Rimalon
04-04-2008, 04:01 AM
>1. The mess tent issue. It takes a grim so long to eat you that rescue has given up on your existence. So, what's the point in tossing you out of the camp afterwards? There's still no one coming after a Grim takes upwards of 2 - 3 minutes of eating you and 116 couldn't locate you during this time.
Originally, there were no plans for any special handling for when you died in a warcamp. People would have to brave the swarm to rescue you, and you best have told someone about where you'd be. As it turned out, a bug in the release version of the warcamps allowed for anyone to exit a warcamp at any time by simply logging off and then back on.
However, simply patching up the bug without any further changes would probably have been unnecessarily harsh, (since rescues inside a warcamp are limited by society membership), so the corpse expulsion mechanism was added (I believe it was a request from the Plat). That way, if you have a rescue coming anyway, you have the chance to avoid getting rank 3 wounds across your entire body. And if you don't have a rescue coming, there's still a chance someone might stumble across your body after a few minutes (instead of the much lower chance of being stumbled upon if you were simply left to rot in the warcamp), at the cost to you of having to wait to get expelled with much more severe wounds.
>2. Grims that spawn with cross-professional abilities. I.E. clerics casting death cloud and mass e-wave.
The cloud spells are on the creature only spell list, which is largely available to all the pure casting Grimswarm. The last update already removed the ability for the Grimswarm spiritual casters to cast Major Ewave and Cone of Cold.
>3. Is it intended that from now on people just pretty much are never given the ability to use the mass spells we've been given in our professional circles?
No, the intent behind the mass spell changes is not to 100% prevent players from using mass spells. The intent is to increase the amount of thought and preparation that is needed before choosing to cast those spells. None of the backlash effects are meant to be deadly in their own right -- their danger can be mitigated with a change in tactics or by simply having someone to back you up.
>4. Is it intended that the entire populace get nerfed due to what a few severel million xp past cap players can do?
Unfortunately, the problems of uncontrolled mass spell usage went far beyond capped players.
>What about an answer about the possibility of extending the duration of some of the sigils?
Yes, we will be doing a post-release review of the sigils.
>Are they (warcamps) meant simply to be part of the training in ranks and once we master we should forget about them? Or are they an ongoing 'hunting area' for GoS players
Their primary purpose is to allow for us to do "hated enemy" societies without having to worry about covering the entire 0-100 level range with individual hunting grounds, and thus avoid problems like the undead gap Voln faced. Their secondary purpose is to allow for like-level hunting in all towns, though we would prefer that players use permanent like-age hunting grounds in any town that has them. As such, they are deliberately meant to harder than standard hunting grounds -- do-able when soloing, but much better with a group.
>1. Please let us know when you change something (like Sigil of Escape).
Almost all the changes, short of minor bug fixes, have been announced in some fashion. I am not aware of any changes made to Sigil of Escape (aside from the bad destination room in Ta'Vaalor being fixed).
>2. Could you let us know if any other mechanics are under review?
The mass spell limiter is still under review (it will likely provide more warning before a backlash occurs, and some of the individual backlash results may be adjusted).
>3. What prompted the shroud changes? Were we razing too many camps? Advancing in the society too fast? EXP considerations?
The problem actually had little to do with the society portion of the release, and much more to do with the fact that we decided to dispense with environmental threats in favour of sheer creature numbers to provide the extra challenge to warcamps. As it turned out, low environmental threats and mass creature numbers is the equivalent of a free exp buffet to the sizeable proportion of the player base with access to devastating mass effect spells.
For quite a number of people, the warcamps were actually turning out to be a (much) easier way to gain exp than the permanent hunting grounds, even with the ocassional death, since it was so easy to step in, spam a handful of mass attacks, fry, and then leave within a minute flat (or less). The shroud mechanism is meant to slow down this method of hunting to a more reasonable level (or at least to make continuing to do so more risky).
>4. What is the design intent of warcamp hunting? Is it to place a strong emphasis on groups? Is soloing another consideration? Stealth?
