A plea to un-nerf

wyrmchow · Post by **wyrmchow** » Sat May 22, 2004 8:24 am

NS4 is a PvP server and without the ability to severely damage an opponent quickly PvP just quickly degenerates into a competition of which level 40 character has got the most heal pots.
I have watched PvP between level 20 characters that resemble pillow fights with little damage being done, of course when one combatant gets injured they just chug a heal pot, combat becomes slow and somewhat dull.

In my opinion everything should be completely un-nerfed.
I think all casters should have all there spells beefed back up in terms of damage and duration, clerics should get their full power harm back, shadow dancers should have their Hips left alone and fighter classes should have their devastating crit returned to them.
PvP then becomes a dangerous affair; nothing can be taken for granted.
The cleric that has just had all his buffs removed by a mage no longer stands helpless, he can still cast a harm, Fighters that have survived the fort and will saves can close on that caster and dev crit the mages spleen all over the map.
Placing a minimum level limit for shadowdancers, say 10 or 15 for example is I think better than nerfing the ability.
The key to survival in this world would be to party up, a solo pvp player would die quickly, a balanced party would be unstoppable, until of course they ran into another unstoppable party from another faction.

Nerfing is my only gripe with NS4, in every other way this mod leaves the competition standing.

Thanks for reading,
-Zed-

DrakhanValane · Post by **DrakhanValane** » Sat May 22, 2004 2:42 pm

You can't nerf a mod that is in beta ;)

If you really have a problem watching the "nerfs" happen, perhaps you should come back when NS4 is final. At that point there won't be any more "nerfs". :)

Hieroneus Maxim · Post by **Hieroneus Maxim** » Sat May 22, 2004 2:58 pm

I very much agree with this. If something is too powerful, put level requirements on it and/or put in-game counters to it.

Examples to problems-->solutions.
HIPS - make useable only once per round (so no spamming the stealth button) or x time limit like pick pocket. Give monsters higher spot/listen. For people complaining about HIPS for PvP, remember that you can easily outrun a stealth character, and eliminating the spamming will make spot/listen useful.

Devastating critical - since there is no resting time limit, casters can rest...death spells...rest...death spells. And this can happen before epic. Maybe a level requirement for dev crit, or if you can make it occur on natural 20s only. IMHO, fighters almost need this to compete with other classes (mages and clerics). It is powerful, yes, but there are solutions to it.

Multiclassing cheese - pally1/sorc19 is or monk 1/cleric 19 are some good examples of this. In some ways, I feel this isn't that bad because all characters can do this. Although PnP allows for this, there are RP reasons to not do it. Limiting characters to 1 PrC is a good move. I have very mixed feelings on how this should be handled. Maybe moving special abilities to higher levels, or gradually improving the bonuses (ie paladins saves boosting is limited to CHA or pal level, whichever is less) if that is possible.

While minor nerfing can be necessary, sometimes improving monsters etc. would be better.

DrakhanValane · Post by **DrakhanValane** » Sat May 22, 2004 3:44 pm

Hieroneus Maxim wrote:Devastating critical - since there is no resting time limit, casters can rest...death spells...rest...death spells. And this can happen before epic. Maybe a level requirement for dev crit, or if you can make it occur on natural 20s only. IMHO, fighters almost need this to compete with other classes (mages and clerics). It is powerful, yes, but there are solutions to it.

I have to say Bullsh*cough*! <sarcasm>Fighters were sooooooo useless before dev crit.</sarcasm> I play mostly fighters. I've never used dev crit and I have no trouble with any mod I've played. If you need a Fighter that is more powerful with a single weapon, try making a Weapon Master.

Throst54 · Post by **Throst54** » Sat May 22, 2004 3:53 pm

i'm w/ DV...

if you want all that stuff, then NS really prolly isnt the mod for you...

dond · Post by **dond** » Sat May 22, 2004 5:30 pm

wtf? un-nerf casters?
what the hell are you people smoking.......
the bread and butter of most casters has been BEEFED up!
hello! anyone out there?!?!?

IGMS does a ton of damage to EVERYTHING in the mages field of view......you can demolish entire parties with this damn spell. who needs death magic?!?

call lightning is also beefed up for druids, dealing tons of damage to non evasion builds...granted thats rare in pvp, but druids get vine mine and creeping doom...

clerics have more buffs than the gods dammit. they're short buffs, but a fully spelled cleric is a melee wrecking machine. who the hell needs harm when you can deal 30+ damage(half of that fire/divine/magic damage) per hit on anything with any weapon? (not including crits)

have you even looked at summons? yea, they're weak alright, lmao.

the dev crit stuff again.....im not even getting started on that heh

there should be more nerfs actually

igms needs a 5 target limit.
death magic dcs need to be lowered slighty, or the spells changed to something like -6 to all stats (some nasty effect like that)
divine power and divine favour shouldn't be stackable....(that's +10 ab when they do stack and an extra attack)

and just so you know, healing pots dont cure you to full hp......it's random between 64-150 or 50% of your health

AndrewCarr · Post by **AndrewCarr** » Sat May 22, 2004 5:40 pm

I wouldn't suggest nerfs. I'd suggest increaing fort dcs on death spells, keeping will dc's the same as they are now, and decreased igms dmg. Maybe increasing other elemental spell dmg to compensate for that.
Oh, and fix the buggy dc100 webs if possible.

The Hasselhoff · Post by **The Hasselhoff** » Sat May 22, 2004 7:05 pm

DrakhanValane wrote:You can't nerf a mod that is in beta

If you really have a problem watching the "nerfs" happen, perhaps you should come back when NS4 is final. At that point there won't be any more "nerfs".

