Imperian Forums

Bonding Profession Revamps

Fri, 18 May 2012 08:00:05 +0000

As promised earlier, I'm going to post about our next big project - a series of large structural changes for the professions that currently utilize the Bonding skill. Three professions are affected - Druids, Hunters, and Outriders - and I will split this post into three parts, as each of these professions is going to be very different. I should note upfront that when I say large changes, I do mean large changes.

Druid

Druids are currently one of the biggest outliers and problems when it comes to balancing combat - especially team combat - because of their heavy reliance on room-wide effects and area control. The redesign attempts to shift them away from this role, while retaining the aspects that make the profession interesting.

The Bonding, Groves, and Naturalism skills are all going to be removed entirely, although some of the concepts will remain in the replacement skills. Thematically, the profession will focus on utilizing nature magick and on plant life (as opposed to Hunters, who will primarily focus on animal life). The profession will primarily be damage-oriented, with heavy emphasis on timing and combinations of special effects.

Evocation will be the new primary skill of the Druids. The skill is composed of three parts - a set of quarterstaff attacks, abilities with an earth magick theme, and air magic themed abilities. The quarterstaff attacks are mostly what the Druids possess currently (whirl, swing, and so on; most of the Naturalism ones is not included, however), with some balancing adjustments, plus a few new attacks - mostly attacks known from other weapon professions, no big surprises here. Stabbing with a quarterstaff will also become the primary bashing attack of the profession.

The earth magick portion of Evocation is where things become more interesting. The Druid will be able to infuse the quarterstaff with earthen magick and then use it to evoke various effects. These include some afflicting abilities, forced movement, conditional damage, and more. Additionally, the Druid will be able to empower his quarterstaff with various effects that will be triggered by most quarterstaff attacks, along with toxins. These effects can optionally be delayed until a certain condition is met, and some strategies of the profession will rely on properly utilizing this effect. Finally, the profession's insta-kill is also in this group, unique in that its duration depends on how much health or mana the target has left (more damaged means shorter duration).

The air magick portion of Evocation focuses on several concepts. The main one is an air vortex (not to be confused with the Runelore one), which can be used to pull in targets from adjacent rooms or to throw them up into the air. The vortex also has some afflicting options. Another important concept in this section are wisps, which can invoke several effects, be it immediate or delayed ones. Weather control is also included in this section, although much more limited than what exists in Naturalism currently, allowing to raise/lower temperature and humidity, and to invoke rainstorms and windstorms. Rainstorms will alter fire/cold resists, windstorms will slow down movement and prevent flying. Temperature/humidity alterations will not really play any significant role, but I'm keeping these concepts around for future additions that I'm considering.

Naturebinding will be the second skill of the Druid profession. It will include the basic tree planting and management abilities that exist in Naturalism. Rousing trees and the quarterstaff effects are not included, however. Instead, the Druid will be able to link himself to one tree of each type, and them summon animated roots anywhere. A total of three types of roots can be summoned at once, and each root will possess a different set of abilities - all abilities will be available to several roots, but some roots will have unique bonuses to some of these. Root attacks will be mostly comboable with the Evocation attacks. Roots will be considered mobs, and will be attackable normally. Swapping roots is designed to be fluid and without loss of momentum, but there is a delay to ensure that some planning is required.

A wide variety of abilities is available, ranging from simple damage and afflicting, to conditional writhes, defense stripping, notifications, and more. An important facet of the skill is that the Druid will be able to send one of the roots into another room within the area, and have it attack there. This is intended to become the primary ranged combat functionality of the magick circle, replacing mages in this capability (most notably ranged Erode - the transition period is yet to be determined, as allowing both to co-exist would likely be too much).

