Ascension - Wyrdenwood, Lag, Bragging Rights.

Mboagn · July 2020

Treehug and Noose both do that, though, right? That is, deal one aff on their 10-p bomb list? It's broken bones for Treehug and entanglement for Noose.

edit, I don't usually notice the bleeding because I'm dead before it ticks

edit, I also don't find broken limbs to be as hindering as entanglement, although that may be mage bias.

Parhelion · July 2020

Mboagn said:

Treehug and Noose both do that, though, right? That is, deal one aff on their 10-p bomb list? It's broken bones for Treehug and entanglement for Noose.

Yes, and both can have runes affixed to them to afflict with more of their specified afflictions.

Parhelion · July 2020

Brawrur said:

Our 10p bomb actually does less damage than one of our 5p bombs if it doesn't have any affs on it.

Also, yes, we can benefits to our 10p bomb, but any benefits a Wyrdenwood has have a +2 added on top.

If we had 5 chemists using the 10p bomb at the same time it'd deal about 10k damage, which would kill people without runes or whatever Celestine buffs you were throwing around. There'd also be no stun.

5 Wyrdenwoods would do 20k damage and 5k bleeding, also stunning for 3s. I know that's slightly unfair since not everyone has the demi+ aff so let's bring that down a bit.

To 15k with 5k bleeding and stuns. And that's if no one has the demi+ thing.

So let me ask you this. Serious questions.

How many of your 'chemwoods were using attacks during your bombs building to try and stack afflictions to increase your damage? Did you coordinate on one person, or were you all over the place? What were your damage buffs like? On the flipside, what are your poison and cutting resistances like?

How many of you were holding Justice Karma blessings? How many Magnagorans kept up unholywater? I know I saw a log earlier of someone in Mag's unholywater hitting Kreon for 6k or so.

Brawrur · July 2020

Treehug (Broken Limb) is Wyrdenwood's Noose (Entanglement) with 2 runes if a runist.

Pyromancers get ablaze, Aquachemancers get... something???, Aeromancers strip galvanism and Geomancers get something unclear.

Brawrur · July 2020

Parhelion said:

So let me ask you this. Serious questions.

How many of your 'chemwoods were using attacks during your bombs building to try and stack afflictions to increase your damage? Did you coordinate on one person, or were you all over the place? What were your damage buffs like? On the flipside, what are your poison and cutting resistances like?

How many of you were holding Justice Karma blessings? How many Magnagorans kept up unholywater? I know I saw a log earlier of someone in Mag's unholywater hitting Kreon for 6k or so.

I would weave reality in the room before dropping arson a number of times, Lisuarte had colour maelstrom up frequently, my cannon can set people ablaze and give them hallucinations if the timing is right. Things often don't quite line up and the speed at which mental affs and ablaze cures (since I can't stick either of those in any way) make things generally more random/unreliable.

I feel like I need to say this clearly, we co-ordinated pretty well. We didn't have a disaster in strategy or some flaw in our planning (other than not being Wyrdenwoods/having a mass exodus to Serenwilde to become Wildewoods). What your side did hardly counts as strategy either, it was just pressing the same one button over and over again.

I'm always going to be 2k damage behind a Wyrdenwood no matter how many affs or how high my resistances and buffs are.

We did generally try to keep people with Unholywater but I didn't track it through the whole fight and a lot of the time it'd be triggered by a tiny tick of damage then go on cooldown.

Also wanted to make a comment regarding how Wyrdenwoods heal for every bleeding person in the room, and everything they do and all their org is centred around is bleeding and dust affs while Wildewoods have less of a cohesive synergy.

Pretending that you didn't win this fight purely because of how powerful Wyrdenwood is would just be lying. Our frustration at this whole thing is because we've been saying that this was unfair for weeks/months now.

Kaizynne · July 2020

I mean. Pressing the creeping/chembomb button is a strategy. I stand by the fact that yes, xyzwood need a look over, and that's my personal opinion. You're not the only one in the boat of, "my chem sucks more than xyzwood"

Brawrur · July 2020

Kaizynne said:

I mean. Pressing the creeping/chembomb button is a strategy. I stand by the fact that yes, xyzwood need a look over, and that's my personal opinion. You're not the only one in the boat of, "my chem sucks more than xyzwood"

I was just saying, it's a bit cheap to claim your side had some superior strategy when it amounted to actually just pressing enter (or using a reflex) every so often.

