Battlerage

Sarapis

Klendathu said:

For the record, the coding I'm doing is to make it easier to track when you have sufficient battlerage to use an ability, not that it will automatically use it for you.

That's something we're going to bake into the HTML5 client too. Three states: Can use and have enough rage. Can use but don't have enough rage. Can't use (cooldown). 

Sena

I do think people could have difficulty with knowing when they can use an attack. You get no message when the cooldown ends, so without something to track that you're basically guessing. Then you also need to remember how much rage each ability costs. I do have triggers for that, displaying "<ability> is ready to be used again." x seconds after the ability is used.

It's still possible to manage without a single trigger, but it would take a lot more experience with the system to instinctively know your cooldowns and costs. Graphical games have the advantage of a GUI that tells you exactly whether or not you can use an ability, and often displays the cost and/or cooldown remaining on the ability's icon.

Alaskar

It seems the Magi BR damage abilities were swapped, and their damage adjusted. Squeeze did 1206 damage against the golem, and windlash did a puny 174 and then 4 damage every second after.

I wasn't necessarily condoning or advocating trying to automate the usage of the abilities, just mentioning it as an alternative for someone looking to retain some semblance of "simple grinding." Personally, I find it more fun to string it together in one badass combo when I deem appropriate.

I think it makes a lot more sense to not be able to lawnmower mode through everything, too. Though I can see the appeal to being a dragon and wanting to just mow down hordes of creatures.

A few general questions, though:
Are battlerage abilities affected by artefacts/stats?
Does sensitivity affect damage from other battlerage abilities? It didn't seem to on the golem
Plans for BR-related artefacts?
Next batch of changes? I hope it's not a battlerage balance or something, because watching a denizen's health drop by like 30% is kind of cool.
What determines how much rage is generated? I seem to get more from punches and kicks than staffcasts.
Plans to release artefacts that improve battlerage?

Sarapis

@Sena We can just add in text update of when an ability is ready to be used again easily enough, as a config option.

Edit: And that will be in today.

Bluef

Jules said:

For the last few posts... that doesn't seem to be how a lot of people are experiencing the changes.  The same people who are PK Gods are loving it, and a lot of other people seem to be floundering.  Even people like Kinilan, who are probably somewhere below Santar, Jhui and Jarrod (but still lightyears ahead of most people) are saying (paraphrasing just a bit) "to do this right, you'd need a system, weren't we trying to sort of move away from systems".  

EDIT:  that said, I am not saying "scrap it".  You already made it, and a certain segment of players seems to really like it.  Why take it away entirely?  But, I am saying that a lot of other people are feeling pretty left out.  

I agree with this 100%. Making claims that the perceived need for systems is incorrect doesn't change the fact that clearly the people who love this are the coder geeks/PvPers. Other people are feeling left out, frustrated, and annoyed by the way it works. it's possible to take pride in something you built while still being empathetic to that. I hope that emotional balance is achieved sooner rather than later. 

Sena

Jacen said:

I haven't gotten to test battlerage out whatsoever yet, but I'm a bit confused by the couple of people who said they are having an easier time bashing denizens that were tough before the changes. Pre-changes, you didn't need to be able to survive a room indefinitely in order to bash efficiently - you only needed to survive it for the 30ish seconds to knock off a denizen or two. With denizen health scaled upwards (threefold I think I read?) it seems it would be necessary to survive a room indefinitely  in order to bash efficiently now. Are the introduced denizen afflictions debilitating enough to counter the increase in time and actually make it easier to survive?

Waiting to heal between fights is inefficient. If you couldn't survive indefinitely, and the time it took to move between rooms (basically 8 rooms per health sip) isn't enough for you to heal up sufficiently, then you weren't bashing as well as you could. With the new system, you could run for a few seconds to heal, and it will be no worse than pausing for a few seconds after clearing a room in the old system.

And how much the afflictions help depends on your class. Knights have really great defensive abilities, for both themselves and their allies. Afflictions like amnesia and stun are also incredibly helpful for surviving. Weakness, aeon, and clumsy are really useful at times, but usually not amazing for solo bashing. Charm is great, situationally.

Atalkez

Sarapis said:

Santar said:

I literally just turned my bashing alias into gut/psiblast/overwhelm for solo bashing.

