Messages

1

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Evening out the EXP to next level.

« on: April 18, 2012, 10:52:00 pm »

One thing you have not considered is that when a certain skill/spell is attained, it makes killing significantly easier. So if you try to spread the xp load around more evenly, it does NOT necessarily make levelling even. In fact, it may make it much longer to level at the lower levels than at the higher levels.

Also bear in mind, even if you do not gain any new skills or spells, your attack, defence, etc do go up. Changing tiers makes a significant difference as well, gaining a huge speed boost.

Other than that, we already know the system is horribly unbalanced anyways.

2

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Unperzable Items

« on: April 16, 2012, 09:52:27 am »

I believe I posted somewhere to the builders a way to make new perzes by using the same vnum so it wouldnt be a PITA to allow unrestricted perzes. I also believe there is no code that double checks unique perz vnums to stop double wears - the scripts have to manually be adjusted, so its simpler to just use the same vnums.

I havent looked at the code in a while, but I think the process is to simply restring the item, then add a UNIQUE flag to it.

3

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Spells and Skills

« on: September 28, 2011, 12:56:26 am »

All info on rank progression, pracs gained etc are discussed in the other thread about skill trees.

The aim is to only provide enough pracs for players to gain 8 ranks in all skills/spells on average. This way, they must decide to either be a jack of all trades, or have masteries in a few spells/skills.

Please read the rest of the info in the other threads.

4

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Spells and Skills

« on: September 27, 2011, 08:14:12 pm »

Those are just cast times.

The idea is as follows:
Every weapon would have a weapon speed, similar to casting times. Adding into the mix are other factors, like dex and speed etc. As an example, a warrior using a shortsword (weapon speed of 7) might have his attacks as such:-
A.......A.......A.......A (every 10 dots is one second, so the attack occurs after 0.7 seconds).
Now say this warrior wants to use kick (which has attack speed of 5), his attack will now look like this:
A.....K.......A.......A (notice how, the Kick essentially replaces one of the attacks, unlike our current system where we have our usual attacks and kick is just a bonus attack)
Now if the warrior wants to spam the kick command:
A.....K.....K.....K.....K (So the warrior has to decide if the kick command does more damage overall or whether he does more damage just using his weapons. The warrior has to take into account his weapon rank, his kick rank etc

These are just examples with arbitrary numbers, and obviously needs to be tweaked. There will be skills/spells that require some downtime and some that are only once per day usage. I am undecided whether to allow some spells to be disrupted mid-cast, for example, if a priest is trying to cast full heal and during that casting time, he gets hit, that spell dissipates and he wastes his mana.

Bear in mind, HP and Mana will be significantly lowered. Also, the casting times of spells and attack speeds of skills will also be tweaked until we get the right balance.

PS: Damn you for conning me into posting details!

5

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: A newbs life in school, quest academy and after.

« on: September 27, 2011, 07:14:16 pm »

Love your work Bane! 4D definitely needed this.

6

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Spells and Skills

« on: September 27, 2011, 12:08:27 pm »

10 cast time = 1sec

7

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Spells and Skills

« on: September 27, 2011, 11:46:04 am »

RESERVED

8

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Spells and Skills

« on: September 27, 2011, 11:45:46 am »

RESERVED FOR MORE SPELLS POST

9

Suggestions & Ideas / Spells and Skills

« on: September 27, 2011, 11:16:23 am »

Based on skill trees (read the other posts regarding ranks, etc). Bear in mind, all the spells/skills listed below are just describing their effects and proper creative descriptions will be added into the help file when they are implemented. The spells below are representative of Priests.

Casting time: the higher the number, the slower it is to cast.
Pre-requisites: the rank of the current spell/skill cannot be higher than the rank of the pre-requisite spell/skill
Critical Miss: Each weapon/attack type has a percentage chance of missing, regardless of any bonuses and levels of the attacker
Success: When casting aggressive spells, the success of the spell is dependent on the spell rank of the caster, the level of the caster, the saving throws and resistances of the victim.

General Curse
Cast: 1
Lowers target's attack by 1 per rank. At mastery rank, target has double the chance of critical miss

Curse Strength
Cast: 4
Prereq: General Curse
Lowers target's ability to deal physical damage by 1% per rank. At mastery rank, a critical miss by the victim will cause the victim to drop their weapon.

Curse Dexterity
Cast: 3
Prereq: General Curse
Lowers target's ability to use dexterity based skills like dodge/phase/parry. Mastery rank will cause the target to have a small percentage chance of receiving full damage when hit.

