The trouble with numbers today

[Fool_Hardy]

OK, So thank you fridge for your thread, sorry it was closed. It seemed to me an enlightening read.

This post is not about mages and melees. It is not about the Powercreep, itself either. Its about the numbers. Bare with me.

The rules of the game have remained pretty consistent through the years, with minor changes here or there to accommodate player issues.

The numbers we play with have actually sent us into a rule change, we can now gang up on each other without reprisal.

What caused the rule change? High Numbers.

You do not have to admit it. You do not even have to agree. But please continue to read.

High numbers affect more than PK.

High numbers are ruining this game.

But Hey FOOL what do you mean by high numbers?

Simple. Numbers that are much higher than they should be.

It starts with the 100%'s, if all of you could not acquire more than 24 masteries based on int+wis/2, there would be chinks in your abilities for others to take advantage of. The elite would still choose wisely, the best would still be the best. But you would not need -60 saves and -600AC with 60 H&D.

Look at the experience, if grouped we are getting 1700-2600 exp per kill. Literally making everyone level 50 in short order. We no longer have the time to make a name for ourselves. Once, people applied to cabals at level 30. Now, we hit fifty and get caballed before we even have time to equip, let alone let the character develop relationships.

Look at the damage output, High Numbers.

Look at the number of people with a weapon that blinds or paralyzes. High Numbers.

The only number going DOWN in Aabahran, is the number of players.

I pray some of you have the fore sight to look down the road before loneliness is all we have left in Aabahran.

[aaa]

Okay, so you've outlined what is your perceived problem. What are you proposing?

Lowering all damage? An option, I personally like seeing big damage from spells and things like paladin charge etc.

Shifting the numbers so you'd still see the same caps (MUTILATES, etc) but it just meaning the damage is less?

 

Personally I'd like the game to be a little bit slower so I'm inclined to agree with you, I think a suggestion that could work is just making sanctuary stronger. It's easy enough to get so everyone uses it so it wouldn't buff any particular subset of playstyles. It could possibly make attrition classes stronger?  

[Fool_Hardy]

The solution is not an easy button.

A slow, steady, downscale.

Begin with cutting the exp bonus back. Cut it in half. I understand its need, groups of three are hard to find.

Severely limit character masteries.

Set parameters on the number of nonguild buffs a character can have based on class. The classes that need the most buffs have a higher limit than those who need less.

Do not allow players to enter cabals after rank 40. If your going to "Be Somebody" in Aabahran, slow down and let us watch you grow. Will this make ranking 40-50 harder, probably, but I think we can handle it like adults.

Armor is affected by placement on the body, its a bonus sort of thing in the code, that makes it give more vs <whatever>. This "bonus" should be looked into, perhaps its factor can be changed to reducing the likelihood of anyone ever reaching -6-800 AC.

There is a scale back on +H +D as I understand it, So +70 is not really as effective as it would seem. +40 I think I read it starts tiering off. Increase this Tier as needed against the altered armor classes.

I am sure there are others with better Ideas, with more concrete understanding of the code.

Unfortunately, I really am beginning to think people do not want to see it.

 

[Fridge]

We made it to 5 pages when I thought it would get shut down at 2 so I'm happy.

There is a problem though with reducing the numbers too much, especially vs heavy attrition classes such as shaman. 

But I do like the masteries suggestion. Do the rest cap out at 90? And how would you choose which can go to 100? Only concern would be that some races will get seriously screwed by not being able to master skills eg. Fire giants. 

Keep the suggestions flowing.

[Chesta6384]

Well first off, the leveling experience was implemented because of lower numbers and difficulty finding groups. 

Secondly, the training was changed because it was wasted time.  Hours were spent afk just training key spells with 0 RP and productivity from said char.  It was essentially deemed unnecessary downtime.  Anyone who wanted to be ready for pk mastered the essentials.  

Thirdly, this high damage you speak of have always been there.  The elite had these numbers and steamrolled everyone who couldn't get them because THEY controlled the gear.  Now, everyone can get to that level, it has helped more that it has hurt.  

Damage has been this high if not higher in the past.  Imagine a decked ogre neutral with 60/60 vs mages who couldn't find the gear to buff AC....They died fast.  Now mages can get the same gear and live longer.  It has also helped make nongiant melees potent.  

