Brew and Poison suggested code changes

[mansa]

Hi,

I have a couple suggestions for code changes for Brew and Poison.

#1 - Have the game tell the player they took the correct cure when they ingest it for the poison they are currently affected by.

Example of taking a correct cure to fight against the poison:
>drink cilops.vial
You drink a red liquid from a red-glazed, cilops-stamped clay vial.
You feel slightly better, as the antidote starts to combat against the poison.

Example of taking a wrong cure to fight against the poison:
>drink cilops.vial
You drink a red liquid from a red-glazed, cilops-stamped clay vial.
You feel slightly warmer, but this cure has no effect on your current poison affect.

Example of taking a valid cure when you are not poisoned:
>drink cilops.vial
You drink a red liquid from a red-glazed, cilops-stamped clay vial.
You feel slightly warmer as the cure flows through your body.

Example of taking a non-valid cure:
>drink cilops.vial
You drink a red liquid from a red-glazed, cilops-stamped clay vial.
You do not feel any different.

Reasons why:
It tells the player they have done something successfully.  It can also tell the player it isn't an immediate cure, but it will take time to cure.  Ingesting invalid cures will tell the player it isn't a cure mixture.  Ingesting valid cures will tell the player that it has some lasting protection, like a poison-protection buff.



#2 - Decrease the time it takes to be "cured" by the cure itself.

It currently feels like if you get poisoned, and you take a cure, the time it takes to be "cured" by the poison is too long.  I would suggest to decrease time to be cured by 50%.  Ultimately, I believe the goal should be that when you are poisoned, and you take a cure, you should be fully cured of the poison by no longer than 15 minutes in-real-life time.



#3 - At a certain proficiency, people with the brew skill should be able to know /how to/ create poisons and cures using the brew skill.   The game should instruct them of the ingredients, similar to the recent analyze skill changes.

This can happen a multiple of ways:
Allow them access to specific help files with the recipes if they have a certain skill proficiencies.
Allow them access to specific discussion branches from master NPCs if they have certain skill proficiencies.
Allow them access to specific analyze echoes / assess echoes when they have certain skill proficiencies.
Allow those players to send in a request to have the recipes taught to them via the request tool.


#4 - At certain skill proficiencies, people with the poison skill should be able to explicitly know what poisons are what color tints are on poison items.

Example:
Player with Poisoning Skill of 15:
>assess -v knife
This knife has a oily tint on it.

Player with Poisoning Skill of 45:
>assess -v knife
This knife has a red oily tint on it.

Player with Poisoning Skill of 85:
>assess -v knife
This knife has a red oily [bloodburn poison] tint on it.


I think these quality-of-life changes might make brew and poisons more useful and utilized.

[Patuk]

I would like to suggest a change of my own that got a little traction on Discord before.

Mages get all kinds of spells they can demand information on. HELP SPELL HYPNOTIC PATTERN or HELP SPELL HEALING WORD (fictional examples) will tell you what a spell does. Helpful! I would appreciate if poisons and cures had similar helpfiles.

Make two helpfiles per poison. HELP POISON BLOODBURN for figuring out sources and combinations; HELP BREW BLOODBURN for knowing what goes into the respective cure. A master brewer, currently, can still not actually know how to ply their trade. This is unfortunate, and something this change should rectify.

[Kaathe]

It currently feels like if you get poisoned, and you take a cure, the time it takes to be "cured" by the poison is too long.  I would suggest to decrease time to be cured by 50%.  Ultimately, I believe the goal should be that when you are poisoned, and you take a cure, you should be fully cured of the poison by no longer than 15 minutes in-real-life time.

It doesn't exactly work this way I'm pretty sure, so we'd need to explore this more to really understand what you are suggesting. Is this what you're suggesting?

Strong poison no cure = whatever the current duration would be
Strong poison weak cure = current duration or 15 minutes whichever is first
Strong poison strong cure = same as above
weak / weak = same as above
weak / strong = same as above

And by poisoned do you mean:
suffering the ill effects partially masked by a the cure?
having the ill effect but it being fully masked by the cure?
having any effect at all including poison recovery?

Keep in mind cures are band-aids now not cures. 

[Synthesis]

It currently feels like if you get poisoned, and you take a cure, the time it takes to be "cured" by the poison is too long.  I would suggest to decrease time to be cured by 50%.  Ultimately, I believe the goal should be that when you are poisoned, and you take a cure, you should be fully cured of the poison by no longer than 15 minutes in-real-life time.

