1. This forum section contains Blog style threads from the Developers, and/or threads with details about what they have been working on, previews of upcoming content, and sometimes backstory associated with the content. Players are permitted to reply to these threads if the developer has indicated it is permissible by leaving the thread unlocked. Please note that TOS applies, and any abuse or trolling will be moderated.
    Dismiss Notice

Chris' Daily Work Blog

Discussion in 'Developer Work and Blog posts' started by Chris, Apr 5, 2017.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Who doesn't love patches? Well, probably Burningtoad, our local buildmeister, and probably people on slow connections or with data caps... Well, at least one more patch coming up shortly that will fix some of the lingering problems.

    Also, I sat down with Astarte and went over the XP attenuation logic and found what was wrong. This is purely a server side thing so that will be going live any minute and not waiting for a patch. Basically the math worked out that such that XPs were getting attenuated at half the expected number and were hard capped at 1 mln. Within the next hour, we should bounce the server and this will be fixed. Also, for those who were curious, there is no cap single player mode.

    Ok, first, I'm going to throw out a crazy idea. I have a couple of issues I've been trying to solve. Problem 1, when or how to apply decay to crafting skills. Currently there is none and players can level 4 ever... Problem 2, the table flipping, rage quitting anger that comes from a crafting failure on an important item. Crazy thought, when you get a crafting failure on an item when your odds are greater than say, 25%-ish, that you are given an option to recover the item by giving up some small percentage of the total experience applied to your crafting skills. Say, something lik, 0.1% or 1/1000th, of your total applied experience. Not sure that 1/1000th is the right number but need to find the spot that is painful enough that you won't do it except in rare cases. Only giving it as an option on attempts with greater then 25% chance will keep people from using this to make every item the absolute best.

    Likewise, we could do the same thing with re-rolling the MW/enchantment buff chosen. So it would turn into Choose A,B, C, or pay 0.05% of your total experience to ignore this roll so you can try again.

    Sleep on it before you go rage post for or against it. :)

    Also, I think we pimped Undone's game in our newsletter, but who reads that!?! For those who didn't know, our new engineer Undone AKA Dr Bob, has a game project that he works on in his free time. Undone is an amazing team member. When he applied, I didn't even have a spot open for him but told Starr and Richard that I didn't care and we were hiring him anyways. Now I get to pat myself on the back for the good call. :) You can go read about his game here: https://sagaoflucimia.com/

    For those who want to give it a shot, he says they have a 2 week alpha test period coming up! Maybe if your trying to enchant your fancy artifact one more time because it has an 84% chance to succeed and you get a failure, instead of rage quitting, take a break and go try Saga of Lucimia for fun. If you see any features you like in it, let me know and we'll steal them for SOTA! :)

    Edit: Also worth noting, that Dr. Bob got into Unity because of the map building challenges I did a few years back. One of his entries placed third in the competition. According to Undone, that was the first time he ever touched Unity. This makes it a feel good story for me because I helped shape one of our finest employees. *wipes away tear*
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2017
  2. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Thanks for the feedback on the crafting idea. I think the big take away is I need to not call it Decay and instead just call it spending experience.

    On to other topics that will upset a handful of people... Hamstring is and has been broken for a long time. I only found out because I heard some people talking about how OP it was. I looked into it and sure enough, it did FULL melee damage every tick for up to 15 ticks. This was not by design. It wasn't showing up on my usage radar because it is a combo and only a handful of people knew about it.

    This has to be fixed, we can't have single skills, even combos, that do 15X damage per hit of most other skills. After the next patch Hamstring will do damage similar to Rend but with a significantly longer duration and still with the slow effect.
     
    Raven Swiftbow, Womby, Ancev and 35 others like this.
  3. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Ok, time to start posting stuff daily again.

    Just finished up the new combat math. It will be adjusted tons over the next two weeks but a good step in the right direction. Most won't notice any change honestly. Only those that were pushing the system to the limits will see any difference.
    Still need to tweak a bunch of related skills. Need to turn down the damage on the biggest critters.

    Pick Pocket, success chance was (SkillLevel/2 +50) % but will now only get the +50% if you are behind the target.

    Setting real values for all artifacts and Cabalist gear so they have value for ransoms. Prices will range from 1k for simple stuff to 10k for Warlock Chains and epic staves and, of course, greater luck rings! This is long overdue but essential now that pick pocketed people will likely notice they have a more legit ransom waiting!

    Parry/Deflect/Dodge/Glancing Blow are all having their cast time changed to 0.1 seconds. For their first 2 seconds they will give roughly 4x effect. Cooldowns have been extended to roughly 30 seconds. Goal with this change is to make it so you can use these as a response to an incoming attack.

    Working on resistance stuff right now.... will discuss soon.

    Ransom choice logic is being upgraded for R50. The game will only include the first instance of an object in the choice list. This means carrying around 500 rusty daggers will not dilute the odds for other items. Also, when a stack of items is taken, it will cap it at a max size or value, I think either 50 items or 5000 gp of value, so players don't have to try and keep lots of little stacks around. Additionally, coming soon will be that if the items chosen aren't worth a minimum value, it will also include some gold.

