Mirror classes

Rhyot

Your first mistake was watching the debate.

Your second is thinking there's going to be mirror classes.

Oonagh

Rhyot said:

Your first mistake was watching the debate.

Your second is thinking there's going to be mirror classes.

</p>

>.< butthead

Tiur

Mini update here! I wanted to expand on the problems we've come across, and why you aren't seeing these immediately. Some classes can avoid these problems entirely, but we're trying to solve them before they're a block in the process, so to speak.

Afflictions! Say you are a Templar, fighting a mirrorTemplar. You use conviction, hit rebounding, and convict yourself. But you already have mirrorConviction! Does it overwrite? Do you have both? Currently, it overwrites. But that shouldn't be the case here. Some places, yes, like you shouldn't be able to get Reflection and mirrorReflection, because that would open a hole into the Abyss and devour us all in a recursive reflecting nightmare.

So, we would need to double the size of the affliction and defense database. But those are already some of the most expensive (processor wise) code in the game, so that's a terrible idea. Sourcing, say, adding the giverclass of the affliction could help... the database doesn't grow, but the logic with each hit a person does doubles. Which is better? Heck if we know, we're having to test it over and over and figure out which is more likely in every class's instance. I floated the idea of faking it and using the same sources for everything, and giving everything player facing as a lie... but that would make tracking things pretty tough, as any bug report from a mirror class would just be wrong because the player is only ever seeing lies.

Anyway, thought you guys might be amused by my breakdown! And some concrete information on the stuff we're dealing with.

Bulrok

I whole heartedly support opening up the recursive abyss. What sights we may see!

Church

Do things like this even necessarily need to come up...? I was under the impression that mirror classes are intended to be, in essence, reskins of the class they imitate - functioning identically to those classes. In the example given, fighting mirrorTemplar should be exactly like fighting Templar itself: the effects, defenses, afflictions should all be exactly the same. If the names don't fit, change them for BOTH or adjust the mirrored concept (it's all flavor built around the concept, easy to imagine a super-zealous Earthen knight believing THEY are bringing truth and purity to the world). If overlapping/replacing effects such as conviction will be a problem, that means they already are and the mechanics need adjustment (for example, prevent mirror/Templars from overwriting a other's conviction while the original giver is still in the room?) instead of weird band-aids born of overthinking things.

Unless that's exactly what you mean and I'm the one misunderstanding.

Tiur

It might not be the best example. Take for instance any mirror that requires a shift in elements... we can't give Sciomancer skills to Enorian. Well, we could, they just wouldn't take them. So to redo the class we need to make everything LOOK different. But still be the same. A lot of the time we can work around the oddness, but the mirrorScio certainly isn't paying shadowprice. We need to remake the exact same mechanic with another name. Which bloats the database, so we have the options like I described above. In afflictions heavy classes with very thematic afflictions or defenses, it's the worst. mirrorPrae shouldn't use blood at all, for example.

But you also kinda get what I mean. We wouldn't want the convictions to overlap.. it makes sense that mirrorTemplar could have the exact same skill, but lore wise, with different convictions entirely, the Templar one shouldn't boost mirrorTemplar abilities. So we should likely bifurcate them, or we'll have Templar purposefully counterting mirrorConviction with their own Conviction. It gets kinda confusing. But these unintended consequences keep showing up!

Also, I want to add heraldry to Aetolia just so Tiur's can be "neant mise en abyme neant"

Drayne

Well, my opinion doesn't matter much but I personally like to see things be more different from each other. If this is being done for combat balance reasons I would hope we could see things like completely different flavor and utility skills for classes that are copies of each other combat-wise.

Zeheia

Drayne said:

Well, my opinion doesn't matter much but I personally like to see things be more different from each other. If this is being done for combat balance reasons I would hope we could see things like completely different flavor and utility skills for classes that are copies of each other combat-wise.

This is a thing we are keeping in mind when it is being discussed.

Mazzion

You posting that it is actively being worked on is a great step. Thank you very very much for the update.

Almol

Thinking about thinking about a mirror Prae class for spirit is breaking my brain

Rihrin

Spirit Praenomen: Required to be a Duamvi and tap into Spirit pretty heavy. If you lose too much Spirit, you dies.

Tada! Though, not sure how..you'd steal Spirit from corpses and it not be weird.

Lin

You guys gotta think outside the box a little. All they need to do to design these classes is abstract their unique mechanisms.

Maybe spirit "vampires" wrest the lingering essence from things they've killed and solemnly send it off to the Underhalls. Instead of blood, they gain a little residual puissance, which they then spend on their abilities. It works exactly like Feed, but it's not Feed.

