Argh! WTF changed? I seriously asked nicely to make it obvious... Why? Why can't we have nice things?

90% of mace skills are failing in hero pk. It is unbearable.

They made some mace skills more dependant on strength a while ago

Is hit roll known to affect mace skills?

No cherry picking, I save the majority of my fights where something happens. Here's the grep. All mace skills are 100%, enhanced reactions is in the 80s, often times with cry of thunder applied for extra boost. Note the huge discrepancy between melee and mage builds.

Your cranial hit hits Khalmarnasa.
Your cranial hit MUTILATES Khalmarnasa!
Your cranial hit misses Xeneth.
Your cranial hit misses Xeneth.
Your cranial hit misses Xeneth.
Your cranial hit misses Trekberg.
Your cranial hit MASSACRES Trekberg!
Your cranial hit misses Trekberg.
Your cranial hit MASSACRES Trekberg!
Your cranial hit misses Trekberg.
Your cranial hit wounds Boelga.
Your cranial hit MASSACRES Boelga!
Your cranial hit EVISCERATES Khalmarnasa!
Your cranial hit grazes Boelga.
Your cranial hit devastates Boelga!
Your cranial hit maims Boelga!
Your cranial hit misses Xeneth.
Your cranial hit misses Xeneth.
Your cranial hit misses Xeneth.
Your cranial hit misses Xeneth.
Your cranial hit MASSACRES Xeneth!
Your cranial hit MASSACRES a silverback gorilla!
Your cranial hit MASSACRES a silverback gorilla!
Your cranial hit MASSACRES Liantae!
Your cranial hit wounds Trekberg.
Your cranial hit misses Kraat.
Your cranial hit misses Altariel.

12 out of 27 misses
12 out of 17 misses against melee = 71% miss
0 out of 10 misses against mages = 0% miss

Your bone-shattering blow misses Kraat.
Your bone-shattering blow misses Charkag.
Your bone-shattering blow MASSACRES Charkag!
Your bone-shattering blow misses Charkag.
Your bone-shattering blow misses Trekberg.
Your bone-shattering blow misses Trekberg.
Your bone-shattering blow *** DEMOLISHES *** Altariel!

5 out of 7 missed boneshatters

You drum at Xeneth with your maces.
Your drumming maces MANGLES Xeneth!
Your drumming maces MASSACRES Xeneth!
Your drumming maces *** DEMOLISHES *** Xeneth!
Your drumming maces DISMEMBERS Xeneth!
(after he was hit with a boneshatter)

You try to drum Altariel with your maces, but miss.
Your drumming maces misses Altariel.

You try to drum Xeneth with your maces, but miss.
Your drumming maces misses Xeneth.

You drum at Xeneth with your maces.
Your drumming maces MANGLES Xeneth!
Your drumming maces MANGLES Xeneth!
Your drumming maces MASSACRES Xeneth!

You drum at Altariel with your maces.
Your drumming maces *** DEMOLISHES *** Altariel!
Your drumming maces *** DEMOLISHES *** Altariel!
Your drumming maces *** DEMOLISHES *** Altariel!
Your drumming maces *** DEVASTATES *** Altariel!
(after he was hit with a boneshatter)

2 out of 5 missed drums, but that's actually in line with past experiences

19 out of 39 missed skills at 100%, 49% failures

It's hard to draw conclusions from log greps like this without having more context.

For example, off the cuff I can say that cranial cares about ganging and (if you are who I think you are) your average group size per kill is pretty high, so that's something to consider. Maybe all those cranial attempts you grepped are solo fights, or maybe not, I don't know.

All but 1 or 2 were solo fights.

One with Xeneth was 3v3 in Maethien and one with Altariel was 2v1 near the Fortress.

Feels as if could be head gear?

If there is a real difference between Mage and melee it may be down to Mage classes being more likely to wear hp boosting non-helms and warriors wearing helms?

This is very different and is likely errant code.

There were some changes to cranial in the last two years (well, in 2014) that impact its base chance as well as with regards to helmets.

Being deliberate changes to the success factors of cranial though, I probably wouldn't describe them as errant.

If we feel like we're observing a problem then someone will review the code more thoroughly and verify that we like where things are dialed in.

Also, a quick glance indicates that drum and boneshatter haven't received significant attention in many years, FWIW.

Seriously. 50% fail rate.

