Which performance problems and opportunities should the new rules address

If that is in fact a possibility, then I will make the time to contact my chapter owner to voice my opinions of the performance issues discussed here today.

Thanks, Draven and Tevas. Good info.
 
Correct. Honestly, the whole "creating entirely new rules for Alliance/modifying rules" thing was pushed off the forums a long time ago.

It was never stated that the intention was to directly create a bid for a new rule. An issue had been identified, and it was suggested that the folks involved in identifying that issue create a thread to brainstorm the discussion of potential solutions. I am unsure how you came to that conclusion, nor does the associated condescending and rather unnecessary remark serve any purpose in supporting the creative processes that should be encouraged in this thread.

Furthermore, we are currently in the process of conducting playtesting for the express purpose of creating, modifying or removing rules in the Alliance system. This particular part of the boards was created by administrators, specifically to be used to these ends. I do not see the relevance in your second comment, as it accomplishes nothing beyond stifling the very purpose of this board.
 
If that is in fact a possibility, then I will make the time to contact my chapter owner to voice my opinions of the performance issues discussed here today.

Thanks, Draven and Tevas. Good info.

You're quite welcome. Everyone involved will be playing the final product, so it is important to gather as much relevant feedback as possible. Thank you very much for contributing your ideas to this process! Please don't hesitate to continue to do so!
 
Common misconception, but that's not ARC's job, either.

If someone wants to propose a change to the rules, the best (and only) avenue they have is to petition a chapter owner. ARC's job is to provide clarification and interpretation, but not actually authorize changes themselves.

You might want to recheck that sir. I believe that was the old way. I am pretty sure that ARC is coming up with these rules and are the ones that rule on them as well.
But according to ARC if your are not in a playtest round you must submit your concerns to an owner.
 
I'll just chime in here. If you wish to have something looked at, you should follow this "Chain of command":

1- Speak to your local Playtest Coordinator(s) - this stops multiple people contacting owners with the exact same proposal
2- PTCs then should speak to their Chapter Owner and work on a proposal
3- the Owner brings this proposal to the other Owners who discuss it.

Then the process continues:
4- If the Owners "like it" they ask ARC to review and come up with a way to make it work in the rules
5- ARC reviews it, tweaks it, works with the Owners to come up with something that works in the ruleset and causes no glaring "exceptions" or "contradictions".
6- Owners vote on the changes and we go continue until ARC and the Owners are satisfied with the proposal.

Hope that clears it up for everyone.
 
Not to derail the discussion, but...

Why did they see the need to nerf Evade? Now it halves damage from weapon blows that have a damage number.

Was it that game-breaking to give rogues (with less armor and less body and typically on the flank separated from the healers) to have some way of saving their own ***? It's not like the old evade didn't already have limited value. Now rogues have to do division in their head, and they still take damage.
 
I like the new version of Evade...1/2 the damage and you drop the carrier....no need to worry about the big damage calls with take out carriers...
 
Forgive my ignorance, but didn't Evade eliminate carrier effects before?

I always thought that if you got hit with a "15 drain" and you called "evade" that negated both the damage AND the drain effect. Am I mistaken?
 
Actually asking why they did something with the rules is on topic for the thread.

With evade, I don't think they were solving a performance problem. I think they changed it because they removed the prepare to die verbal. The old evade didn't work at all on prepare to die skills. Now it does work on them (but taking half damage of a 200 slay may not be an improvement).

Regarding, division in your head, you're right, The new evade is terrible if you have to use it on a few people swinging a few different damages.
 
I don't hate math, but having to divide multiple damage calls that I may call evade on and then have to add each one afterwards in the heat of battle will make it less useful in my opinion.
I only ever really use it for carrier attacks anyways (massive, death, wither etc) and now adding slays....
 
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I like the new version of Evade...1/2 the damage and you drop the carrier....no need to worry about the big damage calls with take out carriers...

I like that right up until you have to keep track of division while being whacked with plumbing supplies, often from multiple directions. :)
 
I like that right up until you have to keep track of division while being whacked with plumbing supplies, often from multiple directions. :)
But add into that the flurry rule and it gets a little easier. Plus for me, smaller games and more 1 day events...lends more utility for that skill
 
Flurry rule only applies to one player at a time. So with two, three or more people hitting you it's pointless. You could also create a point where when you're on your second hit your teammate starts with their first hit and the other can then jump in and so on. I understand the reason behind the new evade I think it works great on paper but not in action. I understand the removal of exceptions but in the new rules we still have them.
 
I was about to say that. And...

If you go with the other variation, (powerful blows) requiring a 3 second delay between your slays, it doesn't preclude 3 guys standing in a line in front of you taking turns delivering one slay every second.

These things all seem great if you're play testing them in 1v1 fights. But that rarely happens in game.
 
I was about to say that. And...

If you go with the other variation, (powerful blows) requiring a 3 second delay between your slays, it doesn't preclude 3 guys standing in a line in front of you taking turns delivering one slay every second.

These things all seem great if you're play testing them in 1v1 fights. But that rarely happens in game.

