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[2018 Q2] Small Race Discussion

 
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Olyn
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Joined: 23 Jul 2008
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Location: Pennsylvania

PostPosted: Wed Jun 20, 2018 1:06 pm    Post subject: [2018 Q2] Small Race Discussion

Players, we'd like a little more input before we move forward with the Q2 balance patch. It looks like there will be some extra attention paid to the small-sized races this time around, so please sound off if you'd like your voice heard on this. I'll add my own thoughts on these races in a separate post.


Gnome

Halfling

Quasit

Pixie


Last edited by Olyn on Mon Jul 01, 2019 4:41 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Olyn
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 20, 2018 1:12 pm    Post subject:

These are my personal thoughts and are not necessarily consistent with other imms' views or the upcoming patch.



Gnome - size small - I like where gnome is at. This is my benchmark small race.

Halfling - size small - We've discussed all sorts of stuff for halfling, including restoring their magic resistance and various legacies. I'd like to see how we feel about this.

Quasit - size small - We talked about a lot of stuff here, too. I'd like to move forward with the slight holy vuln here and introduce the ability for quasits to choose one element from a short list at creation to resist. The lore and backend coding for this has already been completed and uses a pretty cool mechanic if we decide to use it. Another thing we could consider with quasit is to make them size tiny instead of size small and expand what being "tiny" means. There was plenty of other ideas and discussion on quasit as well.

Pixie - size tiny - To me, this feels like the weakest race in the game (by far). I would never even consider making one unless I was doing a quirky herald or something. I think we should lessen their iron vuln, but that's not enough to make them comparable to other races.

Small races in general - there was also discussion about weight of worn items be altered by some factor. That might end up getting complicated for players as to why they're overburdened sometimes, but we could probably make it work. Another option for that, which I actually forgot about until reading Ready Player One, is that magic items in d&d always conform to their owner's size. We could do something with that to alter or strip weight of items flagged as "magic". We need to audit eq flags anyway now that fireforge and sharding is becoming more common.
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Nycticora



Joined: 09 Feb 2013
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 20, 2018 8:52 pm    Post subject:

I think Pixie feels pretty good. I'm OK with reducing the iron vuln to weak if it's medium right now.

I think Quasit does not feel like it's small enough, and needs a change made to make the player feel like the character is small. My recommendation is to reduce carried weight of all worn equipment for all characters by 50%, and also reduce the weight carryable by Quasits by 50% outright. I also think this would be an appropriate nerf to Quasit that requires no other nerf

I think adding a weak holy vuln and a weak resist to a chosen element is a good change that would make Quasit feel more like they should to play
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Davairus
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 20, 2018 11:14 pm    Post subject:

Most common complaint I've heard about playing small races was the wield weight limit
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Vertas



Joined: 17 Jan 2004
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Location: Ewa Beach, HI

PostPosted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 2:06 am    Post subject:

I’ll weigh in on Halfling because I’ve played with them quite a bit. So I had a halfling warrior Warlord at the start of the combat module change. It happened after I was inducted but before I hit fifty and there was a significantly noticeable change on what mobs I could tank before and after the change. My record for that character is somehow no longer available via the record command, even though I have an older warlord still on that list, but it would be interesting to see if there was a difference in trends on win/loss ratio.

I rolled another halfling warrior warlord after taking a couple year hiatus due to deployments and changes in responsibility at work and became so frustrated I just stopped playing him.

Here are my thoughts:
The weight limit was annoying, challenging, but I had fun finding alternate solutions. There are ways around this. To be honest I don’t think you should change this.

Training is a bitch. The intelligence and wisdom are relatively low considering the low strength and con.

The bash vuln I remember being a bit much, but makes sense. I recall there being a change between the two characters with lag, to make it impossible to just chain bash/trip. I felt like I saw differences in the lag I was giving, but not in the lag I was receiving. I would be more than happy to roll one in a couple months when I’m home and less busy and provide logs for examination if necessary. I realize this could be bias on my part, but the other part of me suspects something is up.

The warrior favored weapons are shit. Overhead crush is the skill for two-handed weapons and it is strength based (I’m guessing, again, you have access to the source code, whereas honestly I have limited experience). Exotic weapons are not good for parry on a race that already has terrible parry. There is also little to no benefit on the having favored weapons as exotic since the bonuses on the best items are as good as or better than the bonus provided at level fifty.

Any legacies that you come up with you have to be really careful about. The onset that exist usually are there to help the gauntlet to fifty (ie fire giant rage never die legacy, elf warrior two swords legacy, etc). They really are only useful pre-pinnacle, and we want to encourage people to keep the characters that they have to improve rp and whatnot (and yes I know, I haven’t been on in a while, I’ve been gone for work cut me some slack).

The magic resistance could be beneficial, but then again, my problem isn’t fighting against mage classes, it is impossible for a halfling warrior to stand toe to toe with an evenly geared other race warrior. Most warrior skills are strength based, and don’t get me wrong, it makes sense. It’s just that the low strength is literally what kills the halfling warrior. There should be a way to reward superior tactics without making an easy kill button, ie having races with higher dexterity use dexterity instead of strength like the current trend for D&D (or maybe that’s not eh case anymore, apparently there’s like an eighth edition right now or something.)

