Gradual stats et al

Posted by Davien on 10/28

ok, well I might as well get the ball rolling. After asking how this proposed change will benefit me, the answer that I recieved from two heads of department is simple: I'll be better balanced. I figure this is pretty cool, I actually have the balance skill and I can't wait to see what this will do for me.

on the other hand, I'm a little worried about what I'll be giving up to have my balance skill improved. Being a dex create mage I see myself caught between a rock and a hard place on this issue. I argued it a while back with a lot of people, but I guess I'll do it again. I have 40 spr at the moment. Thats all I need most of the time. But there are times when I run out of mana and must rest to get it back. There I use meditate But now it seems I will have to wait 1-15 ticks to use the skill. on average, this will probably be 600 seconds, or exactly 10 minutes. I ask myself, how does this 10 minutes help me? of course my timed items will be ticking away, I'll be getting a little back each tick, maybe as Sandra says, my charmies will be healing. of course this would have happened while I was meditating anyway, but still..... Then after I have finished meditating, I will have to wait another 10 minutes for my stats to come back. 20 minutes of game play added to what almost everyone admits is quite boring, mobkill. And that makes this game more fun how? At this stage, I'm hoping my balance skill is about to do some truely exceptionally wonderous things to make up the difference.

Having decided that I probably don't want to wait 20 minutes to be able to get my mana back at a decent rate, I have to find some stats to lose. I could drop my dex, but I do that to wield my weapon. Any more and I start to lose attacks. Not to mention armor, hitroll, and now I lose some of my tumbling ability. Will my charmed mobs hit harder now? or better yet, eat less exp? Maybe they will get some benefit from my cool new balance. or I could drop some mind. That makes sense for a mage. Not sure how, seeing many of my spells rely on mind. My greater elemental will lose hp, normal elementals and homunculuses will be weaker, plus my stun will be affected, as well as the overall amount of mana that I have. ok, so maybe thats not so good for a mage. I could drop some str but seeing I have the exact str to wield my weapon, that I can carry 2 bandages or 400 coins, which ever comes first, or 2 pieces of mail, I doubt whether this is an option. I could reduce the other stats, but then I start losing words. Maybe my balance skill will lower the reqs on those words? I guess I will have to wait and see. overall though, this is not looking good for me.

But hey, enough of me. A lot of other people are about to get the benefi of this new balance skill as well. All those people that went and designed an outfit that would have low rent so they could grab other spiffy stuff in order to do some pretty cool things.... will have to wait 10 minutes to do them, then wait ten minutes to get back to being themselves. I guess those people will be rueing the day they forwent the high rent stuff for their added skills. That other 50Hp, 20 damroll/hitroll could have been really handy in the past. Maybe those people are about to get some tools that will teach them those skills in order to make up the rent? I wonder what the chances of those tools being implemented before the change goes in are? I wonder how easy they will be to get?........ Yay, if I solo Blackbeard, theres a 1/12 chance of there being a 3000 rent tool to let me brew again without waiting 20 minutes.....CHEER!

I guess all those people who never quite had enogh stats to be happy and so used rent to make up for them will be absolutly overjoyed at this new change, and will be asking them the same thing I have been. Is this new balance skill really worth it?

Finally, I'll ask the whole mud the question that two heads of department couldn't answer. How do the players of the game benefit from this change? Rufus has coded it, and knowing the attention to detail that he usually demonstrates, it'll be pretty well done, but just because it is coded, should it be bought in? Is the new balance skill worth the amount of aimless time it will, nay, must cause?

Davien Holyoake.

From: Darkheart Friday, October 15, 06:42AM

the way i heard, meditate's req will be dropped enough for most full-time mages to be qualified without having to spam. if not, there's always the 6k rent alternative.

From: Mugwump Friday, October 15, 08:05AM

What I had heard is that this change would come with skilltrees, and that under skilltrees skills would have different reqs. If the stats for meditate are changed at the same time no spam goes in, yay. If not, um, what Davien said.

