hey hey, ho ho, this poisons got to go...no... but. ..

[OfF KiLTeR]

So I am all on board with poison being upped in its effectiveness. I am glad that after years, it's been moved up the ladder.

With that said... it went way overboard.

I think having the effectiveness of it upped was a great idea but it comes with a heavy weighting to Soul masters. I think having that range of damage PLUS the extended and stackale duration have gone a bit heavy. For my example, if a top range hit at 50 occurs we are looking at a drain of 6 dreamsoul per 4 seconds which works out to a drain of 90 dreams oil. Now multiply that over 6 minutes and we have 540 dreamsoul per evoke.

The argument I have heard is "well what about Blast?" Well the thing is, blast is an either/or art that has more restrictions. Yes, I know my blast will do more than 540 damage over 6 minutes... however, one cannot blast and then sling Chakrams all over the place and expect blast to continue keep on draining dreamsoul. Meaning I can sling Chakrams OR I can sit tight and blast. Plus, unlike Blast, Poison follows you into a Sanctuary where you may not be able to med fast enough to stay coherent in sanctuary, which will promote waking. Plus line of sight is also an issue since you could, theoretically, JP to Jim jam Mcnugget and collapse him while he traces.

I would recommend that the only changes I think would balance the art out is a greatly diminished duration, like 10 seconds plus 5 seconds per Plat and make it line of sight. Poison should be more powerful than it was, but it's pretty jacked as it is now.

[Koi-Wish]

I was kinda hoping IC players might work out a resolution all of their own.

One I had - Antidote Alterors.

[Shoury]

I was kinda hoping IC players might work out a resolution all of their own.

One I had - Antidote Alterors.

And so it begins..

[Dina]

I was waiting for this...People can't handle SM's now!!!

HOWEVER...I do agree on one part and that is the duration. I love poison, but the duration is pretty harsh. DON'T YOU DARE CHANGE THE DAMAGE! I will cry.

I've thought of 15 seconds at learn, then adding 2 seconds per plat. 30 seconds for a 50 poison. OR 5 seconds learn, 5 secs per plat?

I do not agree with antidote alterors. That would make sable shield worthless once again and it would just put the SM's back to where we were before.

There is no way in hell that Dina will do anything in game to change it LOL. I love that poison is a slow....errr fast death now instead of a tickle!

[Shoury]

Shoury squeals with joy.

[Dina]

Low charges? Why would that matter when alts can be recharged up?

[Shoury]

ayyy lmao

[Shoury]

Low charges? Why would that matter when alts can be recharged up?

Perhaps to instill an artificial lower cap for antidote alts (an exception case) to keep the rarity/supply low which solves two pain points.

1) Antidote availability in the event of no SMs around.
2) Avoid making poison useless due to a plethora of alts with 24 charges.

[Cherokee]

Poison isn't that bad. I agree with Dina. The damage was decently modified, but the duration needs to be readjusted. I would say a 20 second base, with a 2 or 5 second plat.

Antidote should not be made into an alteror, that just takes away from needing an SM on your side, and easily shrugging off poison. If the duration was lowered, you could meditate through it.

[Dina]

So, why should they not be the only ones who could counter it? Sable Shied can be evoked on anyone? I guess at that point it would pay to be friends with the Order, yes?

I would agree, I would love to be able to put it on allies or friends and every house has sable shield, they have gatekeepers, dreamseers, and soulmasters!

I still think just cutting down the duration a bit would be perfect.

[Koi-Wish]

Another thought...


What if when you evoked Antidote it actually creates a single use (non-rechargeable) Antidote Vial. (Maybe 1 use or 1-5 uses but still non-refillable)

SM only ones whom could make them.
They cant be recharged.
Would make keeping a bunch in your inventory important in battle and thus sacrificing other space, but you better have them if your rumbling with an SM.

[Koi-Spark]

If you prefer, we could have kept the Poison duration as it was - 10 minutes on first evoke at level 1.

Poison is not a flat damage rate as you described. At level 50, the damage can range between 1 and 6, so a typical average of 3.

When you take these kinds of things into consideration, you might realise that Poison previously had potential to cause more damage (1/3 of the damage, but 10x the duration). However, taking only 1 damage every few seconds was an inconvenience more than a threat. Standing still would essentially cancel it out.

Our goal was to make Poison more of a threat. You should have to find a sanctuary, meditate (significantly counters or reverses Poison effect), or get a SoulMaster to Antidote you. Poison should be fairly incapacitating and cannot be ignored. That was the point.

