I am curious to know if either spell bonus is messed up right now, or if firewind has been weakened and the dice for damage has been moved to frostbolt?
Spell damage bonus is now being counted before saves, resistances, etc(previously it had been added at the end of the damage calculation). This means that if a creature saves vs your casting, you will not get the full amount of damage for the eq that is worn. This change was necesarry to add spell dam and avatar bonuses to all mage spells and also to allow us to add more damage spells. There was simply no way possible we could allow a possible 180 base damage to spells( 100 spell eq, 80 av bonus) before a spell was ever cast. One side affect(that I had not thought of) has been the fact high level mobs and players make saves the majority of the time(except against bards), I am working on this now.
The base damage for firewind was lowered a tad(not much ) so that the highest level mage spells are all within a % of one another. However, Frosbolt is still quite a bit higher than the old firewind was. The overall affect should be a more dynamic and interesting way of fighting, as well as mages being able to use basically a firewind damage spell regardless of what type of immunity or resistance a mob has up. Rather than previously where a player had to lower themselves to a spell(disint) which was almost 100 hps less damage than firewind.
I honestly believe that once combined with the other new mage spells(haste, slow, improved haste), as well as the fact avatar bonuses and spell dam eq was added to all mage damage spells, that mages will have an overall power gain. This is in no way meant to be a nerfing and if it is I will revisit it quickly.
As well, I added a few more book poppers for each book a couple days ago but I guess nobody has sang since the originals were set since nobody has mentioned it….
Enjoy,
Splork
Hopefully I should have saves worked out by tomorrow night.
I understand that this was technically a bug that needed fixing. However, I’m sure you guys can also understand that cutting spell bonus (and avatar bonus? i dont know about this one) essentially in half is a rather large blow to a very large portion of the player base.
I’m sure there will be quite a bit of yelling about this one, but I would like to offer up a comprimise:
In an effort to find a way to help players try to get some of this blasting power back, perhaps we could double all the spelldam caps? This wouldnt immediately give any player more power, but would allow them to work towards getting their bonuses back to where they were.
Hopefully that is a mutually agreeable suggestion?
Just a thought….
Ok, since this isn’t intended to nerf mages, I’ll refrain from bitching and just post some facts.
My understanding was avatar spellbonus was 120hps for winds (I don’t have numbers from tests done years ago). Add to this 90 spellbonus (mage prime at max spelldam), Blackmore’s spelldam bonus was 210hps. Assuming a mob always saves, that’s basically 100hps/spell that bmore lost, or roughly 150hps/round. Regardless of intentions, that’s a HUGE nerf to have your primary means of damage dropped by 150hps/round. I can pretty much assume frostbolt isn’t going to make up for the other 100hps/spell. The one I cast as a test did roughly 240hps, which isn’t much considering there used to be 200hps added to winds. Also consider firestorm is still the biggest avatar damage spell. There isn’t going to be anything to compensate for that loss.
Also, the books are extremely difficult to obtain - so saying that with the new spells, mages will increase in power is misleading, because the majority of mages won’t have the spells for months and months, having to rely on their winds that are less powerful.
Finally, with spelldam basically halved, in the time that bmore reached 5x40, all his drachma and all his new eq has gone towards spelldam. In those 3 or 4 years, however long it’s been, he’s succeeded in possibly not really losing much power on his winds, while giving up 1.0 ac, +1 to hit and +1 to damage. With all the talk of new spells, eq and abilities that constantly increase the power of characters, from Blackmore’s viewpoint, when this change is taken into effect, he’s gotten less powerful in all that time.
In an effort to find a way to help players try to get some of this blasting power back, perhaps we could double all the spelldam caps? This wouldnt immediately give any player more power, but would allow them to work towards getting their bonuses back to where they were.
[/quote:hj4ky2t9]
In order for bmore to solo with spelldam, almost all of his spelldam eq is bought with a ton of drachma, and a lyme forge. Unless a significant amount of ingame solo-based spelldam eq got added, it will take a couple years to regain the power through spelldam eq.