Nice post that only answers a technicality and doesn't give any alternatives

What ever happened to IGMS being limited to ONLY 20 separate missles striking targets instead of what sounds like 20 missiles striking each target?

DrakhanValane · Post by **DrakhanValane** » Sat May 22, 2004 10:24 pm

I wasn't giving any alternatives. No reason to. I disagree with the un-nerf plea.

Gil-Este · Post by **Gil-Este** » Sun May 23, 2004 12:10 am

i'm gonna give an example from art that illustrates the point of this:

when michelangelo was making his sculpture David, it was not a nerf to chisel off a little section below the right pec to make the piece more balanced as an artistic whole. (don't have any clue about David by the way so if the right pec doesn't contribute to the balance don't yell at me) that is not a nerf. that is trying to make a piece of rock into art. now once it is completed, if some prim school pta forces the museum to cover up David's manly areas when he comes on tour to their town, that is a nerf.

ATI · Post by **ATI** » Sun May 23, 2004 1:35 am

Gil you have to be kidding me? Are you comparing a computer game to the David?

Stop messing with the core of the game in ways that detriment people. If you want to stop casters that are high lvl, the for gods sake, put in items with something that can solve the problem. The answer shouldn't be decreasing the way the game naturlaly works, we should only increase what was already there, or build items designed to counter and provide solutions through encouraging team play. The problem with this mod so far is the following

1: Nerfs are unbalancing the game in ways unimaginable, to the point that trying to find solutions requires more nerfs in some minds (which is bad)

2: There is an extreme lack of items. the lack of useful items prevents players from being as versatile as they need to be. Fighters have no anti magic items (which even normal DnD has), and casters have multiple ways to kill fighters. In the same respect a mage has nothing they can do against IKD. While this seems a little balanced. Its not entirely true.

3: Most importantly, the synergy bonus doesn't even come close to being able to encourage party play.

Things need to be fixed a little bit, the item spreads, potion availability, and minor, medium, and major items need to be added, furthermore there needs to be a greater incentive to party.

I believe all these things will be fixed in teh future. However, its still valid to say something needs to be done. Arguing otherwise seems completely contrary to a beta test.

Chimaira · Post by **Chimaira** » Sun May 23, 2004 1:53 am

I agree with wyrm and ATI, not on everything, but the main point here is nerfing is bad and I agree with that.
Anyone that disagrees with the fact that casters are already too strong doesnt know what an UNNERFED game is like.
The only reason lots of spells have been nerfed is simply cause of lame items. Yea there are some extremely stupid spells that simply need to be changed, bigby's forcefull hand is a good example, and touch attacks(like harm) arent working the way theyre supposed to either.
But plain stupid changes like banning dev crit, having extremely crappy durations on buffs and the like is just a waste of scripting time.

ATI · Post by **ATI** » Sun May 23, 2004 1:59 am

exactly. If you want to solve an in game problem, the solution is lowering expectations by nerfing. The solution is creativity, which I would think, would be items. Items that balance things out, also provide a large ability for RPing quests, and all kinds of ability for DM's to make the game interesting.

Furthermore, Stop nerfing an unfinished game, the devs at ths point are building from the top down, which doesn't work. Instead, dev powers should be put more towards jobs and new areas, so the foundation of the game is made. Then we should work out the design flaws.

AndrewCarr · Post by **AndrewCarr** » Sun May 23, 2004 2:27 am

Since autofail on one doesn't seem to be disabled even for spells, i don't mind dev crit being disabled. Especially with the restriction on palemaster multiclassing.

DrakhanValane · Post by **DrakhanValane** » Sun May 23, 2004 2:50 am

ATI wrote:Gil you have to be kidding me? Are you comparing a computer game to the David?

Stop messing with the core of the game in ways that detriment people. If you want to stop casters that are high lvl, the for gods sake, put in items with something that can solve the problem. The answer shouldn't be decreasing the way the game naturlaly works, we should only increase what was already there, or build items designed to counter and provide solutions through encouraging team play. The problem with this mod so far is the following

1: Nerfs are unbalancing the game in ways unimaginable, to the point that trying to find solutions requires more nerfs in some minds (which is bad)

2: There is an extreme lack of items. the lack of useful items prevents players from being as versatile as they need to be. Fighters have no anti magic items (which even normal DnD has), and casters have multiple ways to kill fighters. In the same respect a mage has nothing they can do against IKD. While this seems a little balanced. Its not entirely true.

3: Most importantly, the synergy bonus doesn't even come close to being able to encourage party play.

Things need to be fixed a little bit, the item spreads, potion availability, and minor, medium, and major items need to be added, furthermore there needs to be a greater incentive to party.

I believe all these things will be fixed in teh future. However, its still valid to say something needs to be done. Arguing otherwise seems completely contrary to a beta test.

1) Again: It isn't nerfing since it isn't finished. If you keep complaining about nerfs, I'd have to recommend that the devs take it back to closed beta until all the "nerfs" are done.

2) This isn't D&D, it's NS4. Fighters have plenty of ways to protect themselves from magic. Their cleric friend has a nifty spell called Spell Resistance. There are elemental resist pots (again the friend factor comes in). This isn't a Solo mod. You shouldn't make arguements based on the assumption it is.

3) Survival isn't an incentive to party?

I don't understand your arguement for adding more stuff. The foundation is the mechanics of spells and combat and classes and items. They have a job system set up as you can see from LA and AO. You want to add more jobs and area and items to add complexity to the system that's in?