Affliction Revamp

245

Comments

  • Unless I'm mistaken, the only people who are showing interest are saying the idea is salvageable, but the current proposed implementation is still highly problematic. This is actually one of very few times in the history of Lusternia where we seem to be united against the same idea. In a discussion on combat balance though, the opinions of everyone should not be weighted equally, so while I may have missed a scattering of people above who actually say 'go for it as written!', that doesn't necessarily mean that their stance is properly motivated or even valid.
     
    For instance, look at this comment:
    Llandros said:
    Hunger is a non issue for affs if anything it will be flavour. There is no intentional strategic gain to come of it.
    Llandros says this as a member of the Cacophony, who are infamous for their hunger-inducing tactics and who are in the organization with the greatest access to disease afflictions. Being brought to starving levels of satiation already causes passive unconsciousness and  is basically a death sentence against realistic combat situation, even moreso under your proposed changes if three disease affs is sufficient to cause incurable anorexia.
    Estarra said:
    Yes, simplifying combat is a good idea but I don't agree that this is necessarily making it more complicated. It is making the effects of ailments more powerful but not adding more ailments. (Frankly, I'd like to remove a lot of our afflictions which would help simplify combat--if someone wants to start a separate thread on that, feel free!)


    Speaking as an algorist, this change objectively increases the complexity of affliction handling. Even if you remove a good deal of the existing afflictions in favor of affliction sets, you are moving from a linear index of N binary affliction states to N * M^(M-1) affliction pairings which each need to be checked, where M=avg. size of an affliction group and N=number of groups. O(n^n) is polynomial in complexity, which means that even with far fewer afflictions in N*M, you're still going to be responsible for knowing and checking a lot more interactions.
  • Let's assume we are going to start with implementing the Intestinal afflictions (re-posted below). Let's narrowly focus the discussion on what, if anything, needs to be tweaked with that to be implemented in a balanced way.

    Intestinal (worms, dysentery, vomiting, anorexia)

    • Worms + Vomiting: The damage from vomiting task is increased and causes bleeding.
    • Worms + Dysentery: The damage from dysentery task is increased and causes bleeding.
    • Vomiting + Dysentery: The vomiting and dysentery tasks cause balance loss.
    • Worms + Vomiting + Dysentery: Major damage, bleeding and balance loss, as well as immediately dropping target to starvation level. If target tries to eat before curing one of these ailments, immediately is afflicted with anorexia.

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    image
  • SilvanusSilvanus The Sparrowhawk
    Hunger attrition and relying on it is a laughable mechanic.

    It's easy to cure, and just relies preparation from the victim to prevent. Also, eating doesn't consume any curing balance. Relying or focusing on that will just frustrate all involved in the battle.


    If the administrations plan is to upgrade the new affliction classes, a better way would be to focus on chemancers and woods rather then providing upgrades to classes that don't necessarily need it.
    2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
    2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
    2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
    2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
  • See also the posts on the first page where a Hexen Nihilist can apparently give all three afflictions at once. Which is pretty... bad.
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  • My main argument is that your time is extremely valuable, and is also finite.

    There are no shortage of projects for the admin to spend time on that will not:
    Destabilize the balance of the game,
    Make more work for you down the road

    Here are a few:
    Fix the ascension event to work in a way that won't generate so much lag.  If this means less mobs, so be it.  The once annual, pinnacle of Lusternian events, is defined by gross amounts of lag.  I think most of the population just forgets because it only happens once a year.

    Take a look at shrine effects and how they interact with domoths.  Especially distort/invasion.

    Continued work to bring in novices.  I think you admin have been really great at this.  Here I'm not as creative as many others, but this definitely has to be a focus as none of us want Lusternia to die off.

    Working on combat balance with an attention to detail, implementing specific minor tweaks which only effect the skill in question.

    etc.
    Take great care of yourselves and each other.
  • edited May 2013
    The ideas given are all pretty neat!

    That given, it would also break things horribly.  To those who noted doublewhammy to get 2 affs, hexes is being changed so you can do 2 affs for no power uncloaked (use vapors as first and you could hide all of them under blackout).   This would cause group combat to instantly compound and kill people, in solo several guilds would have huge buffs.

