Overrun and WarZone

Jeremy Saunders

We will be testing a couple of games today. See HELP OVERRUN and HELP WARZONE in the game.

I am mainly looking for feedback on if the games are fun at all. The length of the games. The difficulty of the mobs in the events.

Please post all of your bugs and feedback here instead of using the BUG command for now. I will run them a few times today and tweak them until we are pretty happy with them.

Will probably start in about an hour, which is about 19:00 GMT and 12:00 PDT.

Thanks.

Anette

I enjoyed the Overrun, though I got punked by a few mobs wandering into the area.  That's an event I'd play in again.  I'd probably have to play a few times to get a sense for it but it seemed pretty decent the first time around.  There seemed like not as many mobs until it ramped up several times but that's probably just a function of the fact that everyone and their artimount and their artimounts normal pet was in there.

Jeremy Saunders

Yeah. I will run it a few more times today. Need to remove player flying I think.

Anette

Jeremy said:

Yeah. I will run it a few more times today. Need to remove player flying I think.

Didn't think of that.  Could also make it so the mobs have tent tattoos.  But disabling flying (and burrowing!) is probably easier.

Ohm

flying/ burrowing/ going into trees ... phasing/ astralform ... 

Jeremy Saunders

Okay, so I made it so players will be actively looking for players now, which wrapped that up pretty fast. I am going to make a few more changes then run another.

Cyr

If you want to allow teaming in overrun, it may be worth allowing allied telepathy, I'd be wary of it because of things like mind throw, but it allows for useful setups like barrier or empathy.

Owyn

You were able to use SHARD TERRIFY on them for the first run. Also not sure about SHARD HEALing. But, probably don't want those. Also walls, but not sure if you're keeping those either. Other things I saw were flying and demonic aura and piety affecting players. Should probably be wary of prowling.

Jeremy Saunders

I think I am not too worried about walls, but we will see. Mobs can spawn right in the room with you. Will think about it. 

Jeremy Saunders

For WarZone. Do the waves come too slow? Or would you rather double the mobs per wave? Are they mobs too easy? Are they ever going to kill you after 15 minutes?

Anette

This is off the cuff as it just ended, but I had a shitton TM of fun with WarZone.  I probably liked it better than Overrun since you can get back into it.  That said there were a few issues I ran into:

1] Clots of like 20+ mobs.  Owww!

2] Respawns into clots of 20+ mobs.  Double owww!

3] The scoring system favours classes with numerous small attacks over slower single attacks.

1 will probably get fixed with difficulty tweaks.  I'm fond of having spawns be into a protected separate room to fix 2 but I'm not sure how feasible code-wise that is and if the mobs get tweaked it may be less of an issue.

Not really sure what I'd do about 3.  So many times a person with 4 attacks (pred/monk) would bash over me and you look at their scores during their event and there's very little chance even if I lent someone like Pellerin's level 3 artifacts I was even going to touch them, which makes it feel a little pointless as a competitive PVE thing, though I'm not quite sure if that's the aim.  I'm not sure what I'd suggest to fix that, though, really.  It's somewhat just an inherent advantage of the class.

I might have some more detailed feedback when I look over the logs I keep and compute stuff a bit more in me head.

[edit]: Making score be cumulative damage rather than just kills might "fix" 3 if that's something we think is worth "fixing".  It would also at the same time fix people bashing over someone whose been fightin in a room for some time just to have someone punk the last 2% or something.

Anette

[okay forum software I mean to edit the post not quote it >_< ]

Ohm

WarZone mobs were pretty easy the first time around. I'd say bigger clots could be fun. 

Could we also have boss types after certain timer ticks ... for special drops or more points towards the final score.

Just to build on these PvE arenas - could we have Team Warzone type games in the future? These are pretty cool!

Anette

Ohm said:

WarZone mobs were pretty easy the first time around. I'd say bigger clots could be fun. 

Could we also have boss types after certain timer ticks ... for special drops or more points towards the final score.

Just to build on these PvE arenas - could we have Team Warzone type games in the future? These are pretty cool!

Were you in the last one? I was dying as soon as I spawned in a room

Khizan

Anette said:

3] The scoring system favours classes with numerous small attacks over slower single attacks.

This is going to be an issue with basically anything smaller than an ebonmarrow, really, because combo attacks dominate at clearing clumps of trashy low health mobs.

Really, all Warzone games should probably just start with the high end mobs. When you get down to it, a Warzone game is just a Bloodbath with mobs and it seems susceptible to all the old scoring issues of bloodbaths. Why bother killing Eldreth once for 5 points when the same amount of time will let me kill a one point newbie 10 times? It's just like how Great Hunt strategy with the spirits requires you to die occasionally; killing big mobs becomes less efficient than one-shotting trash mobs.

Anette

Khizan said:

Anette said:

3] The scoring system favours classes with numerous small attacks over slower single attacks.

This is going to be an issue with basically anything smaller than an ebonmarrow, really, because combo attacks dominate at clearing clumps of trashy low health mobs.

