Armageddon General Discussion Board

Come on, guys, even if the code was technically "bugged," things seemed to be working perfectly fine before you all went and changed it:  uber warriors were pwning noobs, and everyone was getting along just dandy.

You knew the code change would negatively impact defensive capabilities.  You can't simply cop to a "we preserve code integrity!" defense in order to wash your hands of the consequences of your action.  You -knew- the code change would negatively impact defense, and you did it.  Therefore you -must- have approved of the consequences, or you could've "preserved code integrity" by 1) fixing the bug and then 2) recalculating defense modifiers to keep the new code acting the same as the old code.

Add this to the new "daze" code, and you've basically fouled things up across the entire game, for people who want to play solo characters, or characters without super-buff defense skills (read: parry).  Didn't see that carru coming? Too bad! Next character, please.  A little bit of net lag kicks in at an inopportune moment? Too bad! What does he get, folks? A Brand New Char!

From my personal experience, critters that ordinarily would've only hit me for at -worst- moderate wounds are now landing grievous and vicious blows, dazing me on initial hits, and affording me the opportunity to flee only on the off chance that they go for a short period without attacking me.

Grouping up is next to impossible if you want to play certain character types, so this "group up for protection!" warning is just a bunch of bull. Further, opportunities to actually -use- the rescue skill come few and far between (outside of the Byn, anyway), which usually means that anyone you go out with is going to suck so badly at it that you're liable to end up dead before they successfully knock you out of the way.  Ditto that for the guard skill.  Even beyond that, guards are more of a liability in this game than anything else, because if they're guarding you, it means they're buffer than you, which means they're eventually going to try to take your stuff, just because they can (or the PC is being played by a fifteen year old without the capacity to reason beyond the immediate consequences of the "kill" command).

A further random list of grievances:

Magickers are now going to be even more isolated than before, for a longer time, as they completely avoid contact with the world until they've branched their Uber spells.  Hooray, this means that Ultimate Mages will swoop down out of unknown valleys to pwn unsuspecting noobs.  They'll come out of nowhere and cast immediately, to prevent the possibility of being caught in a daze lock, instantly frying their targets without pausing for so much as a nod.  Hooray for instant magicker deaths?

Certain NPCs are now going to be Doom Creatures of the Dark Abyss.  Uber half-giant warriors had difficulty taking down some of these critters...now what?  What is the point of putting a bunch of creatures around that -nobody- can kill?  What's the point of having an area so populated with heinous beasts that nobody in their right mind will ever venture there (without the benefit of an invisibility spell, anyway)?  You might as well delete the areas, because the net effect will be the same.

People with crappy connections might as well stay home.  It was bad enough before, being caught by the random Doom Beetle descending from the the murky realm known as "the square north-east," but at least you had a sprinter's chance, once your connection stopped lagging.  Now, if combat even starts, you're pretty much toast, unless you have mad skills, because that beetle is going to daze you with the first blow, and keep dazing you until you're meat. Yay.

I don't even want to imagine what it's like trying to raise a half-giant, now.  Before this change, half-giants had hands down the -worst- defensive ability I have ever seen, with any other type of PC. I've had a half-giant warrior lose 50% of his hp, while ep'ing a shield, in 2 lightning fast rounds from an NPC that newbie assassins (used to) use for backstab practice.  What are they going to do now?  They're going to die the first time they get into it with anything larger than a rat, I presume.

Speaking of newbie assassins: good luck, guys, you're going to need it! Oh, or you'll just have to settle for being that sneaky, creepy guy in the Byn that nobody trusts.  Yeah, we've all seen it a million times:  the one guy that for some reason -always- loses his sparring matches, and never seems to get any better at defending himself.  He's either an assassin or a magicker, better watch out!

Of course, all of this can be worked around, sure.  I can deal with it, easily.  I've been playing for nearly 8 years, now...I can adapt, because I've learned most of the crucial survival tips and techniques long ago.  I know better than to pause to emote in dangerous places. I know spam-looking is more important than typing out a flowery emote, if you're in a no-law zone.  I know which beasties to avoid, and more importantly, I know the proper sequence of beasties to hunt in order to boost my skills without subjecting my character to unnecessary risk.  I know better than to stop and chat with hooded figures in the desert.  I know that it's usually safer to simply spamwalk from Allanak to Luir's than it is to "hire a guard."

I know a lot of things, but I ask you:  Is this how you want the game to be played?  Do you want players so mortally fearful of their character's impending doom that they cannot pause to think of anything except how precarious their grasp on life is?

I see a lot of wishful talk about PC raiders and the like, but how on earth is this going to bring about that kind of change? The risk-takers may create raiders, and they may succeed, but most everyone else is just going to stay inside the city and play an aide or a pickpocket, and completely avoid the unpredictability of the merciless NPCs roaming the wilderness.  Before long, we're going to have nothing but a few elite warriors and mages scouring the wastes, preying on clueless newbs who don't yet have the good sense to just stay inside until they've branched (not to mention the newbie desert-elves who don't have the luxury of simply remaining inside the city).

Even if all of this "gloom and doom" scenario turns out not to be the case, it doesn't change the fact of the matter:  you nerfed defense, and you covered it with an extremely lame excuse.  Poor form, in my opinion.

After reading the first few paragraphs, then completely ignoring the rest because I knew the rest would be a long continuation of the first few  paragraphs, I suggest this:

Wait a week.  Then post constructive feedback.  A 15 paragraph rant on what you think might happen before you really know the effects is.. pointless.

Albeit slightly sarcastic in tone, the OP made a few interesting if not valid points.

But, taking Halasters comment into my brain aswell, I haven't yet tested the effects.

Quote from: "Halaster"I suggest this:

Wait a week.  Then post constructive feedback.

Quote from: "Synthesis"Didn't see that carru coming? Too bad! Next character, please.  A little bit of net lag kicks in at an inopportune moment? Too bad! What does he get, folks? A Brand New Char!

Carru and lag have been issues long before this change.  I honestly don't even see how it makes a difference; the problem with carru is the carru-charge, not the daze code.

Quote from: "Synthesis"
From my personal experience, critters that ordinarily would've only hit me for at -worst- moderate wounds are now landing grievous and vicious blows, dazing me on initial hits, and affording me the opportunity to flee only on the off chance that they go for a short period without attacking me.

So be more careful and 'rebuild' your defense.  I'm sure it's no issue for you, and new characters wouldn't really be hindered; as I understand, it would just take them a little longer to become strong fighters now.

Quote from: "Synthesis"Grouping up is next to impossible if you want to play certain character types, so this "group up for protection!" warning is just a bunch of bull.

Practically all character types can group up - hunters, raiders, miners and foragers.  Maybe spam-hunters will have a bit of a problem finding people to group up for a 15-hour hunting spree, but I'm not sure it's a bad thing.  Fact is that normal, sane Zalanthans do group up, because they have to hunt down giant animals with lousy bone and stone equipment.
If I was in Zalanthas and had a fully-loaded shotgun with me, I'd still take a friend or two if I went to hunt scrabs, just in case.  Forcing people to group might actually be beneficial to player interaction.  People aren't really supposed to go and solo tembos and gwoshi without giving it a second thought.

Quote from: "Synthesis"Further, opportunities to actually -use- the rescue skill come few and far between (outside of the Byn, anyway), which usually means that anyone you go out with is going to suck so badly at it that you're liable to end up dead before they successfully knock you out of the way.  Ditto that for the guard skill.

You suck at it now?  Okay, now you have a reason to actually use those skills!  They're coded for a reason; strategize.

Quote from: "Synthesis"
Even beyond that, guards are more of a liability in this game than anything else, because if they're guarding you, it means they're buffer than you...

No it doesn't.  Maybe they're just the quicker guy with the large shield instead of the guy with the two-handed axe.  Strategy.

Quote from: "Synthesis"
...which means they're eventually going to try to take your stuff, just because they can (or the PC is being played by a fifteen year old without the capacity to reason beyond the immediate consequences of the "kill" command).

Oh please.

Quote from: "Synthesis"
Magickers are now going to be even more isolated than before, for a longer time, as they completely avoid contact with the world until they've branched their Uber spells.  Hooray, this means that Ultimate Mages will swoop down out of unknown valleys to pwn unsuspecting noobs.  They'll come out of nowhere and cast immediately, to prevent the possibility of being caught in a daze lock, instantly frying their targets without pausing for so much as a nod.  Hooray for instant magicker deaths?

How is this different from what we had before?  Bash has been around for as long as Arm has been online, I presume, and magickers aren't really made much more vulnerable here; when they start taking hits, you know full well how much time an average Warrior vs. Unprotected Magicker fight will last.

Quote from: "Synthesis"
Certain NPCs are now going to be Doom Creatures of the Dark Abyss.  Uber half-giant warriors had difficulty taking down some of these critters...now what?

Now you can take these creatures more seriously and hopefully not see people going out and going solo at bahamets.  Or you can try to stun them.  Or be more smart in how you hunt them - ranged weapons, maybe?

Quote from: "Synthesis"
What is the point of putting a bunch of creatures around that -nobody- can kill?  What's the point of having an area so populated with heinous beasts that nobody in their right mind will ever venture there (without the benefit of an invisibility spell, anyway)?  You might as well delete the areas, because the net effect will be the same.

The point?  Now people can make RPTs and organize trips if they want to go to places, which might actually make the exotic places exotic; suddenly not every city-bred hunter will pass the High Sun heat chilling in the Mantis Valley.

Quote from: "Synthesis"
People with crappy connections might as well stay home.  It was bad enough before, being caught by the random Doom Beetle descending from the the murky realm known as "the square north-east," but at least you had a sprinter's chance, once your connection stopped lagging.  Now, if combat even starts, you're pretty much toast, unless you have mad skills, because that beetle is going to daze you with the first blow, and keep dazing you until you're meat. Yay.

It's not a significant difference.  Originally you had a shot of 0.05 and now it's fallen to 0.005?   Oh yeah, huge difference.

Quote from: "Synthesis"
I don't even want to imagine what it's like trying to raise a half-giant, now.  Before this change, half-giants had hands down the -worst- defensive ability I have ever seen, with any other type of PC. I've had a half-giant warrior lose 50% of his hp, while ep'ing a shield, in 2 lightning fast rounds from an NPC that newbie assassins (used to) use for backstab practice.  What are they going to do now?  They're going to die the first time they get into it with anything larger than a rat, I presume.

It sounds to me like that NPC got modified because people were using it as 'backstab practice'.  Or maybe you had bad luck - you know, mob stats and random combat procedures?

Quote from: "Synthesis"
Speaking of newbie assassins: good luck, guys, you're going to need it! Oh, or you'll just have to settle for being that sneaky, creepy guy in the Byn that nobody trusts.  Yeah, we've all seen it a million times:  the one guy that for some reason -always- loses his sparring matches, and never seems to get any better at defending himself.  He's either an assassin or a magicker, better watch out!

That's just bullshit.

Quote from: "Synthesis"
I know a lot of things, but I ask you:  Is this how you want the game to be played?  Do you want players so mortally fearful of their character's impending doom that they cannot pause to think of anything except how precarious their grasp on life is?

I actually would like to see people treat the desert as something dangerous as opposed to a happy hunting playground.

Quote from: "Synthesis"
I see a lot of wishful talk about PC raiders and the like, but how on earth is this going to bring about that kind of change? The risk-takers may create raiders, and they may succeed, but most everyone else is just going to stay inside the city and play an aide or a pickpocket, and completely avoid the unpredictability of the merciless NPCs roaming the wilderness.  Before long, we're going to have nothing but a few elite warriors and mages scouring the wastes, preying on clueless newbs who don't yet have the good sense to just stay inside until they've branched (not to mention the newbie desert-elves who don't have the luxury of simply remaining inside the city).

Nonsense.  Seriously.  All it means is that the desert-roaming characters will have to be more careful.

Quote from: "Synthesis"
Even if all of this "gloom and doom" scenario turns out not to be the case, it doesn't change the fact of the matter:  you nerfed defense, and you covered it with an extremely lame excuse.  Poor form, in my opinion.

omg no


P.s.
This post came out hostile, and I apologize for it.  I'm in a hurry to leave and might not be able to post again today, and therefore I'm leaving it as is.  My hostility has nothing to do with Synthesis and/or his opinions, post or Arm at all.  I don't have the time to edit it out at the moment, and therefore I hope no one takes offense from my post.
Apologies in advance.

Quote from: "Halaster"After reading the first few paragraphs, then completely ignoring the rest because I knew the rest would be a long continuation of the first few  paragraphs, I suggest this:

Wait a week.  Then post constructive feedback.  A 15 paragraph rant on what you think might happen before you really know the effects is.. pointless.

An idea that popped up would be to allow people to draw weapons even when in 'daze lock', otherwise people could be easily killed in the street when you etwo a sword and attack them unarmed (a pretty much promised high dmg hit) and if they can't draw a weapon you pretty much are promised all the following hits.

Another would be to extremely lower the % so it is an occasional reward instead of a promised response. Make a warrior's bash still something that is needed if you want to keep those skinny pickpockets from fleeing.

About the whole work in group thing - this is not always possible with the current playerbase, exspecially when you're off-peak or in a clan that's not very populated - some playability must stay even for those people.

If you make everything harder, new characters are fucked - once you can kill your basic critters, everything might be easy, but getting there is extremely hard. I remember being in a clan with a bunch of new characters that couldn't do anything at all, even if they were together and on their own, because even if you work in groups it was already too dangerous for them. If it's a lot worse now for new characters, this is definitely getting me worried - how are those gonna start out, not everyone has the luxury of being able to spar a lot before they first head out into the desert.

Indies, anyone?
If you play off-peak being indie might be the best chance for you to have some fun, since otherwise you're likely to be stuck in an empty, restrictive clan that won't let you do anything on your own, no matter if there are players around or not.

EDIT: Are new characters getting a bit of a bonus compared to what it was before? If not, I'd suggest this so they at least got a chance ;)

Plenty of people have been saying for a long time that there should be some more fear to the deserts. Well, now there is. I think I like that.

Having not seen any of the 'new' code in action, I won't say more until I have something to say.

Quote from: "ale six"Plenty of people have been saying for a long time that there should be some more fear to the deserts. Well, now there is. I think I like that.

Having not seen any of the 'new' code in action, I won't say more until I have something to say.

The problem I see here is that the desert is and was already nasty enough for brand-new characters, exspecially around 'nak and exspecially for non-warriors. If it's true and new characters are the only group really affected by this change in the long run, then you made it even worse for the new characters that have always been struggling and it's still as easy as always for the characters with some play time under their belts.

Quote from: "ale six"Plenty of people have been saying for a long time that there should be some more fear to the deserts. Well, now there is. I think I like that.

Having not seen any of the 'new' code in action, I won't say more until I have something to say.

We could instill fear in the deserts by making people randomly lose link also, but that wouldn't be realistic and have zero playability. The issue people are bringing up is the desert is fearful to people it shouldn't be fearful to.

I want to ignore the desert though as it gives people something to grab on to in defense of reeling blows.

They work in the cities also and as I stated earlier work better there, as you can draw etwo quickly and attack an unarmed opponent. That is pretty much a 100% daze lock. That just makes the game unplayable and gives advantage only to those that are leet warriors and can fight unarmed. I will be the first to say I make city characters that want to talk and hang in the bar all day, not always focus on combat.

Quote from: "Synthesis"Add this to the new "daze" code, and you've basically fouled things up across the entire game, for people who want to play solo characters, or characters without super-buff defense skills (read: parry).  Didn't see that carru coming? Too bad! Next character, please.

As others have mentioned, I think we'll just want to see how the changes play out before accusing anyone of fouling up the game.

There may need to be a bit more preparation done before your character moves into the realm of ass-kickery to which you were accustomed, but that shouldn't be too much of a concern.  Barring a few uncommon encounters, most people can steer clear of troublesome quarry without a whole lot of effort.

Daze

On the subject of daze, I am in agreement with Cyrian20's comments.  After having seen how often the "daze" effect happens in real combat, I don't really care much for the addition.  I'm assuming that this was designed as a control over some kind of twinkery rather than provide a platform for increased RP potential, because it doesn't do much for the latter.

I would like to see the probability of someone being dazed to have a scaling relationship with the severity of the blow:

> Very Hard (10%)
> Extremely Hard (20%)
> Wound (30%)
> Grieveous wound (50%)
> Horrendous Damage (75%)
> Frightening Damage (100%)

Other issues related to the combat change I think will be minmal once people simply get used to the change.  Time will tell, but I don't forsee any paradigm shifts coming about as a result.

-LoD

Quote from: "Cyrian20"
as you can draw etwo quickly and attack an unarmed opponent. That is pretty much a 100% daze lock.

That's simply untrue - you really don't know what you're talking about, sorry.

Quote from: "Halaster"

Quote from: "Cyrian20"
as you can draw etwo quickly and attack an unarmed opponent. That is pretty much a 100% daze lock.

That's simply untrue - you really don't know what you're talking about, sorry.

I know it isn't a 100%, but I think people get the point. It allows a down right evil hit that is going to reel a person, one after another and if they can't draw a weapon they will be stuck there taking them none stop. If I am wrong I apologize but this is the way it has looked to me.