Curse Constitution
Cast: 5
Prereq: General Curse
Causes target to take more damage from each physical hit by 1% per rank. Mastery rank will cause the target to have a small percentage chance of receiving bleeding wounds.

Aura of Fear
Cast: 3
Prereq: Either Curse Strength, Curse Dexterity, Curse Constitution
Causes everyone in the same room to lower their attack by 1 per rank. There is a small percentage per rank that the attackers will flee. This spell becomes innate at mastery rank.

Heal
Cast: 1
1d6 per rank heal. At mastery rank, there is a percentage chance the heal is doubled.

Advanced Heal
Cast: 7
Prereq: Heal
2d5 per rank heal. At mastery rank, there is a percentage chance the heal is doubled.

Inner Heal
Cast: 5
Prereq: Heal
1d6 per rank heal, however, this is more of an ability to ask for divine help than a spell, so you can heal in silent and no magic rooms. Can only heal oneself.

Full Heal
Cast: 9
Prereq: Advanced Heal
4% heal per rank. At mastery rank, there is a percentage chance of the target restoring all of his/her hitpoints.

10

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Woodsing?

« on: September 26, 2011, 10:54:07 pm »

Its probably the max multiplier for your level, tier and wood type.

11

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Gypsys and Rangers getting a battle skill.

« on: September 26, 2011, 10:44:50 pm »

I still think THWACK and WHOMP would make great skill additions to gypsies and rangers.

12

Once's Board / Re: What should be done about GM?

« on: September 18, 2011, 08:42:52 pm »

These are all bandaid solutions to a problem that is too big. I think its a waste of time discussing certain aspects of what is broken with 4D when almost everything is broken with 4D. Instead, we should be discussing what the new system should be, and working towards implementing the new system, which will resolve a majority of the problems.

For example, you are discussing about getting rid of GM, getting rid of race attributes, changing all sorts of things by providing solutions to individual problems without a bigger picture in mind. This is absolutely not the best way to move forward and no, it does not provide a clean stop-gap solution either. You are worrying about trying to keep the last 8 remorts, when a skill tree system will eliminate the need for a remorting system altogether.

And since Once has been working quite hard on this, why dont we talk about getting the skill tree system in place. We have had numerous discussions about this system, and we should be concentrating on getting the right balance for the skill trees and how it affects mobs vs players, and players vs players. We are all wasting time getting all huffy and puffy on a stop gap solution that is not effective - and my analogy of using timers and max_loads is a perfect example, we are repeating history again with ineffective solutions.

13

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Game Design

« on: September 15, 2011, 08:19:11 pm »

No no, dont be too harsh, I really want to hear him argue with himself.

14

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Gypsys and Rangers getting a battle skill.

« on: September 15, 2011, 09:10:23 am »

Damn it Jason and Jaros, they are my eyes, not slits! Bastards!

15

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: A socials shop.

« on: September 15, 2011, 09:03:32 am »

Sigh, again, you just think all the player has to do is make sure they fill out all the necessary lines. Now, let us look at the entire issue:-
- Make sure social shop saves to file dynamically. Make sure player file is also updated to show they can use this social.
- Any new social purchased means adding a new command. This means, making sure the new social saves to file (for shop), updating the main social file, re-loading the entire social file again into memory so that the command is recognised. Depending on how the commands are loaded, we may have to re-load the entire command structure as well. (Otherwise, a copyover is needed. NOTICE how whenever something new is added, a copyover is needed? What you are asking is for something that doesnt require a copyover). Save the new social in the social shop file with the creator's name, save the creator's pfile to show this creator can use the command.
- Because this social can only be used by the specific person who has purchased it, you will need to edit the entire command structure to also check player file if the person has the right to use this command.
- Everytime a social is purchased, the purchaser's pfile needs to be updated.

Two main issues stand out:-
1. It is NEVER a good idea to allow players to directly write to disk. In this case, players are able to create new socials on demand, which makes the mud save to disk a fair amount of information. Disk writes slows the mud down, especially if someone decides to spam this command.
2. It is NEVER a good idea to change the command structure. If something goes wrong, it affects EVERYONE with every single command, so the mud becomes totally unplayable.

Now with further thinking, there may be ways around this but the reason why I wanted to post this is to explain to people the thought processes behind whether ideas are "worth" the effort of implementing. Now coders do not have the time nor the inclination to explain all the issues every single time someone has an idea, and then to debate how worthy their ideas are over the amount of effort to complete the code.