Underlying cause and proposed solution to broken trust

[Yeren]

Greetings all!

This is probably one of the most interesting threads in the history of threads on this forum. Definitely we are seeing interesting times on the donut!

We can probably all agree that the changes undertaken are an operation carried out on a conscious patient. And only people who make no decisions don’t make mistakes. Personally I think the changes go in a good direction, however the cost is some chaos and playerdeaths.

As to bully cass&his club I can only agree with Dan: there is a BIG difference in his behavior vs cass. Both had unintentional bug-riden powers NOT intended by wizards. One of them used it to grief others, and got away lucky, just like 11 times earlier (small joke, but not very far from the truth imho).

Now, we will see another week or two of magic system changes. Probably these will also have to be “fine-tuned” in a live environment before achieving balanced status.

My proposal is this: can the administration propose - after the magic system changes are done - to players an option to be restored to their state as on 9th of March (AFAIR the 1st change date)?

This would give playerbase the option to go back to their state before the live experiment, thus negating ALL possible accusations that some players used illegal knowledge to their profit?

This way we would have a nice balanced game with a happy playerbase who would not feel they have been abused. I also think in all honesty that only a minor fraction of players would go for it, as for many people this would mean a loss of about 2 months of grind time.

Thanks for reading and THANK you wizzsrds and players alike for this game and our community

[Amberlee]

Just because you keep repeating a number - 2.6 or 2.7 doesnt make the formula that came to the 2.6 or 2.7 true.

First flaw in the formula:
A special hits after x seconds, it can't just hit after 0 seconds - white hits do and can 'kill target' if lucky instant you hit...
To be 2.7 a special or a spell should be doing the same, wired into the combat cycle instead of being on its own timer.

Second flaw:
In the time of 1 special, you have many white hits, especially haste seems to scale the white hits far more than the special. This doesnt seem to have been properly calculated as 1 white hit now appears to be more potent than 1 special hit. The special 'should' at least be the same as the dual hits from 2 singlehanded weapons or the same as 1 hit from a twohander.

Anyhow, im just reiterating myself - the math behind the 2.6 is the basic flaw, and is why the game ended as unbalanced as it is right now.

Indeed Dan, the numbers being flung around dont matter! So lets go with entirely arbitrary ones, just to make it more fun.

White hits were increased by apples and oranges (not even numbers?), due to the fundamental basic principle of our balance. We had once upon a time decided that the white hits are 25 chocolate maidens (Number is fictional). Due to chocolate maidens being a big long to type, lets shorten this down to CAID. Upon these 25 CAID we built an entire system, which turned out to have an incorrect calculation at its core. This is what was normalized in white hits, effectively increasing its damage.

Now if we compare a 25 CAID (chocolate maidens.. yum..) special, which uses the same stats as your normal white hits, and has reached the maximum on its counted guild experience (and a few other variables). The damage output will be the same as 25 CAID white hits over time. (There is a small variance depending on the size of your target and hit chance of your special). There have been hundreds of hours spent in game comparing this with the actual damage values, just to verify that the calculations are correct.

Now that we know that 25 should equal 25, we seem to have reached the point of commenting on your statements.

Statement 1: "First flaw in the formula"
White hit has a combat rotation, much like specials. If you are in combat, there is a continuous effort to hit, until you effectively leave combat long enough for this to stop. Once you've left combat, this needs to start up just like any special. So you are working with an incorrect assumption that you can get a "lucky" instant hit, that lucky instant hit can happen just the same with a special which is loading. Also, if you are instantly killing something with white hits, you should probably try bigger targets.

Statement 2: "Second flaw" (So many points here, should probably have been listed as several flaws?)
1. Indeed, you can have several white hits in the time that you hit with one special. In fact, the longer the special, the stronger the special. We account for the time.
2. White hits and specials follow the exact same scaling formula for haste.
3. 25 CAID special should since my changes deal the same as 25 CAID white hits, whether you are dual wielding or using a two handed weapon.

Now to the point, I am not sure on what you are basing your assumptions. If you have definite calculations and proof that any of your statements are accurate, then by all means, send it to me so that I can correct it.

It is possible that you may be using an incorrect assumption that a special you are using should equal that of white hits, and use that to base your theories. Not all specials equal white hits, in fact few do. Guilds are generally not built to put all their eggs in one basket. This does however not mean that white hits are better than specials, in fact specials overall have a higher potential than white hits.

Balance is difficult even if you have all the specifics, so trying to do it with the descriptions and the time it takes to kill something cannot be easy. Kudos to you for trying!

And winner by K.O. in the first round..
Carnak!!

[Dan]

And winner by K.O. in the first round..
Carnak!!

Why the personal attack? Carnak did a good explanation - but the 25 CAID comparison is still far off. Plus he hopefully have access to all the formulas - i dont. I have no idea why that is a K.O. ?