As for the caballing at 30, there have been very few in the past.  It's a general rule of thumb that u need pinnacle to get caballed, though there have been exceptions.   The pbase isn't large enough to support lvl 30s making a name for themselves, the only 30s are qclass wannabes.

[Fool_Hardy]

@ Chesta - I agree that the way we mastered things before was a grind. However, reducing training time from weeks to hours however, was overkill. The same goes for experience bonuses.

Its funny if someone makes a suggestion that aids their lack of skill in PK, everyone cries foul. Why? Because it takes away from the best PKers knowledge/skill at the game, which is true. The simple truth remains, that some of the best at "training and ranking" players had all their skill/knowledge made useless by this change. But some of you think its fine that we can master Assassinate/pry/cleave/cabal skills in literally minutes. Forgive me if I think you should spend a bit more time to call yourself a master.

@ Fridge - The cap on masteries would cause players to have to "pursue" a skill to take it past 95%. There are exceptions, fire giants for instance have several "automasteries". Basically players would acquire a predetermined amount of pursuits, based on averaging intelligence and wisdom. In the fire giant example this means 15 pursuits. The character does not have to pursue enhanced damage to tell the game to allow it to go to 100%. It is already there. So the automastered skills do not count against him. But he only has 15 to place toward skills he knows he wants. Lets say he is a warrior, 4 defenses, riposte, four attacks, ranged weapons, blind fighting, and suddenly your low intelligence fire giant can not master every weapon there is. Now if you were a gnome warrior with 24 masteries, you would have to learn enhanced damage, bash, and twohanded, but could still master every weapon.

If our skills are all 100% they almost never fail. I grew up playing dungeons and dragons, and I do not care how good your character was, if you rolled a one, critical fail. Since the chance of rolling a 1 on a d20 is seemingly ~5%, 95% seems appropriate. Now its important to remember items/skills would still affect these scores, so the knowledgeable players will refrain from pursuing skills he knows he can/will boost with equipment. But that's it in a nutshell.

[Zavero]

I'm not sure I agree with changing the current exp/training away. It really helps casual players to do the things this game was really meant to do: PK and do the level 50 content. 

I personally enjoyed spending hours training. I always have. At the same time I realize some players do not want to spend time training as it is seen as a waste of time. 

As far as the skill change you propose... I don't know. It could be very interesting. It could disrupt everything. I don't think it would affect mages much. If we honestly look at mages they really only use a few spells out of their arsenal unless very specific circumstances. They would master those same spells. It would really hurt melee as they rely on diversity in weapons to be more effective against different classes.

[Magick]

9 minutes ago, Fool_Hardy said:

If our skills are all 100% they almost never fail. I grew up playing dungeons and dragons, and I do not care how good your character was, if you rolled a one, critical fail. Since the chance of rolling a 1 on a d20 is seemingly ~5%, 95% seems appropriate.

 

Tickle me pedantic, but I'd like to clear up a very common misconception here.  The Nat1 auto-failure was only for attack rolls and never for skills; the fail was just a miss, not a "critical fail."  On the other end of the spectrum, a Nat20 in 2nd ed was always a hit and 3.0+ it was still was an automatic hit but you also had a chance for a critical hit.  Like its counterpart, the Nat20 didn't mean auto-success in a skill either.

[Fool_Hardy]

@Magick Awesome stuff.

[f0xx]

Back in the days people complained that it's too hard to find a ranking group, so the IMMs buffed XP, made easy guild quests and gave good incentive for pinnacles to help.

Back in the days people complained that they spend too much time training, so the IMMs cut training times.

Back in the days people complained that all the rares are held by a handful of people, so IMMs bumped the numbers and implemented alternatives.

Nowadays people complain that ranking is too easy, that training is too fast and that there's a "power creep".

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Fool_Hardy]

Very Valid Point Foxx. Thank you.

[Manual Labour]

If you knew tricks to train faster it still gives you an edge over those who dont. Instead of doing something in 2 hours vs 4 hours, now you can do it in 30 minutes instead of an hour.

I think fast ranking is a nice feature, it is fast but it still takes time, it is not an instant 50 button.

