62 replies to this topic

[LABec]

If PvP on 1a is here to stay then we need to balance PvP

 

remove shades and make it a fair fight

 

 

 

[Banishment]

No, take your death.

[«Chão§phê®ê»]

Disagree. People just log and get on a different crit instead of fighting or even running.

[Banishment]

Buy some Magic Absorb gear, I hear Barrier Ring is good.

[Cadabra]

[Adultery]

ironically the ones saying keep the shades are the people doing the pking. 

 

make them uncraftable and 100k a pop. thatll put some led in their pencil. 

[Cadabra]

ironically the ones saying keep the shades are the people doing the pking. 

 

make them uncraftable and 100k a pop. thatll put some led in their pencil.

 

As funny as it is to see, i agree with Rick. Too easy to obtain and they just sink higher levels of massive amounts of EXP. It literally takes no skill if you have an invent of shades. Just wait for target to stam out then you got a nice 10 sec window to blow your load all over their face.

[Nerve]

ironically the ones saying keep the shades are the people doing the pking. 

 

make them uncraftable and 100k a pop. thatll put some led in their pencil. 

 

coming from a guy that supposedly has loads of shades vaulted and logs to town when he sees certain crits log on. Lol

 

 

Also complaining about shades and pks...meanwhile ever since the pking has started more people been playing... must not hate it that bad

Edited by Nerve, 04 February 2022 - 02:25 PM.

[brewcrew]

Rick thats not irony....Irony would be for someone like you who keeps getting murdered to want to keep shades the way they were.

Irony-

noun

 

1. the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

 

 

Shades are fine.

[Banishment]

Everyone has easy access to shades, why is it only a problem for DA?

 

---------------- Azile ----------------

Players Killed: 7

Deaths by Players:

 

Oh...

Edited by Banishment, 04 February 2022 - 02:20 PM.

[Banishment]

 

ironically the ones saying keep the shades are the people doing the pking. 

 

make them uncraftable and 100k a pop. thatll put some led in their pencil.

 

As funny as it is to see, i agree with Rick. Too easy to obtain and they just sink higher levels of massive amounts of EXP. It literally takes no skill if you have an invent of shades. Just wait for target to stam out then you got a nice 10 sec window to blow your load all over their face.

 

Idk man, I seen Rick fail to shade a cleric and logged off after being jolted.

[«Chão§phê®ê»]

The ironic missuse of irony.

I'm down to pay more for shades.

I don't think the price point is too big of a deal. It's a big map...

[«Chão§phê®ê»]

Actually, nevermind. I'm gonna need them for hp/stam/mana regen when I go further out on mage for pks solo.

[LABec]

Nightshades on Multi-alt make sense, they give an advantage but its not enough to wipe out the the party you're attacking before they have a chance to mount a counter attack or flee.  The concept just does not convey correctly to a 1-alt version where a busy day you've got 10 people playing and most days its only 4 or 5 people playing.

 

PvP on a balance game, 80% or more of the encounters need to go something like this....

 

Player A, attacks Player B (of similar level)

Player B uses pots and issues a counter attack

Player A and Player B duke it out for few(1 or 2) MINUTES using skill

Player A or B acknowledges they're losing the fight and has the opportunity to attempt to run or flee if they do not want the penalty of dying

 

I think we can all agree this is not how most PvP encounters are going on 1 alt currently.   

 

To that point, I think the game is not balanced for PvP.  We need to take action to balance the game.  If its not removing nightshades, then maybe its consider the EXP loss and knock that down a significant amount.

[LABec]

other ideas....

 

-Make some areas nopk and some contested, anything under 65 or 70 POD is nopk

 

-Make nightshades 1 stam regain not full regain

 

-Make exp loss minimal

 

-Increase armor, anti-magic, etc

 

-Make nightshades harder to obtain, 100k each and not craft-able

 

-Make it so you can only use a nightshade after being attacked by a player within the last x number of seconds

 

other ideas?

Edited by LABec, 04 February 2022 - 07:19 PM.

[Stig]

Nightshades on Multi-alt make sense, they give an advantage but its not enough to wipe out the the party you're attacking before they have a chance to mount a counter attack or flee.  The concept just does not convey correctly to a 1-alt version where a busy day you've got 10 people playing and most days its only 4 or 5 people playing.

 

PvP on a balance game, 80% or more of the encounters need to go something like this....

 

Player A, attacks Player B (of similar level)

Player B uses pots and issues a counter attack

Player A and Player B duke it out for few(1 or 2) MINUTES using skill

Player A or B acknowledges they're losing the fight and has the opportunity to attempt to run or flee if they do not want the penalty of dying

 

I think we can all agree this is not how most PvP encounters are going on 1 alt currently.   

