Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Posting here because I don't think it qualifies as a 'simple' question, but does anyone know of any quests that tell more about the original history of Shallamurine, or any NPCs I can poke at with a few keywords? Is this part of the Presidio questline? I'm super interested in that battleground graveyard between it and the Presidio, for example, and have no idea where to start to learn more about it.
Laptop kicked the bucket as I was booting up this morning. Hopefully it's a temporary thing and I can be on later, but if not shoot me a message for anything you need!
poke simulacrum With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi. A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye. 8120h, 7200m, 8426e, 10p, [B] esSixk- poke simulacrum With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi. A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye. 8120h, 7200m, 8426e, 10p, [B] esSixk- poke simulacrum With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi. A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye. 8120h, 7200m, 8426e, 10p, [B] esSixk- poke simulacrum With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi. A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye. 8120h, 7200m, 8426e, 10p, [B] esSixk- poke simulacrum With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi. A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye. 8120h, 7200m, 8426e, 10p, [B] esSixk- poke simulacrum With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi. A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye. 8120h, 7200m, 8426e, 10p, [B] esSixk- poke simulacrum With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi. A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye.
Interesting to see how SSC has affected how powerful some classes are relatively, both positively and negatively.
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Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
edited October 2017
SSC should have minimal to no impact on class power at high end PK.
The significant change is middle/low tier PKers with sub optimal curing won't be trashed by the more crippling afflictions like aeon. It's all about lowering the floor to entry. Though, class power typically isn't measured by how many midbies you can wreck.
SSC should have minimal to no impact on class power at high end PK.
The significant change is middle/low tier PKers with sub optimal curing won't be trashed by the more crippling afflictions like aeon. It's all about lowering the floor to entry. Though, class power typically isn't measured by how many midbies you can wreck.
Not true at all. How optimal the actual curing logic is aside (even ssc isn't perfect), ping still plays a major factor in combat and curing is much more affected by ping than offence especially with stratagems. SSC has made it so in general everyone should cure more quickly, leading to everyone being tankier. Classes with timing windows will need even more precision to pull off and classes that rely on attrition will find themselves doing much better relatively, even if they also take longer to build towards their instakills.
Everyone cures as if they are now in America sitting near the servers vs having a bad ping causing you to miss a cure or an instant kill just because of ping.
It's no real change to how the top end cure other than making everyone cure with @ixion's ping.
Yeah, the no latency is the biggest thing. I thought that I had my curing as close to perfect as I could reasonably get it, but I was still always limited by latency. There were people with worse logic who could cure better since they lived in cali. Living in Europe was like having a significant balance penalty on every cure.
I'm still sort of annoyed that they simply made SSC better than any system can be. No use in being a stick in the mud though.
EuroPing kept me out of top tier in Achaea. Okay. Fine. It kept me out of the upper-mid tier, but facts should never stop a guy from stroking that e-peen amirite? I digress. EuroPing is sonofabitch and it needs to die alone in a freezing cold alley in the rain, with nothing but rats to give it succour. Anything that reduces this inequality gets the Versa Seal of Approval.
I'm still sort of annoyed that they simply made SSC better than any system can be. No use in being a stick in the mud though.
I'm kind of confused by this. I made the entire system as black-box as I possibly could, and it honestly shouldn't know anything a player system doesn't. And as much as people are complaining about how it handles hidden afflictions and blackout, I'm pretty sure we're near to the mark there.
The only ways it might be better at the moment are command failure handling and the fact that it responds at an average of 25ms latency. The former is a work in progress (making a system sufficiently black-boxed in a 500kloc codebase is hard, yo), and the latter is by design based on player feedback.
Other than that, it is rudimentary and most of the curing functionality is actually pretty parallel to a mortal system. The only things I can think of that might seem a bit god-modey are the clot formula (which has been reverse-engineered by some system coders for years because, frankly, it's dead simple when you get down to it) and the fact that the system knows what herb is on the nature domoth crown (which any demigod can honestly check and trigger, it's just saving a step). And illusions, which are being phased out 1) because that's always been a questionable mechanic and I'd rather people get something that isn't 100% dependent on tricking somebody else's code, and 2) affmessages and GMCP already kind of pushed us closer to this point anyway, years ago.