Pioneering is the tertiary skill of Druids, and is shared with Hunters. This one mostly contains various defenses and utility abilities - improved sipping, fitness, vitality, lifesense, leaping, blocking, campfires, and so on - it is a combination of various Hunting and Trailblazing abilities. Additionally, a non-combat version of Groves exists as a part of this skill, preserving the utility functionality: Perceive, Imprint, self-only Elevate, Return (channeled and with no environment restrictions), Eyes, Preservation, Isolation, Sever, Storage, Concealment and Gate are Grove abilities that will remain available. And yes, this means that both Druids and Hunters will be able to have a grove.

Hunter

Where Druids focus on the plant life, Hunters utilize animal one. And unlike Druids, Hunters are going to become a primarily affliction-based profession.

Shapeshifting is the primary skill of the Hunter profession, allowing the Hunter to assume the form of a wyvern. This one is rather different from the current Bonding incarnation, however - abilities such as flying or hoist/track remain, but many new ones are added. Claw will be a basic envenomable attack, Scales will protect from damage, Glare afflicts with fear, Roar prones those who are not deaf, Smash breaks limbs, and so on. The wyvern can also breathe fire or ice, with expected results - although some new options are provided too, such as a maidenhair-cured Frostbite ability that gives a balance penalty, or the ability to destroy traps by breathing fire at them.

Auras are the next important ability of the wyverns, providing some passive effects (the concept resembles the Defiler shrouds, but the actual effects are different). Finally, the wyvern can sting with several special and unique effects, ranging from a simple formaldehyde, to the ability to knock a target off focus/purge balance, to a new blood poison affliction that can stack up several times and eventually lead to an insta-kill.

Domination is the second skill of Hunters, focusing, as the name suggests, on dominating forest basilisks and oredring them to attack. The basilisks are capable of giving out a variety of mental afflictions, and the attacks will be comboable with wyvern attacks. A key concept of the skill are so-called affliction triggers. The basilisk can implant two afflictions into a target, which will then be triggered once a certain condition is met - conditions include "health is under 75%", "health is under 50%", "shielded", and "a specific affliction has been cured", with more potentially added. Several triggers can co-exist on a target, although there are limitations too. Affliction triggers will be the core part of Hunter combat.

Domination also includes the Brainmelt ability, which causes 10% unblockable damage per mental affliction on the target, curing these in the process, which is intended as a finisher, as well as some situational attacks. Finally, the ability to lay traps is included - all the Renegade traps are included, along with a few new ones that will be unique to the profession. The currently Hunter/Outrider-specific traps will only remain available to the Outriders.

Finally, the profession shares the Pioneering skill with Druids.

Outrider

OUtriders are going to make justice to their name, and are going to focus on mounted combat. Specifically, their primary skill called Wyrmriding will allow them to specialize in riding powerful icewyrms. Mounted on these, they will retain much of the current utility of the class - flying, hoist/track, icewalls, and so on. They can also use the icewyrm to unleash a variety of cold-based attacks, and will have a new unique 'chilled' effect that allows them to increase the effectivity of cold damage against their target. The icewyrm will also provide a holding ability, an insta-kill, and more.

In mounted combat, Outriders will retain the usage of tridents and spears, utilising them in various ways, ranging from the usual damaging and charging attacks to more special ones. They will be able to coat their spears with ice to cause the weapon to hit with cold damage, or blacken them to deliver nausea with each hit. Additionally, they will be capable of producing several new toxins that will only be usable by Outriders on blackened weapons.

Hunting will remain their secondary skill, and will be mostly the same, with the trident/spear attacks removed or moved to Wyrmriding, and one major change - each of the summonable animals will have two attacks. Normally, the animals will hit with the weaker one, but will switch to the stronger one for the next hit only, if ordered to do so. The weaker ones will mostly remain as they currently are, but lemmings and butterflies will be altered. Ordering the stronger attack takes equilibrium and can be done off-balance, but the caveat is that the animal does not attack right away, but only when it normally would do so next. Thus, usage of these stronger attacks requires some strategy and coordination.

Finally, Outriders will keep the Trailblazing skill with no changes.

