DruidsRPG186 is now up

It is somewhat clear to me that some people just don't like how easily Medics get xp. Some people run away from me if I start to heal them, and the only time they'll actually try to sit still is if they go below 100. They don't even stop between waves, sometimes.

But those people are really a minority. Most poeple will sit still, especially the lower levels. Lots of people say "thanks" even if I only heal them 50 or 100. I don't mind chasing people if I have a medic mini, but with rockets or something that takes a little longer to hit the target I get a little annoyed and sometimes give up.

When I was the only medic in the game, I got 6000 xp in one map (I leveled up twice). Once another medic entered the next game, I got 2000, maybe 3000 xp. I guess having multiple medics sort of balances it out, but still the LW and LA people never get that much, at least not easily.

It is a little fun to ignore the fact that people need healing and start acting like a LW'er. Except then I feel guilty when I let them die, and it's not as good for xp...

kyraeu wrote:

When I was the only medic in the game, I got 6000 xp in one map (I leveled up twice).

Ok, that's just insane....

kyraeu wrote:

It is somewhat clear to me that some people just don't like how easily Medics get xp. Some people run away from me if I start to heal them, and the only time they'll actually try to sit still is if they go below 100. They don't even stop between waves, sometimes.

I don't think that's too bad; if people don't want to be healed then they just keep going to where they want to go. I'm afraid it'll turn into people yelling "I need a medic!" when they're down 10hp from their max. It should be a privledge, not a guarantee. If you're near a medic, fine, but don't yell at one to heal you or come to where you are.

Let him think about his statement as he lies face down in the dirt. As a LW player I'm always on the move, don't take it personally if I don't stop, I've learned if I stop I die.

Im talking about in the intro of a new wave as they have 10 sec to heal people that don't sit still i like the little challange to run after them....

la_bomba wrote:

Szlat wrote:

Do the monsters need to go up a skill level?

I was saying this exact thing last night. Medic's don't always survivie, but they do more than most people their level. Plus, I'm noticing a kind of partnership between medics, almost as if they heal each other before they'll heal a LW or LA player (which isn't necessarilly a bad thing, the more medic's the higher the game's HP is). I'd have to agree with you, not only are the medic's lasting longer than one would think, but EVERYONE is doing better as well.

Odd... Ooo and I had a great thing going the other night. On the map with the jet in the middle (sorry, I cannot remember the name, but you know which one I mean

), I got lucky and made myself a rage +10 rocket launcher. With my stats, I was going around during the waves with the titans, warlords or queens hammering them (sometimes with the triple damage going, sometimes without), and I had Ooo following me making sure I was always in good health. This was a Very Good Thing (TM), as by wave 16, I had those titans hunting me.

I think this was the very sort of thing Dru was wanting to happen.

Chyster wrote:

To infinity and beyond would be quewl. I don't understand placing parameters such as this on something like what you have here.

There's a point of diminishing returns for those above 150, as not many players are above level 150, so in a way I'm targeting the masses.

The problem is that once you're 150, I really dont know what kind of skills to give you that wouldn't dramatically unbalance your abilities against the abilities of lower level players, and to make it simple, I'd really rather make a new class to encourage multiple play styles

Chyster wrote:

Ya, well now I feel bad because I switched around lvl 100 and didn't realize your thoughts toward 'capping' the classes.

I didn't know at the time either. If you remember, I switched too. It's one of those hindsight 20/20 things. If I had thought about it I'd have realized that you'd get more play time building up a new character.

Chyster wrote:

Also, I'm glad to hear the "Beta" info regarding resets for the clerics. I worked hard for my levels (if ya wanna call it work) and somebody who has only been around a short time running up the ladder just doesn't sound right.

Clearly I'm going to have to change something. I do intend for the ladders to be different ladders, and not judged against each-other, but I didn't plan on having level 50 players after a week.

