Shattered Kingdoms

I did glance at the ephialtis log. Barbarians and mercs aren't required. As I said before, tanks are. You had a veteran paladin with defensive spell access, the aludran spell, protective cabal abilities and rescue. Defying conventional wisdom is letting a swash tank.

I totally understand the need for one shot spells not to work, but malediction classes are sitting back wondering why they wasted their whole mana pool to blind something.

I'll just touch on a few points here.



Charm person in end-game is pretty useless because of the bevy of anti-magic rooms and the one means of getting charms through them being removed. Also charm being dispelled in flight rooms or underwater rooms. You can't take a charm in end-game, and in most cases you can't summon one to use when you're there. Haste and GS are useful for specific, usually final fights, but the fatigue from both is more harmful than the benefits of the spells prior to that. So yeah, dragging around a sorc to spawn additional REs for just two spell-casts as buffs right before a fight with a NPC that is often going to have a glow script dispel or weaken or slow (those all seem pretty common these days from what I've seen) in order to add fatigue a round or two into the boss fight seems like a bad idea.



This isn't a bad spell for some PvE that isn't almost completely built around RE obstacles, but it doesn't do anything lightning bolt doesn't do and the warlock spell list and impairment is more useful all around.



I don't think that's what he was saying. I don't think he implied that. I think, instead, he touched on the fact that your specifically stated example would not have been possible without the cabal abilities of the cabals involved. I'm inclined to agree. There is a distinct and well-known disparity between the niches of specific cabal abilities. That's, I think, *one* of the contributing factors to the removal of CRS--certain cabals just have an unbelievable advantage in certain situations. The two cabals featured in that one specific log you pointed out were both in their "ideal" element in the log. You would not be seeing a log of that sort with a few harlies and a few Crucible. It wouldn't be possible.

It pains me physically to agree with spidermonkey, but there it is.




Again, it happens. No one is denying it happens. It is not common, or likely. I've seen it, I've done it (not since several changes have gone in but I've done it). I'd never call it ideal, and the prep and skill level required to make it possible is far beyond the pale. I think, again, that was the point.




Okay. I didn't realize my and others' posts above stating the fail rate is still too high wasn't meaningful feedback. Let me try to clarify.

I was doing end-game content for about 4-5 hours last night. Success rate on spells (spear of faith, bolt of glory) was before the tweaks somewhere around the 1/10 casts that weren't saved against. Last night, I experienced a rate of about 1.75-2/10 casts that weren't saved against. For specific example, I saw the Dracolich take something on the order of 30 bolts of glory. There were 2 or 3 red messages in that spam.

Does that count as meaningful? It's basically the exact same thing as saying "spells continue to be unreliable and ineffective in end game PvE" with just more words. I don't really personally see the difference but hopefully that counts as meaningful.



I mean...yes? I don't think it's a good design plan (in any game, and I've seen this idea that certain content should just be designed to be too difficult for "casuals") to make any content more or less unreachable without being handheld by a vet. It's needlessly frustrating, contributes to the gating of anyone ever becoming a vet (particularly in SK's limited resources environment where there isn't an instance of the best gear for anyone that actually beats the content), and given said difficulty level and the unforgiving nature of mistakes in PvE contributes to people *not* being handheld through it because they spawn more REs or a single typo or moment of panick costs the entire group their gear in an unrecoverable location. Content should be designed to be accessible by anyone, even if it requires 3-4 or more to do it, but it should not ever be designed with the idea that "oh player X knows things or does okay so s/he can lead players Y and Z, but without player X the content is just too hard for Y and Z."

People work pretty hard to make content for SK. I don't think anyone makes content with the idea in mind of "oh man, no new players should ever see this stuff that I busted my butt on." I think, in the main, people are more likely to want content to be experienced, otherwise why make it at all?



I don't think anyone is saying that, anywhere. I think, instead, it's being said that it would be nice if group composition was not so rigidly enforced with NPC saves that are insurmountable with spells, gating that *needs* particular classes, and obstacles like magic nullification that make classes like paladin and sorcerer and shaman liabilities vs assets.

