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PvP Changes
#37

Well the testing was open to public for 2 weeks and very few people expressed issues with it, if people didn't give feedback it leaves me with little to go on. As for PvPing myself, I spend all of my time scripting these changes, literally 3-4 hours blocks of my free time evaporated in the face of C#. So I have no time to do any PvP myself, I still have a job, girl and my other hobbies. Even if I did PvP myself, which now the changes are in I do intend to, it will take quite a long time before I am practiced enough to personally identify deficiencies in the system rather than just deficiencies in my own fighting ability.

But now the changes are global and the forums are public, I imagine after some days or weeks we'll have plenty of feedback to go on. I think people who are already crying are only demonstrating their lack of objectivity though, since you cannot expect to master a system and be playing at the critical edge of balance within the first 24 hours it goes live. I watch people PvP so far and most do not even use any new spells other than GH/FS/Lightning as before, so needless to say the limits of the system and the balance of all the changes are not exactly getting probed at this stage.

Also you say mana regen leads directly to too much survivability, this is only demonstrating to me that you're unable to release the idea that only getting opponent out of mana is the way to win. I'm willing to accept the exact rate may not be perfect, because almost nobody commented on it in testing, but the overall amount of mana available is not much more than before (although pure mana pot spam will give more yes - but at the penalty of no other pot use) so it can certainly be tweaked, and if the balance of attacking spells is right it will be necessary to sometimes drink GH or cure pots in order to prevent death which will on average hopefully bring the overall mana available in line with pre-changes. I'm open to tweaking the numbers once the need for change and the degree of change required is more evident.

And poison spam is pointless since cure is faster and cheaper, the key is learning to time the poison at the right time, which is also the case for proper use of every other spell as well. If people are spamming poison it's because they don't understand that they're in a losing spiral of cure vs poison and that poison only mitigates 30% of the damage so if you poison someone who (at best) mistimes 1 GH and loses 6hp from his heal you've wasted 9 mana and 1s to take 6hp, you would have been better doing a fireball for the same mana and 1.25s cast and doing 14-22 damage or a lightning for 10 mana and 1s cast and doing a guaranteed 16 damage.

I'm not convinced anyone is using the poison mechanic correctly, I've not seen it used correctly and the arguments I've heard (e.g. right in this thread) indicate a lack of understanding of it as well, as I've just explained, so I think people still need to be sensible and objective and actually try things out for a while.
#38

Well people that didn't describe issues were new. They barely knew to pvp, even on your system, and if you balanced the system based on their feedback , then well , it's sad.

However, it's might be more or less balanced like I said. The only thing I don't like is poison being used as harass spell number1 and no way to kill even in box without it if opponent don't make mistake...
#39

Gang Wrote:Well people that didn't describe issues were new. They barely knew to pvp, even on your system, and if you balanced the system based on their feedback , then well , it's sad.

Actually most the balancing was done on the maths, I received relatively little specific feedback about the balance of particular spells etc. I would have preferred more but I had to work with what I got.

Quote:However, it's might be more or less balanced like I said. The only thing I don't like is poison being used as harass spell number1 and no way to kill even in box without it if opponent don't make mistake...

Poison was a harassment spell before as well and if your opponent cures you are actually at a deficit of 3 mana and 0.1s for every misused poison cast. Harassment would be more effective with a spell like Harm or Fireball, but like I said people aren't exactly fighting the perfect way yet so it's tough to judge the exact values.

As for comment regarding no way to kill opponent in box unless he makes a mistake, you could easily be describing pre-changes, we both know it was even possible to EasyUO bot the IN:X system. The fact is if someone fights flawlessly they will be difficult to kill, the only way around this is to add a lot of random elements, which I don't think anyone wants?
#40

Loki, this is way off topic but im 3 hours over jail time and i cant contact any gm's sorry, delete this when you see it if you can
#41

Would you make EasyUO bot ? How much time would it take to create one? And well, noone used it there, so the system was pretty fun. Since aimbot came out noone yet said that FPS games suck, people still play it. They just try and find the way to ban the cheaters, thats it.

Anyways, I'm not fighting the perfect way on the paper, thats fine. You refuse to try out your own system anywhere outside of the paper, thats fine as well. As I said, I only argue because I liked the server (donated over 500$). But I don't expect it go any certain direction. If Taran is satisfed with the PvP system that is implemented , it's his right.
#42

Gang Wrote:Would you make EasyUO bot ? How much time would it take to create one? And well, noone used it there, so the system was pretty fun. Since aimbot came out noone yet said that FPS games suck, people still play it. They just try and find the way to ban the cheaters, thats it.

