Santa... 2018?

[Erelei]

Hey guys,

Halloween Madness will be ending on Monday - sometime in the morning (whenever I get home and have a moment to login and turn it off). That said, I hope it was/is fun!

There haven't been many changes, and I apologize for that. Getting married and going on my honeymoon this year really put a damper on the latter part of this year, and I'm not going to apologize for it (sorry, I enjoyed the much needed vacation!) - however, I can try and make it up to you all as I generally do every years-end.

So, Santa's back - what do you want changed?

I'm not going to limit this to small changes, either - post your worst. Make sure it's a code change - anything regarding OLC, should be directed to Prayer Forum if you have suggestions or want to request a change.

Keep in mind that larger projects will take longer to complete, and also keep in mind that the changes you request *might* be denied, or changed in some way to fit the agenda of the MUD and for the good of the rest of the players.

You can begin posting immediately - use Halloween Madness to your advantage! I'm hoping to get a good bit of changes in by the end of the year.

[aaa]

Personally I'd like to see a number tweaks for each class to try bring them closer together power wise for example:

Berserker damage reduced by 5%

Battlemage defenses improved by 15%

Etc etc

If enough things are shaken up, it should promote a new fresh meta which will fight against stagnation. The changes don't have to be flashy, just impactful. 

But if you want specifics, I'd say mysterum needs some new skills that focus on defense, maybe a blink type thing. Perhaps ac could be looked at again? It feels extremely underwhelming to stack ac high at least vs normal attacks. 

Also there was a thread playing around with the idea of spells that weren't damage spells having reduced effectiveness if saved instead of a binary saved or succeeded. Maybe select spells could benefit from this if not a blanket approach. A saved blind might last 0 hours for example, make mals great again.

Edited November 4, 2018 by Wade

[Tantangel]

* New Race - You could introduce Dragons into the mix like last HM if needed, but a new race would possibly be interesting to add to the mix.

* Perks for unused combination (race/class) to be made more interesting. Similar to how Gnome Thief can now have the Brambus Needler as an innate skill, perhaps give a boost to other lesser played combinations so they're more viable.

* Variable lag and damage. IE: if it lands and lags you for 2 rounds, the damage is a lot less, but the higher the damage you may only lag the person 1 round or even none. This may make smaller melee race combinations slightly more viable as well.

* With what was discussed in that Meeting a while ago, AC being less impacted the higher you have it so AC actually means something, and higher hit/dam diminishing returns so the game doesn't completely favor melee classes.

* MAYBE make it so that Malforms and Crusader weapons are easier to make than they are now. I was testing it out with the perk that boosts it on Madness, and it took quite some time to finally get it to level 10. It took 25 kills to completely level it up which is fine if we had a ton of players on at all times, but I've found that there's far fewer at most times. Even when you do get it to a certain point, most people usually log off when they see you online so it makes it more difficult to keep it going.

* Open up classes to different races as  has been already being tested out. IE: Duergar DK, Dwarf Paladin, Fire DK, Storm Paladin, and I'd say also do Illithid Invoker and Illithid Cleric.

** Update the help file for Tattoos and what they are. Not a Code issue, but it's apparently very  out of date. @Rygothran Are you doing these, or just making notations about the errors?

* Make the nimble perk give you a +15% chance to avoid lag skills instead of just a +5% for any non hiding/camouflaging classes. For any hiding/camouflaging classes they'd still get the +5% bonus to avoid it.

* New Edges for increased finding of lockboxes by +40% or less.

* New purchased skills/spells from the Bazaar like Lore for 20 RP points.

* RP pets lower the prices on them to 40 RP at the most to make them more desirable and have more variety in the different types at different levels.

* Greed DI really should be tweaked to a degree. Maybe make it so it can be a bit more useful. Like blackjack those in your PK range.

[aaa]

50 minutes ago, Tantangel said:

* Greed DI really should be tweaked to a degree. Maybe make it so it can be a bit more useful. Like blackjack those in your PK range.

Global blackjack sounds hilarious, I love it.

[Rygothran]

@Tantangel I have been working on typos and errors only. I haven't rewritten any help files... yet.

[Fool_Hardy]

33 minutes ago, Rygothran said:

@Tantangel I have been working on typos and errors only. I haven't rewritten any help files... yet.

FYI, Help dwarf. Remove Bard. Edit: Might be help dwarf3.

As for Santa;

If I can only put one thing on my list, then I choose a Herald sub cabal.

I have offered many Ideas over the years for you immortals to consider.

