We had a discussion a few days ago about the importance of basics and their effect on the present and future. This has lead us to some different reports regarding new syntaxes to use forms and (when it is up) envoying kata perform itself to improve flow.

The two changes will decrease reliance on scripting while also helping to streamline combat among other things.


This got me to thinking, is there similar changes out there people can think of? It can be a report on anything whose main goal is not to buff or nerf anything, but to make it easier to use, better at its job, or improve the use of mechanics it effects.

I posted it earlier, but might as well again: Free-form forms. Instead of having to rely on a limited number of combos, you could create combos on the fly ("KATA FREEFORM "). I think this is technically already doable by redeveloping a form right before you use it, so it wouldn't impact balance at all.

Thats not really a bad idea, they might be able to scale down forms too <.<

Need not be only monk reports by the way! Could be something with maneuvers, creating cards, yada yada.

Creating motes more then one at a time. Always has been a big beef with dreamweavers, especially as only one or two motes are really very powerful (gogomemoryloss). DREAMWEAVE <1-10>, would knock you off eq longer, and take from reserves instead. This might make dreambody vs. dreambody combat funky, but let's face it... real dvd combat doesn't exist.

In relation to above, the ability to mix more than one tint. MIX <1-10> RED, for example.

I posted both your guyss ideas in simple ideas. As a result....


Changelog Entry #63 (Posted: 2012/01/17 16:32)
o You may now mix multiple tinctures at once. Check the relevant AB
files for the syntax.

Enyalida:

Creating motes more then one at a time. Always has been a big beef with dreamweavers, especially as only one or two motes are really very powerful (gogomemoryloss). DREAMWEAVE <1-10>, would knock you off eq longer, and take from reserves instead. This might make dreambody vs. dreambody combat funky, but let's face it... real dvd combat doesn't exist.

This. This would be nice.

On/Off toggle for karma blessings, so I can sit around doing nothing and not feel guilty for letting the things expire and eat away karma.

Vadi:

On/Off toggle for karma blessings, so I can sit around doing nothing and not feel guilty for letting the things expire and eat away karma.

I think being pressured to upkeep them is kind of the point!

Yeah, I don't see any reason to have a toggle for them.

That point is that you QQ, don't hang around to chat and lower the player numbers? Sure...

You shouldn't be pressured to keep them up when you don't want their effects. You should be when you want them.

Vadi:

That point is that you QQ, don't hang around to chat and lower the player numbers? Sure...

You shouldn't be pressured to keep them up when you don't want their effects. You should be when you want them.

If you don't want them, you can go burn them off.

Yes, I know how karma works. I'm sticking with my suggestion of pausing them instead of completely burning them off - and I don't think it'll be detrimental for you either if this goes in.

This would allow you to run around with a full throng of blessings though, which might not be according to The Vision. Just get a blessing, pause, gather karma, rinse, repeat.

Vadi:

Yes, I know how karma works. I'm sticking with my suggestion of pausing them instead of completely burning them off - and I don't think it'll be detrimental for you either if this goes in.

The question isn't if it will be detrimental; doubling XP gain wouldn't be detrimental either. The question is one of effort vs reward; extending the reward for the same effort makes the reward less valuble and diminished the satisfaction of obtaining it.

Karma isn't intended to be used like that. You get it, you spend it, and then you use it. If you want to keep them up all the time, you have to work to do that. You can't just get a full stack, toggle them off, then toggle them on as soon as raiding or hunting time comes.

That's beside the point: there's an incentive to QQ built in to the karma system. Look at it this way: you want to keep up a certain number of blessings, and you're willing to spend sufficient time bashing/influencing/gambling on the credit market for the cost. What do you do in the time not spent grinding for karma? A) Seek out fun interactions or quest or spar do anything else logged in that doesn't generate karma, and also spend longer grinding; B) Log off and play Aardwolf, because that means less time spent grinding for karma?

(Sidenote: logging in/out is the not-so-hypothetical toggle for karma blessings. It just so happens that it's pretty difficult to contribute to the game while being logged out.)

Alternatively, consider the world of Bashternia, where there's a scaled drain in exp (1% of your total experience + essence per hour, say) while you're logged on, all the way down to level 1 and 0%. Sure, if you don't want any of the advantages of being level 2 or above it doesn't matter, but if you want luxuries like 4-digit max health while also minimising the amount of unpleasant grinding to be done, the rational course is to not be logged on if you're not gaining XP. Needless to say, that doesn't make a fun game for anyone.

EDIT: I should be constructive. Possible solution: blessings should be activable on an hour-by-hour basis (like origami are, essentially). The cost in karma to activate a blessing should still scale to the number of active blessings similarly, though some of the cost will need to be deferred (e.g., at present, keeping 2 blessings up costs 4% per hour and 3 costs 9%. You activate harmony with no blessings active, for a cost of 1%. 20 minutes later you activate death for a cost of 3% (= 4% - 1%). 20 minutes later, just before harmony wears off, you activate beauty for a cost of 5% (= 9% - 4%). When harmony wears off, you activate it again for a cost of 3% because the other two are already paid for at the 3-blessing level. This scheme works out more expensive than the present one, if you stagger activation, but never cheaper.)

I log Out just to keep my karma blessings. If I didn't lose them when logged in I'd play the game a lot more.

Blessings are just that, blessings. They don't compare to any hypothetical experience drain. If you want to keep them up, you get karma. If you don't want to have to bother keeping them up, don't get them in the first place. There is a reason why it costs more and more karma as you get more blessings and any toggle would mean everyone would just stack 9 blessings.

Yeah. Not only is it pathetically easy to get to 100% karma (10 minutes work or less), but all of the karma blessings are mere icing on the cake that don't really have all that of an important bearing on... anything really. I get karma blessings only to use them for like an hour all the time, and feel no pain from this because I really don't give a hoot about karma, it's not like it's really worth anything.