I can see this is difficult to be done in an open forum, as numbers needs to get involved much more so than have been done in Carnaks well written post.

But i will try:

Why is my white hits often doing the same or more damage than my BDA slash 1:1? Is my BDA slash really worth less than a single white hit? I Thought slash was among the better specials CAID wise.

Lets say i have a pen 40 onehander, lets say slash is CAID 100 I would have thought I effectively would have hit with a 140 CAID slash attack, but the white hits do more and i have maybe 6 of those white hits pr slash and my slash seems to miss quite alot especially versus high armour class (but so do the 40 pen weapon)

[Amberlee]

And winner by K.O. in the first round..
Carnak!!

Why the personal attack? Carnak did a good explanation - but the 25 CAID comparison is still far off. Plus he hopefully have access to all the formulas - i dont. I have no idea why that is a K.O. ?

Where was the personal attack?
And as for your second statement there.
Yes he does and you are complaining about something without having all the information.
And yes slash is one of the more hard hitting specials and that has not changed, though it's not only up to the weapon but also the stats and there is where your calculation goes wrong.
The only difference between now and then is actually the fact that white hits are boosted and that does not affect the special.

[Dan]

I see your math skills Amberlee are not the best either then.

If you have 100% hp, prior to the changes, slashes would take approx 65-75% of that health pool off in a fight, leaving white hits 25-35%.

Now slashes takes off approx 15-25% and white hits 75-85% - how did this NOT effect slash becoming weak - hence every1 and his uncle going for rescue/block/merc skills/evasion type/move behind type of abilities now that dps abilities plain _suck_

So defacto DPS CAID got bigtime reduced, and non-DPS types got defacto increased CAID - which I doubt has been reflected in the guilds balance sheets accordingly making a huge imbalance in the system.

[Drazson]

"Huge" imbalance. Having a low awareness sucks but it is not that imbalanced in my opinion.

I assume after the "Gargantuan" changes to magic come around all the guilds will be re-reviewed, magic or otherwise.

We all wait our turn. Some have been for 20 years actually and will still be in the line for another 10 after the rest have had their "fix". Get in line, relax, play an alt if it's that bad, life your RL if you're so frustrated - it's a game.

[Dhez]

Question to the round: so, if white hits deal more damage and, in comparison, specials deal less damage than white hits, a possible scenario would be one in which special damage is increased. In this case, things would die faster which would mean faster growth and more character size inflation which in turn would possibly promote pvp since recovery/growth would be faster or... Not sure.

Am I understanding this correctly? I'm sincerely asking because discussions about math and caid go way over my head.

Would this be the moment we talk about implementing a character size/stat limit? I mean if things end up dying faster and growth/recovery is also faster, then it's less of an investment to be grinding all day and we can turn to rp and pvp once we reach the max limit or simply recover from our deaths?

No clue. Just asking.

[Dan]

Pvp will look like this:
You are fighting in GK vs 1 sentinel
There's one obvious exit.

Merc 1,2,3 enters the room,
Merc 1,2,3 starts blocking the west exit.
Merc 1,2,3 attacks you
10 seconds of fight commences..
You die.

Rinse repeat,

current system, 2 sup guru blocks is 30 seconds blocked, 3 probably 40.

I'm advocating for toning down white hits maybe to a 50%/50% balance of specials vs white hits from the current, and to reduce movement stuns timers accordingly to the new timeframe of fights.

[Arman]

So defacto DPS CAID got bigtime reduced, and non-DPS types got defacto increased CAID - which I doubt has been reflected in the guilds balance sheets accordingly making a huge imbalance in the system.

Dan, DPS CAID was providing far more caid than it should... exponentially more the more CAID the offensive special. That was the imbalance that got fixed. You are complaining about slash being overpowered due to this bug... about no longer being a beneficiary to a huge imbalance in the system.

You bemoan that now DA are on equal footing with other guilds who didn't have as high caid in offensive specials?

[Arman]

I'm advocating for toning down white hits maybe to a 50%/50% balance of specials vs white hits from the current, and to reduce movement stuns timers accordingly to the new timeframe of fights.

And this is a fair advocation. You aren't the first to advocate for more of combat to be influenced by guild specials.

Our combat system was designed so that all players got x caid from white hits, y caid from their occupation, z caid from their layman. Let's pretend the ratio is something like 40:40:20 of total caid a player gets. With the bug that was recently fixed, you had some players with 40:40:20 as they should, and others with 4020, and others with 40:350:20. I reckon you could guess which guilds fit in the three categories.

Those values could be refined, potentially to 30:50:20(?) now that we are comparing caid apples with caid apples. But that is something we (royal 'we', as in Carnak) would need to explore after the magic system is rebalanced and bedded down.