Flatted Fifth wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 9:05 am
EasternCheesE wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 7:41 am
Flatted Fifth wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 6:45 am
Wrong. Fighting defensively doesn't let you make normal attacks, your character stands there bobbing up and down like an idiot waiting for a good roll to allow a riposte. It's rubbish. Meanwhile you still get hit on every natural 20. You can't win on defense alone.
And the proposal to remove tumble ac normally and take away armor optimization for light armor really should come off the table completely, not be postponed. Dex builds were designed to shine in the late game with top tier gear while plate builds were designed to be easier in the early game. Just having a server where the max enhancement is 4 instead of 8 and max level is 30 instead of 40 messes with that dynamic and gives light armor users a big disadvantage. Now you want to take away 3 ac from everyone when they're attacking normally and 5 ac from swashbucklers and rangers and rogues. -3 ac is a 15% increase in odds of getting hit. -5 ac is a 25% increase.
And Rhifox, please, don't ever say "if you don't like it you don't have to use it" while crippling us if we don't.
"Fighting defensively" mode is literally described as "while attacking" or "full round action" in PnP and it allows attacking while using that mode. Rhifox did also quite explicitly said it allows for it. Fighting defensively is a "Free crappy CE mode" unless one invests into tumble to pump it up, per initial design and per implementation (i specifically went to see the code). You may be mixing it up with "Total defense" which is renamed parry.
I won't touch AC or armor optimisation topics as both sides obviously have their objective and fair subjective arguments and my own opinion doesn't matter much in regards of discussion and argument.
NB.
Nothing on bgtscc is really set in stone aside hardcoded features (and those are only set in stone cause we only have Dae who can change them and it takes enormous time to implement even for him). If we add something, be sure we believed it would make things more balanced/better in general. We, obviously can make mistakes, but in numerous times, players feel like we purposely nerf something to make server less enjoyable. We don't. Everything we do is aimed to increase options, increase playability, immersion, allow for easier area building, DM event difficulty adjustment and so on. Some of these changes take things away or impose some limitations, yeah. If something looks like a straight nerf, it is because we have idea of how things should work and only having real people going around and seeing how it works in practice can allow us to see if things were good or not. Making drama from every change that doesn't boost player power doesn't really help to do any project. if you see something you don't like and you see we really want it happen, at least, give it a chance. If it proves bad month later, then initiate discussion again and we will be happy to talk it constructively to find the way it becomes more pleasant to play.
We are known to be not super fast on implementing stuff, but hey, there are new people in team and you see that we do stuff and at quite fast pace right now.
And, once again and after it was said million times through years. Having hostility against staff doesn't help anyone doing anything. When you disrespect people who do work for you, you simply make them less prone to 1) listen to you 2) do anything at all. It's not really hard to be polite. Please keep things civilized. It's not pointed directly at you (though, be sure, i definitely often find the way you post on forums as passive-aggressive or just aggressive insulting style), but to anyone.
RE: Fighting defensively vs New Parry. Yeah, I got the terminology mixed up, not the concepts. I edited to reflect.
RE: rudeness, I don't mean to be rude, I just can't think of very nice ways to point out that the dev team here keeps messing with game balance set by professionals who are better at it because it's their actual job and some of them have things like degrees in statistical analysis. I never claim to know better than my doctor about my health. I never claim to know better than Neil DeGrasse Tyson about space. But the team here consistently seems to think they know better than professionals and to make changes that affect all the players without even asking for our input. Negatively impacting a lot of players without their input or permission is pretty rude, too.
Even having a server where the cap on levels is 30 and on gear is +4 messes with game balance because some builds are meant to be slower burners than others. And while I certainly don't advocate just making a belt of +8 strength available and we all reach lvl 40, I cannot fathom why it is that light armor wearers keep getting the shaft. Is it because Expose Weakness is so OP? Who made it that way? The team here made it that way. Put a cap of 6 on expose weakness damage. Is it because HiPS is so OP in PvP? Then instead of making light weapons crappy compared to the heavy weapons in the epic shops and punishing all light armor wearers even against NPCs, make heavy and medium armor give a reduction in damage from sneak attacks. It should be harder to stab someone in a vital area if their vital areas are covered in steel anyway.
Whether you mean or not to be rude, doesn't change the fact you do behave rude and insult people with your posts. "I don't mean to be rude" is not a magic band aid that lifts away the fact.
Nobody also forces you to be nice. But not having nice ways to prove your point doesn't mean there are no neutral and commonly polite way to prove it.
Insults don't help in proving anything.
