Upcoming changes in the March 2013 round
Disclaimer: this post is NOT about mages and summoners. That one will come later this week.
As mentioned in announce #2278, we have a couple of somewhat far-reaching changes scheduled to be done as a part of this classlead round.
Willpower and endurance will both be removed from the game.
The willpower regenerating artifacts will be refunded, of course. Abilities that drain endurance/willpower will be switched to a mana drain instead, or changed to drain nothing at all where warranted. This will naturally need to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Abilities whose sole purpose is to affect the regeneration of these two will need to be repurposed or removed (preferrably the former). Should you have any ideas about how this could be done, you are of course welcome to file a classlead report in the ongoing round, or to post them here for discussion.
For this reason, we're looking at making the concept largely transparent, while preserving its actual effects. In particular:
- anything that requires riftable items will automatically take them from the rift (no more OUTR first) as needed
- the above will not work with forced commands
- when you receive something riftable, it will automatically be stored in the rift
- the rift will be renamed to something like 'safe storage' (exact name to be determined)
- inventory/IR viewing will be altered accordingly
These changes are going to be done incrementally, and the plan here is to get to the point where you can simply treat the rift as a part of the inventory. The storage capacity, including artifacts to enhance it, will remain.
Most of this will have no impact beyond convenience, with one noteworthy exception - it will become possible to eat plants while entangled without having to maintain a supply of them out of the rift. I don't expect this to have noteworthy impact on any game mechanics that would be worth preserving, as the "pre-outrifting" option has always existed, but please do let me know if you can see any.
As mentioned in announce #2278, we have a couple of somewhat far-reaching changes scheduled to be done as a part of this classlead round.
1. Willpower / endurance
The primary effect of willpower/endurance is to place a cap on how long various abilities can be used. While management of finite resources is, and should remain, an important part of combat, endurance/willpower are a bit too arbitrary. Practically, the only effect that they have is imposing limits on how long you can participate in combat or bashing. Add to it the different comsumption rates of different professions, and the decision is obvious.Willpower and endurance will both be removed from the game.
The willpower regenerating artifacts will be refunded, of course. Abilities that drain endurance/willpower will be switched to a mana drain instead, or changed to drain nothing at all where warranted. This will naturally need to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Abilities whose sole purpose is to affect the regeneration of these two will need to be repurposed or removed (preferrably the former). Should you have any ideas about how this could be done, you are of course welcome to file a classlead report in the ongoing round, or to post them here for discussion.
2. The Rift
What is the Rift? How would you explain it? It's just one of those purely technical concepts that kind of, well, exist. It has a significant practical gameplay purpose, but is a rather strange concept.For this reason, we're looking at making the concept largely transparent, while preserving its actual effects. In particular:
- anything that requires riftable items will automatically take them from the rift (no more OUTR first) as needed
- the above will not work with forced commands
- when you receive something riftable, it will automatically be stored in the rift
- the rift will be renamed to something like 'safe storage' (exact name to be determined)
- inventory/IR viewing will be altered accordingly
These changes are going to be done incrementally, and the plan here is to get to the point where you can simply treat the rift as a part of the inventory. The storage capacity, including artifacts to enhance it, will remain.
Most of this will have no impact beyond convenience, with one noteworthy exception - it will become possible to eat plants while entangled without having to maintain a supply of them out of the rift. I don't expect this to have noteworthy impact on any game mechanics that would be worth preserving, as the "pre-outrifting" option has always existed, but please do let me know if you can see any.
3. Totems
This one is still highly tentative, but I am rather seriously considering removing totems. These used to be a cornerstone ability in Runelore, but now with the semi-recently added rune flaring options, Runelore has enough going even without them. Considering that the primary use for totems is to discourage melee and for some "gimmicks", they do not really feel like something worth preserving. I am not really decided on this one yet, and any thoughts on the matter are very much welcome.4
Comments
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Fourth Question: - Avoid asking for too much - solutions that require significant additions or alterations to multiple abilities, or even whole skillsets, are unlikely to be approved due to time constraints.
With defiler, there's a lot of small problems that make the class fall short. Do you suggest we address these tiny problems across a list of say, 16 classleads? Or do we just pile them into to one classlead like:
Problem: Defiler is a linear class that functions on "Can you tank my damage? If no, die. If yes, I die." Solution 1: Ravage does more damage. Solution 2: Treant does more damage Solution 3: Entropy does more damage.
Do we hope that you can plug and chug the numbers and choose 1,2,3 or any combination of the proposed solutions?
1 - I'm not really sure if any replacement is needed, considering the recent tablet additions.
2 - Yeah, not really sure yet. The review mainly involves looking at afflictions that are considered "filler" and altering them to be more effective. There may be time for that during this round - will see!
3 - I'd suggest waiting a few days with that one
4 - Separate reports
My only complaint (a purely selfish one) with the removal of wp/endurance would be that it'll likely add another passive mana drain ability onto monks (posture). Beyond that, this would be nice. Is moradeim warp going to die the final death with this?
Rift thing I'm not so fond of. It'd be nice not to have to write a pre outrifting tracker, but it'd also mean that a lot of things become significantly weaker offensively. Burning outrifted herbs on someone to riftlock or whatnot was fairly viable, even if they did outrift. The main ones that immediately spring to mind (as they're the ones I have more experience with) are riftlocks, reducing dsb damage, and curing in aeon/retardation (although if that's being changed this round that might be irrelevant). This would definitely be awesome for group battles, but the one v one implications make me
a little.
I'm biased, but I've never found totems particularly interesting. If you're fighting one you have the option of diving it and almost certainly losing at least one of your useful people before everyone can stand up, ranging the totemer and hoping he's not pro and can reprop before you move in, or just sitting as far as possible and trying to snipe off people with ranged (admittedly, Am as the faction without totems has the best method for doing this, but still: boring). Don't really think they should be left without something to replace it just because having one of your abilities flat out deleted always sucks, but maybe tablets were enough to fill the void.
I'll probably just give it a cooldown, unless a better idea is provided.
While I don't disagree with this, it's really difficult to balance anything around these possibilities, as they're so easily countered if you don't mind potentially wasting some resources.
It probably won't, but we'll see.
The loss of totems would be a considerable problem for passive defenses within Magick territories, and while I confess not to know if it is different for Demonic with our Wytch counterparts, I would assume it is the same for them. Perhaps make it simply so they cannot be wielded? Only implanted within areas of a Magick influence.
I'm also curious to see how the elimination of Willpower will affect a skill like Clarity, though I'm assuming it'll become a mana drain. Hopefully not an unreasonable or unmanageable one.
With the cheap cost of herbs and the huge amounts of CC one can expect to find in a team, I recently revised my outrifter to default to keeping 50 of everything outrifted, with a macro to outr another 50 or so. At current prices, if I die like this, this puts me out maybe... 1200 gold or so?
Things that rely on riftlocking are essentially combat newbietraps that really only work on people who aren't willing or prepared to ante up a few hundred herbs per death.
You mean "the loss of totems would equalize defenses across the circles"
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
After attacking celidon the past few days, their totems outside the crest kept me(and everyone else) incapable of doing anything for at least six seconds, and that was with metawake on. A snare trap will only hinder you for three at most while leaving the rest of your team free to move about.
For example, compare Ithaqua's old layout to Antioch's for siege. or Stavenn's/Celidon's.
Some places have received major revamps of their shop area to put them all on the siege line when other places have been denied etc.
With the state of city coffers it'd be a slow transition to optimal anyway. Also would maybe give a use from some of those excess comms that have fixes on the horizon for.