    Elemental/magic Potion changes incoming! For R50, the current elemental/magic potions will be renamed to Greater Resistance potions and remain at 50 resistance. Once R50 goes live, these will no longer drop in game and the recipe will now craft a new potion that is only +25 resistance. Making this public now because I know you crazy guys will want to go buy up all these to save for PVP tournaments. Since these are one use consumables, it is my belief that they will filter out of the system fairly quickly.

    The agro bug where different types of agro were applied to different categories and each of those decayed resulting in a reduced agro ability for tanks, has been fixed. R50 should make it a bit easier to hold agro for those who are trying to hold agro.

    Investigating adding value for crafted items based on enhancements. Looking at something around 500gold per +. Burningtoad is investigating this option now.

    Just checked in change to make all skills return 100% experience on unlearn. This will likely stay in effect until right up to release. LOTS of big changes coming (Note above list was what I did _TODAY_) and players will want to try out lots of builds between now and release without losing tons of xps.

    Also, more BIG resistance changes coming up shortly....
     
    Last edited: Jan 10, 2018
  4. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Bam! back to work on big changes!

    First draft proposal for changes for design being scrutinized by the other team members. Assuming all goes well, I'll be implementing this afternoon.

    Chaotic feedback being made slightly less painful...

    For those curious what I was considering for resistance changes and since I try to design in the open:

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EFRS2rOdQvCqR8mQzB1d-WJWksYdE8kZgqcjcmljx8Q/edit

    For now I set this document open for comments.

    Yes, I know some of you will rage against these changes and some will love them. I think they fit fictionally though and I think it does give players the option to specialize. It also becomes the path to a "Mastery" option by only allowing one of the skills to advance beyond 100 and then open up new options for that tree. I feel like the attunement gains are not so great that this will feel mandatory but still rewarding enough to take the plunge.

    Constructive thoughts welcome!
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2018
    licemeat, Cordelayne, By Tor and 40 others like this.
  5. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Out yesterday for the "Snowpacalypse".

    Today I will be doing a TON of different stuff. Step one is making it so fewer movement effects stack! Wish me luck.

    Change has been made. Thee is now a "MovementBuff" channel. No more than 2 skills that use that channel can be active at once. Also, there were 2 different stats being referenced. One was Movement Speed and the other Movement Rate. Speed added some number of meters per second to your base movement speed. Rate was actually a multiplier! My guess is when some of those thing were setup, they were all intended to be movement speed. Movement rate is just supposed to be used for debuffs not buffs.

    All player facing buff skills are now using movement speed and the ones on movement rate were given a bonus to match the value they had for rate.

    So bottom line is, going forward no more than 2 movement speed buffs will stack and they will all be additive NOT multiplicative. Send hate emails to support@portalarium.com plzthx...

    Also, this affects Berserker Stance, Essence of the wolf, Dash, Spring, and Fleetflute effects. Choose 2!

    Currently writing up a design doc for a system change that will make LOTS of people happy and help both PVP people and non-PVP people...

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OtkQqYiktxK1JwXKcPT-Z7aAujAhYhuYfSOCSJLV20I/edit?usp=sharing

    Set for view only. This will happen in R51, not R50. Back to changes for R50!
     
    Last edited: Jan 17, 2018
  6. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    So here is the deal guys. It is my job to make sure the game is balanced and fun for all. That means if you found something that feels like the best way to win, expect me to balance it and piss you off. Please express your concern over changes in a constructive manner and I will gladly read it and consider it and occasionally make adjustments. I've reversed decisions dozens of times based on feedback to my blog. Rage post and I ignore you and think, "Excellent" in a Mr Burns voice in my head and then mumble about how your tears will fill me with energy. Seriously, make constructive posts with actual arguments and I listen. Movement thing was broken and never intended, just like being able to get damage avoidance to 90 and breaking the combat roll, and had to be fixed.

    So, back to work... So based on feedback and my own thoughts, I have a slightly different plan for the magic mastery system which means it won't make R50. That also means the resistance system will stay mostly the same for R50 though the new partial resists and new attack roll stuff for it will remain.

    Yesterday in addition to the movement fix, I slogged through a dozen or more bugs including fixing the parry/dodge/block stuff on QA. As much fun as it was to parry your own heal spells, I felt I should fix that. :)

    Today I will continue slogging through my tasks and bugs. Also, looking for feedback on boss mob critters on live. New math should have made those much more challenging. Waiting for feedback on whether the change made them shoot right on by "Challenging" and into impossible territory. I expect I will nerf their damage a bit before R50 goes live.

    Also, update on an improvement that I expect to go live in R50 will feel like a nerf to some as it makes creatures tougher. We use a smoothing and dead reckoning system for movement to making things less jerky. The server was using the smoothed position for it's calculations for everything which means that it ran about one second behind the player's actual location. This was done mostly to help make sure looked correct on other machine, so creatures wouldn't look like they were actually attacking the future location of a player.

    For R50 this should now be using the players actual location for all calculations. So, this changes stuff. The good news is that jumping behind something is more likely to give the correct outcome for cover. Before, the extra second or so made this not work in many cases. So the bad news for players is this means that creatures will do a better job of keeping up with players who are constantly on the move. It also means that circle strafing will be tougher, especially in close quarters.

    This change will be especially beneficial to those outside the US with significant ping times. Enjoy!
     
