OCD

Everyone has Nodeka quirks, right?  I delayed enhancing my "pools attributes" (attributes that improve your pools gains while leveling) so that I could be sure to end up with a 0 as my last digit in each of my base pools.  This probably leaves me with the lowest possible pools (I think that ideally, you'd want to have 9 as the last digit in each of your pools), but I think I'm happier this way.

Do you have little superstitious (such as followering Vai-shan when waiting for reward) or OCD things (always capping before converting) that you do?  Do you prefer "looker" uniques or plain gear?

Have Fortitude

With the pwipe, changes to classes that arose from the crafting system are now obsolete and should be reviewed. As usual, we'll start with a less controversial topic and work our way up to the big ticket items. This installment will address constitution as it is implicated with fallads.

1. Holy Hammer: This ability was toned mightily as a result of a single player's strength with stacking constitution on crafted gear. (Well done, Rheal, for you have left your mark upon Nodeka's history.) As it is, the prevention time on holy hammer is much too high. If there is a concern about further constitution stacking, a minimum prevention could be placed on it. As it is, canon of the second hammer is rarely used, because it (a) overlaps with guided canon of mending, and (b) isn't going to see use. Holy hammer's prevention time needs to be dropped back to in line with its pre-crafted incarnation.

2. White Flames of Prayer: This issue actually predates crafting altogether, and seems to have been left behind with the changes in design direction seen in other preventions. White flames of prayer receives no benefit from constitution training, which is unusual for preventions that are affected at all by constitution. The player must sacrifice a lot of his burst damage flexibility when finishing trains, because each 100 constitution trained increases the prevention of this ability by 3 minutes. The prevention time of this ability should not increase with constitution training; or at the very least, the downtime should be kept constant, such that a 2 minute gap between uptime and prevention remain constant, and training constitution at least increases the proportionate uptime.

There are other abilities that need to be addressed in the same vein. The next installment will likely address these abilities/features, especially those related to fallads.

Back in the Swing

There's so much to talk about, in terms of game design and balance.  There appears to be a clear hierarchy of classes and races (the distribution is quite poor), there are lingering issues on overarching mechanics (e.g. endurance as a terrible fighter bonus/money sink, intellect and wisdom being separate attributes), and there are in-game systems that everyone agrees should be addressed (e.g. Christof being overwhelmed, citadels are outdated).

But right now, with a new beginning, I'm going to shy away from controversy and ease back into writing by sharing a short piece of personal information:  I've finally upgraded mud clients.  I'm now on UMC, specifically created to work well with Nodeka, and it really does.  My botchecks are once again captured, which is nice, but mob tells are not, which is baffling (since they are usually more important than the crap that we spew when gabbing with our friends).  I can finally read past character #80 when you send me tells, so yay.

I do have questions, though, and since I'm a newbie, maybe someone can help me out:

1. Is there an equivalent function to #tabadd?  If not, would it be hard to add in this function?  The #tab function was incredibly useful for creating accuracy when dealing with difficult to spell names (Zqxm) and long names (follower_of_). 
2. Does anyone have a second window written up?  I'd love to push output for trials and the info channel (##) onto another window, for at-a-glance status.
3. Is there a way to use variables in #substitute functions?  I'm used to having battle output of "## Grim was just defeated in battle by Grim's gesko!" shortened to "## Grim's gesko killed Grim!".  Right now, everything is backwards and it's making my eyeballs itch.
4. Is there anyway to #highlight?  I've shoved stuff that used to be highlighted into my output window, but that's not exactly what I prefer.

It turned out that most of what I needed to work for me in a tintin environment was translatable to UMC, and the remainder (see above) seems like it should be pretty straightforward.  But I don't really know, since I'm not a programmer of any kind.  

Bad at Martial Arts?

After much delay, here are some bottom lines to consider. Thanks to Grim for his contribution of fact-checking and analysis to this post. Special thanks to all the folks that reported on their class kung-fu. Based on our research, kung fu moves per minute (doesn’t include special moves such as spirit-talon and witching frostband) for each class are as follows:

Fallad & Daja: 4.5/minute = 4 (psychic shock) + 0.5 (bolted lightning)

Druid: 5.16/minute = 4 (psychic shock) + 0.5 (bolted lightning) + 0.33 (breeze of hand) + 0.33 (cyclone of the guild)

Witch: 11.33/minute = 6 (mental blast) + 4 (mental tempest) + 1 (star of the green flame) + 0.33 (oblique pattern)

Poliir: 12.66/minute = 12 (kick) + 0.33 (banded smiting initiative) + 0.33 (oblique pattern)

