Slayer/Brig Hide Revamp - Initial feedback and suggestions

anthriel
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Slayer/Brig Hide Revamp - Initial feedback and suggestions

Postby anthriel » Sat Sep 01, 2018 10:09 pm

I just tested a slayer in PVP within a small group and the /hide (delay) attack feature is a very user unfriendly mechanic.

Now before the people responsible get all defensive about why its necessary (blah blah blah) i think my main issue with it is that the server doesnt handle the delay, but rather requires the player to handle it (and humans dont know what 0.5sec exactly is and therefore end up getting screwed over with wrong things happening or nothing happening for a much longer than 0.5sec outcome).

Eg. if i hit F1 (/hide) & F2 (attack) to backstab, over 50% of the time i get some annoying "you need to wait 0.4sec before you can attack" message which makes me have to press F2 button again (which if the backstab actually succeeded first time it means i make a normal attack by accident and waste chance to hide etc)... so to prevent that from happening im sitting there thinking "has it been 0.5sec yet?... should i press F2 now? ... or wait there's more than 6 in room... should i wait longer??" etc... and since im human and not machine i get it wrong more often than not.... even if the old method of moving in and out to reset backstab took 0.5sec at least it was controllable in the heat of battle... now its too hard for anything besides a machine to handle... esp with lag and scrolling text walls thrown in.

Which brings me to my suggestion. IF we must keep this mechanic (which i dont really agree with where the delay is being placed in the first place, but assuming staff want to keep the delay after the /hide), then at least is it possible to let the server queue the commands and set the delay? So when i press F2 instead of giving me the annoying "you need to wait 0.4sec before you can attack" message (requiring me to scroll back text to see if my bstab executed or failed, or wait much longer than 0.5sec to be sure, or risk pressing F2 again), cant the server just wait the 0.5sec (or whatever delay time) before executing my command to attack (if some1 hasn't successfully searched me in that delay time)? Doing this would be much more user friendly and playable imho... otherwise with lag and fast scrolling text in the mix it basically makes backstabbing unplayable in PVP (which it shouldnt be).

My initial 2 cents. Im sure others will probably have other issues if they cbb posting. Peace

___________________________

Edit: If letting the server handle/queue the delays puts too much strain on the server, then i suggest changing the mechanic to "/hide attack (delay)"... this means that ppl still cant immediately queue 2 backstabs in a round (just like they would have had to move in the old regime) but and at least if they have to press F1 (/hide) more than once it doesnt waste their attack if they double press it.

Terron
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Re: Slayer/Brig Hide Revamp - Initial feedback and suggestions

Postby Terron » Sun Sep 02, 2018 4:31 am

its actually faster than it was before update

seeing as its .5 now instead of .75. but i agree its rather annoying pve and my slayer is revealed in this .5 seconds so often idc to even play it. changes like this should get an option to race change. mostly i lost the ability to double hide which means i get wrecked. then add in crappier potions, monsters attacking faster and cloth armor, its about 1% chance i log the character each day now.

i should remind that i dont mind it on the pvp angle at all.
"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box"

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Kruell
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Re: Slayer/Brig Hide Revamp - Initial feedback and suggestions

Postby Kruell » Sun Sep 02, 2018 12:04 pm

After hearing people complain about this issue I spent some time on my brig to see if there is really a difference. I am on satellite so have a constant lag of .4 to .6 seconds, sometimes greater. I didn't even know there was a hide delay because I could only experience it during peak connection times with absolutely no lag beyond natural satellite link delay. Before the update, I would hide, attack, and then only a small % of the time get a message about the delay to rehide. Now I find myself trying to hide/attack but instead ending up hiding, waiting until the delay timer message comes up, only then attacking, then the hide rotation delay begins again. I'll admit that since I don't have a high speed connection my experiences are not going to be typical. Still, I found that on a OaD run this extra delay means I sometimes would only get 1 round completed in the time it would take for others to get 2 rounds. While running around in different situations, events would occur that due to me waiting for the delay to clear plus my natural lag, my attack timer would reset so where my total delay was greater than the stamina reset. Those instances were rare and due mainly to my connection type. What happened mostly is that I would end up with a single ambush/backstab and then also get a regular attack, meaning I could hide on my last move or spend the attack and have just wasted half of my special attacks due to the delay and queuing. This attack delay after the hide is significant enough that even with my delay hurdles I still have issues getting my attacks off during gameplay.

In comparison with macro smashing classes, this update change was significant enough to make slayers and brigands significantly handicapped. Although I didn't experience it, someone else complained that the monsters they were leveling on would always search them out during the delay between hide and attack causing them to switch over to sword leveling. Since this is monster specific, I don't know of a way to reliably duplicate it without their int/level. I did notice during the daily that even bandit scouts have a chance of finding my 20 int ling before I could get the backstab off. I know there are higher int monsters in game and this makes fighting them problematic for hide classes.

I would suggest removing the delay between hide and attack even it you increased the delay time between hide. RIght now I think the major problem is that most slayers are low int and monsters are searching them out too often. I haven't seen anyone bring a slayer on a OaD since the update and I don't think the goal was to frustrate players away from playing hiding classes.

