New artifacts *too good*?

So, I didn't have a chance to try all the new artifacts, but I have some thoughts about what I saw.

Bot reported some insane amount of xp on one map for the healing sphere.. I'm wondering if the amount healed needs to affect the amount of adrenaline the medic has... Thoughts? (This might also be just that the sphere was too big.)

The healing blast can heal everyone in the radius from 100 to 450. That seems like a *lot* of health.

The damage sphere I'm worried about the effects of activating a triple damage or double modifier while in the sphere. I'm particularly worried about the triple mod as, depending on the order of events (and the code) might leave a player up or down permanently on damage..

I wonder if the orbs were all a bit large. I know it's configurable... just want to hear what others had to say about their sizes...

Thoughts everyone?

Healing Sphere: May have been a bit too large; on the map that I got a lot of XP, I was the only Medic on and was also one of the top scorers, too. Being the only Medic on I think was a large part of that, and I didn't heal a lot of people with my weapon. Map was Colony (the frontier fort), so it wasn't a big map, and I was always in the middle of it.

Basically, it could have been a fluke that I got that much XP. But then I wouldn't object to the sphere having an adren vs healing thing built into it - just not a drastic one because I did note that I wasn't always healing people to full before I ran out of adren. Perhaps some tweaking of the XP award when using this artifact? I dunno. I want to say fluke of being only medic on (like level 105 with ExpHealing maxed at 9), because I don't want the Medics to not get what they deserve, but then I also don't want them unfairly leveling up like gang busters.

Healing Blast: I think we could look at some exponential equation to how much (or little) someone from center gets healed. In another thread we've debated increasing the adren cost (a definite need I think), reducing the radius and healing amounts ...

As far as the equation is concerned, maybe we need to have dead center get 300, but have an exponential or "halvesies" drop to the outer edge (300, 150, 75, on out to edge). Perhaps have the power related to level of Loaded Medic (though I know very few Medics who don't max out LMed to 3 right at start - it's kinda silly not to, all things considered).

Invul/Damage Sphere: The Adren Master doesn't benefit from these as much as a Medic does from theirs, and they are very much teamwork items. They drain adren *really* fast. My only concern is that we did see at least one instance of two people (or one person and a vehicle) being invulnerable long after the ISphere was gone. You'd want to ensure that that bug is dealt with, and that a similar bug does not exist with the DSphere. And yes, we need to adjust the code such that the DSphere and Triple don't stack (DSphere influence should shut off Triple I'd say) and that two DSpheres don't stack, either. Perhaps something drastic in that two DSpheres coming in contact will shut both down, and maybe drain some adren from the Adren Master? Oh my!

I do think that two AMs working together should be allowed to have one ISphere and one DSphere working together. As I indicated, the spheres don't always last that long, so I don't see any horrendous vulnerability issues there.

Lightning Bolt/Blast: I'm not so sure we need both of them as they are now. Someone was saying that they took a Titan down with 135 adren with one of these objects (dunno if that was a fully healed Titan - if it was, we might want to make sure that whatever Adren vs Damage ratio is in place isn't quite that high). I would suggest that we use the aimed one but not the unaimed one. If we use both, they should operate quite differently (near as I know, and Szlat will correct me if I'm wrong, they basically do the same thing except one has to be aimed). Perhaps we could also add a range component into the adren usage. Also might want to debate Damage they do in PvP being different than in Invasion.

Repulsion: Good Lord this was a fun one on death drop maps. I couldn't quite get a good kill streak going with it, but get two Titans right next to me and knock them off the map, and I'd more than make Adren out of the deal (once they actually died) - 32 Adren at Surge 2 per Titan, 50 adren cost per Repulsion ... fun fun fun!

I started a Queen wave (think it was 8 ) on FaceClassic with this ready to go, and had a Queen spawn *right next to me*. Fired it off and Em was watching as she sailed over the edge - he was like "What the heck was that?!" And I said "Teach her to spawn that close to me!"

On Death Drop maps, this is akin to a Vorpal: can almost certainly instakill, but you won't make much XP from it. And as the "impact" of repulsion is distance related, unless you get monsters to cooperate fully and they're close enough to get the full effect, you're not guaranteed to knock them off. Finally, if someone else actually hits the monster with a gun before they die to the drop, that person will get the credit/score. Not so sure this artifact needs any changes.

Did I miss any of the new artifacts?

BotFodder wrote:

Did I miss any of the new artifacts?

FreezeBomb, PoisonBlast, MegaBlast.

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

The damage sphere I'm worried about the effects of activating a triple damage or double modifier while in the sphere. I'm particularly worried about the triple mod as, depending on the order of events (and the code) might leave a player up or down permanently on damage..

Agreed, it needs testing to check for any loopholes.

Because the DamageSphere sets the uDamage flag (just like the double damage would), if it is not already set, I think the double damage, the triple, the double modifier and the sphere all work ok. But there is always some strange combination....

It would probably involve ghosting or getting in a vehicle?

FreezeBomb: Never saw anything actually affected by it - someone would always come along and kill it.

PoisonBomb: Never tried it.

MegaBlast: Never had the Adren.

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

Bot reported some insane amount of xp on one map for the healing sphere.. I'm wondering if the amount healed needs to affect the amount of adrenaline the medic has... Thoughts? (This might also be just that the sphere was too big.)

Recent experiences with my medic make me think that the "insane amount" I got was more related to being the only medic on.