Crucial survival tip #01: Run away.
Crucial survival tip #02: For combat sucky folks, engage at a distance.
Crucial survival tip #03: Run run run run run.

It's supposed to be a tough world out there, and it just got made a little tougher.  Take your prior-badass-character-now-sucky-one back into some organization and work to get back up to prior-badassness, if what you truly want is some warrior who can out fight anything in the game.

It's not about how many animals you can kill, or what animals you can kill.  It's about the RP.

As for daze fouling things up for solo-characters, I haven't noticed.  It sucks, but it's realistic.  Taking a really hard hit to a vulnerable spot is going to daze you, it's what most RP-inclined folks RP out in sparring circles when a hit to the head, neck or body of a hard kind occurs.

If this came out harsh, I have a screaming baby in the background, that's bleeding and needs to be taken to the hospital at this very moment, so apologies.

Quote from: "Cyrian20"The issue people are bringing up is the desert is fearful to people it shouldn't be fearful to.

I think that's a misconception. I don't care if you're a 500-day uber warrioranger decked out in mithril chainmail. The desert should be fearful to EVERYBODY. EVEN YOU. YES, YOU.

But I'll also ignore that because I don't want to derail.

In the end, I think the new code changes will preserve the one fundamental thing to combat: the stronger, better prepared person wins. The other people die, or get away, if they're lucky. That's fine by me.

I have to admit. Between the two changes (Daze and Defense) my char has made utterly different decisions in his life ICly.

I think there are points that Synthesis makes that are valid. The truth is, all I can see coming out of this, is more, Whoever types kill first wins behavior.

Like he said, mages -will not- give any possibly lee way. Before you could try out a scene, have some fun. Now it's just possibly suicidal to do that. By the time they type kill you might allready be dead. So why will they wait to see if you wanna rp?

It hasn't been a week yet I suppose, but if noobs are only going to get hit MORE from this change... as well as get Dazed. Jeez.. was the desert really -that- safe before?

I've always thought that the massive beasts were uberly scary. Now I treat most bloody scrab like I used to treat Mek! Perhaps this is better in terms of realism, but I have to say, I'm interested in playing a fantasy game where I could become something increadible. Where I -could- become a part of history, could slay dangerous animals with a word, and could go through limitless bountiful imagination.

Not where I couldn't do anything solo until day 50 unless I twink out and use every second of coded advantage to survive.

Play a merchant if you're scared of the big sausage.  On the other hand, I think this is great.  It's been some time before I've been in combat and my hands were shaking, everything became all too simple and dumb.  I love it when an immortal steps in and brings the intelligence of NPCs up a notch, usually kicking my face in the process.

As a reaction to this change, I think more people are going to become Tuluki tree-huggin' hippies.

Shit's harder?

Sweet.

Welcome to Armageddon.

Quote from: "Attana"

If this came out harsh, I have a screaming baby in the background, that's bleeding and needs to be taken to the hospital at this very moment, so apologies.

Not to derail, but.. WTF are you doing spending time posting insteading tending to them if that's true?

Doom, doom, doom, doom.

Quote from: "Synthesis"Add this to the new "daze" code, and you've basically fouled things up across the entire game, for people who want to play solo characters, or characters without super-buff defense skills (read: parry).  Didn't see that carru coming? Too bad! Next character, please.

Welcome to Armageddon. The wastes are dangerous.

Quote from: "Synthesis"From my personal experience, critters that ordinarily would've only hit me for at -worst- moderate wounds are now landing grievous and vicious blows, dazing me on initial hits, and affording me the opportunity to flee only on the off chance that they go for a short period without attacking me.

The wastes are dangerous.

QuoteGrouping up is next to impossible if you want to play certain character types, so this "group up for protection!" warning is just a bunch of bull. Further, opportunities to actually -use- the rescue skill come few and far between (outside of the Byn, anyway), which usually means that anyone you go out with is going to suck so badly at it that you're liable to end up dead before they successfully knock you out of the way.

Life-threatening combat is life-threatening.

Quote from: "Synthesis"Even beyond that, guards are more of a liability in this game than anything else, because if they're guarding you, it means they're buffer than you, which means they're eventually going to try to take your stuff, just because they can (or the PC is being played by a fifteen year old without the capacity to reason beyond the immediate consequences of the "kill" command).

Yes, people will betray you. Yes, armed mercenaries are dangerous. Welcome to Armageddon: pay your guards well.

Quote from: "Synthesis"A further random list of grievances:

Magickers are now going to be even more isolated than before, for a longer time, as they completely avoid contact with the world until they've branched their Uber spells.  Hooray, this means that Ultimate Mages will swoop down out of unknown valleys to pwn unsuspecting noobs.  They'll come out of nowhere and cast immediately, to prevent the possibility of being caught in a daze lock, instantly frying their targets without pausing for so much as a nod.  Hooray for instant magicker deaths?

Young magickers already got the crap kicked out of them by anything with fighting skill. They're probably the least affected by the defense reduction.

Quote from: "Synthesis"Certain NPCs are now going to be Doom Creatures of the Dark Abyss.  Uber half-giant warriors had difficulty taking down some of these critters...now what?  What is the point of putting a bunch of creatures around that -nobody- can kill?  What's the point of having an area so populated with heinous beasts that nobody in their right mind will ever venture there (without the benefit of an invisibility spell, anyway)?  You might as well delete the areas, because the net effect will be the same.

The wastes are dangerous. Fighting a mekillot is like fighting a goddamned tyrannosaurus, man! Didn't you find it a bit odd that any sufficiently well-trained dwarf could pwn a t-rex with a couple bone clubs?

Quote from: "Synthesis"People with crappy connections might as well stay home.  It was bad enough before, being caught by the random Doom Beetle descending from the the murky realm known as "the square north-east," but at least you had a sprinter's chance, once your connection stopped lagging.  Now, if combat even starts, you're pretty much toast, unless you have mad skills, because that beetle is going to daze you with the first blow, and keep dazing you until you're meat. Yay.

The beetle will likely not daze characters who are well-equipped and well-trained on the first blow. Further, NPCs are now affected by command lag, so you can easily run off before it gets to you. Yes, ultra-doombeetles will turn merchants into bug-chow. Why shouldn't they?

Quote from: "Synthesis"I don't even want to imagine what it's like trying to raise a half-giant, now.  Before this change, half-giants had hands down the -worst- defensive ability I have ever seen, with any other type of PC. I've had a half-giant warrior lose 50% of his hp, while ep'ing a shield, in 2 lightning fast rounds from an NPC that newbie assassins (used to) use for backstab practice.  What are they going to do now?  They're going to die the first time they get into it with anything larger than a rat, I presume.

You presume totally and completely incorrectly.

Quote from: "Synthesis"Speaking of newbie assassins: good luck, guys, you're going to need it! Oh, or you'll just have to settle for being that sneaky, creepy guy in the Byn that nobody trusts.  Yeah, we've all seen it a million times:  the one guy that for some reason -always- loses his sparring matches, and never seems to get any better at defending himself.  He's either an assassin or a magicker, better watch out!

Assume good faith. I've never seen a Byn assassin mistreated by a guild-sniffing sergeant. If anything, people are happy to have someone around to round out the unit's talents.

Quote from: "Synthesis"I know a lot of things, but I ask you:  Is this how you want the game to be played?  Do you want players so mortally fearful of their character's impending doom that they cannot pause to think of anything except how precarious their grasp on life is?

YES!

I'm bored of seeing people jumping to conclusions before even having the chance to try the new code. It happened several times.

1. Stealthy skills have been nerfed. People complained that there's going to be no more stealthies. I tried one myself and it was nearly as easy as before. Didn't get why people are upset.
2. Archery skill started taking armor into consideration. A whole group of people jumped to the conclusion that archery is now useless. Again, tried with a character and even slings were still useful. Didn't get why people are upset.
3. A daze code has been added. Damn.. I didn't even have the chance to try it. It must be rare. People jumped to the conclusion that now it's certain death to melee with anything. Will try to try the code and see why people are upset.
4. A defence bug has been corrected, making people weaker in defence as far as I get it. Didn't have a chance to try. Still wondering why people are upset _that_ early.

Please... it's so early yet.. Give your chars a chance to try it first.

Before everyone rises up in confederacy against Synth, lets see the point he is trying to get across. The desert is hard and he doesn't want it easier, I have played with him before and he treats it like a harsh desert. He is talking about playability, yes a mek can own me; but since I can't see it northwest of me that means it may get to walk in and get one hit. I may be wrong, but if a mek is the size of a t-rex I am sure as hell going to see it charging over the flats, let me flee when it enters instead of enter a daze lock.

He is talking about low defense -with- daze lock, that can wipe out people before they knew what was happening and there are a -slew- of pc'
s that survive on their own. There is a place with mean ol' rantarri I had a pc survive in by -only- running at the first sign of combat, with lowered defense and daze though a very popular creature out there could daze me on the first hit and keep me stuck in it. Yes it's scary but it must also be playable.

I posted about this in the other discussion though and will repeat it. I had a ranger thug d elf the very first day we could play them. At an hour old I could sap and ko scrab on the first try and was basically a mini-sapping god of doomz. It was refined and I think instead of DO DON'T DO DON'T.

We should instead offer experiences and our opinions to the imms, let us not forget this is our game. Our meaning all of us working together to improve it, rather your a hard working coder, in charge of marketing, or just a player offering constant feedback.

So please lets see less "the desert is harsh" DO and less "the imms want more brains" DON'T posts and lets offer what experiences we have and more then likely we will see it tweaked and made to fit smoothly into the world over the next week or two.

Currently NPCs have command lag like we do. So no need to worry about meks attacking.. They delay. I tested it myself a few times - though they all were unhappy accidents.
In past sometimes creatures charged into the room and instaattacked. They can't do it any more to my knowledge. Correct me if I'm wrong.

For once, I completely agree with Jstorrie.

I even quoted him in my sig.

Quote from: "Cenghiz"Currently NPCs have command lag like we do. So no need to worry about meks attacking.. They delay. I tested it myself a few times - though they all were unhappy accidents.
In past sometimes creatures charged into the room and instaattacked. They can't do it any more to my knowledge. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I think we are supposed to bug npcs that don't, there is still that issue though especially for us dial-up mofos that get to see the npc a second after they enter, and then have to wait another half second or so to type and pray it sends fast enough to ginka.

Quote from: "Delirium"For once, I completely agree with Jstorrie.

I even quoted him in my sig.

Heh. That is pretty fucking quotable.

Quote from: "Cyrian20"

Quote from: "Cenghiz"Currently NPCs have command lag like we do. So no need to worry about meks attacking.. They delay. I tested it myself a few times - though they all were unhappy accidents.
In past sometimes creatures charged into the room and instaattacked. They can't do it any more to my knowledge. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I think we are supposed to bug npcs that don't, there is still that issue though especially for us dial-up mofos that get to see the npc a second after they enter, and then have to wait another half second or so to type and pray and sends fast enough to ginka.

I'll have to wait and see on the new change but I just wanted to add an observation of irony here:

It sounds as though you won't be able to bug NPCs that don't have that delay, because we'll be dead and you can't bug stuff once the mantis shows up.

As for the initial post from Synthesis, I haven't experienced combat since the change, enough to have any opinion one way or another. But I would like to say I enjoyed reading his post, it was entertaining and creatively written (even if it might be incorrect, or inaccurate, or premature, or whatever the current concensus is at the moment).

L. Stanson

I personally didn't enjoy reading his post.

It comes off as inflamatory and confrontational in my reading, and doesn't provide much value in terms of actual statistical analysis of anything he's seen in game:  "In my last fight, I was "reeling" during 10 out of 12 rounds".  Probably the good statistical remarks are best reserved for logs sent directly to the mud account, rather than posted here.  Instead, most of the post is cluttered and unfocused and based on assumptions that he cannot possibly have imperically tested or validated in any way.  It's hard to be convinced, and even harder to be motivated by a post like this.

I realize that it is often tempting to post your bitter, sarcastic, flaming rants here rather than send a considered message along with a log to the staff, but I guarantee you that one method is more effective than the other.

-- X

Quote from: "Lizzie"I'll have to wait and see on the new change but I just wanted to add an observation of irony here:

It sounds as though you won't be able to bug NPCs that don't have that delay, because we'll be dead and you can't bug stuff once the mantis shows up.

This is incorrect, bug does not get delayed by command delay.  So unless you're like one-hit killed, you should be able to get off a bug.  If not, use the request tool to submit the bug.

The code was changed to add ability to block missiles in such.  In this, because of a bug, experienced characters lost an edge over newer characters as the new came out with the ability to automatically defend themselves on a level higher than before if I am not mistaken, no?  Then the staff fixed this and all I hear are complaints because they put them as they were before.  Well, I for one am very thankful because for a while now I was depressed that my relatively skilled character was getting challenged up by newbies for some reason and I couldn't for the life of me explain.

Your joe-schmoe warrior shouldn't be running around with carru anyway.  I see no reason why one shouldn't hammer most humanoids.  Thanks for the fix, Staff.

Quote from: "Dakkon Black"Perhaps this is better in terms of realism, but I have to say, I'm interested in playing a fantasy game where I could become something increadible. Where I -could- become a part of history, could slay dangerous animals with a word, and could go through limitless bountiful imagination.

Not where I couldn't do anything solo until day 50 unless I twink out and use every second of coded advantage to survive.

If every character can be a great hero right out of the box, nobody's really being heroic. There has to be a certain level of difficulty and prevalence of failure for any character's successes to be extraordinary.

I really don't think many characters should be able to go it completely alone in Zalanthas, kick everything's asses, and become epic superheroes. It is still possible to do so with a -lot- of luck and very careful planning. If everyone could be Conan, pwning everything from day four onward just because they took warrior/hunter, I think Armageddon would become very dull.

As it stands you don't have to twink out for fifty days just to survive. You might have to to survive running through bahamet-breeding grounds, or charging head-first into a gith warcamp, but are those really reasonable actions in the first place?

Finally, keep in mind that - as LoD pointed out - a PC learns to defend himself by failing to defend himself. If it gets harder to succeed, that just means the PC will learn more. Things will reach equilibrium again fairly quickly. This sort of reminds me of when it was make much much easier to slice fruit: everyone could now do it, but no-one improved their cooking skill by doing so anymore, because it was no longer a challenging activity. The same thing with defense, in reverse, basically - although skill_cooking doesn't help you fend off mekillots, I suppose.

>i
You are carrying:
a piece of steak
a slice of butter
a lump of gravy
various assorted spices and such
>craft steak slice lump such into a delicious meal
You set to wor--You craft a delicious meal.
>
A big mekillot stumbles in from the east.
>
You shout, in mekillish:
   "DON'T EAT ME!..EAT THIS!"
>give meal mekillot
A big mekillot licks her lips and chows down a delicious meal, grinning at you.
>
A big mekillot happily walks west, a silly grin on her face.
>
You sigh, relieved.
>
An anakore explodes from the earth, screeching loudly as he drags you down with him!
>
>
Welcome to Armageddon.

I've gone through several hours of solid testing on this now, using different classes, races, weapons, armor, skills, monsters, and tactics. I can't post up the actual numbers that I generated, so I'm just going to speak in generalities. Understand that this is data that I have accumulated, not some assumptions that I've made about how things work, not a story my brother's cousin's aunt's sister-in-law told me, and not the result of a single experiment. I ran these simulations repeatedly.

The results look something like this:
:arrow: You can no longer rely on being untouchable to win fights. If you're fighting things that are pretty reasonably in your range, you're still going to win, you're just not going to get by without so much as a scrape.
:arrow: Forget about going solo against Big Nasty Things. You all know what Big Nasty Things are. Thanks to NPC command delay, your chances of running away from Big Nasty Things have improved, so 99% of PCs are better off anyway. The other 1% shouldn't have been able to do what they were doing anyway.
:arrow: If you could handle scrab before, chances are you can handle scrab now. If you were blowing through scrab without getting scratched before, don't count on going unscathed, but you're not going to suddenly be slaughtered.
:arrow: Staying in a fight even when you are running low on hitpoints is now an appropriately risky activity. Routinely getting in fights that end with you barely scraping by has always been a bad idea from a roleplaying standpoint, and now from a coded standpoint it's an equally bad idea.
:arrow: It takes some effort to daze an opponent. The delay from getting dazed is also nowhere near the delay from using several of the common combat commands, including bash, disarm, kick, backstab, sap, kill, etc.

Conclusions:
A range of activities that were unrealistic now have that backed up by the code. I don't see that as a problem.
Combat is a little bit more brutal, and you're no longer as likely to walk out of an encounter unscathed (not that it's impossible). I see this as a good thing as well.
The playing field for combat styles is a lot more level. There are now some distinct advantages for every style. I see this as a very good thing, something I've wanted to see for a long time.
You can't "work" the system in the same way that you used to. Your formula for the ultimate warrior may not have the results that it used to. Also not a bad thing, as far as I'm concerned.

Woohoo! I love it. Now add the bleeding code and Armageddon would be perfect for my warrior/physician. Woohoo!  :roll:

Eh, I was serious about the bleeding code if it was adjusted...but in any case, I like how Nusku's data turned out. No more uber warriors being able to kick a bahamet to death...

-FW, who nearly got close to doing just that with a previous char long ago... :oops:   Not anymore...which he likes now that he knows better.