 

To that point, I think the game is not balanced for PvP.  We need to take action to balance the game.  If its not removing nightshades, then maybe its consider the EXP loss and knock that down a significant amount.

That's more of a duel, and how a fair fight should go, agreed.  With PKing it's a little bit more lopsided, especially as PKers will often wait until players have used all or most of their stamina before mounting their attack, and the victims are usually caught by surprise (so don't have macros set up and will probably take a second to process what just happened), meaning you can't run away or attempt to kill your attacker before they've done all they can.  The main problem is that the penalties for getting PKed are incredibly harsh, what with the lack of cap on XP loss - for example, if you have 1b XP, you will lose 5m XP if you get PKed... for most people who can't commit to more than a couple of hours a day, that's more of a day's training and is nothing short of demoralising.  The other problems is lost gold and loot, especially if it's valuable loot (e.g. you might need to switch weapons to take out the Bolted Chest, for example, and there's nothing stopping a Cobalt Staff of the Winds from dropping and a PKer taking it for themselves).

 

i have campaigned to have the XP loss locked at 5,000,000 maximum before, but JLH is reluctant to have it capped even at such a high value.

 

For Nightshade Elixirs (which are generally not allowed in sanctioned duels), my main problem is that they can be used in such a way that one player with one crit can commit a total party wipe, since you can, for example, kill the party leader, instantly use a potion to recharge your stamina and heal any hits the other party might be able to get off, kill the next player, rinse and repeat, especially Mages with Devastate due to its fairly reliable damage.  Such asymmetric power is, put bluntly, unfair and unfun.

 

At one point in the past, Nightshade Elixirs were changed so they had a chance of killing you on use, but this destroyed the potion completely, even legitimate uses in PvM or in defence of PKing (which is hard because you can get killed first and drop it, and then it becomes potential fuel and return of investment for the PKer).  I have fixed some things like reducing the /examine in the Laboratory (which I originally added about 15 years ago because it made sense given the /read in the area) from daily to weekly, but I don't want to go down the path of making Nightshade Elixirs completely unviable again.

 

The current situation is unique because, as some people have put it, these are a few players who 'maxed out their party' (i.e. trained up Grandmaster Mages, crafted a Scroll of Devastate and decked them out in Intelligence-boosting quest items) and then 'went rogue', so they have a lot of power behind them with items that were originally obtained from working together for the greater good and have the financial (gold) backing to buy, examine or craft (yes, you can craft them, but it takes effort) Nightshade Elixirs as well as buy the Mage-specific mana potion from the Grandmaster guild (although this is probably moot since there are so many on /websell).

I don't want to remove PKing, since it has some legitimate uses (e.g. in response to a drop steal), but what I ideally want is for the game to be fair.  I confess it's been a complaint of mine since I started in 2004, but it's extremely unfair on the victims while the PKers really get no penalty.  Just to note... a PKing a victim loses 0.5% of their total XP, all the gold they are carrying, may drop most of their inventory, and get a permanent -1 to their character score, while the PKer gets no real mark other than an incremented kill count but get all the spoils from their target.  Unfortunately a lot of potential solutions require changes to the game's source code, which is somewhat difficult these days.  This includes the Nightshade Elixir... its effects are hard-coded.

 

To give credit where it's due... buying a Barrier Ring is not a bad idea!  You use a tiny bit of armour if you have to replace a ring, but incoming spells have their damage reduced by 10%.  Spell Absorb is not completely cumulative (in imprecise terms, additional spell absorb gets less effective the closer the total gets to 100%), but it's close.  Wisdom (Intelligence for Mages) also affects incoming spell damage and the chance to resist, but this is highly dependent on the level gap between the attacker and the target.  And though not exactly helpful since they tend to be Mages themselves, Gnomes also get a natural buff to magic resistance.

[Banishment]

The current situation is unique because, as some people have put it, these are a few players who 'maxed out their party' (i.e. trained up Grandmaster Mages, crafted a Scroll of Devastate and decked them out in Intelligence-boosting quest items) and then 'went rogue', so they have a lot of power behind them with items that were originally obtained from working together for the greater good and have the financial (gold) backing to buy, examine or craft (yes, you can craft them, but it takes effort) Nightshade Elixirs as well as buy the Mage-specific mana potion from the Grandmaster guild (although this is probably moot since there are so many on /websell).

lol, most of our gear came from 3 manning bosses with the players in my clan or just going solo. I've been out for randoms in DA for years.

