304/330 Changes Discord Thread

Estild — 07/29/2021
One last concern I have with update is spell bots. We're currently planning to allow every weapon to be temporarily blessed, but with that, I'm not a fan of trivializing it with spell not that uses 1604 + 304 script to grant something like 1,300 swings.  Ideas?
Estild — 07/29/2021
[...] No issue if the cleric is in your group and hunting with you, but don't want to diminish active clerics vs. spell bots.



This immediately expanded into discussion from numerous angles with responses including all of the following and probably even more that I missed:

* Cap or reduce 304 swing count
* Change 1604 in some way (gives a bless instead of increasing bless count, entirely new effect unrelated to blessings)
* Add a cooldown or X/[time period] usage to 304 in some way (per cleric, per weapon, per day, per hour, per whatever), possibly with uses increased by another factor (Blessings lore, Cleric Base ranks)
* Make 304 an aura
* 304 only offers holy water flares over Voln bless and it's not enough to seek out clerics (but Estild notably commented later to say he plans to make holy water flares "significantly better")
* Solving for scripters is impossible, so don't try
* Anything done to stop spell bots will negatively affect active clerics too
* Tie 304 to the weekly resource somehow (not necessarily consuming the resource) or even have two separate pools for 330 and 304
* Scaling mana cost on 304 within a time frame
* There are bots for almost every profession, so cleric bots are acceptable
* Addressing blessing bots is preemptive and unnecessary since people could already make those now but don't, so there's no indication the problem will exist
* People don't make blessing bots because there's no service to trivialize
* If the idea is to keep 330 valuable, then the problem to be solved isn't toning down 304, but improving 330 in some way (a few examples given: full damage reduction starts at T1, more AS/CS/DS/TD/sheer fear protection, better flares)
* 304 having any overlap with 330 reduces demand for 330 same as if temp Ensorcells existed
* 304 cooldowns would hurt the community until after clerics catch up to demand for 330
* Cap the degree of gear 304 can work on; greater undead bane and permabless were valuable in part because the certs worked on anything
* The GS community heavily values permanent over temporary, so 330 will be sought out
* Move 304 to a bless on a character instead of gear



At that point Whirlin summarized as:

Whirlin — 07/29/2021
I'm just going down the list of concerns and workarounds:
Can only bless every x minutes  -  Ok... Stockpile a cache of weapons during times you don't need them
Bless only lasts x swings - ... same solution.
Bless lasts super long forever - 5 casts of 330 to get it up to the same as something super available for a super long time, and a 6th cast to actually make it better?  That doesn't seem worth it.
Bless a buff now? Ok, going to be subject to finding a cleric every x hours rather than y swings... still a forced tedium, but more timeboxed... doesn't negate cleric alts though.
Bless potency based on Cleric training? All low level clerics instantly worthless.  Everyone @ s Leafiara forever.



The conversation went on:

* The community values permanent over temporary, but casual players will be fine with 304 lasting a week or more
* Problematic that 304 works on everything but 330 doesn't work on everything (because gear difficulty doesn't affect 304)
* While having 330 put on your item, you still need to get 304 applied up until tier 5 since 304 removes all damage reduction but only T5 330 does
* Front weighting 330 benefits (such as moving full damage reduction to T1) in a system of progressively increasing tier costs was a drawback of 735 design and would be for 330 too
* Current proposal is too heavily back weighted, aiming 330 at people who can get T5 (and therefore excluding the casual player depending on expected cost of service)
* Have gear penalties of some sort on 304, but with a higher floor than now
* Get rid of 304 since unblessed weapons will be able to hit undead anyway and weighting, flares, etc. can handle the damage reduction
* Getting rid of 304 would too heavily nerf melee characters without 330/GUB/permabless
* Make 25% damage reduction apply to magic too so casters want 330
* Make 330 appealing by adding abilities that require 330 on the gear (akin to Spell Cleave, Spell Thieve, Spell Block, Tainted Bond requiring ensorcelled gear)
* While deciding what if anything to do with 304, don't neglect the casual player who might never be able to afford 330



After going at it for hours, conversation circled back to the original question:

Kianriu — 07/30/2021
i don't really get the issue, what's to stop them from doing this [making cleric blessing bot armies] today?
Ptolemy — 07/30/2021
I think the issue, at its core, is you can replicate a large % of the service of 330 with a temp blessing
Falicor — 07/30/2021
The thing stopping them from doing it today is that you can't bless most things you would want to today. And there is no reproducible service. Without restriction, 304 becomes significantly more potent, given the potential swings being given
A⌋姆ìℜ 💬 — 07/30/2021
That's the real problem, 330 isn't good enough if people are preferring 304.
Nidal — 07/30/2021
Today you can't bless items with a cat B flare, you can't bless items with lots of WPS. Future state you CAN do both those things, and allowing armies of alt clerics to endlessly bless those items is a giant step up in power for everybody
Ptolemy — 07/30/2021
True. But the whole point of these changes is to enable exactly that. I think development needs to be done with the belief that from day 1, every weapon is blessed all the time after these changes
Estild — 07/30/2021
[replying to Ptolemy]
That is correct, but we also don't want it trivialized by a single spell bot cleric.



So onward we went...

* The initial example of 1300 swing blesses means a majority of players can essentially have (what they would perceive as) permabless if those swings are only consumed when attacking the undead as in the current proposal, so maybe drop that aspect and continue consuming bless swings when attacking the living
* Take a starting point that weapons are blessed 100% of the time, then work from there in figuring out how to make 330 valuable
* 1 cleric blessing 200 people is an issue, but 10 clerics blessing 200 people isn't
* Dreaven's already made blesses trivial, yet people still ask for them
* While the community usually hates temporary things (temp WPS, 620), 304 has the momentum of decades of history of people being used to it and needing it
* Voln and paladins diluted clerics and we're dealing with the fallout
* Change the structure of 330 in some way (examples given: T1 damage reduction removed -> T2-4 AS/CS/DS/TD benefits -> T5 flares, or move to 3-tier system: T1 damage reduction + anchoring -> T2 AS/CS/DS/TD/sheer fear -> T3 holy water flares in a 2/2/4 or 3/3/4 week cost structure to mirror 10 weeks for ensorcelling and tattooing)
* The previous idea of blessing a character instead of gear might increase tedium and doesn't address the bot problem
* Have a skill check for 304, but, like with loresong unlocks, make a difficulty cap so a post-cap enough cleric can 304 anything; this at least resolves low level cleric bot armies
* Add customization to how 330 appears on gear when looking at it, based on whatever factors (cleric deity colors, cleric eye color like 312, etc.)
* No need to consider cooldowns on 304 to deal with cleric bots when there aren't cooldowns on things like spelling others up or lockpicking
* People don't make eblade bots to work around permanent enchanting, so they won't make blessing bots
* Eblade adds flares, so it used to make gear unblessable, but after the proposal goes through it won't, so maybe those will pop up too
* Make the 330 AS/CS benefit apply to SMR attacks too (309, 917, Spin Kick, etc.)
* Make 330 add a damage factor multiplier