Vampires

[Belegorn]

(...)
Anyway, should we do something about it now? I don’t know. I really don’t have a strong opinion either way, and I don’t know if it was designed like this on purpose or not. Either way, I am leaning towards keeping it, though. It seems to be causing some friction between players, which I see as something good. But if Ckrik sees some balance issues, and wants to change things, I probably won’t put up much of a fight.
(...)

Or lets wait for new AoB who will have opposite opinion and who will say it is against the idea as it should be designed. Like it was with war gems that were designed and accepted by previous AoB, but current one said the base idea was for sure different....

[nils]

Something tells me the invisible healer wasn't a vampire at all.

Also, using any kind of magic should definitely break invisibility and stealth equally, but not much else. They're very different in nature and have different counters, but the effect to the observer is the same (Someone heals Xyz).

The concept of healing makes one part of combat feels like a lot of work for very little reward. Im not even sure the outcome is preferred. There must be room for some weird, highly situation/location specific tactics, no?

[Kvator]

Something tells me the invisible healer wasn't a vampire at all.

Someone concentrates on something.
...

The large black-cloaked shape riding a black horse suddenly looks decently
healthier as wounded tissue knits together in a very unnatural way.

there're two guilds with option to heal Nazgul afaik -> if MM death spells looks like this then it might be the case!

+ this:

The wounds of Someone knits together somewhat! (dunno if MM's have a reason to - and actually CAN - heal themselves in open-light*)

* there it goes for the terrible drawback that's used as an excuse to grant'em all the fancy stuff in return -> seems that with built in heal they can keep themselves AND a legion of other undeads 'alive' in the open sun no problemo

[Nerull]

Something tells me the invisible healer wasn't a vampire at all.

* there it goes for the terrible drawback that's used as an excuse to grant'em all the fancy stuff in return -> seems that with built in heal they can keep themselves AND a legion of other undeads 'alive' in the open sun no problemo

The vampire heal "can keep himself AND a legion of other undeads 'alive' in the open sun" way worse than you can do with any other layman heal in the game. Furthermore, you can even nuke undeads with your heal, something the vampire can't do to the living.

There are also 2-3 significant penalties using the heal that directly impacts the vampire that you don't need to suffer either, its of layman potency, and is the most restricted heal in the game.

Nothing wrong with a vampire tying a portion of his available caid just to stay in the sun? Very stupid and retarding, and should work to the advantage of the living.

[TaranGoatWalker]

* there it goes for the terrible drawback that's used as an excuse to grant'em all the fancy stuff in return -> seems that with built in heal they can keep themselves AND a legion of other undeads 'alive' in the open sun no problemo

They do not get caid for drawbacks.

[Cherek]

(...)
Anyway, should we do something about it now? I don’t know. I really don’t have a strong opinion either way, and I don’t know if it was designed like this on purpose or not. Either way, I am leaning towards keeping it, though. It seems to be causing some friction between players, which I see as something good. But if Ckrik sees some balance issues, and wants to change things, I probably won’t put up much of a fight.
(...)

Or lets wait for new AoB who will have opposite opinion and who will say it is against the idea as it should be designed. Like it was with war gems that were designed and accepted by previous AoB, but current one said the base idea was for sure different....

Oh come on now. Like the game is not full of stuff that was adjusted after it was approved to enter the game? You make it sound like once something enters the game it should never-ever change no matter what. That's not how any kind of game development works, and you know it. And you also know that some unintended changes eventually get grandfathered in. And yes, it does depend on whoever is in the admin at the time, and things may change as admin members change.

Regarding the war gems, which we have discussed plenty of times, already. It doesn't matter if they were intended to work like they do or not, or if they were approved or accidentally snuck through AoB. They are simply too good. We have no other item that provides a permanent effect that has zero downside, that never decays, doesn't require mana or fuel, etc. If you want to have another round regarding those, let's do it in PMs or in the appropriate thread (I am sure there is a war gem thread somewhere).

[Targun]

Oh come on now. Like the game is not full of stuff that was adjusted after it was approved to enter the game? You make it sound like once something enters the game it should never-ever change no matter what. That's not how any kind of game development works, and you know it. And you also know that some unintended changes eventually get grandfathered in.

Agree, though 2 pages earlier you take opposite stance of: "oh come on this stuff has been here for decades". It has to be one or another. It's not ok to swap whenever one finds it fitting.

There were and are plenty of mechanics on Genesis that were abused. Most of the time it was unintentional effects of implementation or interaction between different parts of the game. Sometimes this was done purposefully by player-wizards or perks-for-friends.

It cannot be avoided in a smallish, non-profit volounteer project. Such is life. Both: the chance for omission due to limited time and conflict of interest of people having both wizards and mortals are too big. These things happened and will happen.

However, once players report some mechanic is being successfully used for griefing and trolling, then it really shouldn't be 6 pages long thread of diluting the issue at hand or comments such as "it causes some stir among players, I think it's good". It just proves lack of understanding of the scale of abuse. It really should be one note: "Roger. To get the facts straight - it's not vampire specific. Yes, it's mechanic abuse, we'll fix that". EOT.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist, where you have such rudimentary, buggy and basic true/false system of seeing invisible/hidden targets that casting heals (or any action affecting stats, stamina, health, poison, etc.) on a different target than yourself and still being invisible/hidden can be great tool for griefing and abusing very basic design. It doesn't matter if it's EC, Ranger on sneak or a Vampire.

For this specific encounter it's simply further aggravated by the passive DMG reduction that Nazgul has, which is why griefing is so effective. It's also causing so much trouble, becuase FBB is massively overtuned since it became top-notch enhancer and it should've been nerfed ages ago.

[Nerull]

Oh come on now. Like the game is not full of stuff that was adjusted after it was approved to enter the game? You make it sound like once something enters the game it should never-ever change no matter what. That's not how any kind of game development works, and you know it. And you also know that some unintended changes eventually get grandfathered in.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist, where you have such rudimentary, buggy and basic true/false system of seeing invisible/hidden targets that casting heals (or any action affecting stats, stamina, health, poison, etc.) on a different target than yourself and still being invisible/hidden can be great tool for griefing and abusing very basic design. It doesn't matter if it's EC, Ranger on sneak or a Vampire.

Ideally, any spell that target other beings as argument (especially nukes, heals, buffs, debuffs etc) should end invisibility. You know, a traditional mmo-approach.

[Hektor]

Again - several games actually only end invisibility on aggressive actions (so healing, summoning monsters, buffing etc) does not break

[Nerull]

Again - several games actually only end invisibility on aggressive actions (so healing, summoning monsters, buffing etc) does not break

Healing the enemy of your friend probably counts as an aggressive action, no? In mmo's in general, you automatically ends up as flagged in combat and on the aggrolist of the enemy of the one you heal.