16 Jan, 2013, Ssolvarain wrote in the 61st comment:
Votes: 0
So quick to criticize anything you see as "something quixadhal doesn't do".

You also have no clue how my auto code worked after I tinkered with it, but it's alright. I've come to expect biased assumptions from you.
16 Jan, 2013, Hades_Kane wrote in the 62nd comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Code that "autosets" your stats certainly IS the easy way. It's also the way to generate hundreds of boringly identical items which differ only by description. When the "smurf berry branch" and the "hammer of odin" do the same damage because the two zones they came from were in the same level range, something is fundamentally wrong.

That's why you tweak the item after you autoset it…

Or set it to 10 levels higher, autoset, and then back it to the normal level…

Or tweak the code to allow for mundane, normal, and rare/quest item stats…
16 Jan, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 63rd comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Code that "autosets" your stats certainly IS the easy way. It's also the way to generate hundreds of boringly identical items which differ only by description.

Balanced != identical. Here's an example of how I handle it:

* Stats are worth 40 radiation per point.

* Speed is worth 12 radiation per point.

* Damage is worth 10 radiation per point.

* Resistance is worth 8 radiation per point.

* Attack and Defence are worth 5 radiation per point.

* Mana is worth 2 radiation per point.

* Health is worth 1 radiation per point.

An item with 100 radiation might have +2 Brawn and +2 Damage. Or it might have +10 Attack and +10 Defence. Or it might have +5 speed and +40 Health. Or any other combination.

Some additional points to consider:

1) There are a lot of different magical bonuses (the above list is just to give an idea of the concept).

2) The base item types (before applying magical bonuses) are balanced against each other, but vary significantly.

3) Every item has a material type, and the material can have a large impact on the item.

4) Each item type has its own list of available magical bonuses (and some of these are further restricted by material type).

5) Particularly powerful and/or rare items have more (and slightly cheaper) bonuses.

6) Radiation works a bit like a level restriction, but it's based on your total worn radiation rather than per-item.

Example magic item:

You examine a steel rapier of damage.
——————————————————————————-
The rapier has a three-foot double-edged blade designed for both thrusting and
slashing. It is light and fast, with a steel basket to protect the hand, but
the blade itself is relatively fragile. It can be used in a two handed style
(with the second hand placed behind the back to improve balance) or combined
with a second weapon. It is particularly effective when used with a main
gauche in the other hand.
——————————————————————————-
Skill type : Swords (also benefits from the Fencing Mastery talent).
Usage : One or two handed (see 'help assist'), but cannot be thrown.
Size/reach : Adds two encumbrance, and has a melee reach of three feet.
Material : Steel with 90% durability.
Techniques : 105 (0 mounted, 78 style-specific and 9 behind the scenes).
Good styles: Viper, Crane, Hawk, Eagle and Hydra (see 'help style').
Special : Some attacks reduce opponent's armour by 25% (see 'help bypass').
Weaknesses : This weapon can be caught by swordbreakers and tiger claws.
——————————————————————————-
Condition : Seventy-five (out of seventy-five).
Attack : +12 (+12, +11, +10 or +2 depending on condition).
Defence : +168 (+168, +167, +166 or +2 depending on condition).
Damage : +117 (+117, +117, +116 or +1 depending on condition).
Requires : Brawn 4, Grace 6 and Size 5 (no penalty - see 'help penalties').
Two handed : Brawn 4, Grace 5 and Size 5 (no penalty - see 'help penalties').
Cooldown : 2, 3, 4 or 5 seconds, depending on wielders encumbrance.
Protects : Hands.
Soak/Absorb: 25%/0 cut, 25%/0 stab, 25%/0 crush and 0%/0 poison.
Soak/Absorb: 0%/0 heat, 0%/0 cold, 0%/0 shock and 0%/0 mental.
——————————————————————————-
Magic type : An uncommon artifact with 1086 points of radiation.
Bonus : +52 armour bypass with cut attacks.
Bonus : -42 AP cost for this weapon's commands, and -1 to its cooldown.
Bonus : +156 Defence (applied to the weapon, not you).
Bonus : +114 Damage (applied to the weapon, not you).
——————————————————————————-
17 Jan, 2013, Runter wrote in the 64th comment:
Votes: 0
What KaVir described is exactly how I've handled it in the past, and I don't think it makes all items the same.
17 Jan, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 65th comment:
Votes: 0
re-thinking about it, Quix was talking about giving same kind power to the "Hammer of Odin" and a "pinebranch" picked from the smurf.
Not that they would have the same stats or even widely different one.