Im also very poor lol.

Edited by Banishment, 05 February 2022 - 04:40 AM.

[Nerve]

-----"The current situation is unique because, as some people have put it, these are a few players who 'maxed out their party' (i.e. trained up Grandmaster Mages, crafted a Scroll of Devastate and decked them out in Intelligence-boosting quest items) and then 'went rogue', so they have a lot of power behind them with items that were originally obtained from working together for the greater good and have the financial (gold) backing to buy, examine or craft (yes, you can craft them, but it takes effort) Nightshade Elixirs as well as buy the Mage-specific mana potion from the Grandmaster guild (although this is probably moot since there are so many on /websell)."------

 

Since i know its me and Craig being targeted by this, I disagree with this part seeing as how we both work 3rd shift and for the most part play mornings and up until lately no one has really played when i do. We 2 and 3 man bosses to get most our stuff, I never even get inviting to go bossing with anyone in Dark Alliance anyways (even before the pking started up)

we Rarely ever went bossing with them so what we have isnt because of them its because of us.

Edited by Nerve, 05 February 2022 - 04:15 AM.

[«Chão§phê®ê»]

Training weapons make training literally twice as easy, and XP loss isn't that terrible. 

 

That being said, lower the XP loss maybe? I was tapping 10 advanced healing pots at the IT on a lvl 28 fighter the other day under the impression I was about to be hit by a lvl 32 druid. /a and /drink nightshade ready to go... you already know /who works. The next step is hiding. It was damn near impossible to get your crits lvl 37 back in the day, and even though most of us probably can play less that what we did (ive been the exception since the covid stuff changed my day to day), but you can make 5m xp an hour on a relatively low lvl crit. I just dont think the amount of pking being done justifies this conversation at all.

 

 

 

I on the other hand would prefer nightmist to have extremely easy exp and slightly easier boss drops. With the significant change of if a character dies 10 x it gone forever. Anyone?

[Stig]

My mistake about the assumptions of the past - well done on the 2-manning and 3-manning bosses.

 

You speak from a position of privilege.  Not everyone can put in countless hours a day playing the game, and not all classes scale equally well.  The XP loss is significant if you're not a very heavy hitter, and for classes like Clerics, they have to buy mana and can only train in select locations (i.e. where there are undead monsters), thus greatly increasing the risk of getting whacked.  Making 5m XP per hour on a low-level crit tends to require swamp training and a class that can hit consistently well at that level, and losing XP at the lower levels is not as significant a penalty.  When you're at the Archmaster levels though and have committed yourself to the game, then getting killed starts to hurt a lot and quickly become demoralising.  A 5m XP loss is painful if you get killed once... what happens if they go out and try again because they want to enjoy the game, and get killed again?  That's another similar amount of XP lost.

 

It was damn near impossible to get your crits lvl 37 back in the day

That is not a positive nor a good selling point for the game.

 

I on the other hand would prefer nightmist to have extremely easy exp and slightly easier boss drops. With the significant change of if a character dies 10 x it gone forever. Anyone?

No.

[Nerve]

I work a full time job and only play in the mornings most the time. its not countless hours. I agree with classes not scaling as well as others, thief is still garbage and no training weapon like dragonclaw has been done to help alleviate the issue. Keep saying you agree with the change but couldn't weapon or equip changes be made in the meantime while waiting on something I think will never happen? So that maybe thieves can get used for more than just examiners/equip holders.

 

Clerics gain exp faster than most other classes. You're acting as if we are targeting people that are new to the game and only play the journeyman crits they acquired. Pretty sure every person that we'd pked own grandmaster crits and have the same access that we do. there are more of you.

 

also thought it was funny the mention of copyrighted customs never came up til now. 

Edited by Nerve, 05 February 2022 - 05:37 AM.

[«Chão§phê®ê»]

We got the amethyst ring in a party of 3 after killing ge 100s of times. Totem was in a party of 3 or 4 as well. All of whom were the noted "rouge" players. Just an FYI about the intell mods. 

 

When pande and da had legit pk wars we were often the underdog because they had 10 36+ thieves... we only managed because of shades... 

 

 

Note: I dont need shades on djinn.

[Banishment]

I work a full time job and only play in the mornings most the time. its not countless hours. I agree with classes not scaling as well as others, thief is still garbage and no training weapon like dragonclaw has been done to help alleviate the issue. Keep saying you agree with the change but couldn't weapon or equip changes be made in the meantime while waiting on something I think will never happen? So that maybe thieves can get used for more than just examiners/equip holders.