Tiur

We actually have the lore on that one pretty solid. But mechanically, it's one of the hardest, so least likely to see first.

Rijetta

I don't see why they can't use blood so that mirror matches between prae and spirit!prae are similar to existing prae v prae matches. A hilarious race to see who kills themselves on no blood first.

Drayne

Maybe they "exorcise" corpses to help them find their way to the afterlife. Works better on sentients since non-sentients don't have a lot of spirit.

Kind of like the anime Bleach And then you can wield a bastard sword or something if vampires are still using weapons... Oh God I'm cooming

Drayne

I thought Illidan made a good point in a clan I'm in, not sure if it's been brought up here or not, but he suggested that one of the reasons the spirit side has players is for the unique classes. Otherwise, shadow side has more interesting RP and more people. This resonated with me since I think people play "the midnight age" to be an evil whateverface, like, Drayne would be evil too except that I (correctly) assumed there were going to be less fighters on the spirit side and I didn't want to have less to do in combat areas in the future.

So, if you can be an evil shaman or an evil luminary or whatever, wouldn't it make more sense for some people and then we might see a significant imbalance in the sides?

They could always make spirit into rebels or something but if all the classes are the same, even that would seem kind of lackluster.

Haven

@Tiur or admin team:

How difficult would it be to instead remove the tethering restriction and instead rework the tethering system to represent alignment for your classes? It'd essentially achieve the same effecet without having to recode everything, no?

An example of what I mean would be: If you're a citizen of Bloodloch or last were a citizen of Bloodloch, your tether would make your Templar/Luminary/Sentinel/Zealot flavor messages etc appear as whatever flavor text for the city.

Bulrok

@Zeheia could you expand on what you mean by utility skills in that response to Drayne?

Tiur

Well, something like say.. Sturdiness in Battlefury. That is pretty generic, doesn't need a rewrite. It's utility and pretty basic. If we did rewrite it, we'd have that problem we talked about above where the stuff is being replicated, causing all this icky bloat that slows the game.

@Haven essentially it's the same thing. Bifurcated messages, changes to visible effects.

@Drayne you're a bit late to this one, so we've totally had this discussion before! It's not at all about making shadowShaman instead of Shaman. It's about taking Shaman, stripping everything off except for the base mechanics (Skill A does 500 damage, costs 200 mana, needs to be near a taco stand, and uses 200 csec equilibrium base, no modifications) and turning it into something new. The intention is to be unrecognizable, but at its core, it will still have those base mechanics. So when classleads come up, changes to Shaman happen to mirrorShaman equally, they are the 'same', but we don't really want them recognizable for what they are.

Beyond core archetype, that is. If your class is about physical damage and hardiness, the mirror would be too. So cores like Physical Bulwark, Glass Cannon, Territory Control... those will stay, so both sides have equal access.

Zeheia

Tiur said:

needs to be near a taco stand

I need you all to know that this part is very important to our brainstorming process.

It's a big secret. I can't believe he's telling you.

Drayne

Sorry if I'm being annoying but the more I think about this plan, the more I personally dislike it. Has there been a poll or anything to see what the players think? In my experience, those who are the loudest regarding combat stuff do not always represent the majority.

Bulrok

The first unofficial announcement for mirror classes came when I created a class lead to do the same thing. It was met with positivity from most active combatants on either side but the report was deleted because it was already in the works. So. Yeah. Most of us want this.

Tiur

It was an April Fools from like, a looooooooong time ago too, and all the feedback we got was positive and people wanted it to be real. I'm not really seeing what anyone has against +10 new classes with tons of flavor.

Tiur

Side note! Mirror classes require us to reread the code for a class. And then duplicate it. So, in some cases it is oldish code that no one understands... which takes some time. This should temper expectations.

On the other hand, if there's something you freaking hate about your class, or have always wanted... and the reason you couldn't get it was "Code to weird to change". Well, get your ideas out, because at SOME point in the nearish future we'll have to go through it anyway.

Taiyang

What is a fishing rod or a fishing spear but a quarterstaff? Please let me smash people in the head with them while monk bashing? Pretty please?

Mjoll

we need a "sus" react for posts

Church

Mjoll said:

we need a "sus" react for posts

Mjoll

I'm on board. Insightful is now sus

Nisavi

Tiur said:

It was an April Fools from like, a looooooooong time ago too, and all the feedback we got was positive and people wanted it to be real. I'm not really seeing what anyone has against +10 new classes with tons of flavor.

Only reason I was against it was that I'm not a fan of symmetrical balance.

Tiur

I totally get that. I, personally, prefer asymmetry in goal oriented games. Where you're playing the same game against one another, but after different goals via different means.

In the case of Aetolia combat it seems to cause SO MUCH SALT though.