm not coming off as some sort of ingrateful pissant to the staff. I'm happy to say that I am -not- sucking up when I say that I appreciate the work and effort they pour into this game tremendously.

[flurry]

This is in no way similar to stat ordering.

It is different, but what I was getting at is that there have been a few times when people have gotten upset over changes, and inevitably the worries blow over.  Either it gets tweaked or people adjust and realize it wasn't as bad as they thought.  Stat ordering was just the most recent example that came to mind.  The weather code is another one.  I remember it happening with a change to contact too.  Looking back, those changes might seem insignificant compared to this, but you wouldn't have known it by the reactions some people had at the time.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that all the concerns and complaints are unfounded.  I have concerns about these changes too.  I think this is an important discussion.  I'm just saying I think we should relax a little and have a longer-term view of this.

[Morgenes]

One thing I keep hearing is that this is somehow only affecting the characters.  Just to be clear, this is a 'sauce for the goose' situation.  NPCs are equally affected by this, making them get hit more often than they previously would have.  By no means was this something where we specifically targetted PCs with the change.