I would like to see defense list messages for wyvern auras. Especially since, if you already have one up and attempt to put it up again, it just reapplies it.
I would like to see defense list messages for wyvern auras. Especially since, if you already have one up and attempt to put it up again, it just reapplies it.
I remember thinking of you when I was doing the conversions and acknowledging that request, but I didn't write a note for myself as to WHY I didn't do the conversion. I'll peek at things and fix that.
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).
I've thought about it and here's my proposal along those lines:
Move purge blood to about... gifted-ish in survival with a ~20 second cooldown. Put a skill at about ~Virt/Fabled that drops that cooldown to the current value. Leave focus where it is. Give Antidotes a new trans skill. Off the top of my head, I'd make it a passive that gave you a decent chance to identify formaldehyde afflictions when you're hit with it. Nobody really uses the toxin as a primary offensive, but this would be decently useful with bashing. Other things are possible, of course, I haven't thought a lot about that.
I suggest this because, right now, Antidotes is basically a ~115 credit purge blood artifact that you're required to buy if you want to fight, because the skill is pretty freaking useless otherwise. I mean, what does poison damage? Damn near nothing, but the skill is still an iron-clad requirement if you want to fight. And moreover, it's a skill that does nothing as you advance towards it. It just makes the combat buyin that much steeper.
"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."
Soulsense is scout, for mobs only, at the cost of a resource. Can we get the half-a-percent* essence cost removed from scout-lite? Half a percent doesn't seem like a lot, but when you use it a lot it adds up and keeps you from animating (if you're me (or someone obsessed with finding tameables (cough @Aleutia cough)))
*Soulsense has an essence cost of 50, and max essence at trans is 10k
I am the righteous one... the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
What do people think about changing devotion and necromancy's essence from its current "pool", to a number of charges?
Lets say at inept you start with 5 charges, and trans you have 20 (arbitrary). Skills require charges to be used. Some require multiple charges. You periodically regenerate charges (1 every 30 seconds? Minute?). You can still blow all your skills at the start of a fight if you wanted, but will have to pay for it later. And, for example, you can prevent someone spamming hands for eternity (i.e. current massive devo pool [max 100,000, hands uses 230 per cast] with low regen vs lower pool with periodic regens), and encourage using other skills. Admittedly Devotion doesn't really have anything to do aside from rites and hands. Templars have flare, which already eat rites. Penance is crap for priests and impractical for Templars.
Also if you do run out of charges, you don't have to AFK until you get it back (roughly like 30% per 2-3 hours-ish, not sure what exactly triggers it but it comes in a chunk every few hours). Lastrites isn't fun. Maybe if you are out of combat for a certain time (using the 1 minute selfharm timer for example), the charges regenerate twice as fast.
Love Khizan's idea here. Wanna point out, the only other purpose (that I've seen yet) in learning Antidotes other than poison mitigation is to make Pred's Bloodscourge less insufferable. With 0 Antidotes, I was still getting random afflictions somewhere like 2 minutes later, well away from combat. Kind of annoying. The idea you propose of having a chance to identify forma sounds like a good new trans skill to me, long as the proc chance isn't too high.
Edit: Only form of serious poison damage that I've seen would be spamming more bloodpoison after already getting someone stacked to 4 (means you could just rupture anyway) and with the first puncture after AB SABOTAGE SCOURGE. Neither have any real ability to be spammed, so you're not likely to ever see them anyway.
Hate to jack more ideas from other IRE games, but I like the idea of being able to emote while performing simple actions like GIVE. It'd be another cool little way to customize your character and could help things like rituals be a little more descriptive in their RP.
On the combat side of things, I'd like to see more things that telegraphed. Not asking for a shift to Midkemia combat (attrition), but maybe a few skills that channeled for a few seconds, then had a short balance time or something. I know things like that might be hard to balance with the instant nature of most Imperian combat, but I think if it was demoed properly on a class getting a revamp or a lot of classless changes, there might be a way to fit even just a handful of these skills in somewhere.
Backstab not telegraphed, can't see it begin from first-person if you're the target (unless Sab rebounding magically goes down, in which case you're dealing with a terrible Sab)
Think shatter in weaponry, axetoss in Wyrmriding, holocaust in Elementalism etc.