But that at the same level a char could wear one of the other, depending on his needs. But thats another problem to me, the fact to autoset an area level at the wrong perceived level.
You should not autoset Valhala to level 0-10 and smurf village to level 100.

A problem my own mud suffers from at the lower levels, but I dont have the builder ressources to fix them.
17 Jan, 2013, mangan wrote in the 66th comment:
Votes: 0
I like KaVir's system, and is something that I would consider in the future. (KaVir, feel free to correct anything following that is incorrect.) Not so much the theme, but the concept of an item's level (radiation) being determined by the stats/attributed of the item. This allows global tinkering of the concept of "balance", so that if a new skill is offered that makes speed more valuable, then speed's modifier to the level (radiation) of an item can be adjusted to fit (either for those that have the skill, or globally, etc… different design decision there that will differ per game).

Further, a primary con to such a system would be that items can adjust in level as they are balanced, and players' expectations/knowledge of the items are therefore inconsistent. This fits nicely in GodWars2, I believe, since a player can have excessive radiation and suffers for it, but they are able to make their own decisions about how to solve it. This is opposed to a standard Diku (or perhaps Merc?) that will fail to save (and therefore delete) any items above the player's level when they quit, thus they aren't even aware of the change or why they are missing an item.

I'm not saying this system is for every game, but that in the right scenario it does accomplish numerous goals. If we accept the axioms that the level (radiation) modifiers are complete and accurate, then every item is inherently balanced from the start. If we challenge those axioms, then adjusting the modifiers can be done in a scalable way to affect all related items. (Scalable here meaning that, given good code design, a single concept/modifier can be adjusted in one spot and affect any number of items, as desired.) This system is also extendible in some areas, such as "harder to obtain items should be better than others of the same level that are easy to obtain". This could be accomplished with a difficulty metric that lowers the level (radiation) by some amount. Again, this could be implemented in a scalable way, which leaves the game design role somewhat decoupled from the content creation role.
18 Jan, 2013, Sandi wrote in the 67th comment:
Votes: 0
Balance may be over-rated.

The most fun I think I ever had was when I stumbled upon a quest prize weapon on Aardwolf. For ten levels, I rocked!!

And there was a race on Dizzy that was notoriously hard to play. Yet, we had one long time player who used nothing else - he liked the challenge.

I think what you want to avoid is a player having an unfair advantage. And, the 'this race/class/weapon is the only one worth using' scenario. But, you really don't want to make things so balanced there are no perks at all.

What I did to "balance" stock ROM was to measure the dam/armor differences in combat, and apply curves to compress the differences as they diverged. On the other side of the coin, I expanded level differences (ie, a mob way above your level did way more damage) so a super weapon (should you stumble on one (a few of us know where they all are)) wouldn't let you kill far above your level for outrageous XP.
18 Jan, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 68th comment:
Votes: 0
Hades_Kane said:
quixadhal said:
Code that "autosets" your stats certainly IS the easy way. It's also the way to generate hundreds of boringly identical items which differ only by description. When the "smurf berry branch" and the "hammer of odin" do the same damage because the two zones they came from were in the same level range, something is fundamentally wrong.

That's why you tweak the item after you autoset it…

Or set it to 10 levels higher, autoset, and then back it to the normal level…

Or tweak the code to allow for mundane, normal, and rare/quest item stats…


That defeats the purpose of having auto-set, doesn't it? If you have to go back and hand-tweak things, why not just assign the values yourself to begin with?

I have to agree with Sandi. Balance is WAY overrated, mostly because certain admins have gotten it into their heads that every player must (for some reason) be perfectly balanced against every other player, no matter the combination of classes/skills/etc. To me, that's absurd. If you believe that, you are missing the point of a MULTIPLAYER game.

What do I mean by that? I mean, consider where MUD's came from. They were an attempt to capture the spirit of a pen and paper RPG session, where you and several of your friends would sit down and adventure together. Back then, players were encouraged to group together, and encounters were designed to require several players to work as a team. Look at the popular MMO games today…. most of the ones that have solid subscriber bases have endgame content that requires people to work together as a team. You don't hear people talking about how great it was to solo the early levels… or how fantastic the 1-on-1 duels were. You hear them talking about endgame raids, and large-scale PvP battles.

