Make swords great again 2k16

[Thothie]

...I think we got all the ones they could replace... Though, sadly, mostly with models far inferior to these.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

Some of these look like they could be good "orcish" equipment to me.

I also really like that they don't appear to be elemental in nature. We need more high level "normal" weapons. It would be nice to see slash/blunt/pierce type damage become relevant again at higher levels, since the game has kind of become a "bash everything with OP magical weapons" fest.

 

[Thothie]

How unusual that the high level characters in a game should only be using enchanted weaponry!

Granted, none of them look unenchanted - it might be more of a matter of finding new sorts of enchantments.

 

[Phosphorcracker]

looking entchanted or not is a matter of how you sell it. If you tell the ppl they look like that because the ore itself is just super fancy theyll take that over magic hurrdurr any day, just gotta tell a compelling story.

Anyway this looks indeed awesome, makes me wonder of the cap of polys one should keep on weapons ?

I love those bows, always liked archery as I used to do it sportswise. Would be rad to see the bows make it ingame.

Brings me to a point: Insert fancy name here
Bow does shoot normally - but stronger
Charge: Pierce shot - a shot in a straight line that shoots through enemys and deals massive pierce damage, maybe take some mana 10/20ish ?
Charge 2: Rapid fire - shoot archery/10 arrows in quick succession, 50 mana ?

The mana isnt there for the magic to do its thing, more of restrictive resource to keep it down a bit. Unless we can make cooldowns that work ?

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

How unusual that the high level characters in a game should only be using enchanted weaponry!

I think this is formulaic and uninspired.

looking entchanted or not is a matter of how you sell it. If you tell the ppl they look like that because the ore itself is just super fancy theyll take that over magic hurrdurr any day, just gotta tell a compelling story.

I completely agree with this. I really want to see more high level "normal" type weapons, like Mythril equipment for example.

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

I want weapons that you can enchant yourself. Making a perfect skullblade viable.

 

[Thothie]

Oddly, actually in the pipe... Working up a system where you can enchant any weapon.

How unusual that the high level characters in a game should only be using enchanted weaponry!

I think this is formulaic and uninspired.

You misspelled "logical and inevitable" (lest your characters live in a non-magical world.)

Granted, I'd like to see a greater range of enchantments than simply flavors of DOT.

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

That's amazing news... can't tell you how long I've wanted to use tork blades and do dark damage.

 

[zeus9860]

I have no clue how you get the idea i want a firebrand nerf. Fire being stronk is no problem to me.

I dont know I am just used to that, go to a fire cave, loot fire items, makes perfect sense to me. Its probably better to drop crossfade.

Every element has its strong points, and I can see that working for some parts so not everything is totally **** up.

Undercliff being borked as is just happened, I dont like running that map at all, throwing on my aob and run mobs down with infinite lives isnt my style. Magically having infinite amounts of spider protection gpop fbrand swiftblade manafont etc is the only way one could run that map without being shredded by that rainbow dps of the map. Also think about that acid plate, fire immunity, cold immunity, lodestone juice, only thing left to do damage to you is 12.5% physical, 12,5% poison (preventable by antidote) and 5% acid (assuming linear multiplicative scaling) that would be further reduced for spiders. So the mobs are scaled to be a threat to a player that runs around with all them buffs stacked.

I dont think a full whipe is what would resurrect the mod. Rather than that I think that would be the last nail in the coffin. Also the issue with potions is that they are the source of their own problem... new maps tend to be harder than what already is there. Knowing that and overdoing the trend mappers make their maps so hard, they just assume everybody has a full set of the strongest potions at disposal. So ppl have a high demand and for reasons that demand got answered.

Also true is that even if you wouldnt loot a billion potions from undercliff ppl would go to sorc_villa and buy potions there, i cant recall if he sells swiftblade potion but about every other potion ingame is buyable there. So making potions rare in maps is a moot point if you can just buy em with the millions of gold ppl have.

Having a meaningfull economy can only happen with a certain amount of players, demanding and offering, crafting potions sure sounds like a sweet idea but wont fix a thing as there is no global timing for respawn on resources, ppl would just reload maps farm items and have billions of potions that way.

Nowhere did i state that you want to get firebrand nerfed, just stating that it could get nerfed if you made a firesword that turns out too overpowered under the effect of the potion.

The only potion you need in undercliffs is spider protection, if you know what you are doing. Nobody is going to explore that map multiple times since its annoying as F, people will do it once or twice and then work on getting the new drops, once they get those they will walk away as usual with their shiny new items and like a thousand potions to boot, unless the map is actually worthwhile playing. Coming across non spider enemies of course will require some extra defense, unless its a high tier greater earth elemental, he will kill you asap if you stand still for like 5 seconds regardless of what potions you have taken.