[Celerity]

Number inflation is true. Everyone agrees on that. Not everyone agrees if it is a truly bad or not. I personally think it is quite bad as balance becomes increasingly difficult. It doesn't become difficult because the numbers are bigger...it is difficult because the numbers are rising at different speeds. Changes in damage output might come after equipment additions which are addressing previously increased numbers. This means we are always somewhat out of balance, ever-inflating to catch up.

One possible hedge is to start working with percentages rather than absolute numbers. Using those where we can, it much easier to cross-manage what a change will have an effect on. This will most easily work in debuffs. Instead of debuffing 20 hp, it debuffs a ratio of the target's current. We have this in place for deteriorate already. There is easy potential for this method in buffs too.

Generally speaking every deflation of numbers must be met by an increase somewhere to maintain the current balance. If we nerf high end eq numbers, we need to buff skills/spells to a certain degree. @Fool_Hardy is on a good track with masteries, but instead of limiting masteries, make it a buff, increasing or providing a new effect on the chosen skills. Then we are back to integrated paths whose initial purpose was to help fight equipment inflation.

Time deflation:

Shortening ranking/training/etc was a good move. But why was it good?

Not because shorter is better. It was only good because those systems were tedious, grindy, and often non-interactive.

Given the choice between short tedium and long tedium, short is better. However, the better solution would be to make ranking/training/etc more interesting, less grindy, and interactive.

Short has its drawbacks too. The most important of these drawbacks is in obtaining/retaining new players. New players want to immerse themselves in a game, trying out the systems, and usually take their time doing so. I personally had a problem introducing someone to FL because they ranked too quickly, forcing them into PK, wayyyyyy too early for their skillset. Short is good for those that don't need to explore the world or systems and want to jump into the end game.

What we really need is early and mid-game content. It could be improving the ranking/training system or it could be other expansions/new systems. If and when we have something meaningful, we can safely increase the amount of time to be spent at those stages. 

[mya]

1º Number went down because FL is an archaic game without graphics and the player base has gown in age. Potential new players will more likely join a graphical game than a text based game, and old players have a life of their own and don't have the time to play.

2º You are right that numbers have gone up. But it's extremely complicated. AC has spiked to huge levels to counter new bonus, such as the new necklace, the new chests eq ... . Spell levels have gone up, to what I think is an attempt to balance the -8 spell saves from the RP necklace and more saves. We have perks that border on the OP, and HP gear has gone up, which balances it a bit.  BUT one the reverse, the low EQ has been made more powerful. You will no longer see people trying to PK in mithril because of the ease of gathering a decent suit by everyone.

3º The game has moved more from skill based towards equipment based, and the overall skill of the pbase has gone incredibly up. This means that you having more skill than your opponent has an lesser impact because your opponent is bound to be much closer to your skill than in the past, and grand part of PK is now dictated by EQ numbers.

4º I think you are the only one to wish ranking to be slower. We know that if ranking is slower we would be playing alone. The fast ranking is the reason that his days 75% of the who list are L50s, who can interact with each others. We don't have the numbers to support slow ranking. Do you have any idea what is to log in during European time and be the only person online? How do you think we could rank like that? Sure you can rank to L50 a lot faster than in the past, but there is quite a lot of power discrepancy between a player who has just reached L50 and someone who has been there for 100 hours. Quest items, quest bonus, cabal stuff, factions gear all this matter a lot in L50 dynamics. Things that didn't matter in the past.

On 25/02/2017 at 11:20 PM, Fool_Hardy said:

It starts with the 100%'s, if all of you could not acquire more than 24 masteries based on int+wis/2, there would be chinks in your abilities for others to take advantage of. The elite would still choose wisely, the best would still be the best. But you would not need -60 saves and -600AC with 60 H&D.

