CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.

[Tocharaeh]

So, believe it or not Prometheus told me I should post this up. This is no post about whining who is what and so on. These, like any prior posts by me are very founded, and vital points to be made when it comes to how this mud currently works, and the imbalances that are affecting everyone (even if you don’t realize it).

These are the points I am going to touch on:
•   HP in general.
•   Casters: Effortless power boost.
•   AC and Spell resistance.
•   Understanding how PK SHOULD work.

HP:  We are having a huge problem with HP and DMG right now. DMG is high (too high) and HP gains are lower than ever. Right now EVERY SINGLE MOB can encircle amongst other things. What does this mean? This means that they WILL do a ton more dmg than they should. Caster mobs classes shouldn’t enricle (they do), nor should warrior mobs classes, and NORMAL mob classes. It is a rogue only skill. Basically what we have is mobs using high dmg skills/spells that can do as much as 3k in dmg at times, and get two of those skills in a row before you have a chance to heal. The problem with this is 90 percent of the player base barely has topped 4k hp save a few of us. I certainly haven’t. I used to hit 5.8-6k HP. I should have never remorted. HP gains need to be much larger to balance out the dmg being dealt to players by OTHER players, and mobs.

Casters: Caster classes are basically effortless. You can gather all of the easy (SUPER EASY) eq from around the mud to max your stats. Only a couple pieces are actually quested for, and on top of that I BELIEVE only one or two pieces are actually being USED. Ghostly shimmer is a caster item that is never used. However blue face paint is the best caster face eq, and I think people are still using the mardi gras beads. Other than that, nothing else exists. Where are the other pieces of eq that casters are getting? Benign mobs actually. If you know where to go, it isn’t hard to take a caster from a nobody to a caster equivalent to Jason, and then even surpass him. Why is this a problem? It took people like Jason YEARS and YEARS to get where they are. They have the best eq in the game from spending WEEKS at a time on a single quest, one by one to become an epic player.  (this is in no reference to GMs. Epic can be achieved by non-GMs as well. Virisin and Exodus proved it.)

Staves (plural of staff) though are made by gypsies can be easily gotten by anyone who has a) a gypsy alt or b) someone who is a gypsy. The existence of major focuses has basically made weapons like orcrist pointless. Why? Because although searching for trees can BE long…that is all they have to do. SEARCH for the right tree, and woodsing. However, weapons like memory, the cool dagger, razor blade of throat-cutting, and the orcrist are in fact quested for. Orcrist in particular takes a long time to get because mining is completely random. I will stop there since it would reveal quest info about orcrist. The point is that major focuses are easily found in comparison to questing. There is no questing involved in woodsing.

What do staves do? They enhance the benefits of beneficial spells, along with the malignant effects of detrimental spells. What we have here is an automatic power boost without the ability to disarm staves. In addition, a caster with the crappiest EQ one, worn just to max all stats and CHA can now have AC = to if not greater than that of what an epic melee player may have. This means that someone like Jason who has little AC can be outdone dmg intake wise by a caster wearing robes, not armor.

To surmise this point: casters with crappy eq but with good stats (non dmg/hr) + staves =
 Greater dmg than melee.
 Greater AC than melee.
 

AC and Spell Def:  

Currently we have NO spell resistance system as it stands. We have “elemental res” which does little in the long run. There is no balance. AC is lifeblood for decreasing DMG, but it is MELEE dmg only. So a caster with great negative AC (speed doesn’t matter for casters) vs. a melee means that the caster no matter how you look at it, has the advantage automatically. Why? Because we cannot resist any magical damage dealt.

How Pk SHOULD work: We need dmg in pvp to work differently. PK battles should be a lot of running around, and outwitting the other side. No “one hit, I win”. PVP is all about the skills of the player behind the character, not what one hit, super powerful skills we have and spam the crap out of them. We need to either cap dmg to a certain percentage based on whatever (I’m not a coder, and don’t do that kind of math well) or start increasing HP gains significantly to balance out the dmg intake. In addition, cure critical/light, and heal need to do more. Vampy needs to come back, or something. Either way, we have a problem with what we can do to each other. We’re basically treating each other like mobs…and we’re not. We don’t have HP that numbers in the tens of thousands. As the years have gone by in 4d, HP has continually gotten smaller and smaller.

