Season Zero to Season One Development Journal

Announcements, updates and news concerning the Requiem project.
Post Reply
User avatar
Sic
Aeolian Staff
Posts: 368
Character: Isidor Abendroth

Season Zero to Season One Development Journal

Post by Sic » July 28th, 2021, 12:32 am

Season Zero to Season One Development Journal

As many of you may be aware, we have spent the past two months focusing solely on the re-development and balancing of our custom magic system. With numerous spell schools and spells to contend with, this has been a rather large and widely encompassing task. During this period of re-design and re-development, regular and intended development of our project was temporarily put on pause, both in so that our development team could focus solely on this endeavor and for some of our staff members to be able to take care of some personal business as well.

With the re-development of the magic system ending, regular development of Requiem will now continue.

Parallel to the re-development of magic, we have been evaluating our major systems and sub-systems for the transition out of our testing period and to full launch. Over the next few weeks, we will be implementing a large variety of changes to our current beta build of the project that represent a compilation of staff observations, results of both internal and team testing, and community feedback. Our goal with these changes are three-fold:

1) To create a more engaging and fun atmosphere for our players.
2) To reduce the overwhelming number of tickets our team responds to on a weekly/daily basis.
3) To implement new community rules and mechanical changes to help support a healthy player base with an attempt to reduce situations in which a player may feel overly grieved.

Large changes that will be impactful to the shard going forward will be explained within this thread moving forward as to give more insight as to why these changes are being made, the scope of the changes, and what we hope to accomplish with them. Most of the changes will be welcomed by the community while we expect some of them to be controversial; regardless of your own personal feelings on the matters, they are being put into place due to the compiled observations, discussions and debates amongst the staff in direct response to what we’ve experienced with you all in the past four months.

The major components of our “Beta to Release” changes are as follows:
  • Burglary/Looting/Rogue Changes
  • Character Changes
  • PvM / PvE Changes
  • Crafting Changes
  • Faction Changes
  • Magic Changes
  • Combat Changes

User avatar
Sic
Aeolian Staff
Posts: 368
Character: Isidor Abendroth

Re: Season Zero to Season One Development Journal

Post by Sic » July 28th, 2021, 1:30 am

Burglary/Looting/Rogue Changes – The What

Changes to stealing, burglary, lockpicking and house looting have been put in place and patched to the live shard as of 7/28/21.

The changes to shard rules are as follows:

5.1 Looting & Property Conflict

When defeating another player in combat, for the sake of decency and respect for your fellow player, the act of “dry looting” an opponent is considered against shard rules. While the staff concedes that there may be VERY RARE times that such an action is required, we encourage players to loot and remove items that they only have a logical reason to do so; removing a downed opponent’s armor and clothing, for example, is not a logical or accepted choice, and ONLY will be tolerated in the most well-explained and rational cases. Items that are considered logical are:

• Weapons
• Spellbooks
• Concealing Items
• Explosives/Throw-able Items

Non-Present Conflict Rules of Engagement:

One of the draws of Requiem is that nothing is safe. There are stakes. That goes both ways – should a player choose to engage in non-PvP Conflict where your target is not present, then the victim will be presented options – mechanically and/or with staff help via [Rollmenu – to have the chance to progress the roleplay. Such encounters are including but not limited to: burglary, vandalism, planting evidence, raiding claims, or any other interaction with the intent to hurt your target in some way wherein they are not present.

Understand that prior to choosing to pursue this line of engagement, there is always a chance the player will be able to discover your actions via RP investigation and clues left behind regardless of your precautionary measures. As a counterpoint, if a property owner has made little to no effort to install proper locks, traps, and/or hired NPC guards, staff will have little to work with. Thus, the owner of a property needs to make a realistic attempt in securing their property in order to expect staff-overseen investigation regarding theft.

It is encouraged that you work with staff ahead of time – via in-game page, or Discord Ticket – to make your intentions clear and collaborate to make such clues as fair as possible to you and the victim to both have a shot at being able to advance the story presented from the conflict. Otherwise, if staff feels a real attempt wasn’t made to leave evidence mechanically by the player, it will be at staff’s discretion whether or not to include your insight in their next steps.

Burglary:

House, claim or property forced entry (the act of LOCKPICKING a door) is now trait-locked (GM-Approval) and will only be accessible through GM permission upon demonstrating the player is responsible enough to adhere to rules involving looting and the act of burglary. Players are still able to steal keys from potential victims and utilize said key to access a house, ie, the act of burglary.

The act of burglarizing a house (regardless of it was from lockpicking or a stolen key) should be done to help further and perpetuate role-playing, not solely for personal gain. Players should leave behind evidence, clues, calling cards or other means to help perpetuate RP and allow the victimized party to further the story.

