Game balancing suggestion

[villager]

If it gets way out of control, I'm up for another character wipe.

Then you could possibly redo the gold situation. I like the idea of everyone "forced" to buy leather armor as a starters armor by making all the other armor out of reach (That means no Platemail spawning in chests. I'm tired of seeing stuff you have to buy for 1k in an easy to reach chest, makes money even more pointless. That goes for all the other high value store bought weapons and gear, it spawns like candy outside of Edana, Helena and Deralia)

I liked the idea of a scimitar costing 1,000 gold in MS, an more ideal weapon price. (Maybe not 1,000g in MS:C but certainly not 40g.)

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

If it gets way out of control, I'm up for another character wipe.

1) We never had one.
2) No.
3) You'll scare off half the community by saying stuff like this.

 

[Lanethan]

Nah, just delete everybody's gold. Add a Tax Collector NPC to Edana who explains that none of y'all been paying taxes for your whole lives and now the King wants his due. Shazaam!

I see right and wrong on both sides of this argument:

Camping for rare items and striving to be the best of the best is certainly a valid way to play the game, as it is in essence what these kinds of RPGs are about in the "end game." Other typical activities in the "end game" include PVP and total quest completion, but in our current system PVP isn't really too viable an option and total quest completion is likely done by nearly everybody who gets to that high of a level simply because there aren't that many quests. So rare hunting seems to be the most applicable and fun activity for higher level characters right now, and it should be encouraged/strengthened or alternatives provided, rather than blanket statements like: "You don't need to play that character anymore."

However, exploration and experiencing the diversity of the world and how your character functions is the essence of what Mastersword in particular is about. Personally I think that the beginning levels (1-10) go by much too quickly, the early levels go by too quick (10-20), the mid levels go by slightly too fast (20-30), and the high levels feel approximately right to me. The only issue is that in the beginning and early levels there isn't nearly enough content to keep things new and interesting if we slow the progression down. This is why, on the custom content board, the post about the hidden shrine excites me, because it is low level content with the idea of enriching what I think needs the most work in MS:C.

Just my two cents.

 

[The Man In Black]

And what if no one talks to him/goes to edana? ;-)

 

[Lanethan]

He should just pop up in dungeons too. MWahahahaha.

 

[The Man In Black]

Yes, that would work well:

"Alright guys, are you ready to take down Atho-- What the hell?! Is that GMan?!"
"Give...me your..mon..ey....Dr. ManInBlack"

 

[Thothie]

Heh, the economy reset doesn't involve any NPC. If/when it gets implemented, your gold will just suddenly vanish.

But, as I've screamed a thousand times before: There will be no character wipe so long as I'm working on this project. (Gold wipe is as far as I'm willing to go, even then, I think we'll put it to a vote.)

 

[villager]

If it gets way out of control, I'm up for another character wipe.

1) We never had one.
2) No.
3) You'll scare off half the community by saying stuff like this.

1) MS to MS:C was considered as a "Character wipe"
2) It'd be a lot better than keeping all the exploits to myself
3) Scaring off half the community (Which is impossible, half of the community doesn't look at the forums) would consist of Thothie agreeing with me (Which I also, extremely doubt.).
*4) Hardly anyone is making any suggestion to fix this "issue" other than to make rares easier to get and to make level 30s and 40s easier to level.

 

[Thothie]

We lost 90% of the community the month after someone started a character wipe vote, and one of the developers said it was indeed going to happen (march 2006). We went from eight servers, totally packed, every day, to three servers almost always empty in that same month. Most of those guys never came back and we still haven't fully recovered.

So not only will I not allow a character wipe under my watch, yer lucky I even let you post about it (and I may not in the future).

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

If it gets way out of control, I'm up for another character wipe.

1) We never had one.
2) No.
3) You'll scare off half the community by saying stuff like this.

1) MS to MS:C was considered as a "Character wipe"

Hahahaha!!!

2) It'd be a lot better than keeping all the exploits to myself

I don't get it. Is this some inside joke?

3) Scaring off half the community (Which is impossible, half of the community doesn't look at the forums) would consist of Thothie agreeing with me (Which I also, extremely doubt.).

We lost 90% of the community the month after someone started a character wipe vote, and one of the developers said it was indeed going to happen (march 2006). We went from eight servers, totally packed, every day, to three servers almost always empty in that same month. Most of those guys never came back and we still haven't fully recovered.

*S-L-A-P*

*4) Hardly anyone is making any suggestion to fix this "issue" other than to make rares easier to get and to make level 30s and 40s easier to level.

