mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 20, 2019 13:33:08 GMT -5
The big clue here that the peraine change was a reactive change meant as a response to some players' in-game behavior is that the change was made by Brokkr. Nessalin practically never runs a mortal PC and Nathvaan sometimes does, but Brokkr runs mortal PCs the most of the three Producers. Really makes you think.
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Post by shakes on Oct 20, 2019 13:41:38 GMT -5
Grouping is problematic. I don't always feel like talking to people or doing much in the way of group roleplay. Sometimes I just want to hack something up or roam around in my desert survival simulator.
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Post by shakes on Oct 20, 2019 13:50:35 GMT -5
The big clue here that the peraine change was a reactive change meant as a response to some players' in-game behavior is that the change was made by Brokkr. Nessalin practically never runs a mortal PC and Nathvaan sometimes does, but Brokkr runs mortal PCs the most of the three Producers. Really makes you think. I feel like I have heard a little bit OOC about this going on, and I don't think it's related to Brokkr's mortal getting offed. I think it's a change that they felt should be implemented, but just didn't get it right in doing so. It's based on some in game actions by a particular individual (I think, this isn't gospel), but I think for realism purposes most people would agree a change needed to happen. I expect some revision of these changes to come down the pipe soon. They're way too aggressive. Not the poison decay one, but the NPC changes.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 20, 2019 14:34:07 GMT -5
The big clue here that the peraine change was a reactive change meant as a response to some players' in-game behavior is that the change was made by Brokkr. Nessalin practically never runs a mortal PC and Nathvaan sometimes does, but Brokkr runs mortal PCs the most of the three Producers. Really makes you think. I feel like I have heard a little bit OOC about this going on, and I don't think it's related to Brokkr's mortal getting offed. I think it's a change that they felt should be implemented, but just didn't get it right in doing so. It's based on some in game actions by a particular individual (I think, this isn't gospel), but I think for realism purposes most people would agree a change needed to happen. I expect some revision of these changes to come down the pipe soon. They're way too aggressive. Not the poison decay one, but the NPC changes. Regarding the NPC changes... it's not like Armageddon doesn't have a test server. The "Ginka" server is the live server (ginka.armageddon.org) but there's also a "Horta" server that's a server for testing code. What I'd like to know is how much testing was done on Horta before the code got pushed to Ginka, and who tested it. Did staff participate in the code tests, and if so, who? Or was it like 99.9% of code changes where Nessalin tries to get staff to test the code and the other 15 staff members are too lazy to bother?
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Post by Prime Minister Sinister on Oct 20, 2019 15:03:01 GMT -5
I feel like I have heard a little bit OOC about this going on, and I don't think it's related to Brokkr's mortal getting offed. I think it's a change that they felt should be implemented, but just didn't get it right in doing so. It's based on some in game actions by a particular individual (I think, this isn't gospel), but I think for realism purposes most people would agree a change needed to happen. I expect some revision of these changes to come down the pipe soon. They're way too aggressive. Not the poison decay one, but the NPC changes. Regarding the NPC changes... it's not like Armageddon doesn't have a test server. The "Ginka" server is the live server (ginka.armageddon.org) but there's also a "Horta" server that's a server for testing code. What I'd like to know is how much testing was done on Horta before the code got pushed to Ginka, and who tested it. Did staff participate in the code tests, and if so, who? Or was it like 99.9% of code changes where Nessalin tries to get staff to test the code and the other 15 staff members are too lazy to bother? i could see them hopping on to make sure the aggro worked and little else without even thinking about the possibility of roving deathsquads of wildlife.
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sneazy
Clueless newb
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Post by sneazy on Oct 20, 2019 15:20:00 GMT -5
The first person to lead a huge pack of turaals into Luirs should get +3 karma. I don't know why I'm laughing about this (there used to be a place where the turaal would stack up about 6 in a room).
