Health Amulets

[wish]

In the thread about plague, Jashon said:
As for Health Ammys...once again, I think they should just be totally removed.

I agree that removing health amulets ability to protect against plague is a wise thing to do. However, I do not agree that health amulets should be removed from the game unless and until another method for quickly regenning health is substituted.

The reason for this position is simply to avoid boredom. At max regen of 25 hps per sleeping tick, it can take 20 ticks to regen 500 hps. That is a very long time. If you lose a spar, or a tough TC fight, it gets pretty boring just sitting around waiting to regen. You might not be able to run to a health fountain across the mud, or you might not even know how to get there. Since my idea to auto-retire chars above level 50 if they don't immort was not well received, we have to do everything we can to prevent them (me) from getting bored.

Maybe I am just lazy, but I think for most of us used to a much faster paced world, 20 sleeping ticks is an eternity. Sure, you could find a nice cleric to come and heal you up, but then they have to sleep to regen mana, and there is no way to do that quickly...except to find a shaman to then come and give mana... At least for mages, health amulets really aid in providing a sense of self-sufficiency.

As for a potential replacement for health amulets, i have two suggestions. You could make sleeping regen for health incrementally higher depending on a chars level. Or, you could make health amulets more like sanct equipment, where it loses its power the more it is used. I am sure there are a dozen other possible solutions.

Wish, Foul Sepiod of the Black Conclave

[ink]

i didn't even read what wish said, but i like the title. I'm all for health amulets being removed and making mobs killable without them :).

[Tynian]

Or, you could make health amulets more like sanct equipment, where it loses its power the more it is used.

That would be possible, though somewhat convoluted. It only works for sanctuary because it's a spell. I could set health up as a spell effect. Easier would be to set Health amulets where they will purge 'x' days, weeks, or months after they are discovered.

[Solaron]

That would be possible, though somewhat convoluted. It only works for sanctuary because it's a spell. I could set health up as a spell effect. Easier would be to set Health amulets where they will purge 'x' days, weeks, or months after they are discovered.

Maybe the same number of weeks as their level?

[Tynian]

That would be a possibility. Or maybe 40 - level of amulet. ;)

[Tiunara]

That would be a possibility. Or maybe 40 - level of amulet. ;)

I don't see why health amulets should be removed or edited. If we are talking about removing (or heavily editing) equipment, I suggest that Astaldo should be deleted as a mob. I have worn several simple rings myself and I know how powerful they are. They have *nothing* to do with randomness or skill or anything. It just takes a freaking amount of time to get 12 million gold coins and you are set. Within that amount of time you'll have that relic you need as well.

Health amulets actually make levelling for shamans and mages a bit more friendly. Clerics have heal and don't need really need a health ammy. Mages do, especially when their AC is quite low (like mine is).

Health amulets are good, health amulets are great, but health amulets are in no way overpowered whereas simple rings are.

[Nicademus]

I agree. I am not sure why people are so against Health Amulets. In fact I think they are one of the better additions to the game. If you take health amulets out I think you need to replace them with some other way to improve regen. Perhaps if con had a greater impact on regen then it does now, or if the cap for con were made higher that could help.

Additionally, maybe consider new skills/spells. Shamans already have meditate, what if they had a concentrate skill that improved regen without immobilizing them. Perhaps spell damage takes a hit while concentrating because the focus is on regen and not damage? Just an idea.

[Hiro]

I would also like to note my objection to changing the way health amulets work.

Hiro

[Avarice]

Health ammy's are good for exactly the reason Wish put forward....regenning tons of hps even as a cleric is boring. However I think you could get rid of them entirely if we're willing to just re-examine how much and how quickly we regen.

I've been complaining about this for a long time since the other mud I play ticks probably 4 or 5 times faster. The reason they did this is obvious....sitting around waiting for stats to regen is boring and often leads to ppl just becoming disinterested. As a newbie sitting around for 10 minutes ticking might be all it takes to say time to try a new game.

I understand that if you change how fast the game ticks, you change something fundamental that will effect plenty of other aspects. However I'd encourage us to at least experiment with faster ticks and see how it goes. Rather than waiting 45seconds or 1minute for a tick, how about 10-15 seconds. In my other game we get mini ticks probably every 10 seconds and it seems to work fine, and enables people to build massive mana sets that they can actually use....