Thanks for your positive comments and support Chyster. I appreciate them

Dru

As for the complaints of medic's leveling faster, I've started to get the feeling that you can't judge them on the same basis as LW or LA characters. From what Druid's said, I get the idea that a lvl 100 Medic does not equal a lvl 100 LA character, nor a lvl 100 LW character. Our jobs are different, our stats are different, so we sould be judged differently as well. Think about it, take a lvl 100 Medic and a level 50 LW character, who would win in a battle?

Another note: The Medic's have more skills with all the monster stuff (intelligence, health, points, loaded) and the two medic skills when LW only has two or three big name skills to level (specific to them).

And besides, our job is to HEAL YOU GUYS. Who doesn't want help to get more xp? I hate to use the "J" word, but is it jealousy? DON'T BE. We can't fight very well, and personally I die at the drop of a hat. Everyone else can fight, get hurt, keep going; our job is back-up. We can't do anything awesome, but you can. We aren't the ones who will be the last one on wave 16 (and if we are, don't hold your breath). Yes we can buy stats, buy you can do that and then some. If we die you guys can still survive, if you die, we're dead.

Random Question: Would a medic avril lock onto players?

Disclaimer: I could always be wrong, I'm not God.

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

SilverMonkey wrote:

I think someone mentioned this already but the easiest solution would be to raise the monsters difficulty.

I'm seriously considering this very thing. Not until this class is final, and until there's enough medics around.

SilverMonkey wrote:

Medics really suck when it comes to trying to defend themselves seeing as we got no/little DR or not much Health

You can buy it the same as anyone else...

SilverMonkey wrote:

I've been ambushed by a couple of warlords and a queen or skaarj and such and all the other guys just sit on the other side waiting for me to die so the monsters come to them....what's up with that? After I healed them like 10 times each?

Sounds like a mob not worth healing in the future > There's no rule that says you have to help big jerks.

Regarding the monster levels, like Dru, I think that once he gets things polished a bit more and the dust settles, a bump might be in order. While the scores are no where like they were in 2K3, where half of us were 1K or more on kill scores, we are definitely starting to go up. Of course, there is also the effect that the higher level players are scoring much higher on both the kill score and XP, gaining more levels, and producing a feedback look while the middle and lower players fall further and further behind. Unfortunately, there is no good solution that I can see, as changing the monster's effective level based on its target opens up a whole mess of problems (such as do you attack a lvl 200 medic at the same level that you do a lvl 200 LW person, or what if a bug misses and hits that poor lvl 6 player with the splash). Oh well, it is still fun.

On the bozos just standing there watching while you get hammered, I would have to agree with Dru that it sounds like a mob not worth healing. There have been a number of things said in what I have read so far, and no doubt the remaining pages may make this redundant, etc. But... As a LA person, who spawns with 300 health, has ghost, denial, resupply and can have 199 adren, but cannot regen at all. I have developed a style of inter-player gameplay which seems, at least from my PoV to be working out. It all comes down to what is called the Principle of Enlightened Self Interest, or simply put...you scratch my back, I will scratch yours. There are players who know that I generally like to get certain weapons which are missing on some maps (like the flak on Face, the sniper or LG on others), and they will say "Hey E, want this?". Or, knowing how vamp or energy weapons help out a LA person, they will want those weapons as well. When they do, they earn bonus points in my book, and I will even max out their weapons, or try to make a good weapon for them before/while trying to work on one of my own. No XP (more about this in a moment), just an increased chance that they might do the same in some later wave or game. A medic heals me, I am still trying to figure out how they work, but would tend to do the same, and **may** even offer my globe if they asked.

Now, I know much has been said about the XP for healing, and it is almost certainly out of balance. After all, between the higher level players, etc., it is probably a rare game where I do 1000xp, even as a level 93 LA player. And I still need more adren to use one of my artifacts, and more DB/DR, and cautionness as well. But, there are two ways we could help ballance things out. They are:

a) Lower the rate at which points are awarded for healing.

or, more difficult...

b) Add more ways that LW and LA folks could gain a few xp here and there by using their skills and aiding other players.

