give peace a chance

[kiryan]

http://www.torilmud.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=18207

this topic started in logs, it should be in gameplay discussion.

1. peace and single file rooms were not intended to be used in twinking.

I might be going out on a limb here, but I believe peace rooms were designed to prevent you from fighting in a room, primarily to prevent you from killing certain mobs like shopkeepers. We added !kill flags in 95/6?, but the point is still that your not supposed to be able to fight for whatever reason. I sincerely doubt the point of peace rooms was to help players twink mobs.

The same is probably true of single file rooms. They are probably intended to force a group to fight instead of running past.... not for twinking multiple mob fights with a single mob. Its not tactics, its not innovation. Its taking an encounter that is supposed to be hard (which generally scales exponentially based on # of mobs) and reducing it to single mob fights with a safe mem out.

Now while twinking is "fun", you have to realize that most twinks comes at an expense. Its "fun" because your getting a high ratio of reward for the time. It ceases to be fun for the twinker when everyone else can do it too or the reward is downgraded. If 2/2 necklace is downgraded to 1/1 because it is 3 manable is anyone going to go twink it for the "fun"?

Stop crying about tactics whenever a twink is removed, its not tactics its a perversion of the risk/time vs reward balance that most of you triumph when it suits you.

2. ogres 2h, its silly that they cant wield them in 1 hand whine whine whine.

size code would be a neat feature. However, trying to say that they have to implement it for weapons because its realistic is a weak argument.

First, I can remember several magical items from various stories that were enchanted to "fit" their wearer. I'd assume that swords could grow to be ogre sized and shrink to halfling size.

A much stronger argument would be based on the merits of implementing some sort of size code. The interesting new combat dynamics like decreased chance to hit mobs smalle than you (and do more damage when you make contact, and always crit), increased chance to hit mobs bigger than you (and do less damage, and never crit when you make contact). Embodied tanks not being able to wear any eq/wield ect...

You could also point out the eq diversity features. Areas has a hard time introducing new zones with any life unles they add some piece of uber gear; gods generally look disfavorably on the cookie cutter eq outfits (everyone wearing the same best set of eq). Adding 2 or 3 sizes would allow you to give a lot more eq diversity... Sure you could implement "sizes" by restricting racial flags and making them extra heavy, but history shows us that all you have to do is whine and bitch long enough and someone will change it. I believe dscale robes was restricted to smaller than human races at one point.

There are lots of great arguments for different sized equipment, but none as weak as "its an ogre stupid".

[Thilindel]

http://www.torilmud.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=18207

2. ogres 2h, its silly that they cant wield them in 1 hand whine whine whine.

size code would be a neat feature. However, trying to say that they have to implement it for weapons because its realistic is a weak argument.

Thought I'd address this: If you're addressing what I wrote, re-read it. I'm saying the _size_ a room must be huge; I mean, in order to allow an ogre with a 2h sword - and its swing radius..yet, not enough room for said ogre to get by an ant.

[Tasan]

A much stronger argument would be based on the merits of implementing some sort of size code. The interesting new combat dynamics like decreased chance to hit mobs smalle than you (and do more damage when you make contact, and always crit), increased chance to hit mobs bigger than you (and do less damage, and never crit when you make contact). Embodied tanks not being able to wear any eq/wield ect...

Except that most zones now have lots of mobs that are all bigger than any player race. Jot/Musp/Brass/AP/FP/Avernus/BC/Tia all are primarily populated with huge mobs. You could just choose to have Hylae instead of Hildibble etc. With the smaller pbase, there are tons of people w/ multiple alts of different races. I can see this expanding to just "pick the race that would fair best in the zone based on mob size".

I guess that's not much of an issue, I'm just talking out loud.

You could also point out the eq diversity features. Areas has a hard time introducing new zones with any life unles they add some piece of uber gear; gods generally look disfavorably on the cookie cutter eq outfits (everyone wearing the same best set of eq). Adding 2 or 3 sizes would allow you to give a lot more eq diversity... Sure you could implement "sizes" by restricting racial flags and making them extra heavy, but history shows us that all you have to do is whine and bitch long enough and someone will change it. I believe dscale robes was restricted to smaller than human races at one point.

Typically size has been used w/ encumberance penalties etc. to balance out the agility races from the strength ones as far as AC I thought. I'm not sure this would do a whole lot to actually change anything. Most people pick from one of 3 or 4 different races for most classes because of versatility, not because of equipment that can be worn. Again just talking out loud.

[kiryan]

---size code in combat

I don't see any problem with introducing more dynamics into combat.. the more dynamics, the more areas for innovation, the more areas "balance" to be tweaked in. Its in the complexity of combat that things get interesting.