You're misinterpreting my point, which is that fighting without making mistakes (like a bot) works pretty well in the old system. In fact a system where someone fights flawlessly and isn't extremely difficult to kill would be strange.

Quote:Anyways, I'm not fighting the perfect way on the paper, thats fine. You refuse to try out your own system anywhere outside of the paper, thats fine as well. As I said, I only argue because I liked the server (donated over 500$). But I don't expect it go any certain direction. If Taran is satisfed with the PvP system that is implemented , it's his right.

Well you're accusing me of not moving out of my theory zone, but it's been live on the server for less than 24 hours and you're already asking me to scrap some of the central parts of the changes. I don't think I'm being unreasonable by saying it needs some more time than less than 1 day to determine how things are going. I'm saying it is important that people learn the new system a little before it can be fairly judged, and that takes more than just a few hours, I don't see how that is being unreasonable in the way that you are portraying?

As for donations, they are always appreciated, but you yourself must know that we can't just let all decisions be made based on the premise of who donated most. In fact I am not even privy to a list of donators so unless people tell me I have no idea what anyone donated and it never enters my decision making for script stuff or ingame stuff. Any other way would be somewhat unfair and defeat the idea of donation, rather than buying influence, wouldn't it? You are right though that the ultimate decision is Taran's, you don't have to argue with me about it, but I expect he'd like more than 24 hours to see how things are going.

Besides, would you prefer to revert to pre-changes? That system had us go from 200 players down to about 80, the latest changes are only live for a day, they cannot be blamed for the current state of the playerbase, nor the number of people who quit citing the simplicity and lack of pace of the old system as a reason. The changes were made because we were concerned for the dwindling state of the PvP system, which as we know is vital to the economy (which affects even non-PvPers) and therefore the general state of the playerbase.

Or perhaps we just install XUO system, but propositions of that kind have been voted down on the polling forum and every XUO-based server so far is dead, I don't know the reason for this because I did not play those servers but none of them are here anymore, so whilst you may worship that system I think the number of UO players around that feel the same is not enough to sustain a populated server. The new system may not prove infinitely more popular, but then again it might, we don't know, and certainly it has been designed to be more interesting and to try and plug the flaws that people were complaining about. Without change we cannot fix problems and a lot of evidence of dropping playerbase, and a list of dead servers tells us that doing nothing and changing only tiny things is not a good plan...
#43

Loki Wrote:You're misinterpreting my point, which is that fighting without making mistakes (like a bot) works pretty well in the old system. In fact a system where someone fights flawlessly and isn't extremely difficult to kill would be strange.

Fighting flawlessly on INX never meant simply not make mistakes. You also had to be fast, land more hits than opponent, means do everything faster and so on.

Loki Wrote:As for donations, they are always appreciated, but you yourself must know that we can't just let all decisions be made based on the premise of who donated most. In fact I am not even privy to a list of donators so unless people tell me I have no idea what anyone donated and it never enters my decision making for script stuff or ingame stuff. Any other way would be somewhat unfair and defeat the idea of donation, rather than buying influence, wouldn't it? You are right though that the ultimate decision is Taran's, you don't have to argue with me about it, but I expect he'd like more than 24 hours to see how things are going.

Gang Wrote:I don't expect it go any certain direction. If Taran is satisfed with the PvP system that is implemented , it's his right.

???




And no, I don't want to revert all the changes, I didn't like the previous system either. I don't think XUO had perfect system as well. I only commented on mana regeneration vs potions part where while reg is passive, potion is judgement call. And poison which was really helping against it. I might have not tested it properly enough, but nor did you, and you refuse to do it as well. It's hard to have objective conversation when you clearly see a lot of people here being stubborn and just being scared of a change, but yet you yourself don't want to try your system yourself. Be example dude, show us how it's done...
#44

Gang Wrote:Fighting flawlessly on INX never meant simply not make mistakes. You also had to be fast, land more hits than opponent, means do everything faster and so on.
But being fast, timing things right and not wasting time is part of fighting flawlessly isn't it? I think we're falling into word games here though.
Quote:And no, I don't want to revert all the changes, I didn't like the previous system either. I don't think XUO had perfect system as well. I only commented on mana regeneration vs potions part where while reg is passive, potion is judgement call. And poison which was really helping against it. I might have not tested it properly enough, but nor did you, and you refuse to do it as well. It's hard to have objective conversation when you clearly see a lot of people here being stubborn and just being scared of a change, but yet you yourself don't want to try your system yourself. Be example dude, show us how it's done...