Finally here are the ultimate suggestions to discuss upon:

•   AC should factor in spell dmg. Spell resistance is too complicated a system to support due to we would have to alter EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF EQ in the 4D world. Yeah, that isn’t going to happen.
•   Current caster eq needs to be nerfed a bit, and casters must quest for real eq like the rest of us. Melee has to bust their ass for every piece of eq. If this means we need to create quests in the game for all current and major zones, I will be happy to help. Either way, casters need to start questing for their eq.
•   Woodsing should be taken out. No reason why gypsy should be dappling in that stuff anyhow. They’re a rogue class with a couple spells. Either take it away, or make it BOP so nobody else can use them. Focus items should be quested for. Again, I am happy to help out writing quests for all major zones. I am happy to work full time for 4d in terms of this if it is going to help us all.
•   Staves should be disarmable. That is the end of that.
•   PVP dmg needs to be taken down a notch and/or HP needs to increase greatly. In the old days, we could hit fairly high hp (I don’t remember the exact numbers, I THINK I hit 10k back in old code, could be mistaken).
•   Spells like harm, call lightning and fireball need to be decreased. There is no reason why someone with 15 remorts vs someone with 70 remorts should be kicking the 70 remort players ass. If I can’t do more than 250 dmg with kick, then neither should they be doing more than they with harm.

So, these are the points I have made. I will now leave this up for discussion. We need to take this all into consideration when concerning the skill tree code being written. Balancing is the hardest part of any mud. There is a lot of math involved, so always remember that the coders are working very hard to make this a smooth process.

[Prometheus]

Hum I have one concern on Tocharaeh's post on woodsing. My GM gypsy has only sang ONE major focus item out of lots of woodsang tries. I would like to know if other gypsies have woodsang major focus staves. I know when Mord put in the code for major focus he made it hard to woodsing a major focus. Now if an builder put in major focus items that I or the coders can't control. So my question to Toch is are these focus items staves or other items. My point of view is ALL Major focus items staves / etc should be timered period. There should be no major focus items that aren't timered if they aren't then we need to know and we can discuss this with Molly IF this is the case.

Prometheus.

[Tocharaeh]

believe it or not but we have had a strange occurance of MORE major focuses than minors in the past years. Riley herself has had an aweful lot of success with them in the past, Fizban STILL carrying one such item. I think the timers if there are in fact any, are too long. The sheer power boost from them is very intense, and there is as of now still no way to combat them. All through my caster time while GMing, I have had 3 major focuses provided by Riley, and peoples alts which tells me that these very powerful items are not as rare as we think they are. I was not a caster for very long while GMing, but I had major focuses whenever I wanted them. Artifacts ave much shorter timers than the focuses, but they boosts that go outside of our boundries.. Major focuses are no different in that respect, so I would suggest that their occurance issues are looked into, and their timers dropped significantly.

Ultimately the biggest issue is the fact that AC does not factor in magic resistance, and I honestly think that is what we need to do. Would that be hard to code in such a factor?

[Britnoth]

Making major focus staves a rarer occurance would make the problem worse, not better.

If they are common enough, then most will have them and it is 'fair' (at least between casters).

If they are rare enough that you need to spend a ton of time to get one, then they are only going to be on the most active people, or friends of them.

The problem is, NO single object should just double your damage, ever.

which means tinkering weapons should also be looked at.... a maximum tinker doubles the average game of that weapon, again way too much.

If these strengths were limted to gypsys then you could balance the class, but as they are items that can be used by others, they need to be removed.

[Tocharaeh]

What we ultimately need to do is remove all temportary buffs on weapons tat dbl damages, but instead create an actual encanting/forging system to improve upon the weapons already existing stats. However, you would need to create a special sliding scale for some improvements to make it increasingly difficult as te improvements stack. As Britnot said, no one item should have its stats dbled at any one given time. However, as it stands tinkering is not te issue at hand. As it stands, casters remain on te top of to food change while not being required like te rest of us to do anything more than find random items strewn around common zones. Where are te quests? Were is te spell resistence? None exist.

