another dept to add?

[Onibaku]

i do not know if you guys have a dept of gameplay development.... but it is an idea to entertain if you guys do not have one yet...

you guys can code, make great maps, beautiful bosses and items ... but it just seems that they are added randomly and put into random places for reasons that seem to be unknown to the players...

like capping parry at lvl 40 arbitrarily??? (ppl whining about titles and what not... the same people who accuse cheating, twinking is good/bad or w/e) parry is a good skill in a sense when it comes to gameplay... as it does help to EVEN out the difference between what the player can do and what the enemies can do

maybe lock parry until a certain amount of hp is reached/mana or skill totals are achieved then unlock a certain # of parry levels?

then you can also maybe link the parry levels to weapon reqs?

hmnn there would be a lot more i could say on this.. but i want to see what you guys think about what i have said so far.

 

[Sabre]

Bad idea, just defeats the purpose of capping.

 

[Onibaku]

purpose of capping was to??
as far as i have seen the purpose was to appease those complaining about rank/title they could get in the game, right?

what i suggested was an intermediate between parry cap and no parry cap....
limit the the level at which people are allowed to gain parry in based on current weapon levels?

 

[FER]

Leveling parry takes no effort, and It has been said MANY times that it will be axed.

Parry will depend on what you are carrying on your hands

 

[CrazyMonkeyDude]

The purpose of capping parry iwas to stop its abuse, allow players to go different routes than parry + main skill, and to make it easier to remove the skill completely.

 

[Onibaku]

so it was a step in removing parry from the game completely?

well thats great and all.. parry currently though does help to balance against some of the inequities in the gameplay a player will experience...

lol like enemies being able to attack/drain life while FROZEN AND STUNNED ... if i cant parry that shit anymore then what will be done to balance the gameplay? its ok to plan to remove parry but what has went in its place?

*trying to have a constructive converstation...

is there going to be some bonuses for getting different titles? like oh i dont know...
damage X2 dealt, mana usage X2, parry number/activation X1.2, damage reduction +10% ---> title = thug?

just a random example but an idea?

abuse of parry? how?

 

[Jelly]

@ The title you suggested: Yes, there's going to be some similar titles with pros & cons. A thread was started about it, but can't remember in which section.

Also, critical hit?

 

[CrazyMonkeyDude]

its ok to plan to remove parry but what has went in its place?

Parry as a skill is being removed. Parry as a part of the gameplay is not.

Parry will depend on what you are carrying on your hands

Which was also said by Thoth to mean that parry will be the weapon you're holding's parry + the shield you're holding's parry, if you can hold a shield. Notice that it tells you what your parry would be under the new parry system when you take out a weapon or shield.

is there going to be some bonuses for getting different titles? like oh i dont know...
damage X2 dealt, mana usage X2, parry number/activation X1.2, damage reduction +10% ---> title = thug?

Yes, there's already a thread for this. If you'd like to find it and revive it with your ideas (as that's what the thread is about, title ideas for the new upcoming title system), that'd be awesome.

abuse of parry? how?

Parry is very very very very (x200) easy to level, inflates level, HP (a little), and mana (moreso than HP), and used to be used to make oneself look really high level without actually being that strong (the HP for score function was added partly due to parry whoring). It's a nice idea, just implemented in the wrong way.

 

[Shadeska]

Don't forget about two-handed swords being able to parry! I also think we should throw in a few defending daggers.

 

[villager]

abuse of parry? how?

Parry is very very very very (x200) easy to level, inflates level, HP (a little), and mana (moreso than HP), and used to be used to make oneself look really high level without actually being that strong (the HP for score function was added partly due to parry whoring).

Don't forget the higher chances of parrying hits that a parry whore didn't legitimently earn

From what I remember, the parry level cap was added because there's no possible way to eliminate parry exploiting with the current parry leveling method.

 

[Thothie]

The way the current parry system works, the parry skill only makes up 50% of your parry chance. So if you had a parry of 60, you’re only losing 10% chance to parry, by having your parry locked at 40.

The real abuse came in when people started combining certain items, double shields, and going AFK in front of certain major league bosses for several hours on pass worded servers, raising their Parry scores to 70+ overnight. Several people had their characters deleted for this sort of activity, but lots of “quazi-cheaters” have been artificially raising their levels in this manner. Those folks are the ones who will suffer the most.

Plus it’s basically giving you points for failing to avoid being hit – this is not conducive to skilled gameplay.

