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Remove money bags and satchels from shifters, give to champs
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saide
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Joined: 18 Mar 2007
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2017 2:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have not been keeping up with this thread, but I will say that there has not been an item standard - at least not one that is easy to find - until recently and it's still being set up - IE - if Bob becomes a new coder, bob has no way of easily finding the standard.

So what cyric says about a moving target is right - items improve over time - new people come along and make better items - or areas get added - with better items - and previously this has been pretty much up to the area creator to determine what those items are - and then whoever reviews the code has the job of catching anything that is really out of sync - the problem is - as I already stated - there had been no real standard written down anywhere for anyone to consult.

There is an item standard now - but we still need to make it easily accessible - once we get this set up then we can build code for player items that would filter through the standard - so that no one item could be better than what it needs to be. Yes, I also realize that this should have happened a long time ago, but we're human, not immortals, so it didn't. It has now - so hopefully we will see items better balanced in the future, as well as cool things like magical crafting for players. It will just take some time - not because the coding is exceptionally difficult - though sometimes it is - but because each of us has lives outside of SG that tend to be more important.

P.S. I will also freely admit that I have a tendency to make powerful items - so arguably the standard I wanted to see implemented was meant to make sure I personally don't make too powerful items. This means that in the next few months/weeks I'll likely be nerfing a lot of my own items - or at least reviewing all of them to make sure they lie within the standard.
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Verbannon



Joined: 30 Sep 2013
Posts: 398

PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2017 3:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh because I sent Ni3nne a mail suggesting a standard I think close to a year ago, maybe more, and she said there was already one.
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cyric
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Joined: 17 Nov 2006
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Location: Singapore

PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2017 12:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

thanks saide for the clarification. I especially liked the part where you said we're not immortal.

Yes, the moving target is because of power creep. New areas and abilities are slightly (sometimes not so slightly) more powerful than old ones to entice players to use them, and because why would you put an item in the game that's less powerful than an already existing alternative? Everyone will gravitate to the one which is better and everyone wants to see their areas/items used.

Having a fixed standard, while allowing scale in that large groups of coders can follow the standard without creating something more powerful than what's already in the game, means that once the top of the power curve is hit, no new items or abilities will be better than old ones, so why bother picking them up? It's a trade off.
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Verbannon



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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2017 1:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think a lot of variety could be seen in items without needing power creep. Items with unlockable or class/faith restricted abilities alone seem vastly underutilized. And you can stretch it out by making most items in a dungeon rather generic, and for a soloabke dungeon have only two of three good items. A couple of hidden items and one item you get when you kill the boss.
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Verbannon



Joined: 30 Sep 2013
Posts: 398

PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2017 1:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
It will just take some time - not because the coding is exceptionally difficult - though sometimes it is - but because each of us has lives outside of SG that tend to be more important.


Not to nit pick but this line doesnt make sense to me in the context of the post. Since when I interpret it I read it as

"Its not that coding takes a long time, its that we cant afford to put much time into it."

Which if that was the correct interpretation seems like a quibling of minutia. As in my mind "Code is slow and time consuming" = "Not enougb time to code."

Since they are stayements that differ largely on emphasis. Like saying 2+6 does not equal 8 but instead 8 equals 2+6.

To further my point, Ill point out that 8f a project takes 2 minutes to finish vlbut you only have one minute to finish it. The statements 'The project will take too long" and "I dont have enough time to ginish the project" Can both be considered equally true.

Limewise may both statements apply to a project that will take 11 hours but one only has ten.
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cyric
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Joined: 17 Nov 2006
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2017 1:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Verbannon wrote:
I think a lot of variety could be seen in items without needing power creep. Items with unlockable or class/faith restricted abilities alone seem vastly underutilized. And you can stretch it out by making most items in a dungeon rather generic, and for a soloabke dungeon have only two of three good items. A couple of hidden items and one item you get when you kill the boss.

In my experience, stretching out by putting average items in doesn't matter in the long run. All that matters is the max end state of the best item, because that's what's going to be used and that's what's potentially unbalanced.

Faith restricted items are a tough sell because in order to be fair whenever you put one in for one faith you need to put one in for every faith, and that's like 20 items you're talking about balancing there.

What would be cool is standards that move with time, opening up the permission to code better items year by year while keeping they overall balance.
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Verbannon



Joined: 30 Sep 2013
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2017 1:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The purpose of the generic items isnt that they'll be used. Its just so you arent wasting good items on the dungeon fodder. And if you already knew this then your post makes zero sense to me.