 

Clerics gain exp faster than most other classes. You're acting as if we are targeting people that are new to the game and only play the journeyman crits they acquired. Pretty sure every person that we'd pked own grandmaster crits and have the same access that we do. there are more of you.

 

also thought it was funny the mention of copyrighted customs never came up til now. 

This, we play in the mornings, we don't get to boss with everyone so we do it ourselves.

[brewcrew]

I would like to say, 

 

All this talk about Nightshades and parties brings up a point...

 

Is this not a game that is heavily based on strategy?

 

Nightshades are not solely for the use of just one clan. Are they available to buy by all?

 

Just because someone uses nightshades to "shade your party" doesn't mean the initial thought should be to take them out.

 

Why are people not putting them on their characters for a defense to said shades. With elderglows and ration packs inventories are not as small as they used to be. Most people have spare slots even going to the bigger bossing areas. 

Stop complaining about an Item when you are not strategizing defense when pks are happening. You could easily set a clicker to go with you tapping macros and ready to shade a mage very easily.

 

It is not an item problem, the problem is user error. People don't like the fact that Nightmist is no longer just a chat room that has numbers that increase the longer you are in it (xp and gold).....Sorry about you , but pking already has a deterring in it. I know if I am training im using at least a couple extra slots for shades or something so I can at least attack back or get out of there.....Seems like most are pking on Mages which are not 1 clickers to begin with. 

 

 

Another point: the "rogues" that you are talking about, did not use everyone else to get their gear and equipment, almost all were either bought, or farmed with 2-3 players.

[Banishment]

Just say what you really want, remove nightshades to have the advantage in numbers, your big clan vs our small one

Edited by Banishment, 05 February 2022 - 06:18 AM.

[Stig]

I'll say what I really want... I need a break.  It seems I'm struggling with understanding different psychologies and playstyles.

[Banishment]

I may let up if Cody gets his stuff back tho.

[«Chão§phê®ê»]

I'll say what I really want... I need a break.  It seems I'm struggling with understanding different psychologies and playstyles.

 

I really think thats all it boils down to. When I last played pking was the game /shrug. I came back and everyone was just "tapping" their macros all day.

 

Enough so that they let a perm banned player swoop in and join all our parties. The same as with the botting accusations being thrown around at everyone in CC jokingly, everyone joked that the new guy was obvious blake and blake not whover and phils brother. The jokes and jabs went on for a while before Blake blew up and admitted it was him.... he was obviously perm banned or he wouldnt have been hiding his identity...

 

I was relatively peeved at this, but not enough to do anything. But he was botting Illuminated tunnels so I popped him. A few days letter our mage is getting its stats checked because the cheating perm banned player started some bs.... all while he (blake) is going around deleting our pots and mana and making it look like adam/zeb's account... 

 

Yall want someone to blame for pks, there ya go. Its me and blake. I pk'd him and he set the server on fire. As we warned when we called him out for being blake in the first place.

 

.  

 

 

So there is your argument against pking.. grown men being upset enough they try to get characters and or items removed from the game. 

 

 

It has just been a few damn pks /shrug

[LABec]

 

Nightshades on Multi-alt make sense, they give an advantage but its not enough to wipe out the the party you're attacking before they have a chance to mount a counter attack or flee.  The concept just does not convey correctly to a 1-alt version where a busy day you've got 10 people playing and most days its only 4 or 5 people playing.

 

PvP on a balance game, 80% or more of the encounters need to go something like this....

 

Player A, attacks Player B (of similar level)

Player B uses pots and issues a counter attack

Player A and Player B duke it out for few(1 or 2) MINUTES using skill

Player A or B acknowledges they're losing the fight and has the opportunity to attempt to run or flee if they do not want the penalty of dying

 

I think we can all agree this is not how most PvP encounters are going on 1 alt currently.   

 

To that point, I think the game is not balanced for PvP.  We need to take action to balance the game.  If its not removing nightshades, then maybe its consider the EXP loss and knock that down a significant amount.

That's more of a duel, and how a fair fight should go, agreed.  With PKing it's a little bit more lopsided, especially as PKers will often wait until players have used all or most of their stamina before mounting their attack, and the victims are usually caught by surprise (so don't have macros set up and will probably take a second to process what just happened), meaning you can't run away or attempt to kill your attacker before they've done all they can.  The main problem is that the penalties for getting PKed are incredibly harsh, what with the lack of cap on XP loss - for example, if you have 1b XP, you will lose 5m XP if you get PKed... for most people who can't commit to more than a couple of hours a day, that's more of a day's training and is nothing short of demoralising.  The other problems is lost gold and loot, especially if it's valuable loot (e.g. you might need to switch weapons to take out the Bolted Chest, for example, and there's nothing stopping a Cobalt Staff of the Winds from dropping and a PKer taking it for themselves).

