More changes to healing

[Veroule]

Healing is definitely improved by the change that forces higher level players to use a higher level spell. I think ideally that the lower level spells should still work but have decreasing effectiveness. This allows that someone highly trained in life would have the power to keep a lower level spell working at a weakened state.

For example lets say that RND is a random number function that returns a real number within the range specified. Then with some made up numbers for explanation purposes we would have these formulas
minor=life*RND(1,2)-level*RND(0,1)
medium=life*RND(3,5)-level*RND(0,2)
major=life*RND(7,12)-level*RND(2,4)
Any result less then 1 would cause the message about the spell not working. I believe this should only be for the spells.

Basic healing potions need to be changed to work again. The easiest way to do that is to make them use a seperate spell. Potions have automatic existing limiting factors that make sure a player can't carry too many. They also have large cost factors, and between these 2 things they are self limiting.

The Heal spell also needs a small tweak. When you examine the associated costs of other methods of instant full healing you find the price is at least 1k per healing. Obviously having 10 lore locked up to learn the spell, and the up front costs of the spell book should make for a lower usage cost. However 1 gold per clover is just way too low. Looking at other reagents for upper lore spells (lightning stones, powdered dragon bone, nightshade berries) we see a low price of 100 and a high price of 250. I would like to suggest that the price of clovers should be somewhere in this range. The other spells that use a clover as a reagent are repair (L4) and summon elemental (L5); which suggests that a price closer to the 100 mark might be appropiate.

That makes 3 different suggestions, all of which could be done independently
1. Raise price of clovers
2. Make potions work again
3. Use formula tweak for soft level cap instead of a hard cap

[themadhobo]

I agree that clovers at 100 gold each would lend balance to healing. Mages dont heal often, so it would curb the healing of non mages! No more full heal spam perhaps.

[anatil]

Regarding the clovers idea...what actual advantages towards balancing the game does it have? Kill off meleers and bring about the age of mages? Healing is already more difficult then it should be.

Also, on a side note, lets think about the RP of this, you want to make clovers (a common plant that grows almost everywhere [in real life]) cost as much as low level weapons and armors? I'd understand if they are a rare item or hard to find, but they aren't.

[Salkand]

Oh yes, because meleers haven't had a long enough run as it is. Pray tell me how this helps mages?

O No, now meleers have to be afraid of losing as much HP as mages, almost as easily too! O Please say it isn't so, the poor defenseless meleers will have to spend more money for clovers! Gasp!

[anatil]

Meleers aren't supposed to take as much damage as mages nor loose the same amount of hp.

If you really want to change the cost of clovers and nerf healing further, than spells like fireball and blizzard should also get reagent requirements.

[Salkand]

Originally Posted by "anatil

If you really want to change the cost of clovers and nerf healing further, than spells like fireball and blizzard should also get reagent requirements.

and meleers should be forced to wear pink dresses, OH and repair their armor after every couple of battles, oh and please let us not forget that they should have to get -1000 mana points by joining their guilds! See, I can sprout off random suggestions too.

[anatil]

Originally Posted by Salkand

and meleers should be forced to wear pink dresses, OH and repair their armor after every couple of battles, oh and please let us not forget that they should have to get -1000 mana points by joining their guilds! See, I can sprout off random suggestions too.

looks like I struck a nerve >_>

[Salkand]

swing and a miss. I was calling your idea stupid and lacking in thought. *rolls eyes*

[anatil]

Originally Posted by Salkand

swing and a miss. I was calling your idea stupid and lacking in thought. *rolls eyes*

No, you snapped and started to panic at the thought of having to carry around reagents to cast basic spells.

Putting more restrictions on healing would be to meleers the same as making mages carry around reagents for basic spells. Since all mages need to easily survive an encounter with a heavy meleer is some strategy, you've got it easy. Meleers need healing in order to survive, while mages only need mana shield (and 1 ring of greater regen or 1 or 2 points in healing) and can run away from a battle, meleers don't have that luxury. Meleers have to stay put and face the monster head on...or else they can't kill it, which means meleers have to stay and face any nasty little tricks the monster has up its sleeve.

[Myself]

It's very hard to deny how ridiculous it is that two low-level spells make up such a high proportion of spellcasting. Reagents may not be the way to do it, but something needs to be done to create a wider variety of near-equally viable mage builds. And no, considering my main is a level 23 Fire/Water Pixie mage, I'm hardly biased against mages.

Going back to the topic:

1) First, for RP reasons, if you do raise the price of the reagent of the Heal spell, 'twould be better to replace the Clover with something that doesn't sound ridiculous being sold at such a high price (even if demand is high, supply is still far higher -- there are thousands within a short walk of my house). However, as long as the price of clovers is far less than the RD loot they can be used to get, the ROI on them will still be very worth it. Although actually, considering that clovers are sold in such small quantities, it takes a lot of time to find and buy them, time which could be spent gathering gold. If you add the opportunity cost tro the gold price, clovers are already fairly expensive. If Heal needs balancing, other methods would be preferable.

2) It's obvious RP that a well-respected widely-sold good should work as advertised (else the Hospital stores would have learned not to waste their floor space) -- potions not working was likely mere undesirable collateral of nerfing the Heal spell. This is already probably on a to-do list.

3) IMO this would be fully sufficient to make Life a viable element again. Making something once widely available only available to a small group is a tried-and-true tactic of nerfers everywhere. With this change, I might even start playing my Halfling whipsman/summoner again. One problem I have with these numbers is that, since Minor Healing will work 50% of the time always for those with at least 1 Life, spam healing will make a huge resurgence. Changing the Minor Heal numbers to something like life*RND(2,4)-level*RND(1,2) should do the trick; a similar thing should be done with Medium Healing.