The fact the ONE ability won that for you shows there's a MASSIVE flaw.

Zagreus · July 2020

This entire thread assumes we had any ability to act how we wanted when we wanted. In the last hour especially, most of us could not get a -single- command off anywhere near when we wanted it (even when I was almost down to 0 insanity, I had command lag anywhere from 30s to minutes at a time), much less trying to coordinate anything. The method to get Choros off the node was easy if the game didn't completely crap out. We knew what to do, and what to expect in full. It was quite directly the inability to input commands that decided it today.

Now, the bombs made it harder and more of a pressure cooker in the latter half, sure, but conflating bombs with today's outcome doesn't track. We had no realistic chance at the end because we literally could not act at that point, period.
--
If you want to analyze bombs under non-ascension conditions, the +2 free racial affs make woods incredibly superior to the mage versions (and bleeding from Creeping on top that others don't get, for example), and I'll say it again, having X number of people being able to reliably room+ranged wipe with fire and forget skills is not good design.

Synl · July 2020

If you really feel it is unfair, you could always report CrimsonMoss be changed to an EmberDance equivalent - something that causes maybe haemophilia and bleeding, instead of ablaze and burn damage.

In addition to the report fixing the racial/racelock. The confusion is nobody reported it, there were a few rants on discord, and then people expected a change from that? How is that fair to the producers that they didn't make changes to classes before a major event based on discord rants??

Brawrur · July 2020

They were part of those discussions and dismissed everything that led to this issue.

Look at literally every Mboagn comment.

Mboagn · July 2020

I don't know how we'll convince you that we did absolutely the best we could do. Org brews, shoulderguns, wonderitems, karma blessings, rock candies, goop scarves - we used these, and more. We made triggers to try and get our chembombs off together. We did manual count-downs.

The "get good" argument is just incredibly disheartening when we did everything you suggested, everything we could think of, and you're still making it seem like it's a failing on our part instead of a skill being overtuned.

Mboagn · July 2020

Also, regarding envoy reports, when we raised the issue of Creeping the first time, you guys diverted the topic and said that maybe that Noose was the problem. As a bonus, nerfing Noose would also cut off the rad+entangle+damage from adjacent!

So we reported Noose...and a partial solution was adopted. Creeping remained a problem. I guess we were naive to think that envoy reports were a valid solution.

Silvanus · July 2020

Meh

Even Boulderblast was nerfed, I don't know how a skill like boulderblast could be allowed years later. You would think how many times it was abused by Val would prevent a skill from being introduced like that again.

Uzriel · July 2020

Getting the staff towards the end and being so lagged that none of my commands went through was probably the most frustrating experience of the ascension for me. I had zero ability to walk to a node despite no enemies being on, hindering, or attacking me. I got the staff and lost it entirely because I had no ability to input commands before it poofed on me for not being at a node. Ciaran got the staff after it reset on me and we never got it off Choros again.

I'm not saying we necessarily would have won, but its beyond frustrating to feel like the lag kept us from really even competing properly in the end, it felt much worse than it did in the beginning of ascension. I paused triggers and was closing the mud client and relogging every 5-10 mins at the end because that felt like the only thing that let me have any ability to input commands.

Silvanus · July 2020

This was the most competitive Ascension I have ever been apart. I do not remember a time where it was 3600-3400, that is truly remarkable that we were able to achieve something so balanced.

This was also the most unbalanced Ascension I have ever been apart of. When in two weeks Chemwoods bombs get nerfed, all of you will know that it was deserved. I do not know how to say correctly what needs to be said, but this was a failure in an inability to address this beforehand. I know it is also weird to take the opinion of someone that has been gone for 4 years, but I know that the integrity of the game has been loss this day, because the skill that won the Ascension will be nerfed within weeks.

I feel as a Lusternia has been robbed of her integrity, a chance for redemption from the previous turmoil has been ripped from her as the only thing it succeeded in was proving it was the same all along.

Brawrur · July 2020

This sort of stuff, along with the other side insisting that we just needed to try harder is what drives people away from Lusternia.

And what's going to follow is going to be pretty predictable. Either nothing, or there's going to be some chemwood nerf which doesn't actually address any single issue raised and somehow worsens the leveling between classes even more, and doesn't at all fix how badly chem fits in as a class into things or the fact that it's never been properly finished after however many years it's been out for.