Again, it comes down to why make content that is only accessible to a few? It defeats the intent of creating content.

Yeah that's not always the best strategy in every case. Fortunately, those classes do generally have other options for different situations. But, the question is still open as to what it should look like or those malediction classes. What should the expected number of tries to successfully land a curse on a dragon be?

All RPGs have this question as a fundamental mechanic, and they all handle it slightly differently, but the core concept is the same. If you were using a d20 system and an opponent has to roll a 5 or higher to save, it means he is going to save 80% of the time. The expected number of attempts before the first success is given by the function E(NF) = (1-p)/p. So, for a 20% event, that is (1-0.2)/0.2 = 4. Four failures are expected to happen before the first success; the mean number of attempts to get a success is 5. It's more complicated on SK than just this straight application of the geometric distribution because of impairment, but that just means each subsequent failed attempt makes it more probable for spells to get through on the next attempt. Thus, a higher probability of an initial save (fewer one-shots) results in the same expected number of attempts to successfully land a spell. In effect, monster saves begin circling the drain at some point, and they stop being able to save very well at all, and you can land a series of spells.

It's also worth noting that different monsters save at different rates against different spells, because they have different CON, WIS, and DEX racial maximums. i think it is unlikely people have tested all of these differences in the few days since its implementation to be able to know for sure all monsters are saving at too high a rate against all spells. Yeah, maybe you're still not going to one-shot petrify a dragon after the change, but that's really not the whole story.

This is a poor equivalency imo. In your d20 example, characters have options to improve their success rates, like feats or specific class-abilities that buff or debuff saves (in an effective and timely manner that SK does not provide.) Even in VtM, you can use Presence or Dominate to buff or debuff in an effective and timely manner. You don't have that option in SK PvE. It is *always* better in SK's environment to just stack an extra melee damager than to try to use the impairment system to the point where "monster saves are circling the drain."

It's false that this one means has been removed, and it's false that it's the one means. You can get charms places a lot of different ways.


We agree on the utility of GS and haste. I wouldn't want it while getting to the final boss, but it sure is nice to have against the final boss. It's also nice to be able to enchant the loot on the spot, too. I'm not sure where the glow slow or weaken spells are that you're talking about, but it turns out that PCs can also have great saves to thwart monster spells just like monsters can have against PCs. If you're getting consistently done in by glow spells, you need to improve your kit. A well-kitted PC will save against monster spells at an even higher rate than a monster will against PCs.



It damages air elementals. It isn't hampered by RE. Just saying, you can't count magic missile out. It does consistent damage, doesn't cost a lot of mana to use, and can be used at range. It's not nothing; it can make a material difference.



Every cabal has PvE benefits that other cabals do not, and it makes sense in any given battle that cabal abilities would be relevant if characters have them at their disposal. I'm not sure what your point is. There have been plenty examples over the years of other cabals not present in that log accomplishing things in PvE that required their cabal abilities. Some characters have made major PvE accomplishments without even being in a cabal. My personal opinion is that none of the people in that log are even in the best PvE cabal, given what I've observed from players in different cabals over the years. Again, just my opinion.



IIRC you were away for sometime. Different approaches to endgame material has been done multiple times by people who wanted to try different things. The prep and skill being high is a subjective matter. All I know is that it has not been uncommon for me to login and see groups adventuring in the Outer Planes with a variety of different classes and a variety of different cabals having been represented.



Why are you quoting me responding to someone else and assuming I'm also responding to you? I'm not.



What the spears were being used against is relevant. 30 BoGs on the Dracolich seems virtually impossible if everything is working correctly. If you have a log of that, please send it to me, because that could indicate a bug. I've never seen or heard of anything remotely like that.



