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I think that needs to go away. Health/CON is already a no-brainer stat as it is. Abilities should add a % limb damage regardless of the target's health or the attacker's weapon/strength. Outdamaging a dragon or similar is difficult enough without the excessive prep for those who need it.
Makes the formulas much easier since they wouldn't be formulas.
Option B: Make formulas available so every prepper ever doesn't have to both figure out and perform math on every target.
Should be as easy as ASSESS TARGET, miscellaneous client-side script inputs target's health + your strength + weapon stats, returns number of hits needed, with no margin of error.
Reasons I bought level 3 girdle and bracelet, in order of importance to me:
1) More time required to prep my limbs.
2) Slightly less % damage.
3) Flexing in public places.
4) Bashing HPS.
"Option B" would be quite fine, although @Iocun and @Jovolo (among others) have also provided some seriously solid counter-arguments.
You know, I'd like to go ahead and say something that might come off kinda dickish, considering the circumstances. All it would take is one person who is willing to spend 30-60 hours working on this (depending on math skill, luck, and availability of testers), who is also willing to give it away publically, and it'd be solved for the rest of the future of the game. I mean, I like to think I'm smart, but I didn't do anything that someone who took Algebra II couldn't solve.
And now I'd like to provide a bit of a disclaimer. There are a few really good reasons that I haven't released the formulas that I've figured out, even to the people who get my system that uses them to track limb damage.
While I will honestly admit that I do think it's fair to get paid for not just my work, particularly since nobody else seems capable or if so willing to do it. However, this isn't the only thing (because believe it or not, the amount of actual money I make on the systems comes nowhere even close to worth my time) that motivates me to keep it secret.
Part of me wants to keep it a secret because I simply think that secrets are cool. It's nice being the only guy, or one of a few guys, who has something - particularly when you made it yourself.
Also, whether you like to admit it or not, everyone would like to leave their mark on the game. I've always looked up to the coders and system-makers throughout Achaea's history, and if some day I am considered one of them (to any extent) then I'd be very proud of that.
Also, good systems simply cannot be done for free. History has shown us more times than can be counted that "free" services just suck, every single time. If I gave out the formulas, nobody would buy Manda (or at least, far fewer would). If nobody bought it, I wouldn't make it, or at least wouldn't make it nearly as good as it is. The same thing goes for SVO. If Vadi gave it out for free, you can bet your ass he wouldn't be logging on 3 times a day to support his customers, update things every single time a change comes out, and fix every bug that's reported to him as soon as possible (things that, strangely enough, I also do nearly every day). And guess what? If SVO wasn't compiled (as is Godzilla), nobody would ever pay for it (they'd all rip it, as that conversation in P9, where people who were taking bets on who could get a ripped copy of my systems so that they could pass them around to use and/or dissect and/or pillage for parts).
SVO is possible because he charges for it (which motivates him to make a quality product, which motivates more people to buy it, etc). The same exact process works with Godzilla and Manda, and in a way, SLC (which is, of course, still donations only - and open source). I charge for it so that I can justify sitting in a chair for 20 hours straight binge-coding a system for a class I don't even play - or so that I can explain to my wife why I have a massive excel file full of "slice" and "rend" hits-to-break, and various graphing/math programs (which proved to be overkill) going, just to play a text game that she sincerely despises.
Without the formula, there would be no Manda. Without my decision to build Manda in the first place, I would never have developed the formulas that were required to make it work. Maybe some day someone will do me one better, but I doubt it. Even if someone had the equations, I doubt they could out-do the system itself. It's honestly a very sexy little slice of lua.
This would, of course, all change - if IRE just released the equations - however I think there would be some pretty significant negative consequences to this. Part of the mystique and appeal of the game is the never-ending learning curve. Personally, the second I feel like I'm the best at something is the last second I ever spend doing it. In all honesty, I took on the challenge of solving the limb damage stuff, purely because it was one of the few things left in the game that I felt I couldn't do - so I sat down and did it.
Well, the last thing I want to do is get into an argument about whether or not Jester is OP (because frankly I don't think I could take anyone who feels otherwise seriously anyways) - but I will give a simple description of why I think this, solely because I do want to answer your question.
In my classlead I referred to the "intended use" of Travel, and the "abuse" of Travel. In some cases, what people feel is "intended" or "abuse" is purely subjective, but in this case, I'm basing it on a very long, consistent trend of "griefy", "unstoppable", or otherwise "extremely lame yet somehow also extremely powerful" uses of abilities or combinations thereof.