    If you are honestly vested in improving some affs and maybe removing some, could we do this as a special report along the lines of when we handled choke/shrines/etc?  I would volunteer to run this one to fix affs a bit, I am familiar with all the affs and which ones are unusuable. I can also keep in mind which come from poisons.
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    Estarra said:

    Let's assume we are going to start with implementing the Intestinal afflictions (re-posted below). Let's narrowly focus the discussion on what, if anything, needs to be tweaked with that to be implemented in a balanced way.

    Intestinal (worms, dysentery, vomiting, anorexia)

    • Worms + Vomiting: The damage from vomiting task is increased and causes bleeding.
    • Worms + Dysentery: The damage from dysentery task is increased and causes bleeding.
    • Vomiting + Dysentery: The vomiting and dysentery tasks cause balance loss.
    • Worms + Vomiting + Dysentery: Major damage, bleeding and
      balance loss, as well as immediately dropping target to starvation
      level. If target tries to eat before curing one of these ailments,
      immediately is afflicted with anorexia.
    1) Vomiting + dysentery cannot cause balance loss. This would be extraordinarily potent in the hands of Nihilist hexens.
    2) Similarly, all three combined cannot have the currently stated effect. The general view on hunger attrition is: If you live in Magnagora it is "pointless," if you live anywhere else it is "an exceedingly annoying mechanic".
    As stated, Nihilist hexens could do this combo in one maneuver, which seems against the spirit of this idea (working to stack affs).

    I also far prefer the notion of increasing effects rather than adding in new ones, because adding in more effects is essentially the same as adding new afflictions. Every coder must code to handle these combinations, or the system is rendered obsolete.

    So why not just continue increasing the damage on the ticks (by reasonable amounts)?
    image
  • Hunger is an un-fun mechanic, kinda all around. I don't really see a need to add more of it to the game, and it think it goes against general efforts that have been made to reduce the number of objects in the game (see: riftable decay.) The changes as written would open up hunger attrition to the Shadowdancers (slaugh tick + hexes for insta-starve) at the very least, and as a result cause more people to be carrying around lots and lots of food items.

    Bleeding, cool. Balance loss, cool. Starvation? Ugh. I think the synergy up to there is just fine.
  • SilvanusSilvanus The Sparrowhawk
    Estarra said:

    Let's assume we are going to start with implementing the Intestinal afflictions (re-posted below). Let's narrowly focus the discussion on what, if anything, needs to be tweaked with that to be implemented in a balanced way.

    Intestinal (worms, dysentery, vomiting, anorexia)

    • Worms + Vomiting: The damage from vomiting task is increased and causes bleeding.
    • Worms + Dysentery: The damage from dysentery task is increased and causes bleeding.
    • Vomiting + Dysentery: The vomiting and dysentery tasks cause balance loss.
    • Worms + Vomiting + Dysentery: Major damage, bleeding and
      balance loss, as well as immediately dropping target to starvation
      level. If target tries to eat before curing one of these ailments,
      immediately is afflicted with anorexia.
    I can whammy vapors and worms. And 2 seconds later whammy vomiting an dysentery under the blackout from the vapors.

    To also assist with this, I order demon to attack with dark fate and stupidity to prevent curing.

    Right before this, I can also Omen to increase damage done.

    2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
    2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
    2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
    2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
  • With instant starvation, even one tic of unconsciousness can put you far behind. This is compounded by the proposed effect also giving anorexia, and Nihilists have other ways to stop eating for a time as well.
  • edited May 2013
    EDIT: I wrote the post before the thread moved along, I will leave it because I still feel this way, but I am happy that we are discussing mechanical elements of the proposed changes now!
    Estarra said:
    Heh, let's not grandstand and say that things like "listen to us" as though speaking for everyone. Just speak on your own behalf. There's lots of opinions and considerations, and of course, we fully expected some people would be interested in this and some people who wouldn't be (as the above posts show!).

    FYI, we won't track afflictions by who gave it. That's really not doable.