The looting of houses abides by similar rules, of which are as follows:

• Individuals or groups can only take what they can carry from a house or claim once every 24 hours.
• The looting of decoration items (chairs, tables, etc.) is considered poor taste and will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
• Intentionally deleting items (pop-corning loot) is prohibited.
• Using pack-horses or other means (spells, leap-frogging, etc.) to help carry more items is prohibited.
• These rules apply to and includes player owned properties that are thought to be “abandoned”; a decay mechanic is in place that will result in the destruction of a house if it is truly abandoned.

The changes to shard mechanics are as follows:

A new mechanic has been added for staff members to be able to approve characters to acquire certain Character Traits (as seen in the Codex) that require GM authorization prior to purchase.
One new mechanic has been added to allow for players to acquire GM-Approved Character Traits in game.
The Home Invader ability has been removed from purchasable skill abilities. Any player characters whom may have had this ability prior to today have been automatically refunded the purchase cost to their Bonus Animus property.
The Home Invader Character Trait has now replaced the former ability; it is a GM-Approved Character Trait.
An Instructional Manual on Modern Locks may be purchased in Bright Lantern for one gold. Using this item when approved by staff will allow the user to acquire the Home Invader Character Trait.

Burglary/Looting/Rogue Changes – The Why

Home Invader was a high-level ability within Lockpicking skill which required 90 skill points and 33 Animus to acquire. The description of this ability was as follows:

Foregoing any sense of moral responsibility for your fellow survivor, you have trained your skills to allow for the picking of house doors, and subsequent invasion of said houses they would serve to protect. Allows the character to pick house doors.

Since March, we have gone through numerous complaints and tickets of excessive looting of houses, claims and rented properties. In most of these cases, the staff has found the actions taken by the offending parties to be above and beyond that of what should be considered reasonable and/or respectful to other players. Additionally, very few of the circumstances we have investigated involved thefts or burglaries that left evidence, calling cards or other means to perpetuate RP behind.

Due to the lack of roleplaying associated with these situations, coupled with the excessive looting situations and lack of providing any avenue of furthering the RP, the ability to lockpick house doors has been removed from a Skill Ability and changed into a GM-approved Character Trait.

Similarly, other complaints and observed situations have led to the expansion of the looting rules and the addition of new “house loot” rules.

Rogue Related Skills: Additional Changes

Additional new GM tools put in to place to better track stealing, lockpicking, and snooping.

Palm Item Skill Ability has been added. This is a Finesse-based skill and is within the 30 skill level range. The description is as follows:

Being fairly adept in the art of Finesse, you are able to covertly ‘palm’ an item, hiding it amongst your body for a later time.

[PalmItem allows you to securely hide a small item on your person (such as a key), of which is flagged as hidden and ‘blessed’ until toggled off.

This Skill Ability functions identically to Keistering and has been added to give more players the ability to use it.
Running while in stealth is no longer achievable without the Stealth Expertise Character Trait.

The Stealth Expertise ability has been removed from purchasable skill abilities. Any player characters whom may have had this ability prior to today have been automatically refunded the purchase cost to their Bonus Animus property.

The Stealth Expertise Character Trait has now replaced the former ability; it is now a Mortality-Based Character Trait.
The Master Of Shadows ability has been expanded to assume the function of the Stealth Expertise ability that provided feedback as to how many ‘steps’ were left of stealthing.

Rogue Related Skills: Additional Changes – The Why

The Palm Item skill ability was added to allow more player to benefit from the ability to hide/conceal their house keys on their person as Keistering has been used for in the past. This allows more players to use this ability as it is now in a skill that more players normally take while also fitting a different “RP” than keistering.

The above-listed stealth changes have been a long time coming. We have observed numerous, poor interactions with characters whom opt to use stealth and immediately start running away from conflict situations while hidden. These situations have led to the frustration and confusion of both player and staff alike. Stealth Expertise will remain in-game as a Character Trait of which can be acquired in a method that will be explained during Character Changes.

User avatar
Sic
Aeolian Staff
Posts: 368
Character: Isidor Abendroth

Re: Season Zero to Season One Development Journal

Post by Sic » August 5th, 2021, 1:31 am

Character Changes / PvM / PvE Changes (Part 1 of 2) – The What

Mortality – PvE

Mortality calculations have been revised for launch status. Mortality is now a scale, with gained points being a value upon a scale of Y to Z.
Gaining Mortality from creatures and PvE elements is now calculated as follows:
X % Chance, Y to Z (where Z is Deadly Chance [ Chance to Obtain Mortality] * 6)
For example, a creature with 45% Deadly Chance will now display as follows:
Deadly, 45% of 1 – 2 Points
Lethal creature designation is applied to creatures with a 75% or higher Deadly Chance, which raises the “low-end” of the scale from 1 to 2.
For example, a creature with 75% Deadly Chance will now display as follows:
Lethal, 75% chance of 2 – 4 Points

Mortality – Character

Incurring Mortality will now display a more prominent message and new popup.
Mortality now decays at a rate of 1 point per every 3 hours in-game, versus 5 hours in-game.
Mortality now decays twice as fast in Sanctuary areas (1.5 hours in-game per point, versus 3 hours).