I played an elf STSF mace spec and it was barely around 60% success rate.

I played other mace specs and it was even worse.

But when you have Skullcrusher, pushes it up to ~80%

FYI, Skullcrusher mostly compensates for the low STR you probably have if you have it. Being, like, Fire Mace is better across the board for Cranial than Arial Mace with Skullcrusher.

NT

On why I am hitting such an ugly and terrible rate at 24 str, yet near perfect against mage classes?

I can send you and Umiron logs via email. I just had a similar cloud giant build and did not experience a fraction of the impotence of what has been going on: it has been ridiculously frustrating.

Thank you.

Nt

Cranial doesn't yet use the new-fangled armor code-- it works off of the helmet's raw AC, and does not account for Armor Use skills or anything else recently touched.

It's likely the class difference the original poster is seeing is from a mage who isn't wearing a proper helmet, but it's hard to tell from such a limited data set and no context.

There's also the standard disclaimer that people who hit runs of bad luck are likely to complain, but people who hit runs of good luck usually don't, and therefore the pool of complaints is enriched in runs of bad luck.

Add in the hyperbole above ("90% of mace skills are failing"), and it's hard to say if there's any real issue here.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

NT

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=47&topic_id=28&mesg_id=28&listing_type=search



Daevryn Sun 04-Aug-13 11:51 AM
Member since 13th Feb 2007
11106 posts

#28, "August 2013"
Edited on Sun 25-Aug-13 12:10 PM

- Cranial and Boneshatter care more about the STR of the user than they used to.
- Concealed/Backfist/Swiftstrike/Riposte are less effective against someone that you're ganging
- Black Duelist is slightly more helpful when casting Poison and Crimson Scourge (if it's applicable).
- Rot is an effective counter to form regeneration and herbal regeneration.
- Deaths to yourself or a mob shortly after fighting other player(s) are treated as a PK in all respects rather than as a mob death. If you have fought multiple players shortly before dying, currently the kill in this case is awarded to the player dealing the greatest damage to you in that short period. This may be refactored in the future to factor in immediacy of damage or other concerns.

First up: I'm not stormmacer, but I've dinked around with maces recently...

The change to helmets does strike me as a little more severe than I expected. If someone who can lift 500lbs takes a 50lb mace and whacks a person in the head it should hurt, regardless of whether the whackee is wearing a paper crown from Burger King or a nice helmet. I acknowledge there will be a difference in the damage there, but neither one should just shrug off the blow like it never happened.

There's always a substantial lag when cranial connects, excepting large gangs and a few other edge cases.

If it is based on raw AC of the helmet as said below, then it could be a matter of the best gear in the game spread out among less players.

In other words, if your pk is a 100 different people at hero, a small subset are going to be wearing great gear. However, if your pk is a dozen different people, a much higher percentage will have great gear and therefore a higher percentage will have good protection from cranials. So you'll miss more often and cranial will be reduced in effectiveness.


Hutto

I think you're half right.

Recall that we're talking AC here. There's non-limited trash helmets that no one ever wears that have great AC, and there's unique very coveted headwear that has no AC at all. So it's not really about a concentration of limited gear, I think.

What is absolutely the case is that picking a real sturdy helmet is something that does go in and out of vogue, usually following the popularity and/or PK prowess of mace specs at the time.

I did a quick search through some of the more prominent pkers and there were a lot of circlets and crowns in the PBFs. I wonder what headwear the people in these logs were wearing.

Hutto

gr

The overall advantage of having high-end gear on a low-level character is still sizable, but we're chipping away at it.

Some of the code that does this has been around for a long time-- not dealing full damage with a much higher level weapon goes back to the 1990s, and armor deflection has worked this way since it came in. Reducing the efficacy of Parry and Shield Block in a similar light won't remove the motive to grab better stuff, just scale back the impact some.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

nt

Better weapons did more damage, they didn't help you parry better, this is a penalty in an area that's qualitatively different to the one in which an advantage was given. I'm unhappy about how vague 'much higher level' is given the difficulty of discerning the underlying probabilities as a player. I can easily see that it's possible that wielding that sword of darkness on my level 20 character will get him killed where a black iron longsword might have won the fight. Or not, because the sword of darkness is slightly heavier? I have no idea. If one of the core abilities that affects how my character fights is going to be penalised for wearing better gear, that definitely does impact the motive to acquire it. Upping my damage from 'decent' to 'good' isn't worth knocking my parrying from 'normal' to 'subnormal' for. Not when fights can be over in 4-5 hits and one or two extra hits can completely change the outcome.

