I had actually forgotten about designs, which alleviates the problem slightly, but aesthetic variety aside, I still think there's some gaps between each weapon type that prevents them all from being genuinely equally appealing and viable.
I kind of see where you're coming from, but with the ability to purchase designs to go on your sabres, it seems less bad to me. Can those normal custom designs be applied to artifact weapons, or do you have to pay to customize them?
You can't re describe a weapon-type as another weapon type. Despite the fact that claymore = halberd = bardiche, you cannot describe or name a claymore as a halberd. This gets dumb when knights use all three, but only one weapon type is for sale as an artifact. #fwp.
What Caelya is harping on here is the fact that weapons suck. What's worse, class balancing around weapons sucks worse. The system is off the rails retarded and we USS Enterprised ourselves into new realms of dumb that no dumb had gone before.
1v1 knights have one choice. Sabres. To afflict as a knight you need to hit about a 2.1s balance time. This usually means a 223? sabre and the fast statpack. You can't tank, but you can almost outpace g-bot. This is really the only 1v1 build in the game for any knight. (Anything you can do, other true affliction classes can do better. But, you can sort of tank and they can't.)
Team wise? You can be an afflict/raze bot or you can be a support and occasionally dish out some crazy damage with claymores (sq, flare). RG's can get away with battleaxes because the balancing mechanism for sowulu flares was less logic and more ::effort::.
Anything that isn't highest damage (claymore, bardiche, halberd, battleaxe) or speed (Sabre, sabre, sabre) is shit. The trade offs for dps, aps aren't worth it. Some people do it like Aleutia and Saivash, but that's about it. If you're not a WD, you don't need a broadsword (because they're shitty). The 3 stat system is X_X. To-hit is an archaic mechanic that we should feel bad about keeping. Ol' yellar has the hydrophobe (for 12 years), it's time to put him down. Sadly, we cling to this...it's a shit show, that's what it is. Weapon stats, weaponry is a shit show. We cling to this for a lot of reasons and the game suffers for it.
Late addition: Also dumb about weaponry. You use a weapon and it breaks. The more you use it, the more it breaks. There is no 3rd person arghpee message about "You feel your crappy sword tremble at the blow of a terrible mechanic." Basically, weapon wielding classes get punished for using weapons because their toys break when they use them. Better idea? Reduce the decay time so you replace more often to sell weapons.
Edit 2: I'm sure someone will offer "I made use of x and y under a very specific set of circumstances that is incredibly difficult to reproduce,." I thank you for that insight, but we're talking generalities here that apply to people who won't have access to that.
It would be nice if I could do AB SKILLNAME RANKS for any skill in the game, not just skills in my active profession.
"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."
AB SKILLNAME should just – by default – show the whole list and ranks in the first place. Instead of telling me "You do not currently possess that skill. You can use AB __________ FULL to view all the abilities available within it," just do it.
My biggest problem with knight weapons is that sabres do way too much damage.
Doing some DPS testing, against myself, with no tower shield but all other runeguard defenses up, I get... 28.36dps for the sabre, and 33.72 dps for the claymore. Longsword/scimitar are also 28, broad/axe are 30 and change. And that's with an L2 sabre, which is awful.
That also doesn't figure on rebounding. Factor in the fact that sabreknights get to rsl/dsl/dsl while claymore knights only get to rsl/dsl, and my napkin math closes the dps gap to something like 26 to 24, in favor of the claymore. A faster/better sabre would almost certainly gain an advantage on the claymore here.
If you just up the DSL speed to L3 speed while ignoring the RSL speed and the damage, the sabre ends up at something like 25.
This means that, over the course of any lengthy fight, the damage difference between the claymore and the sabre is going to be marginal, while the affliction difference between the two is going to be huge, as well as allowing for more flexibility. So using anything not-a-sabre just sacrifices afflictions for no notable gain. Claymore has a place for burst damage, and Runeguards get some use out of a battleaxe due to sowulu's 4s ICD, but other than that? Sabres are EASILY the best weapon in the game.
"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."
A slight exception to the above is Deathknight using Soulquench, where the speed difference matters a lot. If you're Wight, each point of speed is 0.42% soulquench proc chance. A L3 sabre has a proc rate of about 30%, while a L3 claymore's proc rate is just over 63%. Over a prolonged battle, sabre evens out a bit, but a claymore has a lot more burst.