Actually, you’re all ignoring saves. It’s been known for a while that cry of the avatars works out to be a bigger damage spell than firewind even though firewind does a lot more damage. This is because bard charisma makes it damned hard to save and everyone else makes their saves against mage spells near constantly.
If the actual problem, which is saves, is fixed, it will effectively double the power of every spell you cast. ie. You’ll get supercharged instead of nerfed, because not only will that lost spelldam blast through, but all the normal damage that you’ve been thinking you were getting, but weren’t.
After a conversation with Splork, I think I actually understand the situation here (believe it or not).
I would agree with 12345 assuming 1 thing:
By “fixing” the spell saves to mobs, and have them actually fail their save… the save failure % must be set to a decent number. Basically the amount of damage i lost due to moving the avatar/spelldam bonus before the save should approximately equal the base spell damage + my avatar/spelldam bonus that i gain every time the mob failed a save.
The question really is, will the save failure rate be high enough to achieve this?
All that said, one thing that would be nice is if there was a message telling us when the mob succeeds in its saving roll. I know, we dont want to add more to the battle spam, but it would be nice to see something like “Demogorgon stands firm through your cone of frost” or something. Maybe it could be added to the gag_fight list of stuff too?
Again, just a suggestion.
Thanks,
Deju
ps. I understand that you dont want every player in the game to immediately have the new spells, but making the poprate so low (im currently 0 for 62 on one of them) just frustrates players and makes them skip it and go back to doing other things, thus defeating the purpose of putting the new spells in at all.
Deju is exactly correct.
Old method:
~250 damage (saved) = ~125
~125 + 120 (Avatar 40) + 90 (PMage +spelldam) = ~335 / cast
New method:
I think I heard firewind damage and Avatar bonuses are being lowered…
~220? damage + 90? (Avatar bonus) + 90 (PMage +spelldam) = 400 or 200 saved.
If the new save is 50/50, it comes out to about a 35 damage loss. However, we were also told that firewind is being weakened to make room for frostbolt… so assuming that is stronger, it’s close to being correct.
Since mages are 2-1-2-1-2, etc. That works out to about 50 damage lost per round. So it really comes down to how the new saves are calced and how good frostbolt is.
Nods offensive spells appear to be consistantly nerfed for me.. a mob I hit all the time that took a double stab and 3 winds (sometimes only 2 winds if I was lucky) now takes double stab +5 winds - and that’s with 2 of the winds being masterful - otherwise dbl stab + 6 winds, and on top of that is all the additional HP cost while battling the mob (2-3 times as much HP cost as prior to these changes) due to the additional rounds taken to kill the mob, which in the end means the effect overall is more than halving player effectiveness in this case.
Another good measure for me is running Oly, since I do it a lot. My effectiveness there has been halved consistantly, measured by how many full regens I need to do to run the same group of mobs in the area, and I seem to be getting hit harder too.. although it probably just seems that way because it’s taking more rounds to kill a mob now due to the spelldam nerfing. Apparently Oly hasn’t been touched so it’s not a change with the area itself.
Pretty severe changes..
Overall effect - we’re spending even more time regenning and less time playing, while getting less exp than we used to (solo) due to other recent changes. It seems kind of a pointless result of these changes, not to mention boring (seriously, who wants to spend even more time regenning?).
As Splork said below, “This is in no way meant to be a nerfing and if it is I will revisit it quickly” so I hope there is no need for us to freak out just yet :)
Heh… you don’t see that every day.
Weasel doesn’t think this is a personal afront to him :)
Just teasing bro. :lol:
well actually, now that you mention it…. hehe :wink:
Actually I wasn’t going to mention this at all. I thought it was something
they were going to fix… I was soloing and noticed that my damage on my
Firestorm was A LOT weaker then a week or 2 ago. I just thought they
upped the mobs in the area, but I guess that wasn’t the case.