I've adressed most of this above, but the stealth option is meant to be challenging, but not overpoweringly hard. The emphasis on groups was an offshoot of the decision to make the warcamps intentionally harder than a standard hunting ground, partially to see if mechanics that encourage grouping would be appreciated by the player base (they have).
>5. Do you have a count of how many people are in the society?
Yes, generally, 10% of the players online at any one time are members of the Guardians of Sunfist.
>6. Are the durations of the sigils set in stone?
Not necessarily, no.
>7. Why are meteor swarm and evil eye banned from camps?
Meteor Swarm is prevented due to the shroud, as it is the only attack spell that summons an effect from far outside the player's current location (which the meteors cannot locate). Evil Eye shouldn't be banned from warcamps, though. I'll have to look into it (though standing outside a warcamp with a floating eye inside should probably cause the loss of the eye due to the shroud).
>8. What is the rationale behind the emergency version of sigil of escape leaving you within the warcamp?
The emergency version of the Sigil of Escape is meant to drop you into a relatively random room in your current area. It is meant to buy you time, but not necessarily be a guaranteed death avoidance maneuver. With warcamps this is a little hard, since the creatures spawn directly on your location, but allowing it to deposit you outside of the warcamp would be the equivalent of 100% safety for many warcamp locations. Perhaps a (small) random chance to dump you outside would be an acceptable compromise? It will have to be discussed on the GM-side of things, so there's no guarantees of this changing, however.
>Is there any way you could take the time to itemize the minor tweaks/bug fixes that you have made for us?
Unfortunately, our bug tracking database does not track the status of cases once they are resolved, so I have to go by my (admittedly bad) memory. I can answer questions on particular issues though.
>Things like sigil of determination--which during my original testing was not letting me cast through rank 2 head wounds--seems to have been changed. Is it finally working as intended now? And what was the bug with it in the first place?
This was the result of a bug in the way that the Sigil of Determination was treating level 2 nervous system injuries when evaluating actions that require dextrous movements (like casting a spell). The only wounds that should be hindering players with Sigil of Determination up are rank 3 limb, eye, or nervous system injuries.
Coase
Originally, there were no plans for any special handling for when you died in a warcamp. People would have to brave the swarm to rescue you, and you best have told someone about where you'd be. As it turned out, a bug in the release version of the warcamps allowed for anyone to exit a warcamp at any time by simply logging off and then back on.
However, simply patching up the bug without any further changes would probably have been unnecessarily harsh, (since rescues inside a warcamp are limited by society membership), so the corpse expulsion mechanism was added (I believe it was a request from the Plat). That way, if you have a rescue coming anyway, you have the chance to avoid getting rank 3 wounds across your entire body. And if you don't have a rescue coming, there's still a chance someone might stumble across your body after a few minutes (instead of the much lower chance of being stumbled upon if you were simply left to rot in the warcamp), at the cost to you of having to wait to get expelled with much more severe wounds.
>2. Grims that spawn with cross-professional abilities. I.E. clerics casting death cloud and mass e-wave.
The cloud spells are on the creature only spell list, which is largely available to all the pure casting Grimswarm. The last update already removed the ability for the Grimswarm spiritual casters to cast Major Ewave and Cone of Cold.
>3. Is it intended that from now on people just pretty much are never given the ability to use the mass spells we've been given in our professional circles?
No, the intent behind the mass spell changes is not to 100% prevent players from using mass spells. The intent is to increase the amount of thought and preparation that is needed before choosing to cast those spells. None of the backlash effects are meant to be deadly in their own right -- their danger can be mitigated with a change in tactics or by simply having someone to back you up.
>4. Is it intended that the entire populace get nerfed due to what a few severel million xp past cap players can do?
Unfortunately, the problems of uncontrolled mass spell usage went far beyond capped players.
>What about an answer about the possibility of extending the duration of some of the sigils?
Yes, we will be doing a post-release review of the sigils.
