Darkstarr's Release 7 Impressions (+ Revised R8)

hehe no I have no maze at home

 

When I was a bachelor I had a maze of dirty dishes, and dirty clothes all over the place. In fact I think my clean clothes stayed in the laundry basket and never got put back into the drawers more times than not.

I'm glad I'm not a bachelor anymore... although eating instant potatoes straight out of the box ... mixing pancake mix with a little water and eating it... well those are moments to miss.


EDIT: Also Hamburger Helper was like the best thing I ever could make. That was a truly special night of the week.

 

Everything and everything is open for discussion and change I hope and reckon.
(Someone told me a mini map was coming in R11.)

The purpose of the mini map that I think of is to prevent people like myself from swearing over getting lost in public places like Owls Head or Kingsport.
I really miss being able to see where in Owls Head I am in relation to the tavern, my house or shopkeeper x.

It could possibly also map the parts of a dungeon that I have wandered through.
On a personal note it was many years ago since I used real pen and paper to aid me in wandering through a computer games dungeon, and I have no real desire to ever do it again, hehe.
I have become a convenient adventurer.

I can see myself hitting the M key to bring up a local paperized map - it doesn't have to be an always visible map-thing in the lower right corner, but I don't see the harm with that corner-version either.
In fact I would prefer to hit the M key to bring something up, as long as it e.g. shows me where I am in Owls Head.
How they choose to implement it is up to the clever devs ultimately - I just really hope they will do something along these lines.

 

I understand where you are coming from. I would like this to be handled how it was done in the single player ultimas. A map, a Sextant, and peering gems that are valuable.

I don't like always-on minimaps and quest markers I'm with Richard on this.

It's a little funny because in interviews he talks about how he doesn't like people to blow through the text, but because of pushback from new school gamers we now have text and quests we can just blow through without reading any texts (clicking on hyperlinks, etc.)

Lazarus handled this in a more graceful way, if you want a modern example that is sort of Ultima-related.

While chat has definitely improved drastically, It's still a little weird. I also feel like it's a kludge of old school and new school design and makes nobody happy. I think it's also in a bad area - chat interfered with my combat more than once.

 

No way. If they put a maze in the castle arena basement that would wreck everything... UNLESS!!!... The maze walls were made of paper, like those paper walls from Japan interior decorating. THen we could fight eachother, run, then slash the walls and come through then kill the hell out of the guy when he doesn't expect it.

*** hopes that the ground pound bludgeon skill is in the release so we can pound the dead body after it falls to the ground ***

 

AFAIK, that is the current plan. There will be town maps that you need to find, trade, or purchase in-game As far as maps of dungeons or other non-town scenes, I haven't heard them mention those....so, get that grid paper ready.

 

I hope you are right.
An in-game atlas of sorts that you purchase "magic" town maps/pages for could be a variant.

 

@Svahn @Lord Trady of Blix

There ya go!

 

iMoondial?

 

Great post...time yes to get some flesh on them pvp bones.

 

I love how this game is evolving...one of your best posts ever DS.

 

It's either that or a server meltdown

 

We've waited so long to hear the war drums heralding the arrival of PvP! God speed to the devs!

 

Thanks for the update!

Interested in hearing more about the 'deeper vs. broader' aspect of combat skill development.

Is this in terms of prioritization of current work load, or about game system design more broadly?

Cheers!

 

Wow I'm having a deja vu thing right now... I could have sworn I saw this before it happened.

... I just felt like sharing my jedi moment with everybody...

 

Mischief managed! *taps map*

 

That sounds good, but are there counters planned?

If someone casts a fireball at me, are my options going to be to interrupt the spell before it's cast or to get hit with it? I'm very interested in active defenses that are viable counters to a particular attack.

 

You could cast 'Douse' (Removes fire dots) from the water magic school.
learned the passive skill 'fire proof' (increase fire resistance) from the fire magic school
maybe Chaotic Confusion: Randomly rearranges target's skills from the chaos magic school (would need to do it before)
Crushing Blow: Stunning Attack from the bludgeon weapon school.
Celestial blessing: Increases resistance towards magic from moon magic school.

 

It's questionable if you could do that effectively in-game once you're already on fire. If you're just talking about the lasting effects of fire damage, ok sure but the initial effects are still going to be bad. You're just bandaging a wound and not really preventing anything here.

That might work ok, but that's a resistance, not a counter.

That's general purpose and not specific to a fireball.

That's a proactive attack, not a counter defense.

That's another resistance.


The best way to think about this is "how do I block it?" So if someone swings a sword at you, shouldn't you have the opportunity to parry or block? The same thing should happen with a fireball or any other attack. You should have an opportunity to defend.

The problem with the internet is that it's very VERY (impossible) to expect real-time blocking and defense because of technical limitations. So we have to look towards the next best thing - active defenses.

Resistances to "fire" for example, are a good start, but it's not really a counter. A true counter would be more like having a skill or a spell that was set up in advance to completely BLOCK a fireball attack. There would have to be some form of risk verses reward that would balance this out, but the option needs to be there otherwise we're all just hacking away at each other for max damage, and there's NOTHING innovative about that.

Ideally, there would be a counter spell that would remain active until triggered by a specific attack. So for Fireball, there should be several ways to defeat it using both magic and non-magic. Here's some general thoughts on what that might look like...

Non-Magical Counters to a fire ball attack:

1) Simply moving out of the way.
2) Getting behind something like a rock or a very large shield.

Magical counters to a fire ball attack:

1) A spell from the fire school that completely negates the fireball spell.
2) A spell from the opposite school of magic (water) that completely negates the fireball spell.
3) A spell from other schools of magic that partially negates the fireball spell. Think of this as something like a gust of wind or a wall or earth that springs up to help block the attack. Perhaps only elemental schools of magic would work like this, and Death, Life, Sun and Moon would not have counters?

 

There should really be an Ice shield. It's the logical counterpart of Ice fist.