I don’t belive this “change” was good at all. If u added new spells u shouldn’t
have changed the calc that would effect every other spell in the game.
beyond retarded.
Like most ppl already said. Previous mobs were stab stab wind wind DEAD.
Now it’s stab stab wind wind WIND WIND WIND DEAD. That cost at least
75mana Extra that we didn’t need to case in the past. And in a sense 75
mana WASTED, on a mob that we use to be able to kill…
.. a mob I hit all the time that took a double stab and 3 winds (sometimes only 2 winds if I was lucky) now takes double stab +5 winds - and that’s with 2 of the winds being masterful ..[/quote:3gtwzn59]
I’ve winded self in arena and figured out that masterful wind means nothing at all. It costs same amount of mana and it doesn’t affect saves at least in arena.
.. a mob I hit all the time that took a double stab and 3 winds (sometimes only 2 winds if I was lucky) now takes double stab +5 winds - and that’s with 2 of the winds being masterful ..[/quote:32nf6pr8]
I’ve winded self in arena and figured out that masterful wind means nothing at all. It costs same amount of mana and it doesn’t affect saves at least in arena.[/quote:32nf6pr8]
ahh ok thanks, interesting to know. So I guess mob is dbl stab + 5-6 winds regardless of masterful then. cheers. Add on an additional 400 or so HP cost in additional fighting duration as well.. not good.
I honestly believe that once combined with the other new mage spells(haste, slow, improved haste).[/quote:1bsrl4n2]
is this the case? i look at help files and it says these spells is all druid. i am agreeing that they should be mage spells. spells of this nature have always been the for wizards and such. giving them only to druids really upsets the balance between new and old class characters. this isn’t a simple weaken spell this is haste. let’s leave treehugging to the druids and real magic to the wizards.
brand :twisted:
post script: can anyone list the names of the new spellbooks, just for me?
Does haste let you cast faster than 2-1-2-1? I thought the help file said it let you sneak in an extra attack, which seems more along the lines of fluidity. Not that have any problems with mages having it, it just doesn’t seem like it would help them a lot :)
hmm so haste is like avatar attack (avatar 36).. except it’s at druid level 31 instead.. or avatar-druid 31 for longer lasting haste..
so does that mean an avatar warrior with druid class can get 2 additional attacks per round??? or is haste a prime-only spell?
Still doesn’t help anyone without druid class..
btw, convocation is a very nice spell for leaders, thanks.
Last i heard those druid spells were being moved to mage, I am guessing these spells were possibly part of the cause of our recent crashes. Perhaps that is why they have not been moved as of yet to mage. Other than that i don’t recall hearing that they were staying druid spells.
I don’t get it - if haste becomes a mage spell instead of druid, what’s the point other than having to use up more mana casting haste to achieve the same level of offensiveness ..that is assuming that the one extra round from haste makes up for the spelldam lost and the additional HP cost from increased fight duration..
( O)(o )
maybe I should just shuddup.
the only point i can think of that then both brand and weasel would be able to cast haste, which i would like very much :twisted:
If the actual problem, which is saves, is fixed, it will effectively double the power of every spell you cast. ie. You’ll get supercharged instead of nerfed, because not only will that lost spelldam blast through, but all the normal damage that you’ve been thinking you were getting, but weren’t.[/quote:2g24s3pk]
Yes and no. If mobs that always made saves before suddenly miss half their saves, it will be nice on big mobs where things even out, but those saves cutting spell bonus in half will still (potentially) suck on xp mobs. Take paupers on Oly for instance. If they have 250 hps, and your winds used to do 275, you’d never get hit and do a pretty decent xp run. Now, your winds are 200 half the time and 400 the other half. You’re going to take a round of attacks half the time when before you never did.
Please don’t point out how oversimplified this post is, the concept is valid whether or not you figure in getting 2 winds before the mob attacks, or losing conc on your second wind or the variance in hps mobs have or damage wind does.
