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Category Barbarians - The Barbarian's Arena (13)
Topic Guild Guru Announcements (1)
Message From Solomon (124)
By WIBBENG@PLAY.NET (Airaman)
On Jun 28, 2000 at 15:25

Thanks to the thread(s) that several players (Airaman comes to mind) have started and contributed to, thanks to several players cornering GMs at SimuCon, and thanks to several GMs who not only monitored the discussion, but also came to the con with "code in hand" (printouts) and spent LOTS of time going over this code there and after they got back home, I have some announcements to make.

On Wednesday July 5, the following fixes will be made that will effect combat and creatures:

1) ALL armor (players' and creatures') had a problem with damage such that it actually improved injury damage reduction as it became more damaged. This bug essentially allowed damaged armor to work better than fully repaired armor. With this change, damaged armor will be less effective than fresh armor, as should be expected. NOTE: This bug was not, and will not be, something that APPRAISE would reveal. It had to do with the formula used to calculate how much damage got through the armor based on how damaged it was. What players see when they APPRAISE their damaged armor will remain the same, correct information.

2) ALL natural attacks (claws, bites, etc) by creatures were being treated as if the creature had an agility of 0. With this fix, creatures using natural attacks will be more likely to hit, and will tend to do more damage when they do.

3) ALL creatures with natural (hide, etc) armor were not able to "use" their armor effectively because it wasn't "worn" correctly. With this fix, natural armor will once again be effective, and you will not be able to hurt these creatures as easily.

4) Multi-opponent penalty calculations were skewed negatively for players with Multi-Opp. skill of less than 100 such that the creatures they were facing or flanking tended to give them much higher penalties than they should (the same problem for creatures with multiple players on them). This bug explains why players complained that when a third (or sometimes even a second?) creature walked into the room and it engaged them they were suddenly having much more trouble against the creature they were facing. Again, this applies only to those players with a Multi Opp. < 100. (Anyone with a Multi Opp. > 100 were automatically overcoming the penalty.) Another result is that fighting multiple opponents may seem a little easier, but as a result, gaining MO experience MAY be a little more difficult. Its not clear yet whether this will be noticeable or not, but there is a little randomness in the equation that will blur the line (in the players favor) of difficulty/danger that players noticed when stepping up to fight multiple creatures of a higher level than they were used to.

5) For creatures only, the system was always penalizing them when a player attacked, resulting in calculations as if the player were attacking from behind. This should mainly affect only lower-level creatures. This is another reason why creatures are so easy to hit. This will probably not affect higher-level creatures with multi-opp over 100, but it will definitely be noticeable in the lower-level creatures.

THERE IS POTENTIALLY ONE OTHER BUG FIX THAT HAS YET TO BE VERIFIED/TESTED THAT MAY GO IN, AS WELL.

This bug has to do with the amount of magical damage done to creatures based on their armor type. More information will come on this as it is available.

I must again thank the players who posted their findings on the boards, who brought this information up at SimuCon, and the Dev Team for tracking them down and fixing them.

::braces for impact::

GM Solomon, who is frantically, but happily, unpacking the newly-arrived, and soon to be installed, dentures that will give the critters of DR back some of their bite