And you dont need one for every faith from the get go. They can be added slowly as more dungeons are made. And its more like 540 items to fill out the faith based stuff. Well for the basic item sets.
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Verbannon



Joined: 30 Sep 2013
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2017 1:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

And standards make balancing items trust me. Im a fan of D&D 4e and its all about standardization. And because of it I can make perfectly balanced items in minutes and in my head.
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Ares
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Joined: 19 Dec 2006
Posts: 1006

PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2017 2:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Verbannon wrote:
Quote:
It will just take some time - not because the coding is exceptionally difficult - though sometimes it is - but because each of us has lives outside of SG that tend to be more important.


Not to nit pick but this line doesnt make sense to me in the context of the post. Since when I interpret it I read it as

"Its not that coding takes a long time, its that we cant afford to put much time into it."

Which if that was the correct interpretation seems like a quibling of minutia. As in my mind "Code is slow and time consuming" = "Not enougb time to code."

Since they are stayements that differ largely on emphasis. Like saying 2+6 does not equal 8 but instead 8 equals 2+6.

To further my point, Ill point out that 8f a project takes 2 minutes to finish vlbut you only have one minute to finish it. The statements 'The project will take too long" and "I dont have enough time to ginish the project" Can both be considered equally true.

Limewise may both statements apply to a project that will take 11 hours but one only has ten.


There's a difference between difficult and time consuming. The mercenaries that were recently installed as an example. They were not especially difficult to code, but they were time consuming. They represent about 50 hours or so of coding time, plus however many more spent tweaking them to try to fix lingering issues. Coding tends to be time consuming even when it's not difficult. Migrating us to the new driver took probably 200-300 coding hours for something that the players hardly even see. Then there have been I don't know how many hundreds of hours updating code behind the scenes to weed out old issues.

And here's another fun story. We know the best way to implement equipment standards mud wide now. And to do it we have to change just about every single item file in the whole game. So there's another 500+ hours of programming time for code that's not all that difficult.
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Verbannon



Joined: 30 Sep 2013
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2017 2:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well when I say difficult, I always mean time consuming. As that is how I personally measure the difficulty of any task. Which I thought was at least contextually obvious since my principle argument was that coding took too long for any suggestions that would require vast amounts of coding to implement. But your statement did trigger an idea.
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Nienne
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Joined: 17 Nov 2006
Posts: 2764
Location: Aussieland

PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2017 2:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Verbannon wrote:
Oh because I sent Ni3nne a mail suggesting a standard I think close to a year ago, maybe more, and she said there was already one.


We've had various standards on things like enchantments, player adjustments to items, etc over the years, but nothing truly comprehensive on levels/area difficulties vs available items. That's since been done up as part of many items lately to get the game more transparent and fair across the board; we now have a highly detailed outline of where items should sit. I know I'm on the other side of Saide that I tend to underpower some of my stuff, so a few of mine are likely nudged up in future also (Arkhon's stash is a glaringly obvious issue).

As Ares said though, it's a big task to audit every item game-wide & fix accordingly - and we are looking to implement area-based constraints on item use so we can get rid of that eternally-irritating item prolif rule while we're at it, so there's another one. Really not a difficult task to check an item against a standard and adjust to suit, but time-consuming in the extreme game-wide Smile
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Gia



Joined: 03 Feb 2017
Posts: 58

PostPosted: Sun Mar 19, 2017 2:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is a comment to the actual subject of the thread, rather than the current argument:
Please don't take bags away from shifters. For fresh and less experienced players, it's a good source of income. With everyone so focused on "spending gold" remember that there are players here who might not know "how to get all that gold" or where to grind/what to sell to get rich quick. For those people shifters offer a chance of exploration, a decent challenge and a bit of gold+level appropriate but temporary gear. It's one of the things that allow those with time-constraints a chance to "keep up" while also having time to rp.

This is not an argument against the project of "dungeon shifters" you've talked about. It's more a general plea to continue to keep the following players in mind:
Those that are less experienced and therefore not rich.
Those of us that don't have anyone to party with for various reasons. (and I mean -anyone-, I've literally spent months on this game, maybe more, without a single viable party option, due to rp-concerns.) Let those who "must" solo, go solo.

Gia
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