Announce 3777

Vadimuses · January 2013

ANNOUNCE NEWS #3777

Date: 1/31/2013 at 22:24

From: Tecton, the Terraformer

To : Everyone

Subj: Free checks and loopholes

We've recently closed a few loopholes with "free checks" which allowed

players a way to test for the presence of afflictions in situations

where they would not normally be able. We balance combat around the

normal on-balance/equilibrium etc. checks, and loopholes such as these

provide a huge defensive boost that can effectively render a huge number

of abilities trivial or useless.

One such example that we've recently fixed: You could issue the FLING

command, which would check for the paralysis affliction before it

checked if you had balance, so any time you thought you had paralysis,

you could issue a FLING command and find out instantly.

Just letting you guys know that this isn't an intended behaviour, and if

you do find any further cases of commands that allow this sort of check,

let us know via a BUG!

Vadimuses · January 2013

Discuss!

One practical effect is that a dstab+paralysis illusion doubles your herb balance now, pretty good change for an affliction class like Serpent.

Among a ton of other ramifications

Jonathin · January 2013

Looks like I'm not fighting anyone anymore.

Oh wait...

Nellaundra · January 2013

I like it - it's gonna make paralysis a touch more viable to use now and it won't be that hard to adjust.

Triak · January 2013

Is it possible that @Cooper is responsible for this? Posting @Cahin mind sapience showing him fling for a paralysis check.

You summon up your formidable telepathic prowess and allow yourself to drift
among the thoughts of Cahin.
--> Cahin: sip vitality
--> Cahin: fling paralysis
--> Cahin: eat potash
--> Cahin: outr potash
--> Cahin: kill dyissan
--> Cahin: decay dyissan
--> Cahin: fling paralysis
--> Cahin: stand
--> Cahin: eat bloodroot
--> Cahin: outr 1 bloodroot

Vadimuses · January 2013

Not sure, but for something that has been in even the Nexus system, it's a pretty old thing

Namino · January 2013

My immediate reaction on this:

Mizik · January 2013

wb unartied serp

Vaehl · January 2013

Great change. I've always eaten bloodroot off para illusion, never really wanted to AI it, so it doesn't affect me.

Cooper · February 2013

Triak said:

Is it possible that @Cooper is responsible for this? Posting @Cahin mind sapience showing him fling for a paralysis check.

You summon up your formidable telepathic prowess and allow yourself to drift
among the thoughts of Cahin.
--> Cahin: sip vitality
--> Cahin: fling paralysis
--> Cahin: eat potash
--> Cahin: outr potash
--> Cahin: kill dyissan
--> Cahin: decay dyissan
--> Cahin: fling paralysis
--> Cahin: stand
--> Cahin: eat bloodroot
--> Cahin: outr 1 bloodroot

Yep!

Message 14470

Sent By: Achaea on 1/31/23:40

Your bug report (detail: If you think you are paralysed you can check to see if you really are by doing 'fling x'. If you are not paralysed it will give you a 'You aren't holding a tarot card with that image on it.' line. If you are paralysed, it says 'Your state of paralysis prevents you from doing that.' It is a balance not required way of checking to see if you really have paralysis or not.) - has been fixed. The following notes were included: .

Jhui · February 2013

honestly this is a great change.

I have always felt that optimal curing means not eating bloodroot when you are paralyzed and off-balance/eq (unless you are about to get balance back).

AI will still work on balance for this so you can always check it on balance and eat on the next herb balance.

Vadi, you should just update SVO to not cure paralysis if: you regain herb balance off eq/bal AND the paralysis in question could have been an illusion. Otherwise, cure the next highest priority. If you are on balance, check the paralysis with AI as normal.

Hope that makes sense.

Also, remove impale while paralyzed. Thx

Tvistor · February 2013

Voidfist BMs would cry a lot.

Trey · February 2013

Tvistor said:

Voidfist BMs would cry a lot.

Thank you for illustrating the absolute best selling point for this.

Cahin · February 2013

Yeah, they should at least have to pommel/strike knees after voidfist and paraing you :P

Tvistor · February 2013

Exactly. God forbid they figure out how to not rely on it or I'd die a lot more.

Vadimuses · February 2013

Jhui said:

honestly this is a great change.

I have always felt that optimal curing means not eating bloodroot when you are paralyzed and off-balance/eq (unless you are about to get balance back)

Note that the herb balance in the game wildly varies from 1s to 1.6s. How are you going to set the "about to get balance back" exactly when the game is so inaccurate?