Latency is a big gamechanger, but that was the intent. This system is designed to be competitive, but I'm still convinced given the same ping and actual proper application of curing logic (not just hacking in new cures into something built for the old ones), a player-made system would beat SSC out.
If something isn't being sufficiently black-boxed, please go ahead and bug it and I'll do my best to get to it ASAP. Otherwise... Can't please everybody I guess.
A generic system will lose out to something fully and totally built and designed for you specifically-- the issue is that it is a lot of work to do that (including upkeep) and there is now no longer a need for a mass-market system that covers broad swathes of the playerbase. But by putting the majority of the playerbase on the same level it provides a great baseline for balancing and discussion. I've basically disabled my system (excluding defs since they are not covered) in favour of something I do not have to upkeep. I think it is great (though needs a few tweaks that are already on the way, like Allheale and Recklessness checking).
I'm super excited for SSC, though I'm still using MMF for now. When I started and realized that the game would require coding well beyond my abilities to be useful (my years of MUDding being largely occupied by games in which you could mostly get by without triggers and a small pile of aliases, let alone anything more advanced), I went looking on the forums and found MMF. Which is a system I saw the originator had made free access and moved on to other things, relying on (fortunately present and capable) community support.
For a player like me, if that, or an equivalent, wasn't there, or was outdated beyond my ability to personally correct, I probably wouldn't be playing at all.
Something like SSC protects the player base and makes the world that much more accessible to more people. These are good things. Like bacon. And creamsicles.
I would like to expand on my previous statement a bit, actually. Depending on how recklessness checking is implemented, it could actually make personal systems mostly void.
One of the biggest things remaining (aside from being able to tweak and finesse the code exactly to your preference) is the ability to "assume / guess" an affliction and have your system try to cure it. That does not currently exist in SSC.
Implementation of recklessness checking could go a couple of ways. For example, it could be allowing the guess of an affliction ("I think I have reckless, try to cure it") which puts the burden of error checking on each user but also gives a lot of flexibility in other areas (at that point I am not sure why anyone would want to invest the time into their own curing when they could invest time into making their version of SSC better), or it could just do server-side for everyone what any decent system was already doing ("Hey, something happened that should have cost me h/m/e/p yet I am still at full on all of these, ergo, I have recklessness") which would make it better out-of-the-box but still leave extensive customization the purview of a self-built system.
I would like to expand on my previous statement a bit, actually. Depending on how recklessness checking is implemented, it could actually make personal systems mostly void.
One of the biggest things remaining (aside from being able to tweak and finesse the code exactly to your preference) is the ability to "assume / guess" an affliction and have your system try to cure it. That does not currently exist in SSC.
Implementation of recklessness checking could go a couple of ways. For example, it could be allowing the guess of an affliction ("I think I have reckless, try to cure it") which puts the burden of error checking on each user but also gives a lot of flexibility in other areas (at that point I am not sure why anyone would want to invest the time into their own curing when they could invest time into making their version of SSC better), or it could just do server-side for everyone what any decent system was already doing ("Hey, something happened that should have cost me h/m/e/p yet I am still at full on all of these, ergo, I have recklessness") which would make it better out-of-the-box but still leave extensive customization the purview of a self-built system.
Yeah, this has been the exact source of most of my post SSC curing related brain time. I'm not sure exactly where to fall on the player/skill control vs. system handling everything spectrum, but I think your recommendation here is right. On one hand, a small burden on a player to 'assume afflictions' when almost everything else is pretty well handled by SSC doesn't seem crazy to me. On the other hand, when you're getting pages of 'you are blind' spam but SSC can't figure out you're blind, that's odd.
Personally, I think a command to add an assumed affliction to the SSC list and a small burden on players to optimize use is fine, if for no other reason than a diagnose fixes most of these problems.
