Really we want to come into this assuming everything is flexible.
For instance herb on 5s balance is bad, but if focus is also available it isnt as bad depending on speed. BUT since focus is a group not a select aff you can end up in trouble unless focus always cures from highest. LOTS of little things to work on. Do we even want to balance around focus if we have the option? What is the goal for afflictions per second?
I'll post my thoughts on the overhaul when I have all my info in front of me in a day or two (since things are very pending).
Can we change the OVERHAUL LIST to include the skills of the characters? Even saying "cantor" isnt enough. Because a cantor means starhymn but could be tarot or glamours. These are important!
That's another issue. Aeon should likely be the L5 affliction, rather than 4. The way certain things are building up, my gut instinct is that herb times are too slow at the moment. This in and of itself may be the crucial balance change.
Honestly, I would be quite happy to see the overhaul remove aeon entirely. Not sure how practical that is though.
I would support removing aeon too. Aeon is a unique mechanic to IRE games because of the way the combat system here works, but it really is difficult to balance because of its potency. (I also feel that it affects newbies much, much, much more than experienced combatants, and which makes it a bad thing, though that's debatable, I guess.) I certainly won't miss it if it is deleted, much as removing it may mean losing one of the things other MUD combat systems cannot really replicate.
I didn't think that aeon would make the cut actually.
IMHO, adding progressive affs and slowing down curatives solves the problems that aeon addressed.
It was there to trip up systems and hinder curing to allow for specific set ups. If we are no longer in the space where you can cure 20 affs in a split second and it is going to cause massive balance issues then it may be best to let it go.
Edit: Or maybe change it to make cure balances longer. That way it will have a cure hinder aspect but not be so annoyingly debilitating.
Edit2: For Lerad a straight comparison of aff numbers isn't going to be helpful.
You have to take into account aff caps, the affs being given, their synergies and any secondary effects like our relapsing or bonus damage from carillonknell.
And then the simple fact that an attack that gave 3 1/5 affs of different trees is nothing where as one attack that gave 3/5 from the same tree would be devastating. The new system will be much easier to balance but there is a fair amount of complexity to it. Especially when we are only working with such a limited scope of knowledge.
Considering that afflictions seem broken into spiritual/mental/physical I can see how focus might work. Perhaps have it cure two random levels per use? Though this is, again, a balancing act. For vitals healing, it might be nice to see things simplified a little bit. But we do need to keep in mind also how this would affect people doing PvE things (hunting/influencing) if we remove any aspects there.
Honestly, I'd be happy to see Focuses go away. It's currently a rather big skill tax for combat (you need Focus Mind to be a serious combatant, and your response to certain combos depends strongly on your Focus Body time). Making a large investment in Discipline necessary again for combat would a mistake from a "lowering the bar to be a combatant" point of view.
I think that without some level of alternative semi targeted curing that combat will be pretty formulaic. Just outpace curing to a kill condition. I think that allheale is too untargeted to be enough.
I would rather see it through focus cures in discipline than in beastmastery which requires a much much much higher investment.
To be a serious combatant is always going to take a big investment. I think we should focus on capping that from getting out of control and make sure there is a reasonable entry level niche that is enjoyable and at least moderately effective. If they choose to move up from there then it is their choice to get more involved.
Outpacing curing to a kill condition IS what people do in today's combat, WITH focus factored in normally as part of the rate of curing. Focus mind cannot truly target any specific aff to act as a lock breaker, and with the huge amount of afflictions we have at the moment and the varied ways to reach a kill condition being based on different combinations of those affs, it is both theoretically and also practically impossible to use focus mind as a last-ditch method of avoiding or countering a kill strategy - focus mind is just spammed whenever it can be spammed, as much as it can be spammed, and whatever aff it cures, it's taken as a natural matter of course.
It is a requirement for combat because the current rate of afflicting can be so overwhelming that without focus, there is no strategy to speak of - people just steamroll through and never stop. Focus mind is simply a curing boost.
