#Mounts #oact

Xith

Well since mount discussion is "in" these days, it's almost like we could use a temporary forum for mount threads. Anyway...

This one's for artie pets and the oact cost.

I considered designing an elemental mount comprised in its body of all four elements, and having at least an attack for each element. But I hit a snag there because both the first and each successive 'oact' added costs 300cr. Not spending 1200cr to have 4 pretty blunt attacks of the same effect.

7)  Custom Attack Message - 300 Bound Credits (except: see GIFTS)

     Your pet's attack will have a custom appearance in the form we call

     an 'oact'. Oacts may not change the damage type or amount. Multiple

     oacts may be combined to give the pet various attacks. Each added

     oact is also 300 Bound Credits.

     NOTE: you may only get amnesia OR custom attack message, but not both.

So as I'm obviously not going to pay 300cr for any appearance customisation, I think a change is in order for a few reasons:

   1) Nothing but the appearance is changed. A full appearance customisation for a creature is 100cr (includes 6 parts). Reaction things are 25cr.

   2) Actually I guess it's just one reason. But a few ways or reasons it could be improved.

       Every stacked occie/magi gets an amnesia pet. Amnesia is worth the 400cr due to its functionality. But as the default attack damage on 'oact' isn't changed by customising how it looks, I can't see how just changing the look is worth 75% of what amnesia is.

       a) Include the 1st oact as part of the artie pet's desc, along with short/long/extended/enter/exit/death. It's a unique creature and might as well have a unique bash at least. Additional oacts could be more reasonable, somewhere between reaction cost (25cr) and creature customisation cost (100cr).

       b) First oact might be 100-300 cr, but additional should be around 50cr or 75cr, as recommended in a).

       c) "Oacts may not change the damage type or amount." Kind of limits even the creativity to a certain degree when a purchaser's goal is to shape a new being in Achaea.

New price scale for oacts:

- 50 cr: change appearance

- 50 cr: change damage type (require appearance change to suit type) NOTE: base amounts differ by type (asphyx lower default than blunt/cutting because fewer defs)

- 25 cr: low damage amount & fast balance attack

- 00 cr: standard damage & speed by default

- 50 cr: high damage amount & slow-er balance attack

- 100 cr: very high damage amount & very slow balance attack

- 300 cr: Affliction? (exclude things like aeon/impatience/paralysis/limb damage/etc.)

- 100 cr: Attack Schedule: specify frequency/probability for ALL attacks - evenly distributed by default

(future changes to these ratios cost 100cr again) (no attack may have lower than 5% occurrence)

So if I set 4 attacks for my elemental beast:

Key: Appearance (type) (damage) - frequency {cost}

ice (cold) (standard) - 25% {100 + 0}

fire (fire) (very high) - 20% {100 + 100}

earth (blunt) (low) - 50% {100 + 25}

air (asphyx) (high) - 5% {100 + 50}

{+100 credits to specify frequency}

Total: 675 credits

Pet total: 675 + (500-900cr) + reactions and stuff

I think in the long run this means more artie pet revenue because rather than choose just between amnesia and a "pretty-looking blunt attack", people will have options that make them more likely to include additional attacks and spend MORE than 300-400cr on those.

The Garden might be able to pull stats on how many people have actually bought more than one 300cr oact for a damage pet, and I'm sure the "refund" demand is an issue as always, but don't tell me they wouldn't reinvest those saved credits into a larger arsenal of attacks or other arties.

tl;dr - first 'oact' should be included in customisation, additional should cost less but have scaling price options for changing damage type/amount

Xith

Not saying this is high priority and I recognize some of the features mentioned like attack scheduling and adding amount/type changes in general would be tough, not to mention time taken to balance all the speed/damage/types/prices. But in the long run I imagine a valued improvement to artie pets, which are a hugely awesome part of Achaea as is. As much an aspiration for some as a ship, shop, or similar.

So make your points, people. Or even just post your own pet designs based on that oact pricing.