    Last edited: Jan 18, 2018
  7. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Busy week last week so no updates! Super pleased with the release overall. Lots of performance issues squashed and even a few more in the patch releasing shortly! New combat math seems to almost universally be an improvement for players and pets without disrupting balance too much.

    My goal for R51 is to get it done... all of it. Going to be super focused and might not have time for too many posts. I'll try to post the big ticket changes as they come up but likely won't have much time to reply to player feedback.

    • Minimum damage for Chaotic feedback on skill use is 5. (Sorry offhand CF users...)
    • Reduced log messages significantly. Trying to keep our bandwidth down and also preparing for a larger audience size! Need to minimize pointless logs to ease the load on our metrics server a bit
    • Fixed the dots doing crits and getting parried, etc
    • Big one: Armor set bonus is GONE. In it's place I have added a bonus to 3 skills in each of light/heavy armor tree based on the number of pieces you are wearing. Bonus works out to about 2.5% per piece worn in addition to the chest. So, for example, Dodge gets a 10% bonus if you're wearing all cloth armor. While the armor set was fun, I think it was too rigid and didn't make sense for most armor types. I had come up with a per armor type bonus but wasn't super happy with it. I think this makes more sense and can be easily explained in the tooltip for each skill.
      Edit: Your armor type is still based on your chest piece. You cannot use both skill trees. I considered changing this to make it what ever you wear more of but that was going to lead to problems as well. It would also make the starting experience for many frustrating because they wouldn't be able to use either skill tree until they got 3 pieces of that armor. I also considered making it so you couldn't use tier 2 skills unless you had 2 pieces and tier 3 unless you had 3 pieces but I usually go carrot vs stick and added the bonus per piece instead.
    • Maces, hammers, staves, and wands now all have a -25% poison effectiveness bonus. This isn't a balance thing as much as a realism thing. To balance this out, all base damage for those impacted will get a +1 base damage.
    • Ice Field changes: Radius will now be fixed to 7.5 meters rather than being based on the skill level. Additionally, it will now include a -20 cold resist debuff.
    • Based on player feedback, I greatly increased the drop rate on Obsidian golems
    • The Pull skill will no longer have a 1 second delay before the movement aspect begins. This should fix many of the "Pull + Blink" issues players were seeing in PVP.
    • Eagle Eye and Bec de Faucon will now have equal bonuses 75% at GM
    • Polearm's Spinning attack will no longer be blockable or parryable (No polearm stuff is supposed to be blockable)
    • .... nearly time for me to go pick up my amazing three year old so I think I'll drop some bombs since I won't be around to read the replies
    • As promised, Lich Ring wearers will now be susceptible to Banish Undead...
    • Banish undead moving to an AE effect (still discussing whether this is ground target, a moving wall, a cone, or if it uses a chain lightning style effect).
    • Air's Embrace, Strength of Earth, and Enlightenment will all move to be exclusive, meaning you can only have one of the three up at any given time. BOOM again... I've wanted to do this for a while but dex was so inferior people would just choose between str and int every time. I think with the recent combat changes, I think dex is closer to standing on its own. The main goal here is make it so players don't feel like they always have to have a dozen buffs on to compete. That results in lots of tedious casting and no choices. Also, updating lots of buffs ends up being chatty between players and the server. Winning on all sides, AMIRIGHT? :) (I'm going to assume many people will answer NO to this question but I feel it is still the best move for the game going forward.
    • ... busy day for me. Going to get my kiddo before my brain catches fire.
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2018
    Ancev, By Tor, Boedy Arc and 53 others like this.
  8. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Today is spell school mastery day. Wish me luck. I'm kind of dreaming I'll get it all done in a single day...

    Ok, plan is set. Much simpler than previous plan and I think more clear. For those curious, you will be able to train only one mastery at a time. Toggling any mastery skill to on will toggle all others to unlearn. Mastery gives +attunement in school, -attunement in opposing skill, plus adds a Mastery stat for that school that improves various aspects of spells in the school and opens up some advanced spells. That is the one paragraph version. There will also be an Obsidian Mastery skill in the Focus tree that gives plus resistance and minus attunement to ALL schools. Basically the "Keep your stinking magic off me" option for those who choose to forsake all magic for extra resistance.

    Sadly, I'm not going to finish all my work on this today but I'm more than half way done and should wrap it up tomorrow.

    On a totally unrelated note, for those of you who have kept up Shroud for a while, you probably remember a long time employee of ours named Finn who left to do VR stuff. His first game is out on Steam and it is called Baby Hands! Yes, you too can play a baby in VR! Go check it out if you're at all interested in VR stuff! http://store.steampowered.com/app/708820/Baby_Hands/
    Give him a good or at least honest review if you try it!
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2018
  9. Troll Hunter

    Troll Hunter Developer Emeritus

    Messages:
    44
    Likes Received:
    319
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Gender:
    Male
    Thanks, Chris!! We actually have an awesome parody of Akalabeth hidden in the game, as well!:)
    You can copy the game onto another floppy disc, and earn the acheivement "Baby Bootlegger"
    ..so many retro parodies in this game! Lots of hidden achievements, puzzles and mini-games. I think Ready Player One is referenced about 10 different places..haha
    Enjoy!
    View attachment 38
     
  10. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    My amazing 3 year old was amazingly sick at school yesterday and threw up around 2PM. So yesterday was a short day for me with pretty much constant meetings and uplift. Ugh... Good news is my wife is staying home with her today which means I got to come in to work at 5AM and get stuff done!