[Molly]

I am rather fond of magic trees and woodsing myself, so I'd hate to see them go, just because some people think spellcasters are overpowered.

If it is a balance issue, then tweak the balance, but don't get rid of a neat feature. Perhaps the success rate should be lowereded a bit; I definitely don't agree with the opinion that it's a good thing if most people have them. On the contrary, they should need an effort to get, and if only 'the most active people or friends of them' are able to get them; that seems 'fair' to me. That's after all what the game is about - you don't get powerful by squatting at Recall.

If you non-casters think that woodsing is such a problem, there is a very easy remedy - start lumberjacking every magic tree you get across and trade them. That's the tactics PKers used in the old days, and it could be one reason why the major focus staves are now easier to get  - more trees around.

As for OLC created major focus, to my knowledge only one such item exists, and it is set on an extremely  tough mob and only loads randomly. But yeah - it should have a timer. If someone tells me what the timer on other major focuses are, I'll be happy to set it.

[Britnoth]

A select few only becomes a problem if the benefit is so overpowering - such as pratically doubling the rate you can level. You're left with the haves and the have nots, based purely on knowing someone that gets lucky.

I like the actual features myself too, but they do need seriously toned down in strength. Better staves should only be giving slightly more multiplier, and perhaps tinkering with weapons only affect the size of the weapons damage dice, not both values (ie. a 10d10 weapon is tinkered to 10dxx, rather than xxdxx as it is now).


Tocharaeh's first post is partly trying to raise the issue of classes being interdependent. 4D's classes are not really like this, - what others might expect a 'tank' class to be (like a warrior) are not really specialist tanks, while the current spellcasters that are easily made into high damage types (thanks to high +charisma items) can still absorb damage effectively as well.

These are basic game mechanic issues involving hitpoints, accuracy, damage, mobs stats, armour, and so on. They wont be affected by changing what skills or spells a class recieves or giving an extra bonus here and there. The suggested skill tree will add more variation, but to address this it will still be necessary to look at how everything is tied together.


Which leaves an odd one out: Gypsy. Gypsy is the only class in 4d that seems built as a 'support' class - its main features (tinker, woodsing) are in effect transferable to other players because they affect items rather than being skills or spells used just by them. Should such powerful abilities that are wanted by every class be limited to just one? I'm not sure they should be.

Making them available via a quest is one option, or you could even limit them to races - woodsing to all elves, and tinker to all dwarves for example. If you gave all races different unique strengths like this, it might make everyone feel more unique immediately, which I think everyone would welcome.


And that is the crux of the issue for me: The classes seem, even with different skills and spells, to play in a basic similar manner. No natural interdependency to encourage grouping and teamwork, no variation in what equipment you want to wear (+damroll or +cha from items, all other stats get left behind) which might encourage trading, and a sense that everyone plays very similarly to each other.


In summary:

Fix the basics first please.
Every character, whatever their class, should get some kind of ability, spell set, natural strength or something that is unique to them, and will make them vital to have around. Without this all the classes merge into one large blob of collective boredom.

[Xeriuth]

As for OLC created major focus, to my knowledge only one such item exists, and it is set on an extremely  tough mob and only loads randomly. But yeah - it should have a timer. If someone tells me what the timer on other major focuses are, I'll be happy to set it.

This item doesn't work. Ever since that crash way back during that one December..
The OLC function for minor and major both do not work so player created focuses can't exist without them fixed to apply a multiplier to the said item.

[Xeriuth]

Making them available via a quest is one option, or you could even limit them to races - woodsing to all elves, and tinker to all dwarves for example. If you gave all races different unique strengths like this, it might make everyone feel more unique immediately, which I think everyone would welcome.

I like giving things to specific races as opposed to class. Handy. Could make it more diverse for some less existant races.

[Prometheus]

Okay let me address both issues of tinker and woodsing.

1) When Mord changed woodsing to allow major focus's he made it very VERY hard to get Major focus with woodsing. Again using Fiachra as an example 47 remorts and I have only woodsang ONE Major focus staff. And until someone can convince me differently I don't see a point in changing woodsing. And again woodsing staves have a long timer from 13k to 17k depending on level.