EDIT: In case my brain is not braining and those numbers aren't right, you can check it yourself. Max weapon speed is 240, min weapon speed is 120, and in wight the proc chance ranges linearly per point of speed from 75% for the slowest weapon to 25% for the fastest.
EDIT 2: For the curious, the range for a Deathknight *not* in wight is 52% to 17%
EDIT 3: I'm not sure the eq times on sowulu and flaring rites, but that is part of the dps calculation that can't be ignored as well.
I am the righteous one... the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
While we're on the subject of AB, I think it could just use a quick makeover in general, especially since Learning was just revamped. Similar to being informed how many lessons away you are while learning, I think it would be great to show how many lessons away you are in AB. The following is what my AB is subbed to look like. The number of unbound credits remaining isn't really necessary, just something I like to have. I imagine that most people that don't already have code to do this would find it useful to have an AB like this.
I think it'd be easier for others to get into PK if everyone started with purge blood and focus without learning any antidotes or survival.
Start off with a long cooldown on either ability (arbitrarily 30s on purge and 15s on focus), and the more lessons you put into either skill (or as you rank up), the cooldown gradually decreases (to what it currently is, at Transcendent).
Those times would be long enough for convenience issues, like "I got X affliction while bashing and don't know how to cure it", but as far as combat goes, I see it having an overall effect of "Meh."
I mean, do you honestly see a 30 second purge making a significant difference in "Lowbie versus affliction class?" A 15 second focus? Haha, no. People are still going to be forced into transing those two skills very early if they want a chance of healing decently, and the buy-in won't decrease by much, if at all.
"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."
Those times would be long enough for convenience issues, like "I got X affliction while bashing and don't know how to cure it", but as far as combat goes, I see it having an overall effect of "Meh."
I mean, do you honestly see a 30 second purge making a significant difference in "Lowbie versus affliction class?" A 15 second focus? Haha, no. People are still going to be forced into transing those two skills very early if they want a chance of healing decently, and the buy-in won't decrease by much, if at all.
That's true, but I think it eases the transition of figuring out what special cures are. I don't think its intention is "make lowbies good against afflictions classes" but rather "let's give the newbies a good understanding of how upper tier combat works" so it's just an easier way to ease into and understand everything.
I don't think he's proposing so much that we do away with the need for trans Survival and Antidotes. You are correct that affliction classes will still outpace lowbies rather quickly after these changes. However, this change would allow those who haven't transed yet to have a longer initial window to fight, before they get overwhelmed. It would lessen the ability to quickly toxin lock a lowbie, and would prevent fast knights from sticking paralysis almost instantly on those of us without Focus and Purge. As someone that is tri-trans with a decently quick kill method, but without Focus/Purge, it would make me slightly less useless against affliction classes and knights, and that's something I would welcome.
It would not make you realistically more useful against them. It would not give you a chance. It would prevent a basic hardlock, but that's it, really.
Would it be better for lowbies? Sure. Would it "make it easier for lowbies to get into PK"? Not notably, imo.
"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."
There are some bashing skills in this game that are dependent upon skill rank to determine to-hit and damage output. In theory, this is really not a bad idea. Some skill sets like elemancy, chivalry, druid-bs actually give some useful utility skills that make your life easier along the way. This is where the theory holds water. Then of course, there are skills like curses and evileye. This where the theory implodes and kills babies, children and baby animals. There are two pve skills in curses and two pve skills in evileye. After that, it's all pvp (and it's not even that great of pvp). We force novice wytchen/malignists to invest 300 credits to level a meh bashing attack to a decent bashing attack with no other perk. It's wasteful.
Why don't we just sack up and allow all bashing skills to be 100% to-hit and 100% damage at the moment that skill is obtained. If you want to cash in on a bashing skill, elevate it in the skill rank somewhere. Honestly, I'd rather add in some more utility to curses and evileye, but that aint gonna happen (demonic op!). This is just the easiest fix across the board and allows people to learn to bleed/swiftcurse, bleed/deadeyes and then switch over to their real utility skillset to pick up the "how do I not die" skills.