If it's all about the kryl glands, why not just create new hidden sneaky guard mobs, kryllettes, out there so a solo ranger can't get close? I remember enjoying that feeling of going out there solo, taking them down, until I met a HG warrior that would just walk in and kill them all.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 20, 2019 15:43:56 GMT -5
why not just create new hidden sneaky guard mobs, kryllettes Staff are volunteers, stop expecting work from them. /s
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Post by shakes on Oct 20, 2019 17:32:25 GMT -5
Heh. Clearly Brokkr WILL do the work. But this was a complex change with unseen ramifications. I've made worse changes in mud coding. I remember when I was coding Wolf Days, I implemented this big chunk of code that had to do with equipment you wear wearing and "weather effects". During winter when it would get cold you had to layer on clothes to keep body parts from freezing. But I fucked it up and deployed it right before I was gone for a week on deployment. Came back to all the players (what few of them there were) either dead from frostbite or huddled in the tavern around the fire, afraid to step outside.
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punished ppurg
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Post by punished ppurg on Oct 20, 2019 22:56:50 GMT -5
There are a few things that can be done on the coded side to balance this out. I'm just going to spitball. Maybe these are implemented, maybe they're not. Free ideas.
- Add a flat difficulty to firing through crowded rooms. Or for instance, firing from an outdoors room to an indoors room. Penalty for using a bow indoors. These sorts of things can nerf archery. Or, more clearly, simulate the variables of archery which is on its face a very naive implementation of a distant-room damage proc.
- Add a penalty depending on the weather to using archery code outdoors. Add a penalty based on light level. Maybe even add a bonus for ideal archery conditions.
- Set a heartbeat proc to wilderness mobs that will despawn them if they group up. Make it trigger before hibernation, maybe 10 minutes after gathering. If more than 3 tarantulas are in a room, make the rest disappear. If more than 3 raptors are in a room, make them walk in a random direction (that isn't a cliff obviously). This would break up the deathstacks that are getting reportedly formed. Very simple implementation. The zone controller will reseed them back into the area in time. You could even have it do so "instantly". This hits all the nails on the head of "there's unpredictable enemies in all dangerous spots": not the current situation of "there's a deathstack of enemies in the most unpredictable spot". Bad game design.
- While you're on that, set the same heartbeat proc on soldiers and guards in Allanak. If there's more than 3 half giant soldiers in a room, the heartbeat proc will make the rest wander off back into the virtual world. Solved.
- Have some of the wild beasties on Zalanthas run "away" from the archery hit and attempt to hide, rather than death-charging the archer in every single scenario. You could have a hard-coded hostility variable for each beastie, and have it go up progressively to near-certain aggression after multiple arrow hits. Should a bahamet be concerned if an arrow enters its room and misses? Would a mekillot? I wouldn't think so.
The thing about poisons is clearly to set a "level playing field" for the folks who can't log in and farm all the time. I think level playing fields are dandy. I think the no-lifers need to lose every benefit they can derive from the game by exploiting their knowledge over the perspective a new player brings to the game. I wish more things happened to the tune of the spice / poison / food rotting.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 21, 2019 6:02:14 GMT -5
There's a hidden command in the game known as "pulse" that scripts use to activate every second or so. Staff could easily write a script that attaches to some object in the staff zone and checks every room in the game for NPCs, then moves them around or removes them as needed. Other master systems like SimDesert and apartments already use master objects to track time-based activities, so it is not so far outside the realm of possibility to soft-code these features as a script if hard-coding it isn't an option. I look forward to wildlife and half-giants that respect each other's personal space any time now. It's most likely just a few lines of Javascript, so if those NPCs congregating isn't a desired effect, it should be fixed any time now... The thing about poisons is clearly to set a "level playing field" for the folks who can't log in and farm all the time. I think level playing fields are dandy. I think the no-lifers need to lose every benefit they can derive from the game by exploiting their knowledge over the perspective a new player brings to the game. I wish more things happened to the tune of the spice / poison / food rotting. Level playing fields are definitely good. But changes like this pull everyone's ability to farm down, so naturally the people who have the most time to spend on the game are affected the least. If your only job in life is to log in to Armageddon and farm jade glands, then you are going to have a way better time amassing kryl poison than some random grebber who occasionally gets a chance to ride to the Thornlands every other week. Jobless player of a hunter just puts in more hours a day to hunt and less time to sleep, and gainful employment player of a hunter just stores and plays something he or she can handle with the time they have. There are just other ways to go about making it difficult for hardcore players to amass resources without harming casual players equivalently. An example implemented in browser-based text games is some sort of action point system. Everyone needs action points to act, but action points regen at the same rate for everyone. You could make an action point system where skinning (and other actions) take action points, you could make a system where skinning animals offers diminishing returns over time, or you could make it so that large stacks of food/poison rot faster than smaller stacks. All of these ideas would be better than the rot code as it exists right now.