Having cap of 30 levels and +4 gear messes with your vision of game balance, trying to extrapolate your vision on "that's how it's meant to be" and claiming it's only right one isn't helpful as well.
Currently, despite your words, you literally accuse Dev staff of doing bad job because you consider your vision on how such things should be done being better.
"But the team here consistently seems to think they know better than professionals".
Who are those professionals? Anyone who opened mob AI scripts by obsidian can definitely say that getting paid for coding doesn't mean one is professional.
When you appeal to some mystic "professionals", you don't know what was in their mind, you don't know what was in BGTSCC Devs mind for last 14 years as well unless you were one of admins who were forming server's appearance and features. In that case, you may know, but again, there are no some "professionals who designed things to be like i say" sort of things. It's your vision, it doesn't coincide with Rhifox's vision on it. Instead of polite constructive discussion, we have to read text full of anger, accusations (both false and fair) in a very unpleasant form. Once again, this helps noone.
As Dev team, we have some vision (or, at least, we are not against overall idea when such vision is formed by admins, if we are, we do have debates in order to find compromise). It's not flawless, it has it's own balance issues. We discuss things with people and we get many input from players as well, just like this thread. Many Devs avoid talking to players because they feel burned out from drama and rants that happen. I myself don't give a shit about my "reputation" and i don't worry enough to be deeply insulted by player reaction to what i do and i tend to say what i think when i don't like how somebody does something that affects me.
We have our idea, if you don't like it or you find it being a balance concern, please tell it in polite (which doesn't require being respectful) and constructive manner. None of us here, be players or staff are not payed for reading posts full of insults and it doesn't make anyone happy as well? You can't prove your point with insults and people tend to ignore rude people when they can. And since all of us are volunteers, we are definitely not forced to pay attention to rude stuff.
I spend time to make
your time on server better. Not without mistakes that make it worse, but we are open to discuss things in polite and constructive fashion. Have at least some respect to person who is not payed for spending 5 hours today straight debugging and finding why 1d4 slashing on gloves doesn't apply to shifter shape only to find out "professionals" you keep mentioning coded bonus damage stacking in poor and obscured way that prevents us from making it consistent and reliable.
And, looking at PnP and NWN2, there are tons of things that Obsidian game designers just cut out for no obviously good reason and many things they added for no obviously good reason as well. Things that already had their stuff described and discussed million times on PnP 3.5e. So, "professionals designed it to be that way" is a null phrase in my eyes, because i see how these professionals took existing system and swapped mechanics for whatever reasons for no good result.
Speaking of crafting, i will nod on every argument you say about it if you provide me with a ready-made codebase of crafting framework with all recipes needed. Unless you tried it yourself, you have no idea on issues and complications i or any other devs had/have while working on crafting. Even though i use existing crafting plugin to base on and, i can say for sure, it was written by a very skilled developer, it's not something "done and done". I could work on it more, sure, i admit it. I could have it finished about 5 months ago and my RL complication don't have any relation to it. But i work on it at my pace and if you blame Devs for "not doing X" or "not fixing Y", you need to remember that you could take vanilla game and code stuff as well, it's not that hard to get a grasp on basics. I went that path with knowing nothing about coding at all to being able to fix bugs and adding server features and it took me 1 year. You can easily check the date of that message that says "Welcome EasternCheesE as new Developer". That's the moment i started to learn how to code for neverwinter nights 2 and also how to code in general. And, the best part of it, and AoS won't let me lie since he did and does that a lot, people can contribute to server with their code, areas, models, even wiki edits without being part of the team. Obviously, it's easier to do when you are a part of Dev team, but it doesn't make it impossible if you are not.
Once again, i won't delve into details and discuss whether tumble AC removal is bad or not, whether light armor optimisation is good or not. In my view, these changes are justified with new tools all players get and free feats some people get. For you, it seems like it doesn't. So, please, be civil and prove your point with analysis, objective information, calculations and, at least, lack of formal disrespect to other people. If you need your idea tested in game, i, or any other QC member are capable of providing the result.
I strongly believe that even if you disagree with staff on any of balance/feature concerns, and, if staff still decides to give it a go, you can, at least, give it a try. And if it proves bad, you can initiate discussion with materials from your testing that proves your point. We won't always change our decision, but we are ready for a possibility for such a change if points we are given by players are objectively valid. Just have a bit of, no, not respect, i don't ask you to respect me in any way, just have formal politeness and a bit of patience.
Of course, i speak of myself and my own vision, please don't assume it's general staff position.