Paladin: 13.33/minute = 12 (kick) + 1 (spiritstone) + 0.33 (banded smiting initiative)

Monk: 13.33/minute = 12 (kick) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick) + 0.5 (yikwon hand form) + 0.33 (oblique pattern)

Hunter: 13.83/minute = 12 (kick) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick)  + 0.33 (breeze of hand) + 0.5 (bolted lightning)

Footpad: 14.5/per minute = 12 (kick) + 1 (glancing pierce) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick) + 0.5 (one of four, pivot)

Valkyrie: 14.83/minute = 12 (kick) + 1 (glancing pierce) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (one of four, pivot) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick) + 0.33 (banded smiting initiative)

Ninja: 15/minute = 12 (kick) + 1 (glancing pierce) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick) + 0.5 (yikwon hand form) + 0.5 (one of four, pivot)

Wizard: 19/minute = 12 (magic arrow) + 6 (mental blast) + 1 (winged arc-bolt) 
Necro: 18.83/minute = 12 (magic arrow) + 6 (mental blast) + 0.5 (unhallowed scathing) + 0.33(spectral windstorm)

Sorcerer:  19.5/minute = 12 (magic arrow) + 6 (mental blast) + 1 (star of the green flame) + 0.5 (bolted lightning)

Marauder: 23.83/minute = 12 (kick) + 6 (mental blast) + 4 (mental tempest) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (unhallowed scathing) + 0.33 (banded smiting initiative) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick)

Warlock: 24.83/minute = 12 (magic arrow) + 6 (mental blast) + 4 (mental tempest) + 1 (star of the green flame) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 1 (winged arc-bolt) + 0.33 (oblique pattern)

(*)Barbarian: 15.83 = 12 (kick) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.33 (banded smiting initiative) + 1 (ishtl’s thrashing) + 1 (knee smash) +1 (elbow)
[kick, striking fist, bash, isth thrash, band smiting all cant be used while insanity]

(*)Nojohr: 13.3/minute = 12 (kick) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick) + 0.33 (banded smiting initiative)

Analysis and Conclusions:
We previously touched upon the idea that kung fu moves needed to be buffed generally. We explored the idea that certain kung fu moves needed to be buffed much more than others. This listing helps us discern which moves need to be improved more.

The first general trend we notice is that casters tend towards having more kung-fu, in addition to stronger kung-fu as a result of sixth sense. This is largely an acceptable balance, because casters' physical attack damage is reduced by having poor weapons, less +dam, and the option of a high-dammage spammable (fireball, anyone?). Therefore, it is not as ridiculous to grant casters the possibility of "additional rounds". This is also perhaps one of the main reasons witches were not granted the single most powerful kung fu (magic arrow) witches have a high damage weapon and higher hit/dam than traditional casters. Nothing really explains warlocks; warlocks have two strong weapons, many attacks (speed and class), sentinel dominance, physical intensification, lag reduction, sixth sense, and usually have alignment freedom. Short conclusion: We need to be careful not to buff warlocks.

Barbarians have a strong incentive to not open with kick or any of their low-damage kung fu moves, and due to their high damage boost spammables: berserk, insanity.  Additionally, they have the best combat initiative readiness.  Nojohrs have a second-place combat initiative readiness, but their alternative opener is rage, which is much crappier than barbarians. Short conclusion: We don't need to buff barbarian kung fu, cause they don't use it and don't need it.

Working from that loosely brings in valkyrie/nojohr + their kung fu + lack of traditional spammable abilities for some discussion. All the other classes have spammables, druid might be particularly exceptional with regular damage from decaying touch. And valk/noj are traditionally limited to kung-fu + rage. Exceptions being fire goddess and magos/lernen with spammables studied. Despite the exceptions it serves to identify a little bit of a weakness in the base class. (Perhaps a discussion that we can take up in the future.)  

Druids, Dajas, and Fallads, are so far behind, we're tempted to ignore them entirely. Their reliance on pets reduces the usefulness of lagless entry. However, druids in particular might benefit from an improved uptime on decaying touch with more options for lagless entry.

The classes with the highest frequency are vastly superior in kung fu frequency but also excel in other areas, as well (read: pvp). It is the medium frequency classes might be worth looking at further via kung fu, but overall utility might need to be taken into consideration. Short conclusion: Monk, Hunter, Footpad, Nojohr, Valkyrie, and Ninja are classes that should be up for consideration. Therefore, kung-fu that is unique to these classes should be most up for improvement, and no, inscriptions don't count. As it is, the "additional mechanism" for inscription slots haven't been implemented, so we basically have to ignore inscriptions as a reasonable method of improving kung fu. (Or anything. We'll get to that shortly.)