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Post by lechuck on Oct 21, 2019 7:18:18 GMT -5
I'd have preferred if they changed the way peraine works instead of just making it disappear if you try to store it. That's the lazy solution, just like with spice. Instead of being such an all-or-nothing ordeal, make it work more like heramide. Zalanthan physiologies are supposed to be way tougher than ours, and the idea of a poison that instantaneously renders you 100% immobile is a bit ridiculous. Peraine is too cheesy, too uncounterable and too easy to use. If you get hit with it, you have a <5% chance to not just be hopelessly dead. It's so overpowered that some players started trying to build up their poison resistance by dosing themselves regularly over a period of time, which staff of course cracked down on because apparently they haven't heard of the numerous real-life historical individuals who did just that.
In a game where generations of coders have continuously taken steps to weed out easy killshots, two things are apparently sacred: the retarded nature of bludgeoning weapons and stun, and the unstoppable instadeath peraine poison. You have a tiny chance to break free when struck in combat, but I've been on the receiving end of it about six times throughout the years and never had that happen. Once you're paralyzed, you basically are dead if the other guy intends to kill you. That sort of killing power should not kick in instantly, given that it's usable by literally anyone who can hold a dagger. Nerf the poison itself, not the logistics of stockpiling it, because the latter can easily be circumvented and will never stop anyone who intends to use it for easy kills.
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sneazy
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Post by sneazy on Oct 21, 2019 8:04:06 GMT -5
The main strategy of arm has always been about who plays the most and who consumes the most. I think it attracts the wrong kind of player - the one who can sit there and do the same thing over and over and not get bored out of their mind (forage rock x 9000, craft rock x 9000, alright I finally made one, woohoo I'm a winner now). Or worse, the liar that can make up a good excuse to overconsume (I have 9000 raptor hides but I need to go hunt up another to try to miss with my dual wield, er no, I mean because they all have ugly spots on them). That is the lipstick on the pig, guys. And I don't see how these changes help.
If I was playing a ranger these the changes would be GOOD. Yeah, poisons decay - reason to go get more and do dem skillups. Back in the day, I would always keep up with melee because you never know what is around the corner (shoot one miss/fight some miss). So by the time I was shooting at turaal, I was also trying to get in the same room with them for a melee. Kryl and salt worms would be an interesting challenge (if they've applied the new agro to everything). I've seen HG's take on the 4 kryl, I've seen stumps take on bahamet, so maybe it's doable with a human rangerish whatever they are now. Shoot one kryl, melee the others. If it's predictable then people will find a new strategy.
I think the best fix is to get rid of the grind. Even with a story minded player it becomes a necessary evil. I've done it, had a few master'd rangers but I despised the grind and it doesn't fit in with any part of any story (I woke up at 23, couldn't wipe my own ass, by the time I reached 24 I was Daniel Boone, Michelangelo, and Gucci all rolled into one = half of arm's idiotic stories). Changing char gen to have a final character to play would be better (it's been mentioned before, possibly have a random number determine if you get some magic later on so it's truly surprising). Think I'll piddle with this on armsolo sometime.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 21, 2019 9:20:30 GMT -5
Any proposals to make the coded power structure more horizontal are actively opposed by the veterans of Armageddon. The problem is, these veterans are basically the only people clinging to the game. Player metrics are dropping as a whole. Total logins peaked on one week in July 2013 with 309 players and total new accounts peaked a few weeks earlier at 142 new accounts in that week. Nowadays there are about 10 new people approaching the game in a week, and it's highly likely that almost none of them are sticking around. When you take the difference between logins and new accounts on every week there's consistent data for (from 2013 to today), you essentially get the logins from old accounts, and you can see the trend is approaching a flat line. The peaks are getting lower, the dips are slightly less dramatic, but everything is flattening.
