Guild Updates

[Creed]

Ill just raise this old horse, for a moment.

How are things going with the guild-updates?

How about the spell-system recode, and then the magic guilds?

Should we expect to see something in that area, within the next 2-3 years?

[gorboth]

Active recode work is currently in-process on two guilds: the Morgul Mages and the Elementalists occupational magic guild that Petros is creating to more effectively support the theme formerly occupied by the ScoP. PoT are slated for work, but Navarre has been too busy RL to mount a sustained effort in recent months, so we cannot honestly call that project active. Unrelated to the recode, but related to active guild coding is the Cult of Chemosh Necromancer guild that I am halfway (or so) finished coding. I had to take a break for the holidays, but will be back at it next week.

G.

[Zhar]

Might as well say it here.

The Elven Archers are also scheduled for recode. I'm currently working on it with Navarre but it's probably going to take some time as I'm a bit inexperienced and we're still at the planning stages.

To give you a hint of what current iteration of future changes entails (everything can change the closer we get to actually completing the recode):
- new titles (more variety)
- new skills (slight adjustments here, no more sword training for example)
- new spells
- new specials (notice the plural form here)
- ability to freely switch between layman and occupational versions
- new trainer who will accept evil players into the guild and train them in place of the current limiting way of goodie only to join and train but can be evil

This should make the guild more attractive to players, especially that evil-aligned people in OCC guilds that required you to stay evil pretty much excluded them from the ability to join the guild.

When the work actually starts I might create a blog like Gorboth did for his CoC to keep people appraised on the progress.

[Laurel]

- new specials (notice the plural form here)

What exactly is wrong with the current ones?

[Draugor]

Active recode work is currently in-process on two guilds: the Morgul Mages and the Elementalists occupational magic guild that Petros is creating to more effectively support the theme formerly occupied by the ScoP. PoT are slated for work, but Navarre has been too busy RL to mount a sustained effort in recent months, so we cannot honestly call that project active. Unrelated to the recode, but related to active guild coding is the Cult of Chemosh Necromancer guild that I am halfway (or so) finished coding. I had to take a break for the holidays, but will be back at it next week.

G.

Can we have an update from Petros perhaps as to how the work is going? There has been nothing on the Elementals recode board for quite some time now, and we want it

[Zhar]

- new specials (notice the plural form here)

What exactly is wrong with the current ones?

Right now Elven Archers have a total of 0 specials.

Unless you're referring to aiming, ability to shoot someone in adjacent room and all that jazz. Those are mudlib features of every bow out there and everyone can do that.

[Kvator]

back to topic:

update SS please - such a fun guild, so damn unproductive combat-wise now - low weapon-skill + low-dmg special (especially vs enemies with high armour aka most of Genesis' npcs)
update tricksters please - return them some form of shinkick and remove the align-check-on-join part
update archers please - actually finish their implementation and give them double-shot or elemental-arrow (any combat-aid except "aim")

the above is not much coding-wise afaik, so "little" work for much improvement

+1

[Strider]

The Elven Archers are also scheduled for recode. [...] we're still at the planning stages.

I can't recall the thread(s) that spawned this, but I've been kicking around a couple thoughts about Genesis' lack of spatial awareness and the difficulties of location based combat...

It occurs to me that it might be interesting to use being hidden as a substitute for distance to allow for somewhat-sensical bow combat.

A few game changes should allow an archer to sneak up and shoot an arrow into a foe without automatically being revealed or the archer initiating melee-combat maneuvers. Upon being struck, the foe will attempt both it's normal combat routines and to reveal the archer. Each additional arrow shot will increase the likelihood of the archer getting struck by the foe's blind swing and lower the archer's effective hide and sneak against the attacking foe. Should the foe hit or otherwise reveal the archer prior to the cessation of combat on both sides, standard melee would ensue.

So, the archer would not be "fighting" (sort of like they "stopped fighting") although they could continue to use their "shooting" special attacks, while the foe would be using their blind-fighting adjusted parry, dodge etc, to defend themselves and similarly adjusted attack skill against the hide, sneak, dodge, stat, guild-modifier and perhaps room-modifier, modified melee avoidance of the archer.

I think invisibility should not offer the same situation, and backstab could potentially confer the same ability, although it should be much harder to avoid detection that close.

[Zhar]

The Elven Archers are also scheduled for recode. [...] we're still at the planning stages.

I can't recall the thread(s) that spawned this, but I've been kicking around a couple thoughts about Genesis' lack of spatial awareness and the difficulties of location based combat...

It occurs to me that it might be interesting to use being hidden as a substitute for distance to allow for somewhat-sensical bow combat.

A few game changes should allow an archer to sneak up and shoot an arrow into a foe without automatically being revealed or the archer initiating melee-combat maneuvers. Upon being struck, the foe will attempt both it's normal combat routines and to reveal the archer. Each additional arrow shot will increase the likelihood of the archer getting struck by the foe's blind swing and lower the archer's effective hide and sneak against the attacking foe. Should the foe hit or otherwise reveal the archer prior to the cessation of combat on both sides, standard melee would ensue.

So, the archer would not be "fighting" (sort of like they "stopped fighting") although they could continue to use their "shooting" special attacks, while the foe would be using their blind-fighting adjusted parry, dodge etc, to defend themselves and similarly adjusted attack skill against the hide, sneak, dodge, stat, guild-modifier and perhaps room-modifier, modified melee avoidance of the archer.

I think invisibility should not offer the same situation, and backstab could potentially confer the same ability, although it should be much harder to avoid detection that close.

I'll be honest with you here. At this stage it's not really possible to introduce any reasonable form of "spatial awareness" in Genesis. Not like it couldn't be done, but, in my opinion, it would cause more problems than actual help. You have forms of "pseudo range" like Knight's charge, Calian's movie behind etc. but making it a full feature is pointless. Part of it stems from the fact that most of the code that already exists isn't really ready for it. Most, if not all, NPCs would need to be reworked, most of the guilds are based on the premise that there's no range factor, which would require another re-balancing and recoding of them etc.

Another thing is the current stealth system (which sucks) which would have to be reworked too. It might get reworked anyway, but not in a way factoring in ranged combat and what not.

Right now there are several guilds out there that use ranged combat and they're the most OP guilds out there if you know how to use them. Even the fact that you can shoot something from adjacent location without it retaliating is a huge boost.

The biggest problems for us wizards, as I see it, currently are requests (cool requests, mind you) from players that want features that were not implemented/poorly implemented originally. Personally I'd go for the extreme and remove all forms of "ranged combat" from Genesis whatsoever. It would force some guilds to be closed/changed heavily but at least everyone would know what's going on and no there would be no backwards compatibility problems.

All this is of course my personal opinion. I think that you should either do things "proper" or don't do them at all and I believe that it would be easier for players to accept the fact that Genesis simply does not allow for ranged combat than to introduce artificial half-measures just to give few people some poor semblance of what they really want.

[Laurel]

Right now there are several guilds out there that use ranged combat and they're the most OP guilds out there if you know how to use them. Even the fact that you can shoot something from adjacent location without it retaliating is a huge boost.

I gotta tell Kvator how OP he could be if he only knew how to use his guild ...