by Driven » Tue Mar 02, 2021 12:02 pm
I'm sorry that you don't like how I have rebalanced the classes. Just because something "takes a leap forward" does not mean that it isn't "following the intention of the original coders". When I made something take a leap forward, it was because those classes needed a leap forward to gain parity with the power curves of the stronger classes. Even after all of the "leaps of power for caster items", melee classes are *still* stronger than every other class, which means we didn't overshoot. Do you not see that mages and clerics needed a serious boost to bring them up to snuff? Your thinking is far too simplistic.
One of the fundamental problems with SlothMUD was that while the intent of the original coders may have been sound, their execution did not scale properly. Let me give you a couple examples:
(Example 1) Melee class characters do damage primarily through weapons, so as damage increases (i.e. through avatar shop and rebirth shop), damage increases linearly. As such, the damage output over time for a melee class never goes down throughout the course of an hour-long xp run. Casters, on the other hand, rely on mana, which is a limited resource. Yes, they can burst harder than melee, but they hit a hard wall in which their damage output becomes non-existent. As the game has scaled, as our groups have grown to where we can run xp non-stop, that wall shows up very, very early for a caster. Clearly you can see how a caster, sitting on his ass 5 minutes into an hour-long run, empty, casting a spell once every 4 rounds is beyond lame. While melee continues to pump out hard damage, casters just sit on their asses watching the melee players in all of their glory. What was the problem? It was a problem of scaling. When xp runs were 5-10 minutes in length, melee and casters pumped out comparable damage. As xp runs scaled to an hour or more, the damage curves diverged. I'm surprised after all that I have posted on this issue that you are still not understanding this fundamental problem with the game. Was the original intent of the coders good? Sure. Did they execute it perfectly? Hmmm, not perfectly, but I'm not going to be hard on them. They did an amazing job putting the code base together, they simply didn't think about the inevitable endgame of power creep. So be it. We fixed it. Just because you don't like the leap of power doesn't mean it wasn't necessary/important for caster classes.
(Example 2) Consider backstab and deathtouch/deathgrip. The advantage of backstab over deathtouch/deathgrip is lack of lag and high top-end damage--you can follow it up with retreats, circle stabs, firewinds, whatever you want, whereas a monk is eating the first round of damage no matter what. The disadvantage of backstab is that it's not as dependable, you whiff quite a bit. The thought in this implementation was that the advantages and disadvantages balanced each other out. The higher damage output of backstab and lack of lag offsets the lower dependability. Did it work? For a while, but the problem is that it didn't scale. As damage amounts went up (which will happen as the inevitable power creep comes), the stab/grip mobs that are worth killing for xp didn't scale. As damage amounts scaled, the power curve of deathtouch/deathgrip grew high enough that the lag disadvantage become irrelevant. When deathtouch/deathgrip are able to splork the choice xp mobs, the lag becomes irrelevant, and dependability becomes king. This illustrates itself in a concrete way through xp/hour. So here we are, monks thriving and thieves are disappearing. Per the actual equations, damage scaled appropriately for both backstab and deathtouch/deathgrip, such that thieves are still able to burst more damage (2x stab + firewind/circle stab is considerably higher damage than deathgrip/deathtouch), so the problem was not the addition of damage. The problem was that the underlying foundation didn't scale, because as power grew, the deathtouch/deathgrip disadvantage ceased to be a disadvantage. The balance of advantage/disadvantage is gone. I have some ideas on how to alleviate this problem, but it may never happen, because it would involve a 'leap of power' for thieves, which you'll get on your soapbox about how I'm cheapening the ethos of Sloth.
This new item I'm building is not an artifact. And no, I don't particularly want to discuss it. Until you expand your thinking to take into consideration deeper and more fundamental issues, I'm not going to spend my time explaining every last nuance of why I do what I do.
Last edited by
Driven on Tue Mar 02, 2021 12:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.