(first part corrected to say what I meant)
I think you said that backwards, but it’s still a valid point. ie. mobs currently always save.
There is another half to that though, which is something that was confusing me a while back when I was trying to understand why Cry of the Avatars was effectively a better spell than wind.
As written, firewind is a great spell. However, in practice, it’s not. When considering the balance of the game (class vs class), the gods have been assuming it’s 2x as powerful as it effectively is. If you look at the resulting damage totals, that creates a balance problem.
To builders, it’s not a problem (class vs mob). They design mobs so that survive a certain number of stabs/blasts and do x amount of damage. So to them, the error is transparent.
Suddenly, someone realized that you’ve been using an underpowered spell. Fixing this would be a giant plus in terms of bring mage up to parr with the other classes. This is the issue that I’m hoping gets resolved. Though it doesn’t affect me personally, I think it’s important to the balance of the game.
Unfortunatlely, since that most likely means also fixing saves, firewind will no longer be a static damage spell. ie. It may do 2x or 1/2, take your pick. By definition, you’ll sometimes need 2x as much mana to kill the same mob. Luck of the roll.
Theoretically, the areas should be rebalanced after this happens so that they work the way the builders intended. However, assuming that the new saved version is weaker than the old saved version, this will create an immediate problem in terms of mob survivability.
So I guess the question is basically: Would you rather have an underpowered class or wait for the areas to be rebalanced?
I’d hate to add more flames (heh, firewinds) to the fire, but this is a reminder of how silly the early AD&D save system was. It’d be cool to have saves actually mean something in terms of playing. For example, some classes (thieves, etc) might have faster reflexes. Against those types of targets, you (as the mage) might want to choose a lower level spell that saves vs. a different attribute. Your base spell may do less damage, but if the target saves less often you might be far better off.
Of course, there again the AD&D save system was silly. Spells were one large group. Other rules systems have had better, more interesting solutions.
Also, on the spells messages, it may be complicated to implement but a different message (to the caster only) might be a decent solution. Instead of seeing a mob engulfed in blazing burning winds, maybe you’d see the mob hop about trying to avoid the effect. Of course, for a robust system might have different messages for different species etc.
Well, back to work. AFK!
Theoretically, the areas should be rebalanced after this happens so that they work the way the builders intended. However, assuming that the new saved version is weaker than the old saved version, this will create an immediate problem in terms of mob survivability.
So I guess the question is basically: Would you rather have an underpowered class or wait for the areas to be rebalanced?[/quote:3czszlnc]
The question is do you really have so much time to wait for rebalancing? It would take ages. Actually I believe it won’t do. And the trouble with rebalancing is that you can’t just reduce saves for a mob because it will affect not only mages but all classes and it will change balance for area in whole. So I would reduce wind’s basic damage but have previous version of spell_dam/tard_bonus counting.
For the recent spellbonus changes…
What was a reason for adding spellbonus to minor spells ?
Since almost all spellbonus items are high mage restricted,
lowlevels and midlevels mages just unable to taste spellbonus
with minor offensive spells.
From another side, highlevels mages never cast magic missiles and fireballs.
So, it seems to me adding spellbonus to minor offensive spells is
kinda useless.
But, this potentially useless change required to change main formula for
spellbonus, seriously tweaking spellbonus for major offensive spells.
Some mages probably would want to reconsider their charbuild, focused
on maxing spellbonus. But, as a rule, they already spent 1750dr
buying quest spellbonus rings+robe.
Dont you think, in case of new spellbonus formula would stay ingame
forever, it would be at least fair to let players sell their spellbonus quest
items for the same price they bought them.
Drum Roll Please …..
So when are they going to mess with saves on Cry of Avatar?!?
Totaly disagree with Deju and 12345 about spelsaves on mobs and that new spell damage formula will do more damage in future than fue days ago, Unless thay will increase ‘wind’ damage or change/remove that 1/2 rate.