>Are they (warcamps) meant simply to be part of the training in ranks and once we master we should forget about them? Or are they an ongoing 'hunting area' for GoS players
Their primary purpose is to allow for us to do "hated enemy" societies without having to worry about covering the entire 0-100 level range with individual hunting grounds, and thus avoid problems like the undead gap Voln faced. Their secondary purpose is to allow for like-level hunting in all towns, though we would prefer that players use permanent like-age hunting grounds in any town that has them. As such, they are deliberately meant to harder than standard hunting grounds -- do-able when soloing, but much better with a group.
>1. Please let us know when you change something (like Sigil of Escape).
Almost all the changes, short of minor bug fixes, have been announced in some fashion. I am not aware of any changes made to Sigil of Escape (aside from the bad destination room in Ta'Vaalor being fixed).
>2. Could you let us know if any other mechanics are under review?
The mass spell limiter is still under review (it will likely provide more warning before a backlash occurs, and some of the individual backlash results may be adjusted).
>3. What prompted the shroud changes? Were we razing too many camps? Advancing in the society too fast? EXP considerations?
The problem actually had little to do with the society portion of the release, and much more to do with the fact that we decided to dispense with environmental threats in favour of sheer creature numbers to provide the extra challenge to warcamps. As it turned out, low environmental threats and mass creature numbers is the equivalent of a free exp buffet to the sizeable proportion of the player base with access to devastating mass effect spells.
For quite a number of people, the warcamps were actually turning out to be a (much) easier way to gain exp than the permanent hunting grounds, even with the ocassional death, since it was so easy to step in, spam a handful of mass attacks, fry, and then leave within a minute flat (or less). The shroud mechanism is meant to slow down this method of hunting to a more reasonable level (or at least to make continuing to do so more risky).
>4. What is the design intent of warcamp hunting? Is it to place a strong emphasis on groups? Is soloing another consideration? Stealth?
I've adressed most of this above, but the stealth option is meant to be challenging, but not overpoweringly hard. The emphasis on groups was an offshoot of the decision to make the warcamps intentionally harder than a standard hunting ground, partially to see if mechanics that encourage grouping would be appreciated by the player base (they have).
>5. Do you have a count of how many people are in the society?
Yes, generally, 10% of the players online at any one time are members of the Guardians of Sunfist.
>6. Are the durations of the sigils set in stone?
Not necessarily, no.
>7. Why are meteor swarm and evil eye banned from camps?
Meteor Swarm is prevented due to the shroud, as it is the only attack spell that summons an effect from far outside the player's current location (which the meteors cannot locate). Evil Eye shouldn't be banned from warcamps, though. I'll have to look into it (though standing outside a warcamp with a floating eye inside should probably cause the loss of the eye due to the shroud).
>8. What is the rationale behind the emergency version of sigil of escape leaving you within the warcamp?
The emergency version of the Sigil of Escape is meant to drop you into a relatively random room in your current area. It is meant to buy you time, but not necessarily be a guaranteed death avoidance maneuver. With warcamps this is a little hard, since the creatures spawn directly on your location, but allowing it to deposit you outside of the warcamp would be the equivalent of 100% safety for many warcamp locations. Perhaps a (small) random chance to dump you outside would be an acceptable compromise? It will have to be discussed on the GM-side of things, so there's no guarantees of this changing, however.
>Is there any way you could take the time to itemize the minor tweaks/bug fixes that you have made for us?
Unfortunately, our bug tracking database does not track the status of cases once they are resolved, so I have to go by my (admittedly bad) memory. I can answer questions on particular issues though.
>Things like sigil of determination--which during my original testing was not letting me cast through rank 2 head wounds--seems to have been changed. Is it finally working as intended now? And what was the bug with it in the first place?
This was the result of a bug in the way that the Sigil of Determination was treating level 2 nervous system injuries when evaluating actions that require dextrous movements (like casting a spell). The only wounds that should be hindering players with Sigil of Determination up are rank 3 limb, eye, or nervous system injuries.
Coase