September 2018 Update

Comments about any updates
Raislin
Immortal of Magic
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September 2018 Update

Post by Raislin »

Lands:
Monk Guild changes
Rangers / Monks - regained Soul summon spell
Fire Giants - spawn rate decreased in parts of it
Dark Elf Dragon Rider - adjusted but still mighty strong

Monster Physical Immunities
* Monsters immune to all physical damage readjusted to make them vulnerable to bash
* Reduced monsters miscoded with wrong values.
Note that some monsters are still immune to certain attacks -- this is the same as the spell casters having immune creatures to certain spells.

Overall this will need to be re-examined to correct historical problems.

Bounty Gold rewards increased
Couple new types added with large payouts
Second office opened in Tranos
The number of kills / items required were changed to be less random.

Game

Monsters

* Fixed Stunning Blow ignoring Max Stun timings on some monsters
This has exposed some monsters as being unkillable due to very low maximums that weren't getting triggered before. Let us know of any impossible creatures.

* Diminishing Returns on Monster stun / hold / web / sleep
Each use of a hold/stun/web reduces the next application until a creature is immune

* Monsters were slowing instead of Sleeping in some cases.
They now can Sleep you again

* Min monster speed verification
Monsters that would be too fast are now blocked from spawning in game.

* Monsters that resist holds, webs etc won't report it when concentrating to reduce clutter

* Monster Room Spells Fixed
They can now cast the 3 room spells. Beware the dragons.

* Monster Abilities
Some new abilities for monsters to charge, explode, be stronger, enrage etc.

* Monster Healing / Group Healing
Ability to heal themselves and their companions

* Bleed / Poison won't kill a creature
A creature won't die from bleed or poison - so the final blow must come from an adventurer that can claim the kill.

* Fleeing
Monsters that flee will try and avoid returning to the slaughter house

* Innate Spells
Monsters can cast a spell or immediately target it. It's now possible for them to do both to mix it up.


Other
* Lock Traps stronger - damage will reflect your overall strength.

* Inventory backpack filter (i <name>)
when looking at your inventory, you can filter the backpack by <name> to show matching items.

* Vasari given extra books so she can record your achievements more frequently

* Fixed to messages
Trying to send gold to yourself, wrong name, squelching person or full mailbox won't cause the gold to be deducted.

Changing Attack Patterns

There are some experimental features focused on changing how combat is handled -- change from a single attack that concentrates on fast stun / attack. Along with the monster changes above (randomised differences and abilities), the goal is to change to a slower, more varied set of approaches required.

Some monsters are woefully under-healthed for their intended level bracket. This will be addressed later.

Weapon enchants have a cooldown - currently set at 1 second for all.

Attacking non-existent creatures can cause you to be unbalanced (currently off)
Triggering the short spam filter can cause you to be unbalanced. Spam filter has increased its tolerance. (unbalance currently off)
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fearecia
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Re: September 2018 Update

Post by fearecia »

Thank you very much for detailing this update. It was, needless to say, rather huge, and understanding it and adapting to it is going to be very interesting (and neat too, frankly). That said, I do have some questions about implementation and such.

Monster Physical Immunities

Are the changes here implying that all monsters should have at least one melee attack, and one spell, that damages them? Or will there still be monsters that are immune to ALL spells OR immune to ALL melee attacks?

Monsters

Monsters now have the ability to instantly cast spells, charge, etc, which is neat. My concern here is how that impacts casters specifically. Currently, if a caster/sorcerer takes ANY damage (even if it just affects harden armor/magic armor) their SP regeneration drops, which then requires the use of draughts/3 pulse rest periods to regain SP regeneration. Is there any plan to adjust this, so that casters aren't forced to repeatedly and consistently rest to regain sps? With the charge and innate spells, I can see casters taking "damage" much more often. It'd be nice to see only "actual damage" (ie, reduction of hps) affect the sp regeneration.

Other

Lock Traps: I'm a little unclear as to what this precisely means. My assumption is that a person with a better pick locks skill will take less damage from a trap? Just looking for clarification/example for the wording here.

Inventory backpack filter: OMG, THANK YOU! (Pssst. Can we do this for lockers too?)

Extra Vasari books: Does this just mean characters are getting backed up more frequently, so there's less issue/change/loss in case of game crashes/reboots?

Changing Attack Patterns

Enchant Cooldown timer: Will this affect just spell cast weapon enchants, or will it also include built in (permanent) enchants?

That Unbalance Thing

So, this one is probably the most complicated one. At the moment, it appears to only affect melee fighters, though I could obviously be wrong about that. Basic opinion there is if we're going to do an unbalance for aiming/charging at something that is not there, it should affect casters flinging spells at nothing too. Anyway.