**Mind you, wardancers have this worst. To be a good basher you're looking at 600-800 credits.
Outrider suffers the same problem, though iirc it's actually even worse because both speed and damage is dependent on skill in wyrmriding, and both are positively atrocious at low levels.
Just tested, at Adept with level 1 spear and in Fast, it does 39 damage to NPCs at 3.36 seconds.
Trans is 84 at 2.86
I agree entirely that, at the very least, damage to NPCs should be 100% from the get-go. Bashing as a Diab sucked.
Could we make maybe make 'attack' to be the main bashing attack by default against mobs that hit 100%, and against players it can't be attack but specified and all restrictions applied? What I am trying to say is, could I use ATTACK mob to warp a mob with 100% efficiency, and WARP player with restrictions? Also maybe we could choose which command to be used as ATTACK (see DK with decay or DSL).
"A savage grey wolf picks up the corpse of Sarrius in its mouth."
Can we please cut this crap already? Make it impossible to pick up player corpses with Retrieve already. This "You got the killing blow but lost the body before you recovered balance from that killing blow because you didn't intimidate every pet out of the room mid-fight" crap is stupid.
"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."
Would it be too much to have player bodies be instantly picked up upon a kill by the player who killed them? I feel like this would alleviate a lot of problems. Combat-rezzing is a bit ridiculous anyway.
The ability to take out an assassination contract on someone is great for people who are unable or unwilling to kill someone themselves, but the system has a couple notable flaws. The target is given no warning when the contract is taken out (a minor flaw), and given no way at all of knowing who took it out and why (a major one). This leads to a single unexpected death, which can be quite frustrating, since it seems to lack any context or reason. This could be fixed by having the target sent a cryptic letter to warn that the contract exists, while giving them ability to bribe one of the shady men for the name and reason of the person who took it out. Alternatively, give a message upon completion of the contract along the lines of "This death paid for by X" and also stating the reason given.
Those aren't flaws. Those are features. The person being hunted doesn't need a warning. They did something that earned them a death, and they should expect one.
And not knowing who put up the contract is another feature. The person who took it out is trading their personal right to a kill for anonymity, and while the victim doesn't get to hunt the one who took out the contract, they do get to go for revenge against the assassin. This is how it is supposed to work.
Also, the way it is now lets me take out contracts on people whom I would to kill, but that I cannot kill due to political considerations, which is awesome.
"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."
Calling something a feature doesn't make it good. The way things stand now, it's basically just a surprise death, and then it's over with... no warning, no chance at redemption if the reason was poor, no ability to do any sort of roleplay with the person who wanted you dead. I admit that there is merit in saying that the lack of warning could be an integral part, since they are an assassination organization; I strongly disagree that having a tool to kill people anonymously is a good thing, though, for the same reasons that having to give a public reason for bounties is a good thing.
There is also the potential for abuse. This is a minor complaint, since the stated reason for the contract is visible to the administration, but I think it far more likely that someone would put forth bad or shoddy reasons when their anonymity is guaranteed. The lack of accountability is not a good thing. I can see no reason against letting the target see the reason they were targeted, even if it is only after the contract is finished.
You did something that made somebody want to kill you. Why are you surprised that you died?
"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."
Problem with making the system transparent is that it would allow for retribution killings. Example:I was recently attacked/enemied/bountied for a reason that an admin told me was invalid. I'd simply attack and try to kill this person, but they have a myriad of artifacts and I have none. I don't want to issue anyone unless as a last resort and only against particularly egregious offenders. Assassination gives me a way to send someone equally armed to the teeth with artifacts to carry out my revenge, without needing to have a bounty sanctioned by the council with my name on it. If my name was on this bounty, you can be sure that this individual would attack me again each time I put a hit out for them. Anonymity means that I've got a chance at retribution, if this person doesn't just use "Someone put a hit on me, I assume it was you. PK." or the classic "I've got plenty of reasons, I don't have to tell you why. PK.".
Edit: Don't get me wrong, I know where you're coming from. The assassinations system is abusable as is, but a transparent assassination system would be 100x more abusable and effectively unusable due to retribution killing against the contract filer.
