A Request

Ikchor

Apologies for the clickbait-y title, I just didn't know what else to put this as and I figured a blunt title was fitting.



I want to start off by saying: yes, hindsight is 20/20 and I wish that I had thought to ask for this before this most recent classlead round. Better late than never though, right?


Since Starmourn is in beta and we have been half-jokingly referred to as beta testers in the past, I have a fairly large request: Please show us the math for damage, and how the math works for all the skills. On top of this, allowing us to freely swap classes and freely change stat allocations for a fixed period of time again so we can help fix other classes that may be lacking in numbers.

I do not presume to know what decisions are being made way (WAY) above my head as a player but if the joke is only half true that we are all beta testers and we are to actively test out, report bugs, and otherwise help unbreak/break parts of this game. That means - to me anyway - it's also half-true.
So some additional transparency would be helpful, I do not mean transparency as in 'What are our devs doing this week?', as that is already documented for us - thank you for that! - instead I mean the kind of transparency you get from knowing the nuts and bolts, x and y values of a profession's skills and how the stats work and work with it.

This started with a bit of the discussion in the Scoundrel channel on Discord revolving around increasing our normal damage output by a certain percentage, and it got me thinking at the time "Increase damage by a percentage, but of what and where in the formula? We don't know the math here, there might be something we're missing or we could inadvertently shoot ourselves in the foot and have it applied in the wrong place."
No pun intended. I didn't bring it up at the time because I was doing something else. Hindsight.

We already know how some of it works because that's been laid out in help files and just as a result of playing for so long some of it is known, such as one point of lifeforce (prior to the 2:1 threshold) translating to an increase of five hitpoints. However, beyond this, some of that information has been lost to us when a significant chunk of our PVP players shuffled off to other games to scratch their PVP itch.

Removing the ambiguity and the obscurity in this would go a long way to ending some old speculation, questions and some general confusion about our skills. Which would lead to a better grasp of what our skills should/could do in combat, and end the constant "This skill FEELS like its coming up short, but I can't confirm it" feeling and maybe give some people the confidence to go "Yeah, I'll fight. I get how my skills work numbers-wise, and I know why I could die."

To reiterate, free class swaps and stat resets for a period of time to see what happened to the other classes firsthand, and please show us the math going on under the hood so we can make better informed classleads in the future. I understand the second part is a fairly large ask as MUDs jealously guard their math for this, but the idea of having us suggest changes to classes while being in the dark about the real numbers behind them is a bit ... counter-intuitive?

Anyone else have anything to say about this?

Steve

Personally, I'm at the max I can contribute to the game's combat. I need to play other classes to learn what I would need to provide better feedback. As a tester, I'd welcome the class swap option (plus stat swaps), even if I don't want to play anything other than scoundrel from a player/RPer perspective. However, I'm not going to swap around knowing that I lose resources, which will take me more time investment to reacquire.

Seeing math would help with testing by saving us a lot of time as testers. And, frankly, I think there's some urgency for timely feedback on combat.

Removing the barrier from learning how other classes work and removing the guesswork from numbers feedback for SM may be the fastest way to firm up the game's combat foundation.

Eukelade

I'm 100% not opposed to holding a temporary "free swap" week or something of that nature, especially if you guys think it would assist you in giving us clear feedback (and maybe have some fun killing each other in the process?). I think this would be fairly simple to do, and it sounds like a good idea to me. I'll talk to the team about the ins and outs of turning it on and when the best time to do so would be.

Revealing math behind attacks, etc, is another story - it would be very difficult to reveal that information to players in a clear and easily understood way, and would require a lot of granularity in setting up visible debugs, etc - so simply from a logistical perspective that would potentially consume a lot of dev time. Something else to discuss.

Thanks for bringing it up!

Steve

Eukelade said:

I'm 100% not opposed to holding a temporary "free swap" week or something of that nature, especially if you guys think it would assist you in giving us clear feedback (and maybe have some fun killing each other in the process?). I think this would be fairly simple to do, and it sounds like a good idea to me. I'll talk to the team about the ins and outs of turning it on and when the best time to do so would be.

Revealing math behind attacks, etc, is another story - it would be very difficult to reveal that information to players in a clear and easily understood way, and would require a lot of granularity in setting up visible debugs, etc - so simply from a logistical perspective that would potentially consume a lot of dev time. Something else to discuss.

Thanks for bringing it up!

Realistically, a week is not long enough for me to take a deep dive into a single class to provide good class feedback-- these classes are fairly complex.

However, I think there's something to be said for a free swap week (or longer) for testing changes to afflictions/subsystems once those changes are made. I'd happily jump into another class, dabble in it, and see how affliction/subsystem changes are looking!

Pink_Candyfloss

If the arena is all holograms anyways, why not allow people to play as any class as they start a match? This allows people to try things in a way that is a permanent addition to the game and also doesn't effect actual PvP objectives.

Ikchor

Eukelade said:

I'm 100% not opposed to holding a temporary "free swap" week or something of that nature, especially if you guys think it would assist you in giving us clear feedback (and maybe have some fun killing each other in the process?). I think this would be fairly simple to do, and it sounds like a good idea to me. I'll talk to the team about the ins and outs of turning it on and when the best time to do so would be.

Revealing math behind attacks, etc, is another story - it would be very difficult to reveal that information to players in a clear and easily understood way, and would require a lot of granularity in setting up visible debugs, etc - so simply from a logistical perspective that would potentially consume a lot of dev time. Something else to discuss.

Thanks for bringing it up!

Even if the math isn't going to be revealed/enabled for us until the next classlead due to just how much dev time that's going to consume getting that rolling (there's probably going to be another one down the line, its just the Way of Things, right?) it'll just help us make the technical decisions we want/need to make during that classlead a lot more straight forward.

All i'm taking from this right now is that it's not a definitive no which is alot more than what I was anticipating, thank you!

Azlyn

Starmourn actually already gives you a whole lot of data, between balance times and damage values and formulas behind afflictions. It's not too hard to back into the math with what's out there, but I do think that it'd be good to add numbers into AB files.

As more of a low-hanging fruit than free swapping, I would suggest giving everyone in-game access to every skill AB file - e.g., Furies can AB Scoundrel skills. This would enable newbies to be able to research a class prior to learning, and it would also help a lot with classleads and for anyone wanting to learn more about other classes.

Steve

Azlyn said:

As more of a low-hanging fruit than free swapping, I would suggest giving everyone in-game access to every skill AB file - e.g., Furies can AB Scoundrel skills. This would enable newbies to be able to research a class prior to learning, and it would also help a lot with classleads and for anyone wanting to learn more about other classes.

I use the AB X Y AS Z often, but I have to go check the logs to find new players in Song, and then figure out that character's class, and do so until I find the right class.

I'd love being able to just check AB for any class.