That said (and not to start a fight) - If there were a skill that had, say, 7 different effects that all showed the same message and no affmessages, and you can't tell SSC to assume afflictions based on a player-side count, and SSC struggles (or is designed to have a blind spot) related to picking up affs based on symptoms and 2/7ths of those effects include Aeon (meaning 'just diag' is a poor answer, since diag is on Aeon delay), it's hard to imagine SSC at present* being better than even the current, under-maintained state of mmf with regards to that particular skill, since at the very least, you can tell mmf yourself that you have an affliction based on whatever tracking you code yourself.
* I'm not saying SSC sucks, just pointing out that it is literally not a 'cure all' for balance issues, and I think there is room for level headed discussion about how to handle player-system interactions. Otherwise, we should expect to see power increases in the skills and abilities SSC handles worst. As someone who used/abused blackout during the SSC FFA, it's pretty clear that some effects are more powerful with SSC than they were with mmf. That itself is not a crime, so long as the overall landscape aims for some semblance of balance.
I agree with Xenthos that some assume/guess syntax would be hot, and give some player skill power to high end combat plus open up the black box juuuust a little, especially for skills that need player side tracking or guess work to combat.
Guess syntax is and has always been planned. I hoped to have that out with the SSC release, but it ended up being a lot more complicated than I thought and there were reasons I didn't want to delay the SSC release further.
It's on my short-term todo list, but life's a bit of a mess right now and I haven't actually had time to focus on bugs or improvements this week.
Guess syntax is and has always been planned. I hoped to have that out with the SSC release, but it ended up being a lot more complicated than I thought and there were reasons I didn't want to delay the SSC release further.
It's on my short-term todo list, but life's a bit of a mess right now and I haven't actually had time to focus on bugs or improvements this week.
If you have mentioned the Guess thing being planned in my hearing it has completely fled my mind-- sorry! The thing that was coming forward was a flag to "shotgun" cures you mentioned which is also a cool thing (instead of needing to diagnose to see specific affs, try the cures when you have unknown affs).
Burns more resources but saves balance, so depends on preference.
If you have mentioned the Guess thing being planned in my hearing it has completely fled my mind-- sorry! The thing that was coming forward was a flag to "shotgun" cures you mentioned which is also a cool thing (instead of needing to diagnose to see specific affs, try the cures when you have unknown affs).
Burns more resources but saves balance, so depends on preference.
That was actually a specific request by Veyils if I recall correctly. It seemed like a good idea to include it as an option, took about 20 seconds to code, and until guessing is in, a reasonable(ish) fallback.
Comments
Magnagora: Group Suicide? Group Suicide.
Ixion tells you, "// I don't think anyone else had a clue, amazing form."
Ixion tells you, "// I don't think anyone else had a clue, amazing form."
Really curious how this event's going to play out.
https://estelss16.deviantart.com/, visit if interested.
Ok, that's a little OP.
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
Oh, uh... my bad?
Ixion tells you, "// I don't think anyone else had a clue, amazing form."
With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi.
A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye.
8120h, 7200m, 8426e, 10p, [B] esSixk-
poke simulacrum
With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi.
A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye.
8120h, 7200m, 8426e, 10p, [B] esSixk-
poke simulacrum
With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi.
A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye.
8120h, 7200m, 8426e, 10p, [B] esSixk-
poke simulacrum
With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi.
A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye.
8120h, 7200m, 8426e, 10p, [B] esSixk-
poke simulacrum
With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi.
A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye.
8120h, 7200m, 8426e, 10p, [B] esSixk-
poke simulacrum
With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi.
A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye.
8120h, 7200m, 8426e, 10p, [B] esSixk-
poke simulacrum
With your mighty index finger extended, you poke a horrific simulacrum of Moi.
A horrific simulacrum of Moi stumbles and pokes herself in the eye.
The significant change is middle/low tier PKers with sub optimal curing won't be trashed by the more crippling afflictions like aeon. It's all about lowering the floor to entry. Though, class power typically isn't measured by how many midbies you can wreck.