Forsaken Status

Characters who accrue 13 or more points of Mortality at any time will be considered Forsaken. Forsaken characters can interact with special NPC entities, known as Forsaken Entities, around the map, with various outcomes.
Forsaken Status will display a new, customized Death Codex page to indicate to the player they are currently in Forsaken status.
Agent of Enlightenment Added: The Agent of Enlightenment will offer a specialized Character Trait for purchase when double-clicked. The Agent is a Forsaken Entity, and can only be seen by players whom have been knocked-out or whom are Forsaken Status, and can only be interacted with as Forsaken.
Mortal Blows (Trait) Agent Added to game world.


Object Property List – GUI Overhaul

All creatures will now inherit a new GUI “Single Click” feedback formula to indicate when an NPC is abnormal and unique in some way. Feedback is divided into the following categories:
Revised Deadly Chance Feedback (Display % Chance and Point Spread)
Notable Offensive Capabilities
Notable Defensive Capabilities
Notable Stats (two levels)
Notable Stat Resources (two levels)
Feedback will only be shown when certain notable thresholds are met script-side, and will not display on every creatures – this is a work in progress that may be adjusted up or down in the coming weeks.
Mysterious Creatures added: Mysterious creatures will not display any GUI feedback to the player, to include shrouding Deadly Chance information.



Character Changes / PvM / PvE Changes (Part 1 of 2) – The Why

This is part one of a two part patch. The second part of this patch will be coming later this week.

Mortality and Deadly Creatures have been a constantly evaluated portion of our shard’s DNA since it’s inception. The changes instituted to the acquisition of Mortality have been done for two reasons. First, we wish to reinforce the idea of some creatures being downright terrifying to fight, hence the addition of a Mortality scale and new Lethal designation. For the vast majority of monsters and NPCs, the current levels of Mortality potentially being gained from KOs is not changing much, as current levels hover around the 30 to 60% ranges. Incidentally, this change is more geared towards the future, where we can create new, more interesting NPCs that can potentially give good loot and rewards while presenting considerable risk, while not having to resort to making these creatures bloated “HP sponges”.

On the flip side of the Mortality argument, we also understand that Mortality has been relegated to somewhat of a “untreatable injury” status due to its expiration/decay time and lack of any additional mechanics to go along with it. First, we have lowered the overall decay time of Mortality by another 2 hours – bringing the launch decay time from 5 hours in-game time to 3 hours in-game time. Secondly, we have also implemented the ability for this decay to be cut in half if that time is spent in a Sanctuary area, bringing the total potential time a single point of Mortality can decay down to 1.5 hours. We feel that by upping the chances of incurring Mortality in the game world, things can be a little bit more dangerous while also lowering the long-term boring effects of Mortality decay.
A second addition to the Mortality system is that of the Forsaken system. This system is in its infancy, but already has content available to it. The Forsaken system allows us to implement content into the game that requires even a higher risk/reward element by requiring a player to reach and maintain a level of 13 Mortality before being able to access it. When a player reaches this milestone, they can then risk their lives scouring the lands for Forsaken Entities that can bestow upon them various bonuses, offer to them for purchase special Character Traits, and even offer up some forbidden knowledge.

The implementation of this system is two-fold. First, it allows us to provide more powerful content that would otherwise not be implemented as Skill Abilities or standard Magical Spells in an impartial way to the player base. Players who choose to risk the livelihood of their characters to reach Forsaken status and then find and utilize Forsaken Entities run the risk of perma-death. Additionally, many of the Character Traits acquired through this means, while powerful, can only be utilized when the player has a given Mortality value active as well. Secondly, the addition of content available to players on the more extreme side of the Mortality system itself allows for content to be acquired and utilized even in an otherwise boring and dangerous character status – for instance, if your character ends up acquiring a large amount of Mortality from a single event or hunt, you can opt to roll the dice a little bit more and gain access to the Forsaken system.

The last addition with this pre-launch patch is that of GUI feedback on mobs. This feedback has been added to help players identify abnormal strengths and weaknesses of NPCs going forward into launch. The changes introduce to the Combat and Magic systems have allowed us to create new and interesting challenges for players post-launch that will require different thinking and tactics to complete. For instance, a portion of a dungeon may be filled with creatures impervious to all forms of physical damage, requiring the help of a mage, while another room may have to be cleared solely by warriors and fighters delivering Blunt damage. For our team to be able to utilize this sort of PvE building without creating a plethora of aggravating and annoying trial and error scenarios, the addition of single-click feedback as been added to mobiles in preparation for launch. Much like an ARPG, these tooltips and hints also assist new players in determining what targets may be suitable to engage versus which ones to avoid.