I've said this before. Balance, whatever that means, should be focused on a GROUP, not on an individual. If two GROUPS of players decide to fight each other, and they have similar level ranges and class/skills/etc, then they should expect a fairly even fight. If a mage gets the drop on a fighter from a distance, that fighter should expect to be in a world of hurt – even if he's higher level and has better gear. Likewise, if that mage find himself in melee range of the fighter, he should expect to enjoy a lot of pain from the contest… because the classes have different strengths and weaknesses.

When doing PvE, that means you shouldn't be able to blindly wade through things… you should have to be smart about picking your battles. If you're a mage, you really don't want to engage in fights against things that are magic resistant, or against things that can swarm you in close combat. If you're a fighter, archers and mages are not things that make you happy. Put enough content out there so everyone has the level of challenge they need, but don't try to make it so everyone can do everything, unless you're making BeigeMUD.
18 Jan, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 69th comment:
Votes: 0
Not sure this was the same balance we are talking about. I think this thread is focused in what weapons/armors people have access to, and how a warrior would fare against the exact same warrior with different eq.
18 Jan, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 70th comment:
Votes: 0
Balance is balance.

The whole point of balancing anything, be it weapon stats, skills, or classes…. is to try and make some kind of perceived "fairness", where players feel they can expect roughly the same challenge to achieve roughly the same reward.

My long-winded post essentially says, that shouldn't always be the case. It needs to be mitigated with some common sense. If you're playing a ranged magic-using class, you should expect to have an easy time against some things, and a hard time against others. You should NOT expect things to be the same across the board.

In terms of equipment, most games that have specialized classes, also tend to have specialized gear that is more beneficial to that class than others. A mage might expect to find robes which give him a boost to a particular kind of spell casting. A paladin might hope to find that holy avenger sword that amplifies his abilities.
18 Jan, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 71st comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
If you're playing a ranged magic-using class, you should expect to have an easy time against some things, and a hard time against others. You should NOT expect things to be the same across the board.

I don't think this is against balance.
Fairness is to give the possibiliy to a mage to leve lat the same rate as a warrior, it does not mean to allow them to do it in the same place on the same mobs.
Some areas/mobiles may be tuned for warriors, others for mages other for clerics (to keep stereotypes). I call this balancing things as well.
I would call a mud achieving that very balanced, even if it meant a mage has absolutely no chance against some kind of mobiles. (and vice versa)
18 Jan, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 72nd comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
What do I mean by that? I mean, consider where MUD's came from. They were an attempt to capture the spirit of a pen and paper RPG session, where you and several of your friends would sit down and adventure together.

Not quite - the clue is actually in the name. "Dungeon" was a single-player game where the objective was to score points and win the game. The objective in "Multi-User Dungeon" (MUD) was also to score points and win the game. The only difference was that in MUD, once you'd "won" you became immortal, and could hang around using your powers on other players.

quixadhal said:
Look at the popular MMO games today…. most of the ones that have solid subscriber bases have endgame content that requires people to work together as a team.

Many MMOs drew inspiration (either directly or indirectly) from DikuMUD, which was intended to be similar to D&D. But not all muds require cooperative play.

quixadhal said:
Balance, whatever that means, should be focused on a GROUP, not on an individual.

You still seem to be confusing "balanced" with "identical". Let me give you an example (using equipment, as that's what this thread is really about, but the same logic can apply to other things):

Identical: The longsword is exactly the same as the battleaxe.

Unbalanced: The longsword is more accurate than the battleaxe.

Balanced: The longsword is more accurate, but the battleaxe inflicts more damage (both are equally good overall).

The objective is to create balanced equipment. Nobody wants identical equipment.
18 Jan, 2013, Hades_Kane wrote in the 73rd comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Hades_Kane said:
quixadhal said:
Code that "autosets" your stats certainly IS the easy way. It's also the way to generate hundreds of boringly identical items which differ only by description. When the "smurf berry branch" and the "hammer of odin" do the same damage because the two zones they came from were in the same level range, something is fundamentally wrong.

That's why you tweak the item after you autoset it…

Or set it to 10 levels higher, autoset, and then back it to the normal level…

Or tweak the code to allow for mundane, normal, and rare/quest item stats…


That defeats the purpose of having auto-set, doesn't it? If you have to go back and hand-tweak things, why not just assign the values yourself to begin with?