2) Tinker is very random in damage increase. Again using Fiachra I rarely get 16d16 which is not doubling. And I have had tinkers which lowered the damage as well. So until someone can prove to me tinker it over powered with higher damage with timer I don't see a point in changing tinker either.

Prometheus.

[Britnoth]

Okay let me address both issues of tinker and woodsing.

1) When Mord changed woodsing to allow major focus's he made it very VERY hard to get Major focus with woodsing. Again using Fiachra as an example 47 remorts and I have only woodsang ONE Major focus staff. And until someone can convince me differently I don't see a point in changing woodsing. And again woodsing staves have a long timer from 13k to 17k depending on level.

2) Tinker is very random in damage increase. Again using Fiachra I rarely get 16d16 which is not doubling. And I have had tinkers which lowered the damage as well. So until someone can prove to me tinker it over powered with higher damage with timer I don't see a point in changing tinker either.

Prometheus.

So you agree with what I say but ignore the obvious conclusion.

Luck gives you an item that doubles your damage output. Luck. Doubling damage. How is that not unbalanced? But you don't see it. No single item should just double your damage, its like an item giving you +50 damroll.

Tinker: 10d10 = 55 average, 16d16 = 136 average damage. Hmmm. Almost +150% damage from your weapon before damroll. It is quite easy to tinker a large pile of shop bought weapons and make yourself a handful of 15d15 or better ones, you know.... a single afternoon and you can equip the entire playerbase.

[Tocharaeh]

I think I need to post my summery points again because I think we're straying:

•   AC should factor in spell dmg. Spell resistance is too complicated a system to support due to we would have to alter EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF EQ in the 4D world. Yeah, that isn’t going to happen.
•   Current caster eq needs to be nerfed a bit, and casters must quest for real eq like the rest of us. Melee has to bust their ass for every piece of eq. If this means we need to create quests in the game for all current and major zones, I will be happy to help. Either way, casters need to start questing for their eq.
•   Woodsing should be taken out. No reason why gypsy should be dappling in that stuff anyhow. They’re a rogue class with a couple spells. Either take it away, or make it BOP so nobody else can use them. Major Focus items should be quested for, or significantly have thier timer decreased due to the sheer power.. Again, I am happy to help out writing quests for all major zones. I am happy to work full time for 4d in terms of this if it is going to help us all.
•   Staves should be disarmable. That is the end of that.
•   PVP dmg needs to be taken down a notch and/or HP needs to increase greatly. In the old days, we could hit fairly high hp (I don’t remember the exact numbers, I THINK I hit 10k back in old code, could be mistaken).
•   Spells like harm, call lightning and fireball need to be decreased. There is no reason why someone with 15 remorts vs someone with 70 remorts should be kicking the 70 remort players ass. If I can’t do more than 250 dmg with kick, then neither should they be doing more than they with harm.

This is not somple about someone THINKING that casters are overpowered. They are. Why? Because there is ZERO spell defense against them. A caster wit a good focus, or even a major focus can ave better AC than a melee just by casting spells and having no real armor themselves. Meanwhile, we spend years getting all of the best eq we can and pit ourselves against a caster and have all of that AC mean NOTHING while thier AC means everything.

As for this "until you can convince me" stuff. Listen, this is my word against yours kind of deal. This is not how you run a discussion. A problem exists, so instead of dodging the problem, address it. Look at the facts.
1) Casters are easy to make uber
2) Casters don't need to quest at all
3) They can make up for all AC loss with a few simple spells.
4) NOBODY as ANY spell defence vs. them.
5) Casters have all of the defence against melee.
6) You cannot disarm staves.

Every single one of these points (top and bottom) are 100% true, and valid. These honestly NEED to be addressed and fixed.

[Prometheus]

From Toch's post:
Current caster eq needs to be nerfed a bit, and casters must quest for real eq like the rest of us. Melee has to bust their ass for every piece of eq. If this means we need to create quests in the game for all current and major zones, I will be happy to help. Either way, casters need to start questing for their eq.


This is a builder thing and this is Molly's Domain.