But given the uncertain nature of all the probabilities involved I don't know if the penalties are great enough to warrant skipping what's left of a 7 point difference in weapon avg after level scaling for.

Originally, I would simply id a weapon, and if it had better stats than what I had, I could replace it without a second thought.

Weight changes come in and I'm happy about that, it adds a second dimension to weapon choice - all other things being equal there's a reason to prefer the heavier weapon. So now you might sacrifice in one area to help in another, which gives the player a more involved decision to make but even without hard numbers you still have a clear understanding of the choice you're making - better stats, or better parrying/harder to parry.

Now, I might find a weapon that's both heavier than my own and with better stats, but be uncertain if it will parry as well as my current weapon, or better, or worse, because it isn't clear whether the bonus for heavy weapons is more significant than the penalty for higher level weapons. We never know the magnitude of the impact of a given factor, but it's usually been clear whether something is 'better' or 'worse' for a given thing and this change obscures it.

Before any agrues that low weapon weight can be desireable you still know what's going on there. If I want the hardest weapon to strength drop, lighter is better, if I want the hardest hitting weapon, more damage is (probably still) better, If I want the best parrying weapon for my level 25 character do I want that 25 pound level 51 weapon, that 20 pound level 35 weapon or that 20 pound level 25 weapon? It's not clear, and I feel that it should be?

Building up gear is one thing I enjoy doing at low-mid levels. But I guess it is part of leveling the playing field and I just have to figure out what the 'best' low level gear is now. I definitely wouldn't want to be a low-mid range pincer spec with earthquakes anymore.

ADAPT AND CHANGE.

They probably won't spell specific things out like you're asking because it seems like the point to put everyone equally in the dark and make players equally bad?

Maybe two earthquakes is still better. We don't know.

As I said in my last post we've never known exactly how much better or worse something is for the purpose you're trying to use it, but we have always known IF it was better or worse, and we no longer do. That's a whole new conceptual layer of ensuring that players don't know what they're doing.

Honestly with that level of obfuscation coders who play morts could potentially have kinds of advantages they've never had before.

Not knowing for sure how much affect my efforts to optimize things are is something that basically already only happened in CF, being further unsure whether I am screwing myself by using 'better' gear or if I'm screwing myself by passing over 'better' gear takes the "we don't want you to know what's going on" thing to an entirely different level.

I don't think I've ever seen a change rolled back before but this 'broke' CF for me on a conceptual level and I would beseech the immortals to offer some clarity.

Best solution I can come up with at this point would be if the compare command was sensitive to level throttling and gave better/worse information on the parrying abilities of weapons of the same type.

I don't think this change helps newbies at all. The only people it will advantage are those with code access and the inclination to understand it.

I think you are WAY overestimating the impact these things are actually going to play if you believe it has 'broke' CF for you.

I understand we won't get hard numbers but maybe some minima/maxima would help.

Do you understand the point I was making though? That I could come across a weapon and be unsure whether it'll parry better, worse, or the same as my current weapon of the same weapon type, and CF hasn't had that kind of obscurity until now? A player's only recourse at this point is proper statistical analysis.

Was that considered when the change was implemented or seen as an issue?

As a parallel example, no one has dealt full damage with a weapon that's significantly above their level since the 1990s.

This uses a similar sliding scale-- as the weapon's level goes well above your own, your ability to parry with it will decline a little.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

gr

CF has certainly had that kind of obscurity. I rather miss it and I hope shaking up combat mechanics will bring some of that back.

But that's because things were unknown, rather than unknowable.

Does it end before level 30?

It was in progress, and technically nothing has changed yet, but I'm done for now.

New edits are now dated.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

nt

.

As designed/implemented would this change have an affect on a lvl 51 using a lvl 60 weapon? I know the change is designed to even the playing field at low levels, but what about the lvl 60 weapons out there?

I would imagine the answer is yes. The logic for reduced parry is probably very similar to the logic for the reduced dmg based on level difference.

(I am not a coder nor do I peek into said code to get this information, but it would certainly seem like the way to do it.)

So the best weapons in Thera will no longer be the best weapons of thera, for Heroes at level cap, because the area writer made it a level 60 item and not a level 52 one?