So, Puppet Travel Uses, as intended (IMO?):
+ Use it on your enemies to quickly chase them when they run away.
+ Use it on your enemies to attack them in places you wouldn't normally be able to get to.
+ Use it to infiltrate areas or sub-areas you wouldn't normally be able to get into (househalls, etc).
+ Use it to travel to friends as a form of leisurely travel, like portals. (this use inspired the creation of earrings, which is why earrings are used to be exactly the same, mechanically, as Puppet/Doll Travel.
How is it abused:
+ It is used to instantly fast-travel to guard stacks when any form of combat in which the Jester/Shaman is in any way in danger of losing a fight. Considering that it is virtually unstoppable, particularly early in combat, this alone can make it impossible to kill someone determined not to fight you. *** This is not inherently bad, until you combine it with the next bullet ***
+ Due to the existence of things like clouds, above the clouds, universe tarot, Raido other Shaman fast-travel ability, and indeed dolls/puppets of more than one friend, you can easily use puppet travel to do what's known as "fashion whoring" on a whole new level beyond running around dropping peels.
+ This is a simple example of what it looks like:
I'm on the clouds.
Jester pops up to the clouds and immediately fashions me a few times. I realize that I seem to be being attacked, so I grab my mace, swing it, and hit nothing but air. Poof, the Jester just instantly fast traveled to the middle of a guard cluster back in Ashtan, where he is presumably taking a few seconds to re-fashion.
That's ok, I think to myself, the Gods saw fit to give my class some hindrance, so that I might land a few hits before they scamper off!
Drop me some Piety! Enemy that fool!
As might be predicted, Jester pops back up to clouds, fashions me a few times, giving me JUST enough time to smite his right leg twice, before he casually ignores my Piety and fast-travels back to his guard stack (he's now up to like, 20 fashions or so, or w/e). Since Jester alts never bash past around level 70 (because why would they?), I know that I only need one more smite to break dat leg.
No problem, I say! Sure, he can ignore the only thing my class has that can stop people from slow prepping me - but that's ok, I'll just go for a leg break and suppress my knowledge of the fact that it's impossible to kill someone off even a double leg break as a priest.
Jester materializes back on clouds (directly from his guard stack) and immediately fashions me a few more times. The time has come, I only need one smite! BAM! What the... it didn't break. Smite it again? Da fuq, it still didn't break? Poof, he is gone. Now he's at 30 fashions?
I scratch my head, then scratch my head some more, until the simple truth clicks in my head. He's having his limbs reset between poofs. No worries. The forums tells me that good fighters learn how to solve problems. I will figure this out!
Nearing the end of my patience, and having played both Priest and Jester extensively enough to know that there really is nothing I can do (or almost any other class can do) to stop this, I simply accept that I have to run away from this level 70 alt, because despite what the forums thinks, there's absolutely nothing I can do to win this fight, and if I stay here any longer, I'm going to be turned into cat food.
Screw it, lets go back to Targossas *walks east* Oh look, what a nice banana pee--- oh, Jester is here too! Fashioning me. east east east east east east east east east (finally!) *pant* well, at least I'm fine, back here on Targossas' guard stack.
What's this? I'm dead? Oh, that's cool. Forgot that Jesters can kill you without you even seeing a single attack. That's fine, at least I'll just get some old fashioned IC revenge. Oh that's right, he has puppet travel. The concept of combat as we know it does not apply to him (as I just learned). That's cool, I'll just.... stand here on guards, until he QQs. Me and my 30,000cr in arties and 10 years of combat skill - can't even leave the gates, because the moment I do, I'll be seeing the same. damn. thing. over. and. over ... until I just get fed up and quit, and write down yet another classlead to submit if and when they ever start a new round. [ if it's not this, it's bleed spam, or recklessness grief while bashing, or (redacted) casually forcing people to kick guards for the lulz, and preserving the fashion ].
I'm not sure what's more infuriating - people who follow you around while you're trying to bash, sneaking a fashion or two then poofing back to guardstacks, just show up again in 2 minutes to repeat it... or people who pull this crap in the arena, where you don't even have the option of leaving. Every single jester arena event turns into the same thing. Running around, tripping on peels, trying to chase a Jester who can dodge, shackle/balloon, somersault out of every strategy in existence, watching your fashion stack build.