Yep...you heard correctly. I said give the LW and LA folks more ways to gain a few XP. I get no xp for maxing someone's weapon, and someone like Fro or Dirty would get no points for giving me their flak in a map such as face, where there is no flak. Likewise, I get no XP if I hand out one of my artifacts and have no guarentee of getting it back. But those acts are just like healing, and in some regards, are even more generous (especially if you hand out a weapon you may normally use on a map which does not have it). In an ideal world, if someone tosses someone a weapon, there should be some token amount of xp awarded. If it is a weapon not on the map (ideal world, the server could find this out quite easily), there would be more xp awarded. Weapon is a + weapon, even more XP, and if it was a one-off , starred weapon (like vamp), even more. So if someone passed me a +10 flak of rage on face, we could have something say like:

10xp * (150% for plus) * (150% for one-off rage) * (200% for no flak on map) = 45xp

Perhaps it could be scaled even more for just this situation of one-off on a map where that weapon does not spawn.

Anyways, there are some issues involved (such as trading weapons so that one person can max the other's weapon, or weapons passes where a good weapon is handed out, but the other person failed to pick it up, or thrown away weapons) which could make this a real PITA to code. But perhaps part of the solution would be to add another attribute to the weapons just as the plus/type was added, and when the weapon is passed out and is either picked up or fades out, the XP could be awarded. And if the XP is relatively small, perhaps the trade and trade back side-effect could be considered to be a non-issue, since after all, the LA person is accepting some risk of losing their great weapon to max someone elses weapon. Of course, there might also need to be another attibute such as one holding the previous owner to keep folks from just standing there passing a weapon back and forth and back and forth. That is yet another one of those PITA coding issues.

Is the lack of XP for maxing folks weapons or handing out artifacts going to stop me from doing it? Nope? I still have fun. But it was something I wanted to bring up which had apparently not been said yet. And given the complexity of it, I don't expect Dru to spend time he could be playing coding it. Instead, I brought it up so that two of his brain cells could be talking away while he does the many other things he does, and perhaps, at some point in the future, the lightbulb will go on and we could see this sort of feature, say in RPG 861

kyraeu wrote:

When I was the only medic in the game, I got 6000 xp in one map (I leveled up twice). Once another medic entered the next game, I got 2000, maybe 3000 xp. I guess having multiple medics sort of balances it out, but still the LW and LA people never get that much, at least not easily.

Clearly I've got something broken.. you realistically shouldn't be able to break 2000 even if you're playing at the TOP of your game.

Druid made it so you only get experience for healing people when they have taken monster damage. If you were allowed to get experience for healing self damage then it could exploited for free experience.

That's not where the issue lies.

If I understand what I've heard previously properly, at *no* time are medics supposed to get XP for healing someone past their start health. According to Ooo, sometimes he does.

[KitFox wrote:

]
You know Druid, even if LA is fun to play, when a LW is in the game, its impossible to do as much xp. With all the field fulled with mines and more Super Weapon explosions than the number of mobs... I think LA needs something "unique" to make the class more attractive. Its not for nothing that no one is LA.
That Magic Weapon +1 was a good idea !

LW is really powerfull. 95% of the time, a LW guy survive all waves to the end. The only LA player ive seen able to survive is DaRedEye, and hes lvl 240?

I don't think that is entirely true. Depending on what weapons I get/make, how I get hammered in relationship to ghost, etc. I can sometimes make it through with no true death, and I am below lvl 100. Ooo probably can even more easily at lvl 151. (gee...I remember when he passed me, not so long ago. Just goes to show what playing on the server 24x7 can do for ya

) But I will agree that it is much harder for me to have the scores and xp I had as a lower level LW player. The number of hours I am spending leveling now is way up since going to LA, and my scores are probably where they were when I was back around lvl 20-30, if not lower. And I am not a lightweight. After a few days of shaking the RPG skewing, I can still star getting Godlike and Wicked Sick playing single person or on one of the CTF or DM servers where I used to play. The diff is that we have more folks with levels in the 150+ range, and I am playing LA.