I'm sure that's not 100% optimal, but it's pretty good.

See my post on the last page though!

So I suppose this means that they're going to be changed to no longer be balanceless/stringable?

If this is going to be the case, can we also look at decreasing the cooldowns on them? It is harder to stand in rooms with the mobs now, and a 30 second cooldown on an ability that stuns them for 3 seconds seems a bit much (if you can't string attacks!). Also, I hope we are changing to Rage decay rate to be a static decrease depending on the time you hit the denizen last. Right now the timer runs out literally -right- before a lot of times that I can hit. Squinting directions while finishing a mob, walking to the room, ih to make sure it's still there, make sure target is right, type bashing alias rage fades.

Look forward to your response!

Morthif

Jules said:

For the last few posts... that doesn't seem to be how a lot of people are experiencing the changes.  The same people who are PK Gods are loving it, and a lot of other people seem to be floundering.  Even people like Kinilan, who are probably somewhere below Santar, Jhui and Jarrod (but still lightyears ahead of most people) are saying (paraphrasing just a bit) "to do this right, you'd need a system, weren't we trying to sort of move away from systems".  

EDIT:  that said, I am not saying "scrap it".  You already made it, and a certain segment of players seems to really like it.  Why take it away entirely?  But, I am saying that a lot of other people are feeling pretty left out.  

I'm sorry you're just wrong. There's maybe 1 or 2 people who could code the ai to only use BR at optimal times. 

People like this because it adds more dynamic bashing and promotes group bashing.

Jules

Klendathu said:

For the record, the coding I'm doing is to make it easier to track when you have sufficient battlerage to use an ability, not that it will automatically use it for you.

Makes me laugh to the bottom of my stomach that the same people saying bashing was boring are now complaining that it's too hard.

From the very beginning, the concern some of us had was that in trying to make bashing more engaging, a very easy trap to fall into would be making it both more complex and tedious for the person who can truly be considered mostly "manual".  And yay, our first comment outright chastising people that they should be more "pro" to hunt.  That said, admin's willingness to add in regular text lines of when an ability is ready to be used is a step in a direction that probably makes this more friendly to more people.   

Cynlael

Am I the only one that's not seeing any point in going over the top to script this? Given that it's already rather trivial as is... >.>

Jules said:

  a very easy trap to fall into would be making it both more complex and tedious for the person who can truly be considered mostly "manual". 

Easy to 100% manual this new addition, see previous posts on that.

Bluef said:

But I would rather watch paint dry than hunt in dragon form. It's terribad. Seriously. I don't get why you people are lauding something that is so dull and slow you could probably finish half a console game in the time it takes to clear an area. Ick.

Could not be more wrong. Thiev was clearing all of Dun Fortress, Vertani, Quartz Peak and most of Azdun Graveyard in less than an hour when I was simply following him around for freexp.

Santar

Sarapis said:

Santar said:

I literally just turned my bashing alias into gut/psiblast/overwhelm for solo bashing.

I'm sure that's not 100% optimal, but it's pretty good.

See my post on the last page though!

Well, I mean, I'll just code it do the same intended effect. 

You're just punishing people that don't code.

Hellen

Well, hunting certainly seems more engaging than it was! Sadly, it'll probably wear off when the newness of it vanishes.

I'll add my voice in with the complaints of battlerage fading too fast. I think that hitting shield should at least maintain rage, however. That can be incredibly obnoxious when you run into a mob that just shields all the time.

Tharvis

Alaskar said:

It seems the Magi BR damage abilities were swapped, and their damage adjusted. Squeeze did 1206 damage against the golem, and windlash did a puny 174 and then 4 damage every second after.

I feel like, with those numbers, windlash is almost useless. Maybe remove the DoT component and just make it straight damage?

Bluef

Morthif said:

Jules said:

For the last few posts... that doesn't seem to be how a lot of people are experiencing the changes.  The same people who are PK Gods are loving it, and a lot of other people seem to be floundering.  Even people like Kinilan, who are probably somewhere below Santar, Jhui and Jarrod (but still lightyears ahead of most people) are saying (paraphrasing just a bit) "to do this right, you'd need a system, weren't we trying to sort of move away from systems".  