Nope. It gives you a baseline of what is balanced and allows you to make tweaks where necessary, rather than having to guess, consult a big table, make manual calculations. If I autoset a piece of equipment that gives +20 hp, and 20 AC, and it is a super piece of quest equipment, then you could maybe add 5 AC and a point of STR. That's just an off the cuff example, but having a baseline of "balance" or whatever works wonders toward being able to make sure that even your overpowered equipment still falls in some sort of line with the rest of it.
08 Mar, 2013, Nathan wrote in the 74th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
quixadhal said:
Code that "autosets" your stats certainly IS the easy way. It's also the way to generate hundreds of boringly identical items which differ only by description.

Balanced != identical. Here's an example of how I handle it:

* Stats are worth 40 radiation per point.

* Speed is worth 12 radiation per point.

* Damage is worth 10 radiation per point.

* Resistance is worth 8 radiation per point.

* Attack and Defence are worth 5 radiation per point.

* Mana is worth 2 radiation per point.

* Health is worth 1 radiation per point.

An item with 100 radiation might have +2 Brawn and +2 Damage. Or it might have +10 Attack and +10 Defence. Or it might have +5 speed and +40 Health. Or any other combination.

Some additional points to consider:

1) There are a lot of different magical bonuses (the above list is just to give an idea of the concept).

2) The base item types (before applying magical bonuses) are balanced against each other, but vary significantly.

3) Every item has a material type, and the material can have a large impact on the item.

4) Each item type has its own list of available magical bonuses (and some of these are further restricted by material type).

5) Particularly powerful and/or rare items have more (and slightly cheaper) bonuses.

6) Radiation works a bit like a level restriction, but it's based on your total worn radiation rather than per-item.

$ examples removed for brevity $


Looks pretty cool to me. Vaguely reminds me of DDO's system where item attributes have a "level" of enhancement in a sense so that, for example:

+3 Frost Scimitar (Level 4 Item) == +2 Icy Burst Scimitar (Level 4 Item)

Both are level 4 items because Frost is a level 1 enhancement and Icy Burst is a level 2 enhancement and that stacks with the basic enhancement modifier to the weapon to equate to a certain item level. Different design, but similar notion.

quixadhal said:
Balance is balance.

The whole point of balancing anything, be it weapon stats, skills, or classes…. is to try and make some kind of perceived "fairness", where players feel they can expect roughly the same challenge to achieve roughly the same reward.

My long-winded post essentially says, that shouldn't always be the case. It needs to be mitigated with some common sense. If you're playing a ranged magic-using class, you should expect to have an easy time against some things, and a hard time against others. You should NOT expect things to be the same across the board.

In terms of equipment, most games that have specialized classes, also tend to have specialized gear that is more beneficial to that class than others. A mage might expect to find robes which give him a boost to a particular kind of spell casting. A paladin might hope to find that holy avenger sword that amplifies his abilities.


I agree. Although, I think that the way D&D style mages/wizards can't use most armor, weapons period (without a feat – such proficiency is a poor choice to spend feats on in any case) is bad. They could be allowed to get armor and weapons ability more easily if spells were less OP in a sense (e.g. fireball nukes a huge space) or some other balancing existed. I personally feel that the massive 40-60% spell failure on heavy armor is a pretty big disincentive to begin with. Don't wear the armor or your spells won't work. The other thing is that the need for concentration (if it actually has a noticeable effect) is a useful balance, since close combat would make it hard to cast complicated spells. I guess multi-classing helps, but it seems weird that adding a class should be a quick "Oh, look I can wear heavy armor", but you're still affected by the spell failure. I feel like in that case, you ought to get better at casting spells in armor because of your fighter training (namely, moving in/with the armor, etc becomes easier with strength and practice). That would help to justify only advancing in the new class..

It really should be possible to get gear that makes you vastly better, with the caveat that if it breaks (if item wear is a factor), or doesn't work as well due to some skill/proficieny lack you could be in for a good beating. That justifies desire to work hard to go get it. Items that offer only a minor improvement aren't really an upgrade and don't drive interest. Grossly more powerful equipment should either be hard to obtain (high level quests) and/or fairly rare (so everyone doesn't just have it). If you could only get it once or a limited number of times (first 5 quest completions or maybe only once) then high-level players would keep theirs for a while and not just farm them to see to newbs to get lots of money. It might also travel the game somewhat. Truly end-game level gear ought to exist in extreme scarcity and be fairly unique so that it takes a long time if ever for all end-game players to have super awesome armor. Having a crafting system that allows you make that level of stuff with much blood sweat and tears (and materials) would alleviate the pain of only a little random awesome gear and provide some uniqueness. Obviously that needs to drain enough that people might only make one for themselves, not just generate tons of them.
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