It also feels like there's just no reaction to negative feedback other than to shrink away or double down and pretend there's no issue or blame the players. This shit is honestly going to lose you players if it carries on. I'm sure it's already lost you countless.

Melech · July 2020

First of all, congratulations to Parhelion and friends for enduring that truly awful dumpster fire!

I don't normally have a problem with chem/wood bombs, to be honest. They're certainly a little crazy, but it's easy enough to shield and avoid them under normal circumstances.

That's the problem with today's event, though- they weren't normal circumstances. The only counter-play to those bombs (and no, I don't think it's reasonable or desirable for the whole game to flex to one class for every ascension going forward) was nullified by the game's inability to process the load, and that doesn't make for an engaging, entertaining, or thoughtful experience for anyone involved.

I have zero desire to participate in another ascension and that's really unfortunate because it's such a big deal in the game sense.

Thalkros · July 2020

Bombs suck, sure. But the fact that in 2020 a text game event isn’t stopped in the PRE-start pit battle when the lag starts and simply delayed 24 hours is mind boggling. I understand that Lusternia doesn’t have the resources as some big ticket MMO but I just cannot fathom how the Staff event was allowed to proceed past the moment it was realized there was an issue of this magnitude.

It really seemed like there was a decision of ‘oh well the show must go on’ rather than just pump the breaks and call it off until it could be figured out. The game doesn’t shut down just because you need to postpone the event due to the game ceasing to be able to function nominally. That’s the only thing I have an issue with. If you have multiple players, on both sides telling you they were constantly having to close their systems/kill connections and try to log back in just to get a command off, there’s an issue.

That TF after the fact was a slap in the face and utterly floored me but I’m not going to go out of my way to attack administration because I know they don’t have a magical Lag OFF/ON switch. Ascension is supposed to be the pinnacle event of Lusternia and a lot of us simply could not enter a SIMPLE cardinal direction. It came down to who could turtle and get through command lock quicker, and that’s a bad taste in my mouth that would be 100% agreed upon if it was Choros who had lost instead.

Id have taken 100 wyrdenwood players hitting creeping doom in sync if the game would have just allowed me to input a direction and evoke pentagram, but it couldn’t even do that.

Mboagn · July 2020

The admin reaction has put me off from hoping the issues will actually be addressed.

Brawrur · July 2020

I think city warriors should have a bonus +2000 damage and 3s stun to their instakills (Pureblades cast 2 seconds faster) because of reasons I don't really need to specify or explain properly.

Aeldra · July 2020

What I find so sad on threads like these is... that people are so quick pointing fingers at 'this is OP' and 'that is OP' and 'you had no skill, no luck, you simply had that one overpowered skill, thats why we lost.'. Yes, I get it, I've been there myself, many times. It is easy to point the finger at one ability and say 'this is why we lost', it is a lot harder to acknowledge that both sides did an amazing job and gave each other real pressure and kept this whole thing engaging. It was a huge showing by both sides, probably more people we've seen active at the same time since a long time.

Do specific skills maybe need a look at ? possibly, thats what our report system is for! Though, interestingly, most of the times skills are only the issue if you lost, not when you win. We would all be better off if everyone were honest to themselves if one of their own skills was a little too good.

Did wyrdenwood win this ascension? I highly doubt it. I don't think anyone can say to be able to stand in 100 power worth of bombs and rightfully claim they would survive, unless they pulled a prismatic out in the right moment.

Did the lag make everything a lot worse then it should've been? Yes it was. I had a section where I watched someone else needing 3 minutes till they reached back to the present. One section where I stood alone in a room and couldn't move into any direction and another where path track from minutes ago circled me around the room my group was currently without ever landing me in the right spot. Trying to gust allies that were on a different sphere by the time the game caught up to me. We all basically played in RL aeon the whole event.

Truth is, you did all very well, we had a very tight acension event that could've gone either way because both groups that showed did an amazing job at fighting and competing!

Brawrur · July 2020

I disagree with pretty much everything you're saying and think you would have a very different opinion if you on the receiving end.

Everyone agrees that is it OP, we have some people who are lying and pretending that it isn't, but consider that it was wiping out 7+ people at once from 3 rooms away with absolutely no hindering on those people. It was the sole reason for how things turned out.