Increasing cap also will be silly step in eyes of people who collected in past 120-130 speldamage and one day by one man decision was forced throw away all extra and cut self to 90/70/50/30
Fue days ago each 9 from 10 winds was halved , each imm without thinking increasing and increasing spelsaves on mobs, and its bulshit lie in splork’s post that only high mobs (was talking with many imms about that meaning high mob and all imms under that word understand own trough what is ‘high mob’)
Hrm and one more thing, speldamage equip effect was reduced 2s, and speldamage drachma equip price stays same,undead controll drachma equip effect was reduced 5s times and prices was not changed.
To Falsra post: Oleg, speldamage was real bonus for lowbies. On valk in past fireball and frost was affected by spelbonus(wind version spells for newbs) and you right only few spellbonus items for lowbies …. ie 1(belt with 10 spellbonus) actualy was fealable difference between lowbie without it and with.
And any way flame or not flame nothing will be changed
Splork knows what best for sloth and in splork we trust:D
I’m curious if anyone is actually aware how saves work in this game…
I’m sorry, but this is really frustrating. I now get maybe 30 seconds of play in and I then need to regen again for 7 minutes. Honestly this is just ridiculous. If this is how it’s supposed to work then thank gawd it never did because the mud would have died a long time ago.
I think it’s safe to say it still needs work Weasel.
hehe ya think? sorry, should be patient and stop whining huh (rhetorical question btw).
Actually, I think your concern and all the mage’s concern is very valid. I apologize if it seems otherwise :)
We’ll try to look at this sometime soon. The current system for saves totally sucks - it wasn’t designed to work with every mob being lvl 40, which is essentially the situation now. We are thinking over what to do with it. But anyhow, we will probably do something to get spelldam back to about where it was, except that it will still not penetrate fire resistance etc (before, it did). This is being delayed by me being swamped by work and Splork’s computer being broken; both of these situations should improve soon.
thanks for the update Kj :)
- it’s the not knowing that was a killer, heh.
Thanks very much for the post Kj. If by chance there is anything i can do to help, just let me know. Also, I wanted to thank you for the quick addition of the lurk flag too… very helpful!
Thanks again,
Deju
kjartan wrote: We’ll try to look at this sometime soon. The current system for saves totally sucks - it wasn’t designed to work with every mob being lvl 40, which is essentially the situation now. We are thinking over what to do with it. But anyhow, we will probably do something to get spelldam back to about where it was, except that it will still not penetrate fire resistance etc (before, it did). This is being delayed by me being swamped by work and Splork’s computer being broken; both of these situations should improve soon.
I wish posts like this were more frequent. A short update like this is really all most of us need to be calmed down. Thanks.
Im sorry I havent been able to post, my new computer has a bad OS and I havent been able to connect till basically now.
Until we can fix this, I have returned spell damage to being calculated after saves. Also, I have put back the original avatar bonuses which will stay this figure.
These changes should get you pretty close to where you were.
When we redo how saves are calculated, there is a good chance spell dam will be put back to where we want it. There are simply too many advantages for us, building wise, if it is there.
Sorry again for the delay,
Splork
These will go in on tonight’s reboot.
Until we can fix this, I have returned spell damage to being calculated after saves. Also, I have put back the original avatar bonuses which will stay this figure.
[/quote:a1n6rnm9]
This is yet another thing that I wish happened more often. Thanks Rick.
Yeah, I think this was handled better than normal myself. Though the mages might disagree with me :)
cheers Splork and Kj
I do want to apologize again. I really expected to have everything corrected basically that night and then all hell broke loose with my computer. Im still basiucally away till next week because of it.
If anything, you guys should know I speak my mind. If I meant for mages to get screwed, I would of just said it:-)
Im still excited about the project in general. Kj pointed out something, once this is finished it will create room and need for more skills/spells, eq, etc which is great.
Splork
ULTIMA!!!!!