I’m not saying I have the solutions, merely stating my mind. If I’m flat out wrong, also please let me know. Apparently that’s a thing that happens every now and then.
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Olyn
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 12:02 pm    Post subject:

After reading Vertas's post, it sounds like halfling warrior could use a legacy that improves their hobble while using an exotic weapon.
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Davairus
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Joined: 16 Jan 2004
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 8:37 pm    Post subject:

We talked about moving lucky strike from half-elf to halfling warriors. The hobble improvement seems good. Maybe a kneecap thing

Also another reminder is for halfing we said we were going to do 2 int 1 wis . If we want to do -1 dex in exchange for +1 str that means we can give pixie a dex point to make them the most dextrous race instead of it being halfling. Its probably a better thematic fit
Let me know if the hobble legacy still seems good with a 18 str
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Olyn
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 9:06 pm    Post subject:

I'd still like to do a hobble-related legacy for halfling with exotic because we've given double incentive to use exotics (favoured weapon bonus and dex-based hitroll) , but those are basically negated by exotics being fairly crappy at parry and every opponent being proficient with it to aid in parrying their attacks.

The legacy could be as simple as an increased bonus to land superior style hobble with exotic weapons or a free "second chance" hobble on a miss like the kneecap thing you mentioned.

18 str 24 dex for halfling is interesting. I like it.
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Vertas



Joined: 17 Jan 2004
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 10:27 pm    Post subject:

I actually really like those ideas.
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Olyn
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 10:55 pm    Post subject:

Lucky strike also feels like a good fit for halfling warrior. lore-wise If we go that route, that would open up room for one half-elf warrior legacy that either stops working at 50 or only works against higher level opponents.
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Mr. Forgotten



Joined: 18 Aug 2005
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 22, 2018 1:08 am    Post subject:

You could have exotic weapons be an actual weapon to learn, too. Everyone can learn it, but you could opt out of putting practices into it?
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Vertas



Joined: 17 Jan 2004
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Location: Ewa Beach, HI

PostPosted: Fri Jun 22, 2018 1:57 am    Post subject:

Honestly exotic feels like it should be either a race thing or a hometown thing. It’s not really exotic if everyone can learn it is it.
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Andrael



Joined: 15 Jan 2013
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 22, 2018 3:24 am    Post subject:

don't halflings and necromancers use exotics better than everyone else? Why not make it to where they get the 100% bonus while everyone else has a 90%, sort of like being drunk.
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Stiehl26



Joined: 16 Jan 2004
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 22, 2018 1:51 pm    Post subject:

Wait, what? Where does it say they use exotic weapons better?
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Olyn
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 22, 2018 3:38 pm    Post subject:

Exotic proficiency increases with level. Halfling and necromancer are better with exotic than others beginning at level 1 (75%), but everyone is equivalent to 100% skill mastery around lvl 35.

Try to keep this thread on-topic for small races. We'll open up a Q3 discussion thread for new ideas like changes to exotic weapons shortly after the Q2 patch launches.
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Davairus
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 22, 2018 9:29 pm    Post subject:

Another thing to point out is defensive benefits of wis and int enjoyed by gnomes along with tons of hp makes them meaty. You quickly realize that when youre playing a gnome invoker. just because that low dex isnt great for your gnome warrior doesnt mean that your gnome invoker isnt well above and beyond what most people would call "perfectly fine" for an invoker. They have every possible thing an invoker could ask for to succeed already. Racial legacies directed at gnome rogues (bard/thief) make sense. Directed at gnome invoker? Pure idiocy. I think we need to minimize the stat changes and not just throw racial legacies at everything. the proposed stats change to halfling also helps halfling healer a lot so we dont really need to also racial legacy that combo. Sometimes we should go to the forums and say hey guys, you know this combo is sleeping op right? And let the players try it. instead of trying to do that with code changes. I dont know if halfling thief will ever need a racial legacy. Also, some of these races have buffs already , for example, halfling thief has blackjack buffs, so it makes sense to me to gather the facts about all that and just introduce these things properly as racial legacies so that people know these bonuses already exist, instead of making more buffs to things that are maybe just misunderstood at the moment?
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BlackWidow



Joined: 24 Apr 2014
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:28 am    Post subject:

Not played gnomes seriously, and quasits and pixies came out after my long absence... But halflings have great dodging potential due to their dexterity (must have dodge and must maintain combat superiority however). Halfling thieves are probably the best thieves if you're not playing an evil thief. The ranger probably has one of the best dirt kicks in the game (though the low strength hurts them). Two practice sessions to get 75% mastery is the same as a storm giant, which means somewhere between mediocre and average use of practice sessions.

I am not sure that adding magic resistance to a halfling is the right option. Don't they already have negative and maledictive resistance?
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Ergorion



Joined: 16 Mar 2007
Posts: 2156

PostPosted: Sun Jun 24, 2018 3:50 pm    Post subject:

I would like to re-iterate the lag issue that I think it was Vertas mentioned earlier. I would def look into the large/massive bash lags against small and tiny opponents because eating 4 to 6 rounds of lag is a huge game changer when two or three bashes are chained together.
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