I think the only change to assassinations that I could go for would be maybe seeing an assassin paying your killer when you die, so you know for sure that there was a contract and that the person that killed you isn't just pretending that there was a contract as an excuse to kill you.
I can really understand where Ellen is coming from. The assassins system is pretty 'blah' in its execution. It's really the pass-it-on feature that highlights the biggest flaw in our lax pk policy, which is that it is so relaxed. Justus would pay people for their pk reasons so he could go assassinate them. The problem with any work around system is that 'insulting' counts as a pk reason. I can sell my 'insulted feeling' to Dicene and then Dicene can go kill whoever insulted me. The only way to find out who did it is to file an ooc issue, which euthanizes the rp before it starts.
At the very least, the assassins system needs to steal heavily from the bounty system (which is awesome), so that the assassin (and maybe the victim), at least the admin can see this readout:
Honestly, since we're hard up for good obelisk research ideas, why not just toss in a tier 1/2 research tree where the city pays some shady character (Selthis) an informer fee and the security minister gets an update on which citizens have bounties on them (every day). Then if the person wants to, they can go out into the world (this npc should be in caanae) and gold sink it up buying the details of the contract from the middle men. They get their reasoning. Assassins get the contract. Gold sink goes glug glug. As a bonus, some people may even rp their way out of this!
The problem with any solution that lets the target find out who put out the hit is that it leads to circular pk. Any revamp of the assassination system needs to have a way to terminate threads of pk. As is, after someone gets assassinated, they could go after their assassin for having killed them. The assassin could then go after their target again for killing them, and the cycle goes on until they get bored of this. Not usually a bad situation because both are likely to want to fight.
If you implement the above bounty style assassination system, consider what happens in the following situation. Sarrius kills Ellen for hunting when he's trying to desecrate Primal. Ellen feels slighted so she puts a hit out for him. Gurn takes the contract and kills Sarrius. Sarrius is able to confirm that Ellen put the hit out, so he jumps her again, then tries to jump Gurn for taking the hit. Now both Gurn and Ellen have a pk reason on Sarrius again. Ellen doesn't want to fight Sarrius (who actually wants to fight a wardancer?) but she has a valid pk reason on him and keeps taking out hits on him. She eventually gets tired of it and drops it without taking out a hit, Sarrius gets away with his unjustified first pk against Ellen because when somebody puts a hit on him, he gets two pk reasons in return. Makes assassinations just a neverending troll conflict system where anybody can do something wrong to earn a hit on themselves, then they get two more excuses to kill as a result.
. Makes assassinations just a neverending troll conflict system where anybody can do something wrong to earn a hit on themselves, then they get two more excuses to kill as a result.
You pretty much described Imperian here. It was very profound.
The biggest problem with anything like that is that, right now, I can put out contracts to take care of matters that arise when I have an imperian-legal reason and IC desire to kill somebody, but not an organization-legal reason to kill somebody.
Assassination isn't just a "I'm not good enough to kill them" thing. It's also a "I want this person to die without my being implicated" thing.
"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."
Comments
Also dumb about weaponry. You use a weapon and it breaks. The more you use it, the more it breaks. There is no 3rd person arghpee message about "You feel your crappy sword tremble at the blow of a terrible mechanic." Basically, weapon wielding classes get punished for using weapons because their toys break when they use them. Better idea? Reduce the decay time so you replace more often to sell weapons.
"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."
My biggest problem with knight weapons is that sabres do way too much damage.
Doing some DPS testing, against myself, with no tower shield but all other runeguard defenses up, I get... 28.36dps for the sabre, and 33.72 dps for the claymore. Longsword/scimitar are also 28, broad/axe are 30 and change. And that's with an L2 sabre, which is awful.
That also doesn't figure on rebounding. Factor in the fact that sabreknights get to rsl/dsl/dsl while claymore knights only get to rsl/dsl, and my napkin math closes the dps gap to something like 26 to 24, in favor of the claymore. A faster/better sabre would almost certainly gain an advantage on the claymore here. If you just up the DSL speed to L3 speed while ignoring the RSL speed and the damage, the sabre ends up at something like 25.