I mean we could literally just roll one 100 sided die and let combat be decided on that... so why do we go through all the intricacies of engaging casting spells rescuing ect? Because thats where fun occurs. Expand on it.

Your right in that the majority of difficult zones are populated with larger creatures, and while we should be mindful of that, but I think you want to create niches where area designers can expand. Why are most zones large sized mobs? Because they can't be bashed and they hit hard. You can't have great items with out making things hard. bashable casters are easy. Look at what they had to do to seelie court, give them procs otherwise it would've been too easy, you would just bash all the casters. If smaller mobs were harder to bash (or harder to hit or faster casting or something) we might have more zones with < human sized mobs.

Plus realize that depending on the exact implementation of "size code" you could end up with different effects, you could find that elves can't tank giants for crap (because of crits) or you might find finding that giants can't hit elves at all (because of bonus to dodging).

The biggest argument against size code would be that its already implemented in terms of agility and !race flags on equipment. I think we should diversify it some and create a lot of new dynamics that are specific to races (through their characteristics rather than their stats).

---size code in equipment

the biggest problem with race specific eq (or size specific eq) is really the players. god people bitch when they can't wear the brand new best piece of equipment in the game. People will roll alts to take advantage of new equipment, for instance elvenkind / windsong (grey) rock crusher (dwarf) khanjari (human). Is this a bad thing?

One one hand it sucks if your a race that was "best" because of certain eq... on the other hand, if your race was the best then the other races were at a disadvantage... But look at it from a couple of other perspectives. If people are soo horny for the new shiny, they will roll another character... thats them re-using old content... its good and bad.

Not only that re-use in content from re-leveling alts... You get to re-use eq slots... For a long time the hands down best warrior on body wear was spob armor and there was nothing even close to it. That one piece of eq, effectively ruins all other warrior tank on body wear... If spob armor was medium race only, it would've only dominated that slot for medium sized races. If it was human only, then the impact would've been lessed even more.

I am currently of the thought that the more highly specialized a piece of equipment is, the more powerful it should be allowed to be (by a bonus to eq calcr points or a decrease to eq calcr cost).

Another thing is that you may have less "synergy" between items.

If all races could use elvenkind then you implemented a hide item, then all races could sneak and hide, tremendous synergy (sneak is great, hide is great, but sneak and hide is unbelievably great). On the other hand if you implemented a halfling only hide item, then the synergy between the two items is eliminated.

[Shevarash]

MORE DYNAMICS IN COMBAT
New features.

Syntax: varies
Aggessive: usually
Class/Level: All

COMING SOON

[Tasan]

I <3 Shev.

[moritheil]

MORE DYNAMICS IN COMBAT
New features.

Syntax: varies
Aggessive: usually
Class/Level: All

COMING SOON

Hurrah!

[Corth]

Heh, nice bump.

Sometimes I got the impression that 'dynamic' strategies were automatically assumed to be twinking without any further thought. For a while we were doing something I thought was very smart. We would go into a room with a bunch of mobs, try and blind as many as possible, and then the illus would cast tranquility and the fighting would stop, and re-start with only the non-blind mobs fighting.

The tranquility spell was then nerfed to get rid of this 'twink', though I think that sort of dynamic strategy was just the sort of thing that should be encouraged rather than the du jour strategy of having invokers mindlessly drop bombs on the whole room while enchanters and clerics spam out protective and healing spells. The type of combat that wasn't considered twinking seemed boring and kind of mindless.

[Cap'n Touk]

Word. I miss tranq. I miss using ebony to blind mobs. I miss THINKING mid-combat.

[Kegor]

This reminds me of a sweet little piece of code from Homeland.

Homeland was sweet like that with the enchaner spell 'blink'. Could power word blind a mob while a tank was tanking it, and immediately blink them off the mob without teleporting them out of the room. If they weren't engaged in combat that's when blink would teleport them to the next room. Sometimes you had to do it twice when it counted in combat to get them off then get them out, but spell lag was not quite as great so you could do that effectively on every attempt.

[Dalar]

This reminds me of a sweet little piece of code from Homeland.

Homeland was sweet like that with the enchaner spell 'blink'. Could power word blind a mob while a tank was tanking it, and immediately blink them off the mob without teleporting them out of the room. If they weren't engaged in combat that's when blink would teleport them to the next room. Sometimes you had to do it twice when it counted in combat to get them off then get them out, but spell lag was not quite as great so you could do that effectively on every attempt.

This would be an excellent illusionist spell! A spell that checked if the npcs targeting the tank can see or not. If the check fails, the npc disengages.

[Ifin]

???

That was how blink worked on enchanters before here, way back. I guess it was evaluated as too powerful and nerfed (which I can see in a certain circumstances, highest level example being diamond ring twink).