    In any event, this process began when we were reviewing the Wyrdenwood report and really disliked how it was replacing all the wyrdenwood afflictions (with no consideration to the logic or rp of the skills) with every bleeding affliction known (including warrior bleeding afflictions!) because apparently people didn't like the current afflictions or feeling they weren't good enough or synergized enough. Thus, if we do this, probably our first foray would be the Internal set (worms-dysentery-vomiting) and we can see how that pans out. (So, no, we weren't planning on doing everything at once).

    Yes, simplifying combat is a good idea but I don't agree that this is necessarily making it more complicated. It is making the effects of ailments more powerful but not adding more ailments. (Frankly, I'd like to remove a lot of our afflictions which would help simplify combat--if someone wants to start a separate thread on that, feel free!)
    I understand that RP is required, and I think that having certain affliction combinations is even an idea I really like. The part I don't like is just how incredibly strong these combinations are. Group combat is already very difficult to escape or live or do anything if you are being focused, and this would only expediate that, when from envoy reports, I feel that the playerbase wants group combat to go in the opposite direction, so that there are more options on how to survive rather than less.

    For single combat, some of these affliction combinations would be very very easy for some classes to give, are very good, and I think the class they belong to (shadowdancers, illuminati, nihilists) are in a good place affliction-wise now. In addition, certain passive afflictiors such as demesnes, ents, and songs are balanced based on throwing out various "junk" afflictions as well as good ones.

    Overall, I feel, much like silvanus, that the smallest level buffs to the affliction combinations are enough to make the afflictions more attractive, and that adding the more powerful combinations will twist combat into a state that could take a year or more to sort out over envoys.

    I hope you will consider the arguments against this change, because while I like the idea a lot conceptually, I think it could use more work mechanically. One of the main reasons I play Lusternia is because of the intense pvp combat focus. I feel that part of that focus is derived from the tireless work balanceing everything mechanically as best we can, and I would hate to see us make the mistake of thinking we can ignore fighting mechanics or just let them sort themselves out so we can have more rp friendly combat afflictions straight away.
  • Just for clarification, is the intent of this to help Wyrdenwood, and presumably the other Chem-type specs get better? That was the example cited, but it seems to me that the buffs would be most beneficial to Guardians and Wiccans.

    Although... hmm. Wyrdenwood Ecologist can just spam botulinium with fetish and bond for insta-hunger, since their clouds do worms and dysentery already. That sounds... kinda obnoxious, actually.
  •  It seems like one of the intended effects of this new system is to create a number of clearly defined affliction pathways shared across classes that lead to viable kills. That itself seems like a noble goal; the problem arises in the fact that most classes already have working kill strategies that don't account for the bonus synergy from new effects.

    What if, before this change went through, we had a special envoy round where each envoy had the ability to propose simple but large-scale changes to their guild skills to significantly scale down in-class affliction power while bringing the remaining afflictions in-line with one of these affliction sets. This would effectively keep afflicting power at the same level it's at now, since most of the combination effects seem to emulate other afflictions and even hinder curing, while making sure that the changes don't end up too ridiculous balance-wise once the code goes in.
  • Rathan said:
     
    For instance, look at this comment:
    Llandros said:
    Hunger is a non issue for affs if anything it will be flavour. There is no intentional strategic gain to come of it.
    Llandros says this as a member of the Cacophony, who are infamous for their hunger-inducing tactics and who are in the organization with the greatest access to disease afflictions. Being brought to starving levels of satiation already causes passive unconsciousness and  is basically a death sentence against realistic combat situation, even moreso under your proposed changes if three disease affs is sufficient to cause incurable anorexia.
    Yes, I'm also someone who introduced a way to eliminate hunger from our song and some has studied that mater at great length.

    Trying hunger attrition from affs is just silly. Not to mention you would have to hit that combo 6 times for there to be a chance anything would happen. Add in the fact that this form of attrition won't work on warriors and you have a bad idea all around.

    There is no way to tell if a person has food or how hungry they are.

    After you get someone to starving, and you won't know this unless they mention it to you, there is anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes before you get any side effects.

    The two side effects, one is a minor mana loss and about a second of eq loss.
    The other one, which hits much less frequently is basically stun/blackout and can be anywhere from a couple seconds to 8. 90% of the time it's just 3 or 4 though.

    The unconsciousness is random and gives no warning that it is coming. It's impossible to capitalize on it unless you just stand there for three or four minutes waiting to pounce.