Again, hope for the new system is to have your parry equal your skill with your weapon multiplied by your shield's stats, and that parry will no longer affect hp/mp. To compensate the stat loss, I figure one would add a small amount of additional hp/mp for all the existing skill stats (maybe 5% of ea).

I actually would have done that this patch, but the lack of Steam made it hard to test out, plus it would have required a client-side patch.

 

[brian4]

...raising their Parry scores to 70+ overnight.

Ummm... this would take weeks, if not months.

Several people had their characters deleted

Ummm... name one?

...lots of “quazi-cheaters” have been artificially raising their levels in this manner. Those folks are the ones who will suffer the most.

Or anyone with a very high level.

Plus it’s basically giving you points for failing to avoid being hit – this is not conducive to skilled gameplay.

You realize this is an RPG, right?

 

[Slaytanic_pb]

Man, it's sad that parry got capped like that. Considering that mana is more than HALF based on parry being leveled, it'll make getting more mana more than twice as hard as it was before. I can't believe the whiners managed to get this one through.

*Whine* He's only high level because of his parry *whine*.

F*ck you whiner, get a life and show that "parry whore" what someone of that level can really do!

Please, this is the most dumbass thing I've ever seen happen to MSC.

 

[Thothie]

...raising their Parry scores to 70+ overnight.

Ummm... this would take weeks, if not months.

About 8 hours, if you do it right, proved by more than one person. You gotta get that fictional way XP is calced out of your head (and your sig).

Several people had their characters deleted

Ummm... name one?

You know, of all the characters I’ve deleted over the years, I can only remember the names of two or three. Yet I have a folder of 52 characters labeled “FN Cheaters”, and I’m sure at least a quarter of those were deleted for parry exploiting. This belief is further justified by the fact that two of the three names I can remember deleting (Elric and LeftOver), were deleted for it (coupled with a cheat map, in the case of the last one – and Elric had a parry of over 80, without a cheatmap).

Nevermind all the guys Fuzzyfish deleted for parry exploits, and he was much more prolific about it than I was. IIRC, he deleted a guy who just sat in the Edana pool with some rats overnight. First guy to get nailed for that too, I think… We were much stricter in the early days, before the age of the two month rollback.

...lots of “quazi-cheaters” have been artificially raising their levels in this manner. Those folks are the ones who will suffer the most.

Or anyone with a very high level.

Very few, if any, legitimate characters have Parry above 60.

Mana is ( 1 + (Parry/2) + (SC*0.75) ) * 10

So a character with Parry of 60 and SC of 20 has 460 mana
So a character with Parry of 40 and SC of 20 has 360 mana

A 22% mana loss (max) ain't that big a deal. ('specially since most of the heavy drain spells were made with 300mp max in mind)

And as already mentioned, the difference between chance to parry between 40 and 60 is 10%, as Parry skill only counts for half your chance to parry.

Now, it is true, those who had a Parry higher than 60 might suffer more, but they should most likely have their characters deleted anyways.

Plus it’s basically giving you points for failing to avoid being hit – this is not conducive to skilled gameplay.

You realize this is an RPG, right?

How many RPG’s reward you for being hit? Especially RPG’s in which you don’t always have to be? Rewarding stupidity, is stupid.

Please, this is the most dumbass thing I've ever seen happen to MSC.

Most dumb ass thing I recall happening to MSC (discounting Vlad) was when we had to remove monster ramping due to a handful of winers.

 

[brian4]

parry exp = monster exp x 2 unless I'm missing something...

 

[Slaytanic_pb]

OK, wow, this has gone beyond stupid...

A dev abuses his knowledge of the code and gets MEGA huge xp for weapons stats, which HUGELY affects gameplay and doesn't get deleted for it, but you're talking about deleting characters who can legally get level 60 parry through normal gameplay?

So, what is it like to see through you mouth having your head shoved so far up your A$$?

 

[Thothie]

Well, at some point we stopped deleting characters and started this two month roll back thing, and not too long after that, I left punishment almost solely to Blasto. I was fine with Shurik3n being rolled back for practicing the same exploits we've rolled other people back for, and so, indeed, was Shurik3n. I authorized it when Blasto asked.

I was not fine with it becoming a blazing siren circus though, and neither was Shurik3n, nor even Blasto, and was even less fine with losing, what was at the time, our only active coder, and additionally (as a direct result) our #1 coder/scripter in training, due to said circus. I was especially not fine with it, after so recently losing our best modeler and our only other scripter to the same obnoxious behavior by the same people.