After about halfway in, Creeping made up probably about 96% of all kills.

It is just beyond ignorant, flat out rude and insulting, to suggest that it wasn't an absurdly unfair impact.

I'm legitimately disappointed but not completely surprised.

And yes, part of it was due to the lag, but Creeping wouldn't have secured those kills without the +2 buff that woods get or the free bleed on Creeping. Or the free 3s stun which prevented healing after being hit by one.

"Though, interestingly, most of the times skills are only the issue if you lost, not when you win. We would all be better off if everyone were honest to themselves if one of their own skills was a little too good."

Agree with this completely and think Shadowlight could become twice as tolerable if they followed it.

Mboagn · July 2020

Aeldra said:

What I find so sad on threads like these is... that people are so quick pointing fingers at 'this is OP' and 'that is OP' and 'you had no skill, no luck, you simply had that one overpowered skill, thats why we lost.'. Yes, I get it, I've been there myself, many times. It is easy to point the finger at one ability and say 'this is why we lost', it is a lot harder to acknowledge that both sides did an amazing job and gave each other real pressure and kept this whole thing engaging. It was a huge showing by both sides, probably more people we've seen active at the same time since a long time.

Do specific skills maybe need a look at ? possibly, thats what our report system is for! Though, interestingly, most of the times skills are only the issue if you lost, not when you win. We would all be better off if everyone were honest to themselves if one of their own skills was a little too good.

Did wyrdenwood win this ascension? I highly doubt it. I don't think anyone can say to be able to stand in 100 power worth of bombs and rightfully claim they would survive, unless they pulled a prismatic out in the right moment.

Did the lag make everything a lot worse then it should've been? Yes it was. I had a section where I watched someone else needing 3 minutes till they reached back to the present. One section where I stood alone in a room and couldn't move into any direction and another where path track from minutes ago circled me around the room my group was currently without ever landing me in the right spot. Trying to gust allies that were on a different sphere by the time the game caught up to me. We all basically played in RL aeon the whole event.

Truth is, you did all very well, we had a very tight acension event that could've gone either way because both groups that showed did an amazing job at fighting and competing!

I disagree with many things with this post, but particularly the bolded bit:

Wyrdenwood Creeping had been raised as problematic before. You even have players here who play on the side of Glomdoring who at least acknowledge that something needs to change with how the skill operates. Creeping was not just "suddenly problematic during Ascension"; we saw it coming from a mile away and the powers that be chose not to do anything about it.

Incidents like this, where we know something's a problem and elect to defend its existence is a sure way to ensure that this "huge showing" doesn't happen again because players will be leaving.

Aeldra · July 2020

I am sorry if I came across as saying things are fine, I never meant to get this across. I don't have the knowledge to gauge whether doom has the kind of impact on this ascension that you claim it did, I can literally say next to nothing about it, aside of it being a wyrdenwood bomb. I can only say from what I've seen of this ascension, I doubt it is the case. That doesn't mean its fine, again, I don't have the expertise to make that kind of call. If you think that was the point of my post, then either my english is seriously failing me or it is what you want to read into it.

Brawrur · July 2020

If you got hit by any of my bombs in this event, just imagine that dealing 2000+2000 more damage, stunning you for 3 seconds and making you bleed 1000.

And then four more bombs will follow, and you'll see your entire room of allies get wiped out with no ability to shield multiple times. You've never experienced this, because we can't do it to you. I understand if you can't empathise with that at all, it's understandable.

If Serenwilde was an actual organisation and not somewhere where we have to grab random people to decide on important political decisions regarding them, you might get a slight taste of what this is like to go through.

I'm sorry if I've come off as particularly combative but it beggars belief that anyone can look at this and think anything other than "Bullshit."

I've read a bunch of pvp-combat threads and whenever people speak up around a certain org there tends to be a bunch of really... Victim-blamey (for lack of a better allegory) comments which make the losing side out to be lazy, unprepared etc. along with a bounty of people who'll just make excuses for how things are, or just get the thread shut down by gods which you can see in basically every post about conflict on these forums.

It's getting a bit old at this point and some people need to wake up and take a look at themselves and wonder whether they actually want anyone else in the game with them. And that's not just pointed at players.

