News updates for Thu Apr 2 00:00:03 PDT 2009

[dyehead]

I LIKE THE CUT OF THAT MAN STOLI'S JIB

[Xyndaris]

Perhaps also the biggest problem is disarm is like the mobs #1 choice of attack,

maybe add a fumble skill,
put disarm back the way it was,
and make mobs kick or bash more,
make them more versitile in combat styles....
not just disarm disarm disarm...

[Pappy]

Or maybe we could fix the bugs in here and see where it lands.  Eta tomorrow.

[Bambam]

you guys must be having a much worse time with this than me... I can play for an hour against bring friends mobs... and I only lose my weapon once from fumbling... of course this is with my lvl 41... I'm not sure how it is against uber mobs... but in frontier, arden, skeletal forrest, prison, it seems fine

[dyehead]

It's more of the 'attack high level mobs' (level 65+) and be permanently fumbled.  It's not necessarily about dropping the weapon, but more about no longer being able to hit a mob for the duration of a fight.  Note my original displeasure, I could not touch a mob I was previously able to kill, even though he was constantly old-school disarming me constantly.

[Pappy]

disarms will now be more 'smart' in the AI - which means it will follow the old way of giving you a few hits inbetween disarms.

[Edrik]

What is the goal/purpose of the fumble code? Seems it was designed to make mobs alot tougher, was the the intended goal? Getting mobs as low as level 20 using the "skill" now.. understand the need for such code on high level mobs.. but newbie type mobs? really?

[Pappy]

Purpose was to make disarm useful when mobs dont have weapons, which they won't relatively soon (except in some special cases).

There were three changes:
1- an affect, which lasts about 3x the old disarm but is about 1/5th less DPR loss (for a level 50 warrior) change agianst a PC or a mob with a weapon.
2- Old affect still applies on a crit.  This mostly impacts players, since they are the majority (and will remain so) of weapon wielders.
3- anti-disarm skills (there are 3) are checked before a crit is calculated, meaning you can now max this skill (before skills like weapon retention were un-maxable).

The affect from disarm is less than any other -hit spell; including curse or blind, and has less impact than armor affecting spells like sorc, som, ff, barkskin, or armor.

The goal is not to make mobs any harder, however we're not going to be able to keep everything exactly the same forever.  If you feel you are seeing some behavior which you feel is negatively impacting gameplay or some tweak which is far out of line with balance, bring it up with some logs or data and explain your case.

[Edrik]

I'll start putting in fumble with in the attacks to see how often they are triggered and the impact to attacks due to fumble code. I'd like to see the over all effect during a normal battle and a fumble battle over the course of time. Fighting the same mobs like I am over and over and over should provide some input to see if fumble has the expected impact it was designed to do, or if the impact was greater than expected.

** Upon initial review of my logs.. it appears that fumble/disarm is being executed frequently when your low on health ... results are still inconclusive.. but I've noticed that critical hits in the past seem to happen more frequently when your were low on health.. why that is I dont know..

[Xyndaris]

I still think "being able to hone skills" is a very poor tradeoff....
I cold hone those skills if I wanted there are ways, my deikhan has a pretty high disarm skill and he was my newb char I started a few years ago.

I think the main complaint is that people are unable to kill mobs that they could barely squeeze in before....
People who are in the end game like to push the envelope and the envelope has just pushed back on them,

And yes you noticed right LOTS of mobs disarm and disarm often.

[Edrik]

What are the anti-disarm skills?

[Sage]

What are the anti-disarm skills?

Warrior weapon-retention
Psionics telekenesis

I don't know the third.

[Pappy]

defensive trance

[Xyndaris]

what is DPR?  is it damage per round, like DPS (damage per second)

Could you post here to update when "the bugs are out" so we can really evaluate and see how it feels then?

Thanks )

[Pappy]

the AI will no longer stack debuffs, but its currently a bit too frequent still (our mob AI code is pretty sad).  Would be nice if the mobs changed what they did once in a while.