 

Edited November 4, 2018 by Fool_Hardy

[Venom]

I would personally love to see the following:

1. New lores for warriors (from my experience some of them are REALLY unusable like power grip or/and doublesheath or/and backcutter). Mantis maul is interesting, but when it fails to land 2-3 times is disadvantage to have it at all, instead of any advantage.  May be a little buff of feign as well, I don't have that much experience with it, but it looks a bit of weak at the moment, considering that all of the melee (I think) classes has the sword ability. 

2. Potion/herb/wand/scroll lag (might be even 1 round, but at least to have a little lag there)

3. Warmaster Gladiator form for "hand to hand" 

 

[tassinvegeta]

Thought we were going to work on the items discussed in the players meeting first?

[Magick]

I'm not a fan of most of the above.

There is one thing that I think needs looking at and that's the ability to smoke in combat with little to no lag.  Should need to be held and have a chance for flameblind or consumed with no effect, similar to the potion.  Same with the eating of pills: all type pills have a chance of failure if done in combat.  Out of combat, you're fine.

 

Concerning yours, Wade.  Why not both?  Again, there's more than one person on staff and they can do both coding and OLC at the same time.

Edited November 4, 2018 by Magick

[Rygothran]

5 hours ago, tassinvegeta said:

Thought we were going to work on the items discussed in the players meeting first?

We have been working on some of this stuff.

[Fool_Hardy]

Some new RP purchases would be awesome.

Choose Hometown normally allowed by your race and alignment 15 RP.

Choose Hometown not normally allowed by your race and alignment 30 RP.

New spells are always awesome as well.

Blight - Causes perishables in enemies inventory to deteriorate. (Shaman)

Creeping doom - Causes perishables in enemies inventory to deteriorate, causes perishables in enemy containers to deteriorate after one hour of exposure to air. (Battlemage)

 

[mya]

Choose Hometown normally allowed by your race and alignment 15 RP. -- YES, great idea.
Choose Hometown not normally allowed by your race and alignment 30 RP.  ---  NONONONO.... Unless its hometown appears in BIO. Else you will never figure his hometown of the week.
Creeping doom - Causes perishables in enemies inventory to deteriorate,  --- Please no, this make people log off, not fight. We removed breaking weapons/armor, this would be a step back.
 

7 hours ago, Magick said:

There is one thing that I think needs looking at and that's the ability to smoke in combat with little to no lag.  Should need to be held and have a chance for flameblind or consumed with no effect, similar to the potion.  Same with the eating of pills: all type pills have a chance of failure if done in combat.  Out of combat, you're fine.

Yes, on the smoke on combat. I have yet to see a player state that smoke in combat should have no lag. Years of players stating this. Never ever changed.
Pill in my opinion don't need fail chance because ... they are low level. I don't mind someone eating one in combat, because I know that thing is going down very soon.

 

My main proposal for this wish list is simple.
Improved SCORE sheet information.

The improved/expanded score sheet should now also provide information about:
- estimated damage reduction for each AC type.
- spell level, by individual category.
- estimated spell landing %.
- estimation of real hit/dam
- managain & hitgain
- Size

        /-------------------\/--------------------------------------------------\
	| Thulgan           ||  the Entropic Chieftain, Doom of Rheydin         |
	\-------------------/\--------------------------------------------------/
	| Str: 24(24)^1     || Level: 50 Sex: M        Age  : 869(3212h)        |
	| Int: 19(19)       || Class: warrior          Ethos: chaotic           |
	| Wis: 15(15)       || Race : R shl(ogre)      Align: evil              |
	| Dex: 18(18)       || Hp   : 1629/1629        Exp  : 174361/469439     |
	| Con: 24(24)       || Mana :  524/524         +Hit: 90   real: 45      |
	\ Lck: [||||--]     || Move :  469/469         +Dam: 56   real: 35      /
	/-------------------\/----------------------/\--------------------------\
	|  ARMOR        Cut ||  SAVES / Landing Lvl || Deity : Volgathras       |
	| Slash : -260  22% || Spell  : -18 --   50 || Faith : Discord          |
	| Pierce: -29   12% || Aff    :  0  47%  51 || Weight: 78/675           |
	| Blunt : -29   12% || Mal    :  0  47%  47 || Items : 13/39            |
	| Magic : -900  50% || Mental : -2  45%  50 || Prac  : 0     Train: 0   |
	|                   || Breath :  0       50 || RP    : 227              |
	| Size: Medium      ||                      || Gold  : 51K   CP: 35.4k  |
	\-------------------\/----------------------\/--------------------------/
	/ Condition: You are covered with deep scars and lacerations.           \
        | Hitgain:  120%       Managain: 100%          Movegain:  103%          |
	\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/

Why? Several reasons.
First quality of life. Having to calculate your managain is troublesome.
Simplicity and clarification. Remember when no player knew that managain was a +% instead of a +mana per tic? This solves that.
Removing hidden mechanics, which when changed disrupt players know and feel of their classes. Players should make informed choices, not guesses and hope it's better. For example mages with choosing AC vs HP. Meeles choosing saves vs hit/dam. Vuln races, valuing their vuln saves vs not.
Qthings not needing to rely on rumors to have an real idea of what their classes are capable of.