This is not a bad thing - just note that it can't be used "strategically", and usually isn't, beyond a "spam it as much as your mana can afford to, and when there's something it can cure."
I don't mind seeing it gone or retained in the new system, it doesn't really matter. But if it is retained in the same capacity as it exists now, some consideration should be made to move it down the skillranks, to around green level in lowmagic, at highest.
Hmm, the layered affs might actually amplify your point as even random aff curing will be less and less random. It will always cure the one at the top of the list unless you have more than one aff in the same group and then it's a 50/50 chance and so on.
Putting all 3 focuses on the same balance might add some stratergery to it though. Also, some of the aff groups do not have a type listed and would potentially not be covered by these types of cures.
It's just looking through the affs and the groups I feel we are going to need more tools to work with in balancing these things. Having 3 cure balances to address 27 affliction groups is just not going to be enough without making the balances lightning fast and putting us back where we were.
Also, the aff scaling will need to be looked at. Once you get to higher levels the lower level ones take quite some time to cure out of. When you have some of the minor afflictions for any real time period you can be in big trouble. Then you run into having aeon always coming with command denial and mana drain. Unavoidable aff combos are going to be a beast.
How will hypochondria work? Does it fake the "You receive a <blah> affliction." line or will it work as it does now and only fake symptoms?
Speaking more about these new aff-lines, will we be able to illusion them later on (ie. Will free-form illusions still be a thing?). Trying to gauge how reliable the lines are. At the moment they make it easy to handle most afflicting in 3 lines or so, but if it turns out you can fake them, we'll need to start collecting a lot of skill lines again.
Sorry about the questions! Trying to rush some kind of frankenstein system.
Aff messages tells you what level of aff you have when you get hit with an affliction.
Not sure if coding off of that would cause issues with illusions down the line but if you are slapping a quick and dirty system together it should be fine for now anyway.
Teeny request. Would it be alright if we had lines for sipping choleric and phlegmatic when no afflictions related to it are on you, similar to sanguine's "You have no bleeding afflictions to cure."?
1) Recklessness is too strong of an effect to have so low in the musculature line of afflictions. Maybe consider bumping it higher up?
2) Aeon really should logically be the level 5 affliction. Moreover, being a herb cure means you pretty much have to pre-outrift before battles to have your herbs handy. Outrifting and THEN eating under aeon and jinx is pretty rough stuff. I think it might be a good idea to maybe switch aeon to another category that uses a potion of some kind instead...
Alternatively, we can just remove or reimagine slowing effects altogether. It seems at the moment, curing isn't coming up to pace with afflicting speed. Unless that's tweaked majorly, aeon is just overkill. They're kind of a pain to deal with anyway, but it's up to you guys if you wanna keep the effect.
3) I'm concerned about perfectfifth and earache. How is it working exactly? Doesn't seem like blanknote is clearing truehearing.
4) Aff lines. It's really great that I don't have to track 2000 trigger lines for now. Why not just keep it nicely standard and remove free-form illusions and other kinds of trickery? Please consider it!
5) What are we planning on doing about group combat? It's really important we balance around it, because it is really the most important and prominent form of combat in the game right now. It seems like at the moment, it could go by too fast to be enjoyable unless there are some mitigating factors in groups. What ideas are you toying around with?
6) You say level 5 shouldn't be easily achievable, but it really is seeming like it can be done fairly easily...but I'll hold off for now until my curing is 100% in place. But my limited testing had my frankenstein system struggling to keep up.
Oh! Question! What are the names for the high tier curses and malus affs? We go minor, moderate, major...what are the other two?
Could we have it changed so we can actually see what the level is at on them all, please? I'm guessing the only way round this is to abbreviate some, but whatever is easiest and works would be awesome.
You remember the discussion on width we kept posting about? This is why! If we stick to 80 characters across, some of the defenses/ailments may be truncated.
Blanknote does not remove truehearing, it raises auditory by 2 levels. Truehearing sticks as a defense if you get down to auditory level 1 and at higher levels acts as a small reduction in music damage so it is a sticky defense.