 

i have campaigned to have the XP loss locked at 5,000,000 maximum before, but JLH is reluctant to have it capped even at such a high value.

 

For Nightshade Elixirs (which are generally not allowed in sanctioned duels), my main problem is that they can be used in such a way that one player with one crit can commit a total party wipe, since you can, for example, kill the party leader, instantly use a potion to recharge your stamina and heal any hits the other party might be able to get off, kill the next player, rinse and repeat, especially Mages with Devastate due to its fairly reliable damage.  Such asymmetric power is, put bluntly, unfair and unfun.

 

At one point in the past, Nightshade Elixirs were changed so they had a chance of killing you on use, but this destroyed the potion completely, even legitimate uses in PvM or in defence of PKing (which is hard because you can get killed first and drop it, and then it becomes potential fuel and return of investment for the PKer).  I have fixed some things like reducing the /examine in the Laboratory (which I originally added about 15 years ago because it made sense given the /read in the area) from daily to weekly, but I don't want to go down the path of making Nightshade Elixirs completely unviable again.

 

The current situation is unique because, as some people have put it, these are a few players who 'maxed out their party' (i.e. trained up Grandmaster Mages, crafted a Scroll of Devastate and decked them out in Intelligence-boosting quest items) and then 'went rogue', so they have a lot of power behind them with items that were originally obtained from working together for the greater good and have the financial (gold) backing to buy, examine or craft (yes, you can craft them, but it takes effort) Nightshade Elixirs as well as buy the Mage-specific mana potion from the Grandmaster guild (although this is probably moot since there are so many on /websell).

I don't want to remove PKing, since it has some legitimate uses (e.g. in response to a drop steal), but what I ideally want is for the game to be fair.  I confess it's been a complaint of mine since I started in 2004, but it's extremely unfair on the victims while the PKers really get no penalty.  Just to note... a PKing a victim loses 0.5% of their total XP, all the gold they are carrying, may drop most of their inventory, and get a permanent -1 to their character score, while the PKer gets no real mark other than an incremented kill count but get all the spoils from their target.  Unfortunately a lot of potential solutions require changes to the game's source code, which is somewhat difficult these days.  This includes the Nightshade Elixir... its effects are hard-coded.

 

To give credit where it's due... buying a Barrier Ring is not a bad idea!  You use a tiny bit of armour if you have to replace a ring, but incoming spells have their damage reduced by 10%.  Spell Absorb is not completely cumulative (in imprecise terms, additional spell absorb gets less effective the closer the total gets to 100%), but it's close.  Wisdom (Intelligence for Mages) also affects incoming spell damage and the chance to resist, but this is highly dependent on the level gap between the attacker and the target.  And though not exactly helpful since they tend to be Mages themselves, Gnomes also get a natural buff to magic resistance.

 

 

 

Thanks Stig for this post.

 

Thanks everyone for a good healthy discussion.   This game is a community and we all can help provide input on what might make the time we have left most enjoyable.

[LABec]

 

I'll say what I really want... I need a break.  It seems I'm struggling with understanding different psychologies and playstyles.

 

I really think thats all it boils down to. When I last played pking was the game /shrug. I came back and everyone was just "tapping" their macros all day.

 

Enough so that they let a perm banned player swoop in and join all our parties. The same as with the botting accusations being thrown around at everyone in CC jokingly, everyone joked that the new guy was obvious blake and blake not whover and phils brother. The jokes and jabs went on for a while before Blake blew up and admitted it was him.... he was obviously perm banned or he wouldnt have been hiding his identity...

 

I was relatively peeved at this, but not enough to do anything. But he was botting Illuminated tunnels so I popped him. A few days letter our mage is getting its stats checked because the cheating perm banned player started some bs.... all while he (blake) is going around deleting our pots and mana and making it look like adam/zeb's account... 

 

Yall want someone to blame for pks, there ya go. Its me and blake. I pk'd him and he set the server on fire. As we warned when we called him out for being blake in the first place.

 

.  

 

 

So there is your argument against pking.. grown men being upset enough they try to get characters and or items removed from the game. 

 

 

It has just been a few damn pks /shrug

 

 

 

What does any of this nonsense have to do with whether or not the game is balanced PvP?   

Edited by LABec, 05 February 2022 - 02:54 PM.