EDIT:  that said, I am not saying "scrap it".  You already made it, and a certain segment of players seems to really like it.  Why take it away entirely?  But, I am saying that a lot of other people are feeling pretty left out.  

I'm sorry you're just wrong. There's maybe 1 or 2 people who could code the ai to only use BR at optimal times. 

People like this because it adds more dynamic bashing and promotes group bashing.

I know several people who are coding this right now, so..sorry that's not true at all. 

People who like this either want that coding challenge or desire the "dynamic" way they have figure out the best string of attacks and then optimize their hunting keybinds, etc. to take full advantage of it. But some of us plebes don't have any interest in mastery of game mechanics. Others don't have access to city channels where people will gleefully share the best hunting strategy because they want their group to be the best it can be. We're left figuring out why hunting is suddenly so damn complicated and hard to do on our own. If you can't be empathetic to that, then just don't respond to the people who feel that way.

I'll be honest, when I saw Sarapis post that there are more changes on the way, I felt a little sick. It's already too slow and complicated for my tastes. This is why I prefer point and shoot or stand and slash games over those that give you 20 abilities and leave you to read through tons of online guides to figure out what you should be doing (all the while people in-game are screaming, "You're doing it wrong!"

Cynlael

So what you're saying is, you don't want to put in effort to be 'good' at the game you're playing. Here I'll help, it's even easier since you said you don't hunt with people.

1. Check AB files for each of your battlerage abilities.
2. Check rage costs / conditions for them.
3. #1 priority is using your lowest rage/cd ability; dunno about Shaman but for most this is generally 14 rage / 16second cd
4. #2 priority is using your higher rage/moderate cd ability, that doesn't have any conditional damage; again dunno about Shaman but most of the time it's around 24-25rage with a ~23second cd
5. 3rd priority is your final damaging ability (usually this has conditional damage, but you can use it if the other 2 aren't available and you have rage)
   
6. Make a trigger for both, with a tempTimer( <cooldown>, [[cecho("\n<red> =<green> ABILITYNAME IS USABLE <red>=")]])
7. You're done. Enjoy.

PS. Saying you don't want to learn how the game works, but at the same time want to be as good as people who do figure it out, is just plain asinine. Stop that.

Bring on more changes, Sarapis! - Add MORE abilities to the lists!
(This is not sarcasm, I for one find it pretty interesting, more abilities could be fun)

Jules

Awesome.  Another "just get gud" post from a PK-er who is clearly a solid coder.  And, just to stay rooted here, we're talking about BASHING.  By the way, as is often the case, Santar pretty much says "yeah, I'm going to code that, and yeah, you're punishing people who can't do what I can".  

Cynlael

Holy shit you two could not be any more dense, even if your lives depended on it.

You bitch when you don't know how to set something up... Then you bitch when you get told exactly how to set it up. jfc

Morthif

Cynlael said:

Holy shit you two could not be any more dense, even if your lives depended on it.

Yes time to stop feeding the trolls

Jules

I am (finally) to the point where I actually might be able to tackle something like this and (sort of) enjoy it.  But you know what?  It took me 10 years and finally getting access to people who not only knew things, but had the patience to try to explain it to me, so that I finally got a critical mass of knowedge that allows me (to an extent) to go looking for things and actually understand them (since most references really are written by coders for coders).  Some of you really are being jerks about this.  It's basically "screw you if you're not good at all of the things I'm good at".  

Merador

Jules, you haven't even tried it by your own admission. Stop playing newbie rights activist when you've no idea how hard it actually is.

Cynlael

I'm done.

Morthif

You need 0 coding knowledge to battlerage effectively. If you want to be lazy the code it. If not stop crying.

Jules

Merador said:

Jules, you haven't even tried it by your own admission. Stop playing newbie rights activist when you've no idea how hard it actually is.

Merador, I've only tried it briefly and yes, I'm going to wait until after the initial rollout to really give it a whirl, but honestly, it's the attitude of some people that's got me riled.  Anyway, yeah, I think we've all said our piece for now. 