From: Pallas Friday, October 15, 09:02AM

The way I see this, basically, it's aimed at doing all the 'bad' things Davien said it would do, making you make decisions on what you can do, and thus making you be one type of character. So you must decide, are you a mage, and can meditate, or are you a fighter, with many attacks? It'll make the game more challenging, more difficult, and a little slower, sure, but use that time to talk to people, be social (not that you, Davien, are antisocial, but many are) and perhaps it will improve the mud atmosphere, with people knowing one another. If you have no idea who I am, and see me hit a DT, it's not hard to ignore my pleas for help re-equipping, but if once, for ten minutes, we sat and talked while you meditated and I rested for hps, then when I hit that DT, you may be more likely to say to yourself 'Hey, I know her, lemme help her out' and the entire place will seem more friendly. Being a person who's never had a character spam for stats, I know that most of the IC friends I have here come from sitting around resting for stats, or asking a surgeon to come along on an xp run, so two characters benefit instead of one character with two stat-sets.

At first, I was against the no spam code, because it made me feel that if I found some new eq, it would take a long, long time to find out what it really did. Now I see that this is not an issue, and I like the new coding. We'll see how it works out. Let's give it a chance before we're up in arms against it.

The Dred Pyrat Pallas, ever the optimist

From: Oxalis Friday, October 15, 09:40AM

Gradual stats is good for game balance.

But like everyone else I under the impression that stat reqs would be looked at before it went in. If this doesn't happen it will cause specific imbalance for certain character types. A mage wanting to meditate and spamming for it is not quite the same thing as wanting to spam between sniper and mage thus having two char types in one. Of course ideally mages should wear the stats to meditate all the time, but I would guess that 90% of non-druid mages do not and that the game is balanced that way now, so mages losing 15 stat points will change the balance of the game. Now in a way the fact that you can spam and just choose to wait longer create a greater imbalance between those who go to this trouble and those who don't.

Perhaps revision of stat reqs would be better than having this imbalance, or maybe some powerful spells should be made dependent on or more powerful with high spirit to compensate those who decide to use the extra spi all the time...

From: Ariel Friday, October 15, 09:41AM

Personally, yeah, I wish this had been held off until skilltrees. I literally built several characters, including my pkiller, around their ability to spam for skills they ordinarily wouldn't qualify for. Maybe it's cheap, maybe it's unbalanced, but still. And I know I'm not the only person who built characters like that.

To address the issue of meditate--

I do most of my mobrunning when there -aren't- people on that I want to talk to. Maybe I'm anti-social, but I have a pretty good idea of who I like and who I don't, and I'd rather do the mindless repetetive stuff when I can't get a good conversation going. Whether I try to veeeeeeery gradually spam for meditate, or just screw it and go to sleep, that's quite a bit of time when I'm just being bored. Now, I haven't positively heard one way or another whether the stat reqs for meditate/root are changing or staying the same, but I would seriously hope they'd be lowered to be within the nospam range of a third circle mage. Note that most of my chars are freaky 2nd circle hybrid somethings (hence the high spam content) so most of my characters wouldn't even qualify for meditate if it -was- lowered to 40 spir. However, I think 40 would be a decent compromise.

Ariel

From: Conspiracy Friday, October 15, 11:23AM

sending tells while sleeping would be a nice new option, and make sence, since you can grouptell whie sleeping.

sleeping recovers mana pretty fast, actually, it just completely takes you out of the game.

From: Bakunin Friday, October 15, 12:35PM

I hope that the reqs for meditate will stay right where they are at. It's about time that mages be prevented from fighting just as well as fighters. So drop points from your fight stat, get meditate back, and fight like a weakling mage ought to, for once.

From: Ariel Friday, October 15, 05:02PM

Under the current system, weakening mages' fight skills would make them seriously underpowered. Many current offensive mage skills exist to make their attacks more potent, rather than dealing direct damage.