    Still working on Mastery skills. I'm liking the way they are shaping up and the options they present. For instance, currently Taming has to be weak because if it isn't, then pretty much EVERYONE would be required to have a tamed pet to be competitive. Having a mastery skill per skill tree means we can greatly increase the power of tamed creatures through the Taming Mastery skill because players can only have one mastery set to Train and all others will be forced to Unlearn.

    This means that players will be making a choice to not be a blade master or fire master but rather be a taming master. This in a way, mirrors what many people have wanted from UO times. They want to limit how many things they can be good at but fits more closely with our design where we want to limit what you can by limiting the number of choices during combat but NOT in the skill tree. Also, I'll be investigating ways we can allow two trees to be worked on at once. I have a plan but need to stew on it a bit more.

    More to come but wanted to share that tidbit with you...
     
  11. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    No rest for the wicked... up at 3:30 AM because I'm so excited about Mastery stuff I just couldn't sleep! MUST IMPLEMENT! :)

    Working on Sun tree now... as with all of the skills, each point gives you +/-attunement in the tree and opposing tree. Also 0.0125 (1.25%) in the Mastery stat for that school. so if you have and 80 skill, that stat is 1 (100%).

    NOTE: After consideration of how these work, I'm going to add tech so only trees with Mastery set to train or maintain will gain the mastery benefits. This means I also need to go guard against players changing training stuff DURING combat. :p

    Also NOTE: I'm looking for a better name for Mastery. :p I hate Master Mastery or Grand Master Mastery. Focus makes sense but then you get into Focus Focus land which is also lamish. Maybe proficiency or dedication?

    Here are the effects per spell as I add them:
    • Light duration will x(1+sunMastery) So 2x at Mastery. (I thought about giving this a stat bonus BUT I didn't want to encourage more performance damaging lights!)
    • Searing ray gets a chance(0.5 x sun mastery %) for a proc that adds -10 sun resistance, stacks 3x
    • Enlightenment, adds small spell crit chance to buff (trying out 5% * sun mastery)
    • Blind, chance (0.5 x sun mastery %) to add slight melee crit debuff (-5%)
    • Elysian Illumination, the number of ticks increased by half sun mastery %.
    • Phoenix.... hrmmm
    • Stone fist, Cooldown and lock time decreased by half earthmastery %. (I considered adding a root proc or stun proc to this but many want to save those type things for special, long duration effects)
    • Root duration increased by half earthmastery %. Note, this will help overcome high strength creatures!
    • Obsidian Arrow, lock time and cooldown time reduced by half earth mastery %.
    • Strength of Earth, carry capacity boost of earth Mastery %
    • Shield of crystal, adds 10 x earthmastery % damage avoidance
    • Earthquake, increase knockdown duration by earthmastery % (remember, knockdown is getting fixed this release)
    • Earth's Embrace, reduces the negative movement effects. EarthMastery 80 will cut it to 1/3rd the move speed debuff.
    • Earth elemental... hrmm... (ok, I'm going to come back to all of these soon)
    • Healing touch cast/lock time divided by (1+ LifeMastery). NOTE: for those who didn't know, how long it takes to charge a spell is based on these times. No mastery healer in their right mind would cast a single charge heal unless it was an emergency. This will mean faster charging for big heals.
    • Healing ray, same speed boost...
    • Purify, instead of doing a single purify, will turn into a purify over time, repurifying every 3 seconds for 1+(lifeMastery x 9) ticks, so 10 ticks over 30 seconds at mastery 80.
    • Banish Undead, increases the Minimum Damage it can do by Life Mastery % (Base is currently 10-35 so at mastery 80, it will be 20-35 base)
    • Resurrection, cast and lock time reduced by (1+ lifemastery), so cuts time in half at mastery 80.
    • Healing grace, reduced focus cost. (BTW, healing grace focus use is going up in R51)
    • Healing Blast, Yes, reduced casting and lock time... (Again, mastery healers for parties will LOVE this as this one took a LONG time to cast and charge)
    • Ice Fist, small chance to proc an attack speed debuff. At 80 mastery, roughly 10% chance for 10% slowdown with same duration as move speed debuff.
    • Ice Arrow, same as icefist. (Each of these can stack once, so landing both fist and arrow debuffs could give 20% attackspeed debuff at 80 mastery)
    • Douse, extends duration of lasting effects by water mastery %
    • IceField, increased duration of icefield. Doubles it at 80 mastery.
    • Soothing rain, small (10% at 80 mastery) chance to remove fire dot each tick.
    • Shield of Ice, increased duration (doubled at 80)
    • Night Vision, increased duration. (I really want to add a buff side effect but decided against it because people would always play the game in ugly mode if I did!)
    • Vanish, bonus to combat/noncombat focus/health regen while active
    • Shadowform, spell was already getting a change to move it to count as a movement speed buff (can only use it with 1 other move buff as it counts as 1). Mastery adds a built in speed buff.
    • Celestial blessing, this thing needs a nerf or redesign ASAP. Sleeping on this one for now and will come back to it.
    • Fireflies, adds an extra dex debuff of 10 x lunar mastery (10 points at level 80)
    • AND the 3-year-old monkey is now climbing on me so this concludes this morning's mastery work! :)

    And the monkey is awake! Time to make her some pancakes, take her to the YMCA so I can keep teaching her how to swim, do out weekly trip to the Costco, fly dronie (our DJI Mavid Pro drone) at the park, nap (I might join her!), then go walk around the Texas capital and then go to the men's Longhorn's Basketball game! Love work but also love spending the weekend with the munchkin! Have fun all and I'll try to get a few more schools done tomorrow.
     