Quote from: "Nusku"Conclusions:
A range of activities that were unrealistic now have that backed up by the code. I don't see that as a problem.
Combat is a little bit more brutal, and you're no longer as likely to walk out of an encounter unscathed (not that it's impossible). I see this as a good thing as well.
The playing field for combat styles is a lot more level. There are now some distinct advantages for every style. I see this as a very good thing, something I've wanted to see for a long time.
You can't "work" the system in the same way that you used to. Your formula for the ultimate warrior may not have the results that it used to. Also not a bad thing, as far as I'm concerned.

I think these are all admirable goals to strive for, and thus I'll echo Forty Winks - Well done staff members.

Quote from: "Forty Winks"Woohoo! I love it.

Alright i've had a chance to test out the new changes,  my character is pretty combat oriented and i'm quite familar with my characters abilities in various forms. Its a 22 days old heavy combat oriented character, very well trained, still take all this with a grain of salt.

Before the changes, fights were a bit slower but still seemed balanced, one side would win in an orderly manner. I've gotten the impression not only did defense go down but because we've been fighting with boosted defence abilties, our offense is extremely high and skills like shield_use haven't been trained very much. Right now fights feel like a brutal slug fest. Since i worked very hard to build my defence i am not sure whether my defence is actually been trained at the level of my offense or if the bug has significantly hinder it. On a personal note this makes me sad since i've put alot of love and effort into building my PC in all aspects of the game.

I would agree with Nusku that it has made some styles more viable (two-handed and dual wield seems really strong right now) but again i've always assumed that offense and defense would more or less train equally so i'm not sure if currently some PC are seeing Offensive skills at 60/100 trained and defensive skills(shield_use) 30/100 trained (as an example) because of the bug. Personally i didn't find my PC's old defense that impressive to begin with alot of things would still hurt him before he could kill them.

My biggest problem is with mounted combat. This is because when your good at riding you don't fall off. Its so much better to fall off on your mount first hit then stay on your mount. Being mounted currently feels like being fighting unarmed -and- not being standing. Even with the bug goudra, hawk and durrit (creatures like that) would still hit you once in a while and fights took a while to win. Heh enough to say its alot more brutal and down right suicidal now. I really think the penalty should be severely reduced or at least make dismounting when attacked automatic (toggable). Ex. depending on your riding skill you fall off or dismount. Currently being skilled at riding is at times more dangerous then benifical.

I think daze is fine, you need to be around 50% health before hard hits begin to daze you. Otherwise you need to be very skilled, very strong(dwarf) -and- very lucky to daze in the first couple of hits. Currently it doesn't take very long to get there now but for the most part  daze itself is fine. I wanted to see kick and  charge (on top of making them fall on their butt) get a decent chance of dazing someone even without low hitpoints. I still want to see stamina drain where the more tired someone is the more likely they are to get hit and/or not to hit their opponent, etc etc. However i did want this added with a defence boost on top of the one given by the bug because even with the bug my PC was still mangling other PCs pretty easily (it being a non-warrior vs some warriors even). INnmy opinion this would have made combat more strategic and heart thumping other then the 'blink and mantis head' that we are used to seeing.

To be honest i don't have a problem with the way things are right now. Imms have to ask themselves if this is the type of combat they want to be seeing.  Before my opponents had 30-2 mins to decide whether to run or risk fighting me. As it stands now, 10 seconds into the fight, they are getting dazed, 20 seconds they are dead. If they want to see fast and brutal then its fine, if they want to see slower and more strategic then defence levels need to go up somewhat. Again maybe defence just needs time to catch up with current offence levels, right now there isn't much time to emote even when sparring.

Lastly about wilderness being more dangerous. It currently is but for newbies and new PCs. Its just alot harder to start on your own without clan training and from one point of view i like that...Alot. However uber NPCs isn't the type of dangers i wanted to see, i'm still hoping for code and mechanics to allow  PC raider groups and noble house PC slavers to be running around making the wilderness dangerous more easily.

Quote from: "Nusku"
The playing field for combat styles is a lot more level. There are now some distinct advantages for every style. I see this as a very good thing, something I've wanted to see for a long time.

Except one-handed and mounted combat styles! [/hint hint]

The only thing Synthesis said that I agree on is the magicker bit. Magickers -will- make themselves more isolated from the rest of the world now. I've seen how the new daze command -alone- affects magickers without this defensive bug thing and it's not very good. I think the number of magickers we'll be seeing now will be much, much less. Either because they're all off in their little holes to gain enough skill to survive or because they'll die off a lot more quickly than they did before. Whether or not this is a bad thing, I don't know.

I agree with the magicker part regarding these changes as well as how much hg defense sucked to begin with.
Also, from what I've experienced so far with the daze code...it happens WAY too easily IMO. I've already seen creatures dazed basically from the beginning of combat until their death more than once now by a human that isn't exactly a great fighter.

Honestly, most of the code changes regarding combat over the last several months are really beginning to turn me off to playing anything combat related at all. I gave it a while on the stamina drain that primarily affects those of the warrior guild and I still don't think it's fair or realistic that other guilds are not losing stamina while fighting to their full potential as well.

Daze, while in theory a good idea, doesn't appear to have been executed that well IMO. It appears to happen far too easily and I think the starting end of the damage that gives a -chance- at even causing it should be raised.  I'm not the slightest bit impressed or happy about pc's defenses getting nerfed simply to make the game even harder on combat pcs who already live a very dangerous life as it is.

Just a quick note of reassurance: magickers are actually the least affected by the defensive changes. The majority won't be affected at all. Daze code will still have an effect, but how much of one still remains to be seen. This is something we'll be keeping an eye on.

Ya know, I wonder how horrible it's going to be fighting poisonous animals now.  It's just a scary thought.

Anyway, this change doesn't nerf defenses, it just shows how few defenses there were beforehand.  Most of people's defenses come from their primary weapon skill and their style.  I don't really know how much of a parry bonus dual wield and two-handed bonus confer or even if it increases with skill in the style.  Either way, it's not all that much.  So, the only really defensive skill open to anyone is shield use, and I've never had a character where that went off with any regularity.

I personally like this change more than the daze.  Before, you could send two average fighers against a great one, and the great one would kill them both unscathed.  That rather sucks.  I think it could use some tweeking in some areas, like poisonous animals and larger animals perma-dazing until death (saw someone die to accidentally attacking their mount recently, it wasn't pretty).

I can wait for the tweeking, though.

What was unrealistic about a veteran warrior defeating two greenies without a scratch?

*BOGGLE*

Quote from: "Nusku"The results look something like this:
:arrow: You can no longer rely on being untouchable to win fights. If you're fighting things that are pretty reasonably in your range, you're still going to win, you're just not going to get by without so much as a scrape.
:arrow: Forget about going solo against Big Nasty Things. You all know what Big Nasty Things are. Thanks to NPC command delay, your chances of running away from Big Nasty Things have improved, so 99% of PCs are better off anyway. The other 1% shouldn't have been able to do what they were doing anyway.
:arrow: If you could handle scrab before, chances are you can handle scrab now. If you were blowing through scrab without getting scratched before, don't count on going unscathed, but you're not going to suddenly be slaughtered.
:arrow: Staying in a fight even when you are running low on hitpoints is now an appropriately risky activity. Routinely getting in fights that end with you barely scraping by has always been a bad idea from a roleplaying standpoint, and now from a coded standpoint it's an equally bad idea.
:arrow: It takes some effort to daze an opponent. The delay from getting dazed is also nowhere near the delay from using several of the common combat commands, including bash, disarm, kick, backstab, sap, kill, etc.

So, this description leads me to agree more with Synthesis that these changes were not coming at the hands of a "bug fix", but as a planned and focused change to the way combat works in the game.  

It seems as if there were opinions that some "unrealistic combat situations" were resulting with people being able to walk through NPC's or PC's without being touched once they were passed a certain level of skill, and one of the focii of this change is to address that.

Defense and the factors that used to be used to calculate defense have been changed, modified, removed, or tweaked to not only "fix the bug" but to adjust the ceiling.

Is that accurate?

-LoD

Quote from: "jhunter"What was unrealistic about a veteran warrior defeating two greenies without a scratch?

*BOGGLE*

Ya, I'm curious why it was so unrealistic for an 'untouchable' warrior to take down a scrab or two without being hit at all.

And personally, even the completely maxxxed out 'untouchable' warrior of doom still could have gone down one way or another before this new code change. *I'm not saying that they'll go down way faster now.* But what I'm saying is the maxed out warriors have gone down in the past and I've never really seen it as a problem before that some fighters were so exceptionally trained that others around their range couldn't hit them.

Quote from: "jhunter"What was unrealistic about a veteran warrior defeating two greenies without a scratch?

*BOGGLE*

Uhh... everything about it?  Armageddon isn't one of those movies where badguys charge the hero one at a time with their weapons raised until they are dispatched.  Two people surrounding one are going to get at least a few glancing hits, if not a couple good ones, no matter what.  In reality, the lone veteran would need to have a few advantages on his side to win.

Quote from: "Dalmeth"

Quote from: "jhunter"What was unrealistic about a veteran warrior defeating two greenies without a scratch?

*BOGGLE*

Uhh... everything about it?  Armageddon isn't one of those movies where badguys charge the hero one at a time with their weapons raised until they are dispatched.  Two people surrounding one are going to get at least a few glancing hits, if not a couple good ones, no matter what.  In reality, the lone veteran would need to have a few advantages on his side to win.

A lone veteran already has all the advantages they need. It can happen and I'm sure it has plenty of times. There is nothing unrealistic about it. I'm just going to have to say that I believe you are completely wrong and we'll leave it at that because my opinion in this will not be swayed.

Quote from: "jhunter"

Quote from: "Dalmeth"

Quote from: "jhunter"What was unrealistic about a veteran warrior defeating two greenies without a scratch?

*BOGGLE*

Uhh... everything about it?  Armageddon isn't one of those movies where badguys charge the hero one at a time with their weapons raised until they are dispatched.  Two people surrounding one are going to get at least a few glancing hits, if not a couple good ones, no matter what.  In reality, the lone veteran would need to have a few advantages on his side to win.

A lone veteran already has all the advantages they need. It can happen and I'm sure it has plenty of times. There is nothing unrealistic about it. I'm just going to have to say that I believe you are completely wrong and we'll leave it at that because my opinion in this will not be swayed.

I dont see nothing unrealistic about a veteran laying the smack down on someone without taking a blow. If we are talking about realistic stuff then I will bring up and example that happened in real life. I have seen someone who was a decent fighter get the living crap beat out of them without laying a single blow on the other person. This is indeed going to make things tough icly. Even with the bug, I never had a problem losing a pc, heh. I mean even insta-dying sometimes, even to something that wasnt really all that bad. I dunno, we are just going to have to suck it up and get over it.

I think the best thing to do, as with most changes of this kind, is to sit back and wait to see how the newer combat-types are affected, as well as the more long-term effects. If the fix was truly a bug as the imms have stated, it only goes to say perhaps we've been thinking of Arm combat wrong, and the now 'fixed' code is how it should have been.

From the gist of the posts explaining the new change, it seems to me that extra bonuses applied in defense have been removed to better accurately portray defense. That means other skills that rely on defense will be increased more over time than previously, including skills such as parry and shield-use to offset the difference. The main reason everyone is seeing such a large drop in the defenses is due to losing the extra defense bonuses that weren't apart of defensive skills (parry, shield-use) and the base defense.

As of screwing magickers over, if this is the case with the code, it really only affects magickers who have relied on melee combat for some time (some krathians, for example) as they now won't have a defense that portrays their past experiences in combat. It isn't -this- change in the bug that magickers should be worried about, it's the daze effect.

Personally, I think the 'fix' brings alot more good to the game than bad. Yeah, there's going to be some short-term consequences for everyone to adjust too, but think about the characters you'll have in the future (and those who survive through this period) who get to enjoy the benefits later on. Loosen up abit, and start thinking about the good things instead of just the bad.

-FW, who appreciates dyanamic changes to the game, even if they screw you over for a (hopefully brief) time.

Which brings me to another point: just how much are fighting styles really affected due to this change? Dual wield will allow increased "parry" and more consecutive attacks, shield-use will add more defensive abilities through "blocking" (as an update was announced for shields blocking), and two-handed will hit harder (with more chances for daze) in exchange for a worse defense.

[reflection]Looks to me the staff have done a good amount of planning ahead already to take into account these changes. As the players don't (and shouldn't know) the exact mechanics of the code, it's better not to be jumping all over them for making changes that may seem detrimental to the game at first, but are assuredly done for the benefit of players and the game. Complaining and ranting right off the bat won't accomplish anything with no solid basis or long-term experience, and will only make you as a poster appear foolish abit down the line when the real benefits of the code are actually revealed. Also, the imms aren't there to cater to -everyone-. There will undoubtedly be people who hate certain changes (as it seems some people still haven't gotten over the stamina drain from combat skills), but in my Arm experience thus far, any addition, modification, deletion, and tweaking to the code in the past have been for the overall benefit of the game, and not simply to screw certain guilds/roles over.[/reflection]

-FW, who he thinks has been posting funny lately.

Actually, I have to agree with jhunter on one point...

I have seen in RL a 'maxxed out warrior' take out 5 'noobs' in 30 seconds without suffering a scratch.  He was unarmed and they were all armed.

Will we ever see such in Arm?  Probably not.  Everyone will complain that warriors are too strong.

Currently, as I've said, I'm playing a character that seems to have been benefited by this code more than penalized...so of course I see nothing wrong. ;)  Honestly and seriously, though, I still think everyone complaining about this needs to chill and wait.  See how this affects long-term, not just short-term.  As has been suggested, many people's defenses have probably not gone up as much as they should have due to the fact that their defensive skills were all getting a bonus here or there that they shouldn't have.

The only thing I'm really worried about here are starting characters, considering that without the bonus defense they're even worse off now than they used to be.
It was hard enough before to get things started without an active clan, if this is getting worse it might get near impossible.

I don't know if this code change had anything to do with it, but today my 5-day pickpocket with next to no combat training beat what I think is a fairly well-established assassin, with relative ease, in two sparring matches. A few days prior to that before the change went in, that character beat mine without any trouble.

What I did notice was that instead of the occasional hit in-between dodges and parries, we both hit eachother with pretty much every attack and my stats made a -world- of difference there. Also because we practically couldn't miss eachother, I imagine we didn't get much in the ways of offense/weapon skill increases, but I suppose that'll change gradually as our defensive skills catch up due to the beatings we're now taking from eachother.

Quote from: "Nao"The only thing I'm really worried about here are starting characters, considering that without the bonus defense they're even worse off now than they used to be.

Actually, the weaker someone is in combat, the less they're affected.  The bug fix means that bonuses and defensive skills are now applied as they should be.  So a new character whose defensive skills aren't any good won't be much affected.

I don't think anyone on staff has said "and it's going to stay this way forever!", by the way.  If, after a while, we think it needs adjusting and tweaking, we'll do that.  

(but most of us won't listen to people like the OP of this thread who are just nasty and sarcastic from the get-go, rather, we listen to people like Dresan who actually tested it first, then came back with polite, constructive feedback).

New system is Great and i dont understand why people complain about it.. I'v been watching films and animes and all for years and no fight lasted more then 2 rounds, they draw swords and one is dead, other is alive.. I know metal doesnt exist but still, having 10's of combat rounds was too unrealistic, i am so happy about new code.

Whoah, I just saw stuff hit my pc past his shield that has never touched him in over a year of play.

One mobile didn't even have a weapon equipped and did it unarmed..

Hot Dancer

Quote from: "Nusku"Combat is a little bit more brutal, and you're no longer as likely to walk out of an encounter unscathed (not that it's impossible). I see this as a good thing as well.

One small thing. I've not seen the code yet, and am not going to talk about it, but...

The entire point of hunting, RL hunting, is to come away unscathed. Historically hunters have managed this quite well, even before the era of shotguns and big game rifles. When on their own, they sneak up on small game that would flee their presence and ambush it, and they group together into packs to handle more dangerous animals. Armageddon is somewhat strangely biased towards the more dangerous animals, they're very plentiful. This does make it hard for solo hunters to be played sensibly. Now, I feel that if a group of hunters with long spears go to take on a scrab or something, they should have excellent odds of getting away completely unhurt, even if none of them would last more than seconds in close combat with such a beast. Would you say this is currently the case?

(On a side note, I also think that if you're going to fight a beast that requires you to bring a large group of hunters if you're all to escape unscathed that it should provide you with much more meat than such beasts currently do. It's silly to bring down a mekillot and end up with a few paltry steaks; there should be so much meat there that a half-giant couldn't carry it all, no matter how careless the skinner.)

I absolutely love the daze code and the new spin it puts on combat, especially group combat. I don't agree with it because I'm part of a group that utilizes it, I was actually victim to a group and liked the way it played out with them descending quickly onto my pc and how spamflee didn't instantly work. As for defense being nerfed, I could tell the difference, definately, and new pc's seriously won't be effected as much, in fact if the new pc's live as long as the currently established pc's then they'll almost positively be better than we were at that point. Lower defense, more getting hit, more getting hit, more increase in your defensive skills. If you fought a couple scrab and got hit a few times and hopped on the thread to bitch about it I don't think it's very helpful to anyone.

