Code changes: Weaves, Weather, Riding, Faceoff, Master Mobs, and Misc. Bugs

A place for Immortals of the game to post changes in policy or other relevant announcements for the game.
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Aureus
Posts: 968
Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2020 11:13 pm

Code changes: Weaves, Weather, Riding, Faceoff, Master Mobs, and Misc. Bugs

Post by Aureus » Sat Nov 12, 2022 2:44 am

Some code changes will be live as of next reboot:

Channeler Updates
  • Channeler "long weaves" (ice spikes, fireball, sonic boom) have been lengthened by 1 pulse, so when bash and a weave start at the same moment, the bash will win.
    • Why this change?
    • Channelers have -10 DB and -10 PB while channeling as part of their "glass cannon" playstyle. However, with how "PONR" ("point of no return") effects work, when a bash and weave start at the same time and complete at the same time, the channeler does not have the -10 DB and -10 PB -- meaning after recovering from a bash or even when starting a weave, a channeler can generally weave with their full defense. This means there isn't much of a tradeoff between short and long weaves, especially when long weaves deal so much burst damage: a channeler's enemy is generally guaranteed to take this damage. This change introduces more of a decision between a safer, more reliable short weave and a riskier but more powerful long weave, by making the long weaves 1 pulse longer (so bash will win the "race" in situations where they start at the same time).
  • Hurricane updates
    • Hurricane will fail to toss people who are higher level than the channeler.
    • Hurricane will fail against NPCs who are following someone Hurricane fails to toss.
    • There's a zone-wide outdoor message when someone starts weaving Hurricane.
    • Hurricane now properly counts as an AOE weave for SP cost calculations (ie, 20% is charged up-front).
    • Hurricane is 2 pulses faster than before.
    • Why these changes?
      • Hurricane has been a long-standing pain for smobs, city heads, high level patrols, and other misc. mobs that leads to these mobs mostly being placed indoors. And currently our tools like MOBOL are very bad at catching and dealing with this. This level check allows us to make more smobs and other things outdoors, which opens up more utility for charge and call lightning, and also eliminates a "get out of jail free" card for berserk.
      • The zone-wide message and AOE calculations reduce scenarios where it's very easy to flee a room, start weaving, and then toss all your pursuers. This was a bit too cheesy when used well (albeit we see it rarely).
      • To compensate for the zone-message and upfront SP cost, we're making Hurricane faster so opponents will have to stay more on their toes.
  • Dark Vision's weave timer has been shortened now that we are requiring Dreadlords to practice it again; it was 3x as long as Light Ball for no discernible reason.
  • AOE weaves will no longer hit invisible "helper" mobs (this includes earthquake, sonic boom, whirlpool and hurricane).
    • This both helps Imms who don't want these behind-the-scenes mobs (which do things like award herald qps and extra loot for group smobbing) to die, and and also you, because these mobs are often high level and you don't want to get hit by them (plus you want the rewards).
Weather Updates
  • There will be less snow in winter, more gentle rain (but fewer storms) in spring, summer will be drier, and autumn will have more storms when there is rainy weather but be drier and have less rain on the whole.
    • With the recent season changes, there's been more snow than we want or expected in winter. This is because weather is controlled behind-the-scenes by a complex air-pressure based system rather than directly. At the same time, we'd like a bit more realistic seasonal variation since we're making winter drier.
  • Those experienced enough in Wisdom Lore can determine the precise temperature.
    • In the game, you only see weather in increments of 5 degrees. But that is a design decision since the weather messages says it's "about" X degrees -- behind the scenes, the weather is actually precise. This is an RP change to allow those who can read the wind to be more informed about the weather than a layperson.
Riding Updates
  • Riding no longer requires Level 1 Ride. Anyone (who is eligible to ride a horse) can ride. This should make life much easier on LS newbies.
  • Those with level 0 Ride will instead find their mount sometimes will refuse to obey their commands. This still costs the mount some moves as if it had moved. This effect happens more frequently if you have no-quit.
  • Horses can now only be ordered to "follow", and can no longer open doors, search for hidden exits, bash, etc.
  • ...some more quality of life changes related to riding are in the queue, but Flash had a requested update to one of them (that I've already made but is waiting for re-review), so more to come here...
    • This is in now, too!
    • If you type "lead" or "ride" with no target, you will try to lead or ride your last-ridden mount.
    • If you type "ride" with no target, and you don't have a last-ridden mount or it's not present, you will try to ride a horse you're leading.
Faceoff Updates
  • Fades no longer have face-off with their shadow stallions.
  • Dreadlords now have face-off when leading trolloc mobs.
Master Mob Updates
  • Master mobs now respect the same command restrictions when being ordered via "order followers" as when being ordered individually, meaning they are no longer capable of being ordered to do forbidden commands this way.
  • The forbidden command list for master mobs now uses the same command parsing as player commands, meaning "order <mob> k <target>" was previously blocked because it thought you were trying to order the mob to "kick", even though this is actually "kill". There are several examples where this caused problems and now work properly.
  • There is now a half-round lag after ordering a mob.
    • This last one is because it was possible to take advantage of the fact that mobs don't have any delay when disengaging from combat to get extra attack rounds by micro-managing your mob, which is not gameplay we think is healthy long-term. We also think it isn't good gameplay when a crit person uses ordering their mob to spam for an enemy instead of spamming directly, in order to avoid being hit. Due to how command processing works (processing the commands of the person who has been logged in the longest, first), this can sometimes make that person impossible to attack as long as they are spamming well enough and have a fast enough link.
  • These changes apply to pets and other led mobs as well. (Though the order "lag" doesn't apply to ordering your horse.)
Misc. Bugs
  • A bug with Known Darkfriend channel restrictions has been fixed (it was blocking channels in the wrong zone instead of the CoL, Void and prac area).
  • A crash bug that occurred whenever a hitched wagon was purged (and the game thought the horse was still leading the wagon) has been fixed.

Aureus
Posts: 968
Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2020 11:13 pm

Re: Code changes: Weaves, Weather, Riding, Faceoff, Master Mobs, and Misc. Bugs

Post by Aureus » Sat Nov 12, 2022 2:55 pm

Flash has merged the remaining Riding change, which will be live as of next reboot:
  • If you type "lead" or "ride" with no target, you will try to lead or ride your last-ridden mount.
  • If you type "ride" with no target, and you don't have a last-ridden mount or it's not present, you will try to ride a horse you're leading.
This will make life easier on newbies, and also easier on groups ("was I 4.horse or 2.horse? damnit, that scallawag Itesh rode my horse!")

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