I realize this is a game and we're not doing rocket science here, but the better the empirical evidence we have, the better we can fine-tune everything. "About this" and "approximately that" against unspecified targets isn't the most precise information. It's better than nothing, but when we can look at specific monsters and get precise success rates in a given combat, that's way more actionable.

What would make your input even more meaningful is if you stated what your expectations were as a player. How often should spear of faith land against endgame foes? You use words like "unreliable and ineffective," but I don't know what you consider to be "reliable and effective."



Of course it is. Vets will just get bored if they never have PvE challenges to face. Vets enjoy new content and challenging content. Everyone can become a vet in time by just playing and getting experience. If we build so the average player can accomplish everything the game has to offer, how can we make it so that it's still challenging and engaging for a vet? I am going to continue to make hard stuff for vets to do, and there will continue to be rewards for undertaking those challenges. Fortunately, at this point on SK, there is also a lot of easy and moderate content. You can assemble a perfectly competitive kit without going to anywhere like the Nightmares Temple or Dreamscape. Many of the most successful PvP characters in the past few years have had zero loot from those or other particularly challenging endgame spots.



This simply does not square with the data that people have been and still are engaging in PvE on a regular basis, and it isn't and hasn't always been just hardened, unflappable vets like Syn. There is tons of loot circulating and lots of people have great kits. It also hasn't been the case since the last round of adjustments that people are getting overwhelmed by random encounters. There are also lots of ways for people to recover from losses that didn't exist before. I personally think that loss recovery has been a major problem that makes people shy away from PvE and PvP, but we've done a lot to address that. You could get looted and have a great kit again in a small fraction of the time it used to take.


I don't know. They say Prince recorded hundreds of songs and videos that he locked in his vault. Just like different players have different motivations for playing, so, too, do different builders have different motives for building. I personally have built things that still haven't been found even after having been in the game for months or years. It will be cool if someone finds them. If not, I'll live. I don't even think about it in terms of newbies or vets. More like, "I wonder if anyone will notice this clue in a room description," or "what's a good reward for the PvE junkie who goes through all the trouble to actually reach this spot." For the meat and potatoes stuff like basic pieces that can be used to assemble good kits, sure, I try to make sure they're accessible, but sometimes it will take groups. All of the endgame powerloot has been obtained multiple times, and it doesn't even always go to the most elite/experienced players.

I don't have much time, but I wanted to pop in and say that I do think this conversation is valuable. I am interested in doing what can be done to bridge the gap between having challenging encounters and making it impossible to save. That being said, it is pretty hard to get perfect. The gap between never saving and always saving is pretty small. Which is why we have done more in recent years to make things incremental. And OA, I do have to say I disagree with your last statement:


In fact, you do have options. You have the option to train art. You'll probably say that isn't an option because it's assumed you will max it out. That's fair, I guess. But you also have the impairment system, which I feel like people are either forgetting about or just don't understand. We intentionally made it so that debuffs are now fast casting and almost universally add an impairment to saving throws (which stack) if the debuf itself is saved against. Therefore if you want to succeed with a one-shot spell, you can try casting it (slowly) 3-4 times before it works. Or you can toss out 3-4 debufs and have a much better chance to hit with the one-shot in an overall smaller amount of time.

At least, that's the theory. If there are concrete reasons why that doesn't work (maybe for specific classes?), I'd certainly like to hear more.

I'll go through Thuban's post after, but D, the key phrase in my statement was "effective and timely." It is not effective or timely to use the impairment system to make monster saves manageable. I specifically referenced the impairment system; I'm not forgetting or ignoring it, I'm factoring it into my criticism. In SK's PvE environment, it will always be preferable to have another melee damager pumping out 4-5 rounds of attacks during the time it takes a maledicter to impair a monster's saves to a level where saves are no longer insurmountable.

Yes, the option exists to use impairment. No, it is not an "effective and timely option" which was what I was referencing specifically. It costs too much ME, takes too much time, and is unreliable in terms of maledictions actually mitigating the power of the target before the meleers have it already or almost dead. Which makes hybrids like paladins and hellions less effective (remaining only desirable because of their "merc light" melee capabilities), and straight casters like warlocks and sorcerers undesirable.