Discussion is welcome. Any factual errors should be emailed to the author.

Let the Qi Flow

I’m accelerating my specific suggestions to avoid receiving anymore suggestions on a system.  My analysis will be slightly out of order in that it will follow this post, instead of preceding it.

Specific Suggestions:

No Buff To Prevention Time: kick/magic arrow/mental blast/mental tempest all have low enough prevention times that they should probably remain unchanged (although kick is way worse than magic arrow and it evokes great tears of sadness from the author).

Should be Buffed Even Before Training/Constitution:  glancing pierce, bolted lightning, striking fist, unhallowed scathing.

Glancing Pierce should have a baseline 20 or 30 second prevention time if it’s to be used fairly often, according to the helpfile.  (3 or 2 times per minute is not bad.)

Bolted Lightning, Striking Fist and Unhallowed Scathing should have their 120 second preventions dropped to 60 seconds.

Improvement Contingent Upon Training:  psychic shock, ashi barai kick, yikwon hand form.

For various reasons (such as inscription incentive, already low prevention time), these abilities don't need to be improved immediately, but could stand to have reduced prevention times with training and/or high constitution.

Suggested baselines:  Constitution and training should probably have additive effects on the prevention reduction of kung fu moves.  That way everyone has access, although training remains highly desirable.  As a side effect, the maximum reduction should be reachable either by training or by constitution, the maximum benefit will need to be capped.  For example:

1500 constitution (800 over 300) can be neatly divided into 8, 10, or 16 parts.  Every 100 constitution could reduce prevention times for [standard] kung fu moves by 10% for a maximum possible reduction of 80%.  However, more readily achievable levels of constitution (500 constitution, for example) would result in a 20% reduction in prevention time.

605% training (505 over 100) is an incredibly awkward number, so let’s use 600%.  Every 50% training could reduce prevention times for standard kung fu moves by 5% for a maximum possible reduction of 50%.  At 250% training, this would be a 15% reduction:  not bad, but not game-changing, probably how it should be.  At 400% training, a 30% reduction is seen, which seems reasonable.

The prevention reduction could be additive, so that someone with 400 constitution and 250% training would see 25% reduction in prevention times on his or her kung fu moves.

Notes:

1. Obviously, balance is a very difficult; the author has no concrete way to judge the effect this has on total damage output.  Likely, only Nijlo has the ability to run exhaustive tests for balancing purposes--but does he have the time?  We can hope.
2. Endurance drains might be extreme in certain cases, although this is really only a problem for fighters (endurance bonus and fighters is a separate post--suffice it to say that one hopes fighters are NOT balanced around having a hit/dam bonus up continuously by not using their endurance).  Perhaps endurance costs for some of these abilities should be lowered, particularly for abilities that should have short prevention times, such as glancing pierce.
3. Certain abilities have added incentives, already.  For example, ashi barai kick, yikwon hand form, and banded smiting initiative have inscriptions that increase their utility.  These abilities will likely need to be “held back”; perhaps their prevention reducions be halved compared to “normal” kung fu moves.
4. Bash and Trip are the subject of a future post and/or suggestion.
5. Winged arc-bolt is not a trainable kung fu, and given it’s scaling, it probably doesn’t need to be.

A more detailed analysis of kung fu moves will be in the next post, and will include a class comparison---with the understanding that we are NOT looking for parity, and with the realization that each class benefits differently from kung fu moves.  For example, the harder someone hits, the more valuable using kung fu as a lead-in will be (valkyrie will benefit more than any pet class).  In the meantime, let me know the prevention times for breeze of hand and cyclone of the guild.

Bruce Lee Disapproves

“A unique aspect to glancing pierce is that its recovery time is nearly nonexistent. This makes glancing pierce a highly used skill.”  - helpfile for glancing pierce

“Unhallowed scathing has a very short prevention period. Basic mystical patterns can be used again after the skill's prevention has worn off.” - helpfile for unhallwed scathing

Has anyone here trained glancing pierce or unhallowed scathing?  The recovery times are 60 seconds and 120 seconds, respectively.

Introduction:

Kung fu moves go largely untrained, and this is because their prevention times are too long.  Kung fu moves are the attacks that every class has: these are the attacks that are limited by a prevention time and deal damage, but offer no side utility.  They have two uses:  (1) damage and (2) to allow lagless entry into combat (and therefore, lagless exit if no lag-inducing abilities are used.  Without exception, all kung fu moves are trainable.  But the players by and large eschew their training, and I believe the reasoning is due to the factors set forth below.

Discussion:

The lagless combat-entry portion of kung fu moves is powerful in very specific circumstances:  because an entire combat round is attached to kung fu moves when used to initiate combat, they become extremely powerful when combat ceases for that round.  Used this way, several rounds of attacks can be performed (against different targets) during 2 seconds (the normal combat round).  In this way, kung fu attacks are basically a weak version of “combat initiative ready”.

With respect to damage, kung fu moves represent a very modest portion of a player's total damage output, with the exception of two moves (kick and magic arrow).  If we say that a player is in combat with the same enemy for 1 minute, then that player has 30 rounds of normal attacks per minute.  Let's say this player has 15 attacks, which is a very conservative estimate (remembering we're not counting spammables such as fireball).  That's approximately 450 attacks.  An ability such as striking fist (60 second prevention), even if it does approximately 3x a normal attack in damage, is worth 0.66% of that player's total damage output.  In contract, even though kick (5 second prevention) is worth only approximately 2x a normal attack, it's used up to 12 times per minute, allowing it to be an impressive 5% of that player's damage output.

With both uses of kung fu moves (damage and lagless entry into combat), perhaps the clearest indication of usefulness is uses per minute.  Kick has 12 uses per minute.  Mental blast has 6 uses per minute.  Glancing pierce has only 1 use per minute.  So while improving damaging abilities is usually done by increasing the damage dealt, here, prevention time is key to improving their desirability.

In contrast, increasing the damage dealt by kung fu moves too much with training is not an ideal, because doing so would increase the burst damage potential (relevant to pk) without touching the utility of an attack.  Players already die very fast in pk, and having significantly more burst within the first 2 rounds of pk combat would only serve to shorten pk combat.

Additionally, there is the problem of certain kung fu moves which simply have too much prevention time, even as a baseline.  These include the two examples cited above, and a couple others as well.

Summary of Problems:

(1) kung fu move prevention time is too long in most cases

(2) kung fu move prevention time reduction based on constitution is capped at a low constitution.

Summary of Solutions: (more than one solution may be appropriate, depending on each move):

(1) kung fu move prevention times reduced outright

(2) kung fu move prevention times reduced by constitution

(3) kung fu move prevention times reduced by training %

Due to the size of this post, an overview of the current state of kung fu, and specific suggestions, will be separate posts. Suggestions attached to this post, especially those with numbers, are likely to be ignored.

Fallad Races Breakdown

Three years late, here's quick review of logical race candidates for Fallad.  I'll evaluate any races you request in the comments, and the next post will discuss the direction of posts for the near future.

Onillin Ti:
With no subclass to provide any augmented healing, and the main healing output of fallads unaffected by time-walk, this race is not nearly as powerful for the fallad as it is for the daja.  However, the attributes remain viable, so this race is medicore rather than alarming.

Sun Kedoeji:
The time-walking remains a less than ideal racial choice, but the increased personal attack bonuses for Kedoeji cause this race to pull ahead of Onillin.  Additionally, the sights, 48% 1/2 NR and extra dex/hit (due to more attacks) become more useful than for daja.  Sun kedoeji is a strong utility choice for fallad.

Storm Wielder:
While the physical resistance and massive size have limited use, the lightning dominance fits fairly strongly with fallad 4-second cooldown on falladian holy analgesic, unlike Sun Kedoeji's time-walking.  The constitution will help with preventions, although that is less relevant in today's Nodeka because the key prevention of holy hammer has been nerfed to the point where no amount of constitution will make it more than a novelty in most situations.  The extra damage and dodge/parry suppression aren't bad for regular attacks, but conversely this race does not have much by way of reliable additional attacks.  Nevertheless, +20 damage on the race may be worth almost an extra attack's worth of damage, depending on individual circumstance, so this race appears to be a fine choice, especially for running.

Silver Elf:
As with daja, a strong choice for fallad.  While fallads are not the best healers on Nodeka, they are a clear second place.  And with no subclass option for healing amplification, silver elf is one of the few ways that a fallad can boost his healing.  The combat bonuses are very similar to Sun Kedoeji; the utility bonuses, however, lend more towards emergency situations rather than quality-of-life.

Ryfe:
Omitted from my daja post, this race is included here for defensive potential.  The continuous physical regeneration from ryfe combined with a fallad's heals can make this a tough race.  Add in willpower, 15% anti-offensive, 60% magic and mental resist, you have a decent race.  Given the new ability of static charge to cause the caster to almost never run out of mana (and fallads can heal while regenerating mana thanks to lagless healing), this is one of the most durable fallad racial choices.  However, this race has only moderate offensive bonuses, so it's more relevant for fallads who want to run areas that are "too big" for their pools.