Might want to look into that one, I don't see many players being very happy that things like conquest and whatnot are going to be hindrances instead of help now. The weapons are like, the hardest things to get in Thera for a reason, why bother when something like a jagged short sword is going to get you more bang for your buck now?

The actual amount of "reduced" effectiveness is probably so small that you cannot even factor it in any different than you can the standard RNG. Honestly, I would imagine that if the change was not announced that no one would ever know it occurred.

.

I appreciate you're trying to help but these questions are best answered by someone who knows. Your second guesses about Valg's changes aren't necessarily better than a players.

For all the times people have complained they have had questions ignored, you would think that having *something* is better than nothing. So I guess if you (the collective players and not just you personally) start getting ignored again when asking questions like this, you know why.

edit: fixed a spelling error

You're answering questions you don't know the answer to. I can live without those kinds of answers. In point of fact the pertinent questions I asked in this thread were answered with nothing but a restatement of what we got on the changes board.

Again, thank you for trying but if you haven't looked at the code or been told the specifics yourself, your guess is no better than ours.

As you can see below, both Daev and Dest both gave you pertinent and different information to what was being asked. I wouldn't dismiss what an Imm has to say just because they do not have the pretty imp symbol by their name.

To be frank, their guess is probably better than yours. They might also have means to get you valuable information too. EX: Dest's post below.

When you say things like, "I can live without those kinds of answers." You are just encouraging someone to not go the extra mile to get your question answered. Remember, most of us are human with feelings and that whole not being infallible thing... But some of us have tried to overcome that.

--Fangy

*Disclaimer: By no means do I speak for the staff in part or whole. Any statements given are my own personal views on any given situation.*

I know the answer, just not the very specific direct quote from code answer that you want. I suppose my flaw was the use of the word "probably." But because I do not have direct access to the code, I do not feel comfortable saying things with 100% certainty. I can however say with certainty that my guess is way better than yours.

I know perfectly well I won't get the numbers, I wanted to know if my objections were recognised as an issue or considered when the change was made.

With a couple looks at the "best" weapon of the types, I didn't see a single one with a level of 60.

Seems even most of the hell/archdevil items and weapons are no higher than 52 or 53.

Conquest just became suck though to me. Damn the weapon damage hindrance from level difference, now it'll parry even worse.

I think you're looking at the old version of the Conquest axe, not the new one. (either that or you're talking about a completely different item named Conquest that I'm not familiar with)

If you say it's changed, I believe you. Sounds like this will be a non issue for heroes then all around the board, so hard to argue that this isn't a good change for the game. I was concerned with hero level only, lowbie looters be damned. (even though I am absolutely famous for lowbie looting at times, this is probably better for CF as a whole)

Sorry for the headache. Seems like this will actually change the playing field some between the newbies and vets that just loot and stack a fat set at 20. Nothing really to complain about.

>So the best weapons in Thera will no longer be the best
>weapons of thera, for Heroes at level cap, because the area
>writer made it a level 60 item and not a level 52 one?

Psst... due to the damage level scaling code (which is older than dirt -- it predates me being an imm), you already wouldn't be getting all the damage out of such a weapon.

Thank you, I actually didn't know this (I thought that heroes were exempt from dmg of higher lvl weapons being lowered by the code). My initial question was a result of this (incorrect) assumption.

That said, if you Daev were a playing a hero and had the option of using a lvl 60 weapon that had 6 more avg damage than a lvl 51 weapon you had, would you ever use it knowing that your parry/etc would be nerfed?

There are shiny lvl 60 high avg 36 weaps out there - while I understand you guys want to keep a level of obscurity to the actual code, it becomes very confusing as a player when something looks WAY Better via lore/identify (higher average) but you know, that because of code in practice it may be the same (or worse) but have no way of truly knowing. Really, it takes what seems like an "obvious" choice and makes it not obvious at all.

Usually the things that make me pick my weapons (given a choice) don't come down to pure damage. It's a factor to be sure but things like weight, material, damage type, weapon type, cursed, special progs, etc. tend to weigh more heavily for most characters.

There are characters where it's all aboard the damage train but that's rarer.

Whether I'd give up parry is situational too -- if I have riposte, hell no. If my parry is already pretty marginal or is not my primary defense, sure, why not. Everything in between is a judgment call.