Getting hit more and combat ending more quickly I feel is more realistic than the 7,000 nicks and grazes my character normally recieved before reaching half his hp anyway.

I personally want to test this out. But I'm too scared. I already get beaten up by things I should be able to stand on - I don't want the embarrassment of another 'death by butterfly' note on my account.  :oops:

Is this really as bad as everyone is making out? If I take my char and go on my usual hunt...Am I going to die to things I used to be able to kill? I'm asking because this is an OOC change, so finding out IC is really a valid response...and well, I don't want to die finding out.

Quote from: "Quirk"

Quote from: "Nusku"Combat is a little bit more brutal, and you're no longer as likely to walk out of an encounter unscathed (not that it's impossible). I see this as a good thing as well.

One small thing. I've not seen the code yet, and am not going to talk about it, but...

The entire point of hunting, RL hunting, is to come away unscathed. Historically hunters have managed this quite well, even before the era of shotguns and big game rifles. When on their own, they sneak up on small game that would flee their presence and ambush it, and they group together into packs to handle more dangerous animals. Armageddon is somewhat strangely biased towards the more dangerous animals, they're very plentiful. This does make it hard for solo hunters to be played sensibly. Now, I feel that if a group of hunters with long spears go to take on a scrab or something, they should have excellent odds of getting away completely unhurt, even if none of them would last more than seconds in close combat with such a beast. Would you say this is currently the case?

(On a side note, I also think that if you're going to fight a beast that requires you to bring a large group of hunters if you're all to escape unscathed that it should provide you with much more meat than such beasts currently do. It's silly to bring down a mekillot and end up with a few paltry steaks; there should be so much meat there that a half-giant couldn't carry it all, no matter how careless the skinner.)

You can't really compare RL animals that are hunted, to the animals found on Zalanthas. Yeah, animals like quirri and gurth likely would be possible to walk out unscathed for an experienced hunter, but things such as scrab, duskhorn, and carru are typically mutated giants of the animals in RL. And even taking examples of RL variants of the animals IG, a boar-hunt in RL with a wooden spear could easily kill a hunter if they aren't experienced and well-prepared before, even if they are in a group. Now replace the hide of a boar with a chitinous plate and you got a miniture RL scrab.

In any case, in relation to the game, hunting gets boring and becomes a chore just to get some coins or meat if you walked out unscathed codedly all the time. Now, each hunt is actually a life-threatening endeavor, which I love.

There's a huge difference going from walking away unscathed once in a while to walking away with an injury almost every time. That's not any more realistic than how it was previously.  Less realistic IMO. RL hunters or soldiers would -never- last very long at all if they were wounded every single time.

In fact, alot of deaths back in the times of this sort of combat were due to infections from wounds on the battlefield. If people got wounded that much noone would've continued beyond a battle or two.

Quote from: "Forty Winks"You can't really compare RL animals that are hunted, to the animals found on Zalanthas. Yeah, animals like quirri and gurth likely would be possible to walk out unscathed for an experienced hunter, but things such as scrab, duskhorn, and carru are typically mutated giants of the animals in RL. And even taking examples of RL variants of the animals IG, a boar-hunt in RL with a wooden spear could easily kill a hunter if they aren't experienced and well-prepared before, even if they are in a group. Now replace the hide of a boar with a chitinous plate and you got a miniture RL scrab.

This would be pretty much my point. Most big animal hunts, nobody gets hurt but the animal - and if a hunter does mess up dealing with the lion or bear or whatever, there's an excellent chance of them being killed. It's not terribly realistic to have a bunch of hunters coming away from most hunts with moderate injuries.

(Incidentally, the Masai do hunt lions alone to demonstrate their bravery. This is likely to end in a dead lion and an uninjured Masai hunter, or more rarely a dead Masai hunter and an uninjured lion).

Quote from: "Forty Winks"In any case, in relation to the game, hunting gets boring and becomes a chore just to get some coins or meat if you walked out unscathed codedly all the time. Now, each hunt is actually a life-threatening endeavor, which I love.

Going out to hunt shouldn't be particularly life-threatening, most of the time. It would be ludicrous to have a mortality rate of, say, 50% of hunters dying within their first year of hunting, assuming a hunter population who didn't go out of their way to tangle with huge and dangerous creatures.

Hunting those huge and dangerous creatures should be life-threatening, but the common outcome should tend towards either the hunters coming away with no or few injuries, or bringing back a dead comrade. Having them regularly coming back partially mauled is silly.

QuoteDefense and the factors that used to be used to calculate defense have been changed, modified, removed, or tweaked to not only "fix the bug" but to adjust the ceiling.

Is that accurate?

That would be a completely inaccurate statement.

The fix was a genunine bug fix. If things were changed due to realism or "adjust the ceiling", we would say so.

Quote from: "Halaster"After reading the first few paragraphs, then completely ignoring the rest because I knew the rest would be a long continuation of the first few paragraphs, I suggest this:

With respect, how do you know the remaining paragraphs were simply a paraphrase of the first two if you didn't read them?  Because, on the contrary, I found it one of the few lengthy posts worth reading.  There were some remarkably valid points stated there.  Go give it a read, man, you might be surprised.

I see the main problem with code changes as this.  A player logs on, trusting the skills he's always used and, suddenly, finds himself instakilled due to a change in the steal code, or the combat code, etc.  It's only natural that he's going to be upset about it but, when making his comments, he may be told to give it time and let the bugs be worked out.  I don't want to be a guinea pig and lose a character to something where, a week ago (and all the years prior), would have never come close to killing him.  I don't want to spend the time, energy and calories required to ponder a new character concept only to have all that effort go down the drain due to a code that's "in-the-works".

I think what Synthesis was saying, whether you've taken his criticism as constructive or insulting, is that in his opinion (and I am happy he has the freedom to share it) the code change pushes this MUD towards H&Sness.  From the little bit I've experienced and the large amount I've read on the board here regarding changes to combat, I have little to no insentive to put any thought in a character concept.  I'll just whip up a quick 3 1/2 line mdesc with a one sentance background and make sure it is in no way unique or original because, frankly, I don't want to get attached to a character that will die faster than you can type 'f l e e'.

Suggesting players wait a while until a code evolves makes sense when it's something along the lines of cooking or a new spell or a change to psionics.  But imagine playing a master thief who has always been able to trust his skills, logging on and doing what you've always done, only to be instakilled due to a change in the steal command.  Look, I'm not being mean, I'm not being rude, I'm trying to demonstrate my point as politely as possible but... I think I'd be pretty upset if someone tried to quieten me by saying "Give it time".  Because in this instance, "give it time" essentially means "start making a few characters and dying again and again until you learn how the new changes operate".  ArmageddonMUD wouldn't suit its name if the game were easy, but I think there are more than enough death traps and ways to die instantly that adding more is, quite literally, overkill.

These are merely my opinions.  I am not badmouthing anyone.  I kindly ask you to respect my point of view, as I respect yours.

Cheers.

Heheh, good post. Actually, after seeing the stuff about the daze addition and then seeing the stuff about this defense thing the first thing that popped into my head was: "What, you don't think we are dying -enough- already?!"

:lol:

Quote from: "Halaster"Actually, the weaker someone is in combat, the less they're affected.  The bug fix means that bonuses and defensive skills are now applied as they should be.  So a new character whose defensive skills aren't any good won't be much affected.

Quote from: "Halaster"Before, your chance to parry and do other defensive things was grossly inflated and bonuses were mis-applied. They have been corrected to what they should be, which results in fighter-types getting hit more often.

Note that a really experienced fighter will be able to be as good as they were before, this mostly affects newer combat-oriented characters.

Quote from: "Pantoufle"
There were some remarkably valid points stated there.  Go give it a read, man, you might be surprised.

No thanks.  I really don't have any interest in reading someone's opinion who starts out the first two paragraphs acting so sarcastic and insulting, "valid points" or not.

Quote from: "Doppelganger"

Quote from: "Halaster"Actually, the weaker someone is in combat, the less they're affected.  The bug fix means that bonuses and defensive skills are now applied as they should be.  So a new character whose defensive skills aren't any good won't be much affected.

Quote from: "Halaster"Before, your chance to parry and do other defensive things was grossly inflated and bonuses were mis-applied. They have been corrected to what they should be, which results in fighter-types getting hit more often.

Note that a really experienced fighter will be able to be as good as they were before, this mostly affects newer combat-oriented characters.

Hunh, I contradicted myself, thanks for pointing that out.  In the 2nd quote (which was the announcement?) I was a bit wrong, I think.  I noticed that a code change had gone in by someone else, so I quickly made an announcement to quell the questions being asked "if combat had changed", before I entirely understood what they changed.  I probably should have waited a bit longer before posting, and gotten a better understanding of what they changed, sorry.

Newer characters won't suffer as much because they already don't have good defensive abilities (compared to longer-lived ones).  I should have left it with:  "Note that a really experienced fighter will be able to be as good as they were before."  Or maybe "this mostly affects mid-career combat-oriented characters"?

Quote from: "Tlaloc"That would be a completely inaccurate statement.

The fix was a genunine bug fix. If things were changed due to realism or "adjust the ceiling", we would say so.

Thanks for the clarification.  Your wording seems to indicate some level of offense at the inference that this change was motivated by anything other than a bug fix because "we would say so."

My post wasn't intended to be snarky or assuming.  I was just seeking general clarification based on how the series of events unfolded.  I didn't recall seeing any announcement of the defense bug fix, but it's certainly possible that I simply missed it.  For something that would have such a profound effect upon the playerbase, however, it might have warranted an individual thread on the GDB so players were aware of the change prior to implementation, especially with Nusku's testing finding there to be quite a few changes to the "mindset" of the fighting populace.

I will certainly take a look at how the changed code behaves from a player's perspective over the next few months and provide constructive feedback after having some time to witness it in action.  I'm sure you can understand how players of a game can be a bit shaken when someone changes the rules on them in the middle of the action.  

It's like playing soccer and suddenly getting whistled for a foul because I'm using my left foot, and that's no longer allowed. :wink:

-LoD

Quote from: "Halaster"Hunh, I contradicted myself, thanks for pointing that out.

Thanks for resolving that contradiction.

His sarcasm aside, Synthesis expressed his concern over changes. The fact that his worries were based on expectations rather then on knowledge doesn't make his post less valid than 99% of other posts on GDB. Actually, everything said on this topic was based on expectations and nearly zero knowledge, difference in how optimistic poster's outlook on life is.

That said, I thought that a bit of hints on how changes work would be helpful.
Changes were drastic enough for players to notice them long before announcements. Now everyone need to adjust their characters, old and new, to these changes.
I think the more information you provide the less empty speculations you get.

Well, things are more interesting now.  Combat is more brutal, as they said, and luck is a more significant factor in fights between reasonably even matched opponents.

Overall, I like the bug fix.  If any of you remember newbie hunting, it was just dodge after dodge after dodge.  Now things will go by a bit quicker.

Wow you guys.  Change is change.  But the staff isn't out to make the game unplayable, that's just ridiculous to even suggest.   This code, like all code changes will be reviewed, considered and quite possibly tweaked until it is something we all know and love and spout endlessly in reviews about how much more awesome arm code is than any other game.  I can think of SO many examples where changes resulted in belly aching (some from me) which ended up being no big deal, or even cool in the long run.  

If you don't want to lose a character during a code transitional period, and it's argueable if the code would be to blame, then I suggest avoiding instances where it would be a problem.  Take a week off the game or something.  Halaster and Morgenes have both been really reasonable in their responses here and thats in the face of some pretty harsh critisism.  Seriously.  Calm down.

Change is change sure. But think about it, people play a game usually because they enjoy the way things work and such. You change how things work and you turn it into a different game with the same name. It's the same thing as with any other game. Some come out that I enjoy everything about them immensely and cannot wait for a sequel. Then the sequel comes out and they have changed the game mechanics and such so that I no longer enjoy it.

Change is fine and all but there becomes a point where I think it's best to leave the major mechanics alone and flush out the things that are already there.
Spend some time fixing brew or something.  Make silt-skimmers and travel on the silt sea a coded reality instead of just virtual. Flush out the crafting skills that need it more. Build more on expanding the size of the gameworld or making it more three-dimensional instead of messing with game mechanics that worked perfectly fine as they were.  The original mechanics were good enough, I think there were other areas that need more work than what is currently being focused on.

Some people don't see these type of changes as an improvement and are going to be vocal about it because, in a sense, you are taking away something they loved as it was.

I don't like most aspects of the game anymore. *shrug*

On topic: I'll have to see how combat is different for myself.

I think the code changes are great, though I predict we will see some modifications to how often the daze effects kick in. Since the daze code was implemented when the defense code was still buggy, I'm going to guess all balancing tests are based off the buggy defense code, and therefore no longer reflect the original balance template.

I feel that a very minor reduction to daze frequency (I like the daze) may be in order to compensate for the fact that hits are now landing more frequently.

Quote from: "Pantoufle"

Quote from: "Halaster"After reading the first few paragraphs, then completely ignoring the rest because I knew the rest would be a long continuation of the first few paragraphs, I suggest this:

With respect, how do you know the remaining paragraphs were simply a paraphrase of the first two if you didn't read them?

He didn't say paraphrase.  He said continuation.  Different words, same attitude and tone.

It doesn't matter, though.  Halaster was saying that the original post was snarky.  Why, when you can simply scroll past such jackassery, would anyone stop to read it?

Quote from: "Synthesis"People with crappy connections might as well stay home. It was bad enough before, being caught by the random Doom Beetle descending from the the murky realm known as "the square north-east," but at least you had a sprinter's chance, once your connection stopped lagging. Now, if combat even starts, you're pretty much toast, unless you have mad skills, because that beetle is going to daze you with the first blow, and keep dazing you until you're meat. Yay.

-Self Edited because I'd rather save'em the time of doing it-

Well...Gunner, since I got here before your post gets editted and know what probably killed you, just be grateful things weren't wholly realistic.  If things were, it would just kill you in one stomp.

Still, even if it wasn't what I think, sometimes the green newbie get's a lucky shot off and KO's the uber warrior.  Sometimes the uber-warrior just sucks ass.  I'd suggest not jumping to conclusions.  Be civil.  Discuss.  The staff is more likely to respond to you in a positive fashion that way.

Oh, and one last thing, this isn't the thread to discuss dazing.  This is the 'defense got nerfed' thread.

Well, spawn, if it HAD killed me with one stomp, I would've rathered that. Atleast I would've died thinking that I got owned by some creature to match that of a mekillot instead've some feckin' run-of-the-mill critter...

Quote from: "spawnloser"

Quote from: "Pantoufle"

Quote from: "Halaster"After reading the first few paragraphs, then completely ignoring the rest because I knew the rest would be a long continuation of the first few paragraphs, I suggest this:

With respect, how do you know the remaining paragraphs were simply a paraphrase of the first two if you didn't read them?

He didn't say paraphrase.  He said continuation.  Different words, same attitude and tone.

It doesn't matter, though. Halaster was saying that the original post was snarky. Why, when you can simply scroll past such jackassery, would anyone stop to read it?

Replying to a post that you haven't read in full is just bad form. Promoting the idea of not fully reading posts and yet replying to them on a GDB system is completely contrary to the very fundamental CORE of a DISCUSSION BOARD. I personally love the combat code changes and am hoping to see more, but I thought I'd post this up to put an end to any discussion in this thread about why it's ok not to read people's messages in full and then offer a reply. It's completely ridiculous to propose that we should reply to messages we haven't fully read.  Skipping over posts and _not_ replying to them is totally expected and normal behavior, but skipping a post and replying to it just doesn't make sense.

No, it's not cool to skip post content and reply to the post. Spawnloser's post may inspire a derail regarding why it's ok to skip post content and reply, but let's not allow it to go there.

QuoteI think what Synthesis was saying, whether you've taken his criticism as constructive or insulting, is that in his opinion (and I am happy he has the freedom to share it) the code change pushes this MUD towards H&Sness.  From the little bit I've experienced and the large amount I've read on the board here regarding changes to combat, I have little to no insentive(sic) to put any thought in a character concept.  I'll just whip up a quick 3 1/2 line mdesc with a one sentance background and make sure it is in no way unique or original because, frankly, I don't want to get attached to a character that will die faster than you can type 'f l e e'.

I disagree with what you say, sir, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it.

I don't think the code changes are destroying anyone's incentive to create well-thought out characters at all. On the contrary, I think they reinforce your incentive to act and roleplay realistically - to NOT go out alone into the desert and try to solo salt worms, or a tribe of gith, or a nest of raptors, and so on. The code changes are upping the risk factor of that to the point where it's a bad idea in most cases.

An H&S much would have a much different balance between PCs and the environment. In H&S muds, the top-leveled, maxed out characters are usually gods in their own right, capable of killing 95% of the NPCs in the game. (The other 5% they can group with others and kill, too.) In a roleplay mud, and especially in Armageddon there will be things out there that you would have to be insane to fight unless you're some kind of ubersorceror. Unlike an H&S, even the maxed out warriors and rangers are not comic book superheroes who can defeat entire armies in single combat. By placing PCs on a lower plateau of power than the things that want to eat them, we're encouraging those PCs to make smarter, more cautious decisions if they want to live long. I think that's the point of an RPI.