Losing four top-notch devs in just under six months to this kind of behavior made me decide the project was unviable with the current community.

 

[Picadilly]

Plus it’s basically giving you points for failing to avoid being hit – this is not conducive to skilled gameplay.

Since when were u able to avoid being hit without being on the other side of the map?

This is one of the things about MS:C that's frustrated me from the beginning. In a game like DOD, CS, or even Oblivion for that matter, if you "sidestep" the attacker's melee, it will miss. However, that isn't true in MS:C. I'd always thought that the current parry system was like a crippled D&D rolling system meant to substitute actual "thought" into hitboxes and range. I mean, saying that there's some "skill" to avoiding attack in MS:C, other than parry, or simply being fully out of the monster's MAXIMUM range is just nonsense. If it's "skill" to disconnect when the blooddrinker is chasing you through a wall, then I'd better sign up for CAL-I a.s.a.p...

 

[Thothie]

The dodging system is not what I wish it was, tis true. I wish the game was more skill oriented, but sadly, there are certain limitations (although I’d point out that BD is a bad example, as it is very easy to dodge, despite the wallh4x). There are many monsters you can dodge, however, and ironically, some of them are amongst those popularly used for parry abuse.

Regardless of the inevitability of being hit, the fact that you can easily train it while AFK, would have it removed from any commercial RPG on the market, and justly so. It was never the intent of the developers of this, or any other game, that players would train AFK.

When I first got the code, however, I reduced the amount Parry gave Manna, and increased the amount that Spell Casting did (SC gave almost no manna at the time). It maybe Dogg’s intent was to force wizards to go into combat to get manna (and thus avoid the traditional “stringy old weakling” wizard) – so there maybe something to that, but the game still discourages that route, so I didn’t feel it too radical a change.

 

[Slaytanic_pb]

Boo hoo hoo, ahhh, poor Shuri wasn't fine with the circus.

He should have known better than to pull something like that off in the first place!

If he could do something like that, he could have spaced it out over a week and no one would have known better or cared, but no, he had to do that in 6 HOURS.

And how big of you Thothie of you to let Blasto roll him back, real big of you.

Did he even talk to the community about what he did?

No, he was too chicken to do that, nor man enough to say on the dev team after getting busted like that.

 

[brian4]

This isn't the first time a "circus" has been created over a cheater either. But I've never seen Thothie have a problem it in the past... Also, I guess we really know who runs FN now...

 

[Thothie]

Boo hoo hoo, ahhh, poor Shuri.

Now yer just being petty.

Did he even talk to the community about what he did?

He was advised not to.

But I've never seen Thothie have a problem it in the past...

Tis true, but I’ve never seen a circus setup for someone who wasn’t already justly hated by the whole community, nor for someone who had done so much for the game’s possibilities, and contributed so much good work to the project. I was further embittered by the fact it seemed to be just because he had wagged his finger at certain people who were engaging in behavior to make life hard on the developers, and bragging about it.

I was also unaware there was ever any question as to who ran FN, although the main reason I started to let Blasto handle the bulk of the workload is that, so many character rollback requests were coming in, that answering them all was seriously starting to eat into dev time (character overlow, somewhat ironically, being the last project Shurik3n was working on).

 

[brian4]

We had been taking a look at shuriken's character files long before that thread. It just took us a long time to map exp and find the point where he did the cheating.

 

[Thothie]

+2 guys find a cheater who used knowledge of the code to cheat
-one guy loses status in the community
-one guy loses his guild
-an guild unseen controlling the game, now controls the game
-guild makes a crest saying the cheater didn't cheat
= BULLSH!T

For the record
- he didn’t use knowledge of the code (these are training issues he brought up before joining the dev team)
- no one lost a guild, except may haps of their own volition
- what guild is controlling the game?
- the crest does not say he didn’t exploit/cheat

However, if we're going to continue to bitch about Shurik3n, rather than about Parry, we can take this elsewhere.

 

[Sabre]

Oh God, more of this? :roll:

Take your paranoia and straw-grasping elsewhere, what's done is done. If you don't like what has happened, or what will happen to MS:C, then I'm sure you can find your way out.

And do you honestly think Shuriken should continue developing? You people say that, and yet you'll probably be the ones constantly b!tching about how a cheater is developing.


:roll: