Messages

31

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Ranged Re spec.

« on: June 30, 2012, 06:18:14 am »

This is great stuff.

Proposed flags
Fire rate/delay/burst fire - all good and would probably not be difficult, given that we already have melee speed and skill delays.
Range, rounds, chance of jam - good.
Disposable, rockets - good.  The issue would be making them good enough to be worth using but hard enough to acquire that you can't just collect 10 and go kill Gojira in 10sec.

I really like the idea of a ranged weapon that doubles as a melee, like a bayonet or something.
The only one I can't see being necessary is speed for dueling/switching.  No other weapons have that.

Ammo
Viri and I were talking the other day about the elemental effects they have in Borderlands.  The game is literally all guns/ammo.  It works something like this:
There are 7 weapon and ammo types.
Ammo is all generic and has no effects.
There are hundreds of variations within each weapon type.
One major variable is the elemental type.
Incendiary/fire has a bonus against unarmored targets.  It has a chance of lighting them on fire and dealing ongoing fire damage.
Corrosive/acid (which I suppose would be our water element) is good for armored targets.  It has a chance of dealing ongoing corrosive damage, in which case all weapons get a bonus against the 'corroding' target.
Shock/electric removes the rechargeable shields people wear.  For us that could equate to negating certain buff spells.
Explosive is good for something else, I think targets with exoskeletons but I'm hazy on that one.
Then there are regular guns with no element, which tend to have higher base damage.
The system works well because they each have clearly defined specialties.  Targets that are strong in an element themselves are immune to that type of damage.
We have elemental staves now so it would be great if ranged weapons were eventually brought up to speed with them.  I'm sure uses for spirit, death, etc could be thought of.

32

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Throttle and Garotte, Shadowmask and Shadowcloak

« on: June 26, 2012, 08:05:46 pm »

It never meant insta-kill.  If everything worked it would mean a kill after about 7-10seconds, which was very rare even with garrotte and throttle maxed.  More likely was that a check would fail about halfway through and the target would be freed to fight back while you were left swapping your garrotte for a melee weapon as fast as you could.

Mask and cloak sound great.  They should be available for more than just thieves though.  So should garrotte.  Also I'm pretty sure poison_weapon hasn't worked in years.  (I always check these things and then forget.)

33

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: lumberjacking

« on: June 24, 2012, 01:22:35 am »

Would be good if the age of the tree made a difference to the multi.  That was always meant to be a factor.

34

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: The Gross Imbalance That Is Race

« on: June 22, 2012, 06:36:30 pm »

I think you misunderstood me.  My point was that if a race is just a way of choosing your pigeonhole then what's the point?  That's what classes are for, and classes are much better at it.  I think it is good that no one cares about the race bonuses because the race bonuses are a boring way of diversifying players.  

A race difference is a difference you choose at creation and never change.  That is boring.  Different race bonuses do not make for "different paths."  They do not make for "paths" at all.  They do not develop at all, they are the same path.  All race bonuses do is let some people travel that path faster than others.

I have never said there should be no diversity.  I just think race is a stupid place to put it.  Race should be cosmetic.  Let players diversify as they play.

If we remove these ridiculous race imbalances we can concentrate on systems for actually earning diversity though upgrades and masteries instead of choosing it once and forgetting about it.  That will give us a lot more diversity because it will make all our races worth playing, instead of only half of them.

35

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: The Gross Imbalance That Is Race

« on: June 22, 2012, 06:15:14 am »

Still, I think it would be more interesting if the races actually were different in more ways than just the wear_locs, so that players could choose race after how it fitted their playing style. (For instance it would make sense if elves have bonuses that makes them better magicians but not so physically strong, while dwarves would have more brute force, but be slow and not so agile). It should be possible to find other logical reasons for positive/negative bonuses for all the races, based on their descriptions.
Why have races at all, if they are just cosmetical?

One problem is that players are asked to choose their race before they know what their playing style is.

Another is that melee vs magic should not equal brute force vs magic, but it does.  Looking at it from the outside, it should be possible to be good at melee by relying on speed and agility instead of just brute strength, but the combat code doesn't reflect that.

By trying to make races 'different' like this, you end up pigeonholing them into one class, at which point you might as well ask, what is the point of classes?  Why not just replace casters with elves and martians if the name serves the same purpose?