From Toch's post:
Woodsing should be taken out. No reason why gypsy should be dappling in that stuff anyhow. They’re a rogue class with a couple spells. Either take it away, or make it BOP so nobody else can use them. Major Focus items should be quested for, or significantly have thier timer decreased due to the sheer power.. Again, I am happy to help out writing quests for all major zones. I am happy to work full time for 4d in terms of this if it is going to help us all.

That is your opinion and I don't see a reason to remove this ability from the game. Maybe with skill trees you might see less woodsingers but I know my mortal isn't going to change out from having woodsing and tinker. We might lower the timer on staves but again I need more than 2 people saying staves are too potent.

From Toch's post:
Staves should be disarmable. That is the end of that.

Really forgive me for saying there is no end to that. But disarm might be possible.

From Toch's post:
Spells like harm, call lightning and fireball need to be decreased. There is no reason why someone with 15 remorts vs someone with 70 remorts should be kicking the 70 remort players ass. If I can’t do more than 250 dmg with kick, then neither should they be doing more than they with harm.

This is a Work in Progress after skill trees go in I am planning some spell additions and tweaking.


And the following:
As for this "until you can convince me" stuff. Listen, this is my word against yours kind of deal. This is not how you run a discussion. A problem exists, so instead of dodging the problem, address it. Look at the facts.

This is more than an coding issue it is an building issue it is an class issue which encompasses everyone from player to immortal so just changing major stuff around is not gonna fly. Look at skill trees there is some resistance to making skill trees. So please don't just demand things without realizing it is a bigger issue and not everyone is going to agree so don't say I'm dodging.

Prometheus

[Molly]

As for the parts of it that are 'Molly's' - or rather all Builders' domain, here are some comments:

In the addaffect list we have the following affects to put on equipment:
20) Paralize Defence    
21) Rod Defence      
22) Petrify Defence      
23) Breath Defence      
24) Spell Defence

They exist in OLC, and they also have been set on quite a lot of pieces of equipment in the game.
They also sound to me to be exactly what is needed here.
I know that I've used them myself, thinking they actually did something.
Apparently I must have been mistaken, since nobody seems to want them or use them.

So this is my question; mainly to the Coders, but also to players who might have tried them at some point:
Do the spell defences work at all?
And if they don't - can't they be made to work?
That seems to me a lot easier that trying to 'alter EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF EQ in the 4D world', which in itself seems like a weird idea. Every single piece of equipment  shouldn't be spell resistent, just a few special items, and these should be hard to get.

Which brings me to the second point: Caster equipment being too easy to get, no questing needed.
This is probably true, since int, wiz and cha were never cherished by the players at the time when we made most of the quests. Hit- and damroll was all they cared for, and so the player preferences have partly decided the stats of the high profile quest equipment.

Now I'd be perfectly willing to make some caster equipment as Quest prices, even if it means creating new quests in existing zones. That's what we are doing all the time in the old zones that we update, and a fact is that we often have trouble thinking of good quest rewards that would not spiral the stats on everything.
So that's not the main problem here, instead the problem is that the existing caster equip would have to be nerfed, before we could put the quests into action.

Which means balancing, plus a mass change - which is coder work, not builder.
And which would affect all casters in the game.

So far, Toch's the only experienced player who has voiced opinions about Casters, (I count Prom on the Coder side in this). What do the rest of the knowledgeable players think? Especially those who habitually play Casters or PK against them? Are Casters really as overpowered as Toch says? Or does PK skill play a roll in it? Have you really tested this systematically, for instance on the Gladiators?

Finally, I think this is an issue that should be adressed before the skill trees are tested, since those probably will take a long time to finish.
And my first advice would be to do something about the above mentioned spell defences in OLC.

Again: Woodsing will not be taken out, but the staves could be worked on.

[horus]

Regarding one part of Tochy's post:-
Melee damage has alot of protection - sanc, stoneskin, shield, etc etc

There is NO protection against spell damage currently, thats why spell damage appears to be disproportionate to melee damage, when in fact, they are relatively the same.

I am working on this right now, although it may take some time, because every time I touch something, there appears to be some other part of the code I need to fix up. Yes Estidn, I am fixing parts of the code that isnt broke :p

---
Well, spell resistances have been completed. I decided against fixing the other things for now.