Conclusion

Five new skills, many other smaller additions, that's certainly a lot to be looking forward to. We've been working on this silently for quite some time now (since shards got released), and the progress is good - the design documents are fully written, I'm currently about halfway done with Druids, while Fasler is coding the new Outriders. I am planning a full beta for these, which, if all goes well, should be starting sometimes in late June / early July (no promises on this, though, delays -always- happen).

Garryn

I heart <3

Fri, 18 May 2012 07:21:47 +0000

Quote

Posts must conform to the rules HERE. If you get banned because you can't read it's not my fault.

I heart having more than enough people to fight at almost all times of the day lately.
I heart almost having a working parry system (finally).
I heart Garryn's rapid response to bug submissions so far.
I heart not being formally involved in Antioch leadership (I stepped down)
I heart Maitreya not being formally involved in Antioch leadership (he didn't)
I heart having an I Heart thread back

Clueless?

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:30:23 +0000

I just thaught this up and I thaught it was brilliant. No more new threads about the same damn thing that really should have been decided by someone other then us reading the forums.

If you are not sure what race you want to play as and want advice, post here.
If you are not sure what class you want to play as and want help, post here.
Not sure what races work with what classes, post here.
Don't get how one little thing about something works and want to ask, ask here.

Basically this would be a thread for all the random questions like:
"I was thinking of making a Wardancer. Do you think a Lamira or a Akrabi would be a better choice?"
"What does the racial skill Fury really do?"
"How do I quit and save the game?"

Basically anything that really isn't a discussion or something like that.

The idea of this thread isn't to mock the ones that don't know theese things, but more to clean up the forums and also create a thread people can check before they post and maybe some of the questions have already been answered.

Hope it proves to be usefull.

Autosip

Wed, 16 May 2012 02:05:44 +0000

Hey.

Having some problems making an autosip script with CMUD.
For starters, I can barely pronounce or write the word scripting, if you get what I mean.

Anyhow, I figured out I need to get the prompt in looking something like this for example H:%1M:%2E:%3 etc.
Question is though, how do I work in the prompt, is it a trigger? And how would it look correctly? (thinking I didn't do a single thing correct above)

How would a simple balance tracker be?

I also wondering how I can replace "You have recovered your balance" with something else. I managed to get:
You have recovered balance.
------BALANCE RECOVERED-----

But wanted just ----BALANCE RECOVERED---- instead of earlier message.

Thanks for your replies and also, I don't like asking these questions, but since I'm not able to find a guide for reallysuperubernoob...

Aetolian Credits for Imperian Credits.

Tue, 15 May 2012 20:02:54 +0000

I have 345 Aetolian credits I'd like to trade for Imperian ones.

Send me a PM or reply here and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

P.S. I'm perfectly fine with doing smaller amounts. I don't expect anyone to have enough to do them all in one shot.

I hate

Tue, 15 May 2012 07:19:18 +0000

I hate that just as I'm trying to convince myself not to come back, I learned that I can easily sort and prioritize lists in MM2k6 now, which was all that was preventing me from writing a new and vastly improved healing system.

Now I'm all tempted.

what's wrong

Mon, 14 May 2012 22:42:06 +0000

I made an alias named health
In that alias I put: # VAR m_health %1

and in the prompt trigger i put

#IF (@m_health <= H:%1 && h_balance = 0) {
drink health }

though aint working for some reason, anyone got a clue?

Using CMUD btw

Iron Realms Scoreboard

Mon, 14 May 2012 07:00:29 +0000

I've created a website that's keeping a record of who kills who in Imperian and all the other IRE games that support the API used. The application is created with node.js and updates every 5 seconds. A Glicko rating system is implemented to judge who is the best of the best. However, before your name is displayed on the ranked scoreboard, you need a total of atleast five records - which means the sum of kills and deaths.

I hope that this site will produce a new aspect of combat where everyone wants to get a good score at the end of the day. Obviously this application doesn't take into consideration if players are teaming or not, which means that some players might get really good scores.