Still better suggestions than a character reset.

 

[Gurluas]

I have ideas to add quests to the old maps, but if i know thothie well...he will never allow me to make a quest... "sigh"

but i still think , more quests in old maps is the way

 

[Evaan]

That's my next task after weapon balancing.
I already have some ideas in mind that I hope will work out quite well.

 

[Thothie]

he will never allow me to make a quest... "sigh"

Wonder who he's talking about. Couldn't be the guy he sent dozens of broken scripts to. Granted, I don't recall any scripts submitted from you in regards to existing maps.

If ya have a quest *idea* you can run it by Evaan - provided its something simple. At the moment I'm kinda tied up with the more complicated beasties.

Granted, I've a few complicated quests I'd like to add, I just dunno when I'm going to get to it.

 

[Jelly]

I was playing the_keep with some guys when EVILX suggested that you should get exp from healing other players. I actually think that's a quite good idea.

 

[The Man In Black]

It WOULD be a good idea if it wasn't exploitable.

Player 1 jumps from the top of bloodrose
Player 2 heals
Rinse and repeat

 

[Evaan]

You know, as someone gets experience based on how much damage he does, when the creature dies, the healer should get experience based on how much damage he heals.

 

[Gurluas]

The only reason the scripts were broken are because all references i have are old 1.4 beta scripts.

 

[The Man In Black]

You know, as someone gets experience based on how much damage he does, when the creature dies, the healer should get experience based on how much damage he heals.

I'm not saying the idea is bad. I'm saying you won't be able to implement it without it being exploitable.

 

[HomestarR]

Example, someone stands there and gets beat on by a rat, and the other player heals him. This continues for 5 hours.

 

[Jelly]

If the amount of hp you healed gets turned into exp (heal for 15 to get 15 exp) it wouldn't make much of a difference. 15 exp isn't all that much.

 

[Thothie]

I almost like the idea of giving the healer a fraction of the XP the target player gets when said target player kills a monster. But there's also no way to implement that. 'Sides, if I gave the XP to Divination, I'd have to nerf rebuke or something.

 

[Evaan]

Example, someone stands there and gets beat on by a rat, and the other player heals him. This continues for 5 hours.

I meant of course that the experience is based off of the experience the monster has, and you get the experience when the monster dies, based on how much HP you healed, instead of how much damage you dealt.

Let me put it simpler and easier to understand:

Monster has 100 Health
Player A attacks for 10 Damage
Player B also can attack for 10 damage, but also heals for 10 health points.

Player A decides to attack monster. Takes 10 hits to kill it.
During the fight, he is wounded for 40 damage, which is healed by Player B.

When the monster dies, the attacker gets experience based on 60 damage, while Player B gets experience value as if he attacked the monster for 40 damage.

 

[Gurluas]

I almost like the idea of giving the healer a fraction of the XP the target player gets when said target player kills a monster. But there's also no way to implement that. 'Sides, if I gave the XP to Divination, I'd have to nerf rebuke or something.

You can readd protection

 

[Thothie]

Eh, that'd be even worse (about 7x worse, to be exact).

Monster has 100 Health
Player A attacks for 10 Damage
Player B also can attack for 10 damage, but also heals for 10 health points.

Tis more along the lines what I was at... I was thinking, actually:
Player A hits monster X
Player B heals Player A
When monster X dies, Player B gets XP as if he had done the same amount of damage to monster X as he healed Player A for.

So if Player A kills a rat (5hp, 3XP, no armor), and is healed by Player B for 14pts during the battle, both players get 3 XP.

If Player A kills Atholo (7000hp, 800XP, 50% armor), and is healed by Player B for 1000hp during the battle, Player A gets 1200XP, and Player B gets 171XP ( 1000hp healed / monster's 7000hp = 0.142... * 1200XP = 171XP)

( Granted, that assumes Player A can solo Atholo while Player B heals him - and sfaik - only J-M and Jelly could pull that stunt. )

But this is all moot, again, there's no way to implement this currently, and even if there were, it'd also have to be after some sort of adjustment to the magic system.

 

[elfstone222]

Bah, gimme a pot of protect and keep me ice sheilded and he can wail on me all day, so long as he doesn't knock me and my healer into the abyss.

I like ANY idea that promotes support roles, right now the only time I have incentive to go support is either a) when I can't do anything useful b) when I'm trying to train sc in groups or c) when crap is dying so fast I have to tage enemies with AoE's just to get any exp.