Really, all Warzone games should probably just start with the high end mobs. When you get down to it, a Warzone game is just a Bloodbath with mobs and it seems susceptible to all the old scoring issues of bloodbaths. Why bother killing Eldreth once for 5 points when the same amount of time will let me kill a one point newbie 10 times? It's just like how Great Hunt strategy with the spirits requires you to die occasionally; killing big mobs becomes less efficient than one-shotting trash mobs.

Getting a high-end mob down to like 2% or whatever and having someone wander in and punk it and then they getting the point and not me is kinda lame, though.  Agree about putting the focus on high-end mobs though.

Khizan

So punk them back, steal their kills. If the event is gonna be more than just a straight bashing contest stuff like that has to be possible.

Anette

Yeah, like that's going to happen when I'm a templar and they're monk or predator.  The way the event scoring is designed presently its going to flat-out favour certain classes.  There is little point in participating if you don't have them.  Unless the intention is to make an arena event that the majority of professions cannot compete in, that's going to be a problem.

Ohm

Anette said:

Yeah, like that's going to happen when I'm a templar and they're monk or predator.  The way the event scoring is designed presently its going to flat-out favour certain classes.  There is little point in participating if you don't have them.  Unless the intention is to make an arena event that the majority of professions cannot compete in, that's going to be a problem.

The solution to this is possibly eliminating critical hits. 

That being said, even in PvP based events, certain dueling classes will always have an advantage over non-dueling classes.

Khizan

Events always favor certain classes, that's the nature of events when you have different classes. Try and win an FFA as a predator at all. Try and beat a Diabolist as a monk(or any class without rage, really). There are certain matchups that you just aren't going to win assuming both parties are equally skilled. Septus the Deathknight takes Septus the Runeguard ten times out of ten. No question. 

The big thing here to me is that small creatures heavily favor the combo classes without adding anything interesting to the game. Getting kills amidst big waves of facemelters can be interesting. "Who can kill locusts the fastest?" is not interesting. It would not be interesting even if it didn't excessively favor fast/combo attacks, which it does.

As for the big things? People heavily overvalue combo classes on large targets. The larger the target, the less valuable combos become and the more important your pure DPS is.

Khizan

Ohm said:

The solution to this is possibly eliminating critical hits. 

This will make it worse for more people.

Criticals are just a straight percentage modifier on top of your DPS; when you math it all out criticals are a fancy and somewhat random way of just adding +X% to your bashing dps. When you remove criticals from bashing you're reducing DPS across the board. This has the side effect of increasing the value of tankiness. 

Here's an example: Say I do 40 dps without criticals, and with criticals I average out to 60 dps. Say an Ebonmarrow has 1000 health. With criticals, I need to survive an ebonmarrow for roughly 16.6 seconds. Without criticals, I have to survive an ebonmarrow for 25 seconds. That's several more hits for 400+ raw damage that I have to survive, and that gives a huge advantage to the tankier characters who can take 25 seconds worth of punishment without flinching.

Ohm

Khizan said:

Ohm said:

The solution to this is possibly eliminating critical hits. 

This will make it worse for more people.

Criticals are just a straight percentage modifier on top of your DPS; when you math it all out criticals are a fancy and somewhat random way of just adding +X% to your bashing dps. When you remove criticals from bashing you're reducing DPS across the board. This has the side effect of increasing the value of tankiness. 

Here's an example: Say I do 40 dps without criticals, and with criticals I average out to 60 dps. Say an Ebonmarrow has 1000 health. With criticals, I need to survive an ebonmarrow for roughly 16.6 seconds. Without criticals, I have to survive an ebonmarrow for 25 seconds. That's several more hits for 400+ raw damage that I have to survive, and that gives a huge advantage to the tankier characters who can take 25 seconds worth of punishment without flinching.

I guess I was coming from the point of view that with critical hits - combo classes will take down a lot of smaller targets faster. While classes with more single attacks only overkill (reducing their actual DPS efficiency). So eliminating critical hits would serve to equalize DPS across the board. But I can see how it then helps tankiness instead.

Khizan

Eliminating critical hits only equalizes DPS when you're smashing a bunch of tiny things, which is always an uninteresting exercise regardless of criticals. 

Ohm

The other way this could work is if overkill damage is applied to the next target automatically (although I'm not sure if this is feasible)

Jeremy Saunders

I have made a couple tweaks. I will probably run a couple more today to test them if I get a chance.

Zarim

So, I joined the Overrun today and wound up staying at more or less full health with a fair amount of downtime until a beztyr showed up and did this:

H:553 M:635 <-b db> 

A snarling beztyr demon pierces your flesh with his claws, dragging them beneath your skin.

Damage Taken: 313 cutting (raw damage: 828)

Damage Taken: 137 poison (raw damage: 206)

You have been slain by a snarling beztyr demon.

That's a one-shot from full health, and I have a fair number of tank arties. I think that's pretty unfair, especially to the people that don't have a ton of arties to get that far. It kind of makes this a who-can-survive-the-beztyr-attack randomized lottery. 