Consider this phase a beta test and feel free to PM me requests of features you'd like to see on the site or if you notice any bugs and errors.

URL: http://www.irescoreboard.com/

A New Conflict System

Sun, 13 May 2012 14:02:46 +0000

I am currently working on a new conflict system, designed as a further extension of the existing obelisk system. The addition is aiming at filling a big gap in it, where the system focuses on larger infrequent fights, but does not allow for smaller-scale permanently ongoing conflict.

The system revolves around the so-called 'shards' - this is a work-in-progress moniker, and will likely be renamed prior to the actual release.

Shards will randomly appear anywhere around the world, and players will be able to harvest these. Lore-wise, these will be somehow tied to obelisks and/or the diachaim. Occasionally, a bigger amount of shards will appear scattered around an entire area. Harvesting a single shard will take about 20 seconds - not channeled, but aggressive actions will abort it. Having more players will not make it go any faster. The numbers are yet to be finalised, but in the current draft, we are expecting single shards to appear every 3-6 minutes, and the bigger amounts every 3-4 hours, with 50-100 shards in each batch. The intent is that the single shard drops allow for more individual conflict, while the bigger ones require more organisation - area-wide scattering should ensure that entrenching at a single location is always a suboptimal tactics.

Shards will then be used to both unlock and use various abilities. Unlocking will be based on an ability tree, where some abilities will allow others.

To unlock an ability, players will need to use some of the shards - it is important to note that harvesting shards will give them to the person who harvested, so cities will need to organise this somehow. To be able to use shards to unlock abilities, they will need to be inserted into the generator, just like corpses/gold are now. There will be a log of who added how many shards. There will be an accompanying gold cost as well.

Unlocked abilities will be usable by anyone within the circle - the system mirrors obelisks in this regard. Many of the abilities will consume a shard, too.

Two types of shards will exist - a common variety, and a rare one. The rare one will count as 5 shards when used for unlocking purposes, and will also be required for some more powerful abilities. Some abilities will also behave differently depending on which shard type is used.

As for the individual abilities, this is still a work in progress. There is currently a total of 19 types of unlocks, most of them having 5 levels with increasing costs (a few have 10 levels instead). At each level of each unlock, a new ability, or a modifier to an existing ability, will be provided. Unlocking everything is going to take a -long- time.

The provided abilities are split into several groups:
- Abilities affecting the system itself: including an ability to be notified about the bigger shard drops, ability to see how many shards are in your current area, notification about single shard drops (a defence that lasts about an hour and requires a shard), notification about ongoing harvesting (again requires a shard), up to an ability to detect and destroy the unlocked abilities of another circle (specifics are yet to be determined). These are likely going to be the first ones that you will want to focus on.

- Abilities enhancing the obelisk functionality. These will only be unlockable if you control the obelisk in question, and will not work if you lose it again (but you won't need to unlock them again). These generally modify and further improve the obelisk's main functionality, but there are exceptions, too - Nature provides further harvesting improvements, but also an extra regen in natural environments; true sight improves farsight in various ways, but also affects some other abilities; and so on.

- Abilities thematically based around obelisks. These will require the obelisk to be unlocked, but will remain functional even if you lose the obelisk later on. A wide assortment of abilities will be available through this, ranging from health regain to walls and travel skills, most of them requiring a shard to be activated - the specifics are mostly still to be designed.

- Improvements to the Tattoos and Engineering skills - various enhancements to several existing abilities, as well as a few new ones.

This part is still very much a work in progress, and any interesting ideas are welcome - the challenge, of course, is that all additions need to be balanced out against all the existing professions.

There is no schedule decided on all this as of yet - I had hoped to have this out before the upcoming classlead round, but the Bard changes took longer than anticipated, and so the more likely release time for this would be shortly after classleads - this is only a very rough estimate, though, we may decide to delay the classleads in favor of this.

As always, comments are welcome.

Quotes 14

Sun, 13 May 2012 11:47:41 +0000

No handy quotes to start of with. Sry