Problem with most channeled abilities is that the majority of them require no action taken during it, including basic curing. That's a deal breaker a lot of the time, as your day can be ruined very fast if you take even a slight moment away from curing. The other deal breaker is obviously paralysis and how quick most classes can apply that (or web, or prone, or entangled, or peaced, take your pick), which again stops most channeled abilities and makes them nearly worthless a significant amount of the time. Then you have the aforementioned axetoss or holocaust, which in general are so powerful if done in excess that most people will just walk out of the room rather than deal with them.
The potential is kind of there, but they're much trickier to balance
Exactly like backstab. I adore backstab. I love that it pierces shield and aura, and I think if it razed shield and/or aura it would have a little more use in a group setting, while still being something unspammable because it requires leaving, hiding, and reentering to ready again.
But I digress. I think more classes could use a skill like that, and not specifically one that is designed to be an opener like Backstab is. A skill where you get to throw some risk out there for a bigger potential gain in combat. Not saying that this example would be necessary because Hunters do have 1.5 kill methods already available to them, but for instance, you could revamp Shapeshifting Incinerate. The Hunter has to channel it for 2 seconds without eating or drinking anything, after which they hit the target with an attack that hits with sensitivity(if undeaf) and prevents the target from applying salves for 3 seconds. Maybe have a 1.5 second balance afterwards. This would allow the Hunter to start pressuring salves a little. Could be used to help RG's push their own salve stacks, or could be thrown in on an already afflicted target and timed to overlap with anorexia dropping on a trigger to complicate things.
Keep in mind the above example isn't really meant to be balanced to the current state of things, but I think it illustrates an interesting example of what could be done. The enemy could hit with paralysis during the channel, if they got balance back before it hit. The Hunter could try and time peace, paralysis, or lethargy to help prevent the enemy from blocking it. The whole point of short channeled techniques like that would be to force the enemy to make more decisions in combat. They can choose to eat the salve block and do something risky in exchange, or they can throw metrazol or something and block it, but it slightly slows whatever their offense may be.
It would also be a way to make stopping certain things less momentum killing. Getting interupted by shield or death tarot or anything else that forces you to completely stop attacking is usually a case of stopping your combat for a set number of seconds to hammer, web, hanged man, etc. It's annoying, and nobody likes being forced into it. There are a few things like death tarot and cleave that channel and can be used to punish massive balance times on things like Survival Restore, but I'd like to see some channeled skills like that with a quicker balance and no insta-kill. Another more simple example: Enemy touches shield while hit with Confusion. You know the balance will be 7 or more seconds, so you channel an attack that can break shield and stun for a second that requires a 5 second channel on your part. More interesting than losing your momentum to hammer.
Edit: @Xeron You're pretty spot on with your comments. Never used shatter, so I don't know if it has a real use. Those types of skills are undoubtedly hard to balance, but I think with proper beta testing, they could find a middle-ground between OP and useless. And you're also right about things that require you to stop curing being bad usually. I think this could be avoided by simply eating a longer balance and channelling through the balance. Example: Skill eats a 5 second balance, channels for 3.5 seconds. Similar to how Tumble works. You keep curing, but you can't respond to something that the enemy does.
Another more simple example: Enemy touches shield while hit with Confusion. You know the balance will be 7 or more seconds, so you channel an attack that can break shield and stun for a second that requires a 5 second channel on your part. More interesting than losing your momentum to hammer.
So... what you're saying is that, in that case, I could take 5 seconds to break shield and get a second of stun, or I could hammer them in 1.90 seconds and keep up with my offense... and the FORMER is the one that doesn't give up momentum?
Please find something you are good at, and then stick with that.
"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."
Stuff to talk about...concept...pros...cons...more stuff...arbitrary number that doesn't matter because I explicitly stated I'm not trying to talk about specifics, just the idea in general and why I like it...even more talking stuff.
In his defence, he also said touch shield in his theory-world cost 7 seconds, so it appears all of the balances were scaled up to slow-mode combat.
We can probably assume that the major difference between hammer and empowered hammer would not be the time taken, but rather that empowered hammer's action goes through at the end of EQ if the attacker is still unhindered and the target is still shielded.
As to the need for something like this, I have no opinion either way.
If you have confusion and slow-eq, shielding can take up to 11 seconds of eq, iirc. Not sure about the statpack.
