Reconstruct stealth nerfed?

[azrael4h]

Oh...and I do have an example of a quest that I feel is well-designed to challenge a party:

The Lost Thread.

The Drow are not stupidly overpowered in that quest, but they position archers defensively and place magical traps along the approaches to said archers.

Hmm, FINALLY a fantasy race with a bonus to Intelligence that actually uses rudimentary REAL WORLD DEFENSIVE TACTICS. Thumbs up.

They also use enslaved villagers as an added defense, though the result was a bit lame, a minor bonus xp instead of something real. No reason to not obliterate them. But I guess that's DDO.

[Scraap]

I'll also add that this "power spiral" is also part of the reason that there is such a gulf between characters with good self-healing (casters) and those without--the game gets balanced to assume you have someone that can throw out 300, 400, 500 hundred point Heals, so when you don't have someone doing that, you can't compensate with potions.

Not a dig against the devs here, but against all the people that complain about seeing Heal nerfed.

Well, to use a sound engineering analogy, it's not so much an amplitude problem as a frequency one. Of course, this late in the game cycle, we've been overly conditioned to expect it quick and immediate, so I'm not really sure how they could paint themselves out of that corner without causing even more rage.

[taurean430]

I'll also add that this "power spiral" is also part of the reason that there is such a gulf between characters with good self-healing (casters) and those without--the game gets balanced to assume you have someone that can throw out 300, 400, 500 hundred point Heals, so when you don't have someone doing that, you can't compensate with potions.

Not a dig against the devs here, but against all the people that complain about seeing Heal nerfed.

How is this any different than a character with moderate to good healing amp drinking a silver flame pot or umd'ing a heal scroll?

The problem is that players badger other players into playing healbots instead of taking on some of the responsibility for their own hp. I've played with you a number of times and know that is not the case with you personally, but I see it all the time.

You can now build a fvs to do somewhat respectable damage with light/untyped/instakill. The problem persists with other players having a fit because they actually put action points into their smiting lines.

[sephiroth1084]

Well, to use a sound engineering analogy, it's not so much an amplitude problem as a frequency one. Of course, this late in the game cycle, we've been overly conditioned to expect it quick and immediate, so I'm not really sure how they could paint themselves out of that corner without causing even more rage.

It's a problem with both actually.

How is this any different than a character with moderate to good healing amp drinking a silver flame pot or umd'ing a heal scroll?

Well, the emphasis on SF pots stems from their being the only source of instantaneous big heals for non-casters. It should have alarms ringing like crazy at Turbine to see so many people using, and even building toward, frequently potions that drop all of their stats by 10 points. That's a pretty big penalty, and yet they are considered to be one of the most important items in the endgame for an melee that can support them.

Heal scrolls, meanwhile, require heavy investment, have a moderate cooldown, are subject to Concentration failure, aren't super-cheap, and don't heal for as much as either SF pots or the actual spell being cast.

My issue isn't with the consumables, but the direction the game has taken for these to be mandatory, especially SF pots. But it's more to do with the ability of healers to hit a whole party for 400-800 every 2 or 3 seconds, and to spot heal for 600+. How do you design an encounter that poses a threat to such parties? The devs have done so by giving monsters huge attack and damage bonuses, by stripping away some of our Fortification protection, by including some form of healing curse in a lot of big encounters.

But after you've tuned the game to challenge those groups, how do you accommodate the parties that don't have a healer? The game isn't flexible enough to be balanced for both, and even if it could be, it probably shouldn't be skewed too heavily to the groups without healers, or we'll end up in a situation similar to what we have with downward dungeon scaling, where it becomes more profitable to play into the scaling, in this case by running in groups without healers. It's a delicate balance between 'challenging for groups with healers' and 'challenging to groups without healers that have otherwise strong healing resources or defenses.'

[bibimbap]

Thank you so much! Now I can happily be a robot that kills dragons! ^^

[taurean430]

They also use enslaved villagers as an added defense, though the result was a bit lame, a minor bonus xp instead of something real. No reason to not obliterate them. But I guess that's DDO.

Yep.

Hate to say it but I'd actually be content at this point putting in a failure condition for killing x number of villagers. Having pugged this recently with crowd control specialists, I was thrown by everyone running ahead and just killing villagers.

every. single. one.

[Entelech]

I DO kind of wonder why the Temple of Mystra was constructed with a whole bunch of slave holding cells controlled by levers, but she DID have the bad taste to sleep with Elminster, so...

[sephiroth1084]

Yep.

Hate to say it but I'd actually be content at this point putting in a failure condition for killing x number of villagers. Having pugged this recently with crowd control specialists, I was thrown by everyone running ahead and just killing villagers.

every. single. one.

Agreed. Always thought it was dumb. Even more so that even in groups that do make an effort to save slaves, once you have gotten all of your bonus XP freeing X number, the rest become expendable.

At the very least there should be a (sizable) bonus for not letting any slaves die.

[azrael4h]

Yep.

Hate to say it but I'd actually be content at this point putting in a failure condition for killing x number of villagers. Having pugged this recently with crowd control specialists, I was thrown by everyone running ahead and just killing villagers.

every. single. one.

Maybe not an outright failure condition, but enough of a reason to put forth the effort that it's more worthwhile to save them. Right now there's almost no reason to save them, given the time advantages of just slaughtering them. You can about run the quest again.

Maybe implement a XP penalty when killing off NPCs that could be saved? Say up to 25%?

[Kinerd]

I'm not saying Eladrin is a liar, and I appreciate his posts in this thread. Let me start with that.

-This isn't the first time a blatant nerf has been waved off as "unintentional" or an "error" after community outrage.
-It won't be the first time a less blatant, conciliatory nerf replaces a proposed blatant nerf. (And I have no doubt a Reconstruct nerf is still coming.)

Remember Chattering Rings turning into Purified Eberron Shards? Does anyone really think that any dev anywhere would seriously include Chattering Rings as a crafting ingredient? If Turbine were that much of idiots, they wouldn't be able to operate the door knob to get into work in the morning. It may be arguably less respectful to accuse them of constantly lying to and manipulating us, but what other conclusion can I reasonably draw?

All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.

[Postumus]

I'm not saying Eladrin is a liar, and I appreciate his posts in this thread. Let me start with that.

-This isn't the first time a blatant nerf has been waved off as "unintentional" or an "error" after community outrage.
-It won't be the first time a less blatant, conciliatory nerf replaces a proposed blatant nerf. (And I have no doubt a Reconstruct nerf is still coming.)

Remember Chattering Rings turning into Purified Eberron Shards? Does anyone really think that any dev anywhere would seriously include Chattering Rings as a crafting ingredient? If Turbine were that much of idiots, they wouldn't be able to operate the door knob to get into work in the morning. It may be arguably less respectful to accuse them of constantly lying to and manipulating us, but what other conclusion can I reasonably draw?

All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence"

Napoleon Bonaparte

[Dandonk]

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence"

Napoleon Bonaparte

But I am not sure which alternative scares me the most.

[WolfSpirit]

Still little help the poor ailing Warforged...
I mean, EVEN magical diseases and Poisons need a Circulatory system!
I mean, Mummy rot? REALLY?
The same Larva that gestates in an organic brain surviving in the dry/oil/wood/ enchanted Head of a Warforged?
I know its Fantasy, but it also contains Logic within the Fantasy one would hope!
:sniff:
I /cry for my Warforged....