Game update: 10/25

Hey, folks - the 'mystery feature' is finally ready!

Nodeka now offers pvp-based character advancement:

Yeah, this one is pretty darn cool. =) Basically, pvp can grant you random improvements to your character's stats (up to 300), pools (up to your pool cap), and ability masteries. (Only abilities which grant benefits beyond 100% will be selected for improvement - which is why I needed to be able to identify those abilities internally, which resulted in the side-effect enhancement of the 'skills/class' command in the last update.)

This is a very important step for me in terms of design. I've babbled a lot about rewards and the difficulty of designing them; part of the reason that it's so difficult is that, in a nutshell, running has always been "superior" to pvp. While pvp on Nodeka can be a powerful, exciting experience, there has never been a significant inherent benefit to participating in it. Over time, people came to realize that even if you ARE interested in pvp, it's often more lucrative to keep your head down and script areas in order to grow first.

Now that pvp provides an inherent benefit and (eventually) an alternate path to character improvement, rewards which are more pvp-oriented (that is, any inscription, mastery, or piece of gear which provides a benefit outside of the generic "running stats") can justify their existence more effectively.

This is obviously just a first step, and I'm sure I will need to tweak the numbers as things play out over the next few months. However, as far as first steps go, it's an important one and it has been a long time coming (the "pvp advancement" tab in my design spreadsheet has been there for quite a while, evolving over the months and years). =)

The original design had a "pvp rank" element to it as well - sort of a pvp level which represented how experienced your character is in pvp combat. This rank was to be used as a statistic, much like a player's experience level, to meet requirements - for example, a piece of gear might have a requirement of "pvp rank 7" in order to be equipped. I've removed that element from the design for now, to keep the base system simple and intuitive; we'll see how things unfold and whether the idea of such a statistic is warranted, or if the system would be better improved in other ways.

'Help rules' updated with rule #14:

This rule a safety catch for the pvp advancement system. The internal structure of the pvp merit system is designed to reward "good" behaviors and to automatically penalize (or complete deny a reward for) "bad" behaviors, such as intentionally killing your friends over and over for credit. However, no system is perfectly free of abuses. Rule #14 is a formal statement that we'll be watching for behavior which attempts to "game the system"; several features have been coded into the system which allows the staff to keep an eye on pvp advancement, and to lock players out of the merit system (or take more severe action) if they attempt to do so.

Tweaked mastery benefits for armor, greater armor, and bless:

These three abilities now provide mastery benefits for fighters as well as casters, but these bonuses are not as strong as those granted to pure magic-users. The base benefits for magic-users have been tweaked slightly as well, to make the bonuses scale more smoothly and aesthetically (and to improve them slightly where warranted).

Game update: 10/1

As I've mentioned earlier, I'll be keeping the live MotD messages as brief as possible whenever I post a game update; in exchange, I'll be discussing each MotD entry in more detail here on the Sixth Sense whenever I update Nodeka.

'class/skills' command shows abilities which improve beyond 100%:

A small but very useful interface improvement. The skill/spell list for each class will now identify those abilities which can be trained beyond 100% for additional bonuses, making it much easier to see how each class can advance at a glance. This works for classes other than your own as well, of course.

This feature is actually just a side-effect of something more exciting which is still in development. =) I've made a number of internal improvements while developing the new 'mystery thing', and this happened to be a feature that I could code quite easily with the improvements implemented so far - so here it is.

As for the 'mystery feature', it's coming "soon". =) It's something that I want to release on the same general schedule as the spoils of war (for reasons I'll explain once they're in) and the newbie improvements (because these are improvements to Nodeka's fundamental experience, which need to be explained during the newbie experience and thus necessitate updates to my work in that area).

Quick note regarding bless and greater armor: these spells will report as trainable beyond 100% even for fighters, who do not gain benefits from doing so (they're set so that only casters gain additional bonuses). In the next update, I will be implementing small training benefits to those spells for warriors (although they will be fairly minor, to maintain the original intention of the training boosts). Armor falls under this category too (it does already gain a +ac boost for fighters, but it's pretty insignificant.)

Cinderskein improvements:

Cinderskein can be a bit challenging to use, given its war-shell and range restrictions. I've improved the spell's feedback a bit by adding a message which informs the sorcerer whenever the cinderskein "misses" a player due to the fact that they've moved away from the targeting rune. (Previously, cinderskein would just silently fail on that player, which could be confusing.)

I've also made a number of small improvements to the spell (slightly reduced the lag when firing the heat rays, and slightly improved the damage range, especially when more targets are struck).

Vicious Fist bugfix:

The buff to hand damage which vicious fist grants at masteries beyond 100% was increased slightly in the 9/10 update. However, when I implemented this increase, I only applied the change to left-hand attacks, and failed to increase right-hand attacks... This has been fixed. =)

Helpfile fixes:

Thanks for all of the typo/discrepancy reports, folks. Our helpfiles can always use some spring cleaning, so I appreciate you bringing these issues to my attention. =)