With a neutral eq statpack, 8.2 seconds with Confusion. 11.4 for Confusion and Lethargy. 12.2 for Confusion and Mebaral. 17 for Confusion, Lethargy, and Mebaral. And I did specify shielding with Confusion in my original post, so I was actually underestimating it when I said 7.
There is no need for 'wind-up' attacks to end up being the typical for Imperian. While 'digital fencing' might 'work' for Midkemia, I believe that is why the combat scene there is an absolute mess.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Add some sort of indicator on GWHO and probably NWHO for when a newbie is registering their character. That way novice aides and newbie helpers in general might have a better idea of whether the newbie they were just talking to over GNT or Newbie is coming back.
As far as MKO goes. From the various threads, logs, lectures I've read about their combat and current overall status, the biggest problem they face is a lack of admins/programmers/designers. People tend to either love or hate their combat system, with a majority of the ones who are still around really liking it. Conceptually, it sounds great to me.
That said, Imperian isn't even remotely similar. I'm aware of that. Hence the part where I said I didn't mean for Imperian to shift to MKO combat, but rather thought there could be a few more of that particular style of skill balanced into the game. There are already a few, and from what I've seen, they're well balanced. All I'm saying is that I like those skills and think we could do with just a paltry few more. Maybe someone could classlead an existing useless skill into one and see how well it ends up working with that class. Maybe find room for one in a future revamp.
Reason I bring the idea to the forums in the first place is to see how well other people think they have been implemented (in Imperian) thus far and if they think more (very few more) could find a balanced position in our current combat scene.
Pardon the double post, but this idea is entirely seperate from the one above. I wanna say it was Mathiaus that had brought this up previously. Having a test dummy to practice things on would be amazing. Could start out as simple as a mob that speaks how much damage a pvp attack causes on it, and could eventually be expanded to use GBOT with customizable priorities, purge, tree, focus, fitness, rebounding, etc, while telling you what it cures and when.
They could be great goldsinks if you charge the city a massive one time fee to purchase each individual one, and then you could charge players maintenance fees to use them. A ton of ways to rp them. They could be combat instructors, magically imbued dummies, complicated machinery, captured demons (for AM or Demonic). It could also be added as a new shard research tree, which would give you time to slowly implement new levels of complexity as the programmers have time to work on it.
Having a programming background, I understand that coding a new class of afflictable mobs would be a hell of a lot of work, but that framework for test dummies could then be used to create new types of bosses that require newer methods of attack. For example, a boss that keeps rebounding up, or a boss that you need to web to keep from instakilling you.
Lastly, I'll mention that I do appreciate Config Selfharm, having played at a time when that wasn't an option, but with combat currently requiring a lot of hinders like breaks, cigua, metrazol, peace, hanged man, etc, there a lot of limitations on what you can test with selfharm.
Can shop directories show us the price and short description of wares matching queries? (Bonus round: also have a way to probe items from the directory.)
Every once in a while we talk about making it so that mobs can be afflicted, however, the sheer amount of work makes me want to cry. That being said, I think the game would be better if all class skills worked on mobs somehow. Just adding that feature would probably take several months of work though.
@Susser Would also be great if the General Store was queried in Directory as well.
@Jeremy I'd imagine it's a ridiculously daunting task on your side. Even baby steps like Lettings mobs get hindered, adding limbs breaks that temporarily stop enemy attacking, etc would be huge undertakings. Another way to go about it would be to make their curing kind of abstract rather then the same as player curing. Mobs could have a straight X second cure balance that cures whatever the highest priority affliction is or whatever. Just ideas for if/win it ever becomes a real goal.
On the plus side, if you were ever to implement mob afflicting and/or test dummies, I feel like players would be willing to pay a metric tonne to unlock it. I have no gold sink currently, other than the credit market, but I'd pour money into the city account to help pay for a test dummy or for the appropriate shard research. It'd also be a major selling point of other (IRE and otherwise) muds.
@Jeremy I'd imagine it's a ridiculously daunting task on your side. Even baby steps like Lettings mobs get hindered, adding limbs breaks that temporarily stop enemy attacking, etc would be huge undertakings.
That all is still the easier part, the difficult (or well, time consuming) part is that every single attack would need to be rewritten to support mob attacks (attacks vs players are handled very differently than attacks vs mobs). Which is all doable, the big question is, would it be worth it, and worth prioritising over other projects? Getting this done against one type of mobs (test dummies or anything) wouldn't be any faster than getting it done against all of them.
