4Dimensions Forum

General Category => Suggestions & Ideas => Topic started by: Tocharaeh on July 25, 2009, 12:08:05 am

Title: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Tocharaeh on July 25, 2009, 12:08:05 am
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.

Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Prometheus on July 26, 2009, 03:45:36 pm
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.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Tocharaeh on July 26, 2009, 04:56:02 pm
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?
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Britnoth on July 27, 2009, 12:33:34 am
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.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Tocharaeh on July 27, 2009, 01:55:40 am
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.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Molly on July 27, 2009, 03:23:07 am
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.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Britnoth on July 27, 2009, 08:08:42 am
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.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Xeriuth on July 27, 2009, 11:42:08 am
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.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Xeriuth on July 27, 2009, 11:45:32 am


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.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Prometheus on July 27, 2009, 02:23:04 pm
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.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Britnoth on July 27, 2009, 03:06:55 pm
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.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Tocharaeh on July 27, 2009, 04:39:58 pm
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.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Prometheus on July 28, 2009, 12:11:01 am
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







Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Molly on July 28, 2009, 01:50:19 am
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.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: horus on July 28, 2009, 09:42:44 am
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.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Estidn on July 28, 2009, 04:46:33 pm
As of now it seems PK skills play a lesser role in a fight now-a-days because fights are over so quickly. Damage has gotten to the point where a encircle can do 500-2000k damage and a spell can do over 5k. We either need to significantly lower damage for PK or significantly increase hp.

On the subject of casters being overpowered. From what I can tell yes, they are extremely overpowered. Mana shield doesn't even have a working trainer atm. (Not sure what's up with that one) But the main issue is isn't enough protection against casters. Mirror shield = Thornshield/Fireshield,  Mana shield (not working?)=sanc. Then you have armor/shield/ice shield/stoneskin/steelskin/ect.

    Now looking at the fact that caster equipment is way to easy to get. A caster who is a t4 lvl50, without a single piece of QEQ can easily kill a melee t4 lvl50. For casters a major focus is the be all and end all. They're aren't disarmable and their is no defense against it.

    From what I remember Mord had created the classes so that they were interdependent with each other. Fighter were supposed to be high HP with decent damage, rogue was supposed to be a skill based class with medium hp but dodge/phase type skills to make up for the lack of hp. Casters were the damage class with low hp. Now in my mind with the damage the way it currently set up is about right. Casters are doing insane damage. Fighters are doing shitty damage and rogues are doing decent. The only problem lies in the hp gains. All three of the types of classes hp are VERY similar. I've seen casters with 3000hp rogues with 3500 and fighters with 4000. Now the only problem with that is the damage doesn't match up.  At the rate of current damage. Casters should have 3500 Rogues 6000 and fighter over 10k. Now obviously increasing the hp to those high of levels would throw off the balance of the game. So I'm guessing the best solution would be adjusting both the balance of hp and damage to make it meet the how it was originally intended.

Now on class interdependency. I.E. getting rid of woodsing. Why in gods name would you want to get rid of the only class interdependency we have. For an obvious example of why interaction between players is a great thing look at our pbase. I wish I had a chart to show it but ever since we put grouping back to normal, the pbase has skyrocketed from what it was before.

 Now for my rant- Skill trees suck. Fix the basics first.
That's all for the rant

Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Xeriuth on July 28, 2009, 05:17:47 pm
I play a caster mostly, and I think they are very easy to gear. There is a handful of caster gear that is questable for, but most of that isn't even flagged, so anyone is capable of wearing it. I could give a list if need be, to have flags given to such equipment. With the way caster gear is, max stats are very easily attainable, being charisma 100 and all other stats at 22.  I always said I would like to see the cap on charisma lifted, and it can be still. Just decrease the bonus gained from charisma slightly. Less eq would have to be altered and maxing stats wouldnt be as possible if you were shooting only for charisma, like melee shoots for damroll.  This would be the easiest fix in my mind but not sure what everyone else thinks?

As for how powerful we are in relation to melee. Not very, unless using a major focus. This can be looked at in two fashions. PvP and PvE. I think it'd be very difficult for a mage or esper to ever take down Gojira the said toughest mob in the game. To defeat Gojira you tend to need to be melee, or a priest whom can just heal themselves to make the fight go quicker and easier. I'm not sure how it'd be with a major focus as I haven't really played around with one so can't say for sure. For levelling purposes, casters are easier to start with than melee, just for the fact you can gear them up from the getgo, a melee you have to quest with and some quests require you to be higher level to even do so you arent at your full capacity to level quickly. Once you get geared melee levels pretty quick, just as casters do..... so again a fix is to simply make more questable caster gear? 