That's not where the issue lies.

If I understand what I've heard previously properly, at *no* time are medics supposed to get XP for healing someone past their start health. According to Ooo, sometimes he does.

I don't think they do i have notice after i start to heal past there start health it stops giving me exp...

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

[KitFox wrote:

]You know Druid, even if LA is fun to play, when a LW is in the game, its impossible to do as much xp.

I wonder if you're playing the class wrong... I couldn't disagree more. On average, I can level at the same speed as a LW person of similar level, as long as I get in in the beginning of a game. If I get in late, it's hard to catch up.

Look at how well ooo does, and he's a LA character. He's leveling at least as fast or faster than LW people, to the point that I feel like I need to help out the LW peoples.

Now I agree that at the lower levels that wasn't possible in the past, but I believe we've corrected that in this release. The lower level skills are a lot easier to purchase.

[KitFox wrote:

]That Magic Weapon +1 was a good idea !

Thanks

[KitFox wrote:

]LW is really powerfull. 95% of the time, a LW guy survive all waves to the end. The only LA player ive seen able to survive is DaRedEye, and hes lvl 240?

It's true that the last few waves are more difficult for an adrenaline master, especially if they get in late... although if I focus, I can survive all the time. I'm hopeful that having medics around will help with this. Really, the adrenaline master class is supposed to be more like a mage.... You dont throw your mage out on the front lines... They aren't designed for it

And I would have to disagree with you Dru, much as I hate to have to say it, on several points. First, while I have nothing against Ooo or yourself, but I think neither he nor you are a good choice to use as an example, just as using Dirty would not be a good choice for an example as a LW player. There are issues like how much time does player X spend playing (measured in terms of clock time as well as games/waves), as well as statistics for things like relative player levels for a game, and somehow player class would have to enter into this as well.

To put it another way, the one thing I think we are really missing here meaningful stats, collected on a per-game (or yes, even a per-wave) basis, which can be measured over time for all players and as needed, normalized or plotted against other stats. This would include things like the time played, kills, XP, RPG level, who else was in the game, and could also include things like time entered, bugs killed, etc. In other words, pretty much like UTstats, but with RPG added in. But at a minimum, it would have things like a end-of-game log dumped with per-player summaries of times, kills, deaths, starting lvl/xp and xp gained, for all players. I think if you had those stats on at least a per game, you would find that higher level players are on average probably dominating the game when compared to the more average levels, and that LW players do this at much lower levels than LA players. And it would not even have to be collected as the game proceeds, but perhaps could be logged at the end of each wave or game.

Now, regarding the LA folks not supposed to be on the front lines like a mage... I have a bit of a problem (well, more than a bit, but I will forgive you for it

) with that analogy. Indeed, this pretty much pushes a button, as you will see.....