Many players have shamelessly stocked themselves with an abundance of forged DreamSoul elemens with high charges and a high rate of healing. But remember this is still a game that is going to have challenges. If there is no chance of being collapsed, where is the challenge? You should get a better sense of accomplishment when you survive an attack while being poisoned and attackers are hacking away at your protective arts. And higher spheres should pose a greater threat to lower spheres - not only because they can use higher level chakrams, but because their higher arts are significantly more dangerous. It is part of the reward for advancing to those higher spheres and plateaus.

With all of that said, we are constantly monitoring balance and gameplay issues. Not only with Poison, but arts from every focus and House Arts. We test as much as we can in development, but you understand our time and resources are very limited. Running through numbers and comparing to other arts, including protective/healing arts, Poison is now a much more significant threat, but it's not a certain death sentence unless you completely ignore it (like people used to do when Poisoned).

Wish had mentioned the potential for Antidote alterors and it's something we've considered. Personally (this is just me talking, not the whole team), if we do put Antidote alterors in Item generators, I'd make them very low or single-charge and not rechargable. One so it doesn't make Poison completely useless again, and two so it would be a very valuable item that cannot be forged.

Of course overall, this change gives some much-needed value to SoulMasters. Houses should be responding by campaigning very hard to get (and develop/advance) more SoulMasters - not just to harness their power to Poison their enemies, but as a source to Antidote themselves.

As much complaining as we've heard on this and other issues OOC, the game could be made far more interesting and engaging when dreamers react to changes by either adapting their own strategies, or by trying to fight those changes in-game. The changes to Poison were introduced by players from an IC standpoint - your efforts to rein it in and make it more manageable should also be IC.

This may be a good opportunity to remind teachers that you shouldn't always give an easy quest for "useless" arts at higher plateaus. At one point, there didn't seem to be much point in plateauing Poison up to 60 or 70, but doing so was pretty easy. Now, how are your Poison plateau quests going to change? Do you wish that SoulMasters with Poison so high had a bit more of a challenge getting it to that level? They basically just got a very powerful art at a fraction of the "price," right?

Just a few thoughts I wanted to share.

[Shoury]

Another thought...


What if when you evoked Antidote it actually creates a single use (non-rechargeable) Antidote Vial. (Maybe 1 use or 1-5 uses but still non-refillable)

SM only ones whom could make them.
They cant be recharged.
Would make keeping a bunch in your inventory important in battle and thus sacrificing other space, but you better have them if your rumbling with an SM.

This suggestion is da real MVP - I think this would be a well received addition/change to the SM toolkit.

[Koi-Wish]

Haha, and Spark and I didn't even discuss the single use non-recharge factor together but we both had the same thought at the same time on this thread. His were genned mine were alterations to Antidote. But both have arguable merit.

[Sidas]

Antidote Alterors don't really address the balance problem with Poison. No other art allows someone to just evoke it, walk away, and still have a very good chance of getting a collapse. That is not making the game more "challenging", that is making another form of a FoD.

Example: A level 50 poison averages at 3.5 dmg per tick (not 3) and lasts for 6 minutes, which results in a rather large amount of damage. It also seems to hit on the higher range more than that since we tested IG and saw that a level 29 meditate (the most common in the game) could not keep up with a level 50 poison.

I think there are two fairly reasonable solutions to the issue:

1) Allow Dreamsoul elemens to "Breakthrough" poison. This would allow using dreamsoul to reduce the duration and make it not quite as painful. The effect would be that Poison would still cause the target to use far more dreamsoul charges than they otherwise would, so it would still alter how someone would deal with a fight.

2) Sanctuaries should degrade negative effects. This would allow someone to seek Sanctuary to be safe from Poison while also not being stuck there for 6 full minutes twiddling their thumbs.

Not so reasonable solution:

3) Make the Poisoner remain in the room with the target for the damage to hit. That would be cumbersome to implement but also add more of a challenge to the Soulmaster.

Overall, Poison needed to be stronger but turning it into the Death Star is too much. If testing resources don't exist on the GM team itself, then a different testing process should be introduced that allows for more of these issues to be identified sooner.

[Shoury]

Antidote Alterors don't really address the balance problem with Poison. No other art allows someone to just evoke it, walk away, and still have a very good chance of getting a collapse. That is not making the game more "challenging", that is making another form of a FoD.

