Recent Poison Updates Questions

[Riev]

I find that in certain areas, poisons and poisoned weapons tend to stock up to the point where you eventually have to start just junking the 100 bloodburned arrows you have because you need room to make MORE bloodburned arrows on your next Poison-having character.

Degrade is nice, and I'm sure staff will eventually balance it out. If I put peraine on a blade and you don't use it for 3 in game years... it probably shouldn't be as potent as it used to be.
Cures, similarly, get stockpiled and never used.
Spice, also, before degradation came in.

The one thing I DO dislike about degradation is that this game moves in days and weeks. I might be able to get 20 cures today, but the RP event where I might need them can't come together for another RL month. Are the cures still bad, because I wanted to make sure I got them before the event due to OOC circumstances?

[stoicreader]

The one thing I DO dislike about degradation is that this game moves in days and weeks. I might be able to get 20 cures today, but the RP event where I might need them can't come together for another RL month. Are the cures still bad, because I wanted to make sure I got them before the event due to OOC circumstances?

When I go on a road trip with my son, I always pack the greenest bananas and pick the freshest of ingredients. If I'm going into a war, and my life depends on the freshness of a cure, it's my job as a leader to prioritize fresh cures.

From a code perspective. Keep the cure on you! If you know spice will degrade at xyz rate. If you put it under your bed, it degrades all day everyday. If you log out with it however, you 3x to 10x it's lifespan depending on how often you're logged on.

It would be nice if we can tell how fresh something is. "This smells completely stale and has a crusty film on it."
"This looks like it's mostly stale"
"This looks like it might be partly stale."
"This is starting to go stale"
"The colors are starting to go dull."
"This has full color and a nice strong smell."
"This looks freshly made."

[downer]

There is a lot in this thread that makes me regret playing Arm again. 

FOIC: Only took 8 years of playing and updates being made to poison for me, and from what I can tell others, to learn the poisons were craftable at all.  Really good system, if your game is known for being newbie friendly, inclusive, and helpful.  What's our tagline again?

Cures: This, is already one of the shittiest features in Arm.  Changes have been made, that have made it worse, and I guess better to use, but the player end seems to just get shittier and shittier.  More poisonous creatures more places.  Stronger longer lasting poisons.  Prohibitively expensive cures based on "average Zalanthan incomes" don't forget the virtual world.  Getting cures, has always been a massive shit show.  I don't believe I've ever seen an organization handles cures well, even clans designed to create them.  And you genuinely believe that making cures decay, is going to be an ADDITIVE experience to Armageddon?  What happened when you made burn cures, less convenient to obtain hmm?  People quit going places.  Be smart, protect your playerbase.

[Halaster]

We're still fiddling with the exact numbers, but it's going to be in the realm of RL months.

Cures will be dependent on the type (vial or tablet) and the strength.
Poisons will be depenedent on the type (grishen, peraine, etc) and the strength.

Riev pretty much explained why.  I agree, we need to factor in realism and balance, while not making it a huge hassle.  But it should require effort and something you have to plan for, work towards, and revisit every once in a while.

[Halaster]

Cures going to degrade? will poisons too even if not applied to a weapon?

Yes to both.  If you go out and collect a bunch of Bear Piss that is known to be a potent form of peraine, and stockpile in a crate in your warehouse, and forget about it for an IC year or two.. yeah, it's going to lose potency over time, eventually becoming inert.

[Halaster]

This just doesn't seem fun or rewarding to make cures and poisons so much harder to get and then also make them degrade.

I'd like to point out that high level poisons are going to be harder to get, yes.

Cures are not.  The ingredients for cures are not changing.  You just need a good brew skill (with a small bonus from poisoning skill) to make the best cures from those ingredients.  If you compared them in terms of strength vs difficulty acquiring vs degradation times, cures will by far outweigh poisons.  It will be easier (like it is now) to get cures, easier to make higher strength versions of them, and they will degrade slower than poisons.  My biggest concern I'm keeping in mind while I work on this is balancing it all to avoid taking away the teeth of poison by making cures too "good".

[stoicreader]

  My biggest concern I'm keeping in mind while I work on this is balancing it all to avoid taking away the teeth of poison by making cures too "good".

Cures are kept on hand as a prophylaxis, the prepared hunter has them.

As such, they will need to continuously buy/make them to stay prepared for something that you may never ever need.

Poisons can be gathered and made as needed. As such, even though cures are easier to produce, the demand for them will be much higher than poisons as a consequence.

And as such, the supply and demand of either will be heavily influenced by arbitrary factors of where players happen to roll their characters and how popular the game is that season.

It would be very easy for a shortage of cures and an excess of poisonings to occur under certain situations.

[mansa]

This just doesn't seem fun or rewarding to make cures and poisons so much harder to get and then also make them degrade.

