Thothie, you win. Congratulations.

[Netrogor]

Of course, by mentioning impossibilities, that refers to what we are heading to in the future. Right now, it is just a lot of grinding we have. If Thothie continues to "rebalance" items, thinking of the high levels using them, new players will face impossibilities in real form.

Pretty much, what is going to happen, at this rate, is that all of the items considered great... they will all be made worthless, and a new set will probably replace them that is equal to what they were before hand. As has been happening. Then, as has been happening, the bosses will be made yet tougher, over time, and people will have to start grinding.

You already have to put in a week's worth of eight hour grinds per day just to get the level needed to fight Lord Cal. The entire game is about grinding these days, because quest rewards are either not-so-difficult to get and crap, or insanely difficult to get and so-so.

I would be jubilant if some new content came out, to cater to the level 40's & above. It would help deter the empowering of current bosses, and prevent items being nerfed for the few uses they have.

EDIT:
Oh, and to the loss of mana after shooting off a charged attack... yes, that was intentional. When I reported it, unsure of whether or not it was a bug, I was told it was done intentionally so. ^^

 

[Shurik3n]

Pretty much, what is going to happen, at this rate, is that all of the items considered great... they will all be made worthless, and a new set will probably replace them that is equal to what they were before hand. As has been happening. Then, as has been happening, the bosses will be made yet tougher, over time, and people will have to start grinding.

You already have to put in a week's worth of eight hour grinds per day just to get the level needed to fight Lord Cal. The entire game is about grinding these days, because quest rewards are either not-so-difficult to get and crap, or insanely difficult to get and so-so.

If that happens, then its what Thothie thinks is best, and all these anti-nerf conspiracies and such aren't going to help him change his mind. This whole argument is really unecessary, it comes down to what Thothie decides is best for the mod and we shouldn't make it so difficult for him.

@Thothie: Going off of what Humansteak said, you might want to consider getting the opinion of some honest low to high levels on the topic balancing and such. Probably want to do it privately so we don't get a thread like this one spawned. Maybe a private group+subforum. He did make a good point, while you spend a lot of time working on the game you don't play it very much and may not have the right idea as to how things actually play out ingame.

EDIT:
Oh, and to the loss of mana after shooting off a charged attack... yes, that was intentional. When I reported it, unsure of whether or not it was a bug, I was told it was done intentionally so. ^^

I was referring to the hard to aim and insanely close range, read your whole post before replying to what I was referring to from it. You really shouldn't skim and reply. ^^

 

[Netrogor]

EDIT:
Oh, and to the loss of mana after shooting off a charged attack... yes, that was intentional. When I reported it, unsure of whether or not it was a bug, I was told it was done intentionally so. ^^

I was referring to the hard to aim and insanely close range, read your whole post before replying to what I was referring to from it. You really shouldn't skim and reply. ^^

Nor should you.
You didn't specify what you were talking about. So, I assumed you meant the more annoying DC-nerf, as opposed to something server-latency plays a greater part in (monsters being next to you or far away, causing possible misses by lag).

 

[HomestarR]

Anyway since you don't play this game much, I think you should pick some players that you consider trustworthy and ask for their opinions separately for game balancing questions.

That may prove difficult, as I doubt he finds anyone here trustworthy.

Going off of what Humansteak said, you might want to consider getting the opinion of some honest low to high levels on the topic balancing and such.

That may prove difficult, as I doubt he finds anyone here honest.



All joking aside, that does seem like a good idea. Even WoW (yes, had to mention it) has a group of employees that play certain classes from start to finish, and do high end pve/pvp in order to balance. (Granted, they suck at it) On that note, they are being paid to be honest and trustworthy. (No, I can't stop with the joking)

 

[HumanSteak]

*Off topic* I'm sick of this constant arguing taking 2-3 pages in every threads I go
Please cut it out.
Edit: I'm not talking about what Homestar said.

 

[HomestarR]

*Off topic* I'm sick of this constant arguing taking 2-3 pages in every threads I go
Please cut it out.

It has always been around, but it does seem to have... heightened... as of recently. Also, it isn't as light hearted as it used to be.

@Net. Clam it down pl0x. i serious. You're my buddy, but you are making it really hard to stay on your side. (Not saying I won't take your side) It is obvious you love to debate/argue, and that's all good and fine, but you do take it a bit too far. (I think you realize this too.)

 

[brian4]

Erm I know this is a bit off topic, and there's drama going on, but which compiler do you guys use? I use visual studio 2005.

 

[Sabre]

I'm told that they use 2003, but don't trust me on that one.

