But the Others approach the Wall! We must be prepared!
Viravain, Lady of the Thorns shouts, "And You would seize Me? Fool! I am the Glomdoring! I am the Wyrd, and beneath the cloak of Night, the shadows of the Silent stir!"
I suppose one positive about this whole no-state concept is that new races can now be introduced much more easily without the need for balancing out stats.
I'm concerned then about the vast amounts of the special brews I have (argleblaster and fruitpizzazz). Hoping I get some sort of conversion to something significant post-overhaul. I specifically bought curios one at a time to hoard the suckers.
Both have a conversion into the new system. The old +health now works on the /10 Health buff scale, the old +stats has a perk attached that acts similar to (but not as awesome as) a truefavour.
It won't stack with a Truefavour nor they with themselves.
@Baelor when you say with themselves, do you mean sipping multiples of the same? or you mean I can't just drink kiwi/golden/argle/pizzazz all at once anymore?
I'm guessing they'll stack, but up to a certain cap. Ie. if TF's take you to say, 6/10 for health buffs, then tonics may go an additional 2/10 or something for a total of 8/10.
Both Argleblasters and Truefavours stack fine with everything else.
We've stated that a large part of this overhaul was to remove outliers, instances where players were fortunate to stack two, three or even more Truefavours often unbalanced combat, this is going to prevent that. We want to keep Truefavours awesome, that getting them makes a difference and encourages players to work for one and feel rewarded should they get it, but at the same time we didn't want to penalise those who don't have access to them. Argleblasters have the same bonuses to offensive damage and damage reduction as a Truefavour but do not grant the extra H/M/E regeneration.
This gives players without access to Truefavours a way to even things out in combat as a temporary measure, while still keeping the advantage of Truefavours (as well as the mitigation that was the old 15% damage reduction, which has been converted into the new system and does stack with the TF bonus)
The Gods haven't been nerfed, you can still have more than one Truefavour active, but the second and so on will offer little mechanically.
And before people state that everyone has access to truefavours, no they don't. I've only been given 3 favours ever and two of those were the time I was in Mysrai's order having offered billions of essence. The third was Nocht for some reason truefavouring me for chopping Glomdoring's elders.
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
Yes, everyone has access to truefavors. Everyone. All orgs have active gods that will dole them out for offerings. Whether you choose to offer for them or not is your choice, but you can, and that by defintion is access.
That being said, the only real imbalancing aspect of the truefavor was the damage mitigation. Now they kind of suck but better than nothing.
So here's my biggest concern with all of this: we're taking the emphasis off of in game, accessible to everyone buffs, and have now moved it to artifacts which are far less accessible. Outliers might have been toned down, but now the outliers and biggest players are just going to be artifact machines rather than people who knew and took advantage of the game mechanics. I have a huge issue with this. One of the greatest things about Lusternia when I moved over from Achaea is that I didn't instantly need thousands in credits for artifacts to compete with the higher tiers, and I competed successfully for many years with minimal artifacts. I've built them up over time, but I'm still pretty lightly artied. Now we're requiring artifacts for the best racial perks, for the best mitigation, for the best damage buffs, everything.
So the old issue was people who knew how to stack blessing and artifacts having such an enormous advantage over those that did not, and now it's just people who can stack artifacts having a huge advantage over those that do not in the form of 9% more damage and 9% less mitigation, on top of some pretty out of this world racial perks. I don't think we've really solved the outlier problem. We just sold it for credits.
Iunno. Think I'm top three for Vira and I haven't seen a favor. Nocht isn't really active to offer to that I understand. Shikky is same. Oh... Right, Manny. I forget about him. Going to have to start throwing corpses his way.
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Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
Nocht is active. Vira favors heavily, but like I said, sometimes they get busy! Then there's always Manteekan who is awesome. I'm not talking like..a month or two where your god gets busy IRL so favors get light. Over an extended period of time, everyone has access to TFs.
I can tell you Vira hands them out generously if you are putting forth the effort to interact with her.
Requires a convergence of login times, and I'm fairly certain she's evenings, EST, since I've normally caught her in the afternoons when I'm logged on at work when it's slow.