Yes this would change the way people fight, it would require re-tooling most spell-durations so that spells don't fade extremely fast, would require changing the time alottment on mobmasteries and probably a million other things that seem daunting to alter. However I think the faster the game is played, the more exciting it becomes. One of the biggest turn-offs for me as a player who has experienced a mud that ticks extremely fast and one that doesn't is the time spent simply regaining hp/mana. Just my 2 cents here, this is a great way to increase our attractiveness to new players.

[Thor]

I don't have much to say on this topic other than to restate what Hiro and Avarice have said. So, I'm going to note my objections to the changing of health amulets.

However, I agree with Avarice in that if they do change, something should speed up. It was just take way too long to regen without it.

[Tynian]

I understand that if you change how fast the game ticks, you change something fundamental that will effect plenty of other aspects.

Interesting idea.

If I were to do this, I could speed up regen without changing everything else that depends on the tick timer, or mix and match as needed.

I don't feel it's appropriate to speed everything up.

Thoughts?

[Thor]

I'd be in favor of speeding up regen as long as we weren't just talking about bigger numbers per tick. I can't count the number of times I've been exping or something else with a group or something and been like, "ok, 1 tick".....and what seemed like 10 minutes later the tick finally passed.

Obviously there are some things that we wouldn't want to increase the speed of (or at least I wouldn't want to). Things like battle speed. Even if you don't read it the text can scroll by pretty fast. Any faster and those with slower connections (ie dialup) might have trouble receiving that fast. I know I'd have trouble reading that fast. But I won't say too much on this as I'm sure no one was thinking increase how fast things scroll by.

In any event, it would be nice to get a (not really sure what to call it) "regen cycle" 2 or 3 times per current tick. Even if the same numbers were kept, that would make things speed up a lot. Although, there could be implications as far as leveling. If you regen faster, you level faster. As a result we'll get even more bored eff 50s. But by that time we've probably already got them hooked to TFC..MWAHAHA. ;)

[Avarice]

Thanks for considering my idea, I'm rather partial to it:)

I think I already touched on the main things you have to worry about....spell duration and mobmastery ticks. I think increasing spell duration slightly won't overpower or imbalance the way it works...i'm just thinking of low level spells that wear off relatively fast as it is....you wanna be able to sanc and kill at least 1 mob before you tick and the spell wears off. Likewise during combat at higher levels its ok for sanc to not drop for a good 5 or 6 ticks if a level 30 cleric casts it. Mobmastery is essentially a time-based quest so increasing the # of ticks you have will ensure that you still have the same amount of real-time to find and kill your target mob. If its too fast, say 20 ticks that might mean only 2 minutes to find and kill a large mob...we don't wanna make mobmastery any harder OR easier with this change, simply speed up the time it takes to tick in between fights...

[orpik]

I like health amulets, though I agree they should not protect against plague. Why not? this enables people to sit in safe rooms afk for long periods of time without vulnerability, and it has taken plague out of the game.

If we wanted to remove health amulets, how about doubling or tripling the effect wearing wiz or con has on one's regain? Example people with 5con would gain 10hps a tick or 15 hps a tick sleeping rather than 5. (I mean 5 raw con, not just worn con etc). though I guess what you would do is create a base amount that did not count at all and once people had that amount of con, then any additional amount would start working like a health amulet.

Why? then people exping would benefit from their lvl eq. The int would make them regain mana faster and the con hps faster. Now it make sense to wear con even when not levelling. (I would also advocate removing penalties in lvls for wearing extra con and int so people could wear 30 con and 30 int if that is how they wanted to level as opposed to 30 dmg).

Thoughts?

[Nicademus]

how about doubling or tripling the effect wearing wiz or con has on one's regain? Example people with 5con would gain 10hps a tick or 15 hps a tick sleeping rather than 5. (I mean 5 raw con, not just worn con etc). though I guess what you would do is create a base amount that did not count at all and once people had that amount of con, then any additional amount would start working like a health amulet.

I alluded to this in my earlier post. I agree completely that it would be just as easy to have con simply have a greater impact on regen hps for example. It would make wearing level eq more pallatable.

(I would also advocate removing penalties in lvls for wearing extra con and int so people could wear 30 con and 30 int if that is how they wanted to level as opposed to 30 dmg.

Supposdely there are no such penalties...


With respect to Health providing immunity.... what is the plauge?

[kehrindrek]

could recovery (health or otherwise) become a percentage of a characters maximum stats? 10 ticks at 10% of max would = full recovery for example.