User avatar
Sic
Aeolian Staff
Posts: 368
Character: Isidor Abendroth

Re: Season Zero to Season One Development Journal

Post by Sic » August 11th, 2021, 10:50 pm

Character Changes / PvM / PvE Changes (Part 2 of 2) – The What and Why

Part two of the PvE / Status cleanup patch for pre-launch includes considerations for both PvM and PvP situations we have been tracking, documenting and handling ticket concerns since launch. One of our earliest questions to our pre-launch Q and A that had been submitted was concerning “wait-out” time for PvP Knockouts and the like – ie, if we would be enforcing rules concerning players immediately returning “to the fight” after being bested by an opponent in PvP. At the time, our response was to let things work themselves out organically and trust in the playerbase to police itself. In the time since then, we have fielded a lot of tickets concerning etiquette after being knocked out, especially that of either immediately getting up and fighting again, or using other means and methods to evade and escape an otherwise valid RP situation.

The second part of this patch addresses these concerns by implementing the new Defeated Debuff status on players who experience a KO. We have iterated on our KO system since launch already, including things such as disallowing certain rogue skills immediately after a KO, disallowing the use of sprint, and other situational scenarios that we addressed through complaints from other players. The Defeated status incorporates these iterations and expands upon them to help foster an environment that supports better PvP etiquette and roleplaying, while also refining our PvM penalties for being KOed. The Defeated status places more significance to KOing in game, forcing players to play more strategically and incorporate better tactics both in solo and group play. It additionally serves to address numerous PvP related issues we have witnessed and investigated since launch.

Mortality and PD Infliction

We continue to constantly evaluate the status of Mortality, PVP and PD implementations within Requiem. Comparatively speaking with Act V, we have scaled back PvP-PD penalties for the “killing” party substantially in VI. For launch preparations we have increased the Act VI Mortality Penalty for inflicting PVP-PDs on other player characters from 1 point of Mortality to a random value of between 3 - 5 points. This change was driven mostly by player feedback from players inflicting PDs, citing that the prior value felt very unsubstantial.

Grit Changes

Grit has received some launch changes to make it more critical to the ins and outs of normal combat consideration and to pave the way for additional and new mechanics involving the management of this stat. Additionally, the next launch patch involving Crafting updates will introduce Grit recovery items available to be used outside of Sanctuary areas, thus giving a secondary method in which players may maintain this stat.

Minimum levels of Grit (that is, the low value you retain at all times) will now be calculated at a rate of Anatomy Skill / 10 instead of Anatomy Skill / 5. This change reduces the maximum potential of “No Grit” emergency heals from 24 Hit Points to 12 Hit Points at 120 Skill Value. Healing yourself or others at “Emergency Grit” levels will now reduce Stamina by 50% of its current value.

Regeneration of Grit within Sanctuary Zones will now regenerate 50% of maximum Grit every ten minutes, down from a static number of 2000, with this value being halved if wearing armor (relatively the same, old value 500).
Defeated Status

The defeated status debuff (AKA Winded Status) is now applied to all players in the event of a KO. While in the Winded status, a gump will be presented in the upper left hand corner of your play window, your character will acquire “blue” colored notoriety, and a single-click GUI element will be added under your name on single-click status. The debuff status will last for either three minutes or six minutes, dependent upon the following factors:

If the KO was at the hands of NPCs only, Winded lasts three minutes.
If the KO was at the hands of solely a player, and the player is not part of the victims party, Winded lasts six minutes.
If the KO was at the hands of a mix of players and NPCs, and if the victim took the majority of it’s KO inducing damage from a player not in their party, Winded lasts six minutes.

Current statistical debuffs and infusion loss remain untouched. When the Defeated Debuff is added, the following effects occur:

- Loss of 10-15% of Grit
- Majority of all Rogue skills & abilities locked-out
- Spellcasting lock-out
- Meditation lock-out
- Special Weapon Moves lock-out
- Potions/Syringe/Nets lock-out
- Deal 50% reduced damage
- Receive 50% more damage from melee and spellcasting sources

Rogue Skills/Abilities Lockout

Many of our complaints concerning immediate post-PvP actions took the form of rogue skills. These included individuals immediately hiding/stealthing away from a PvP situation, using stealing or lockpicking, and otherwise using a mechanical means to ignore and evade a roleplaying situation. The majority of this was addressed in prior patches that locked these abilities out for up to two minutes after KO. These existing throttle mechanics have simply been moved to the Winded status now for more visibility and awareness versus being on their own separate cooldown timers.