I'm not complaining. I usually run around without TFS, and if I happen to have one, that's just extra gravy piled on. I'm just stating that merely offering a ton is no indicator of whether or not you'll have a favor given.
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Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
You can interact through prayer! It's one sided sometimes, but it lets a god know you are interested. TF or no TF, I encourage prayers for players looking to be more involved with their gods. Just flowery prayers, let them know what you are doing. They aren't really omniscient obviously.
My counter point is that I've only very rarely had an issue getting a TF if I wanted one. There was always an active god I could split offerings with that would dole them out. I ran around with doubles from Shikari and Nocht at times even. The good news is TFs are much less impactful now either way.
The issue isn't that having a Truefavour made you an outlier, it's that having several gave people fortunate to have access to multiple active divine a distinct and somewhat broken advantage.
When redoing Truefavours I wanted to make having one be something you noticed, that getting one would be awesome, and for those who can't get them, there's options to get a short term bonus that isn't as good but almost quite as good as a Truefavour.
The stacking was leading to various scenarios we didn't like, while capping how far players can reach now to within more balanced levels, and removing certain multipliers entirely. We don't want to encourage a scenario where some people feel the need to play up to Divine that they wouldn't ICly entreat, for the sake of levelling the playing field in combat.
This isn't about the accessibility of getting a single Truefavour, if it were, we'd simply make them a non issue in terms of combat benefit.
TF's didn't really stack that egregiously. The damage reduction specifically didn't stack and the stat bonus was capped and tapered by buff system (plus most people could max their primary stat anyway).
Sure, you could boost your health/mana/ego a bit higher, and increase damage by a smidge, but nothing terrible
There was early concern that Elfen and Faeling regeneration perks were not on par with the other racial abilities, with their limited terrain and with how easy it is to otherwise cap out regeneration. Is that still on anyone's radar?
For reference, before the racial perks are in, I'm currently capped out at 10 heath regeneration with three 'overflow' levels of regen. I also already have 7 levels of mana regen. Half of the demigod bonus to mana will be wasted on my character, all of the health regen will be.
True... also for naturey types our regens are also typically super situational and there's a lot of overlap.
I don't think there's really a "baseline" for totems users especially. River, Sun, Moon, Tree... they're all based on really specific conditions. (Tree requires like... a totem for your commune... it wouldn't even cover all of Serenwilde)
It'd probably be better to look at the regens as a whole and then consider elfen/faeling in that context cause like... my "maximum" regen would require like... sun and a full moon in the sky at the same time while I'm standing in a river (specifically) with a totem beside me. So yeah, I doubt I've ever really received a benefit from River and it's only slightly more likely that I've received one from Tree but I don't have many memories of fighting someone near a Seren Totem.
When redoing Truefavours I wanted to make having one be something you noticed, that getting one would be awesome, and for those who can't get them, there's options to get a short term bonus that isn't as good but almost quite as good as a Truefavour.
The stacking was leading to various scenarios we didn't like, while capping how far players can reach now to within more balanced levels, and removing certain multipliers entirely. We don't want to encourage a scenario where some people feel the need to play up to Divine that they wouldn't ICly entreat, for the sake of levelling the playing field in combat.
This isn't about the accessibility of getting a single Truefavour, if it were, we'd simply make them a non issue in terms of combat benefit.
I agree with Synkarin on this. Unless there was some hidden benefit we weren't seeing. The benefits for TF were mostly damage reduction (which is why I always would much rather have a long HF then a much shorter TF), a point here and there that because of weighting may or may not have had some effect, alters skills, and a bit of xp on expiration.
Multiple ones were nice for skills (one could for instance not trans a tradeskill and make the skill item when you had a few tfs). This doesn't break anything or create outliers (not that anyone said it does).
The stats could give a bit more con when stacked. But I'm with Synkarin, stacking with other stuff maybe, but stacking TFs shouldn't have been creating outliers.
If you want to keep single TFs 'awesome' giving them the damage shield vs denizens only back would be one way.
It also might be interesting to let those with favours to temporarily gain powers from that deity.
beseech x for zap <person>. //flavour zap by the deity.
beseech x for resurrect <person>.
etc.
They could even be limited to once per month and should cost order essence or personal karma like shrine powers.