You remember the discussion on width we kept posting about?
Yeah, I suspected as much but then I thought of the situation where you do increase it and a user cannot support such width. That would break things far worse.
I think blanknote should work even on people at level 0 auditory. Else it's a 50/50 whether the bard should open with blanknote or another afflicting thing just so they can bump up to lv1 and blanknote :x
Blanknote deals no auditory that way you can use the current tactic of waiting to use earwort till you need to move. If you could give auditory before then you would never be able to earwort. Dont assume earwort is always up ahead of time!
Ok, after putting a little thought and time into things, here is the main thing I see right now:
As things stand, kills are done in one of two primary ways right now. Either raw, simple damage, often supplied by wounding by a monk, excessive bleeding, or a meteor, or by causing a curing lock of potency enough that you can then achieve a kill through some sort of instant (thornrend, soulless, ruptured gut, succumb stick to allow toadcurse) method.
What we're potentially looking at right now is a major paradigm shift from curing locks to a more overwhelming number of afflictions. This in and of itself is not bad, but what we need to consider is how this will permit kills. The shells are, at present, L80. This in some senses does not permit us to test things to a proper conclusion, considering the general balance is considered at a level of Demigod.
What I will say is this: We need to consider whether we're going to look at a combination of afflictions that would permit a lock - and if so whether we could design something to avoid the lock, or otherwise permit curing out of it - or some other method of ensuring a kill takes place. Things like Perfect Fifth help to a degree, though as they're designed presently within the overhaul it would be nigh impossible to escape before they could kill you with that, or with a deathsong.
Considering the nature of kills, I see things working primarily in a few ways right now:
1) Affliction Locks (Green Locks/Aeon) that prevent curing, permitting the opponent to kill with an instant, or something timed.
2) Cure Stacking - overloads of certain afflictions that use the same cure/have similar effects to allow a kill time to work.
3) Damage Overload - This exists primarily for bards, astrologists, and monks right now, with some warriors as well.
All three of these are viable, with most classes relying upon either affliction locks or uncurable/heavily stacked afflictions to kill, including those who are occasionally able to kill with damage or bleeding.
In order for us to really evaluate the overhaul, I think we need to ask; Do we intend to keep locks available, or are those going to disappear with the new affliction sets? It looks like they still might be available, but now set with afflictions that exist towards the L4/5 end of the affliction chart. If so, what form will skills like Green/Gedulah/Moondance Full/Akhkrak take in the new system? Will they provide a general lowering of affliction level, or cure certain things? It could be very easy to over or underpower them, and until we get these common skills (including focus abilities) decided it will be nigh impossible to consider balance.
Personally, for the sake of simplification/ease of entry I would like to see things such as focus and beast curing disappear. If power locks remain, something like green MUST exist to allow us a cure out of them, or it'll just be a race to reach the lock the fastest - and it'll make group combat decidedly dull when you're shot to a lock almost instantly. If power locks do not remain... Well, we'll still need to work a bit on afflictions regardless. But removing things that would allow locks would be crucial. I am admittedly very curious to see how poisons turn out.
Damage kills are something I would like to once again see as viable in this system. This could be through afflictions that reduce maximum health (or mana/ego) to a reasonable value to permit a kill, or afflictions that drastically increase damage, such as sensitivity does now. A combination of the two would be quite acceptable as well in my mind. But if so, we need to consider damage formulas as well. We don't want anybody reaching a damage kill without some effort, be it a warrior who pressures a person to use health applications instead of sipping, or a bard reducing maximum health by 40% before pulling off a Discordant Chord with some sort of additional damage cause, or a wiccan who uses hexes or astrology to reduce a target's ability to heal themselves and increasing their sensitivity to damage while a few potent moonfires or nightgazes drop their health in a few hits.
For damage kills, I reiterate that I think some setup is absolutely crucial if we're talking personal combat. Groups will cause damage quickly, but I'd like to see things worked out so that damage is once again a viable option for most classes, as it was in the days before common demigods.