The wipe is not a "ressurect" move, it's a refreshing move and a rebalance, if the game got changed with various new things and reworks (economy, smithing, alchemy, etc), the wipe would be justifiable with these terms. Even more so if the game ever gets released on steam. The ressurect move is adding MSC to steam, changing the game with new things or with rebalanced/reworked mechanisms is simply refreshing the game.

The whole potion thingy, you got it wrong aswell. If you add ingredients to the chests instead of potions and force the player to hunt for ingredients in certain themed maps, like a frozen mushroom could only be obtained from frozen/cold themed maps, perhaps with better drops rates depending on the tier of the map. Having something like this instead of giving away potions out of nowhere seems more logical to me. Now if you are to take into consideration an entire rework on the economy along with the added bonus of having alchemy to create your own potions from recipes that could be bought or found, chances are that, npcs selling potions right now would get an entirelly new inventory of items. I would expect some good potions (eg: greater protection, immunity potions, vampire blood, etc) to become buyable from certain npcs in high level towns. Again, if you were to consider the economy rework, i would assume buying things would have priorities, since a rework is a rework, the economy right now is beyond broken and you can simply just buy everything, gold needs to have more value and be given in less quantities, i have like 20 million gold coins on my main, who the hell carries that many coins around. Instead of giving out 10k gold from a chest and having potions cost 500 to 10k, you would get like 10 gold pieces and have potions cost like 100+ coins. Items should be priced accordingly to how much of an impact it would have in the game, you would seek gold and use it to buy certain things that could help you.

And of course, with these reworks, having ingredients and potions become stackable would most likely be a must, otherwise inventory space would be a huge problem.

Oddly, actually in the pipe... Working up a system where you can enchant any weapon.

What other things are on that list of yours? You seem to keep on increasing the amount of things to do and lack the time to do so.

 

[Thothie]

What other things are on that list of yours? You seem to keep on increasing the amount of things to do and lack the time to do so.

Meh, tell me about it.

This, however, unlike a lot of the crap on the back-burner, is actually something I'm working on as we speak and already have some framework for.

ATM, trying to come up with a better way to store the item modifications than the quality tag. It's a short, limited to 32K, so it limits things - thus I'm trying to come up with a reliable way to store a full length string instead. (One idea was to create a quality index tied to quest data, but MiB is trying to help me with actually adding a savable string to the item data proper.)

I suspect, what'll happen at first, is that those random quest dwarves (that GreatGuys setup for us, and Oyster still has to place) will dish out randomly modified weapons as a reward. Actually rigging up the customizable system for players (which will require a rare "currency drop" and visiting a well buried NPC), will take a bit longer, but the hard part will be done.

But, as I'm stuck on that item-data bit, and have to wait to hear back from MiB or just go with the quest data indexing, I'm gonna sidetrack and work on a global spawn limiter, and a dynamic, left4dead style, area spawn system, while GreatGuys is working on dynamic quests.

PS. Also, stop talking about wipes - you know it ain't happening, and you're scaring people.

 

[greatguys1]

The only potion you need in undercliffs is spider protection, if you know what you are doing. Nobody is going to explore that map multiple times since its annoying as F, people will do it once or twice and then work on getting the new drops, once they get those they will walk away as usual with their shiny new items and like a thousand potions to boot, unless the map is actually worthwhile playing.

Besides the potions part, any map is usually worthless to run after you get your items. That's what it's all about.

Working up a system where you can enchant any weapon.

That's gonna be interesting. But to tie it with what zeus said, perhaps there can be "prefixes" on weapons similar to Terraria, where items come out of the box enchanted with certain buffs to certain parts of the weapon, or a debuff if you're unlucky. It'd perhaps give high level players something to keep running maps for, if you want the absolute best stuff you can get from it, though it'd pointless for lower tier weapons, as they would eventually get discarded. Though to keep players running maps, there can't be a wizard that can change your prefix for 100,000gp. Maybe only if the economy gets fixed, somehow.

 

[Thothie]

Well, while I'll never wipe players, I *may* wipe the economy, someday (just set your gold to 1000 or 10000 based on how much you have, or your HP, and mark it as done with a quest tag) - but not until I'm absolutely sure the economy is fixed - which it ain't. (Despite having patched dozens of exploits related to said over the years.)

The weapon enchantments will be purchased via a new collectable drop (rare forging material) that'll be set to drop globally on mobs with more health than you (the odds and number increasing with the more health it has).

ATM, I've just marked enchanted weapons with an asterisk* and put a list of their enchantments in their description. You'll be able to add multiple enchantments of various levels to the same item, the cost increasing with each additional enchantment and level. Customizing the name based on the list of enchantments may take some doing (also not sure if it'll work while the item is in your pack.)