In other words, Armageddon has pretty much all of the players it's ever going to get. And the only way for Armageddon to grow is to adapt to casual play styles.
The game not only does not change to attract new players and put them on a relatively even level with older players, the older players actively resist changes that would extend a ladder down to newer players because they fear being misplaced by others. Everyone keeps saying Armageddon can't be won, but the veterans who have 8+ hours a day to spend on the game already did.
(Sidenote: If you're interested in the data behind all these claims I intend to post about it in early 2020, looking back at the past 6 years. Everything I discussed is preliminary but almost complete.)
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2019 9:21:56 GMT -5
They are trying. The new guilds skills have much higher starting points and the learning proclivity has been increased considerably.
The grind is a big detriment, but can you truly imagine Armageddon without the grind? I'm not really convinced if it'll make things worse, or better. The 'grind' and the ethereal illusion of being more skilled then someone else does attract a certain type of player. Those are the players that tend to spend the most in the game and while many of them are not the greatest of players, they create the soup for other fish to swim in.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 21, 2019 9:37:49 GMT -5
The main strategy of arm has always been about who plays the most and who consumes the most. I think it attracts the wrong kind of player - the one who can sit there and do the same thing over and over and not get bored out of their mind (forage rock x 9000, craft rock x 9000, alright I finally made one, woohoo I'm a winner now). Or worse, the liar that can make up a good excuse to overconsume (I have 9000 raptor hides but I need to go hunt up another to try to miss with my dual wield, er no, I mean because they all have ugly spots on them). That is the lipstick on the pig, guys. And I don't see how these changes help. If I was playing a ranger these the changes would be GOOD. Yeah, poisons decay - reason to go get more and do dem skillups. Back in the day, I would always keep up with melee because you never know what is around the corner (shoot one miss/fight some miss). So by the time I was shooting at turaal, I was also trying to get in the same room with them for a melee. Kryl and salt worms would be an interesting challenge (if they've applied the new agro to everything). I've seen HG's take on the 4 kryl, I've seen stumps take on bahamet, so maybe it's doable with a human rangerish whatever they are now. Shoot one kryl, melee the others. If it's predictable then people will find a new strategy. I think the best fix is to get rid of the grind. Even with a story minded player it becomes a necessary evil. I've done it, had a few master'd rangers but I despised the grind and it doesn't fit in with any part of any story (I woke up at 23, couldn't wipe my own ass, by the time I reached 24 I was Daniel Boone, Michelangelo, and Gucci all rolled into one = half of arm's idiotic stories). Changing char gen to have a final character to play would be better (it's been mentioned before, possibly have a random number determine if you get some magic later on so it's truly surprising). Think I'll piddle with this on armsolo sometime. The main problem with grind is that it doesn't incentivize collaborative roleplay. On the contrary, it incentivizes going out on your own to kill shit or going into seclusion to craft shit before returning to civilization as that super buff 24 year old. This is intensely bad in a game that needs roleplayers to function and is one of the main reasons why players who can play for a long time each day are social and political powerhouses as well. The grind takes less percentage of the overall time played for them and they can spend more time roleplaying while their skill timers cool down, whereas a casual player has to essentially choose whether to spend their hour or two on either skill-grind or roleplay. Armageddon would improve massively if it adopted a XP-from-roleplay system similar to that of Sindome, The Inquisition: Legacy, or Arx.
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