(I did scrap the affliction attack for now because it complicates things. Really should have its own pricing scale, where freeze/burn are only 100cr or so. Possibly allow itching, but in reality can't have any of the locking afflictions because even a serpent with a "confusion" or "dizziness" pet is kinda gamebreaking.)

Silas

Pets should never do high damage attacks. Penwize could walk past somebody and instakill them if they did.

Xith

Plenty of people can instakill others without artie pets. And it's well-documented that amnesia pets make Occultists even more ridiculous than they already are. But unfortunately that's how arties can work.

More helpful critique would have been "restrict total % of all high damage attacks to 40% probability, making additional oacts necessary before any can be added".

A.k.a. minimum maximum probabilities as follows:

low - 100%

standard - 100%

high - 40% (inclusive of 'very high')

very high - 30%

So my above pet could have 30% probability on the Very High attack, but then the max of all other High attacks would be 10% together, thus also limiting the number of high attacks to 2, because of the 5% minimum. So you'd have to budget your attack schedule within the rules.

It might seem abusable, but each damage increase comes with a speed decrease. And to be more specific about those, here's a table estimate of blunt base damage (prior to reductions/armor). If anyone knows the actual artie pet damage/speed (bolded), feel free to say so.

L: 200/2s

S: 400/4s

H: 650/6s

VH: 900/8s

EDIT: This means just to get a VH damage attack you'd need to spend at least 200cr, which would default your attack schedule at 70%/30% if you just had the standard comeswith attack already. So looking back, the pricing scale would have to be more like 25/0/150/300. With (50+50) to add a new attack. So in reality, 125/100/250/400, making the VH attack worth as much as Amnesia, except that amnesia pets always give amnesia.

Sylvance

You bored tonight, @Xith?

Xith

@Sylvance Yeah, that's why I'm commenting on a 2-page idea with one hypocritical line. How bout you?

Tesha

This is a bad idea. Do it, Raspbeary is going to tear you punks up.

Xith

Not any more than "Raspbeary" already can, I'm afraid.

L: 200/2s

S: 400/4s

H: 650/6s

VH: 900/8s

With the balance difference between current attacks and the proposed Very High damage, you only get 100 more damage (really 50 more per 4 seconds). And you only have a 30% chance maximum to roll that little bump. So one third of the time, you might do enough extra damage to fluster somebody's boar tattoo for a second, but that's about it.

Kresslack

Xith

To get people with short attention spans back on track, the original point was that pricing needed a change and I offered 3 proposals (a, b, and c above).

If you're against option C, that's fine. 

But while that part was the most elaborate, it isn't the most important point, which is that oact costs are disproportionate to their use, especially when compared with the use of amnesia. The damage amount is not changed by the current 300 cr cost. It's a mere superficial change and should not cost 300 cr.

Option C is suggesting that if the 300 cr price remains, it be given some validity via damage/type changes.

Tesha

Asking for feedback and insulting people who give you feedback is a little bit silly. This will have consequences on combat, and if you do not want it that way, why do you want it at all? Get a reaction or make a custom emote if you want the flavor, anything more than 100 damage is just not happening. 

The answer to all problems with roleplay is not in changing the code; most problems can be answered with simple emotes.

Zeon

I think they're priced pretty fairly. Costly but worth it, like all customizations.

Antonius

Most customisations aren't costly, and custom attack lines at 300 credits each aren't worth it.

Jonathin

bad analogy

Antonius

If heated leather seats cost in excess of the price of the entire car very, very few people would ever buy them, because at that price they're simply not worth it. I'm sure there are people who have bought custom attack messages, but of all the people I know with pets I can't think of a single one of them who has done.

Jonathin

nvm

Xith

And even if you did one, you wouldn't probably do another when it's the same thing but with different flavour.

As outlined in the first post, normal full creature customisations are 100cr, and that's for 6 pieces. short/long/ext/enter/exit/death.