Spellcasting/Magic Skills

In line with the rogue lockouts, magic lockouts have been added to the Debuff status as part of launch preparations. During Beta, one of the larger points of frustration from PvP encounters with spellcasters have been their use of utility spells to escape roleplay situations in ways that other characters could not in any conceivable way. While some would argue that spellcasters inherently are more at risk at losing their characters in a PvP situation and thus deserve the upper hand in terms of escaping conflict, the uncertainty of players engaged in PvP RP scenarios over if/when a spellcaster will simply “exit stage left” from a KO situation has resulted in observable escalations of post-KO hostilities and actions taken on both fronts, up to and including situations where PD attempts have been made in lieu of other avenues of RP. Therefore, to promote equity and fairness among all players, magic lockouts have been incorporated into post-KO recovery times. Additional framework has been added with this change to further evaluate it in the coming weeks that will allow us to potentially “white list” certain spells that would be practical and applicable to be allowed for use during Winded status. At this time, however, all spells are included in the lockout/throttle.

Combat Related Lockouts

In line with the rest of the lockouts, we have observed KO situations in PVP encounters where individuals have been bested and have immediately returned to the fight. In situations such as this, especially when dealing with the possibilities of PD, players on the receiving end of a player’s instant-recovery-retribution attack have expressed feelings of disappointment – the extent of regretting not further incapacitating their prior victim with a PD themselves.

In line with rogue and magic lockouts,combat related lockouts and debuffs have now been added as part of the Winded status as to help avoid the sorts of situations described above, while also helping to instill more consideration to Knock Outs when in PvM: these debuffs help to encourage good RP after PvM KO situations, helping to reinforce the concept of your character being knocked unconscious. Special Weapon Moves have been added to the Winded lockout, as well as a reduction in potential damage output along with an increase in damage received.

Item lockouts

Last on the list is item lockouts while in the Winded status. In line with the above changes, this should come as no surprise as some items within the game world can cause significant interruptions to other characters, even at the hands of a defeated “out of the fight” character. Nets, syringes, bombs and potions are incorporated into the new defeated status debuff and are summarily locked out as well while in Winded status.

Future Iterations

Future additions to this system will include the following:

- Dueling ability, which allows two characters to duel without experiencing Defeated status
- Re-engineering of “control” items that take advantage of Defeated status (ropes, masks, etc.) for PvP situations

User avatar
Sic
Aeolian Staff
Posts: 368
Character: Isidor Abendroth

Re: Season Zero to Season One Development Journal

Post by Sic » August 18th, 2021, 1:58 pm

Magic and Arcane Review - Part One of Three

Introduction

One of the larger concerns of our playerbase as directed to us in numerous reports, complaints and feedback sources is that of the Requiem Magic System. Magic in Requiem is undoubtedly one of the most customized and heavily iterated solutions to Magic and the Arcane that has graced the RP circuit of UO shards. Clocking in with nearly three hundred spells, numerous customized progression systems, and over a half-dozen related skills, we have come a far way from Corp Por and Kal Vas Flam. With such an ambitious, expansive and deep system, however, comes a lot of baggage: playtesting, balancing, iterating and bug fixing are part of any addition to this project, but Magic is one that is especially difficult to “get right”. Regardless, we acknowledge that Magic has been a sore spot for the prelude, and thusly have spent the past few months working on this total review to bring it more in line with our core values of design.

We have evaluated the system from three major points of view for this very large and all-encompassing review. First and foremost, we have documented and compiled the feedback that our prelude players have given us in regards to how interactions with Mages felt as someone on the mundane side of things (spoiler alert: they weren’t enjoyable). Secondly, we spent a lot of time simply observing the behavior of our Mage players and how they used their characters and to what effect - through many of these observations, we found mechanics that were far overtuned, not working as intended, or simply overpowered beyond belief as comparatively speaking with other mechanics. Last, we wanted to look at Magic with a fresh pair of eyes and compare it to other mechanics on the shard, ensuring that it didn’t outpace mundane counterparts in utility, and at least had a semblance of balance in other facets.

As we all know, magic and the Arcane in Requiem’s lore and story is considered very powerful - described essentially as the literal building-blocks of creation itself. It should come as no surprise that this inspiration transfers over to our in-game design. Historically speaking, this has led to mechanics often being on the higher end of our spectrum of balance versus starting low and working upwards - thus resulting in a power curve that resulted in some pretty powerful results. This great power, of course, has it’s caveats; mainly in the form of two main conceptual designs we have striven to bring to life in Requiem.