5º I agree with the AC thing, but then again I'm partial on that because I hate having to be completely decked to compete. But the 100% mastery thing is irrelevant, because that is already implemented. The proficiency of a skill only dedicates your base skill with it. It's there to force you master it, and to allow debuffs to proficiency to have an impact on your skills (fear, histeria, ...), else it could be 1 or 100% at char creation. What differentiates on the same class is your race. When you chose your race you do this things... You select a giant and you will succeed a lot more at lagging skills but you will dirt kick like a girl. You choose elf for auto-sneak, you choose human for no vuln, you chose halfling for the pry/plant bonus. You chose human for the haymaker bonus, you choose slith for the spears and trip bonus. You chose avian for the bash avoidance bonus. There are chink is every combo. You think giants hit harder because of that +3% to enhanced damage?  They hit harder because of STR bonus to hit/dam.
Races are the chink and bonus selection, that has always been the FL way. 
You like to deepen that selection, then I recommend that you play a class that relies heavenly in selections, like blademasters, Thieves, NINJAS, Zerks, Necros, Clerics or button mashing crusaders. Or one of the classes where skill has a greater impact in PK like Blm, Shamans, Thieves, DK's, Battlemages (actually stay away from BMG's).
To do such an overall on the system such as Celerity proposal (sorry Cel ) would be to not be playing FL. Although I'm not against expanding selections like the new hard worked ninja changes from Morl.

 

On 25/02/2017 at 11:20 PM, Fool_Hardy said:

Look at the experience, if grouped we are getting 1700-2600 exp per kill. Literally making everyone level 50 in short order. We no longer have the time to make a name for ourselves. Once, people applied to cabals at level 30. Now, we hit fifty and get caballed before we even have time to equip, let alone let the character develop relationships.

6º For me we would only have 4 Levels. Newbies, L30, L50 PK range at disadvantage (it's uncabaled atm), L50. Having 50 levels is detrimental to the game. Frankly I love this we are all L50, a lot more. There is nothing to do on others levels, because we don't have the players to support them and the management choice to heavenly promote power ranking to L50 was one of the best ideas they ever had.

About, name. You think most of use give much importance to some guy who just reached L50 and cabaled? No, they are to me what L20-40 fodder was back in the day, disposable characters that we now can PK. We value characters Nepta, like the merchant prince, like Raymond (crusader), like Kotrag, like the mino warmasters elder, like the drow synd invoker, like the Nightmare, like the undead bard ... etc ..., and many others like Thulgan the eternal. People who stick around and have an RP impact on the game. And although I much hate the RP bonus, @Valek (may the sky not fall over our heads) was right, the RP incentive to stick around with a character for a a long time only makes the game better. Want to power rank and play a disposable character? Go ahead, we like those. PK fodder variety is nice to the game. Want to stick around and have an RP impact? Guess what, we also like those.

[Celerity]

Of course I disagree about the integrated paths bit, but I want to say it would still be FL, just a logical conclusion of a trend we've been following anyways. You like class paths? Me too! I want to see them on every class. I want to then see them on every race. I even want to see them on every skill, if possible.

You might not think that is what FL is, but if you follow the changes over the course of the game's history, we are going deeper into pathing. Paths that have already been implemented have done wonders for the classes AND kept the game alive. I have NO doubt we will continue to see more pathing as time goes on. Paladins should probably be next.

Integrated paths skips all the intermediary steps and suggests full pathing. Since you have layers of paths (race, class and skills), I called it integrated paths. You might disagree with the concept of pathing skills which is a legitimate worry. It is easy to forget we already have path skills in place for crusaders and things like weapon expertise decisions. Do you dislike warrior lores and thief traps? Those are pathed skills. Sliths are a semi-pathed race. It is already in the game.

Disagreeing with integrated paths (on the basis of it being not FL) is disagreeing with those current systems we have in place, saying they aren't part of FL. They are part of FL, so that just isn't true.

Virigoth put in ranger paths (class experiment), crusader paths (skill experiment) and slith (race experiment). We've followed this development path since then.

We may take the fast or the slow safe road there, but FL will continue to change and develop towards this end. I believe it will continue to path because pathing is a system that we have proven works in FL and has a huge range of benefits, both in PK and RP. There is nothing 'new' there conceptually. FL is already the conceptual alpha and even some implemented beta of integrated paths. You may or may not like it, but that is the state of FL, its history and future.

It has been and will continue to be what FL is. You'll see more of it as time passes and that is a good thing.

[mya]

I have nothing against pathing. I have against the extreme pathing you proposed years ago. I prefer pathing to be incremental. Which, although I would not like to derail this thread, if you could path a class @Celerity, what class would be? And how would you do it?

[Celerity]

I'm perfectly fine with incremental as well, and that is what we seem to be doing anyways. Like I mentioned in my post, my first thought is paladins, but that is for another thread.