It doesn't exactly work this way I'm pretty sure, so we'd need to explore this more to really understand what you are suggesting. Is this what you're suggesting?

Strong poison no cure = whatever the current duration would be
Strong poison weak cure = current duration or 15 minutes whichever is first
Strong poison strong cure = same as above
weak / weak = same as above
weak / strong = same as above

And by poisoned do you mean:
suffering the ill effects partially masked by a the cure?
having the ill effect but it being fully masked by the cure?
having any effect at all including poison recovery?

Keep in mind cures are band-aids now not cures.

I just got poisoned by bloodburn.

I had a pouch full of strong bloodburn vials, that I brewed myself, because I have (master) brew.

I got bit once? I think by a common-ass thing with bloodburn.

I chugged a vial almost immediately after getting bit. My max hp dropped by only 1, I got the cure downed so fast.  I chugged 2 more later, because nothing seemed to be happening (other than not losing hp anymore).

I spent 50 minutes unable to regen hp or stamina while awake.  I was able to regen stamina while sleeping, but not awake.

That's fucking bullshit, IMO.  50 minutes is too fucking long when you have the cure ready to go and downed almost instantly. Maybe I'm just being a little nostalgic bitch crying for the old days, but it's really made me so mad that I don't even want to log back in.  The brewing system is already so arcane that the only way to get it done is to fucking look it up on the shadowboard, and then even when you fucking cheat, you get fucking time-wasted to the point where you start to question why you're even doing this.

[MarshallDFX]

Maybe I'm just being a little nostalgic bitch crying for the old days, but it's really made me so mad that I don't even want to log back in.  The brewing system is already so arcane that the only way to get it done is to fucking look it up on the shadowboard, and then even when you fucking cheat, you get fucking time-wasted to the point where you start to question why you're even doing this.

B-b-but the magic!  You could have spent 50 minutes *and* ages not knowing how to do any of it!  Think of the wondrous joy that would come when you eventually learned how to reduce your multi RL hour poisoning to a mere 50 minutes!

[LindseyBalboa]

Fan of #1, #2, #3. +1 to all.

#4 I have an issue with as the first time you find out oily red is bloodburn you know it forever, so veteran players get a leg up again based solely on OOC knowledge. Meaning the next character for someone that already knows would only have to actually get 45 skill to have the knowledge of a 75.

Expanding on #2:

NPC poisons - instantly cured with cures. It's PVE. Nobody wants to roleplay out skellebaine for an hour by themselves a second or third time, and if there are other people around, there is still roleplay to be had just the same as a few months ago. If the poison RP is good, people can keep doing it, even.

PC poisons - let's cap the maximum duration anyone can be poisoned at like... 20 minutes. If you caught a few poison darts and you're running and your move is gone and you've managed to stay safe for 20 RL minutes of your time, congratulations. That's more than enough time for someone to find anyone they managed to taint, unless they're just not going to find them.

My personal feedback on the new system: the new poison system has pretty much removed poison from the game for me. The few times I've gotten good poisons from someone all mixed up, they either went inert, or wasted away on my weapon before I used them. Plant poisons are literally useless, I have poisoned my weapons dozens of times at this point and I have never seen an NPC live long enough to even emote or give any sort of poisoned reaction. I'm glad cures don't disappear that quickly but they still disappear too quickly given that they're not easily available or even reachable by some PCs in shops. I hope to see more people poisoned by food and drink, and I hope to see ingestables poisoning able to be done in front of people using stealth while passing them a drink.

Edit: (maybe should split this off?)
I'd like to see plant poisons either have a point to being used for more than practice, or maybe just let characters with poison brew mid-level poisons. I think that last part would fix every issue I have, and also make sense given that classes with poison but not brew seem likely to have been intended to be able to make and deliver poisons, as they were assigned the poison skill which did both of those things. If poison could be used to brew mid-level poisons, you'd still have to find the ingredients, but at least someone could hold them for a bit, make them up, then taint them. It increases the lifespan in practice without actually changing the lifespan.

[ShaiHulud]

I am currently involved with this. And I think what is said or portrayed is ...not accurate. Please don't nerf poisons because a few don't get it yet.

[GreenTransient]

Poison changes, for me, has been the second worst thing to happen to Arm in the last year.  So please, regardless of any singular players personal knowledge, please be open to either

1) Allowing for changes that support RP between PC's

2) Be a member of the Community that is known for teaching players IG instead of being known for Gatekeeping. FOIC doesn't have to be (and shouldn't be) learn by death only, ya pack of trolls.

#WeCanDoBetterFuckers