I could do the old diablo'sque advantage/penalty enchantments list, though I don't think I can run the enchantment process on an item sitting in a chest. Also, if we end up not doing this via the quality tag, you won't be able to bank these things. (Maybe I can work something out though - your new bank still stores Quality, yes?)

 

[greatguys1]

(Maybe I can work something out though - your new bank still stores Quality, yes?)

Yep. But it won't do quality and quantity on a single item. That'll mess up stuff. I would offer to have it store the string also once you've got that figured out, however, that'd blast through bank space more than Litch Tongues would.

 

[Thothie]

Eh - so long as it knows the difference between quality and quantity (checks isgroupable?). This is why I asked for the feature though...

Granted, that'd mean storing their mod string in quest data, setting their quality to a matching index, and then restoring it based on that quality when pulling it from a bank... At that point, however, might as well just go with using a Quality<->Quest Data index to begin with, rather than trying to hack this new item data property out. It is being a bit of a pain.

 

[greatguys1]

Eh - so long as it knows the difference between quality and quantity (checks isgroupable?). This is why I asked for the feature though...

Granted, that'd mean storing their mod string in quest data, setting their quality to a matching index, and then restoring it based on that quality when pulling it from a bank... At that point, however, might as well just go with using a Quality<->Quest Data index to begin with, rather than trying to hack this new item data property out. It is being a bit of a pain.

Is there a property that I could just grab from items to see if it's groupable? Otherwise its just using a token of partial names of items that are groupable, currently only containing "proj_;item_lockpick". If there is I need to change that. It does know the difference between quality and quantity, but if quality is set to 0, it will not store it. The bludgeon hammer kept storing a 0 quality for whatever reason :I

 

[Thothie]

Hmmm... is_projectile, is_drinkable, quality, maxquality, quantity... Everything but is_groupable apparently - guess I need to add that. Otherwise I dunno what yer going to do if you want say, make item_lockpick bankable - though currently it's flagged not to bank.

Meh, was kinda hoping it'd have two different parsers for Quality and Quantity so you could have both, and just store them when set, but no biggie.

Not sure waddup with the Bludgeon Bludgeon though - it doesn't seem to be setting Quality anywhere. If Quality=0 one would think one wouldn't store it.

 

[greatguys1]

Hmmm... is_projectile, is_drinkable, quality, maxquality, quantity... Everything but is_groupable apparently - guess I need to add that. Otherwise I dunno what yer going to do if you want say, make item_lockpick bankable - though currently it's flagged not to bank.

Meh, was kinda hoping it'd have two different parsers for Quality and Quantity so you could have both, and just store them when set, but no biggie.

Not sure waddup with the Bludgeon Bludgeon though - it doesn't seem to be setting Quality anywhere. If Quality=0 one would think one wouldn't store it.

You can store quantity and quality, they have different parsers, but you can't store an item that has both quantity and quality. It wont play fair then. Lockpicks should store fine, as long as they don't have the NO_BANK var set. Potions should store fine also, without resetting the quality. If there was, however, arrows that were enchanted, and used both quality and quantity, it'd fail to deposit or withdraw correctly. I forget which it would be. Ammo has a string to check if the scriptname contains "proj_" or "item_lockpick". If you wanted to add more stuff that doesn't use the proj_ prefix, just add the scriptname to that string, and it should let it deposit. While we're on the topic, the Fire Brand has the NO_BANK var set. Seeing as how it can be deposited with new galats, could that be removed?

 

[Monika's_BFFEx0256]

This is getting exciting

 

[Thothie]

Well, if your parsers are different for Quality and Quantity, I dun see how they'd end up mutually exclusive. If "+" is quantity and "&" quality, and you had an enchanted arrow stack, the item data entry might end up looking like "proj_arrow_wooden+120&11322", and if either were zero, you wouldn't tack them on, but meh... I don't foresee a need for both, at the moment, it's just an odd limitation.

As it is so far, the only things you can enchant are swords, smallarms, axes, poleams, gauntlets, and bluntarms (save for staffs) - not yet worked out a bow enchantment set, let alone arrows.

Lock picks work via Quantity - if you're using the script name to check if you should store Quantity...

But yeah, I'll run through the items for NO_BANK tags and see if there's anything else that can live without it. I think those are among the ones that are NO_BANK, not because they have multiple charges that wouldn't store, but just to limit the hoarding of them. Probably have to abandon that approach as unintuitive, now that you can bank potions, and maybe make them rarer, if the Rainbow DPS cuts back in these next few maps.

 

[Phosphorcracker]

I was wondering about enchantments for bows...