[themadhobo]

Heres a simple solution to clovers costing lots and being common. Make them four leaf clovers, those are hard to find and still clovers. All it would take is adding another leaf to the graphic and it makes sense!

[Beckhan]

yeah.. none of these suggestions (save pots which is allready in effect with full heal pots) really helps the elven archer who cannot cast as well and do not have the skills to spend on life or lore let alone both.

And I thought elves were supposed to be all in tune with nature and able to healing what not..

[Veroule]

Mr. Myself, in response to my numbers I think you missed/misunderstood my statement that RND should be defined as a function that returns a real number within the range specifed. In programming parlance a real number is one that has decimal places, ie 3.141579. When dcimal places are used the general standard distrubtion formula would tend to apply. This means that numbers close to the average of the range are more often drawn then those at the edges. With that knowledge you should see that the formulas I suggested tend to produce reasonable results. Of course my suggested numbers are merely for concept purposes.

Yes, having fireball and blizzard be the last spell most mages need is silly. I would really like to see spells reworked so that the damages they deal are more appropiately attached to thier lore levels. The destruction spell is a great example. With low spirit it only hits creatures immedialty next to you, frost wave has a larger radius of effect at equal 0 element skills. Next we get the damage, if we consider equal 0 elements for destruction and frostwave with 0 resistances, then once again frostwave is stronger. At 0 elements destruction with a lore cost of 9 should be stronger then frostwave which is at lore 4. Basically the entire spell system needs work, but that is a different issue.


Anatil, if you didn't guess from my signature I play a naga. I rely heavily on hydra form, and if I need to heal in a battle my only choice is to cast Heal.

I am also a very gold oriented person, and with quite a number of melee characters stating over the auction channel that they will buy clovers at maximum I want to be able to fill thier request at a good profit. Clovers currently cost 1 gold, and it takes around 12 hours of heavy shopping to collect 1000. Maximum at auction for that lot would be 5000 gold, which is a net profit of 4000 gold for 12 hours of running about. From a merchantile standpoint it is not worth the effort, increasing the price of clovers makes it viable to sell them in auction.

Now as someone that casts Heal I will say that I tend to cast it about once every couple of hours. I am cautious, and even with the wonderful speed limitations of a hydra I manage to run away when I can. Guess what, you don't have to Heal every 50 points of damage; you can learn a little caution and a little patience. The price increase would be a small amount of gold for my usage, but might require a change in strategy for some that are used to healing continuously.

Since you also seem to be unaware of this, most magical attacks destroy items. This means many mages are somewhat on the poor side. They would be hurt equally by a change in the price of clovers. True archers and mages tend not to need to heal as often, but they still do. There is no new age of mages here, the price change suggestion is to bring clovers in line with similar, both in terms of stock stack size and spell lore level, reagents.

Please take a few moments to reread my original post, as well as Mr. Myself's considered reply and comment on the other suggestions.


Salkand, don't encourage the boy. Stop the sillyness.

Edit: I guess I never brought my old signature from the old forums to this one. I will have to remedy that soon. Suffice it to say I am an ugly green killing machine.

[Myself]

Very sorry; there was a huge gap between when I first read this thread and made a post in it. Sometime over that gap, I had forgotten that you defined RND to return a random real and assumed it was a random integer. With that in mind, I now compute the odds of a Level 25 Paladin with the guild bonus succeeding with Minor Heal to be 26%. For all I know, that's still overpowered, but certainly less so than 50%.

You make a good point as far reselling items goes; however, that's more of a problem with the auction system than with the price of clovers. Still, since the problem with the auction system (i.e.: a better way to let players sell things for their true worth without opening up gold-transfer abuse possibilities) avoids an easy solution, it'll be easier to tweak clover-side.

As a sidenote, the only reason a good pseudo-random number generator would be noticeably more likely to return a value closer to the midpoint that a given endpoint is, because if you define "x is close to a" to mean that abs(x-a)<D for some number D, there's twice as much area within the range close to the mid than the endpoint! In other words, a die is more likely to roll close to the average (3.5) than close to 1, because it's more likely to roll either a 3 or a 4 than to roll only a 1, though there's still an equal chance of rolling any single number. However, as any DnD player could tell you, the effect of "This means that numbers close to the average of the range are more often drawn then those at the edges." is achieved by rolling multiple dice. Perhaps you were looking for something closer to (RND(0,0.5)+RND(0,0.5)) for your rand function?

(As a side-sidenote, in my 5 years of programming, I've never heard the term "real number" used to describe anything other than an element of the set of real numbers. 5 is every bit as real as 5.00000001. Of course, it's important to realize (digital) computers are incapable of working with most real numbers, only their approximations.)

Lastly, you shall refer to me as His Self.

[Hamel]

*points at clover picture* They already are four leafed.

[themadhobo]

Wow I must have always just overlooked the fourth leaf and thought it was a stem... *squeegies glasses* hmmm...

[Klodin]

The problem with a formula is two parts. One, Rhialto has to code it since noone else has access to the spell libraries. Two, it would take additional resources to perform the calculations. It will increase load on the server by roughly 150% from previous healing spell system.

Not to mention there is the added detriment of it not working at all with 0 life or for low level characters.

[crinox]

the answer is obviously just to remove healing and only leave the healing skill >.>


yea take that giants

[Salkand]

better idea, remove meleers completely and let mages rule wyvern.

[Klodin]

Why not just remove all players?