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2018
  12. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Crazy busy day yesterday with the three-year-old! We even managed to make it to the Longhorns game where they beat number 12 in the nation, OU. While this will just confuse a lot of you, I am required to say... hey what time is it? 4:29AM and OU still sucks! Texas vs OU is a huge rivalary...

    Enough chatter, time to finish a few more trees! First up, finishing the Lunar tree....

    • Animal Charm, longer duration (2x at 80 Lunar Matery)
    • Moon beams, first off, Holy crap. The math for this has been wrong all along! :p The chance for it was supposed to be (100- target.dex/2 - target.intelligence/2)* negative attunement. I left off the target part so the smarter and faster the caster was, the less likely it was to land! :O Ok, fixing that math and then increasing the radius based on lunar mastery
    • Cocoon of Night, first, I'm happy to see this gets a decent amount of use! Second, this is gaining a boost to the amount it heals per tick based on Luanr Mastery.
    • Meteor shower, as with most powerful AEs, this is getting a focus cost and cooldown bump for R51. This spell is already crazy powerful so I think for mastery, you just get a shortened cool down timer (At mastery will be less than it was in past releases)
    • Nightstep, adds a chance to also add a mesmerized effect to the target to help you line up that first shot from behind.
    • Willowisp, saving pets for last.
    • Gust, first the stun on this is stupidly short to the point that people avoid using it. Moving it from 1 to 2 seconds base. Then Mastery will be a multiplier on the stun duration. I would give it a boost to distance it pushes things but that would make Air Masters cheaters in gust ball! :p Edit, changing this to match discharge with greater chance, not greater duration.
    • Discharge, also increasing the base stun from 1 to 2 seconds, fixing some math in the stun duration (attunement was being applied correctly). Mastery will now increase that stun chance (+25% chance at 80 air mastery)
    • Air's Embrace, BAM, you saw it coming, small melee/ranged crit bonus based on dex.
    • ... got slowed down because I found a code bug I need to address... we will resume your normal programming momentarily... :)
    • Dash, boost to duration. (Double at 80 air mastery)
    • Lightning, chance for reduction to air resistance. (50% chance at 80 mastery, 10 point reduction, max 3 stack, 1 minute duration at 80) Edit: doh, forgot this already had that feature. Instead making it increase the number of times it will stack with itself from 1 to up to 5 at mastery 80.
    • Shield of Air, bonus to duration (double duration at 80). I would love to make this more interesting but this thing already has so many edge case uses that it is just a hair away from being super powerful.
    • Blink, this gets used a LOT, probably more than any other spell with reagents. Useful in PVP, PVE, and travel. Air Mastery will reduce the reagent use on this, 3x at level 80 air mastery. BTW, I also just made a Jira to make sure this gets another VFX pass. I really want a short smoke poof or something where they started in addition to the vfx at the end point. Right now it feels a bit like a bug as they just vanish wishout a trace! Just looks like broken movement code...
    • And... perforce is "down" for a weekly verify and backup process... going to do a few more than then just reconcile later.
    • Chain lightning, damage bonus from dexterity increased. With a 100 dex, this went from 31 -79 to 38 - 91 at air mastery 80. Also fixed a problem that was preventing the extra target for those with the lightning wand.
    • Tap Soul, reduces the number of times the life attunement can stack. At 80, reduces it from 10 to 5.
    • Corpse explosion, small chance (25% at mastery 80) to add a 5 second mesmerize effect to all victims.
    • Death Touch AND Death ray, chance to add -5 death Resistance on use. These stack up to 3 from each effect.
    • Death Shield, duration boost.
    • Death Field, AE spell so cool down getting a bump in R51. For mastery, it will reduce cooldown to slightly lower than where it was.
    • For those who are death fans and reading this and thinking, "man, death magic mastery isn't as cool as some other masteries", please remember that death magic is already VERY powerful, especially at end game levels by skill players AND in PVP but you are right. I actually made all these a hair lower than the others because all death magic spells get one addition boost from mastery.... Fizzle chance, reduced by 50% x death mastery level. This means a death master with a 100 skill could wear full bone armor and have a 0% fizzle chance with tier 3 spells and below when not moving. Death Knights anyone? *drops microphone and walks off stage*
    • The amazing 3 year old just woke up so likely I won't get to fire and chaos until later today or tomorrow morning.
     
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2018
  13. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Bam... slept in a bit after the super bowl last night. Time for FIRE... Of all of the trees, this one is the toughest for me. It is all about damage and damage over time but I'm reluctant to add even more DPS to it. Going to think on it a bit but this one might be a slow tree... I actually all the skills blank for this school o my notes. hrmm...