The pursuit of Magic within the confines of the game world is conceptually designed to draw parallels to that of how Magic is written about in our lore and game-world. Magic is a shunned, often misunderstood power that requires sacrifice, investment and resolute dedication to master, lest the aspirant Mage fall victim to the masses who look upon their art as wicked and evil. This lore concept, in turn, translates into the mechanical evolution of a character mage; starting weak and getting progressively stronger as they unlock more power words, mantras and progress through the Magery system. This journey from fledgling to master represents our second conceptual design - Mages have been pitched, time and time again, as “glass cannons”, with a limited pool of power that, once gone, leaves the Mage practically defenseless. By the end of the arduous journey a player character takes during their journey down the path of the Arcane, a Mage develops into a veritable powerhouse that, conceptually, if caught unaware or with a single misstep, may be dispatched fairly easily. This concept is important to the Magic system as it relates to the shard and playerbase as a whole - while Mages may be intended to be strong, they also require drawbacks and weaknesses to help keep the balance; equity amongst systems, power and utility is imperative when we, by design, do not seek to introduce equality between a Magic and their mundane counterparts.

In Act VI, we believe that we have met the mark with one of these concepts, and have missed it rather completely with the other. Progression through the magic system for Act VI has been made more accessible through the addition of new mechanics such as Dusty Tomes, yet a player character still has a lot of work to do to move from fledgling caster to apprentice Resolvist. The difficulty and investment required to be a decent mage is considerable, and far more than a warrior or archer for instance. In this specific case, we feel fairly good where the “path to Magedom” leads and how many twists and turns it takes to get to the end of it.

As for our second concept - the idea of Mages being glass cannons - was not realized by our initial launch systems. While we may have gotten the “cannon” part of “glass cannon” right, Mages in Prelude have shown us many glaring issues with not only individual accounts of spells and combos of them, but the core of the system as well - often times leading to the absence of the “glass” prefix. In numerous instances in prelude, Mage survivability has been very overtuned. These instances of survivability and utility were only exacerbated by the Mage’s obscene levels of potential DPS - as many say, the best defense is a good offense, and often times the Mage’s defenses weren’t even coming into play due to their offensive capabilities. And in the rare instances that a Mage was able to be dispatched in PvP instances, we found that the sheer amount of utility available to the Mage allowed them simply to vanish from the RP situation, much to the utter frustration of others.

With this all said, the staff of Requiem understand that there've been a lot of problems in the past with Magery and it remains a part of the project that elicits many passionate feelings. With perma-death and potentially hundreds of hours of character development on the line for people involved in the never-ending strife of Hunter vs Witchkin, these passionate feelings can oftentimes lead to negativity, cynicism and anger. In this act, and specifically over the past three months, we’ve taken an assertive effort during the Prelude to fix the issues and bring Magery in line with the initial design we had envisioned for it before launch. We had recognized very, very early in our evaluation of the Beta that Magic was not in a state we were comfortable with. From it’s damage, to its utility, to its survivability, Magic was over-tuned to the point of being greatly imbalanced even when accounting for equity among systems. In keeping with transparency and honest communication with our playerbase, Prelude/Beta has lasted a lot longer than it was intended to so that we could take our time in re-evaluating Magic and it’s accompanying sub-systems so that they would more closely align with our intended design concepts.

With all that said, we’d like to start sharing these sweeping changes with the player base at large in so that everyone can begin referencing our changes with Magic and its related subsystems. Summarily, Part One of this three part review has focused on three major mechanical design concepts: utility, survivability, and damage. These three concepts have been reviewed with the mundane professions and combat equivalents in mind. In almost every case of evaluating a Magic skill’s “meta”, we've removed instances where a mage spell was equal to or better than something that has its own skill tree (poisons, potions, skill buffs, etc). In the case of combat, we've kept mundane equivalents in mind when approaching damage, cast times, and mana cost. And as for survivability, we have introduced many new mechanical changes that help even the playing field when it comes to implementing weaknesses and handicaps to Mages in order to make RP and PVP less frustrating overall.

Utility

As stated above, a major issue we addressed with this review was the sheer amount of utility available to a mage. Things like teleporting around will always be an available option to mages that don’t have a direct mundane equivalent, but it is unfair and unintended for mages to be the best in all aspects of the mechanical portion of the game; we envision them to be a jack-of-all-trades but master of none when it comes to anything outside of damage. As part of this review, the development team has gone through all of the utility spells (spells doing effects other than damage) to bring them in line with their mundane counterparts. Our goal in the review was to have mundane methods be twice as strong as what is available to mages - i.e., spells are only 50% effective as their mundane counterparts.

Some of the most obvious and immediately identifiable of these changes comes in the form of nerfs to buff duration and potency, both of which have been reduced across the board. Additionally, the removal of instances of applying higher-tier poisons for free (as opposed to the mundane equivalent of crafting them) is another change in this category. Furthermore, we have removed instances of mages being able to summon higher-tier craftables other players have to craft (cureables, bombs, etc).