My hope is that with this, players and staff can have a clearer vision about the game and it's inherent balance balance. Stubbornly refusing to change because we always done it that way, is death. Adaptation is the way we overcome challenges as they come.
It's not perfect. I wish I could include % of defenses, but as someone player said: Small steps is still moving forward, while always arguing to try to figure the perfect solution is no progress.

I would also like to suggest, coding a separate message for imms watching combat, relaying damage done. And perhaps the roll of the defense. As in:

You parry a huge scaled behemoth's attack. 55%
You parry a huge scaled behemoth's attack. 55%
A huge scaled behemoth's draining horn injures you. -13 dam
Bloog's poison scratches him. 1 dam
You parry Bloog's attack. 35%
You parry Bloog's attack. 35%
Bloog's sting mauls you.   23 dam
The Mournblade draws life from Lelleiala
Bloog's vampiric touch grazes you.  3 dam
A large spotted leopard's claw devastates some ectoplasm vapor!  33 dam
A large spotted leopard's claw misses some ectoplasm vapor.  33 dam
A large spotted leopard's claw decimates some ectoplasm vapor!  33 dam
A large spotted leopard's claw devastates some ectoplasm vapor!  33 dam
A large mammoth's crush hits you.  4 dam
A large mammoth's crush hits you. 4 dam
A large mammoth jumps in front of Bloog!  25%
Some ectoplasm vapor's chill hits a large spotted leopard. 3 dam
Some ectoplasm vapor's chill grazes a large spotted leopard. 3 dam

Edited November 5, 2018 by mya

[f0xx]

Most of my changes concern policies, so I would keep them for myself.

Mya's suggestions are great. 

Apart from that, it would be nice to see scaling spells and the removal of THAC0.

But I guess those are also policies.

*shrug*

[Tempirion]

I'd love to see a jailing system put into place for cabals to have dungeons for cabal warfare like tribunal jails.

[Chief]

I wouldn't mind seeing a glyph or protection service that a Caballed player can use at the expense of CP's to make their cabal guardian totally immune for a few hours and has a substantial cool down. (Similar to Glyph in Dota)

People can log on instantly and go straight for enemies Guardian and snatch a standard before the other has time to react, this is especially true for cabals like Savant who have a lot of prep time with Reverse Time to be ready to fight at full capacity.

I think this would be in favor of mages so they get some breathing space over those power Melees who can down a guardian with lightning speed and strip cabal powers.

 

[Zoichan]

23 hours ago, tassinvegeta said:

Thought we were going to work on the items discussed in the players meeting first?

@tassinvegeta That's an OLC change that I'm working on, not code changes like E is asking for. So far I've changed at least 5 items with either crazy high saves, or crazy high hit/dam (meat kleefer anyone?) and will be changing more.

[tassinvegeta]

Oh, ok how about this one? Bring back the old, shorter descriptions for Help <insert race here>. And change the newer help race descriptions to Help race detail.

[Mali]

Delete bards.

[Mali]

Give healers random access to mage spells based on path.

Necro healer path

Invoker healer path

Bmage healer path

[Mali]

Dk's charm works on players again.

[Mali]

% chance paralyze every time you wimpy.

[Mali]

Thief slice can work on backpacks in addition to gold. 

[Lloth]

To piggyback on this, I will be accepting 3 OLC changes. Specific items, quests, mob difficulty, and area layouts only, please. Please also try to keep it reasonable. Entire new zones can take several months of work (based on scope). So decide among yourselves what you'd like to see from me, as well, and I will work with Zoichan to get things scheduled out and completed.

[Fool_Hardy]

Academy quests.

Crunch the ogre has an over due book, retrieve it and return it to the Library in Maelbrim. Ect.

[Tantangel]

@Lloth I'm still open to doing the Arena in notepad for my RP points. It would at least cut down the build time of it significantly depending on how hard it would be to add in the Newbie Quests I had suggested via Prayer. I've got quite a bit of RP points to use just to make it happen.

Outside of that, timed areas I wouldn't mind seeing as per my Ideas and Suggestions post, but know that they would probably take significantly more time than even my Newbie Arena suggestions I made.