Some of them already do, webbing (almost) every attack.
Honestly, I don't see the point. It's a huge investment of time and coding work with a lot of pitfalls. We can't even balance pvp. Imagine trying to juggle the myth of class balance while simultaneously balancing all of the classes for their ability to bash. At the end of the day, your stupid predators are still going to ruin balance for the world because they do solid dps, have 18 forms of CC and can use toxins.
Ignoring the shit show that you'll make class balance, I don't even see how it would be remotely fun. Bashing sucks right now when it's dsldsldsldsldsldsldsldsldsldsldsl. It's still going to suck when I move my pvp toxin tracker to npcs. There's no change here. Personally, I don't want to invest the gold to go out and kill trash mobs. It's not even going to be that interesting. For a week or two, we're going to get a feel for the affliction priorities of mobs and Fazlee is going to post a toxin queue and we're all going to faceroll every trash npc you throw at us. You don't see Aragorn really trying hard unless it's a boss fight. I think the boss fights are money. You make us grind through x number of trash mobs for xp/gold and then make us use our brains to survive some interesting boss fights.
It's a lot of work. It's a lot of unnecessary work with a very small percent change of reward. Your boss fights are golden. Stick with those. If you want to spend a lot of time coding, get to cracking on Noctu, Mage, Malignist, Bard, Knights, Weaponry. I have a sneaking suspicion that's a solid investment.
Arrest Summit was always one of my favorite moments in Diablo 2. =P
Edit: Late. @Ahkan Obviously it's a bad idea to make every mob vulnerable to afflictions. Making a few boss mobs of that sort would, however, be potentially very interesting. It would have a more realistic feel, to me, than emotes in boss fights. And the reason I even brought up affliction vulnerable mobs was as a positive consequence of making combat dummies. But whatever, as cool as it would be, we all recognize, and I've acknowledged, that there are higher priority things in the works. Keep up the good work peoples.
My big complaint about boss fights is that I'd like them to be a bit more rewarding for the guys in the group who tagged along for all the deaths and all the trials and didn't get the KB.
"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 big complaint about boss fights is that I'd like them to be a bit more rewarding for the guys in the group who tagged along for all the deaths and all the trials and didn't get the KB.
Agreed. Something like locking new people out of the room after the boss is first attacked might work, although it might take something slightly more complicated. Also, preventing people from Focus Moradeim'ing into boss rooms would be great as well.
The idea of all your targeted abilities just being targeted abilities, rather than artificially divided into player-killing abilities or mob-bashing abilities sounds fantastic to me. I love the idea of more options in bashing/world interaction, and if NPC challenges had the same level of attention and diversity that player-killing challenges are given, I would be forever sold on Imperian above all other MUDs.
Having said that, I don't really see where the balancing of so many profession abilities, group combat afflicting and the effects on otherwise important mob loyals (ents, guards, etc) would end up. I'd also hate to think that bashing became as difficult to succeed at (and become effective at) as PK is, or with as many rules and exceptions, as a result of the balancing process.
Personally, I wonder if maybe as a non-PK player I would be more satisfied with a middle-ground expansion of mob interaction that was a greatly simplified model of the much more complex PK combat. Maybe something along the lines of allowing you to afflict or add defences to mobs, but the effects were simplified and standardized into a limited number of generic 'mob effects' - damage-over-time, heal-over-time, hindered (slower attacks), weakened (less effective against resistances), stunned (with cooldown), buffed (stronger attacks), curing (removes afflictions over time), etc. Then you could use your PK attacks against them, but the balancing effort required might not necessarily be quite as insane, and stacking effects is restricted.
That wouldn't work at all for the target dummy concept that was suggested though.
Comments
I've thought about it and here's my proposal along those lines:
Move purge blood to about... gifted-ish in survival with a ~20 second cooldown. Put a skill at about ~Virt/Fabled that drops that cooldown to the current value. Leave focus where it is. Give Antidotes a new trans skill. Off the top of my head, I'd make it a passive that gave you a decent chance to identify formaldehyde afflictions when you're hit with it. Nobody really uses the toxin as a primary offensive, but this would be decently useful with bashing. Other things are possible, of course, I haven't thought a lot about that.