Mboagn · July 2020

Aeldra said:

I am sorry if I came across as saying things are fine, I never meant to get this across. I don't have the knowledge to gauge whether doom has the kind of impact on this ascension that you claim it did, I can literally say next to nothing about it, aside of it being a wyrdenwood bomb. I can only say from what I've seen of this ascension, I doubt it is the case. That doesn't mean its fine, again, I don't have the expertise to make that kind of call. If you think that was the point of my post, then either my english is seriously failing me or it is what you want to read into it.

Your first paragraph disregards the issue of skill balance and instead chalk it up to better strategy; it argues that the Ascension was won solely because of better play by the winners and not because of mechanical issues with abilities and how they translate in actual game combat.

This position is supported by your second and third paragraphs. You even stated that issues of skill balance only come up when you lose to it, thereby implying that it is irrelevant to how Ascension played out. You cap this off by making the argument that Wyrdenwood did not win Ascension, despite it alone taking way more than fifty kills (according to my records; I didn't see deaths which happened when I was dead/did not have deathsight up). You'd expect combat to have kills from different sources; toading, decapitation, deathsong, perhaps. But in this particular instance, Creeping bombs literally caused the majority of deathsights.

You cap this off with an anecdote on lag, which is increasingly looking like the scapegoat that's going to be sacrificed instead of taking an actual review of wood bombs and their overall design. While lag was indeed equally horrendous for both sides, the fact that woods can natively stun and access bigger damage with their bombs means that they are less affected by it (the lag). Chems needed to make sure their bombs went off within a split second of each other in order to outpace serverside autocuring (and thus, also get access to bomb stun and big damage); woods don't have this problem in the same order of magnitude.

In conclusion, it's great to be on the side of Creeping. We know.

Mboagn · July 2020

I know my tone is abrasive and this is intentional; from experience in IRE, in general, only the biggest fires draw admin attention in a timely manner. You saw how quick the admins tried to slap a band-aid on Ascension woes with a truefavour. With that in mind, I'm going to keep pushing until some real solutions are enacted. I do acknowledge that those who aren't on the receiving end of Creeping probably don't realise how frustrating it is to deal with. All I'm asking is that you acknowledge that our concerns are real, even if you don't feel them yourselves.

Synl · July 2020

Mboagn said:

Wyrdenwood Creeping had been raised as problematic before. You even have players here who play on the side of Glomdoring who at least acknowledge that something needs to change with how the skill operates. Creeping was not just "suddenly problematic during Ascension"; we saw it coming from a mile away and the powers that be chose not to do anything about it.

No, it has not. You keep saying this and it is still a lie. There has been no report put in for wyrdenwood bombs. You did rant about it on discord, but there is way, way more consistent ranting about monks on discord too. There was huge ranting about Aeonics, at one point. Etc. It is unreasonable to expect IO to change things because a handful of people are ranting about an ability.

Put in a report. If that report is supported by players, and then still rejected by the admins, then you can start saying what you've been saying and it will actually mean something.

Kethaera · July 2020

Ascension this year: See warning about creeping. Enter command for shield. Wait 10 minutes. Wait 10 more minutes to phoenix/return to Astral cause I'm already dead.

Bombs generally are a ridiculous "strategy" in events like this, and chemwoods are worse than others. Added with the lag, and this was unplayable. There was no strategy to overcome it, and we did try everything available to us. All this posturing about "well maybe you could have done..." No, stop. Anything after that statement - I tried that. Repeatedly. I tried everything suggested, either from people here or from people on our side during the event to adjust for the bombs and the lag and the difficulty of moving people out of the room, and there was nothing else.

We worked with what we had, and we did damn well at doing so, and nearly won. All the suggestions of how to "git gud" is just as absurd in this case as it ever was in the past. You want to pretend like you'd have done better in our place - BS. You'd have lost, and whined about it.

Brawrur · July 2020

We've literally had multiple discussions with Oraeal over the course of like months telling him how bullshit this thing is.

It's not that it hasn't "gotten to the people who make the decisions" or somehow slipped by. We've literally had him tell us that it's very fair and balanced and right.

"Do reports" is a shit response. We may as well tell IHC to just not do any combat for the next year until those open again.

I remember being deterred away from touching the whole race thing as an envoy report and had my hands too full of reports to actually make some of Gaudi's classes not as much of a joke.

I don't know why you're calling anyone liars, there are logs of this.

Ascension - Wyrdenwood, Lag, Bragging Rights.

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