Crowd Control, or “CC”, is another issue we addressed. As part of our initial Act VI launch additions, a “root immunity” mechanic was added to all CC related instances as part of addressing historical problems with “chain-CC”. We have further evaluated the micro of Magic to address more specific problems of CC as it relates to removing player agency and fun. The paralyze effects instituted by various spells have been brought down to a range of between six to ten seconds on average, down from 30 seconds, 1 minute, and even permanent in some cases. Lesser forms of CC were brought down from an average of 12 seconds to 4-6 seconds depending on the spell. Mana cost for crowd control also went up across the board. As to give back more player agency in PvP situations, all paralyze durations can be lowered by having invested into the Arcane Resist skill, reducing these durations by up to 60%. Lastly, as part of quality control, we have gone through all CC related spells to ensure that they are properly inheriting and applying the Act VI “root immunity” mechanic.


Survivability


Survivability, our second concept and focus of re-design, was considered our second most important issue of prelude. As we have stated above, when the staff conceptualizes a Mage, the last thing on their list of defining qualities is that of “tank”. As part of the generally agreed upon “rules” of Magic development, Mages are entitled to enjoying good damage and a variety of utility at the explicit expense of being a concept that can be easily and quickly dispatched if caught unprepared or out maneuvered. Unfortunately, due to many spells and interconnecting mechanics of Act VI, this expense was hardly realized.

The teleport spell is one of the most visible examples of this imbalance before our review addressed it, allowing for a mage to utilize it in such a way that resulted in a completely imbalanced and unfun experience. Major nerfs to the spell havd summarily been introduced for this review, such as increasing the mana cost of the spell, and adding a 20-second cooldown timer. Now, using Teleport will also place [Sprint on cooldown (20 seconds), and using [Sprint will lock out teleport for 20 seconds upon completion of sprint. Teleport can no longer be casted while actively sprinting.

Teleport, of course, is only one example of our efforts in reducing the obvious superiority Mages enjoyed in terms of general survivability. As part of this review, we’ve removed or changed nearly all spells that turn the user invisible, removed or nerfed spells that gave resists, removed spells that gave the user skills such as Tactics, and have introduced a plethora of other changes that allowed for Mages to be simply too hard to pin down and kill in many PvP situations. While Mages still have some tricks up their sleeves, the most egregious of these imbalances that led to outright frustration of other players have been addressed and rectified moving forward for launch.

Spell Damage

The third concept of re-design we have addressed in this review is that of Magic damage. It is no surprise that we have considered this concept as the most critical of issues that required our attention. Plainly put, Mages in Prelude were doing too much damage. While in some cases they continue to exceed the damage output we ultimately want from the system, the damage potentially of magic has gone down dramatically. Overall, our estimates place Magic as a whole in doing about 50% less damage as it did on launch. This is more evident in what we have referred to as “spell outliers”, spells in which were badly coded or working improperly, which in some cases have been reduced by up to 90% of their prior effectiveness.

We’ve also increased the mana cost across the board for most spells. The development team along with several player testers have gone through spell by spell and brought them closer in line with what we envisioned for the system. With nearly 300 spells in circulation, the system is still not perfect and always has room for improvement, but from our perspective, it has improved dramatically.

Mana changes and individual spell reviews were furthermore combined with sweeping system changes to what we refer to as the “core” of our system. A new damage formula has been implemented to Magic on a global scale to better calculate damage, along with introducing longer cast times for heavier hitting spells. The design concept of these changes in particular hope to achieve the idea that Mages will have to remain stationary and vulnerable if they wish to do large bursts of damage, whereas before, this condition sometimes did not exist.


The default damages listed below help to illustrate these new changes to our damage calculations. The cast times listed are for when the mage has exactly that much required skill. For example Tsunami cast time is calculated with a mage that has 80 INT. The required Skill is also the Required Int.

unnamed.png
unnamed.png (85 KiB) Viewed 6472 times

The implementation of this new global damage formula has allowed us to reign in our nearly 300 spells under a singular umbrella of design versus having 300 separate and individual calculations to account for. Moving forward, this further allows us to continually and more easily evaluate damage outputs of the system, making changes where we may need with more efficiency and transparency.

Damage - Details

Further helping to optimize our spell engine, we have re-coded much of the internal functions of core in order for us to better and more cleanly calculate bonuses to spell damage in a way that is more obvious and less obfuscated. All bonuses to spell damage are now calculated into a singular variable, known as Spell Damage Increase (or SDI). SDI has existed prior to this change, but has now been expanded to account for all sources of bonuses to spell damage.