"aim;;ch" is a staple of melee combat. It reduces human errors during monotonous hunting, and reduces necessary keystrokes, while maintaining higher attack damage. It's entirely analogous to the "t;;cast #" that a spell caster tends to use. Now, I understand that efforts are being made to change up hunting so that it's not so monotonous, which may help solve this problem, but currently, attaching an unbalance timer to this is extremely problematic.
  1. We don't have an easy way of telling if we have been engaged or not. If this is going to be a thing, we really need a window added to the wizard, or some sort of feedback at the end of each kill that says "you are engaged by x number of creatures" so that we don't hit "aim;;ch" just to make sure we've killed everything. Seconds count when hunting, and taking the time to "l" can be deadly.
  2. Is there any plan to replace the aim;;ch with say, another skill, so that this is more feasible? Something that allows us, as users, to do the same as "aim';;ch" with a single command/skill, in order to keep our human errors/keystrokes down? (likewise for casters, if this is going to affect them)
  3. Sometimes, due to the nature of spawn rate/character/monster deadliness, it is essential to combine a "lure macro" with an "attack macro." In such instances, my macro often looks like this: "e;;aim;;ch;;w;;aim;;ch." The point of this is to prevent me from over-scrolling the area, and automatically engage me. There are places like dungeon spiders, where, if you scroll more than one spider, you may be very, very dead. This is done out of both efficiency (faster keystrokes = more hunting, less time scrolling), and a need to keep a "weaker" character alive. Many characters anymore have 1000's of hps. Plenty of us, however, are still in the 700-900 range, and need to make sure we stay alive.
I'm bringing up these points to try and make it clear how that unbalance timer is going to get tripped, a lot, and annoyingly so, under current hunting conditions. It's entirely possible that you all are 100% aware of this, and have changes planned to address all of it. If so, awesome, and thank you. If not, I hope that this illuminates how "normal hunting" tends to happen, and that can be taken into consideration as things move forward.

As always, thank you all for your hard work and dedication!
Raislin
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Re: September 2018 Update

Post by Raislin »

>> Are the changes here implying that all monsters should have at least one melee attack, and one spell, that damages them? Or will there still be monsters that are immune to ALL spells OR immune to ALL melee attacks?

All monsters should have 1 physical attack open to them. Not checked for spells yet since we have exceptions like absorption beasts. Resistances are still in place (like ooze).

>> rest

Depends what the issue is here. Spell points are a resource to use -- it shouldn't be effectively unlimited that no one thinks about it, so the intention is that rests are required. Instant heal/restore potions need to be thought about too in combat - if we want to slow down the combat so it's more considered then the abilities at hand need to have some limitations to help balance the fights.

>> Lock Traps
They were doing small, fixed damage before. They can now do a lot more - most won't kill you outright - though they'll now do a more noticeable impact if set. Remove Traps will give you the ability to miss a trap, and resistances are factored in as well.

>> Extra Vasari books:
Yes. She saves more frequently on top of other conditions as well (like a new level).

>> Enchant Cooldown timer
Both types.


The unbalance thing - no one should be seeing it at the moment for missing attacks. The only one active is the spam filter trigger.
The goal is to change the pattern anyway so the approaches used now may not be required/optimal in the future. The split second attacks shouldn't be required. The goal is to make the combat more engaging so that you don't just macro the same attack. The various attacks (aim, attack, charge, some new ones) have different abilities and you must chose the appropriate one for the best result. If everything is slower then you'll have time to consider it and not rush the next attack out.
Tashmaal
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Guild: Barbarians

Re: September 2018 Update

Post by Tashmaal »

>>>>Weapon enchants have a cooldown - currently set at 1 second for all.
Does this also apply to bonuses from <balanceweapon>? Or is that not considered an enchant in this regard?

>>>>Monsters that resist holds, webs etc won't report it when concentrating to reduce clutter
Any chance that this can be reconsidered? This information is useful at a glance and removing it doesn't reduce a huge amount of clutter.

>>>>Some new abilities for monsters to charge, explode, be stronger, enrage etc.
Will there be some kind of output callout to indicate things like imminent enrage, explode, etc.?
Raislin
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Re: September 2018 Update

Post by Raislin »

balance and bless aren't affected.
Can look at a second level concentrate so it's selectable.
Enrage is called out.
Some will be there from spawn so won't get called out like that.
m011
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Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2018 4:08 am

Re: September 2018 Update

Post by m011 »

Can we please change the spell system for npcs back as far as instacast? Things are starting to feel a little unfair. A lot of these guys do a lot of damage and have a lot of HP for their level. They can one shot you in a lot of areas. Absorption rates are pretty high (not sure why I'm doing 2-3k dmg a hit just to have that reduced to 500 on average to most npcs that give exp). Some of them even run away leading you around and potentially forcing you to lure up other npcs. A lot of these things are pretty challenging and make you have to think on your feet, but to add instacats on top of that can make some fights super long and boring. I wasn't a fan of npcs chain spelling before but that makes me kinda just not want to bother hunting.
Raislin
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Re: September 2018 Update

Post by Raislin »

The instacast wasn't changed to make them fire more often -- the change makes some coded as 'random' to act that way. Prior to that they would have been instant 100% of the time.

Which creatures are you hunting? I think it's more likely the room spell fix on them may be the cause -- some monsters now correctly use their spells and some of them were coded really high.
m011
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Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2018 4:08 am

Re: September 2018 Update

Post by m011 »

The wasps are pretty annoying, and the fat dragons in the jungle hit really hard. The valley giants I think also do the pacifism thing. I've had times where the dragon hit me 3 times in a row with fire spells. Dead before retreat timer was up. Even with 80 fire resistance I can get hit for 400
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fearecia
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Re: September 2018 Update

Post by fearecia »

On the topic of a selectable level of concentrate... could we have a way to mute Vasari? Her scroll is kinda redundant. I enjoy and appreciate getting the time of day updates, but not so much her. Just a random thought to throw out there.
m011
Posts: 17
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2018 4:08 am

Re: September 2018 Update

Post by m011 »

Agreeing with Fearecia here. That is very spammy and unnecessary. I understand it is for posterity but I vote it out.

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