You could, I suppose, keep spamming characters with no backgrounds and weak mdescs, and charging into the deserts to fight things until you die, and then "respawn" a new one and repeat the same process, but I don't think that's what the game is designed for or what the code change is promoting. It would probably quickly stop being fun.

Say what you want about the new combat code, but I don't think it hurts roleplay.

Sorry for the delay in posting a defense of my orginal post, but the sheer quantity of replies and real-life time constraints kept me from it until now.

Most of the (useful) counterpoints were made by the earlier posters, so those are more heavily addressed.  In particular I address quite a few of Larrath's points, simply because he was the first to bring them up.

1. Larrath, RE: "Carru and Lag."
Yes, carru bash is annoying and lag was a problem before the daze code went in.  However, the daze code significantly increases the chance of a large creature being able to hit you repeatedly.  Before, if you lagged out or if you simply missed the creture's entrance message, you could soak the first hit and flee out instantly.  Now, it's quite possible that if you overlook the message or lag out, you'll be forced to stick around while that large creature lands some follow-up blows.

2. Larrath, RE: "Rebuilding your Defense."
Your argument is valid only if the changes to the code lower overall defense only through the middle range.  If it lowers maximum achievable defense (which I'm inclined to think it does), sparring to "rebuild defense" will only aid those who haven't already reached their upper limit.  If this is the case, then it pretty much leaves everyone at least a little more vulnerable.  Personally, I'd always considered my PCs vulnerable enough. Given the high turnover rate of combat-oriented PCs, it seems excessive to heap further difficulties upon them.

3. Larrath, RE: "Grouping."
The fundamental problem with grouping is the OOC unreliability of your group members.  If you are a hunter who is barely getting by, you can't idle around for four hours waiting for your buddy to log in.  (Even if you could, why would you want to?)  In a clan, with many members, it's often difficult to get any sort of group effort together, and so much more so when you don't have the convenience of a GDB forum or an IC rumor board.

4. Larrath, RE: "Rescue."
Outside of rote sparring, rescue usage is infrequent, for a variety of reasons: 1) the difficulty of grouping in the first place; 2) it is tactically more sound for the ablest fighter to simply engage before the attacker can randomly pick a target; 3) it is tactically more sound for the target of the initial attack to simply flee once the attacker has been engaged.  Until these circumstances are changed, pretty much the only PCs with any skill at rescuing or guarding will be coming out of the Byn.

5. jstorrie, RE: "Fighting T-Rexes."
As far as I know, nobody was ever going to go solo against a mek, under normal circumstances.  However, at least they had a chance of getting away if they were unfortunate enough to be attacked by one.  Now, I would say that the chance is significantly lower.  Given the terrain meks inhabit (as has been pointed out numerous times), it is unlikely that such a beast could ever launch a surprise attack, as they unfortunately are fairly capable of doing at the moment.

6. jstorrie, RE: "The Desert is Harsh."
I figured the desert was fairly harsh enough, as it was.  Besides which, these recent changes don't particularly affect the harshness of the desert, only the frequency with which people will be killed by large beasts (which they probably were actively seeking to avoid, in the first place).  Browsing through "Most Dissatisfying Deaths" thread, I see quite a few chalked up to mobiles, but not a one in the "Most Satisfying Deaths" thread.  Apparently, nobody enjoys being killed by a mobile, no matter how uber.  Sure, we all get a good chuckle when we run across some hapless newb's bahamet-brutalized corpse (sometimes you even get a bunch of loot!), but I don't think the game is any better off for that death.  One grievous pinch to the arm is enough to warn off any would-be solo bahamet hunters.  We don't need PCs to actually die from a random encounter with an insanely large beast to impress upon them the danger of such things.

7. Generally, RE: "NPC Command Delay."
This was an admirable fix, but it doesn't really concern my argument.  Yes, it decreases the chance of dying to what was a true bug, but now you've gone and increased the chance of dying to a similar bug (inability to look north-east, etc.).  NPCs are delayed, but they can still appear virtually out of nowhere, attack, -and- keep you there while they engage in further melee.  Note that this is a criticism of the daze code, but the defense nerf ties into it by increasing the likelihood of being dazed by such an attack.

8. Xygax, RE: "Statistical Analysis."
Yes, I jumped to some conclusions and upon further consideration I've amended some of my previous views.  However, your call for statistical analysis before criticism is absurd, simply because it would be impossible for any player to compile a set of statistics that would adequately address the issue in a timely manner.  If this were a pre-requisite for comment on code issues, there would be little point in having a Code Discussion Forum.

9. Generally, RE: "Magickers."
My prediction for magickers was addressed more to the daze code than to the defense nerf.  Of course the two are not entirely separate issues, but the one is apparently far more significant than the other.

10. Generally, RE: "Nastiness."
I'm sorry you interpreted my tone as malicious or mean-spirited, but it wasn't intended to be.  Yes, I used rhetorical hyperbole to get my point across, but I seriously doubt I would've generated six pages of discussion with an initial post that read like a statistics lecture.  Sometimes, you've just got to have a little fire in your belly before anyone will care.

11. Generally, RE: "Bug Fix, Not a Nerf."
I still believe my criticism of the terms in which the defense nerf was couched is a valid one: it is not merely a bug fix, it is a calculated downward adjustment of defensive abilities--i.e. a nerf.  Perhaps the bug itself was that defense was too good.  That's fine.  However, this does not change the fact that the change is also a nerf:  it may be a bug fix and a nerf, but it certainly is not only a bug fix.

Okay. My turn. I don't normally flat out bitch about changes...Especially not in the last 6 months. I have loved and embraced most of the changes made.  I loved watch, I loved the changes to sneak and hide. I loved bio. I love lamp. I loved hemote and semote. I even loved daze.

Wait, Lamp? NEver mind that.

With this I was worried but I waited until I sparred a little to say what I have to say.

I HATE this change. I HATE it. I HATE it. I HATE it. I hate it so.

All I can say is WHY? WHHHHYYY hast thou forsaken us so?? How hast thou displeased you????

Now. That being said.

I hate this change because my current character is significantly weaker then they were last week. And I find it irritating, my OC ego is bruised and it seems chars that were only slightly better then me yesterday are now 100 times better then me.


Now. *That* being said....Is this a bad things? I think what I see is that the change has made warriors stronger and to be fair with the boost to sneakies of late, maybe that's a good thing.

All in all. I hate it.  I liked it the way it was, and now I think it sucks.

Talk to me in two weeks and my mind may change. But as of right now I am thoroughly disgruntled.

I don't think this needed fixing. Things were hard enough as it was, especially with the addition of daze.

Like I mentioned earlier but without clarifying much, the impression I get is that stats now matter a lot more, especially in the beginning. From testing and observation, it seems that hits are much much more frequent and characters with low defense skills will hit eachother practically every time, so now agility, strength and endurance has been the absolute deciding factor in the outcome of fights for me. It's probably different when relatively skilled opponents fight and dodges/parries actually occur, but as long as failed attacks are almost non-existant then the speed and force of your attacks as well as how much you can endure will be pretty much the only thing that matters.

I worry that now a slew of people will find strength to be so important just to survive so that they can daze other people first, all we'll ever see is pc warriors who suicided over and over to get an awesome strength roll.

I worry that in the wastes, pc's will attack first and rp later, because if they don't, they other guy might, and that means that he gets the first chance to daze.

But I have faith that the staff are watching this change very closely and aren't about to leave it in a state that doesn't work well. I have to admit, I rather hated the idea from the start.

Perhaps a cool idea would be making daze an actual skill that warriors can branch later and that larger beasts would have.  Obviously I don't know if everything can daze, but... tregil dazing me to death would suck, and the truth is, I've had chars who almost died to tregil before the daze code went in. Heh.

I just got to say about the magicker arguement.  

Seriously?

Magickers with Daze code in a sense got nerfed.  They're more vulnerable because now they're going to have a harder time casting.  They're going to find themselves possibly getting dazed.  And you say, OH GOD the magickers are going to try to kill us faster!  

So like.. if the staff make magickers so uber they don't have to worry about you ever hurting them then it's crap cause magickers are too powerful!  But if the staff make a change that makes magickers more vulnerable it becomes OH GOD now the magickers are going to be more careful cause we might kill them otherwise.  

Clearly the staff can't win this no matter what they do.  

I would like to further point out having played a fairly long lived and powerful magicker, that powerful magickers to my experience were a lot more rare then people seem to think.

Quote from: "Synthesis"8. Xygax, RE: "Statistical Analysis."
Yes, I jumped to some conclusions and upon further consideration I've amended some of my previous views.  However, your call for statistical analysis before criticism is absurd, simply because it would be impossible for any player to compile a set of statistics that would adequately address the issue in a timely manner.  If this were a pre-requisite for comment on code issues, there would be little point in having a Code Discussion Forum.

You're saying that making "I have experienced an issue" a criteria for discussing that issue is absurd?  If all you have is anecdotal evidence, then offer that (via private e-mail, since current anecdotes are inevitably too IC for the boards), if you're going to complain in broad, sweeping generalizations, then you'd better have some statistics.  I don't find this requirement absurd in any way, and it should stem the tide of knee-jerk reactions such as those with which this thread is replete.

I can certainly also be persuaded by "I anticipate an issue," but those sorts of arguments should be constructed with logical reasoning empowered by courteous phrasing.  If you want people to value your opinion, you owe them the same level of respect.

-- X

Has the way combat skills are trained and learned been altered as well to adapt to the new system? I'd have to admit I'd anticipate some problems in that area, if skill-advancement hasn't already been explored in combination with the new defense adjustments... such as with Nusku's impressive experiments.

I definately agree that the lever goes both ways, and either way you balance it seems to favour one over the other, but I don't actually think the daze code is the problem for magickers. Just the way it can come about.

In a room that should be hundreds over cords long, someone can arrive and before you've drawn daze you. It's not rp realistic, but codewise it can be done, and is done out there by some people.

I think the real answer would be some kind of challenge code like approach. You could never attack another pc unless you approached them first.

Then if you walk into a room and someone enters, at least you as any pc, from magicker to noob ranger trying to greb for a root, you don't get owned out of the blue by somebody not paying any attention at all to how far realistically they must have been in the room.

Only has pro's I'd say. Doesn't allow random attacks, and creates a safety barrier that can be used to increase desert rp.

El Double Poste.

approach code sounds great, but there are already too many codes in game, another simpler solution might be, -and i remember discussed before-:  a delay can be put before agressive actions, which might include kill, hit , subdue, bash,...
it can be like:
kill duskhorn..
You rush towards a graceful duskhorn.
5 second passes and combat starts.
Everyone in room might see the message, or they may not (depending on alertness)
bs and sap can have some priviledges.

I have to say that when a very experienced dwarven hunter is incapable of dropping a scrab by himself something has gone terribly wrong.  I posted in another thread that one of the things I admired about Arm was its ability to engage players who wanted to play solo, indy characters that could still have an impact and at the same time have large, imm-controlled groups.  This "fix" makes it very, very difficult to be an Indy player.  What it really does, in the end assessment, is drive players into the large, Imm-controlled clans like Kadius, Borsail, etc.  This takes the control of the story of the game away from players and puts it in the hands of the Imms, and in my mind this violates the most basic principles of Arm.  One of the things I've always loved most about Arm is that a player could rise up and become the ruler of the world, that players were responsible for driving the story and the plot.  If that is no longer the case, I think it's a highly regretable situation.

I love Arm, I love the work that all the folks put in on it, I love the creativity they employ in coding and trying to make this an excellent game, and I realize that sometimes they're just gonna miss, and that's ok.  I'm not trying to be down on the game or on any of them, I'm just pointing out what seems to be more than just a logical inconsistency, but rather something that violates one of the basic principles that makes Arm the best game there is.

Ohhh...an approach code would be horsum. But obviously...sneakies would have a skill that allowed them to work on doing in sekretly...and rangers should be able to work on approaching animals without warning/scaring them.

*giggle* I can't wait for Halaster to quit buffing magickers, and fucking combat classes, wouldn't it be dandy?

But on the point -- this would simply enable you to be hit more often, so it would take you less time to get your defense higher, which can be a problem with being a warrior.

Carru's lag, yeah always been a problem, doesn't change much, the stun thing...not seen much to it, atleast me hitting npc's with it.

I'll take this as a blessing in disguise and leave it at that.

Edited further to add.  I've had a lot of unpolite things to say about the modifications to combat in the past. All of the modifications they have done, have had few consequences  for me as a player such as stam loss, for moves and combat initiation, it doesn't really bother me, rest as much as I rested before, so along with that I doubt they'll put in anything we can't handle.

Edited further further to add that's scrabs are nasty nasty bastards, if you've taken them in the past easily, and they seemingly just started nailing you, wait for a reboot and then try another.  Sometimes, god forbid a npc will get immensly strong off of players that can't kill it.  I've had on a few occasions gith of legendary proportions that have survived an array of combatants because they heal in a single tick when not engaged in combat they'll be ready for the next battle soon after.  Having stat gains comparable to a pc.  Might or might not be the case, but worth exploring.  Myself I've noticed I'm getting hit more often by monsters that usually don't hit me, nothing significant, but it's happening, and I doubt it's nothing a few days training can't fix.

I won't presume to know anything about how the new combat code actually works behind the scenes, but I do know that I don't like the change that it has brought to the feel of the game's combat.

For me, fights that occurred between evenly matched opponents used to be exciting and inspiring shows of skill and technique. It was fun describing how two opponents would have this dramatic struggle for the upper hand in combat. You could feel the dedication, time, and thought both participants had put into their art. Blows slipped through their defenses because of mistakes they had made, or simply because one opponent was faster  or more cunning than the other.

Now, these fights between evenly matched opponents seem to be just a bunch of unskilled, sloppy slug-fests in which both participants abandon everything they've learned just to see who can hit harder. characters that were formerly skilled and knowledgeable in their craft now seem like they have no idea about what they're doing. Granted, I suppose that they will eventually regain the skill that they used to have prior to the changes and maybe start having those exciting, edge-of-your-seat duels again, but it's still a big setback.

I also have to admit that it's frustrating for me on an OOC level when my 600ish hour old character now suddenly has to fight at almost the same level as 0-72 hour old characters. It's just as if I was starting all those last 400 hours or so all over again. My character probably feels like how I would if I'd suddenly forgotten the last X years of my education for some reason and had to take the classes all over again to regain qualifications and knowledge I previously had.

Sounds like it's time for Johnny Badass to explore a potential injury to explain his loss in ability.  Might be good rp, but if it's occuring on a great scale I can see a problem.

I've tried some combat since the change, in a "controlled environment" and I really got a kick out of it. My opponents got beat, but it didn't take too much shorter a time than it would've before the change, and it just plain felt great to see that all the time I've spent with this PC so far working on the skills have actually amounted to something.

I wouldn't be surprised if armor types and choices will have a more significant impact now as a result, but I haven't tested it to be sure. But it seems to me that someone walking around the desert wearing nothing but their newbie gear is going to see a *much* higher risk of a one-whack kill than someone in a full desert-gear suit, than ever before. I was able to watch my PC get taken down a few notches on the defense side of things, which gives her a reason to consider one or two different pieces of equipment, or new equipment to cover a part that was previously uncovered. In other words, vulnerability and weak points seem to be more obvious now than they were before.

L. Stanson
So far, so good.

One day I'm slaughtering everything in my path like a machine gun, the next I'm running like crazy.  Oh well.  It's still pretty hardcore.

Quote from: "FightClub"*giggle* I can't wait for Halaster to quit buffing magickers, and fucking combat classes, wouldn't it be dandy?

This is an excellent example of how not to word a post when one wants one's opinion to be given weight.

-- X

QuoteAfter reading the first few paragraphs, then completely ignoring the rest because I knew the rest would be a long continuation of the first few paragraphs, I suggest this:

Wait a week. Then post constructive feedback. A 15 paragraph rant on what you think might happen before you really know the effects is.. pointless.
_________________
- Halaster

Since I think everything that can be said on this has in various ways I'll keep mine short. IMO I think its really sad that so many players jumped all over the staff and there ideas for this before even giving it the slightest chance at all. I'd really hate to be an employee to one of you and have a new 'direction' or 'idea' for the company....Bring my helmet to work.

Quote from: "Testing"What it really does, in the end assessment, is drive players into the large, Imm-controlled clans like Kadius, Borsail, etc.  This takes the control of the story of the game away from players and puts it in the hands of the Imms, and in my mind this violates the most basic principles of Arm.  One of the things I've always loved most about Arm is that a player could rise up and become the ruler of the world, that players were responsible for driving the story and the plot.

More than Imm-controlled clans, these are "Not You"-controlled clans.  These are established organizations that have a long history and may well contain tens (small elf tribe) to hundreds (Merchant House) to thousands (Legion or Arm of the Dragon) of NPC's and VNPC's that have been working for years to keep things moving.  PC's have the potential to rise to very high levels of power within these organizations over a great period of time, but many players seem to lack the patience, understanding, or desire to put forth enough effort to actually achieve it.