Tvistor · February 2013

I think he was talking about regular balance and not herb balance. So if I'm 0.5 seconds from recovering regular balance to do a paralysis check, I'd wait for it instead of eating the next highest priority.

Jhui · February 2013

I wouldn't worry about the "about to" part at the moment (in regards to bal/eq), maybe further down the line though. Just don't eat bloodroot if off-bal/eq AND if it's possibly an illusion, eat something else...maybe even eat bloodroot if you have no other afflictions.

edit: clarity based on Tvistor's post

Vadimuses · February 2013

Regular balance is even more difficult to predict! Achaea, unlike Aetolia doesn't tell you how long you lose it for. I think at the moment it's a no-go, even if you add triggers for everything, account for artefacts, you'll run into things on top of it like lag, getting stunned at bad times, and inaccurate game timers that'll give a noticeable degradation in curing performance.

Plus I don't think you'd be entirely happy about the following case: you eat a herb for an affliction, waiting for balance to check paralysis, balance comes up right away, and it turns out you were paralysed, and now you have balance and eq back and you're paralysed, sitting there and wasting time. This can happen, if you want to test the theory right now, make triggers to shift paralysis priority down on balance loss/regain.

PS. Asthma is affected to a degree as well, can't hold breath anymore, only smoke to check. Which isn't a problem yet, but smoking will be nerfed, too.

---

This is a huge change that the population at large hasn't yet realized. It also undermined the last 6+ years of balancing done in this game in regards to any class that touches on illusions (although anyone can buy a staff), because the administration did not realize this counter-balancing dynamic to illusions was in effect.

Jhui · February 2013

I agree it's a huge game-changer. But I will say this.

Worst case scenario: You have kalmia and (maybe) paralysis. You get herb-balance back just before you get balance back, so you eat kelp. You are only paralyzed for 1.5 seconds with bal/eq BUT you have cured another affliction (kalmia) that you had previously. people are paralyzed for 1.5 seconds while on-bal/eq these days anyways, based on the way people whore curare, so I see no real harsh side effects.

Best case scenario: Say you have kalmia, sens, and (maybe) paral and you have just gotten herb balance back, and you are going to get balance back in 1.5 seconds. Instead of eating bloodroot, you eat kelp. Then on balance, you immediately check AI for paral and see you don't really have it, then you get herb balance back and eat kelp again and waste nothing.

Jules · February 2013

I love that they actually announced that there had been such an important bug in the first place, and that it was now fixed. Thank you.

Vadimuses · February 2013

@Jhui: System-wise it's not a challenge to add, I'll make it be an option and we'll see how it works out in practice.

Jacen · February 2013

Jules said:

I love that they actually announced that there had been such an important bug in the first place, and that it was now fixed. Thank you.

Meh, what's a feature today is a bug tomorrow, and a feature again the day after. See: Opening doors while phased.

Mizik · February 2013

No dude, just void fist para!

Iocun · February 2013

I don't make it depend on my own balance, but my opponent's (primarily in the case of serpents and apostates). If I have para/impatience or para/asthma and I get herb balance only very briefly after they attacked me (or already had it when they attacked), I will prioritize paralysis, because I will still be able to eat another herb before they can attack me again. If my herb balance recovery happens a bit later into their attack, I will cure defensively however, to avoid a lock, since I won't be able to eat again soon.

There are some other factors that influence my priorities, but that's a rather relevant one. When fighting apostates I also often need to prioritize paralysis even more, in order not to get pushed to the defensive and let them retain their full momentum.

In any case, regarding the OP: It will certainly the life of new serpents a tad bit easier. I just hope it doesn't make some things too easy and totally trivialise illusioning to a degree that you only ever have to use two or three illusions at all. There were already ways to make people eat two bloodroot off a single paralysis, they just were much harder to pull off and required much more precision.

But then, that's only a real issue with how systems are currently set up. With some improvements here and there, a good system should still be very well able to cope with it, without being overly bogged down by illusions.

Jhui · February 2013

thanks!

This will at least eliminate people doing nothing but Paralysis illusions and you doing nothing but sitting there eating bloodroot, at the cost of 0-1.5 seconds of paralysis while on-bal/eq.

Not to mention this mainly just affects serpents to a large extent (other classes to smaller extent, but not as abuseable), and against serpents eating away another kelp affliction at the cost paralysis can be a good thing.