I would love to, and in fact have been spending a little time today trying to set up inj for PvP. But the fact is I will probably not be very good, slow and making mistakes etc. I don't choose not to PvP because I don't want to, but because I am busy and when I do have UO time it has so far all been spent on staffing. With the changes in I hopefully will have more time, but would you expect a noob who more or less just started to try and fight to be able to teach anyone anything significant? I doubt it, so I don't think there's much point judging the changes on my own personal performance.

I may seem stubborn, but mostly all I am saying is that it has been a day, shouldn't we be waiting longer before making conclusions? and I may seem like I am arguing, I guess I kinda am, but I'm trying to show there are good theoretical and mathematical reasons behind the changes, I didn't just pull them out of no where at random, they have an intended purpose but because it is early days the intended use of most the changes is not being utilised by players yet.
#45

Loki Wrote:I would love to, and in fact have been spending a little time today trying to set up inj for PvP. But the fact is I will probably not be very good, slow and making mistakes etc. I don't choose not to PvP because I don't want to, but because I am busy and when I do have UO time it has so far all been spent on staffing. With the changes in I hopefully will have more time, but would you expect a noob who more or less just started to try and fight to be able to teach anyone anything significant? I doubt it, so I don't think there's much point judging the changes on my own personal performance.

This exactly. You for some reason decided that to proove a point to me you need to beat me. Nope, I never meant that when I wanted to test the system with you. I simply wanted to do that just so you show that at certain situations it's better to X rather than Y , thats it. And you refusing to do so that is what makes you look stubborn the most, at least to me. Because mathematical and theoretical reason is great, but not always works out perfectly in reality.
#46

It's not about beating, but if (like me) you have not PvPed significantly for many years then situational awareness of things like opponent mana, your own mana, reacting quickly to sudden change of situation etc. are not good. Also it is harder to make quick judgements, losing 0.1-0.2s per cast in decision making or trying to remember a key, or mistiming things. This means that if we were to duel, I would likely not have a full awareness of what is happening, and the course of the duel would be dictated by a lot of mistakes, delays or poor judgement calls as even a good understanding of the theory does not translate instantly to fast instantaneous decision making in a duel situation. For these reasons I have always been reluctant to judge the system on my own personal PvPing, but rather on watching others and analysing the maths.

However, in the coming days or weeks I will be making an effort to take part myself, to what end I am not sure but we shall see.

I should also point out as I keep saying that the changes were aimed at increasing viability of world PvP primarily, adjustments for duels, arenas and tours can be made by region control, but adjustments for world PvP cannot be made this way. Things like regen help to keep groups fights going and not just stagnate whilst waiting for mana potion spam, poison helps to add a dimension to cross healing in group PvP. If these things prove to be imbalanced in 1 vs 1 (which I still think it is too early to say) then region controlled adjustments can be made. I want all aspects of the system to work, dueling is important of course and please don't misunderstand - I do not intend to ruin dueling, but one very specific problem of the old system was that it was almost pointless to go out into the world for PvP in a group of less than 3. Also a lot of group fights would have lulls in activity whilst people were spamming their mana potion key/loops and in general automated/semi-automated cross healing was way too easy. So there were a lot of problems to address, whether we've been successful in this regard will take a little time to tell.
#47

I should also say that time was a big factor, I had so little UO time the last few weeks we are lucky I even managed to get the changes coded in time for the restarts, in fact one had to be delayed, I certainly never had time to login and do any actual PvP.
#48

Then I myself would like to know how everything you changed works exactly. I know thats probably a lot to list, but theres no information how everything works in numbers, only you know the algo's. But players must be able to read to math part to figure the dynamic themselves... Why not post it then at least? I mean, the ones that will like it and would go as far as copying these to their server (thats the reason to not publish it, right?) will definitely go and get the values from wide testing. I mean every and each game has it's dynamic listed somewhere... INX had all of the values listed on the website, and it was written how everything works. Diablo II for one has the Arreat Summit and so on. I don't think you're as big as blizzard to list as much things as they did, but well you didn't change as much stuff either, right?


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