Rinse and repeat the [ walks in, fashions you, walks out, you slip on banana peel, repeat ] loop until he gets enough to casually push his "initiate jester win button" hotkey, and turns your face into confetti.
Like I said, it may have been (almost certainly was) enjoyable for the people participating in higher echelons of combat - it was just that the barrier to entry for lower echelons was incredibly high (relative, for instance, to other classes - even affliction classes). You could kill absolute newbies who had no real automated defence, and then as soon as you wanted to fight anyone, even someone just starting out, with no idea what they're doing aside from installing SVO, it was excruciatingly more difficult than it really ought to have been, because serpent offence was, at the time, balanced around the assumption that illusions were effectively part of your affliction pressure, and, at that same time, most lowbies and midbies (and a fair number of high-tier combatants who just bought Thoths') didn't/largely couldn't make use of/learn to make use of effective illusions.
This bit I'll admit I don't really get. I'm pretty familiar with all of the information available through GMCP and I don't have any idea how it's useful to facilitate anti-illusion, though I also don't really know much about how most anti-illusion works. I also find it surprising that GMCP would facilitate anti-illusion too, since the admin have pretty consistently rejected offering anything to do with afflictions through GMCP (even just saying what afflictions serverside curing thinks you have). Could you give an example of what you mean? I think, on the whole, that largely isn't true. If you're paralysed and you try to take an action, what happens? Should it just have a generic "You can't do that for reasons that are unclear to you" message? That seems really wonky. And, while I don't know the specifics of much anti-illusion, the impression I've gotten is that a lot of it is similar to that - leveraging the fact that afflictions restrict you from taking actions, trying to take those actions, and making use of the feedback. I don't really see how you can get around that in a lot of cases since that feedback has to exist for reasons other than anti-illusion too.
There are probably some afflictions that could have been made harder to anti-illusion, but I suspect the measures they could have taken are somewhat more limited than they might seem at first glance.
I don't know, I kindof liked the idea of checks, although there were certainly cases where some where way too good. The race between us serpents and the curing system gurus of the times was always fun, and was always what defined who the "good" serpents were. Now, it seems to revolve more around whose Skype message summons the most lupine bows.
I mean, I'm all burnt out on debating things on forums, although I certainly don't mind explaining a classlead or two in a bit more depth (when asked).
I have every bit of confidence that @Makarios, @Tecton, and the team will do a great job of reading the classleads, tossing out the not-so-good ones, keeping the good ones, and as is typical, addressing some of the leftovers in totally unforseen (unsuggested) ways.
Just a quick Question - would you agree/disagree/meh if I said that when you see a Jester kill someone on deathsight, you assume it was some kind of lameness, but if you see a Jester die in a deathsight, you either assume that either they were teamed, or that they must simply be terrible fighters? I know it's a leading question, but that's honestly where I'm at. I'm not saying this just to spread dissent, I'm saying it to point out that this stereotype has some pretty solid truth behind it - and that's something that is fairly indicative of a class that needs some attention.
Before I saw the magi/shaman changes, I would have said "... but don't even bother trying to fix Jester, it's simply a bad class concept that can't be fixed without a complete overhaul..." - however, after seeing the Magi/Shaman changes, I will simply say...
"... so when is the Jester overhaul going to happen?"
Classlead it.
@Austere yeah I totally have let it go, because I give it about a 1% chance that it doesn't get fixed or removed (although probably not removed - I learned to accept that classleads usually result in half-measures). Whether they decide to do it now or wait until it's a more visible issue remains to be seen. It's almost unfortunate that all the griefy shaman/jester alts haven't been very active lately, so it defaults to looking like a deceivingly low-importance matter.
Only reason I was mentioning it was because someone asked about it, in tandem with the fact that it is in fact the entire point of the thread (talking about active classleads). I do think it has been sufficiently discussed elsewhere (even if the 5-page thread made for fast travel discussion contained about 3 on-topic posts).
The suggestions in 67 go way beyond addressing this problem, and look to remove an interesting facet of the game that is too strong in combination with other factors.
A much better solution, in my opinion, would be to add some small checks to Travel (a la Raido) and change how fashions work. Make fashions go down over time if you're further than a certain amount from your target for non-allied targets. If you travel out of the area? You doll for offense is going to drop to uselessness in a short amount of time, so you can't endlessly slow prep to an inevitable finisher.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
Album of Bluef during her time in Achaea
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
Shaman/Jesters are exceptional in that their slow-prep doesn't decay, which is a rather extreme exception.