As we know, the purpose of this game is to have everyone kill bugs so that we make it through the game. Yes, our LW folks are the big, "dumb" fighters, shining knights, etc. And our medics are like the clerics in some games (or medics in some others). But the only real way that the LA player can get XP is by killing bugs, **just like the LW folks**. And, to gain adren at any real rate, the LA person has to kill bugs. And just like the LW player, the LA player has to do it with the range of the weapons being used. But unlike a LW player, a LA player has no guarentee of vamp (LW can get the kill while LA has to have the weapon, and I have gone entire nights without vamp or energy weapons unless I was given one, typically by some LW5 person), no regen, and I have to go around picking up weapons. The end result is that the LW player generally get the first kill (a AR is no match for a RL, flak, mini, etc.), stay in better health, do more damage, and generally get higher scores when compared to a LA player. And no, in this I did not forget about things like booster, the globe, etc. Like a LA player, the LW player gets adren for damage, and with their DB/WS, the pickups, etc., they could fire off the booster just like the LA person, but they would have less of a need for it, with regen/vamp combined into the picture. Yes, LA player can buy DB/WS just as well, but they have the need for adren, drip, surge, etc. as well, which the LW person does not. But in the meantime, the LA person using booster in the early/mid rounds is not getting rid of any negative weapons or getting the really good weapons which the LW person may have spawned with from time 0 (I have lost track of the number of times I have picked up all normal, negative or cursed weapons). Combine in other factors like all positive magical weapons from the beginning, the fact that they can pick up most of the artifacts they want by being around a LA person when they are killed, the fact that their regen/vamp is a no-action-needed (as opposed to our having to switch artifacts around, and activating it) and such, the LA person actually ends up with multiple disadvantages when compared to LW, particularly when at mid levels (e.g. about the time you can get LW5). The only real bonuses at mid levels for LA as I see it are that if I have dumped 50 into my adren bonus instead of DB, DR or WS, I can max a weapon, and once I get denial 3, I can keep all of my weapons. Of course, this all depends on whether or not I have managed to somehow get that nice weapon. Some games, all I seem to be able to come up with is a poison, freezing or null weapon (near suicidal for a LA person given no vamp or regen), a penetrating/piercing/sturdy weapon (nearly useless), or some weapon I already have (e.g. a +5 RL/flak when I already have a +5 weapon). Or how about that now nearly useless healing +3 mini. No spash so no self heal, and nobody really needs it in many games.

So, will this keep me from handing out weapons? No. But I will say that since the medics showed up, I have pretty much stopped wasting time asking about whether folks want a healing weapon. Indeed, there are some weapons where if I am at a point in my adren usage where I started at 199, I will re-make the weapon a few seconds later when I cross the 100 adren point again.

So, will this keep me from giving out an artifact at times? Not really. But I will say that given how hard it is to pick up a new MWM after giving one out, and the fact that I get no XP, it is far and few between that I will give it out.

Will it change any other ways in which I play? Naa.

But I will continue to think that perhaps some if not most artifacts should behave differently (such as using adren say 5x slower while giving the same effect, or always making maxed-out weapons), that perhaps LA folks should not drop their artifacts when they die (but not prevent their intentionally dropping them or giving them away), and that perhaps XP is warranted when other players benefit from your using adren to max their weapon or to make one. Or that we should have a much higher chance to make a such as a vamp or vorpal? Nope!
Nor will I stop thinking that perhaps LA still costs to much for what we get.

But I will also not stop playing my LA player as my main player.

Nor will it keep me from saying Thanks Dru!. As much as things are unballanced at times, you have still done a very good job!

Well...I want to play some, so I better wrap this up so that I can get dinner taken care of, and on to playing all the sooner.

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

The problem is that once you're 150, I really dont know what kind of skills to give you that wouldn't dramatically unbalance your abilities against the abilities of lower level players...

Well the idea would be to create something that is VERY expensive, worth while, and worth working toward. An example would be

Kamikaze

This requires the purchase of both levels of retaliation plus one hundred skill points. At the purchase of this skill you LOSE the ability to re-buy retaliation.

Effectively kills EVERYTHING in line of sight, monsters, players and pets alike. This would encourage team play in the sense that the person with the ability is severely penalized for team kills.

OR

Since the LA class is basically a mage, find a way to resurrect the old 'Black Hole Gun' mod and give them the ability to generate and disperse this weapon.

Well that is definitely a shot in the dark, but a shot none-the-less. You're probably right in it being easier to just build a new class. This is more along the lines of a suggestion, so move it to that thread if you deem it appropriate.

Chyster wrote:

Since the LA class is basically a mage, find a way to resurrect the old 'Black Hole Gun' mod and give them the ability to generate and disperse this weapon.

I'm sorry, I missed out on that. Which gun is that?