More specifically, we have also introduced the following intricate changes to our damage calculations as they relate to spells:

The global formula for calculating spell damage is as follows:

Damage = ((RequiredMana * ((-0.01 * RequiredMana) + 2)) + (RequiredSkill / 10)) * ratio;

This Rolled Damage number is then randomized by a dice roll:

(Rolled Damage - 10%) + random 0-10%
Rolling 10 damage would be randomized to 9-10
Rolling 23 damage would be randomized to 21-23
Rolling 81 damage would be randomized to 73-81
Rolling 100 damage would be randomized to 91-100
etc


Each Arcana has been tweaked to allow for different default spell damage and healing amounts, this includes spell rarity having different levels of damage.

The damage bonuses for spell rarity are as follows:

Low Rarity Recipe bonus = 0
Medium Rarity Recipe ratio = 10
High Rarity Recipe ratio = 25
Artifact Rarity Recipe = ratio 40 (no artifact spells are available to players currently)

SDI bonus (global capped at 50)
Yelling/Whispering Bonus (added into SDI, global capped at 50)
Rarity Bonus (added into SDI, global capped at 50)
Arcane Empowerment (added into SDI, global capped at 50)
SDI cap of 50 checked
Arcane Linguistics BonusDamage
INT BonusDamage
Reaper Form BonusDamage
BonusDamage scaler
Arcane Incantation scaler


In the case of AOE damage, the amount of damage done for more than 2(or 3) targets is divided up by the number of targets.

In the case of Damage-Over-Time effects “DOT” the damage is divided by the number of ticks.

The remaining damage is then lowered by the targets resisting effects (in the case of Medium(10%) and High(30%) rarity spells, some of the damage bypasses this by Spell penetration)

INT Every 10 int is 1.5 % damage reduction
Arcane Resist: Every 4 skill is 1 % damage reduction

The damage is then reduced by the targets Armor resist values.

By default Divine, Archmagic and General Arcana spells do Energy Damage.

By default Paganism and Diabolism spells do Occult Damage.

Spellbooks can modify the damage type to be more Corporeal Damage.

To help walk through these changes, we have also implemented debug information to the “combat messages” debug system. [combatmessages will now toggle on the details of spell damage line by line so players and staff can spot problems and understand it better.

Damage - Low Tier Spells & “Fast Casting”

One of the glaring flaws we observed during our evaluation of the magic system during Prelude was the efficiency of lower-tier fast casting spells when compared to the higher-end spells. In many cases, the repeated casting of low-tier, low mana cost spells far surpassed the potential DPS of longer, more mana intensive spells.

With the implementation of the new damage formula listed above, this problem is now easier for our development team to address, through both decreasing the efficiency in fast casting spells as well as increasing the value of higher-end spells. The newly added spell penetration mechanic offers more function to the higher-end spells, making them more appealing to mages. The overall concept behind these changes are that mages will have a larger spectrum of “risk vs. reward” in that higher-tier spells will be more rewarding, but more dangerous, whereas the relative utility and safety of “machine-gunning” low tier spells are less effective.

Damage - Auras

Auras have gotten a lot of negative feedback from both players and staff alike during prelude. Conceptually speaking, Auras as a game mechanic are not something that the majority of our playerbase has expressed as liking. Numerous complaints concerning the agency that Auras remove from players were reviewed by our team, citing that counter-play to these spells were oftentimes too difficult, unfair, and nearly always unfun.

There were many mechanical problems at launch with Auras as well, ranging from having far too great DPS potential, to being too mana efficient, and in some cases, being stackable with other effects to create damage potentials far outside our intended ranges. Some Auras were so imbalanced prior to this review that on the high end, some were doing an average of 23 DPS (15-30 damage a tick at 1 tick per second) for a fully automated, mana efficient method of damage.

Aura damage, on average, is now normalized to 3-6 damage a tick, ticking once every 2 seconds, for a new average of 2.25 DPS, a decrease of approximately 168%. Furthermore, we’ve removed the ability to use auras while stealthed, changed them so they drain mana regardless of if a target is present for it to damage, removed a Mage’s ability to use multiple auras at the same time, and lastly added a 20-second duration so players can no longer keep it running for extended periods of time and must stop to recast it.

Auras now are meant to be a small AOE damage bonus to supplement a Mage’s normal spellcasting, not the end-all-be-all spell for mages to use. We will continue to tweak and address auras until they are in a place we feel comfortable with, but rest assured, the significant DPS of Auras are no longer a mechanic in Requiem.

User avatar
Sic
Aeolian Staff
Posts: 368
Character: Isidor Abendroth

Re: Season Zero to Season One Development Journal

Post by Sic » August 18th, 2021, 2:07 pm

Spell Damage Ref Image - Full Size
Capture.JPG
Capture.JPG (125.41 KiB) Viewed 6457 times

Post Reply