I'd like to point out that high level poisons are going to be harder to get, yes.

Cures are not.  The ingredients for cures are not changing.  You just need a good brew skill (with a small bonus from poisoning skill) to make the best cures from those ingredients.  If you compared them in terms of strength vs difficulty acquiring vs degradation times, cures will by far outweigh poisons.  It will be easier (like it is now) to get cures, easier to make higher strength versions of them, and they will degrade slower than poisons.  My biggest concern I'm keeping in mind while I work on this is balancing it all to avoid taking away the teeth of poison by making cures too "good".

Can I eat a handful of "poor" cures that I have, and it will cure me of my "bad evil poison" ?

Basically,

If I get poisoned at Level 3, and I eat a "good" cure, will it take me to level 0 and be cured?
If I get poisoned at Level 3, and I eat a "poor" cure, will it take me to level 2 or do nothing?

[Halaster]

Can I eat a handful of "poor" cures that I have, and it will cure me of my "bad evil poison" ?

Basically,

If I get poisoned at Level 3, and I eat a "good" cure, will it take me to level 0 and be cured?
If I get poisoned at Level 3, and I eat a "poor" cure, will it take me to level 2 or do nothing?

Taking cures that are lower strength than the poison will not cure you, but they will reduce its bad effects.  So if you get poisoned by the "bad evil poison" that's very potent, and pop a weak cure, you'll still suffer, but that weak cure just might be enough to keep you from dying when you otherwise would not have.  Though you'll feel like shit.

[Brytta Léofa]

If you want to get real fancy...assuming that cures are coded as an affect with strength and duration, I think they should stack this way:

Code Select Expand


stackedCure = {
  .strength = max(
     // Always get at least the stronger of the two.
     // This means that you can extend a strong cure with a weak cure.
     min(cure1.strength, cure2.strength),

     // Modest benefit when stacking two cures of similar strength.
     1.2 * (cure1.strength + cure2.strength)/2.,
  ),

  // Duration resets to the longer of the two (remaining time on the existing cure, or full duration of the new one).
  .duration = max(cure1.duration, cure2.duration),
}


- Taking two cheapass cures back to back gives you a 20% boost in effectiveness, no increased duration. Worthwhile but not amazing.
- Taking a second cure halfway through the run of your first cure gives you at least as the duration as the second cure, and doesn't reduce duration of the first cure.
- Yes, you would ideally frontload your strongest cure and then keep boosting it with weaker ones. But I think that's kinda reasonable.

[Brytta Léofa]

Hal, will we be able to take cures before getting poisoned as a prophylactic?

Pleaaaaase?

This has the ability to neuter the best (fast-acting) poisons, so I would pay for that two ways:
(1) "The cure is worse than the disease!" Strong cures for strong poisons have negative effects.
(2) "It's strongest right after you take it." Reduce cure strength over the course of the affect. If you're really lucky, your prophylactic anti-perraine cure gives you enough time to take a second cure after you get hit.

[stoicreader]

Hal, will we be able to take cures before getting poisoned as a prophylactic?

I think this is already a mechanic for certain poisons, unless it's just a RP mechanic and not a real one.

[Lotion]

Will creating a cure below the maximum potency level possible with your brew skillcap count as a fail for the purpose of increasing your brew skill?

[mansa]

Will creating a cure below the maximum potency level possible with your brew skillcap count as a fail for the purpose of increasing your brew skill?

I don't think the code allows you to choose what potency you can brew.

Q. Does that mean you can eventually brew different potency cures or that cures start a 'full potency', and then degrade over time?

The potency will heavily depend on your brew skill.  But they'll start as 'full potency' (that you can make for your skill level) and then degrade over time.

[Halcyon]

  My biggest concern I'm keeping in mind while I work on this is balancing it all to avoid taking away the teeth of poison by making cures too "good".

Cures are kept on hand as a prophylaxis, the prepared hunter has them.

As such, they will need to continuously buy/make them to stay prepared for something that you may never ever need.

Poisons can be gathered and made as needed. As such, even though cures are easier to produce, the demand for them will be much higher than poisons as a consequence.

And as such, the supply and demand of either will be heavily influenced by arbitrary factors of where players happen to roll their characters and how popular the game is that season.

It would be very easy for a shortage of cures and an excess of poisonings to occur under certain situations.

Just curious, are you really advocating the necessity of a brewmaster pc in every clan more than 4 or 5 members?  "Keep 30 bynners in cures" sounds an awful lot like a full time job.

[Brokkr]

I mean, poisons are meant to actually kill people too, beyond just peraine and heramide, rather than just be some inconvenience.

[stoicreader]

I mean, poisons are meant to actually kill people too, beyond just peraine and heramide, rather than just be some inconvenience.

Peraine doesn't kill anyone. XD

[Riev]

I mean, poisons are meant to actually kill people too, beyond just peraine and heramide, rather than just be some inconvenience.