Doubleshot: Would split the arrow in 2 with some vector so hitting the same target at range would get harder to impossible.
Pierceshot: What it says, with less damage per enemy pierced or even more (with some cap ofc)?
Rapid: Just make it attack faster, like a ranged dagger or some... (didnt i hear someone talking about throwing consumeables at some point)
Longshot: bonus damage for distance. Reward them snipers as aiming with lagg is a real art xD

Additional thought: Doubleshot could also be Multishot making the bow effective at trash clearing but build how msc is it would probably end in ppl staying in the face of some mob so all arrows hit 1 target to exploit dmg or on hit effects...

some of those would also be viable on lances with their throws

PS I also wanted to give Thothie a round of applause for being the only man on earth being capable of explaining coding to ppl in a way that normal humans can actually comprehend.

 

[greatguys1]

Well, if your parsers are different for Quality and Quantity, I dun see how they'd end up mutually exclusive. If "+" is quantity and "&" quality, and you had an enchanted arrow stack, the item data entry might end up looking like "proj_arrow_wooden+120&11322", and if either were zero, you wouldn't tack them on, but meh... I don't foresee a need for both, at the moment, it's just an odd limitation.

I think its gotta do with the way I have it deposit. I don't remember. owell
If there comes a time where ammo would have quality, I'll fix it.

Back to the topic though, there's really nothing separating swords, or any of the skills (aside for a few) from each other besides just a weapon group. There's nothing really special about any of 'em. If each weapon group were to become unique in a way, they'd still have to be useful in a fair amount of situations.

PS I also wanted to give Thothie a round of applause for being the only man on earth being capable of explaining coding to ppl in a way that normal humans can actually comprehend.

Gotta give credit where credit is due. Real hard stuff to try and explain.

I suppose it's hard to see the picture. It's a ROUND of applause.

 

[Thothie]

Well, with some help from MiB, I've got $get(<item>,modded) and $get(<item>,mods) working now, so it seems Quality won't be an issue for them... But it might mean more work on the bank via yet another parser.

The easiest way I could think to make them bankable, would be to create an indexed Quest data entry upon deposit. Have it check for the first zero instance of "bankedmods<#>" in the player's Quest data, store its mods in said index, and store the index with the bank data with the new parser. Then, when the item is withdrawn, mod the item again (command being "moditem <target> <mods>"), based on said data, and reset the related Quest data entry to 0.

Guess it'd work, but you'd need to be able to sort out multiple parsers on each bank data entry. Two is easy enough, three might be a bit of a pain, but I suppose it's just another pair of string comparisons.

Back to the topic though, there's really nothing separating swords, or any of the skills (aside for a few) from each other besides just a weapon group. There's nothing really special about any of 'em. If each weapon group were to become unique in a way, they'd still have to be useful in a fair amount of situations.

That sort of approach would mean defining the roles of each weapon line and building all the weapon lines from the ground up again. They have *some* semi-consistent uniqueness in their functional roles, as it is, I suppose, but not much. It's more about style (and sadly, as you must train everything, you don't get to really choose your style).

Providing players with actual roles was supposed to be done through the Title system (yet another perpetually back-burnered beast), though the system wasn't going to be entirely dependant on a weapon line (even if some Titles were to favor some to varying degrees.)

 

[greatguys1]

Well, with some help from MiB, I've got $get(<item>,modded) and $get(<item>,mods) working now, so it seems Quality won't be an issue for them... But it might mean more work on the bank via yet another parser.

The easiest way I could think to make them bankable, would be to create an indexed Quest data entry upon deposit. Have it check for the first zero instance of "bankedmods<#>" in the player's Quest data, store its mods in said index, and store the index with the bank data with the new parser. Then, when the item is withdrawn, mod the item again (command being "moditem <target> <mods>"), based on said data, and reset the related Quest data entry to 0.

Guess it'd work, but you'd need to be able to sort out multiple parsers on each bank data entry. Two is easy enough, three might be a bit of a pain, but I suppose it's just another pair of string comparisons.

Thread is officially hijacked by Galat's and enchantments.
I can get on that once I've got the quests done. I'm not looking forward to looking back at that Galat's script. It's real hard to look at and some stuff I could've done better. Might have to resist re-writing a good chunk of it :/

Providing players with actual roles was supposed to be done through the Title system (yet another perpetually back-burnered beast), though the system wasn't going to be entirely dependant on a weapon line (even if some Titles were to favor some to varying degrees.)

I kinda like the all around characters. If the title stats were to be followed, potions would probably have to be nerfed for people not to absolutely blast through maps.

 

[Thothie]

Granted, that Title list was actually just meant to introduce the concept - not reflective of an actual plan. The idea would be to increasingly specialize you in Tank/DPS single/Splash/Buffer/Healer, etc, the more ranks you went into a Title line.

...It'd also require me figuring out why MiB gave us a title setting command that only keeps the name for a frame. >_>

It's real hard to look at and some stuff I could've done better. Might have to resist re-writing a good chunk of it :/

Yeeeeah - now, try imagining having over ten years worth of those...

 

[greatguys1]

Yeeeeah - now, try imagining having over ten years worth of those...