I'm not even talking about one-shot spells here, but just damage spells in general even. Yes, I know some people have referenced one-shots, but I was not one of them. There are ways to make one-shots not easy-mode PvE that don't also involve making all other offensive casting undesirable.

You're adding in a bunch of extraneous stuff here. At the most fundamental level a saving throw is an exercise in probability. Different games have different ways of manipulating these probabilities, and that's part of what gives each game its own unique flavor. Impairment, art, and a handful of specific spells and skills are what manipulate this on SK. The pertinent question is simply what should those probabilities look like on SK. So far, nobody has had anything to say about that except that it's "too high."



Definitely not. You're either not considering or not aware of all the possible situations in which this could arise, how rapidly you can impair things in some cases, or what the different ways you impair something could achieve.

Can we possibly implement a 'spell penetration' stat/enchant that decreases the chance of resists?

Something that can be obtained from train stat spellpen, or cast enchant/consecrate spellpen, or loyalty tokens, etc.. This can promote putting effort into building character/equipment and possibly encourage longevity.

For simple day to day travel purposes, I have been finding the gate resists on very low-level anchors fairly cumbersome and occasionally frustrating. From Grandmaster to a target such as Jemm the Blacksmith has roughly 1/4 resists chance.

For the majority of PvE content, short of niche purposes such as pick lock, the rest are probably best accomplished by stacking mercenaries (class) and priests at the moment and have been for some time now.

The Lamp was not removed? Last I saw it was removed. If it hasn't been, that's great. As to other means... I mean, I guess it comes back to my old-hat complaint that if the only person that knows about things is the builder, there's no point in building it in the first place. Content that is secret or gated to only the initiated few is not in my opinion actually added content; it's just perks for knowing a few OOC things or the right people.



Again, dragging an extraneous group member around for 90% of the trip is not fun for them, and it's an extra hassle for the ones dragging them around. This is the complaint. This is the problem.

I'm trying to be civil and constructive here, but I really don't feel inclined to curb my own snark when I'm getting snark first. Yes, PCs can have great saves. Unless they're sprites against fort-based. Or griffons in general. So again it comes back to liability vs asset. So lovely, two entire races are liabilities and that's just fine and dandy, or anyone who plays casually is SOL. Guess that's by design and just FU if you want to do sprite or griffon for RP reasons or don't have time or your allies don't have time to enchant the hell out of your kit, or you don't know where the best gear to enchant is. Players z and y should just git gud I guess, or become player x. Except they can't become player x unless they're already player x?



That wasn't the point. That wasn't why you referenced that log in the first place. You referenced that log as an example of how "non-standard" group composition was not impossible. Everyone here is saying "yes, non-standard is possible, but it is NOT possible without specific non-class/race abilities." That is my point; that was the point spidermonkey was making. That is the point that was being refuted by you. Yes, *most* cabals have PvE benefits. This *specific* example that *you* cited as proof of not requiring meleers to make successful runs on end-game content is *not* a valid example because it relies on *non-class* abilities to make it successful in an argument about content being restrictive on the class options you have to complete it. You referenced the log as proof, but it is not proof of concept. The concept being discussed was *class requirements and forced class composition of groups.* Show me a log of Crucible, Druids, or Harlies defeating end-game content with no mercs or barbs and then we'll talk.



Because I made a paraphrase of the exact same statement that you deemed "non-meaningful contribution." I was attempting to make it meaningful, because it matters and it shouldn't be ignored just because it doesn't have a series of numbers, equations or ratios specifically stated.



Void horrors, winter gods. I'll see if the dracolich fight's still in my buffer. I'd like to know why it's meant to be virtually impossible. It's not the first time I've seen dozens of BoGs used in a single engagement with the dracolich in recent times.