Granted, we're adding a new item as well as customising it with each oact, but your result is an identical blunt attack to the one the creature starts with at 0 extra cr.

It isn't 6 descriptions though, so individually it should be worth 50cr. Maybe 75-100cr if you DO include the fact that it's adding an 'ability'.

Only context under which it should approach 300 is if the type/amount is changeable.

Jonathin

My argument is invalid because I thought we were talking about pets, not just regular mounts.

Shirszae

Xith ought be allowed to post into the denied sub-forum of the Dais. Saves the hassle of having to move his threads there, saves us from having to read them, and he can keep spouting his brilliant ideas like nothing changed.

Win for all.

Nakari

Shirszae said:

Xith ought be allowed to post into the denied sub-forum of the Dais. Saves the hassle of having to move his threads there, saves us from having to read them, and he can keep spouting his brilliant ideas like nothing changed.

Win for all.

I don't like a lot of his ideas either, but I find this comment both pointless and mean. Censorship isn't the right response, especially when someone has honestly good intentions, and If you don't want to read his posts then I think that there is probably a fairly easy solution.

Sena

I agree that custom pet attack messages are ridiculously expensive, unless it's justified by taking a lot of work to change compared to any other customisations.

Katzchen

I would like to see them cheaper, say 100cr. I would definitely consider it when I get an artie pet for that price, but not at 300cr.

And why can you only have amnesia or an oact?

Eld

Katzchen said:

I would like to see them cheaper, say 100cr. I would definitely consider it when I get an artie pet for that price, but not at 300cr.

And why can you only have amnesia or an oact?

Likely something to do with how amnesia is coded in that would make it difficult for it to only happen on some of the attacks but not all.

Zeon

Likely something to do with having an affliction that has a non-deterministic trigger line.

Xith

Yeah including the option for an attack schedule as mentioned even to switch between amnesia and other attacks.

I did imagine that the difficulty of implementing had something to do with it being priced at 300cr originally. But whether that's the case or not it can't be comparatively worth it now as long as amnesia is 400cr. Even though amnesia's message is always the same.

I think 100cr would be reasonible. Or possibly 200cr for the first and 50cr for each successive oact. Or the first is included with the pet and 75-100cr for others.

Jonners

Ok, so there's two points to the OP that I see. One, custom attack messages are priced ridiculously high and the numbers purchased should probably be audited and the price accordingly reduced. Two, allow more flexibility in damage types and amounts and price that on a sliding scale.

I completely endorse the first point. I'm getting myself a pet here in short order and I instantly decided against a custom attack message because I'm not paying a third of its worth just so it looks pretty when it attacks you for nothing. I'd pay 50-100cr for that max.

Antonius said:

Most customisations aren't costly, and custom attack lines at 300 credits each aren't worth it.

I got custom letters from my stationery kit... 700cr. So there are exceptions to the rule, of course, and obviously there are some rubes out there willing to pay real money for custom text items...

Edit- As for the second point, I'm not a combatant so Jimmy crack corn...

Xith

Yeah, the customisations that require brand new custom coding are always quoted as 500+

Anyway I think we've got a grasp on the issue and I maintain the original post. I offer the ideas mentioned in C as well should the admins decide to ever offer anything like that. (and the revisions in subsequent posts)

Heard some agreements to A & B, so I think we're at the ruling stage.

Nemutaur

I'd be ok with different damage types as long as the fire option doesn't get boosted if the target is already burning like all other attacks and there's no 'black dragon' style damage option.

Xith

Nemutaur said:

I'd be ok with different damage types as long as the fire option doesn't get boosted if the target is already burning like all other attacks and there's no 'black dragon' style damage option.

Which was acid type if I remember right. "unblockable"

Seftin

Agree reduce the pricw. Disagree to change damage type or damage done.

Xith

In conclusion, reduction of oact price, and/or include the first one in the description, in addition to the other 6 pieces of a pet desc.