    • Flamefist, hits also add a small amount of fire resist debuff AND a small heal debuff. These will each be 5% at fire mastery 80 and stack 3 times.
    • FireArrow, same as flamefist. fire resist and heal debuff. These will stack with fire arrow (for total of 30% of each at 80 fire mastery)
    • Ignite Weapon, increased duration (double at 80)
    • Fireball, in my mind, this should be one of the defining skills of the fire school. It gets used a lot and like other AE spells, it will see a focus increase, cool down decrease, and probably a reagent chance increase for R51. I think for this one I'm fine with just going damage but in an interesting way. Adding a smallish chance (20% at 80 mastery for now but might drop it to 10% after testing) for this to trigger a second explosion that does the initial explosion damage a second time and shakes the ground.
    • Immolation, increases duration, double at 80
    • Ring of fire, adds damage resistance debuff effect. 10 DR at 80 fire mastery
    • On to Chaos! Confusion, adds an int and dex debuff. chance for debuff (10 points each at 80 mastery)
    • Juxtapose.... ready for some mutha F'ing chaos? For Chaos Mages, they will be able to cast Juxtapose as a stand alone spell that will do... things. First 4 effects, 40% chance it will move large amount of health to Focus, 40% chance it will move a large amount of focus to health, 10% chance it will give you a chaos attunement bonus buff(60 seconds, 20 points at 80 skill), 10% chance it will give you a (debuff to all magic resists 10 points each at 80 skill). More stuff to come but you get the idea. (This is mostly just for fun, btw)
    • Chaotic clone, gives a chance for a weak 15 second stealth effect that allows movement. (Won't help much in PVE but fun for PVP)
    • time to get the little monkey ready for day care! I'll resume work at the office.
    • And now at the office working on this...
    • Tabula Rasa, includes a chance for a negative draw speed modifier. 25% reduction at 80 chaos mastery.
    • Chaotic step, increases the minimum distance it will travel.
    • Chaotic feedback, reduces all negative effects slightly. (Roughly 33% reduction in all negative aspects at chaos mastery 80)
    • BAM, done and moving on to...Taming...
    • Lots of testing on taming as I'm trying to follow the old carpenter rule of measure twice, cut once....
      • Obsidian bear damage on training dummy
        • 10 summoning skill, 100 all others: 11 -17
        • 40 summoning skill, 100 all others: 16 - 24
        • 100 summoning skill, 100 all others, level 90, 113 str: 18-27 level 90
        • Lower combat training to 1, level 77 bear, 95 str: 15-24
        • combat training to 40, level 84, 106 str: 17-25
        • Ok, just lost an hour to a code bug. Our skill table doesn't properly read stats unless you have the correct number of spaces after it and doesn't give any warnings. booh...
        • All skills at GM obsidian Bear hps: 406
        • Now working through various creatures to see what tier he can solo. My goal will probably be to make it so with a mastery of 80, he can kill something 3 tiers higher
        • Lies... bear health is 523...
        • Base bear can usually take a T06 skeleton melee but not by much. T08 skeleton kills him while only losing 1/3rd health.
        • Target set! Bear should be able to beat a T08 skeleton with 1/3rd of his life left...
        • First stab. Give bear extra 100 x Taming Mastery strength... ooh, close. Bear won but only had 10% health left...
        • Going to increase his dexterity some as well to get his defense up and reduce the dodge of the target
        • I think I'm getting close. First, I'm upping the base strength value for tamed critters. Should give about 10-20% more base damage and some HPs. Second, for Taming masters, they get 125 x taming Mastery % for str, 50 x taming mastery for Dex, and 100 x taming mastery for hit points. The result, with 100's in all taming skills and 80 in Taming mastery, bear friend has around 1100 hps and hits for 50 with non crits.
        • Ok, Tried out on scorpions, spiders, bears, and BOARS! Porky my new Razorback Piggy approves of the current change!
    • Tame Heal, chance to remove effects (Any type, including fire)
    • Tame Resurrect, like the normal res spell, this one is tough because it is kind of a single purpose spell.. Just improving this with reduced focus and reagent use
    • Ok, next up will be Tactics but I need to do some system coding work first so I won't get to it until tomorrow!

     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2018
  14. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Ah, 3:30AM... what better time to work. :p Sadly I'm up early this morning with stomach problems that match what Maxine had this weekend. If it is the same thing, hopefully I can get over it in 24 hours like she did! Might end up working from home today.

