Post by Tchalvak on Aug 11, 2006 1:11:40 GMT -5
Alright, Dim Maks are still causin' problems, though now some players say that they're -too- useful.
Some of the difficulty of balancing Dim Maks comes from the lack of feedback on them. Are players using five of 'em every time they log on? Are they just holding onto them for a rainy day? We don't currently have anything that counts up how often people are using Dim Maks, so it is harder to decide how powerful they can be or how expensive they should be. If they continue to be problematic to get right, I'll probably have to set up a method of checking that, but for the moment we'll jus' try to keep on coming up with a setup for them that works without needing that information.
There are certain parts of the effects of Dim Maks that can be easily messed with:
We can change the amount of kills that Dim Maks cost.
We can change the amount of gold that Dim Maks steal away.
We can change the amount of damage that Dim Maks do.
We can change the level requirement to get Dim Maks.
Shogunassassin suggested that we raise the cost of Dim Maks to something like 200 kills. While I'm not opposed to raising the cost, I want to explain that I don't like making Dim Maks cost -too- many kills because otherwise -getting- them completely outweighs -using- them, and items that don't get used, that only exist for the novelty of it, isn't quite as fun as things that can actually be used. Increasing the "kill cost" back to 50 or even slightly more is definately an option, though.
The "gold stealing" effect of the Dim Maks was set at 90%, and no question, with a cost of 20 kills, that amount of "gold stealing" is too much, as "thevirginmonkey" pointed out. If the kill-cost were more, perhaps such a large stealing effect would still be warranted. As it is, I've cut the "gold stealing" effect down to be the same as dueling until more discussion of the balance can occur.
The third thing to mess with about Dim Maks is the question of how much damage they do. Currently, they do 100% damage, so even high level characters healed up to high hitpoints get effected instantly. I'd be open to changing that so that they do a certain (high) amount of damage instead, like 500 or 700 or 1000 damage instead, depending upon what makes sense with the way that the other factors like cost and gold-stealing end up. That way, high level characters would still get the advantage that they should get from healing up to full health, so I'm totally in favor of that, it's just a question of how much to put the damage at.
We can also simply increase the level that people have to be to get Dim Maks, which would make fewer people be able to use them.
These are all possibilities that are open to a lot of fiddling up and down, and your thoughts on where they should go will be useful in the (ongoing) attempt to make the damned things both worthwhile and not overpowered. Just try to keep in mind my suggestions, those being:
-"too high a kill cost would make 'em unused" and
-"too high of gold stealing inconveniences other players too much"
Soooooo what are your thoughts?
Some of the difficulty of balancing Dim Maks comes from the lack of feedback on them. Are players using five of 'em every time they log on? Are they just holding onto them for a rainy day? We don't currently have anything that counts up how often people are using Dim Maks, so it is harder to decide how powerful they can be or how expensive they should be. If they continue to be problematic to get right, I'll probably have to set up a method of checking that, but for the moment we'll jus' try to keep on coming up with a setup for them that works without needing that information.
There are certain parts of the effects of Dim Maks that can be easily messed with:
We can change the amount of kills that Dim Maks cost.
We can change the amount of gold that Dim Maks steal away.
We can change the amount of damage that Dim Maks do.
We can change the level requirement to get Dim Maks.
Shogunassassin suggested that we raise the cost of Dim Maks to something like 200 kills. While I'm not opposed to raising the cost, I want to explain that I don't like making Dim Maks cost -too- many kills because otherwise -getting- them completely outweighs -using- them, and items that don't get used, that only exist for the novelty of it, isn't quite as fun as things that can actually be used. Increasing the "kill cost" back to 50 or even slightly more is definately an option, though.
The "gold stealing" effect of the Dim Maks was set at 90%, and no question, with a cost of 20 kills, that amount of "gold stealing" is too much, as "thevirginmonkey" pointed out. If the kill-cost were more, perhaps such a large stealing effect would still be warranted. As it is, I've cut the "gold stealing" effect down to be the same as dueling until more discussion of the balance can occur.
The third thing to mess with about Dim Maks is the question of how much damage they do. Currently, they do 100% damage, so even high level characters healed up to high hitpoints get effected instantly. I'd be open to changing that so that they do a certain (high) amount of damage instead, like 500 or 700 or 1000 damage instead, depending upon what makes sense with the way that the other factors like cost and gold-stealing end up. That way, high level characters would still get the advantage that they should get from healing up to full health, so I'm totally in favor of that, it's just a question of how much to put the damage at.
We can also simply increase the level that people have to be to get Dim Maks, which would make fewer people be able to use them.
These are all possibilities that are open to a lot of fiddling up and down, and your thoughts on where they should go will be useful in the (ongoing) attempt to make the damned things both worthwhile and not overpowered. Just try to keep in mind my suggestions, those being:
-"too high a kill cost would make 'em unused" and
-"too high of gold stealing inconveniences other players too much"
Soooooo what are your thoughts?