Then there's affliction stacking. Please let us get rid of uncurable afflictions of all sorts. I'm fine with things causing passive afflictions that last a while. That, to me, isn't an affliction but is a boost to offense. (Moon Dark, Grey Whispers, Time Echoes). But things that have a notable, direct detrimental effect upon the target while remaining impossible to remove (such as old Bad Luck) are just not too fun or skillful to use in combat. Less fire and forget, more strategic usage of skills to achieve a kill. Insanity and Timewarp kills are better in my mind, due to the way that they require you to build or burst the afflictions to a certain level, and in doing so they allow you to stack other afflictions through cures. Sure, they cure first, but if you have a horehound/focus mind cure that you really need gone, and you have any level of those things, it comes in handy. It can help particularly well with locks, of course.
I suppose the main thing that came to mind that spurred on this train of thought was the case of Succumb. There is no question that Succumb is exceptionally powerful, causing rapid, potent mana drains if left uncured. The issue being that it is fairly easy to cure, unless you have the target held back by an aeonlock of some sort - be it astrology supported with anorexia/impatience, or a sleeplock of hexes. Healers are mostly SOL unless they figure out timing and hindrance perfectly for aurawarp. Which isn't to say it hasn't been done...
Anyway, Succumb. For a skill so crucial, how would it work in something like this new system? There's leaky aura to cause mana drain, at a low level of the auric afflictions. But that's a minimal drain from what I saw, certainly not something on the level of efficacy as succumb. Yet succumb is how an MD brings about a toad curse. Will there be ways to stack afflictions to keep succumb from being cured, or will it be the L4/5 of an affliction tree not yet designed, unique to Moon? Unique affliction trees for certain skillsets might even be reasonable, as long as cures aren't kept overwhelming.
I've yet to come up with a solution in my head, but I wanted to offer the question to people, to think about how things would work with the Overhaul. Please, shoot out ideas!
I will admit that I'm skeptical about affliction trees unique to skillsets, as it brings the concept of bloating right back into it, which is a large part of what we're trying to avoid here.
(Fixed my stupid wording error. I hate when I can't recall a word and the wrong one goes into place. Silly brain!)
Comments
I'm sure we'll keep allheale and beast curing in some manner.
Not sure what vitals healing options are.
It is a requirement for combat because the current rate of afflicting can be so overwhelming that without focus, there is no strategy to speak of - people just steamroll through and never stop. Focus mind is simply a curing boost.
This is not a bad thing - just note that it can't be used "strategically", and usually isn't, beyond a "spam it as much as your mana can afford to, and when there's something it can cure."
I don't mind seeing it gone or retained in the new system, it doesn't really matter. But if it is retained in the same capacity as it exists now, some consideration should be made to move it down the skillranks, to around green level in lowmagic, at highest.
GMCP aff messages completed too?
/a hopeful person
It's defintely worth considering and certainly something a lot of us would like to see [completed].
You are:
Affliction Type Cure
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Merian Fire Damage Defense Mal Fire Damage Defense Malus, Lvl Inherent
Merian Electrical Damage Defen Electrical Damage Defense Malu Inherent
Entanglement Entangled, Lvl 1 Writhe
Spasms Musculature, Lvl 4 Eat Yarrow
Moderate Bleeding Bleeding, Lvl 3 Drink Sanguine
Sun Allergy Skin, Lvl 4 Eat Arnica
Leaky Aura Aura, Lvl 1 Eat Reishi
Confusion Delusions, Lvl 1 Eat Pennyroyal
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Could we have it changed so we can actually see what the level is at on them all, please? I'm guessing the only way round this is to abbreviate some, but whatever is easiest and works would be awesome.
Thanks.
Alternatively: *cough* gmcp aff keys *cough*
Blanknote does not remove truehearing, it raises auditory by 2 levels. Truehearing sticks as a defense if you get down to auditory level 1 and at higher levels acts as a small reduction in music damage so it is a sticky defense.