Here's the problem. SK's randomization and the numbers behind race X and PC A are invisible by design. It is not reasonably feasible for a player-side person to generate what you're calling empirical evidence. It is a monumental undertaking for a player to do it. I've done it before with a bug I found in the dodge skill when stances were implemented. What *is* reasonable is for someone with behind-the-curtain access to arrange and test. It is a far, far more simple matter for a staff member, or Dulrik, to generate empirical evidence of the kind you're looking for. At best, a player can make guesstimates. A staff member can set hard numbers and mimic gameplay with 100% certainty in a variable controlled environment. What we, as players, can do is say "this is not fun and it doesn't work for us because of X, Y, Z." What then should be the reasonable response to that from a staff member, imo, should be "okay, why isn't X, Y and Z working and how can adjustments be made?" What is not an appropriate response is to expect players to generate thousands of lines of logs with barely controllable variables to estimate numbers and results when it would take a staff member a minute fraction of the time to find the same results.

So when we as players (basically every player who has bothered to comment) is saying "saves are making casters undesirable to play or have present," I think you're trying to put the onus of why it's not working on the wrong shoulders. We as players just don't have access to the variable controls and hard numbers that you as a staff member (and I use "you" in the general not specific sense here) have access to.



Reliable and effective would be somewhere on the order of 60-70% success rate. Given the restrictions on alignment-only spells that already exist, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to hit for full damage against the already-limited number of NPCs they affect. Particularly given the HP count on end-game NPCs.

Non-alignment restricted spells would be, by me, considered "reliable and effective" in the 40-50% range.

One-shots are an entirely different ball-park, but as I said already there are ways to make them not the key to easy mode without also castrating all other offensive casting.



No, I don't think it is good design. It is possible (if difficult) to make something challenging across the board without making it impossible or boring for either end of the spectrum. I won't be changing your opinion, apparently, nor will you be changing mine on this. I have not ever agreed with nor will ever agree with the idea that content should only be made for some and not all. I don't subscribe to that level of gaming elitism. I don't think it's healthy or beneficial for a game to have it. You, clearly, do.



The last I heard about a group recovering with any haste from a tpk in end-game, it required an IMM loot movement from where the group wiped. I mean, yeah, I guess that's always been a possibility, but it just doesn't happen very often or for some people ever. If you're talking about the potions of call armor, those require at least a moderately kitted couple of people to even get in the first place, so if you wipe and didn't stash one of those ahead of time, or don't have a paladin in your group that was carrying it to then call it with the rest of his armor for someone else to use, well... Yeah, sure, you're not wrong that some options do exist, but they're not exactly good options or quick ones.

I think the phrase "small fraction of the time it used to take" is kind of key here. Yes, it has always been brutal to die in end-game SK. But you know what kind of level of recovery SK is currently competing with? Respawn points with a few GP for repair costs. There just really is not any kind of comparison. Oh, and leet loot for *everyone* who completes the content and no limits on instances of resources. Do I think SK should go quite that far? Maybe not, but making the comparison of "it only takes you three days instead of three weeks" is not really something to shout from the rooftops, particularly when it takes multiple PCs to get back to fighting fit because not everyone can gather mods to slot into their gear but instead require priests or sorcerers to actually enchant.



I mean, good for you? Glad you like being the only one to know about stuff you spent time working on. I don't think you're usual in that regard. I think the majority of content-creators want content to be experienced. I don't really understand your mentality of "I spent all this time on something and don't care if my characters are the only ones to know about it ever." Or, well, I do understand that mentality, but I'd like to believe it isn't the right understanding of it.

The fact remains that we disagree and probably always will on accessibility of content. I, again, do not think it is a good idea for content to be built with elitism in mind (whether it was intentional elitism or otherwise.) I do not think content should exist that is "just too hard" for a casual player to experience, even if they can't experience it with quite the same amount of haste or guarantee of success as a vet. I don't think I'm in the minority on that front; I think, instead, you are. Which, whatever. The only real problem with that difference existing is that currently the rest of us more or less have to play as if we are in that minority, too.