What exactly is wrong with races being primarily cosmetic?  It would solve a lot of problems.  No one seems to care much about the bonuses.  I would argue that the bonuses only exist as a derivation of the cosmetic difference.  I think people would care a lot more if we removed ELF, CEN, IND from WHO than if we removed the bonuses.  I think the cosmetic difference is far more important to the game than the combat difference is.

36

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Overlooked balance issues for casters

« on: June 22, 2012, 05:41:57 am »

Good points Loria.

All I know is that when I was priest I felt invincible.  The only thing that could kill me was Balrog because I had heal, and with lightning I could do as much damage as I've done in any other class.  The elephant was a basically a cakewalk.  As any class without heal, the elephant takes a lot more time and concentration.  I'm sure a lot of people don't find it quite that easy, even as priest, but the imbalance has always seemed ridiculous to me.

That said, I know I always make a big deal out of 'nerfing' priests but that's just me and I am not the one doing the balancing.  In reality more effort has been put into making mage and esper worth playing than has been put into 'nerfing' priests, which is great.  You said yourself that only one caster class is worth salt.  Hopefully soon all three of them will be worth equal portions of salt.

The fact that every caster needs the same pike to be dangerous is worth talking about.  I think the difference between the pike and the next best option is too extreme.  The pool of foci is too small - we could do with a few more options between staff and pike.

37

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Feedback for New Spell Multi's and New Spells

« on: June 12, 2012, 03:25:09 pm »

- Added some new multi conditions.  More notable ones are:
  * +AntiEvil = Requires good alignment, victim is evil aligned, protection from evil, but NOT protection from good
  * +AntiGood = Opposite of the above
  * +AntiCold = Requires Mind Fire, protection from cold, but NOT protection from fire
  * -ElementalClash = being affected by the opposing element mind spell (for example, mind water when casting flame arrow)
  * -VictProtection = Protect from Elements now work against specific spells
  * -VictSanct = Sanctuary will reduce harm's multi
  * +VictLowWis or +VictLowCon = Targets that have low stats may take additional damage
  * -VictHighWis or -VictHighCon = Targets that have high stats may take less damage
- Divine Mind and Mind Element now gives +0.20 and +0.25, up from +0.15 and +0.18 respectively.  However, they are no longer effected by the mage and esper mastery bonuses, which means players with both masteries get a -0.04 nerf across all spells.  However players without either mastery get a +0.12 bonus to all spells.
- Numb Mind now reduces the affected caster's multi for all spells by 0.75.

I really like all of that

38

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: backstab

« on: June 12, 2012, 03:16:49 pm »

You can backstab a sleeping player after blackjack or sweet dreams.

Can we make object applies such as spell defences (20-24) and health, mana and move regen worth something too?

Apparently spell defenses do help your saving throws but as far as I know they've always been pretty negligible.  Maybe someone could pull up the equations and we can have a gander?

Regen could easily be made more significant with some multipliers.  Mana/move draining/buffing skills/eq would be much more interesting then.

39

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Feedback for New Spell Multi's and New Spells

« on: June 10, 2012, 04:52:25 pm »

good show graham.  if anyone can keep these pesky spells in line it's you.

40

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: The Gross Imbalance That Is Race

« on: June 08, 2012, 03:55:21 pm »

DWARF:       melee damage = damage*0.9
                  magic damage = damage*0.9

No wonder there are no dwarves around.

41

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: The Gross Imbalance That Is Race

« on: June 08, 2012, 03:53:56 pm »

Applying damage bonuses/compromises at creation is the worst time to do it.  If we remove race_dam_mod now we can concentrate on developing elemental and weapon proficiencies that improve through use and eventually accomplish a more balanced version of what these were originally meant to be.  Prom, Once, Thotter?  One of you must be capable of removing them..

42

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: The Gross Imbalance That Is Race

« on: June 07, 2012, 08:39:54 pm »

So for months now I've been wanting to create new characters to play but these restrictive race imbalances suck all of the joy out of it.  Fortunately that seems an easy fix that no one is opposed to!!! 

43

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: backstab

« on: June 03, 2012, 01:08:53 am »

makes a lot of sense.

44

News & Announcements / Re: Artifacts and artisave rooms

« on: May 17, 2012, 03:31:03 am »

I'm excited about this 

45

General Discussions / Re: Free banners on TMC

« on: May 01, 2012, 09:15:09 pm »

Yeah the website header is definitely wider than 270, that's just the width of the logo.  It's more like 1000, so that should sit the 4Dimensions nicely above Forum | Play now, etc.