YeAh BuT PeRaInE aNd HeRaMiDe ArE LeSs RiSky

[Halaster]

Just curious, are you really advocating the necessity of a brewmaster pc in every clan more than 4 or 5 members?  "Keep 30 bynners in cures" sounds an awful lot like a full time job.

"Keep 30 bynners in cure" is a bit of an unrealistic goal in the first place in a resource-starved world.  For that matter, why would you need to?  Have the sergeant or whoever carry around a couple of each cures, and give them to someone as needed, instead of trying to have a full set for everyone.

[Halaster]

Will creating a cure below the maximum potency level possible with your brew skillcap count as a fail for the purpose of increasing your brew skill?

No, but as mansa said, you won't be able to specify the potency, you'll just make the highest you can according to your skill.  Failing to craft altogether is how you gain.

[Lotion]

Will cures in NPC shop inventories degrade over time?
Will there be a way for a player to examine a cure for its potency level (including degradation)?

[Bloodpaint]

"Keep 30 bynners in cure" is a bit of an unrealistic goal in the first place in a resource-starved world.  For that matter, why would you need to?  Have the sergeant or whoever carry around a couple of each cures, and give them to someone as needed, instead of trying to have a full set for everyone.

I am [most loved Byn sergeant of all time, all time🏆] and I approve this message

[Halaster]

Will cures in NPC shop inventories degrade over time?
Will there be a way for a player to examine a cure for its potency level (including degradation)?

You can be assured that shopkeeper's cures they sell will be top quality!  Best value around!  Don't buy the other guy!

Yes, assess will show you strength/potency if you have the brew skill for cures, poisoning skill for poison.

[Patuk]

Just curious, are you really advocating the necessity of a brewmaster pc in every clan more than 4 or 5 members?  "Keep 30 bynners in cures" sounds an awful lot like a full time job.

"Keep 30 bynners in cure" is a bit of an unrealistic goal in the first place in a resource-starved world.  For that matter, why would you need to?  Have the sergeant or whoever carry around a couple of each cures, and give them to someone as needed, instead of trying to have a full set for everyone.

I don't see this working out the way you might envision, probably. There is nothing keeping people from running it this way now: sergeant carries cures, other people hopefully get some if they are poisoned. But they don't, and in fact a ton of money changes hands making sure everyone gets their own set. That people don't stop at just having leaders carry cures probably should clue us in that restricting curative availability even more may not be a sought-after change.

[Bloodpaint]

It worked fine, really. Wanting to have a perfect set of equipment is not the same thing as need - Runners are meant to be making coin, if spending more on them than getting out of it, the whole thing is wrong, there shouldn't be handouts unless they are paying for it (there's even some players that will literally use any OOC excuse every time to avoid any contracts, when realistically they would be kicked from the Byn otherwise how would Sergeants ever get anyone to come out? not talking about people who legitimately can't, but people that will literally refuse then go back to sparring for hours like they do every day) or the character has somehow proved themselves too much trouble to replace - I think this is why the Byn are not allowed to go grebbing or have time off to craft and trade stuff etc, so they can't basically cheat the system and keep things a struggle, because it's meant to be like that, it's meant to be a nightmare capitalism simulator, and experiencing that pain probably helps people empathise with people from less developed countries where there is no free healthcare

All NPC cures should be removed too! They've trivialised poison for a long time. Bloodburn, sounds like such a scary name, when's the last time you heard anyone actually having a problem with it? Why have it even exist?

If someone can just eat the most basic of cures to live through the most complex poisons, why bother with any of it when magick or someone with high melee combat already are more likely to actually kill than give a little tickle and eat a 60 coin tablet? I don't know game statistics but from what I have seen magick and combat are way way way more what causes people to die, and magick is just "new game+ mode" rather than having any disadvantages, at the moment, especially since they can have both now.

Lets have a new era of interaction between characters and remove all vending machines for cures and poisons (and make all NPC created stuff inert) since they are usually used in interaction with other characters - it's not needed at all, there's always SO many characters that are willing to help, even through friends of friends - it shouldn't be possible to get any of this stuff without characters actually taking risks or roleplaying with other characters.

Also lets have some IC laws regulating who is allowed access to cures, and that they have to be screened by Templars before being allowed - create a black market Bearing in mind that none of these are things that the average citizens that don't leave the walls should be experiencing, and the more expensive they are, the more the opinion would be... Why should this random person be allowed cures for the exotic poisons that their "betters" use to get rid of people that are problems to them? "If we allow this person that never leaves the walls to have bloodburn cures, we might need to actually waste something expensive later on this person that doesn't currently have much value to our totalitarian government right now?" I think a lot of interesting plots would probably get started off by them becoming something people envy each other for. Or wondering why mister normal grey cloak has templar-rated exotics.