It's no real change to how the top end cure other than making everyone cure with @ixion's ping.
I'm still sort of annoyed that they simply made SSC better than any system can be. No use in being a stick in the mud though.
The only ways it might be better at the moment are command failure handling and the fact that it responds at an average of 25ms latency. The former is a work in progress (making a system sufficiently black-boxed in a 500kloc codebase is hard, yo), and the latter is by design based on player feedback.
Other than that, it is rudimentary and most of the curing functionality is actually pretty parallel to a mortal system. The only things I can think of that might seem a bit god-modey are the clot formula (which has been reverse-engineered by some system coders for years because, frankly, it's dead simple when you get down to it) and the fact that the system knows what herb is on the nature domoth crown (which any demigod can honestly check and trigger, it's just saving a step). And illusions, which are being phased out 1) because that's always been a questionable mechanic and I'd rather people get something that isn't 100% dependent on tricking somebody else's code, and 2) affmessages and GMCP already kind of pushed us closer to this point anyway, years ago.
Latency is a big gamechanger, but that was the intent. This system is designed to be competitive, but I'm still convinced given the same ping and actual proper application of curing logic (not just hacking in new cures into something built for the old ones), a player-made system would beat SSC out.
If something isn't being sufficiently black-boxed, please go ahead and bug it and I'll do my best to get to it ASAP. Otherwise... Can't please everybody I guess.
For a player like me, if that, or an equivalent, wasn't there, or was outdated beyond my ability to personally correct, I probably wouldn't be playing at all.
Something like SSC protects the player base and makes the world that much more accessible to more people. These are good things. Like bacon. And creamsicles.
One of the biggest things remaining (aside from being able to tweak and finesse the code exactly to your preference) is the ability to "assume / guess" an affliction and have your system try to cure it. That does not currently exist in SSC.
Implementation of recklessness checking could go a couple of ways. For example, it could be allowing the guess of an affliction ("I think I have reckless, try to cure it") which puts the burden of error checking on each user but also gives a lot of flexibility in other areas (at that point I am not sure why anyone would want to invest the time into their own curing when they could invest time into making their version of SSC better), or it could just do server-side for everyone what any decent system was already doing ("Hey, something happened that should have cost me h/m/e/p yet I am still at full on all of these, ergo, I have recklessness") which would make it better out-of-the-box but still leave extensive customization the purview of a self-built system.
Personally, I think a command to add an assumed affliction to the SSC list and a small burden on players to optimize use is fine, if for no other reason than a diagnose fixes most of these problems.
That said (and not to start a fight) - If there were a skill that had, say, 7 different effects that all showed the same message and no affmessages, and you can't tell SSC to assume afflictions based on a player-side count, and SSC struggles (or is designed to have a blind spot) related to picking up affs based on symptoms and 2/7ths of those effects include Aeon (meaning 'just diag' is a poor answer, since diag is on Aeon delay), it's hard to imagine SSC at present* being better than even the current, under-maintained state of mmf with regards to that particular skill, since at the very least, you can tell mmf yourself that you have an affliction based on whatever tracking you code yourself.
* I'm not saying SSC sucks, just pointing out that it is literally not a 'cure all' for balance issues, and I think there is room for level headed discussion about how to handle player-system interactions. Otherwise, we should expect to see power increases in the skills and abilities SSC handles worst. As someone who used/abused blackout during the SSC FFA, it's pretty clear that some effects are more powerful with SSC than they were with mmf. That itself is not a crime, so long as the overall landscape aims for some semblance of balance.
I agree with Xenthos that some assume/guess syntax would be hot, and give some player skill power to high end combat plus open up the black box juuuust a little, especially for skills that need player side tracking or guess work to combat.
It's on my short-term todo list, but life's a bit of a mess right now and I haven't actually had time to focus on bugs or improvements this week.
Burns more resources but saves balance, so depends on preference.
Ianir said early on about adding a "add affliction" and a guess thing type thing I recall vaguely.