This means that, over the course of any lengthy fight, the damage difference between the claymore and the sabre is going to be marginal, while the affliction difference between the two is going to be huge, as well as allowing for more flexibility. So using anything not-a-sabre just sacrifices afflictions for no notable gain. Claymore has a place for burst damage, and Runeguards get some use out of a battleaxe due to sowulu's 4s ICD, but other than that? Sabres are EASILY the best weapon in the game.
"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."
EDIT: In case my brain is not braining and those numbers aren't right, you can check it yourself. Max weapon speed is 240, min weapon speed is 120, and in wight the proc chance ranges linearly per point of speed from 75% for the slowest weapon to 25% for the fastest.
EDIT 2: For the curious, the range for a Deathknight *not* in wight is 52% to 17%
EDIT 3: I'm not sure the eq times on sowulu and flaring rites, but that is part of the dps calculation that can't be ignored as well.
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
It's iffy, to me.
Those times would be long enough for convenience issues, like "I got X affliction while bashing and don't know how to cure it", but as far as combat goes, I see it having an overall effect of "Meh."
I mean, do you honestly see a 30 second purge making a significant difference in "Lowbie versus affliction class?" A 15 second focus? Haha, no. People are still going to be forced into transing those two skills very early if they want a chance of healing decently, and the buy-in won't decrease by much, if at all.
"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."
"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."
WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW.
Having said that:
This will be badass for mid-tier combat and absolute divine in bashing. Which is why we should do this.
There are some bashing skills in this game that are dependent upon skill rank to determine to-hit and damage output. In theory, this is really not a bad idea. Some skill sets like elemancy, chivalry, druid-bs actually give some useful utility skills that make your life easier along the way. This is where the theory holds water. Then of course, there are skills like curses and evileye. This where the theory implodes and kills babies, children and baby animals. There are two pve skills in curses and two pve skills in evileye. After that, it's all pvp (and it's not even that great of pvp). We force novice wytchen/malignists to invest 300 credits to level a meh bashing attack to a decent bashing attack with no other perk. It's wasteful.
Why don't we just sack up and allow all bashing skills to be 100% to-hit and 100% damage at the moment that skill is obtained. If you want to cash in on a bashing skill, elevate it in the skill rank somewhere. Honestly, I'd rather add in some more utility to curses and evileye, but that aint gonna happen (demonic op!). This is just the easiest fix across the board and allows people to learn to bleed/swiftcurse, bleed/deadeyes and then switch over to their real utility skillset to pick up the "how do I not die" skills.
Just tested, at Adept with level 1 spear and in Fast, it does 39 damage to NPCs at 3.36 seconds.
Trans is 84 at 2.86
I agree entirely that, at the very least, damage to NPCs should be 100% from the get-go. Bashing as a Diab sucked.
"A savage grey wolf picks up the corpse of Sarrius in its mouth."
Can we please cut this crap already? Make it impossible to pick up player corpses with Retrieve already. This "You got the killing blow but lost the body before you recovered balance from that killing blow because you didn't intimidate every pet out of the room mid-fight" crap is stupid.
"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."
Those aren't flaws. Those are features. The person being hunted doesn't need a warning. They did something that earned them a death, and they should expect one.
And not knowing who put up the contract is another feature. The person who took it out is trading their personal right to a kill for anonymity, and while the victim doesn't get to hunt the one who took out the contract, they do get to go for revenge against the assassin. This is how it is supposed to work.
Also, the way it is now lets me take out contracts on people whom I would to kill, but that I cannot kill due to political considerations, which is awesome.
"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."
There is also the potential for abuse. This is a minor complaint, since the stated reason for the contract is visible to the administration, but I think it far more likely that someone would put forth bad or shoddy reasons when their anonymity is guaranteed. The lack of accountability is not a good thing. I can see no reason against letting the target see the reason they were targeted, even if it is only after the contract is finished.
"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."
1 Active Shaylei Lionas Abuse use of the semi-colon. Police notified
The biggest problem with anything like that is that, right now, I can put out contracts to take care of matters that arise when I have an imperian-legal reason and IC desire to kill somebody, but not an organization-legal reason to kill somebody.
Assassination isn't just a "I'm not good enough to kill them" thing. It's also a "I want this person to die without my being implicated" thing.
"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."