And I completely understand.  However, it is simply not true that being part of these organizations means you are no longer responsible for driving plots within the game.  The construction of several estates have been driven purely by PC endeavors, the northern Byn compound, wagons, resource centers (i.e. mines), political involvement (i.e. Rebellion), and many other aspects of clan life are not only determined by, but are conceived and proposed by, the players.

I do not think that the combat code changes (daze and the defense bug fix) will force people into more Imm-controlled positions, however, what I have witnessed thus far are these:

:arrow: Fights progress much more quickly.

It seems to be much easier to land a blow with the new changes, and fights tend move much more quickly.  I'm sure some will applaud the change for the good things that it helps to solve, but there are several other changes that I see being made for the worse.

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.  

:arrow: Attributes play a much larger role.

The previous system allowed more quickly for skill to outdistance raw physical ability, which is realistic.  Fighting is not sprinting, where someone's raw physical ability has the potential to almost completely negate technique.  Real fighting involves much more technique, and the people who are practiced will easily and quickly overcome opponents who are not.

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.

: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.

Conclusion

All of these changes are new, and the Immortals will be monitoring their effect upon the NPC's and PC's within the game to make necessary tweaks where it's become unbalanced.  Special care should probably be taken during this time because it very well could result in the death of your character.  Situations that haven't been dangerous for many RL years may now suddenly be fatal, and caution would be prudent until changes have been made.

I'll reserve judgement until I see the final version of the code and its effect upon the playerbase, however, my initial opinion are that these changes take away more RP than they add.  And 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

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.

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.

Quote from: "LoD"
: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.

Quote from: "LoD"
: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.

Quote from: "LoD"
: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.

Quote from: "LoD"

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.

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.

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:

Quote from: "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.

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.

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.

Quote from: "naatok"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.

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

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

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.

Quote from: "Nusku"

Quote from: "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.

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.

Quote from: "naatok"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.

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.

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

Quote from: "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.

Quote from: "Dalmeth"

Quote from: "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.

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.

Quote from: "Dalmeth"

Quote from: "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.

Quote from: "Defense  (Combat)"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:

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.

This is in no way similar to stat ordering.

Quote from: "Cegar"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:

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).

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.

Quote from: "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.

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.

Quote from: "spawnloser"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.

Quote from: "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.

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.

Quote from: "Cegar"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.

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.

Quote from: "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.

I was unaware that NPC skills changed significantly over time, however?

The problem I was referring to is that PCs are suffering a double penalty - firstly, they're losing the bonus to defence they had formerly, and secondly, since they've had that bonus for so long, their skills aren't representative of what they would have been had the bug never existed.

Let's take two hypothetical fighters.

Fighter A started this time last year, and has trained for an hour daily since his creation.
Fighter B started today, and will train for an hour daily for the next year.

Fighter A's defence today will be lower than Fighter B's will be in a year's time; over that time period, his defence has failed less. NPCs, however, will have the same offence and defence today as they will in a year's time (unless someone deliberately alters them).

Fighter A therefore is not just worse off than before the bug was fixed, but worse off against NPCs than he would be had the bug never existed.

Once again, the actual 'defense' skill did not change.  What did change was how parry and shield use were being applied.  Previously it was possible to parry blows without the parry skill at all.  

The actual defense scores of characters have not changed.  You are getting hit more often because parry and shield use are not the magickal impenetrable barrier they once were.  It is now more of a skill with a chance of success or failure, rather than a 100% sure thing that constantly protects you.

Edited to directly reply to your example:

Quote from: "Quirk"Fighter A started this time last year, and has trained for an hour daily since his creation.
Fighter B started today, and will train for an hour daily for the next year.

Fighter A's defence today will be lower than Fighter B's will be in a year's time; over that time period, his defence has failed less. NPCs, however, will have the same offence and defence today as they will in a year's time (unless someone deliberately alters them).

Fighter A therefore is not just worse off than before the bug was fixed, but worse off against NPCs than he would be had the bug never existed.

Since defense wasn't actually altered, most of this is moot, however, yes, a year from now Fighter B will have more defense than Fighter A has now, however Fighter A, a year from now, will have been building up equally and be able to smear Fighter B's butt.

We are sorry this has inconvenienced you all, and that this was not properly announced giving you all warning.  However we have no way of evaluating what a proper reimbursement would be, and therefore you guys are just going to have to be more cautious and do more training to get your defense scores up some more.  I will say that the days of 15-20 minute turtle fights are not going to happen again.

Quote from: "Quirk"
Fighter A's defence today will be lower than Fighter B's will be in a year's time
...
Fighter A therefore is not just worse off than before the bug was fixed, but worse off against NPCs than he would be had the bug never existed.

This isn't true. If Fighter A continues to use his skills on the same rate that he has up to this point, he will continue to progress and should remain above Fighter B and gain against NPCs in the same regard. You're basing your logic on a false assumption, as Morgenes has stated.

Maybe I shouldn't ask on this thread, but just a curiosity I have for staff.

When the defense was chosen for npcs which do not use parry or shield use skills and therefore were not affected by this fix, was it based off of the way fights went during the time that this bug existed?

My point I'm trying to get at it is, as a player point of view, we were apparently fairly blind to this bug going on, and therefore saw things as more or less how they should be.  Maybe a few of us did think fights lasted too long.  However, if this bug was as big a one as it seems to have been, then it should of been that npcs without the parry and shield use skill would of fallen much quicker than ones with, actually it seems to me they should anyway since they've not got weapons or shields to use or skills to use them with.  Considering a tembo really for instance has nothing to block with, you miss that bastard only because it dodged.  

So my point or question is, if their defense was made based off of how normal npcs acted with an artificially boosted defensive score, would their now base defense not be a little high?  I had really long matches against these npcs before, I had boosted defense stats due to this bug, they did not, therefore when I have working defensive stats (and I am referring to parry and shield) they will still have the same defensive stats which will then appear relatively higher.  

I know that this bug didn't technically affect them, but staff putting in their stats prior to this fix may not of looked purely at numbers considering that the equations used to determine overall aptitude is probably (this is from a blind point of view from someone who can only guess) probably too complex to know that this defense rating is roughly equivalent to this combination of parry, defense and weapon skill, ect.  If the above statement is true, and I don't know that it is, I think it safe to assume staff would of had to more feel out where an npcs power should be and would have to therefore feel it out based on how pcs and npcs around them act and fight.  Therefore indirectly this bug WOULD of affected their stating and defense skills and would make it, while not dramatic, but probably so they would be with this fix, a little higher on defense than maybe they should be.  

So I guess what I'm asking is if this could be the case or if I'm mistaken.  This isn't meant as any accusation to the staff or even a complaint, just a mild curiosity from a player.

Quote from: "Morgenes"Once again, the actual 'defense' skill did not change.  What did change was how parry and shield use were being applied.  Previously it was possible to parry blows without the parry skill at all.  

The actual defense scores of characters have not changed.  You are getting hit more often because parry and shield use are not the magickal impenetrable barrier they once were.  It is now more of a skill with a chance of success or failure, rather than a 100% sure thing that constantly protects you.

It completely makes sense to me now. This explains why i've been seeing or not seeing certain things since the bug was fixed. Thanks and now knowing the exact nature of the bug and what i was seeing in the sparring ring before i'm -really- happy with the fix.  :D

Trust me guys it was needed.

Editted to add: This is not to say i might not eventually wish that parry/dodge(defence)/shield_use were more effective but  i used to see few day old none-warrior PCs parry the shit out of my PC, which always seemed odd, to me at least.

Quote from: "UnderSeven"
When the defense was chosen for npcs which do not use parry or shield use skills and therefore were not affected by this fix, was it based off of the way fights went during the time that this bug existed?

That's a really good question.  The best answer is "Mostly no, but probably sometimes yes".  The vast majority of time when someome makes an NPC and sets their fighting skills, they base it off templates, and those templates are just raw numbers that if you used them would make sense.  The 'bug' with parry/shield-use wasn't showing up to staff very easily, though we knew something was "off".

For example, I can think of many times where we said "Sheesh, look at that 4-DAY-OLD warrior wiping the desert clean of NPC-X, how the hell is he doing that?", "I dunno", "me either.. oh hey, let's fix this crash bug".. and it'd get dropped.  It's one of those things we kinda knew about, but weren't totally sure, and couldn't explain the behavior we were seeing.

So based on the fact we were seeing situations like that (where someone who shouldn't be able to whack certain npc's was doing it) we can say that: No, most NPC's were underpowered for a long, long time.  We meant for NPC-X to be tougher to kill that he was, yet it wasn't working for some inexplicable reason.

Finally, we found that reason, and now things are as we intended - for the most part.

I'm sure there's probably some NPC's out there who are overpowered because of it, but I'm confident that most are not.  Most are finally behaving as we've always meant it.  Now your 2-day old warrior is likely going to get beat up by that hardened desert gith who's been struggling for survival against rival gith, elves, and so on - just like we meant it.

And I think that's important to understand:  characters who shouldn't have been able to defeat certain people were doing it.  Literally, 5-day old warriors were able to fight as well as what we thought a 40+ day warrior should, on average (assuming your 5-day old warrior was actually out there fighting and gaining skill).

Having said all that, if you find an npc that you think is just way over-powered, you can always email in about it (I'll be glad to take the email at halaster@armageddon.org).  We may not change it at all, but we'll probably at least give it a once-over to make sure it's where we want it to be.

Quote from: "Djarjak"

Quote from: "Quirk"
Fighter A's defence today will be lower than Fighter B's will be in a year's time
...
Fighter A therefore is not just worse off than before the bug was fixed, but worse off against NPCs than he would be had the bug never existed.

This isn't true. If Fighter A continues to use his skills on the same rate that he has up to this point, he will continue to progress and should remain above Fighter B and gain against NPCs in the same regard. You're basing your logic on a false assumption, as Morgenes has stated.

I stated that Fighter A's defensive ability today is lower than Fighter B's will be in a year's time. Morgenes has since confirmed this.

I never stated that Fighter A wouldn't continue to progress. I compared a fighter at a point right now with a fighter in a year's time, not the two of them in a year's time.

I apologise if my phrasing was unclear; would it have been better if I had compared Fighters A and B over a parallel time period in a mud where the bug existed and was fixed, and an otherwise identical mud in which the bug had never existed in the first place?

I guess it didn't seem fair to imply that a 4 day old warrior is going to get his butt kicked by a newer warrior in 4 more days of play.

But I gues sit is a valid point to evaluate if the rate of skill progression was impacted.

Since we learn from faillure, Quirk, and considering the quantity of fails you will get in a sparring session, I'm sure this did not "seriously" affect skill gain...but affected it to some amount.  Chill, okay?

i'v played and observed alot of badass warriors and many of you know that after lets say 10-15 days of playing time, you got no more hits and parry skill suddenly stops gettting better.
And i think %99 of the warriors until bug-fix were not able to reach even half of their parry-skill potential. I think after 15 days of playing a warrior, we will understand it. Because the untouchable period of our warriors will end and we will finally start to force our parry potential up %80-%100s.

Quote from: "Halaster"Now your 2-day old warrior is likely going to get beat up by that hardened desert gith who's been struggling for survival against rival gith, elves, and so on - just like we meant it.

This has probably come up before, but my only concern is that some of those 2-day old warriors may have a background of struggling for survival in the wastes their entire life - perhaps in just as brutal ways that those gith are.  I guess this might be getting a little bit off topic, but I have been kinda wondering where the opinion of the staff is on this sort of thing.  I know we don't want people being able to put anything in their background and expecting it to become instant reality in the game, but then again.. isn't this what the approval process is for?

So what it comes down to is the question of having a typical warrior that has been around the block; veteran caravan guide, ranger born in the wastes, assassin/street-thug that has been getting into knife fights ever since he was a child, etc.  This character may have a good background and good IC reasons for being a pretty rough individual that could probably hold his own against, at the least, a single gith.  

Are these going to continue to have to be special app'd (if that is the current process, I'm not sure) in order to be as tough as their background may say they are, or is there going to be some sort of variation of stats depending on your character's age?  Will karma affect this sort of thing?  Maybe only allowing character's with at least 1 karma have their skills affected by their age/background?  Again, this may be getting off-topic and may have been asked/discussed before, so point me in the right direction if I'm just re-hashing old, dead topics.  Thanks.

to further derail the thread I'm going reply to sokotra:

I don't know about other people but the way that i usually think of characters on this and other muds, is that before the day that you start them most of their life they've been matched just the same as every other humdrum individual in Zalanthas, and the day you started controlling him/her was the day they satrt becoming extraordinary. Just think of must of the characters as the cream of the crop of Zalanthas. Sure some of the cream is better then others but most characters (all those that arn't created specifically to be horrible) are representative of the Zalanthas best and brightest. In this I usually apply the same for the wildlife. Ther may be weaker Gith out there that never come into play becasue they were simply so easy to bat off that they weren't worth mentioning. So in your background you may have toughed it out with all the other VPCs and be pretty tough compared to all of them but once you start playing them they start having contend with the rest of the cream

Quote from: "Sokotra"

Quote from: "Halaster"Now your 2-day old warrior is likely going to get beat up by that hardened desert gith who's been struggling for survival against rival gith, elves, and so on - just like we meant it.

This has probably come up before, but my only concern is that some of those 2-day old warriors may have a background of struggling for survival in the wastes their entire life - perhaps in just as brutal ways that those gith are.  I guess this might be getting a little bit off topic, but I have been kinda wondering where the opinion of the staff is on this sort of thing.  I know we don't want people being able to put anything in their background and expecting it to become instant reality in the game, but then again.. isn't this what the approval process is for?

I think you got it there at the end.  If your character won't start out as an experienced character (read: all starting characters) don't have the background say that your character is  so experienced.  That or include a reason why the character is no longer as elite as s/he once used to be.  That or special app an experienced character, but I would expect some limitations, like a good reason you should play an experienced character.

Quote from: "Sokotra"
stuff

If you want any skills better than starting skills, you have to Special App it - and even then it's unlikely to be approved.  The solution to "but what if my background says he's been fighting all his life and should be more skilled" is... don't put that in your background.   Another way to look at it is that that life of fighting has got you to the point where you are when you start the game - it was just enough to get you to "newbie warrior" skills (which isn't as bad as you think).

Maybe your long nomadic life had fighting involved in it, but your enemies were never tough, I dunno.

Anything beyond that, like we said, is Special App material.

Quote from: "Halaster"

Quote from: "Sokotra"
stuff

If you want any skills better than starting skills, you have to Special App it - and even then it's unlikely to be approved.  The solution to "but what if my background says he's been fighting all his life and should be more skilled" is... don't put that in your background.   Another way to look at it is that that life of fighting has got you to the point where you are when you start the game - it was just enough to get you to "newbie warrior" skills (which isn't as bad as you think).

Maybe your long nomadic life had fighting involved in it, but your enemies were never tough, I dunno.

Anything beyond that, like we said, is Special App material.

Also if I may add, there is no more reason to add an extensive background anymore with the bio command. You can now write up his life as it happens, so -if- he was a hardened byn sergeant that joined Borsail. Bio add Shit slave becomes a slaver.

Quote from: "Halaster"


And I think that's important to understand:  characters who shouldn't have been able to defeat certain people were doing it.  Literally, 5-day old warriors were able to fight as well as what we thought a 40+ day warrior should, on average (assuming your 5-day old warrior was actually out there fighting and gaining skill).

Does that mean that we'll be gaining at a WAY slower rate now, or were those 5-hour-warriors exceptions due to the bug?

My biggest concern about these changes are:

1) From what I can tell, nearly the entire player base disapproves. This is of course looking at it from my tiny little corner of the world

2) I don't recall ever seeing anythign in code discussion where people seemed unhappy about this particular aspect of the game

3) There are 100 other things that I would imagine the general populace that plays and contributes to armageddon wanted to see.

4) They seemed to have introduced a good deal of oddness, including old rangers being significantly weaker, and mounted combat being useless.

So, my big question is, in light of #2 and #3, Why not post a poll to the players first?

*shrug*

I'm generally unhappy.

Quote from: "jmordetsky"My biggest concern about these changes are:

1) From what I can tell, nearly the entire player base disapproves. This is of course looking at it from my tiny little corner of the world

2) I don't recall ever seeing anythign in code discussion where people seemed unhappy about this particular aspect of the game

3) There are 100 other things that I would imagine the general populace that plays and contributes to armageddon wanted to see.

4) They seemed to have introduced a good deal of oddness, including old rangers being significantly weaker, and mounted combat being useless.

So, my big question is, in light of #2 and #3, Why not post a poll to the players first?

*shrug*

I'm generally unhappy.

That's gospel, for me. Sums up my feelings about the changes perfectly.

-WP

All the more reason for your character to focus on finding a way to defend themselves. Players will actually have to find and kill tregils for a while, rather than going out to hunt gith/duskhorn/scrabs right off the bat because their base agility is high. As I see it, this is being contested much like the drop in D-elf stamina some time ago, only -everyone- has to deal with it now. Deal.

Quote from: "Nao"
Does that mean that we'll be gaining at a WAY slower rate now, or were those 5-hour-warriors exceptions due to the bug?

They were exceptions due to the bug.  Their skills were being incorrectly applied, making them much better than what they really should have been.