The Sphere probably made it "easier" to make the XP, but I didn't necessarily make "more" of it. Moof and I think MA2 probably help you make more XP as a medic - moreso than the sphere, anyway.

BotFodder wrote:

Healing Blast: I think we could look at some exponential equation to how much (or little) someone from center gets healed. In another thread we've debated increasing the adren cost (a definite need I think), reducing the radius and healing amounts ...

As far as the equation is concerned, maybe we need to have dead center get 300, but have an exponential or "halvesies" drop to the outer edge (300, 150, 75, on out to edge). Perhaps have the power related to level of Loaded Medic (though I know very few Medics who don't max out LMed to 3 right at start - it's kinda silly not to, all things considered).

These were dumb ideas I think. Best bet is to change the default HealingMax (450 I think) and HealingMin (50 I think) and HealingRadius (2200) to smaller values - maybe 300, 10, and 1750? Szlat knows the code best - is that horrendously unfair or probably pretty good?

BotFodder wrote:

Best bet is to change the default HealingMax (450 I think) and HealingMin (50 I think) and HealingRadius (2200) to smaller values - maybe 300, 10, and 1750? Szlat knows the code best - is that horrendously unfair or probably pretty good?

I have no idea. The reason I made it all configurable was because I didn't know where to set it.

To put it in context, I did the healing artifacts for two reasons. One was to encourage team play (which Medics are good at anyway), but the other was to try to get people away from the triple, which was dominating gameplay too much.

My feeling would be to compare the Healing Blast against the triple. The Blast requires 50 adrenaline, the Triple 10/sec. So, I think the pitch ought to be for the Blast to heal a bit more in 5 secs than a medic with triple would. Otherwise, lets forget about all other artifacts and just have a triple.

A minigun normally does around 110 damage/sec. With maxed weapon speed that is 165/sec. With a triple that is around 500/sec. Health given is 30% of damage, so 150 healing per sec. 5 secs means a max of 750 healing.

Currently the Blast heals for upto 400 in the centre and 50 at the edges. Although 400 is a lot, it is unlikely that anyone will actually want that much health, and it is only at the exact centre. So, typically I think you will get 100-250 healing per player in the blast area. So, if the blast gets 4 people, it sort of matches the triple.

I don't think that's too far out.

Besides, you have to remember that although it is a lot of healing, the medic would normally do it anyway with the medic weapon - it would just take a little longer. And once the healing is done, it is done. So, if you have one medic playing, he would have got the healing points anyway (assuming the players didn't die before he could heal them). The benefit is it helps more players survive by getting the health to them quickly, rather than giving the medic extra points.

However, the big question is how many people are typically getting healed and for how much? And this we don't know. I think the only way to get the xp properly balanced would be to have extra stats monitoring, so at the end of each map we can see who got what xp and how they got it. I am sure some medics are getting more xp from killing than healing.

(sorry, it's a long post)

Lightning Beam is very powerful.

I would liken it to having a vorp 10 or 15 at will ... if I start with max adren, on a good wave with larger monsters, I can get a good kill streak going and keep a decent amount of adren ...

Granted, I still need to take a couple of shots to keep the per monster cost down a tad, but it's still a very powerful artifact, particularly with adrenaline surge.

It's great for kill thieving, to be honest - if you can aim it, and people have been pounding on it, you get a likely insta-kill (even through queen shields) and most likely a low cost in adren.

Titan waves are a little different but still - if I can get a beam off on a Titan that's been hit a few times, it becomes very much worth it to zap him.

Too powerful? Hmmmmm ... I don't know ... I don't know if it needs "massive" adjustment, but I would suggest maybe a range component to the equation of adren cost (same goes for bolt, now that I think about it).

Medic Sphere and Blast don't seem to heal pets. They should at the very least heal your own.

Dru/Szlat - make a decision (own vs all friendly) and let me know what it is; I know you've moved on to other stuff and I should be able to fix this.

Put a fix in AbilityMonsterPoints - should fix a bug I've noticed with monster icons (not getting text until you try to spawn something, as I put some catches in the activation routine in DruidArtifactMonsterSummon way back when). If it doesn't, I've got a few (ugly) workarounds I'm going to use instead.

BotFodder wrote:

Medic Sphere and Blast don't seem to heal pets. They should at the very least heal your own.

Dru/Szlat - make a decision (own vs all friendly) and let me know what it is; I know you've moved on to other stuff and I should be able to fix this.

This is Dru's call.

In the past, the theory has been that pets are expendible, and you just create another one.

Certainly you should not get any xp for healing pets, as it is too expoitable. For players, the system tracks how much damage has been done by monsters, and how much self-inflicted. It can then work out what part of the healing should get an xp reward. But there would be significant extra loading extending that to pets. So, no xp.

I suppose for consistency if a healing weapon heals the pets then the globe and blast ought to.

But I have no real preference either way.

BotFodder wrote:

It's great for kill thieving, to be honest - if you can aim it, and people have been pounding on it, you get a likely insta-kill (even through queen shields) and most likely a low cost in adren.

This evening on wave 14, I actually had someone following me around. As soon as the Awareness bar turned red on my screen, the Titan suddenly got hit by a bolt and gibbed.

I never saw who it was, but it happened 4x until I went to another room. Not only did the AM get the 66 points for it, but judging from comments made by other AMs, likely gained adrenaline on the deal as well, intentionally robbing me completely of both.

I know that we have no official kill stealing policy, but this is not behavior we should be condoning via artifacts.