    • Torpid Torment, I missed listing this one yesterday. Increased duration, double with an 80 skill
    • Tactics is next.
    • Parry, extends the initial 4x power time. 2X time at 80.
    • Also, while I'm calling these BLANK Mastery for now, I intend to rename most of them at some point. I'm calling them Mastery for now because it simplifies code and data work.
    • Defensive Stance, reduces the attack speed penalty, half at 80.
    • Reckless Stance, reduces the DR penalty, half at 80.
    • Berzerker stance, Adds a bonus crit multiplier, 0.75 at 80
    • Passive Stance, decreases the move speed penalty, 66% reduction at 80.
    • Fortify Defense, increased duration of both effects.
    • Offhand Attack, Adds a 10 second Parry bonus, 10 at 80.
    • Distract, I know this will make you all sad but I'm not giving this a bonus. It is WAY OP as it is... :p
    • Engage, reduced focus (again, not much to improve here)
    • Trip, slightly increased duration (Reminder, knockdown getting a rework this release)
    • Camouflage, increased stealth amount. With both at GM, allows for full stealth where creatures can't see you even at point blank range.
    • Pugillism, gains range (1m at 80) and damage (+25% at 80).
    • Poison Weapon, gives small chance to not consume the potion on use. 33% chance at 80.
    • Silent Movement, increased duration.
    • Sneak Attack, adds chance to mesmerize target when used from behind.
    • Sap, when used from behind, adds chance for dexterity debuff, -20 dex at 80, 1 stack only
    • Pick pockets, use and cooldown time reduced, 20% reduction at 80.
    • Opportunity Strike, Increases the window after dodge for bonus damage by 50% at 80
    • Time for Focus....
    • So this is the crazy school with 2 Masteries! One is Obsidian Mastery (new name coming) and the other is Focus Mastery.
    • Obsidian Mastery adds magic resistance to all schools by Chaos, 10 points at 80.
    • Focus Mastery, reduces fizzle change slightly (5% at 80) and adds a small focus regen bonus during combat 0.2 at 80
    • Mindwipe, reduced cooldown, half at 80.
    • MindLock, increased lock time, double at 80
    • Spellbinder's stance, adds a small COMBAT focus regen, 1 per second at 80. Current focus regen on it is non-combat only.
    • Aetheric feedback, increases the time window to get the bonus features.
    • Bam... combat tree type.
    • Shields up first
    • Deflect, increase the time window where you get the 4x bonus, double at 80
    • Bolstery balance, small dex buff, 10 points at 80
    • Shield Bash, adds a damage avoidance debuff, 10 points at 80
    • Dig in, duration boost, 2x at 80
    • Charge, increased knockdown duration, 2x at 80.
    • Tetsudo, range bonus for who gets extra DR in your party as this was small. double range at 80
    • Blades...
    • Thrust, small chance to add a 5% heal reduction, stacks twice
    • Riposte, increased time window for gaining bonus features.
    • Double Slash, small chance to get a 3rd attack, 25% at 80 skill
    • Rend, increases heal modifer by 50% at 80
    • Whirling Blades, Another AE effect that is seeing it's focus cost increase in R51. Mastery will get it back down to where it was.
    • Coup De Grace, increases the size of the bonus damage window, at 80 skill it will affect it at 30% health instead of 20%.
    • Dodge, extended 4x bonus time, double at 80.
    • Evasion, duration extension, double at 80
    • Escape, increased ranged, double at 80
    • Flurry, adds a small draw speed boost, 20% at 80
    • Sprint, duration increase, double at 80
    • Ranged....
    • Aimed shot, focus cost reduction + ammo scavenger chance boost, 50 reduction and 33% boost at 80
    • Disabling shot, duration boost on slow effect
    • Piercing shot, small damage boost, 25% at 80
    • Blinding shot, duration boost
    • Rapid shot, chance to not consume ammo, 25% at 80.
    • Multishot, increases chance of getting hit by each of the three volleys. 10% boost at 80
    • Bludgeon....
    • Crushing blow, first, this is getting its stun doubled from 1 to 2 seconds base for everyone. Second, this is getting an extra duration boost from mastery
    • Break Weapon, increased weapon damage debuff by 50% at 80
    • Knockback, damage boost, 25% at 80
    • Knockdown, reduced cooldown, 50% at 80
    • Break Armor, increased armor debuff, double at 80
    • Berserk, increased duration, decreased Damage avoidance debuff, at 80, double duration, half DA
    • Ground Pound, adds a small chance for a stun. At 80 skill, 20% and 4 second stun.
    • Heavy Armor....
    • Glancing blow, extended 4x multiplier time. double at 80
    • Body Slam, extended stun, 50% longer at 80
    • Inner Strength, extended duration, 2x at 80
    • Absorb impact, duration increase and negative effect decrease, 2x duration and half negative armor damage at 80
    • Taunt, increases the angle of the cone of effect, this will increase from 120 degree to 180 at 80
    • Knight's Grace, here is a new one for you. If you are working on mastery in heavy armor, this will add 25% more mastery bonus to all items in the tree for 30 seconds.
    • Polearms....
    • Push, damage and range boost, at 80 skill 25% damage and 50% range
    • Pull, damage and range boost, at 80 skill 25% damage and 50% range
    • Puncture, extended duration on Dot and heal debuff, at 80, 50% more dot, 100% duration on heal debuff
    • Spinning Attack, this was only hitting 3 targets but I am treating it like an AE attack. Increased the focus cost (as with all AEs in 51) and increased max targets to 6 for everyone. for Mastery it has a chance to add an additional bleed effect. At 80 skill, it has 20% chance and does half the damage of main hit spread out over 10 seconds and stacks 3 times.
    • Skewer, focus cost on skewer going up for R51 as is cooldown. For mastery, damage bonus and root duration bonus. At 80 skill, 25% damage 100% root duration.

    BAM... done for now and it isn't even 10AM yet! muahaha.... Next up is implementing the 6th glyph. That will sadly be lots of coding to handle all the cases so probably no updates for a while.
     
