Melder Revamp
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I believe around then melds breaking on death and effects only hitting adjacent rather than demesne-wide were implemented. Which, from memory, were because the first melder in was securing the objective and it was an overwhelming advantage? But then like, through the nerfs I remember comments about it being more effective for the melder to just stand adjacent to the fight rather than being actually in the room.
And then it seems like a decision was made to do the overhaul so melders stopped being touched on in reports (addressing allergies, sap, etc was all part of the overhaul afaik).
So like, how do you make something that's territory control, where you're not (nearly) completely locking out people of the same class (or allies with the same archetype), without reinforcing the fortress meta, but without also making the class meaningless. The list that comes to mind seems to be pretty contradictory tbh.
A lot of other side-problems also come up because of the above major problem. One is that 1 melder is necessary, and all other melders become almost useless owing to the exclusive nature of melds in general.
tl;dr Melds are the poster children of the fortress meta
These changes don't seem to address any of that, so gg.
Accountability is necessary.
This is something that'll be tested by players prior to things being released so we can make adjustments should issues arise.
With that in mind, I'll start working on the coding and planning of the effects for each class. I have a baseline to start from for every spec at this point, but if anyone is interested in putting together a proposal or throwing together ideas for how a certain spec should work, please feel free. You can either post it up here, or send me an email at Orael@lusternia.com. Ideas are always welcome.
Which in turn is another one of the complaints (afaik) that the system encourages melders to not directly participate.
Also this reasoning is why melders had the repeated nerfs such as dropping on death and effects only hitting in the one room radius. Which, from memory, encouraged the play style I mentioned of being adjacent to the fight because the downside of being in the room as the number one target wasn't really matched with an upside. Not exactly the most fun thing which likely only exacerbates the issue of no melders readily available.
If the outcome of the revamp is that things are mostly the same it's just easier again for non-melders to remove a meld then you might as well just delete melders rather than waste the time.
1) The requirement to have a melder in order to compete
- By giving multiple ways to break the meld and reducing the ability to have unbreakable rooms, you should be able to compete easier even without a melder.
2) Fortress melds
- All nodes are breakable in multiple ways, unbreakable rooms have significantly reduced offensive potential (since effects will not bypass protection in those rooms).
- Breaking a node removes potentially larger swathes of the meld rather than needing to break each room one at a time.
3) Issues with multiple melders
- By allowing meld bonding, multiple melders of the same spec can be useful and have things to do.
- The penalty of death is less severe with nodes passing to a secondary melder, encouraging multiple.
As far as encouraging the melder to sit away - the reason that was such a viable tactic was that you could have unbreakable rooms with your offense running. Meaning the only way to break that room was to go through that room to get to a breakpoint (which wasn't always strategically possible) or kill the melder. Additionally, the risk of dying was much greater to the melder, encouraging them to be less risk-averse. That's why that strategy was so prevalent.
Now of the 3 ways to break the meld, killing the melder is likely to be the hardest (compared to a 5s channel or killing a mob). Each node is breakable and any unbreakable room, as noted already is severely hampered offensively, where you want to be able to strip protection in order for it to have an effect. We're including motivations for the melder to be in the room rather than sitting one room away. The penalty for dying is also less severe in that you can pass off the meld to other melders. The worst-case scenario is we add some kind of cooldown before the melder can re-raise a node once it's broken via the other two methods, but I don't know that it'll be an issue at this point and necessary.
The major point is that the outcome will not be the same.
Yes, one of the big complaints was that it almost required another melder to be present to work your way in, but if we're going to continue with how this system works, then honestly we're still going to require melders. Let's not forget that we just got revealed to us that every room is going to have effects, including rooms without nodes. Sure, just bring a Scroll of Protection, but there are meld effects right now that break that protection. Are those going to be looked at?
As far as I'm aware, the only way to strip protection outside things like lowmagic spring is a melder stripping it.
chemwoods won't be changing at this point and will likely just continue with the same effects they have currently.
Passing off is cute and all, but I imagine any melder without the artifacts wouldn't be bound in unless absolutely necessary because they wouldn't be able to maximise the meld with their limited node count which just increases their buy in.
Do you mean that having to face the enemy to do your part is a bad thing? That we should encourage no risk scenarios that let them use their entire offense without the threat of death?
If that's the case, then I'm going to disagree with it. If a melder wants to maintain their meld, there should be inherent risk associated with that. They shouldn't be able to sit aside and let things run without facing the potential of being a target. There should always be an inherent risk when participating in combat.
The only thing melders seem to be "getting" out of this so far is to be brought closer to but still lesser than other classes with the whole second melder thing. (I look forward to "So I don't get to meld today cause this ally has an extra melder online" or variations on that)
I guess it's all in how you look at it.
The second part is an assumption, killing the enemy's primary melder would also be about letting your melders fully participate in the fight by getting their node raised and in turn you're also likely hampering the effectiveness of the other enemy melders.
The third as noted is also an assumption, you could also make an assumption that the kill route would involve the meld, particularly given that's a common thing. Which loops back to the previous bit where killing the meld could shutdown progression towards the kill for the secondary melder(s).
There are some things in Ecology that could conceivably be patched through regular channels (as certainly there must be in Telepathy) but too much of the overarching conceit of the skillset was double wrecked by the Overhaul and the effective (and soon actual) loss of sap. For both druids and bards it's a real one trick skillset, and those few tricks have been progressively nerfed, whittled down to nothing.This isn't because they were too strong per se, but more that the mechanics were a poor fit for modern lusternia. The only way to force them through the Overhauling process was to smush them flat.
I threw around some ideas for doing it via the regular channels, but dropped it when I totally lost faith in the current (on the way out) reporting system and the capacity for people to rally behind changes for a skillset they don't personally benefit from. I think that either some kind of administrative-led rework or possibly a Special Report style mass-reporting cycle could do wonders in bringing the skillset into modernity.
EDIT: what eco (and telepathy) look like really is a function of what the overhaulled melders look like. My hope is that the actual melds will be dramatically reduced in importance, with more actives and more design space opened up for interesting primary/tertiary strategies. Either out of the gate, or as a function of forward thinking design that allows for those changes through "normal channels" to the primary skillsets.
Like...
General info: this is your kill objective
Primary: you wanna focus on this sorta thing
Secondary: this maybe doesn't directly help but keeps you alive
Tertiary: you wanna focus on this sorta thing
It seems helpful to people starting out and provides something to envoy around.
The thing that keeps coming to mind is that these changes seem to be aligning the archetype more to being a "tank". (i.e they have functionality that makes the enemies likely to want to be taking them down first.)
Having abilities like liquidform and fleshstone makes sense if you treat them as/make them a defensive cooldown, it's really just a matter or balancing/viewing their skills as tanking rather than support/dps.