Example: A level 50 poison averages at 3.5 dmg per tick (not 3) and lasts for 6 minutes, which results in a rather large amount of damage. It also seems to hit on the higher range more than that since we tested IG and saw that a level 29 meditate (the most common in the game) could not keep up with a level 50 poison.

I think there are two fairly reasonable solutions to the issue:

1) Allow Dreamsoul elemens to "Breakthrough" poison. This would allow using dreamsoul to reduce the duration and make it not quite as painful. The effect would be that Poison would still cause the target to use far more dreamsoul charges than they otherwise would, so it would still alter how someone would deal with a fight.

2) Sanctuaries should degrade negative effects. This would allow someone to seek Sanctuary to be safe from Poison while also not being stuck there for 6 full minutes twiddling their thumbs.

Not so reasonable solution:

3) Make the Poisoner remain in the room with the target for the damage to hit. That would be cumbersome to implement but also add more of a challenge to the Soulmaster.

Overall, Poison needed to be stronger but turning it into the Death Star is too much. If testing resources don't exist on the GM team itself, then a different testing process should be introduced that allows for more of these issues to be identified sooner.

Formidable solutions that could run parallel to the idea of Antidote vials, that function like GK amulets.

[Cherokee]

Another idea: have Protection protect against Poison, and degrade like the other arts.

[Tember]

Poison is annoying as hell :p But, I really like Jade's idea.

[Shoury]

As previously pointed out, there's a delicate balance here. I'd rather Poison's DoT damage and/or duration be adjusted to reflect the power Koi wishes to see in the SM toolkit. While counters are available, outside of SMs (Antidote), we must be careful about having too many options against Poison, or else we're back to square one.

1) Protection is interesting, however, everyone can learn it, which would make it even more useless than it is now. Maybe not with art degradation against protectives, so Jade's idea may be viable.
2) Vials with a / limited charges, unrechargeable like Amulet

If any change is to be made, it should be PRIMARILY centric around the art itself, and if necessary, improve the SM toolkit to work in parallel with those changes.

Just my two cents.

[Koi-Wish]

Exactly. RP it.

We are always watching.

As for testing failure, I take offense to that. We tested the hell out of it. We know what it does, we knew how it would be received.

Just like when the horrons were in the houses in the early days... we knew that sucked, but we also knew that it would inspire RPs and it did, many of them.

If you don't like something, RP it!

[Sidas]

As for testing failure, I take offense to that. We tested the hell out of it. We know what it does, we knew how it would be received.

Spark is the one that brought up testing resources:

We test as much as we can in development, but you understand our time and resources are very limited.

That certainly implies a need for more Testing Resources.

[OfF KiLTeR]

Oh yeah, also...

Poison eats shields. I assume that's a glitch somewhere?

Mike

[Shoury]

Oh yeah, also...

Poison eats shields. I assume that's a glitch somewhere?

Mike

Why wouldnt DoT's eat shields like DD arts? I'm confused. Anytime you take damage with a shield on, a percentage of that gets eroded from the shield first, then the avatar takes the rest of the damage in form of DreamSoul. Or am I not comprehending your questins, Master OnN Kilter?

[Koi-Spark]

There's also the argument that Underlight shields don't behave like a traditional shield. This is a dream state, after all. The shield item itself doesn't really look like a physical shield. It's far too small to block physical attacks. When you "wear" a shield, it's not a visible addition to your avatar like equipping a shield would do.

But when it comes to a dream, what is physical? It seems, perhaps, that shields are more of a metaphysical protection against any damage, internal or external. They protect your avatar from perceived damage.

And as far as comments on our testing processes, we did test thoroughly within the limits of our resources. We aren't a big game company with thousands, hundreds, or even dozens of internal and beta testers to be testing around the clock. Our testing crew can be counted on one hand, in fact. But that doesn't mean we don't test or that any of our development efforts are half-hearted, as you may believe.

As it has been already stated, most of the changes we make are in line with role-playing introduced and sustained by the players. Of course, we can't code every idea every player offers. But when an idea supports in-game participation and evolves the storyline while still fitting in the boundaries of Underlight lore, we do what we can to support it. It also doesn't hurt when the changes don't require an entire rewrite of client and server code.

Poison changes have presented themselves as what some of you may consider to be a problem. If there are viable solutions presented in-game, we'll consider every option.

[Shoury]

Is it possible that the team would solicit testing help from the community in the future, or is that a no-go? I'm sure most dreamers wouldn't mind.. just a thought.