Now in a PvP sense casters can be powerful, but don't last very long. This is really hard to say atm anyways and with skills/spells being overhauled making an argument on who's overpowered is irrelevant to me. The balancing should be looked at once the new skills/spells are in, or are available for testing on test port. As for casters with major focuses yes they do deal a lot of damage, and it should deal a lot, but with new equipment with spell defense maybe it wont be as powerful? Impossible to say at this point in time.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Xeriuth on July 28, 2009, 05:22:59 pm
Overall focuses don't need much work right now because with new skills/spells and new equipment with spell defense, we don't know how that'll help defending against spell damage.  So until all that happens the quickest fix is to just lower the multi's of majors to be 150 percent of minor staves multi as opposed to 200 percent.

Also eliminating the charisma cap, and making charisma have less of an affect on damage boost.

But using the ungeared melee person, casters just because gear is easily attainble, casters are better, but an equally geared melee they are about equal. That's just my point of view.
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Estidn on July 28, 2009, 06:25:50 pm
So X your suggestion is instead of lowering their power. To just shrug it off and make them stronger? Just lower the multi until the new skilltree's come in?
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Tocharaeh on July 28, 2009, 07:17:02 pm
On the subject fo spell defence the problem that I see with the flags that are never used is that they aren't used due to the fact that they take points away from other stats. So basically, if you were to run around adding spell defence, you'll be forced to nerf other melee gear.  See, unlike us the majority of muds out there (when i say majority I mean 90% of them) outright have you build your stats from the start. You roll stats, then move on to train them up as you level until you hit your natural maximum in racial stats. This is to simulate growth of a character, not "hey, I'm Superman". If we do one thing, we have to compensate for the loss of the other. i.e.;
 I add spell defence to all melee gear that is qeq
 I remove stats (str, hr, dr, ac) to keep items "balanced"
 now casters have maxed stats, and melee has LOST dmg for defence against magic.

The Spell defence/breath/magic whatever molly listed, created by Morde though was a good idea was horribly thought out. WHAT uses breath anyway?

Ultimately what needs to be done is that those halfassed aspects that morde never finished need to be done away with, completely scrapped, and instead have it all factored into AC. There is a huge different between someone like me who has all of the best eq in the game save a couple pieces, and no real AC to speak of. Whereas a caster who also has no AC to speak of, with a spell multi can now outdo my ac and go right into the negatives...whereas I who have cast everything I know onto myself and I get to a +17 rather than a +23. So, my +17 vs.  casters -20, or -40 with major focus....is now procted from me, and meanwhile all I have done is slowed myself down...not taht it matters because I can't dodge magic so far as I can tell.

here is a quick question to everyone who MIGHT know. I don't think I've ever dodged fireball with drunken master, phase, or dodge. Can anyone well me if they can? I know a GM casters have everything, and espers get phase.. So melee can be dodged. Anyone know if this is the fact for melee vs. caster? CAN magic be dodged (not the 'base attack, laser spraying magic either, but FIREBALL)?

We also need to possibly come up with a system for defence points that would not take away from ther overall 15 points we get for making lvl 50 zone gear. Maybe set aside their own points to deduct from? Might do us some good, because otherwise the people who will hurt the most in any kind of reform will be the melee.

Finally, as for interdependancy that supposedly exists> gypsy's tinker, manipulate, AND woodsing. Why on earth are they the ONLY inbetween class? Thieves get poison...which doesn't work. All skills are detrimental to the items. The only other beneficial things I see here is embue armor, enchant, and remove alignment...which are all highly dangerous spells to even cast....with no way to repair any items. What were we thinking when we created these things? Item broke, and can't be fixed! Great idea... No, we need to put in a subskill here and there that actually can fix what has been broken. Seems so silly to be to mess somehting up, and then cry about losing a one timer because you didn't want the !evil on it anymore.

I think gypsy skills need to be spread out across the classes a bit. Maybe throw manipulate to the warriors, have them keep their staff making, andf then give tinker to ranger or something?
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Xeriuth on July 28, 2009, 09:21:07 pm
Well no, not shrug it off. Just do a quick fix, until the skilltree's come in. Why balance now, just to balance later? Redundant?

Toch does have a good point in just combining spell def to AC, but in turn it should be different I feel. Just make the points out of the 15 it takes less per. Some items can be more protection against melee less against spells, vice versa, or equal then. Could end up making it so there isnt always just one set of eq, might have to change it depending on who you fight. Just a thought.
Dodging fireballs does make sense, even phasing past the spelll and striking the opponent. Would be a good addition but would have to be dependent on the spells itself, seperate flags. Like as you said you can dodge a fireball, but dodge a spray?
The whole dividing gypsy skills.. there is always Britnoth's idea of seperating them into races. Or another idea, is to just put them part of the different professions when they come in?
Title: Re: CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.
Post by: Britnoth on July 30, 2009, 04:57:36 am
Well, spell resistances have been completed. I decided against fixing the other things for now.