Jhui · February 2013

Iocun said:

I don't make it depend on my own balance, but my opponent's (primarily in the case of serpents and apostates). If I have para/impatience or para/asthma and I get herb balance only very briefly after they attacked me (or already had it when they attacked), I will prioritize paralysis, because I will still be able to eat another herb before they can attack me again. If my herb balance recovery happens a bit later into their attack, I will cure defensively however, to avoid a lock, since I won't be able to eat again soon.

There are some other factors that influence my priorities, but that's a rather relevant one. When fighting apostates I also often need to prioritize paralysis even more, in order not to get pushed to the defensive and let them retain their full momentum.

In any case, regarding the OP: It will certainly the life of new serpents a tad bit easier. I just hope it doesn't make some things too easy and totally trivialise illusioning to a degree that you only ever have to use two or three illusions at all. There were already ways to make people eat two bloodroot off a single paralysis, they just were much harder to pull off and required much more precision.

But then, that's only a real issue with how systems are currently set up. With some improvements here and there, a good system should still be very well able to cope with it, without being overly bogged down by illusions.

I wish I had your commitment to making my system better.

So many ideas, just too lazy to implement them

Cooper · February 2013

Jhui said:

I agree it's a huge game-changer. But I will say this.

Worst case scenario: You have kalmia and (maybe) paralysis. You get herb-balance back just before you get balance back, so you eat kelp. You are only paralyzed for 1.5 seconds with bal/eq BUT you have cured another affliction (kalmia) that you had previously. people are paralyzed for 1.5 seconds while on-bal/eq these days anyways, based on the way people whore curare, so I see no real harsh side effects.

Best case scenario: Say you have kalmia, sens, and (maybe) paral and you have just gotten herb balance back, and you are going to get balance back in 1.5 seconds. Instead of eating bloodroot, you eat kelp. Then on balance, you immediately check AI for paral and see you don't really have it, then you get herb balance back and eat kelp again and waste nothing.

You realize that if you waste that ~1s+ of sitting off eq/bal to check and see if you actually have paralysis, you will fall so freaking far behind in curing against anyone who knows what they are doing that you aren't ever going to recover without playing 1000% defense, right?

Also, smoking to figure out if you have asthma is kind of touchy. You can't really take that away. Ooh, I know!

Let's say you have kalmia. As of now, you try to smoke and it gives you the cannot smoke asthma message. Could change it to letting you smoke naturally with no problems, but then causing damage to your lungs to 1. let you know you actually have asthma, and 2. makes it so you can't smoke for another 1s or so due to having tried to smoke while having asthma. Also brb going affliction class

Calaurn · February 2013

Only sarcastic comments comes to mind. So I'll refrain much.

Touching tree tattoo will also reveal state of paralysis or whether both injured arms are injured.

There are a bunch of things that can be done (both offensive and defensive) while paralysed, so waiting to cure paralysis is really not a waste of time. Simply needs a presence of mind.

What happens when your character gets stunned while being devoid of senses?
Do you see a stun message when you try to do something or an off eq./off balance message first?

Been blacked out for a while now, and close to gaining senses. Something happens.
-

Your senses return to you as the blackout ends.
ekdb-

diag
You must recover balance first.
ekdb-

You have recovered balance on all limbs
exkdb-

diag
You are too stunned to be able to do anything.
exkdb-

You are no longer stunned.
exkdb-

diag
You are in perfect health.
xkdb-

Knowing about "free checks" shows something about real game-combat experience than reliance on script, particularly one that is shared and used by many. For some reason this change appears to be influenced by use of client-side scripting rather than bringing balance to game. I do not like it because I do not have to like it.

For newbies, diagnose takes longer recovery without physiology. I'd salute the newbie that learns about and uses free checks to figure out and treat afflictions in quick order.

A less likely option is to remove diagnose feature entirely and replace it with all the possible message based on action posted to game. You can no longer diagnose all ailments in one go but you can use free checks.

dsl rat
Your aura of rebounding disappears.
Your state of paralysis prevents you from doing that.
You must recover balance first.
ekdb-

You have recovered balance on all limbs
exkdb-

dsl rat
Your state of paralysis prevents you from doing that.
exkdb-

And if you are stunned.
You are too stunned to be able to do anything.
ekdb-

I am gonna go report one or two bugs that seem like free checks.

Caladbolg · February 2013

Tvistor said:

Voidfist BMs would cry a lot.

Other people do this besides me? o.O

Cahin · February 2013

Using tree tattoo to AI paralysis is a terrible idea.

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