For example, let's look at stun. Quite possibly the most-used spell in pkill. It does no damage on its own whatsoever, it merely leaves the target vulnerable to the mages' attacks. Assuming a non-wfw stun, it'll stick for what, two rounds? It's very unlikely that it will last longer than that, and quite possible that it will last less. During this time, your average dex mage will probably decimate twice, doing, what, around 100 dam? Whereas a strength fighter can routinely do 100 dam in one round against a bashed target. It's true that a wfw can be seriously nasty, but so is being bashed for two rounds against a damroll monster.

The damage spells currently in the game cannot replace the mages' weapon skills, they merely augment the mages' potential damage. If the current damage spells can either be upgraded to do more damage, or higher-damage spells are added, I will have no problem with keeping meditate at its current stat req, and dropping those 15 stat points from something else.

However, under the current system, it would be disastrous for mages, in my opinion, to lose those vital stat points from a fighting stat.

This might be somewhat of a ramble, but I hope my point came across.

Ari.

From: Ton Friday, October 15, 06:41PM

I like the changes myself. Seems most of the complaining is coming from the mage crowd. I suggest maybe min spirit could be lowered for meditate dfor 3rd circles, but not sure it should move too far for 2nd circles.

Ton

From: Davien Friday, October 15, 08:26PM

ok, to clear up some issues.... the first thing I asked was "are the reqs for meditate and similar skills up for review?" The answer was "not at this time." I see that has changed from when I wrote this post. The reason I asked was quite simple. The last time I heard gradual stats mentioned, it was part of the whole skilltrees thing and it was specifically said "We will not be implementing gradual stats until there are new skills added and the reqs for the old ones are reviewed. In the end, you will only need to spam for really high-level skills." Now I take that to mean that the current way of playing the game will be preserved and if you want really cool skills, you'll have to pay the price. Fine by me, thats the way it should be.

As to those who say that I as a mage shouldn't be a great fighter, I can assure you that I am not. In choosing dex I have sacrificed both the high damage from a heavy weapon and the damroll that is almost certain to go with it. I have never ripped to shreds in my life and I doubt I ever will. I have also sacrificed hp. I cannot go toe-to-toe with high damage mobs because I get killed in 3 rounds or less. In those 3 rounds I can deal maybe 150 damage on a good day, more if I get a lucky stun or something. For instance, the Brahman is likely to eat me for breakfast in 4 rounds or less. I have almost no chance against him. However, I see pure fighter types solo him on a very regular basis. Maybe this super fighter mage is doing something wrong?

For those of you that say mages have had this coming because they are too powerful, I heartily disagree. Having 15 characters, I find the mages have the biggest weaknesses and make the greater tradeoffs of all of them. In general, this dex mage has the greatest personal value, but others are far better in terms of utilitarian work wear. Fine by me, just don't preach this "mages are unbalanced line" I simply don't by into it. ohh btw, my druid is the hardest case of all and gets very little playtime. Maybe you should worry about this more that my percieved strength?

Davien Holyoake.

From: Merlinn Friday, October 15, 09:10PM

Ok first Off I would like to say mages will be getting a quick kick in the nuts when this thing comes in.

1 Not being able to meditate off 600mana will take a good 20-30mins to sleep back off.

2 umm yeah that 6k option is not as good as you make it sound DH

3 Me being a con mage, I hit like a 2 year old bunny ok

I only get a Decimate if the mob is stunned if not I barley cursh or crush a whole 1-10 damage ohh thats lots

4 I think this change will make most of my charas incredibly boring to pla having to spent countless minutes just sleeping off the hp and mana loss i think it just crazy and a waste of my time.

and finnally I hope this change wasnt made just to satisfy the pkillers whining about spam augmenters. From the fight logs I have read I see 90% of all charas heal during a fight.

either it be glowing roots or cure crits or cure lights Ive seen them all With this change I see a lot of pure fighters and dex mages in the future well just my thoughts on this change which I really dont like I just dont like the fact of no flexablity in charas

-Merlinn not Merlinnn

From: Rufus Saturday, October 16, 04:15AM

1 to 3 points per tick, and actually, that may change. So only 15 ticks if you're REALLY unlucky. Each stat that can change changes 1 to 3 points per tick.

We're going to be modifying not only the meditate req, but also a few others likely... nothing's 100% at this point.