This is true...but rarely have I, as a PC, stepped up to a fight with 3 NPCs and have gotten hit with a big shot from each in rapid sucsection.....but as an NPC I can't count the number of times this has happened to me...with 5+ PC yelling 3 different big shots each....
So as a PC interacting with NPC...not to much of a problem....as an NPC interacting with PC, it can be a problem...but with the flurry rule and the swarm ability...no more pillow partying the BBG...

Most of the time you need to worry about facing off against 3 people and getting smacked with a slay from each of them...would be when dealing with other PCs as a PC.
 
You mention "no more pillow party" but I bet it still happens and I know with swarm I would still surround them specially if it's a group of people my character doesn't like...whoops hehe. Remember that swarm isn't a auto land, so they will have to hit the players and most likely the ones closest to them. Also when your have swarm activated you still take damage.
 
But add into that the flurry rule and it gets a little easier. Plus for me, smaller games and more 1 day events...lends more utility for that skill

Yeah. I'm not sure if that, or Sarr going the #@%@ away is my favorite new rule.

Probably Sarr, they were intensely frustrating to play.
 
I am going to make a rickety transition from the combat roles thread to this one.

The ARC only brought up a gap regarding passive damage from Weapon Proficiencies and Backstabs. Any other gap you reference is one of your own devices, and not one that they have openly recognized. Does that mean that it has no opportunity to exist? No. But please do not state it as though they are designing rules based on it, as they have not made mention of it.
From what I read, ARC says that scaling up the build cost for profs and backstabs helps to reduce the gap between low and high level players. To me, this indicates that ARC cares about the power gap between players and that other changes might also help.

Also, I don't know how much clearer I can be on this point: I don't know what the objectives are for the new rules. I would like to know. I am trying to figure it out.

To answer your question, ARC described the alleged "gap" as existing particularly with regards to Weapon Proficiencies and Backstabs. They are not the only contributor to differences in capabilities between lower and higher level players, but they are the contributor that ARC chose to identify and address in this fashion due to its direct impact on other aspects of the game, specifically monster statting.

Again, I haven't seen ARC describe the alleged "gap" (huh?) as existing particularly with regards to Weapon Proficiencies and Backstabs. They say that changing profs and backstabs should help to reduce the gap. Doesn't that mean that other things should help reduce the gap too? Reducing wand damage maybe?

That's why I have been asking for clarification on what the rules are supposed to improve. Are we trying to make combat more fun for 15 build characters?

So all this stressing about how ARC only wants to address profs and backstabs is part of the problem. There needs to be some underlying performance deficiency or this whole thing is a waste of time. The rules project will be a waste of time if we start off by saying "Weapon prof damage is too big."

As Robert Mager would say: We are finger-pointing, naming a culprit and hinting at a solution instead of probing for the problem by asking Why is this so? What causes it?

For example, monster statting isn't a performance problem as I understand it. A problem might be "NPCs make errors playing their cards." If that is a performance problem, then the new rules should systematically help NPCs play their cards more accurately. Playtesters could even measure how many errors NPCs make using the new rule system and provide useful feedback on how well the rules help people perform better.

- The suggestion to re-read the playtest packet came specifically from a need to ensure that correct information was being communicated to the general player base. Any ideas of punishment are solely of your own creation. The comparing skills and equal weight comes from your post saying: "I just don't see any logic with making profs more expensive to reduce the gap while introducing meditate and blast gas to increase the gap.", which once again refers to an out of context "gap" that you had somehow derived from the section on passive damage reductions. As so far as your next question on abilities goes, again, there is no published ARC stated intention of "evening the playing field" for anything aside from constant sources of passive damage. The design behind the change, as stated by ARC in the "Clarifications of Intent" thread, regarded monster body points as a contributing factor, and wished to change the nature of combat away from a "grind the monster down" model by reducing both monster body points as well as these sources of passive damage.

- We talk about maximum purchased numeric damage because anything outside of that operates off of a fictional hit percentage that varies from individual to individual and situation to situation with extensive variables and as such cannot be regarded as reliable data. If you wanted to say, "Meditate should allow casters to throw with more confidence because they have the ability to regain missed spells, which might amount to more spells landing over the course of an event", then that would be a perfectly reasonable statement. Unfortunately, however, you said "...while increasing high level spell and alchemy damage...", which is untrue, because high level spell damage did not actually change. And why do I mention Alchemy damage changes? Because you specifically said that high level Alchemy damage had increased, so I was addressing it. Taking the opportunity to review your previous posts prior to continuing the thread may help eliminate fragmented issues like this, and maintain a higher level of discussion coherency for the outside reader.

Context could be your friend. I think that meditate will help high level casters do more damage in the new rules than in the current rules. Alchemists will also do more damage because they can hurt more stuff. High level alchemists will do more damage because they have more money to throw (and can hurt more stuff). Then comes the important question: Why are we helping high level casters and alchemists dish out more damage with the new rules? I have a feeling that Tevas will reply (again) that spell damage has not changed. True, my eighth level spell does the same damage in both rule sets. But over the course of an event I will deal more damage if I get back missed spells.

Also, regarding this out of context gap that I somehow derived (invented?). Actually I am searching for the performance gaps that the new rules should help us overcome. This is backwards and we shouldn't have to guess. If ARC wants good feedback, they need to tell us the performance objectives and how we should measure them.
 
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