[Thor]

could recovery (health or otherwise) become a percentage of a characters maximum stats? 10 ticks at 10% of max would = full recovery for example.

I'd like to say, I think this is a neat idea and my first reaction was, "That would be awesome."

However, the biggest problem I see with it is that it would give those with much more hp a huge advantage. It would be like, the more hp you got the bigger the health amulet you'd get automatically. A person with 600hp would regen 60 hp per tick, that would be insane. (I realize 10% was just an example.) Perhaps we could do something like this only when sleeping? This way there wouldn't be a huge advantage during pk, etc and you wouldn't have to wait an hour between xp runs.

Nice idea, Kehrindrek.

[kehrindrek]

i'm not sure if 600hp vs 300hp recovery would be unfair or not if both just took 10 ticks to recover. if say a 600hp character was trying to pk a 300hp character both could sleep and be fully recovered in the same amount of time. i would have to ponder that a little more. if it is unfair a possible offset could be to make the percentage relative to total hps. an example would be 300hp at 10% per tick (30hp in 10 ticks) and 600hp at 6.6% per tick (40hp in 15 ticks).

[orpik]

could recovery (health or otherwise) become a percentage of a characters maximum stats? 10 ticks at 10% of max would = full recovery for example.

I like part of this idea. Right now people do not wear much hp or mana eq, if regain was a percentage perhaps they would because it would make exping easier. (I am all for making other types of equipment useful)

On the other hand, the down side is a character with 20 hps still needs to sleep for 9 ticks to regain to max just like a character with 600 hps. I think there would need to be a minimum regain to avoid small characters only regaining 2 hps a tick.

[Thor]

i'm not sure if 600hp vs 300hp recovery would be unfair or not if both just took 10 ticks to recover. if say a 600hp character was trying to pk a 300hp character both could sleep and be fully recovered in the same amount of time. i would have to ponder that a little more. if it is unfair a possible offset could be to make the percentage relative to total hps. an example would be 300hp at 10% per tick (30hp in 10 ticks) and 600hp at 6.6% per tick (40hp in 15 ticks).

The sleeping time isn't the problem I see with it. It's the regen during battle. If, for some reason, the 300 and 600hp guys were in a fight, the 600hp guy would regen at 60hp a tick. If the battle were very long (I know most aren't) the 600hp guy would have a huge advantage.

[Nicademus]

We could leave Health Amulets alone?

Right now we are considering changing:

1) Alignments
2) Damage structure
3) Plauge
4) Invis
5) 50 other things we have talked about.


I really like Health Amulets ::up::

Now having con play a more prominent role is a great idea, but seems to be independent of healths...

[orpik]

I see the point if it is a lvl 50 vs a lvl 30, but then again lvl 30's dont hang around to fight lvl 50s anyway so its not that big of a deal.

Then again it encourages someone to wear 200 points of hp eq. they should regain 20 hps more a tick than someone with 200 hp less otherwise hp eq isn't very useful. (ie as it is now)

[Anduin]

only clerics and evil mages have any real way of regenning hp quickly enough without them

[Tynian]

could recovery (health or otherwise) become a percentage of a characters maximum stats? 10 ticks at 10% of max would = full recovery for example.

I don't see a compelling reason for changing health amulets in this way, particularly given the coding that would be necessary.

[jaerith]

I think I may be quoting here, but I'll let you figure it out.

*clears his throat*

If you don't like how slowly you regen, group with a cleric and get heals. No one class is supposed to be the uber-elite-pwnzer class. (gods, writing that made me want to vomit..)

That is all.

[Dundrave]

I disagree about the changes proposed. Dundrave was my first char, and only Char of any size. I think that all this talk of baseing stuff (regain rates) on your stats puts Chars of newer (or at the time inexperienced) players at a disadvantage, infact it multiplies the disadvantage.

Why change health amulets? They are fine, remove immunity if you must, but I see absolutly no reason to re-do regains, or the way your regain. Let Tynian focus on things that makes TFC exciting, and not piddle with things that arnt broken.

Dundrave

[Belsambar]

Well, since we've got new changes, I think things are perfect as they are. So older chars may be at a disadvantage....I always found it wasteful to not try to max everything just because you only need dex/str at 30/40/50. if you're at a disadvantage by stats, well, do you really need that 3dmg, or should you wear that 5con instead?