    Hunger attrition is bothersome for everyone involved. It takes way to long too set up, is absurdly unreliable, frequently ineffective and then there is that one time when that person with the thing said he knew someone that was annoyed sometime and then OMG OP!!!!!

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  • Personally, I don't think the worms-dysentery-vomiting isn't mainly about hunger attrition but rather the bleeding/damage. The hunger you get is a bonus if you get all 3 but really is secondary. We could, of course, remove the hunger component.

    For the sake of argument, assuming we are going to do some form of this, how would you design a synergistic redesign of worms-dysentery-vomiting?
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  • Personally, I'd simply increase the effects of them, not introduce new effects. That makes them more potent if combined while not making things more complex due to having to keep track of new effects and adjust the curing priorities based on what afflictions you have.

    They shouldn't be increased to a level where the afflictions become too powerful though, but that's hard to pinpoint.
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  • I'll just be sitting over here, hoping for some noncombat skill reviews.
  • All 3 should cause Malaria!

    But seriously the combination would be horrible. Are they combining to an effect or still hitting sep though? Like is vomiting causing damage, and dysentery causing damage, or do you get ONE of them to hit and the damage is upped based on number?  Those are all easily given affs so the combination shouldnt be super power. What about it manifesting a symptom every 6s or 8s if you keep them and after 4 tics it kills you or something?  Symptoms can be like blindness, burst vessel, or chunk bleeding.

    Hard to make them in combination but its possible I guess.
  • edited May 2013
    What about if you land an affliction combination, the afflictions all do slightly heightened versions of themselves, and the afflictions which make the set are uncurable for 2-4 seconds?

    You could add a line for the afflicted person that they have been hit with the set as well, so curing systems can account for it.
  • Of the proposed combinations, I think this is the least worrisome.  I also think this is the least needed.  The reason these afflictions don't get used is because they are incredibly weak.  That said, they are also incredibly easy to give to someone.  This combination seems to me as a type of affliction lock.

    I never use the proper terminology for these things, so bear with me while I stumble through my haze of newbieness.  If I am a pureblade, I can give you an affliction lock.  I give you a severed tendon, prone, slit throat, and slickness.  You now must cure one of those things before you can continue your offense or healing yourself.  You do this via a powercure.  It is not, however, easy for me to perpetuate this on you if you know how to defend against it.  It also takes a massive stroke of luck that, all at the same time, 1) my swing hits your head, 2) my affliction checks for slit throat, 3) I get a proper check and the senso I've envenomed gets applied, and 4) you do not shrug the venom.  I've also had to land the tendon on you previously (or else you would cleanse and that's that).  This means I've successfully built wounds on both your leg and your head.  This in itself is difficult.

    A similar thing happens here.  I give you worms, dysentary, and vomitting.  Suddenly, you have the risk of being proned/stunned/blackedout, are bleeding, have taken massive damage, and been thrown off balance.  Toss in a very easy-to-hide ectoplasm from a Nihilist Hexen and you have a pretty big problem on your hands.  If you do not cure one of these three things before you sip health or mana, you will get anorexia.  This all seems to be a lock-type setup that prevents the target from curing.  Only there is no necessary setup.  All of these things can, and will, happen at once with no widely available preventative measures or safeguards in place.  It becomes as simple as pressing one alias which has a very fast balance.  This effectively becomes an insta-win strategy with no effort on the part of the user.

    I would suggest something far less reaching (ESPECIALLY with the other 'locks,' where you are now without health/mana/ego sipping for as long as you are being focused).  Instead of having one big interaction like this, make the effects of the individual afflictions be increased for as long as you have them.  Each affliction will tic much, much faster.  Worms will drain progressively greater satiation.  Vomitting will do enough damage to matter (and it will be doing so much faster).  Dysentary will also do enough damage to matter.  Instead of eating causing anorexia, the effect would be similar to Ecology Herb Bane: the cure for these afflictions has a chance to fizzle out without consuming the cure balance, the chance of which will increase to very significant levels the longer you have these afflictions.