-Ruf

From: Darkheart Saturday, October 16, 09:14AM

Mages, by far, are the strongest chars around no matter which way you look at it, in my opinion.

Xp running, in particular, mages are so powerful that they could get over 2 mil xp per run, and even today they can do significantly more than non-mages as long as you are willing to make xp runs non-stop. yes, non-stop. there are tons of features in this mud for a mage char to have them running without needing to stop for more than 10 mins max, and many a times i have come to points where 'safe' mobs ran out before my hp or mana did... this is no idle boasting, anyone can do it, and truth to tell, quite a few have done it.

The simple fact of the matter is, stun is such a powerful thing when it comes to mobkill, because there actually are 95% stun-baits on this mud, a lot of which are worth heaps of xp (which means, you don't fail it like other mobs who have seriously high stats on everything but mind) That one fact alone makes mobs truly easy to pound on if you are a mage, much unlike fighters who have no skill they can wish 95% guarantee on mobs worth xp. Immolate is a sure-fire (haha, no pun) spell that does damage regardless of stats as well. The list goes on. Mages are seriousl powerful in terms of mobkill.

As far as pk goes, however, things are slightly different, but still similar. Only difference is that fighters can spam their skill while mages can't, which can make a world of difference depending on the situation (of course, mages can too, but that makes them sacrifice 2 rounds in skill delay when actually they would have rather used a spell over a skill). That little fact evens things out dramatically as well as the fact that unlike mobs, mage-pkers aren't really spiked up in their fight stats.

Anyway, even without meditate there are tons of in-game eq and ways to heal up mana in godspeed, if you're willing to go through the trouble. And seriously, get rid of meditate spam and some hp/dam eq returning to the old-style i-had-rent-for-sancs-char, rent for chalice is a joke.

From: Davien Saturday, October 16, 12:04PM

only 2 things to say to that Deakheart. First, charmies ruin stun. A normal stun is likely to be used by a greater elemental, who IF it hits does 25-30 damage instead of the normal 20ish. IF it hits, and that is by no means guaranteed. Which leaves the mob awake from then on to hit and use specials. WFW's last one combat round tops. By the time 5 people have hit on it, it is gone, leaving the mob often able to have a weapon round and special round.

Second, what is this immolate spell you keep talking about? Damned if I can cast it no matter what combination of words I use.

I guess a 3rd could be getting charmies to move between eras in order to find 'safe' mobs. Easy to say, not so easy to do. Still, only a minor worry.

Davien Holyoake.

From: Ton Saturday, October 16, 06:23PM

I know very few creates that use charmies when they are trying to get any real xp when running. Most use their mana for stun and healing.

From: Davien Saturday, October 16, 11:52PM

Sacriledge! Charmies are super-powerful unbalancing weapons that give an unfair advantage to their master. Ask them imm people.

From: Darkheart Monday, October 18, 08:16AM

i've had a guy that was enabled as a 3rd create, and guess what, he got enough xp to retire and is enjoying his retirement.

charmies are quite useful, but they're not the end-all-be-all of things. you can easily use them in such a way that they help but don't eat up xp, and if they ruin stun, you use them against folks that you don't normally stun.

seriously, nothing prevents you from not using a charmie in your xp run even if you do have the charmie ready -- use him for mobs where you need his help. and if you don't have immolate, you have kick. kicks are fairly powerful, especially on stunned targets if you are a dex mage.

it's only when you are stuck in one set of tactics when things are difficult, and that's something no amount of coding will help -- your failing to see other options.

From: North Thursday, October 28, 12:45AM

Gee, would this 3rd circle create have gained the xp to retire before or after changes to xp/roots? Charmies are fun and all, but they do require rather large expenditures of mana to create and if they just happen to die you're out a few hundred mana. Personally I only use them for eq/money runs, since a dopple usually suffices for xp runs.

Oh yeah, create mage immolate? low dex kick? what's a poor con mage to do? I'm sensing a general trend in your advice to mages, perhaps you're the one who needs to think up new tactics. (just to show you're better than us all =P )

North