 

[brian4]

Hmm, I'll have to obtain a copy... somehow lol. I got my 2005 at discount because I'm a student, but I doubt the bookstore carries old compilers. Anyone know where I can get it bootleg?

 

[The Man In Black]

2003 is what we use, as 2005 will not work at all. I got mine through the mail, so I don't know where you would get it normally.

Trust me, you can't just come into this code with a C++ class under your belt. I tried that and it failed miserably. After about a year, I came back at the code in full force and it finally worked, but until then I was just dead weight.

 

[brian4]

If worst came to worst, I could be an error checker (everyone forget's a semicolon every once in a while, AMIRITE?). But the professional coder xjiro and other coder's I know, could help with things that Thothy doesn't understand (at least I'm told he doesn't understand) such as the way the character information is stored.

edit: static_cast<developer> Brian4 =p

 

[Thraxis]

Trust me, you can't just come into this code with a C++ class under your belt. I tried that and it failed miserably.

After just skimming through most of the hardcode, I can promise you it doesn't get much more true than this. I believe Thothie mentioned he had modding and coding experience (Since I believe he said Quake, might be wrong) and still came into this mod a little shaken at the code.

I'm still in disbelief that an RPG of this size can be run of the goldsource engine and cooperate this well. I'm no coding expert however I'm kinda star struck after seeing some of the original Coders coding...methods.

So as someone else suggested, hang around, get your feet planted in the community and with thothie as honest enough to grab the "Sample" code, and go from there.

Thraxis: and ****, what did I get myself into
Sabre: rofl
Thraxis: This is rough
Sabre: you sold your soul.dll

 

[The Man In Black]

If worst came to worst, I could be an error checker (everyone forget's a semicolon every once in a while, AMIRITE?). But the professional coder xjiro and other coder's I know, could help with things that Thothy doesn't understand (at least I'm told he doesn't understand) such as the way the character information is stored.

The compiler informs us of syntax errors. We know generally how character information is stored, it's just painful to look at it. Besides, I doubt Thothie wants to hand out the code so that someone can immediately go for the character encryption code ;-)

 

[brian4]

Honestly I'd rather fix bugs than add content lol. And linux and other operating system compatability is also important.

 

[Shurik3n]

Well having never taken any coding classes I find the code to not be too strange, its just theres a lot of renaming of things and it just takes some time to figure out what does what. I'm pretty sure I've got a good understanding of how just about anything works now, cept for the character encryption. Thats probably the only thing I would need a second person to help me figure out, but at the same time thats a part of the code I wouldn't want to give out to just anybody.

The big bug I'm currently "working" on is making character loading less intensive, and slow it down or space it out so we don't see the overflows.

 

[brian4]

Yes, that's probably more important than adding features. I just think a feature that allowed clans to have a sort of "group storage" might be kind of cool. BoU could combine items they don't want/need (as could any other clan). But I'd like to work on making this compatable with linux dedicated servers.

 

[The Man In Black]

If we ever get around to do FN text-based-banks, it would be very easy to setup a clan one... But we'd have to get PROPER party verification, not "Hey, there's no one in __ party on this server, sure you can join it/be its leader!"

 

[brian4]

Also, for the character storage system being hard to understand, did they not comment their code or something?

 

[Netrogor]

Perhaps, for clan-based banks... you could simply check steamIDs. List the top two ranks of each Guild (broad ones, so that the BoU, for example, would have Grand Master (J-M v2.5.5) and Masters' steamIDs validated for the clan-bank).
It is past midnight, so if I misread what you meant by "clan-bank", I'm sorry. Plus I just had circle time.

 

[The Man In Black]

Perhaps, for clan-based banks... you could simply check steamIDs. List the top two ranks of each Guild (broad ones, so that the BoU, for example, would have Grand Master (J-M v2.5.5) and Masters' steamIDs validated for the clan-bank).
It is past midnight, so if I misread what you meant by "clan-bank", I'm sorry. Plus I just had circle time.

It'll be easy to setup proper clans, yeah, but it does take time ;-)

 

[brian4]

All the reason for: static_cast<developer> Brian4 =p

 

[HomestarR]

lol keep at it. We all know how persistence is received here. Ask JM about persistence.

 

[Jelly]

If you do get to work on the code, don't be frightened, remember it is not ordinary C++ but MSC++.

 

[brian4]

Hopefully its commented well =o Hard to make sense of hundreds of lines of code without comments =o

 

[Dridmar]

I've always wondered what the coding for msc looks like. Thothie, pic pl0x?