Jhui

looks like a lot of fun. Wish u guys would reset everyone's honor mobs kills so everyone has incentives to learn the most complex aspects of this system and have fun regetting those lines for the next few years 

Sena

I'll simplify the shaman strategy even more, and use explicit numbers:

If you have 16 rage and corruption isn't on cooldown, use corruption.
If you have 36 rage and haemorrhage isn't on cooldown, use haemorrhage.

95% of the time, that's good enough, you're done, there's nothing else to worry about. If you want to go a little more complex:

If you have 16 rage and corruption isn't on cooldown, use corruption.
If you have 36 rage, haemorrhage isn't on cooldown, and you aren't about to kill the denizen with something else in the next few seconds, use haemorrhage. You might also want to switch this with the first step, and use haemorrhage before corruption. Either way is fine.
If you have 25 rage, vurus isn't on cooldown, corruption and haemorrhage are on cooldown, use vurus if you want.
If you have 18 rage, cesaret isn't on cooldown, and the enemy is under 20% health, use cesaret if you want, to keep them from shielding.

Edit: This is for solo bashing, group bashing has more things you might want to take into account, like someone being able to give afflictions for vurus. But sticking with this in groups will still work fine.

Jhui

That's part of the fun @sena . I'd recommend letting ppl find this out for themselves and feel a sense of accomplishment. just like in pvp 

Bluef

Cynlael said:

So what you're saying is, you don't want to put in effort to be 'good' at the game you're playing. Here I'll help, it's even easier since you said you don't hunt with people.

1. Check AB files for each of your battlerage abilities.
2. Check rage costs / conditions for them.
3. #1 priority is using your lowest rage/cd ability; dunno about Shaman but for most this is generally 14 rage / 16second cd
4. #2 priority is using your higher rage/moderate cd ability, that doesn't have any conditional damage; again dunno about Shaman but most of the time it's around 24-25rage with a ~23second cd
5. 3rd priority is your final damaging ability (usually this has conditional damage, but you can use it if the other 2 aren't available and you have rage)
   
6. Make a trigger for both, with a tempTimer( <cooldown>, [[cecho("\n<red> =<green> ABILITYNAME IS USABLE <red>=")]])
7. You're done. Enjoy.

PS. Saying you don't want to learn how the game works, but at the same time want to be as good as people who do figure it out, is just plain asinine. Stop that.

Bring on more changes, Sarapis! - Add MORE abilities to the lists!
(This is not sarcasm, I for one find it pretty interesting, more abilities could be fun)

I clearly put in the effort to be good at hunting already. I'm a level 104 dragon. I hunted solo to it. I didn't leech off anyone. I didn't group hunt. I grinded my way there learning how to bash new areas as I went along. But bashing then was fast and fun, not this syrupy feeling of being weighed down by abilities you don't quite know how to use properly against foes that have far too high health pools and are bludgeoning you to death.

We're not trolling. We're significantly unimpressed with the new system and the many challenges it creates, especially those that turn once high-level hunters into dragon newbies. That's neither realistic in my mind or an interesting reward for years of continued gameplay.

Although helpful in some ways, your post lacks empathy and is just unkind. No one is saying they don't want to learn how the game works. There is a learning curve though, and there are many people who aren't even on it in terms of mastering game mechanics. It's obvious that those who have somewhat love these changes.

Jules is right. Some of you really are being jerks about this. Stop being so condescending. 

Santar

Jhui said:

looks like a lot of fun. Wish u guys would reset everyone's honor mobs kills so everyone has incentives to learn the most complex aspects of this system and have fun regetting those lines for the next few years 

Would be an enormous slap in the face for people who put in the time and effort to already do this.

Jhui

Santar said:

Jhui said:

looks like a lot of fun. Wish u guys would reset everyone's honor mobs kills so everyone has incentives to learn the most complex aspects of this system and have fun regetting those lines for the next few years 

Would be an enormous slap in the face for people who put in the time and effort to already do this.

They'll have to adjust.. It'll be another step in the right not letting us 15 year vets stay on top of the ladder

Jules

Santar said:

Jhui said:

looks like a lot of fun. Wish u guys would reset everyone's honor mobs kills so everyone has incentives to learn the most complex aspects of this system and have fun regetting those lines for the next few years 

Would be an enormous slap in the face for people who put in the time and effort to already do this.

Could give people like Jhui (aka the people who have the right skills to actually enjoy this) a new honours line though.