Quote from: "jmordetsky"My biggest concern about these changes are:

1) From what I can tell, nearly the entire player base disapproves. This is of course looking at it from my tiny little corner of the world

I can't count the number of times this has happened as a result of a change, even when the playerbase hadn't actually played with something before criticising it.

Quote
2) I don't recall ever seeing anythign in code discussion where people seemed unhappy about this particular aspect of the game

It's a bug fix.

Quote
3) There are 100 other things that I would imagine the general populace that plays and contributes to armageddon wanted to see.

This is nearly always the case. But, again. This is a bug fix.

Quote
4) They seemed to have introduced a good deal of oddness, including old rangers being significantly weaker, and mounted combat being useless.

I'd like more information on this. If you have specifics, I'd like to see them. Feel free to e-mail me - include the character name so I can look at the details.

Quote
So, my big question is, in light of #2 and #3, Why not post a poll to the players first?

Because it's not customary to ask for your approval to fix a bug

I have been silent through all this because I am neutral on the whole situation.  However, I do feel the need to say that I hope this will encourage more people to use shields more often and two weapons less often, especially northern PCs, because using a shield should be more common in northern fighting styles.

Quote from: "jmordetsky"2) I don't recall ever seeing anythign in code discussion where people seemed unhappy about this particular aspect of the game

Heheh, of course they wouldn't complain about being able to defeat creatures they shouldn't have, or operating at a skill-level beyond what they really should be.  They didn't even really know there was a problem.

Quote from: "jmordetsky"
So, my big question is, in light of #2 and #3, Why not post a poll to the players first?

Because we don't poll players to fix a bug.  I agree, if it was a "change" to the way things were supposed to work, it'd be good to get feedback.  But we thought it was a "bug".

I believe jmordetsky is refering to the changes to the combat system as a whole. There have been only a vocal minority that have really been complaining about it. The majority of the pbase had no problem with the combat system over all.

After having some experience with my warrior, i realised that this bug-fix was necessary. I dont agree with players who commented it reduces playibility. You hunters will notice you can hunt small animals. But come on! i saw warriors in past hunting dujat worms and salt worms after 4-5 days of playing time? How real was that? Can you kill something that is many times taller and heavier then you? Think about your chances against an elephant, or a tiger. Those animals at ancient times were being hunt by large groups, which should also be the same here.
Again previously, the idea of being able to clean a whole area from beasts (because my warrior could do) was annoying and boring. I am once again glad the code has changed.

Quote from: "Quirk"
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.

I've also just talked about this with the coders.

That's also not the nature of this bug.

So all of your assertions about this are, indeed, invalid.

Quote from: "Cuusardo"However, I do feel the need to say that I hope this will encourage more people to use shields more often and two weapons less often, especially northern PCs, because using a shield should be more common in northern fighting styles.

Let me emphasize this point.  Before everyone with some modicum of weapon skill had a huge chance at parrying a blow.  Now, plain and simple, without the parry skill you will not parry a blow.  There are many other ways to skin a quirri.  Try changing up your combat styles.  The standard two weapon fighting may not be the best way to survive anymore.

QuoteNow, plain and simple, without the parry skill you will not parry a blow.

Does that make sense? With a huge shield in my hand, will i only dodge or get hit?

I think you'll either dodge or get hit on the shield.  Not a coder, and combat isn't one of my specialties... but I think shields add an extra armor location more than a chance at turning blows outright (like parrying).

Lord Templar Hard Nose shrugs, fumbling with a jade-emblazoned letter-opener.

Edit:  Forgot about blocking using shield_use, heh... shows how much combat code I know.

Quote from: "Halaster"

Quote from: "jmordetsky"2) I don't recall ever seeing anythign in code discussion where people seemed unhappy about this particular aspect of the game

Heheh, of course they wouldn't complain about being able to defeat creatures they shouldn't have, or operating at a skill-level beyond what they really should be.  They didn't even really know there was a problem.

Quote from: "jmordetsky"
So, my big question is, in light of #2 and #3, Why not post a poll to the players first?

Because we don't poll players to fix a bug.  I agree, if it was a "change" to the way things were supposed to work, it'd be good to get feedback.  But we thought it was a "bug".

Well, yes and no. Granted we are calling it a "bug fix", but it really was a bug no player could see and so we all are experiencing it as change in mechanics. That's what it feels like to the players so the answers "it's a bug fix" don't make us feel better.

In terms of us not complaining about being able to kill mean creatures, I don't think that's true anymore, I take it back.

I do recall myself complaining on several occasions that there were no baddies in the desert or that if there were they were pretty easy to kill.

However, two things here,

1) It's not the NPCS buffness that I'm really wowed about, it the other players. Certain PCs just seem *incredible* to me now, when they were just mediocre a few days ago. I'm literally taking 15-20 points of damage +daze in one HIT against PCs that a few days agao were obviously better then me, but hardly stomping me into the ground, laughing and peeing on my quivering corpse.

2) From what I can see, reasonable warriors seem alomst unaffected by this change. Either that or they are so much more tank then I am now that it just appears this way to me. I do know that I in my class am now completely afraid of the wastes, where as my warrior comrads are not. I believe this is because they have the parry skill, and the effect is therefore lessened on them. In a way I see this is fair...but it hurts.

I'm obviously not sure if #2 is a true statement, it may not be so feel free to correct me here, but if it is true that warriors are still pretty BA then wouldn't a better solution have been to tank up the mobs a bit? Because it seems like the 4 day n00b warrior is still going to go out and clean up gith town.

So, that being said....My constructive feedback thoughts (because Dig scolded me last night for being a bitch, and he's right, i was being a bitch)

1) To even things out, boost mounted combat for skilled riders. Word on the streets is that charge is completely useless now.

2) Possibly allow dodge to become more effective, and lessen (not remove) the overall impact on non-wars.

3) Increae the number and buffness of baddies in the desert to offset the increase to dodge.

4) Lastly, take a good look at PC vs PC combat and varying days of play , skill and off/def. It really feels to me that warriors are now super powered. Especially with disarm under their belt.

This is coming from a player who's mantra is normally "harder is better". This entire post has me feeling a bit like a hypocrite. But I think that is because the change feels SOOOO severe.

I've released a good deal of software, severe changes are normally met with crying users if they aren't specifically requested, even if it is in the long run good for them.

I think thats we saw hugs and kisses with hemote and boos and jeers with this.

There are four common ways to survive a hit without any damage...one is dodging, the other is parrying, another is blocking using a shield_use skill and the last is having your armour absorb all the damage.


Again i'm completely happy with the fix, it was needed but i'm still going to wait a while to see the effectiveness of defence vs offence, esspecially concerning shield_use since from what i'm currently seeing its not as effective as going all out with a more offensive style. Again its too early for me to tell, hopefully in another couple of weeks i'll have a better idea (except for mounted combat which i honestly feels it needs a less severe penalty).

Quote from: "Djarjak"

Quote from: "Quirk"
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.

I've also just talked about this with the coders.

That's also not the nature of this bug.

So all of your assertions about this are, indeed, invalid.

wait wait, I was curious.

Would the seeming imbalance between offense and defense be caused by:

1. Character practices.
2. Character parries more because he has better parry chance due to bug.
3. Character learns to parry less because he's already doing so well. Learn by doing, learn by failing.
4. Character gets leet parry ability taken away. Now he's learning from those quirri again. Because they're eating him alive.

I don't see how an inflated parry chance WOULDN'T affect the end level of one's skill in parry, by affecting how much slower one learns when one doesn't -need- to learn.

Quote from: "Djarjak"I've also just talked about this with the coders.

That's also not the nature of this bug.

So all of your assertions about this are, indeed, invalid.

You are contradicting what Morgenes confirmed earlier:

Fighter A starts playing 9/26/2005. (With Bug)
Fighter B starts playing 9/26/2006. (Without Bug)

In one year, Fighter A's defense is X.  It never went above X because the bug that allowed him to parry and block with the shield made him somewhat invulnerable to the things he fought, and there was no skill gain in defense as a result.

In one year, Fighter B's defense is greater than X.  He never had the advantage of the parry and shield use bugs and so the same time spent following the exact same regimen has yielded to him a higher defense skill.

You can assign whatever point value to the defense above you wish, but the point is that in the same amount of play time, against the same opponents, with the same variables (i.e. weapon selections, wisdom sscores, playing times) will have yielded a higher defense score to Fighter B.

Quirk's point is that the players of Fighter A's (rangers, assassins, warriors, burglars, and pick-pockets) are frustrated because they are ending up with lower defense scores than fighters who have played the same amount of time will have after the bug was removed.  His claim is that the "bug fix" cheapened their investment into the character by removing the inflated bonuses without compensating them for what they would've learned without the inflation.

Now, Morgenes has said that there is really no way to even begin knowing what compensation would be appropriate across the board, and so there will be none.  And I understand and accept that decision.  However, I don't want to see these concerns labeled as "invalid" when they're perfectly understandable.

People will have to spend some extra time training or learning to return to the same perceived level of skill they were before (i.e. able to consistently handle NPC "X" or consistently avoid the attacks of PC Recruit "Y"' in sparring).  I'm not saying those should be people's goals, but the bug fix didn't just right a wrong, it altered expectations.  It changed not only the perceptions of players with regard to what was possible/normal for their character, but the very model in which martial success or failure is now calculated.

It's not a simple bug fix.  It's complicated, and introduces significant changes in how a combat oriented role will have to consider the world.  It may wash out in 1-2 years.  People may not even know that it ever existed, but at this moment - it's taking everything people have ever assumed about the game for at least the last 5 years with regards to combat and changing it.  And that's got people backpedaling.

-LoD

Quote from: "LoD"

Fighter A starts playing 9/26/2005. (With Bug)
Fighter B starts playing 9/26/2006. (Without Bug)

In one year, Fighter A's defense is X.  It never went above 30 because the bug that allowed him to parry and block with the shield made him somewhat invulnerable to the things he fought, and there was no skill gain in defense as a result.

In one year, Fighter B's defense is greater than X.  He never had the advantage of the parry and shield use bugs and so the same time spent following the exact same regimen has yielded to him a higher defense skill.

You can assign whatever point value to the defense above you wish, but the point is that in the same amount of play time, against the same opponents, with the same variables (i.e. weapon selections, wisdom sscores, playing times) will haved yielded a higher defense score to the Fighter B.

Quirk's point is that the players of Fighter A's are frustrated because they are ending up with lower defense scores than warriors who have played the same amount of time will have after the bug was removed.  His claim is that the "bug fix" cheapened their investment into the character by removing the inflated bonuses without compensating them for what they would've learned without the inflation.

This is how I've been understanding it, too.  Basically defense (and defensive skills) is lower than than they would otherwise have been without the bug.

However, isn't the opposite true for offense?  With the bug, PCs weren't landing hits as much as they should have been, so offense (and offensive skills) must be higher than they would otherwise have been without the bug.   Right?

Defense underdeveloped.   Offense overdeveloped.  Maybe it's that combination that's making it seem like such a dramatic change.   (Is anyone volunteering to have their offense downgraded?)

Right?  Am I thinking of this right?

In more skill focused, player centric, code based games, (i.e. dragonrealms) they would have grandfathered the skill a certain amount.

I'm not saying everyone should come back to previous levels, but there is a bit of reality in Zalanthas that needs to be dealt with to make this transition smooth. It's not as if we were all purposefully exploiting the bug.

Maybe we can see a little to help things be more explainable ICly.

"You three, go eliminate that carru on the road.'

"Uh sir, that's beyond our capabilities."

"What? I just saw you do the same thing last month."

"Yea, well, we were all partying one night, and we had some bad spice."

"So?"

"It made us selectively forget how to defend ourselves."

". . . "

p.s.
Yes, that makes a bit of sense, flurry. And perhaps that should be the option offered to those affected: Blend offense and defense into more cohesive whole, at the cost of raw offensive skill.

Quote from: "LoD"

Quote from: "Djarjak"I've also just talked about this with the coders.

That's also not the nature of this bug.

So all of your assertions about this are, indeed, invalid.

You are contradicting what Morgenes confirmed earlier:

Fighter A starts playing 9/26/2005. (With Bug)
Fighter B starts playing 9/26/2006. (Without Bug)

In one year, Fighter A's defense is X.  It never went above X because the bug that allowed him to parry and block with the shield made him somewhat invulnerable to the things he fought, and there was no skill gain in defense as a result.

In one year, Fighter B's defense is greater than X.  He never had the advantage of the parry and shield use bugs and so the same time spent following the exact same regimen has yielded to him a higher defense skill.

-LoD

Eh, there's a flaw in the reasoning of the example, LoD, which is where the staff commented on. If player A started in 05 with the bug, and played for a year, he would be at the max that the bugged coded skill would allow him. Player B, starting in 06, is already one year behind player A, so if both players played an additional year, (and hypothetically trained the exact same amount of time) Player A would still ALWAYS be at a higher level than player B as he would have had previous experience boosting his defensive skills. This also takes into account having the exact same stats (wisdom score) and considering that player A will never max out at his skills.

I picture the roads being suddenly free of gith corpses and gear since the change came into play.

Quote from: "Djarjak"

Quote from: "Quirk"
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.

I've also just talked about this with the coders.

That's also not the nature of this bug.

So all of your assertions about this are, indeed, invalid.

Really, now?

I'm afraid I'm going to have to quote Morgenes at you.

Quote from: "Morgenes"Since defense wasn't actually altered, most of this is moot, however, yes, a year from now Fighter B will have more defense than Fighter A has now, however Fighter A, a year from now, will have been building up equally and be able to smear Fighter B's butt.

From this comment I would take that parry and shield use were being incorrectly applied, and the result appears to have been that the skills were not failing at the same rate as they will be now. Hence, they have not been improving at the rate they're meant to. It does seem to have been a more complicated affair than just a bonus to the skill test, but the ultimate effects appear to have been the same.

Is your comment to be taken as an overriding of Morgenes' comment, and Nusku's comment about skills topping out too early? It seems to me as though this could do with some clarification.

If people -haven't- been suffering skills topping out far too early (as Nusku seemed to indicate was the case), then it seems that the game balance with the defensive skills people have right now is the game balance we're going to have for the foreseeable future. Would you confirm this for me, please?

Quote from: "Agent_137"
"It made us selectively forget how to defend ourselves."

I've just been RPing feeling under the weather of late and being generally frustrated about it.

Yea, I don't much feel like doing that for a few months. I think I need to train some more. Sorry.

Quote from: "Forty Winks"Eh, there's a flaw in the reasoning of the example, LoD, which is where the staff commented on. If player A started in 05 with the bug, and played for a year, he would be at the max that the bugged coded skill would allow him. Player B, starting in 06, is already one year behind player A, so if both players played an additional year, (and hypothetically trained the exact same amount of time) Player A would still ALWAYS be at a higher level than player B as he would have had previous experience boosting his defensive skills. This also takes into account having the exact same stats (wisdom score) and considering that player A will never max out at his skills.

No, there's no flaw.

We're comparing player A at 9/26/06, having started play at 9/26/05 with player B at 9/26/07 having started play at 9/26/06. We're not comparing player A and player B both at 9/26/07; I already pointed this out. If you feel you simply must compare them on that date, I'd ask you to add the proviso that player A doesn't train from 9/26/06 to 9/26/07.

Djarjak's comment on this was based on a misunderstanding of my perhaps overly complicated example.

Quote from: "Forty Winks"Eh, there's a flaw in the reasoning of the example, LoD, which is where the staff commented on. If player A started in 05 with the bug, and played for a year, he would be at the max that the bugged coded skill would allow him. Player B, starting in 06, is already one year behind player A, so if both players played an additional year, (and hypothetically trained the exact same amount of time) Player A would still ALWAYS be at a higher level than player B as he would have had previous experience boosting his defensive skills.

You're completely right if we're talking about Fighter A vs. Fighter B.

However, I'm debating the return of investment for Fighter A.

Fighter A (after one year) - Defense X
Fighter B (after one year) - Defense X+Y

If all things were similiar, and these two characters had the same race, class, play times, wisdom scores, weapon choices, level of opponents, etc...then Fighter B comes out with a larger return on his investment of time even though BOTH fighters put the same amount in.  The only difference was that the bug was hindering Fighter A's ability to gain defense skill because of inflated parry and shield use numbers.

I'm simply stating that one of the reasons Fighter A players are frustrated is because they are being forced to re-establish what they felt their character should already know.  They are being forced to commit more time to skill development because of the bug.

Perhaps it was a fair trade.  Perhaps the increased defense helped keep their character alive in situations where they would've died.  Maybe they were able to accomplish tasks or receive promotions or lead successful missions because of the bug that granted them IC benefits and advantages that a Fighter B wouldn't have received.  I'm "OK" with characters not having any compensation for the bug leaving them less able than probably they should be ICly - but it's not flawed logic.

-LoD

Ok, I see what you're talking about now. Thank you for clarifying, LoD.

Quote from: "LoD"

Quote from: "Forty Winks"Eh, there's a flaw in the reasoning of the example, LoD, which is where the staff commented on. If player A started in 05 with the bug, and played for a year, he would be at the max that the bugged coded skill would allow him. Player B, starting in 06, is already one year behind player A, so if both players played an additional year, (and hypothetically trained the exact same amount of time) Player A would still ALWAYS be at a higher level than player B as he would have had previous experience boosting his defensive skills.