    Last edited: Feb 6, 2018
    Vaiden Luro, By Tor, Ancev and 45 others like this.
  15. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Good morning! Read over most of the 3 pages of comments over night. My favorite parts are where some argue polearms are the worst and some argue polearms are the best. I actually love seeing that type stuff for a number of reasons. It means that they clearly are not super far off of balanced or else people would all agree. It also means that there is enough depth to combat and skills that some are missing the proper use of a tree and still have something to learn. My personal belief is polearms are currently OP. I'll reevaluate once I get to spend some more time playing with the latest changes.

    First task of the day is a boring one, answer all the questions we missed on the post-mortem...
    and done! Time to get the munchkin ready for day care and head to the office. I have several meetings this morning so likely not much work until post lunch. :(

    • Currently working on getting the 6th glyph for PROFICIENCY over 80..
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2018
  16. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    As expected, yesterday was largely a wash due to lots of meetings and other uplifts. On the side, I'm currently working on a new data box that isn't cooperating. Can't believe I'm still having to fight with 2tb drive limits in 2018. :/

    Up early today to start slogging through the 50+ bugs Attenwood wrote up for minor issues with the new masteries! I'm probably going to take a few breaks to make some new artifacts from a list players have been putting together.

    Who doesn't love meetings! I don't but sometimes they are needed. Today's 2 hour plus meeting was with UNITY! They were in the area and stopped by for a long chat in person. I'm somewhat more hopeful of resolving some of the memory and performance issues after chatting with them but definitely not confident it will all get resolved before launch.

    Created a new obsidian potion for faster experience application. This just moves more experience per skill use from your pool, to your skill. Really just a convenience thing but something people might want in the next month or so to speed up their rapid testing of all the new stuff coming.

    Also, had an idea thrown at me by a player that felt super dirty, an obsidian potion of decay protection. :( So that is super dirty and would essentially break the system because top end players would NEVER decay. What I threw back to the player was, what if there were an obsidian potion that when used, applied a half or a quarter day's worth of decay but THEN protected you from decay for a full week.

    Still feels a bit dirty but I think some would go for it just so they don't have to care about dying for a full week. Just batting ideas around here, not implementing this yet. One of the top things I feel we need currently are more non-pay-2-win consumables objects. This one has a hint of p2w but I'm a fan of balancing stuff out with a bit good and a bit of bad.

    It will likely start a major poopstorm in my blog responses but what are people's thoughts of something like that?

    Also, to throw some gasoline on that fire, Death Shield is crazy OP... Considering making a large change to it. Possibly changing how it stops damage but also considering making it so it gives you focus on drain instead of life. From a game play mechanic, I like that the best but doesn't match with the fiction of the other death magic stuff as well. I guess the other fiction is you draining life from them where as this would be they attack you and give you more power. Will think about it after I finish drinking a big glass of player tears... I KID! I KID! but I think most people are in agreement that it is OP at high level and is pretty much mandatory no matter what tree you play. Needs to be evaluated...

    Also I just realized with these last two items, the table has turned on me and now I'm the one clicking F5 to refresh to replies thread. :p
     
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2018
    Vaiden Luro, Gia2, Thwip and 37 others like this.
  17. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Up at 4AM again to work on Masteries! Woohoo! Also, I'm going to look into decay math and see if I can do anything to help prevent players from screwing themselves. Oh, also worth noting that I'm home with Maxine today. Her daycare has a teacher training day today and the wife stayed home with her last Friday when she was sick so it is my turn to stay home with her. I will be around the computer most of the day but I do plan on taking to the Y to continue teaching her to swim!

    Wooh, finished reading 5+ pages of comments from overnight. Awesome job all, lots of good feedback and ideas and while some were negative, all were constructive and that is really all I ask for!

    Tearing through Attenwood's feedback on SPECIALIZATIONS. Rebranded from Masteries because it would just be too confusing to be a Master Master or Grand Master Master. :p Most of the remaining bugs on specializations are due to just a couple of system changes that need to be made.

    Once I'm done with this, I'm going to take a pass to reduce the Min-Max spread for magic. I did this for Melee last release but magic still has a lot of spells with more than 3:1 ratios for min to max damage. Also worth noting, this is part of the continued push to get randomness out of the DPS aspects of the game. I want a player who has fought 100 elves to know how many hits it will take +/- 1 or 2 hits. Currently, for casters, it might take 3 or it might take 20+ because the spread from min damage hit to max critical hit is something like 7x for some skills!
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2018
    Vaiden Luro, Gia2, Thwip and 39 others like this.
  18. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    And up around 4:30 to work on Creature Enrage effects! Watch out, Cabalists and other boss types will have a few more tricks! in R51.
     
  19. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    4AM, time to make the donuts! :) Actually, I'm going to work on resolving a few lingering build issues.

    On a somewhat related note, we again turned on DX12 support... and it was again slower. :/ We also again turned on Vulkan support... and it crashes within seconds.

    Ok, fixed the build error.

    Oneandonly added a new option for me (yes, I do delegate work!) so I can hide skills with a 0% chance. Time to make a pass to set all those that are needed. Making another task for Wizardsmoke to update the display to show the chance on skills.
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2018
  20. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Today is a war on the demons that slow our game down! I hear by swear that Brittany will no longer suck in R51!
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.