    This not only gives these afflictions a reason to be used, but it gives them a reason to be perpetuated instead of just bursted over and over and over.  Eventually (and by that, I mean over the course of about 12 seconds), it becomes nearly impossible to remove this state in the midst of the aggressor pounding you away with more afflictions.  The risk for this?  You're giving up your hindering for a period of time in order to keep them from curing.  The reward?  You're probably going to win.

    I apologize that my combat-fluency is nowhere near some others in this thread and that I struggle to word all this with the elegance I know some others can.  But that's my two-cents.
  • If this change is geared towards making the chem and wood abilities better, wouldn't it make more sense for them all to be released before we make a big overhaul like this? And is this delaying the release at all?

    At first I read this and was thinking this could be interesting. Then I got to the end of the post and I came to the conclusion that none of these would help me at all. In fact, after these changes, being attacked in group combat at all could quite possibly spell my death quicker. And I already die way too fast.

    The only one I even remotely like is the phobia one, I'd switch to tp for that.

    "But paradise is locked and bolted...

    We must make a journey around the world

    to see if a back door has perhaps been left open."

    -Heinrich Von Kleist, "On the Puppet Theater"

  • KioKio
    edited May 2013
    We should stop lumping these changes in with the chems and woods.  They don't seem to be geared towards doing anything for those skills specifically.

    As far as Estarra mentioning Wyrdenwood, I think she did so because it was proposed during the Wyrdenwood report that the admins would be very willing to consider reworking how some afflictions work.  Mentioning Wyrdenwood was merely a reference to when it was brought up.

    edit: If I'm wrong, do correct me.
  • NeosNeos The Subtle Griefer
    Daedalion said:

    The only one I even remotely like is the phobia one, I'd switch to tp for that.

    focus mind
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    Celina said:
    You can't really same the same, can you?
    Zvoltz said:
    "The Panthron"
  • Please, no.
    image
  • Neos said:
    Daedalion said:

    The only one I even remotely like is the phobia one, I'd switch to tp for that.

    focus mind

    Touche, good sir.

    "But paradise is locked and bolted...

    We must make a journey around the world

    to see if a back door has perhaps been left open."

    -Heinrich Von Kleist, "On the Puppet Theater"

  • ShuyinShuyin The pug life chose me.
    edited May 2013
    Ah man.

    If you guys want to revamp afflictions, you don't have to go the complete other way.

    I agree with simply buffing the weaker afflictions to have stronger effects. That's all you really need. Like what everyone else has said.

    BUT if we're going for something a bit more...drastic / you guys really want to improve affliction setups, I'd rather just review and possibly eliminate multiple cure methods for affs and/or even straight up deleting certain balances (*cough purgative*) and moving them over to existing ones.

    I haven't actually fully thought out the implications of the idea above, but I would say it would simplify combat more if you did that (since you don't have to keep track of less balances -and- you'll just know that slickness is only cured by eating, as examples) instead of adding more affliction "combos".

    There, I'm being productive.

    P.S. OP hexen illuminati would have enjoyed the mental aff combo along with new badluck. Especially with newly buffed hexes. Maybe we'll even have power to illuminate someone a bit more sooner!
    image
  • I am curious to know if there is an intended power cost to trigger these sort of effects, or if it is proposed that they just happen.

    I've never been very good at combat, and it seems like some of these effects are just way too powerful so it would just punish me even more than I already am for getting behind on my curing. I'm not sure how I'd deal with that at all, since some people can really lay these afflictions on thick, very very quickly. Which seems kind of like giving them even more afflicting power for free.

    Mayor Steingrim, the Grand Schema says to you, "Well, as I recall you kinda leave a mark whereever you go."
  • edited May 2013
    As a non-combatant I have to say congratulations, this has blown my pathetic little mind. The current system already almost has me in seizure like fits trying to comprehend it but this.. Its well above me. While I cannot offer any educated constructive feedback from this simply because I lack the knowledge and understanding of how all this works, I can say this If something like this was implemented it it would destroy any desire for me to get involved in combat, simply because I know how much added frustration it would add to something I already find extremely difficult and have increasingly less patience for. Not trying to start anything, just placing in my view as one of the little people or a "small fish in a big pond".


    *edited to reduce wordiness. My apologies for that.
This discussion has been closed.