You're completely right if we're talking about Fighter A vs. Fighter B.

However, I'm talking about Fighter A vs. 1 Year.  I'm not debating Fighter A vs. Fighter B in 2007.  I'm contending that Fighter A's investment of 1 year in the character is resulting in a lower defense skill because of the bug than Fighter B - and that is one reason why some folks are upset.

-LoD

Ah, I see. Didn't catch that part of your post.  :oops:
Other things aside, I assume people either want the bug BACK, or they are neutral/like the fix. I think bringing the bug BACK, is out of the question, and in terms of tweaking the defensive code...what is there to tweak? Yeah, people can complain, and have that freedom, but what's the point if the complaint has no end objective other than to restore their character to their previous invincibility? All players were affected, so there's no real way to make amends to everyone who have those 1 year combat chars.

Quote from: "Forty Winks"I think bringing the bug BACK, is out of the question, and in terms of tweaking the defensive code...what is there to tweak? Yeah, people can complain, and have that freedom, but what's the point if the complaint has no end objective other than to restore their character to their previous invincibility?

You have to look past any angry words and see the situations people are having trouble resolving.  They are voicing their displeasure about the source of the problem without really bringing up why they're frustrated in the first place:

:arrow: Hunter Harry sings the blues.

Previous to the bug fix, Hunter Harry was confident in his ability when facing off against duskhorn of the grasslands.  He'd hunt there a couple days a week, occasionally struck by a stray horn, but resolute in the fact that day-in and day-out he'd been able to handle himself.

Harry wakes up one day, ventures out in the grasslands to hunt and suddenly finds him on the receiving end of the punishing stick.  Not only is he getting challenged by these critters, they're kicking his ass.  Things he was able to bring down, skin, depend upon are now suddenly harder, faster, and stronger as a complete race - not a select few.

:arrow: Battle Hardened Bob sees stars.

Battle Hardened Bob is a Sergeant of the Kohmari Fighting Tregils, and has been training his team of hunters for years.  It's been no surprise that many a new recruit has fallen under Bob's heavy hand during training before, and word on the street is that he's nothing short of unbeatable.  After lecturing a recent recruit on his lack of ability, Bob wakes up to give the recruits a brand new lesson.

Except this time, the joke's on him.  Recruits that hadn't been able to land a single blow were now suddenly catching him off guard.  His practiced parries, and deft deflections were nowhere to be found as his prized defensive capabilities seemed to wane in less than an evening.  Scratching his head, he stalks off to figure out just what he might have eaten to cause this turnaround.

:arrow: Strong Critters: Dazed and Confused.

Packing a double whallop is the combination of the combat bug fix and the daze command, which caught a few unwary travellers by surprise.  Mean beasties who packed a healthy punch before were even worse due to the increased offense-defense disparity.  Folks who were confident in their ability to avoid such troubles were suddenly caught off guard by a few of the stronger and seemingly more accurate beasties of the desert sands.

Not only were they being hit, they were being stunned.  They couldn't flee.  They were missing swings, the beastie had their number and it rang them up.  This one-two punch was enough to cause some folks to wonder what in krath's name was going on with the wildlife population.

So -- What Good is Discussion?

The end objective of the complaints is not to win back the old system, nor simply to vent frustrations - though both of those agendas are certainly represented in this thread.  The true end objective is to discuss the problems and issues that current characters face, both from a code and RP perspective, and request feedback on how to move forward.  Here are a few things that players might hope come away from these discussions:

> Evaluate the competition

Players might hope that some attention is being given to the stat scores previously held by critters of the gameworld to see if they are truly in line with characters now they will be developing differently.  Do fights between low to high skilled animals and NPC humanoids go as desired against Ranger/Warrior/Assassin Joe (new, seasoned, and veteran)?  Or is there some room for tweaking?

> Watch the Hard Stuff

With how quick combat can take place, try to level out the damage being done by high offense, high strength critters and humanoids.  If the answer is not toning them down, then perhaps lessening their number or moving them to more remote locations would be a better answer.  Most of them are hard to come by, but some of these monster critters are not that difficult to happen upon barely an hour's ride from a city gate.

> It's All About STYLE!

Since there are some changes being made to combat, this might be a great time to start looking into and experimenting with other coded effects that deal with the different styles of weapons being used.  Stances or weapon/shield combinations that provide bonuses/pentalties to defense/offense to create more potential "roles" within a group of combatants might be fun.

Those are just a few, but there are certainly some positive things that the playerbase is asking for "between the lines" that don't have to do with retoring bugged code or expressing displeasure.  An understanding of the player's perspective as it relates to future additions, changes, and interactions is always helpful feedback, I think.

-LoD

Personally, I dig it. I also feel that nobody would be complaining if suddenly a bug fix made everyone able to kick -more- ass. You need to look at the positives.

1. "I just killed a scrab" is now a line that'll get you laid.

2. Hunters will very likely be getting paid better, and be in much higher demand.

3. Despite what many of you are saying, the desert wasn't -that- harsh. Anyone that's been here a couple of years only dies to it if they're exploring or trying to. (slight allowance here for freak accident)

4. Combat is fast and brutal irl. It should be fast and brutal ig. Have you ever gotten into a 20 minute fight irl where your goal was to kill your opponent?

5. Chances are, Mister Baddass Sergeant will still be able to kick Mr 2 hour newbie recruit's ass without taking a hit.

6. The warrior class has regained definition. Why play a warrior when a ten day ranger will very likely be just as tough as you at 8 days, with the added benefit of archery?

7. Tregils are no longer cute. They're war-steeds akin to ratlon.

8. You can lead scrabs to the gate and now they'll effectively decimate the entire population of Allanak.


The rangy, weathered man rides in from the west, on a yellow kank.
An insect-like scrab arrives from the west.
An insect-like scrab arrives from the west.
The rangy, weathered man shouts, in sirihish:
'Your judgement is upon you!!one1!'

An insect-like scrab does horrendous damage to a half-giant soldier's head with its pinch.

9. zomg a warrior can kick a mages butt in melee?!

10. The scrab line again, because I'm going to use it about five times this week.

'Nuff said.

(http://home.no.net/eovti/BabyJesusCry.jpg)

The flipside of LoD's explanation is that now, all combatant characters will gain in defense skill faster, and branch any skills based on parry/defense/shield use faster. If they don't get killed first.

Rejoice!

I like the change from what I've seen. Makes taking down a tough beast all the more fun.

Quote from: "LoD":arrow: Hunter Harry sings the blues.
Harry wakes up one day, ventures out in the grasslands to hunt and suddenly finds him on the receiving end of the punishing stick.  Not only is he getting challenged by these critters, they're kicking his ass.  Things he was able to bring down, skin, depend upon are now suddenly harder, faster, and stronger as a complete race - not a select few.

So, he'll have to spend another week or two on ritikki?  Maybe he'll have to go salvage some rocks and pick up a sling?

Quote from: "LoD":arrow: Battle Hardened Bob sees stars.

Except this time, the joke's on him.  Recruits that hadn't been able to land a single blow were now suddenly catching him off guard.  His practiced parries, and deft deflections were nowhere to be found as his prized defensive capabilities seemed to wane in less than an evening.  Scratching his head, he stalks off to figure out just what he might have eaten to cause this turnaround.

Ha!  This one made me laugh.  Yeah, Bob gets hit.  It's so traumatic!  Well, not as traumatic as the injuries the recruits are receiving in sparring.  I spar with new recruits alot.  I don't use my primary weapon anymore because I'm mauling them.  I get hit more, yeah, but my attack skill is still vastly superior to theirs.

The only real combat quirk this bug fix adds in my mind is for poison.  It's going to be a lot easier to pull off now in melee combat.  For assassins and especially burglars, that might be good news, but for people hunting poisonous animals, things may need to be adjusted.

From a realism point of view, I don't like that only characters with the parry skill (which are so few) are able to parry at all. I know that if I somehow ended up in a swordfight in real life, I would be physically capable of parrying a blow. I might not be very good at it, but it wouldn't take me months and years of training to know that if I put my sword up in the general direction of their swing, that might parry the blow. Maybe the chance shouldn't be as high as it was before, which seemed quite high, but it shouldn't be impossible in my opinion.

I'm not reading through this whole thread, I read what the staff said about the change and in essence now, instead of skill the outcome of a battle is now MOSTLY dependant on luck. The Die roll as it where. This how I see the explanation and how it works in practice.

Gee, thanks guys for turning the combat in this mud into D&D first ED. rules.

And to anybody who says otherwise. Tell me that when you watch a 15+day warrior with high strength and agi, max or near max shield use and parry get beaten by a 1 day warrior.

Like I've posted before, Put the bug back, call it a feature. That or raise the skill maxes to shield and parry. Its truly silly to think a veteran warrior could get his ass handed to him by a 1 day assassin in straight melee, but it is possible now.

Maybe change the help files for warrior as well.

QuoteWarriors are the easiest persons to employ. They are invaluable as guards, soldiers, mercenaries, military advisors, outriders, scouts, gladiators, or even as assassins and spies. No other guild can match a warrior's combat prowess, and thus all warriors are much needed parts of any clan or mercantile operation.

Should read

QuoteAny guild that knows which end of a weapon is the sharp end can match a warrior's combat prowess so don't bother with this guild since you will get more fun skills with any other.

(edit)
LoD has the right of it from an RP perspective.

Quote5. Chances are, Mister Baddass Sergeant will still be able to kick Mr 2 hour newbie recruit's ass without taking a hit.

6. The warrior class has regained definition. Why play a warrior when a ten day ranger will very likely be just as tough as you at 8 days, with the added benefit of archery?

Wrong, it actually now goes the other way, the decrease in skill with nothing else to offset it adds an increase to luck.

So, the warrior class loses definition, why play one when luck is a major deciding factor in combat?

And I've seen mr 2 hour newbie hit the badass sarge, he got hit much more of course but thats not the point.

i dont think warriors are weak now, they have disarm + bash, which are much more dangerous skills at the moment than before.

You're throwing out way too much hyperbole, X-D. That a newb can lay a glancing blow on his sergeant doesn't mean that he's a match for him in any way. The sergeant still wins.

The majority of players don't like this change so I reckon there will be an update soon.

Quote from: "ThirdEye"The majority of players don't like this change so I reckon there will be an update soon.

I certainly hope not.  I like things the way they are.  Gives people more reason to hunt together, even old veteran hunters.

Quote from: "Dalmeth"

Quote from: "ThirdEye"The majority of players don't like this change so I reckon there will be an update soon.

I certainly hope not.  I like things the way they are.  Gives people more reason to hunt together, even old veteran hunters.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with the change. Shit, I could be totally wrong, might end up being one of those things we just get used to.

Actually, either my PC is improving fast or the staff is hard at work tweaking. Things seem to have smoothed out in many areas.

Quote from: "X-D"I'm not reading through this whole thread, I read what the staff said about the change and in essence now, instead of skill the outcome of a battle is now MOSTLY dependant on luck. The Die roll as it where. This how I see the explanation and how it works in practice.

Defences are low at the moment, and offences may be high. As they improve, some of the issues you're seeing currently should sort themselves out.

However, battles now depend more on skill than before - I'll explain how.

Morgenes mentioned that before, anyone and everyone got a chance to parry, whether they had the skill or not. This went for newbies and guilds that didn't get parry as well as people who'd branched it. Now, only people with the parry skill will get a chance to parry. Now, I'm not sure whether this new change will alter the behaviour of combat. In the past, it often seemed that only a very good fighter could land a blow at all on another very good fighter. If this is accurate, and is still the case with the new parry check, then as fighters progress they'll again become effectively immune to those with weaker offences - but those with weaker offences who haven't got parry and aren't using a shield won't have much by the way of defence to stop the powerful fighter hitting them every turn.

A top warrior might take a hit slightly more often than they did even once their skill with the new parry check's advanced to a high level; I don't know. However the number of hits they'll land on weaker opposition should climb even higher, and the new daze code should further reduce their opponent's chance of getting a strike in back.

It's sad though understandable that there's to be no reimbursement, but I don't think anyone will complain much about this in a year's time.

Quote from: "ThirdEye"The majority of players don't like this change so I reckon there will be an update soon.

Majority?  Hardly.  Oh, and just because people bitch, you think the staff is going to hop to?

Quote from: "spawnloser"

Quote from: "ThirdEye"The majority of players don't like this change so I reckon there will be an update soon.

Majority?  Hardly.  Oh, and just because people bitch, you think the staff is going to hop to?

Actually -most- people I've spoken with are unhappy with the changes to the combat system over all. They just do not want to speak up for fear of making themselves a target of a disgruntled staff member or player who disagrees. I'm not saying it's a valid fear, but that's what I've gathered when I've asked why they do not speak up on the matter.

Well, if people don't speak up, their concerns are not heard...and it is their own damn faults, first thing.

Second, just because people don't like it means the staff should undo a bug fix, take out daze code or take away the stamina drains on combat skills?  Nah, I know plenty of people that are fine with these changes...and the staff have had members state that the staff is generally happy with these changes too.  I don't think a NON-vocal minority is going to get anything changed.

Quote from: "jhunter"They just do not want to speak up for fear of making themselves a target of a disgruntled staff member or player who disagrees.

That's funny!  It really is!  This board has rarely if ever been much for persecution.  Never have I seen it come from the staff.  More likely, all they have to say is. "I don't like it," and you've elaborated on more than enough reasons to support that already.

Still, the people you've talked to almost certainly represent a tiny fraction of the playerbase.  I still love this change.

Quote from: "Dalmeth"

Quote from: "jhunter"They just do not want to speak up for fear of making themselves a target of a disgruntled staff member or player who disagrees.

That's funny!  It really is!  This board has rarely if ever been much for persecution.  Never have I seen it come from the staff.  More likely, all they have to say is. "I don't like it," and you've elaborated on more than enough reasons to support that already.

Still, the people you've talked to almost certainly represent a tiny fraction of the playerbase.  I still love this change.

Who said anything about on the board? I didn't. And quit being a jackass, Dalmeth. As I said, I don't necessarily agree that they are valid fears but they are the fears of those people anyway. Some of the reasons I have mentioned are the same reasons they mentioned to me. So stop making assumptions and just plain being a jerk. The crap I'm getting right now about it makes their fears more believable to me now.

Quote from: "spawnloser"Well, if people don't speak up, their concerns are not heard...and it is their own damn faults, first thing.

Second, just because people don't like it means the staff should undo a bug fix, take out daze code or take away the stamina drains on combat skills?  Nah, I know plenty of people that are fine with these changes...and the staff have had members state that the staff is generally happy with these changes too.  I don't think a NON-vocal minority is going to get anything changed.

It doesn't mean that one's attitude should be: "Well, I won't get anything changed anyway so I may as well not even say or do anything about it." *sigh*

Oh look...my tail fell off again...oh well...no sense in putting it back on, it will probably just fall off again anyway.
:roll:

I never said that one's attitude should be that.  I'm just saying that if you don't complain, don't expect the staff to know how many people dislike it.

I also said that in this specific instance, don't expect the staff to change because of complaints.  This has been a discussion about defense being nerfed...a discussion about the BUG FIX that caused this so-called condition.  Oh, they fixed a bug (not made a change) meaning that it'll take some actual work to become bad-ass?  I, and many others, say to this: "Good!  Finally!"

Quote from: "spawnloser"I never said that one's attitude should be that.  I'm just saying that if you don't complain, don't expect the staff to know how many people dislike it.

I also said that in this specific instance, don't expect the staff to change because of complaints.  This has been a discussion about defense being nerfed...a discussion about the BUG FIX that caused this so-called condition.  Oh, they fixed a bug (not made a change) meaning that it'll take some actual work to become bad-ass?  I, and many others, say to this: "Good!  Finally!"

Oh, I don't give a crap about this fix really. I'm just talking about the changes to the combat system as a whole. This just happened to coincide with more changes to the combat system.

You know, people who are happy with the change usually don't bother to post.

I like the change myself.

I hope I like the change. I like the idea of the big boys dazing you a bit, but I never found fighting a huge animal to be that easy in the first place. It sorta seems like this whole daze thing comes down off a few pc's out there who were fantasy solo'ing against mek's or something.

The truth is, even that I don't mind, if they got their char to the skill that they could kill a mek alone, I think that's freaking awesome. I want hero's in the game, I want to see other people walk in the room and shudder thinking, there's a legend. Not sure I want to live in a crafter heaven.

Quote from: "Morfeus"You know, people who are happy with the change usually don't bother to post.

I like the change myself.

Agreed, and me too. (despite the fact that I've died recently to things I used to own) If you're talking about the silent masses, I'd believe they're in favor of the change, otherwise they'd jump at the chance to voice their frustration.

You could settle the debate as to what "most" players feel in regards to the changes by starting a poll, I suppose.  Not that it will much influence our decisions, but for the sake of who's right, spawnloser or jhunter, heh.

Quote from: "Halaster"You could settle the debate as to what "most" players feel in regards to the changes by starting a poll, I suppose.  Not that it will much influence our decisions, but for the sake of who's right, spawnloser or jhunter, heh.

I considered it. The problem is that too many people use alternate accounts to skew the results of such polls. Polls don't really mean jack shit because of that.

new change = poop.

I think everything's been said.