I suggest this because, right now, Antidotes is basically a ~115 credit purge blood artifact that you're required to buy if you want to fight, because the skill is pretty freaking useless otherwise. I mean, what does poison damage? Damn near nothing, but the skill is still an iron-clad requirement if you want to fight. And moreover, it's a skill that does nothing as you advance towards it. It just makes the combat buyin that much steeper.
"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."
*Soulsense has an essence cost of 50, and max essence at trans is 10k
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
Think shatter in weaponry, axetoss in Wyrmriding, holocaust in Elementalism etc.
Problem with most channeled abilities is that the majority of them require no action taken during it, including basic curing. That's a deal breaker a lot of the time, as your day can be ruined very fast if you take even a slight moment away from curing. The other deal breaker is obviously paralysis and how quick most classes can apply that (or web, or prone, or entangled, or peaced, take your pick), which again stops most channeled abilities and makes them nearly worthless a significant amount of the time. Then you have the aforementioned axetoss or holocaust, which in general are so powerful if done in excess that most people will just walk out of the room rather than deal with them.
The potential is kind of there, but they're much trickier to balance
So... what you're saying is that, in that case, I could take 5 seconds to break shield and get a second of stun, or I could hammer them in 1.90 seconds and keep up with my offense... and the FORMER is the one that doesn't give up momentum?
Please find something you are good at, and then stick with that.
"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."
sigh\qq
We can probably assume that the major difference between hammer and empowered hammer would not be the time taken, but rather that empowered hammer's action goes through at the end of EQ if the attacker is still unhindered and the target is still shielded.
As to the need for something like this, I have no opinion either way.
@Jeremy I'd imagine it's a ridiculously daunting task on your side. Even baby steps like Lettings mobs get hindered, adding limbs breaks that temporarily stop enemy attacking, etc would be huge undertakings. Another way to go about it would be to make their curing kind of abstract rather then the same as player curing. Mobs could have a straight X second cure balance that cures whatever the highest priority affliction is or whatever. Just ideas for if/win it ever becomes a real goal.
On the plus side, if you were ever to implement mob afflicting and/or test dummies, I feel like players would be willing to pay a metric tonne to unlock it. I have no gold sink currently, other than the credit market, but I'd pour money into the city account to help pay for a test dummy or for the appropriate shard research. It'd also be a major selling point of other (IRE and otherwise) muds.
Honestly, I don't see the point. It's a huge investment of time and coding work with a lot of pitfalls. We can't even balance pvp. Imagine trying to juggle the myth of class balance while simultaneously balancing all of the classes for their ability to bash. At the end of the day, your stupid predators are still going to ruin balance for the world because they do solid dps, have 18 forms of CC and can use toxins.
Edit: Late. @Ahkan Obviously it's a bad idea to make every mob vulnerable to afflictions. Making a few boss mobs of that sort would, however, be potentially very interesting. It would have a more realistic feel, to me, than emotes in boss fights. And the reason I even brought up affliction vulnerable mobs was as a positive consequence of making combat dummies. But whatever, as cool as it would be, we all recognize, and I've acknowledged, that there are higher priority things in the works. Keep up the good work peoples.
My big complaint about boss fights is that I'd like them to be a bit more rewarding for the guys in the group who tagged along for all the deaths and all the trials and didn't get the KB.
"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."
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
Agreed. Something like locking new people out of the room after the boss is first attacked might work, although it might take something slightly more complicated. Also, preventing people from Focus Moradeim'ing into boss rooms would be great as well.
Having said that, I don't really see where the balancing of so many profession abilities, group combat afflicting and the effects on otherwise important mob loyals (ents, guards, etc) would end up. I'd also hate to think that bashing became as difficult to succeed at (and become effective at) as PK is, or with as many rules and exceptions, as a result of the balancing process.
Personally, I wonder if maybe as a non-PK player I would be more satisfied with a middle-ground expansion of mob interaction that was a greatly simplified model of the much more complex PK combat. Maybe something along the lines of allowing you to afflict or add defences to mobs, but the effects were simplified and standardized into a limited number of generic 'mob effects' - damage-over-time, heal-over-time, hindered (slower attacks), weakened (less effective against resistances), stunned (with cooldown), buffed (stronger attacks), curing (removes afflictions over time), etc. Then you could use your PK attacks against them, but the balancing effort required might not necessarily be quite as insane, and stacking effects is restricted.
That wouldn't work at all for the target dummy concept that was suggested though.