I think we could make it a little more equitable and interesting if we

• Put a cap on mob strength
• Increase mob generation per round
• Increase mob track speed per round
• Disable certain abilities like icewall that could stop mob tracking
• Delete beztyrs (plzkthx)

Make it less about your constitution and arties and more about dodging giant hordes while killing stragglers.

Anette

Zarim said:

So, I joined the Overrun today and wound up staying at more or less full health with a fair amount of downtime until a beztyr showed up and did this:

H:553 M:635 <-b db> 

A snarling beztyr demon pierces your flesh with his claws, dragging them beneath your skin.

Damage Taken: 313 cutting (raw damage: 828)

Damage Taken: 137 poison (raw damage: 206)

You have been slain by a snarling beztyr demon.

That's a one-shot from full health, and I have a fair number of tank arties. I think that's pretty unfair, especially to the people that don't have a ton of arties to get that far. It kind of makes this a who-can-survive-the-beztyr-attack randomized lottery. 

I think we could make it a little more equitable and interesting if we

• Put a cap on mob strength
• Increase mob generation per round
• Increase mob track speed per round
• Disable certain abilities like icewall that could stop mob tracking
• Delete beztyrs (plzkthx)

Make it less about your constitution and arties and more about dodging giant hordes while killing stragglers.

Making it about a bunch of mooks makes it pretty pointless to participate in as slower classes, per prior discussion in this thread, but a mob doing 800-odd base damage is probably a bit too far in the opposite direction unless it's a team event (which would be cool pls add)

Khizan

Zarim said:

H:553 M:635 <-b db> 

A snarling beztyr demon pierces your flesh with his claws, dragging them beneath your skin.

Damage Taken: 313 cutting (raw damage: 828)

Damage Taken: 137 poison (raw damage: 206)

You have been slain by a snarling beztyr demon.

That's a one-shot from full health, and I have a fair number of tank arties. I

  313+137 = 450
450 < 553

You were reckless.

Khizan

Zarim said:

I think we could make it a little more equitable and interesting if we

• Put a cap on mob strength
• Increase mob generation per round
• Increase mob track speed per round
• Disable certain abilities like icewall that could stop mob tracking
• Delete beztyrs (plzkthx)

Make it less about your constitution and arties and more about dodging giant hordes while killing stragglers.

Also, this would not make it more equitable and more interesting. Oddly enough, when you make things easier to tank you still end up increasing the value of tankiness.

Let's pit you and me against each other here. You have 553 health, I roll at about 700.  I also have better resists than you. You took 313 from that beztyr's physical hit and I'd take 264. I'd also take 111 from the poison hit, so you're taking about 75 more damage per hit than I am(450 compared to my 375. The thing here is that despite my higher resistances we both still die from two straight beztyr hits, because these hits are so big that my better resistances and higher health aren't enough to buy me extra hits. Sure, they're enough to let me heal my way out of a two-shot from one beztyr, but two beztyrs in my room can kill me dead before I can react, same as you.

Let's reduce their damage by a third. You take 300 damage per shot, I take 247. You're still getting two-shot from full health, but now I can survive a two-shot from full and still have 200+ health left, so even one regen tick will let me soak a third hit. The end result here of reducing their damage by a full third is that I can survive more hits while you're still getting dropped.

Zarim

Hmm. I think I missed the third damage line (they did a third unblockable damage along with the cutting and poison).

As for the rest, if you trade big damage for bigger hordes, tankiness still is a factor, obviously. However, you may stop some of the insta-pwnage that makes contests less fun.

I mean, really. A monster that one-shots you with 500 damage is a complete shutdown, whereas you might have a small chance against a group of 10 things all doing 50+ damage. And even if they faceroll you, at least you won't feel cheated. I mean, there were ten of'em!

Anette

Zarim said:

Hmm. I think I missed the third damage line (they did a third unblockable damage along with the cutting and poison).

As for the rest, if you trade big damage for bigger hordes, tankiness still is a factor, obviously. However, you may stop some of the insta-pwnage that makes contests less fun.

I mean, really. A monster that one-shots you with 500 damage is a complete shutdown, whereas you might have a small chance against a group of 10 things all doing 50+ damage. And even if they faceroll you, at least you won't feel cheated. I mean, there were ten of'em!

I regularly bash Skegdald.  The top attack there does 402 ish damage to me through platemail, shield, evasion, and protection favour.  It's rough, sure, but it's manageable if you handle aggro and know when to duck out and heal up.  Most of the times I've died there in the past day or two have been me pushing my luck when I should bail and heal.  There's some skill involved in that.

On the other hand, if I have a bunch of mooks, a predator or monk with their four combo attacks is just going to wipe house on the scoreboard.  A slower templar such as myself (esp as strong but even as athletic with longsword) doesn't have a chance.  Especially against a pred or monk with L3 everything.  And there's basically no skill at all involved in just hammering attack <thing>

Its a little funny to me because at first when I started doing Skeggy I probably would have agreed with you about this kind of thing, but given time to think about it and the numbers Khizan showed in his arguements I reconsidered. Its the artifacted people it really benefits making those kind of changes.