I'm wondering if we can get any clarification on the Native Weapon abilities some of the races have (e.g., kephera). I realize that some races already have this; will they essentially be getting the same thing, or will it be changing with the overhaul? Are there any specifics available with regards to what it means to "use a weapon more effectively"?
In the past, it used to just add some weapon stat points if you're that race and wielding its associated weapon. I'm not familiar with the warrior ones, but the monk races (illithoid/keph) added +5 to all three stats. it was marginally useful at best (speed is the only stat worth anything for monks, and at 5 points, made a negligible difference). Of course, when stacked with level 3 stat runes, the difference became slightly more noticeable, though going by personal experience, still not quite fast enough to compare with aslaran.
Pending any changes to weaponry via the warrior updates, though (weapon stats are probably going away) the bonuses will likely have to be adjusted as well. I suppose we could make it be a damage enhancement effect? Since I don't really like the idea of speeding things up, after all, we just went down this no-stat route to remove that from aslarans.
Comments
Truefavours will not stack with themselves.
Both Argleblasters and Truefavours stack fine with everything else.
We've stated that a large part of this overhaul was to remove outliers, instances where players were fortunate to stack two, three or even more Truefavours often unbalanced combat, this is going to prevent that. We want to keep Truefavours awesome, that getting them makes a difference and encourages players to work for one and feel rewarded should they get it, but at the same time we didn't want to penalise those who don't have access to them. Argleblasters have the same bonuses to offensive damage and damage reduction as a Truefavour but do not grant the extra H/M/E regeneration.
This gives players without access to Truefavours a way to even things out in combat as a temporary measure, while still keeping the advantage of Truefavours (as well as the mitigation that was the old 15% damage reduction, which has been converted into the new system and does stack with the TF bonus)
The Gods haven't been nerfed, you can still have more than one Truefavour active, but the second and so on will offer little mechanically.
I'm not complaining. I usually run around without TFS, and if I happen to have one, that's just extra gravy piled on. I'm just stating that merely offering a ton is no indicator of whether or not you'll have a favor given.
When redoing Truefavours I wanted to make having one be something you noticed, that getting one would be awesome, and for those who can't get them, there's options to get a short term bonus that isn't as good but almost quite as good as a Truefavour.
The stacking was leading to various scenarios we didn't like, while capping how far players can reach now to within more balanced levels, and removing certain multipliers entirely. We don't want to encourage a scenario where some people feel the need to play up to Divine that they wouldn't ICly entreat, for the sake of levelling the playing field in combat.
This isn't about the accessibility of getting a single Truefavour, if it were, we'd simply make them a non issue in terms of combat benefit.
True... also for naturey types our regens are also typically super situational and there's a lot of overlap.
I don't think there's really a "baseline" for totems users especially. River, Sun, Moon, Tree... they're all based on really specific conditions. (Tree requires like... a totem for your commune... it wouldn't even cover all of Serenwilde)
It'd probably be better to look at the regens as a whole and then consider elfen/faeling in that context cause like... my "maximum" regen would require like... sun and a full moon in the sky at the same time while I'm standing in a river (specifically) with a totem beside me. So yeah, I doubt I've ever really received a benefit from River and it's only slightly more likely that I've received one from Tree but I don't have many memories of fighting someone near a Seren Totem.
I agree with Synkarin on this. Unless there was some hidden benefit we weren't seeing. The benefits for TF were mostly damage reduction (which is why I always would much rather have a long HF then a much shorter TF), a point here and there that because of weighting may or may not have had some effect, alters skills, and a bit of xp on expiration.
Multiple ones were nice for skills (one could for instance not trans a tradeskill and make the skill item when you had a few tfs). This doesn't break anything or create outliers (not that anyone said it does).
The stats could give a bit more con when stacked. But I'm with Synkarin, stacking with other stuff maybe, but stacking TFs shouldn't have been creating outliers.
If you want to keep single TFs 'awesome' giving them the damage shield vs denizens only back would be one way.
It also might be interesting to let those with favours to temporarily gain powers from that deity.
beseech x for zap <person>. //flavour zap by the deity.
beseech x for resurrect <person>.
etc.
They could even be limited to once per month and should cost order essence or personal karma like shrine powers.