Hurray!  :) Ok back to the issues.

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.

Yeah, well so far whenever I see an item give one of these, I take a step back, because:
1. They are pretty uncommon to see.
2. They are on items that otherwise suck monkey nuts.
3. They are pretty vague, -5 spell defence?

Is -5 meaning I take less, or more? Does it even work? Is it 5% less damage or 5% chance to avoid? Just 5 points of damage less??

And even if it does work, and I crawl  dozens of zones to find such uncommon items, because they are on such sucky equip otherwise my damroll will now be through the floor anyway, making the whole exercise pointless for anything other than PK. There instead Ill just take slightly longer to die anyway.

Putting more items with these bonuses in, will not help a mobs lack of spell defence either.

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.

Scarily, I think youre seeing the point I'm trying to make.
Right now, you could remove int, dex, con, wis, and maybe even strength, and you would lose nothing in terms of gameplay.
Everyone maxes these stats as a matter of course, leaving interest in just damroll, and charisma. They cap far too easily to leave anyone a decision on what equip to use, or what kind of strengths and weaknesses their char might have. Character growth in this respect is entirely one dimensional.

And for spellcasters it is much worse. As Toch already said, all the good quest stuff is melee centric. Why? this kinda thing is why:

(2 steps from Yorke square, is a newbie jewellery shop, with)
Quote
an emerald ring is a type of treasure made from base-material
It can be taken and worn on TAKE FINGER
Its weight is 1 and its valued at 4000 coins.
If worn it will give you --
     5 to your Charisma

Plus five. And there are lots of other such high char items around the mud, easily available even to the bad explorers like me, which give +5 or greater. When you have over 20 item slots to wear things, it is pretty straightforward for everyone to easily reach 100 charisma.

Now, If I'm a builder. I want people to do my quests. If spellcasters already have 100 cha easily already, then im not going to put in items that give even more charisma than existing equip am I? Even if I am allowed to break the item stat rules, its not worth bothering: a +6 or +7 charisma ring isnt any use if you are maxed already.

So everyone keeps giving melee items as rewards. Or items that give permament spells and so on.

The problem here was having charisma, a stat that was considered weak and so given easily available + items without concern,  an irrational increase to your spells power without then rebalancing all the items that increase it.

As of now it seems PK skills play a lesser role in a fight now-a-days because fights are over so quickly. Damage has gotten to the point where a encircle can do 500-2000k damage and a spell can do over 5k. We either need to significantly lower damage for PK or significantly increase hp.

...

Now on class interdependency. I.E. getting rid of woodsing. Why in gods name would you want to get rid of the only class interdependency we have. For an obvious example of why interaction between players is a great thing look at our pbase. I wish I had a chart to show it but ever since we put grouping back to normal, the pbase has skyrocketed from what it was before.

 Now for my rant- Skill trees suck. Fix the basics first.
That's all for the rant

Well, if you reduce damage much you will need to adjust the HP of mobs, so I would guess that changing the players HP is going to be a bit easiler from that viewpoint.

Id get rid of gypsys having woodsing and tinker exactly because they are not promoting class interdependency. An ability that is utilised by logging on, tinkering a few items or singing to a few trees for half an hour, then giving your produce to another char and logging off is the worst kind of way to do it. If i want to be useful, I want to be online, in a group interacting with others; not a pet I log on once a month to give you a staff.  :P

Cannot say whether skill trees suck or not yet, but yes, the very basic things at the core of the game: char stats, damage, unique strengths of each class are the reason people want to xp, quest and so on, to improve their chars and make them feel valued/effective. See my previous post.

Overall focuses don't need much work right now because with new skills/spells and new equipment with spell defense, we don't know how that'll help defending against spell damage.  So until all that happens the quickest fix is to just lower the multi's of majors to be 150 percent of minor staves multi as opposed to 200 percent.

Also eliminating the charisma cap, and making charisma have less of an affect on damage boost.

But using the ungeared melee person, casters just because gear is easily attainble, casters are better, but an equally geared melee they are about equal. That's just my point of view.

Well, +50% is still a huge boost, I was thinking more +20% at most...

An even better solution to increasing the charisma cap: Just stop it affecting spellpower at all. Why does being a good conversationalist, or pretty, or empathetic, make you better at casting a magic fireball again?  ???

Equal on paper maybe, but as has been said before spells are alot less resisted than melee... though with the latest change that may be less so.


I suppose this all comes down to how brave the imms are willing to be in making changes. I've not been back long, but I see alot of familiar faces around. Are you making changes to please old codgers like us, or that will interest and draw in new people?

Is tinkering (hoho) with such things really going to have the effect you want, or are you willing to risk losing some people with changes they dislike to really make the improvements needed?

I'm always willing to give suggestions, if asked.

Brit.