Then again... it could be the rise of the gnome slayers....
If you look like prey you will be eaten

Terron
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Re: Slayer/Brig Hide Revamp - Initial feedback and suggestions

Postby Terron » Sun Sep 02, 2018 7:48 pm

in all fairness people need reaction time for search and priesting in group fights (if these ever come back)

i think there should just be a server check when u attack, and if its an npc, attack delay doesnt happen
"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box"

this game is like sim ant
zerg the red ants with more black ants

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NiteHawk
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Re: Slayer/Brig Hide Revamp - Initial feedback and suggestions

Postby NiteHawk » Thu Sep 06, 2018 2:46 pm

Kruell wrote:After hearing people complain about this issue I spent some time on my brig to see if there is really a difference. I am on satellite so have a constant lag of .4 to .6 seconds, sometimes greater. I didn't even know there was a hide delay because I could only experience it during peak connection times with absolutely no lag beyond natural satellite link delay. Before the update, I would hide, attack, and then only a small % of the time get a message about the delay to rehide. Now I find myself trying to hide/attack but instead ending up hiding, waiting until the delay timer message comes up, only then attacking, then the hide rotation delay begins again. I'll admit that since I don't have a high speed connection my experiences are not going to be typical. Still, I found that on a OaD run this extra delay means I sometimes would only get 1 round completed in the time it would take for others to get 2 rounds. While running around in different situations, events would occur that due to me waiting for the delay to clear plus my natural lag, my attack timer would reset so where my total delay was greater than the stamina reset. Those instances were rare and due mainly to my connection type. What happened mostly is that I would end up with a single ambush/backstab and then also get a regular attack, meaning I could hide on my last move or spend the attack and have just wasted half of my special attacks due to the delay and queuing. This attack delay after the hide is significant enough that even with my delay hurdles I still have issues getting my attacks off during gameplay.


Well we can make it hide attack delay again too with no reset to n/s but imo I don't see why you're noticing a difference as the timer was actually 1s before for hide attack (delay), and now the timer is generally half that. If you didn't move n/s then I'm not sure what your doing as the timer you'd see would generally be less (in general). If the issue is with waiting too we can also make a /backstab command to not be 'worried' about extra attacking by mistake too.

---

Yeah we could also just remove it in PVE but I'm not 100% sure of that just yet. I could easily not have the delay in PVE. I'd want to try to at least make it as consistent as possible. I haven't been a huge fan of making differences for PVE in this regard yet imo.

----

Ant, slayers are overpowered, and no one really wants them to be 'lowered'. They need to have a handicap of somewhat somehow. In terms of queues, no, not really possible without a bunch of annoying work. I'm fine with maybe including a hide timer too that's visible if we keep with this, it kind of depends where we are going with it.

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NiteHawk
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Re: Slayer/Brig Hide Revamp - Initial feedback and suggestions

Postby NiteHawk » Thu Sep 06, 2018 4:34 pm

As a test before we go gunho a different direction:

/backstab is added. Only attacks when you are hidden.
/hide (delay) attack - delay does not increase in PVE. It will be set to 0.5 always, never higher.
Eventually I'd prefer adding a timer on the client too.

We'll keep mucking around anyways.

Terron
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Re: Slayer/Brig Hide Revamp - Initial feedback and suggestions

Postby Terron » Thu Sep 06, 2018 10:23 pm

looks good tbh. anyone knowing what their doing will see a slayer is about unstoppable 1v1 provided you have an int advantage over your target.
"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box"

this game is like sim ant
zerg the red ants with more black ants

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NiteHawk
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Re: Slayer/Brig Hide Revamp - Initial feedback and suggestions

Postby NiteHawk » Fri Sep 07, 2018 2:03 am

Terron wrote:looks good tbh. anyone knowing what their doing will see a slayer is about unstoppable 1v1 provided you have an int advantage over your target.


I kind of wanted to make hide/searching a little more useful too. IMO though we'll see how it goes with these changes first before I consider heavier ones. I'm all for improvement/change just want to try to fix what we have first and then if it doesn't work at all we'll go from there.

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JadeFalcon
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Re: Slayer/Brig Hide Revamp - Initial feedback and suggestions

Postby JadeFalcon » Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:17 pm

I thought it was just me, but having talked with some people in game, i'd say you might have gone a bit too far.

We can live with the hide revamp
We can live with the hide delay when too many slayers

But the cloth armor done it for the class - i understand that its a -9% AC (tops) difference, but currently this means:
- Slayers as is, are dead versus Druids/Chanters/DMs. Likely, they are now inferior to zerkers in 1vs1. Versus other classes, its debatable, but they are now much weaker. It would seem the only use they might have is for PVE (but then again, take a zerker, its simpler).

As the class is no longer useful for PVP (since its clearly inferior to so many, and not much better than the others), its relegated to PVE roles (where its use is again debatable)

Most people seem to agree that slayers should be competitive in PVP, and less useful in PVE, so i think the class is "turned upside down".
I would strongly urge you to revisit this class role, and modify it accordingly.
In my opinion, this would be done in two ways:
- Increase their damage to offset their lower AC, and inferiority against so many classes
- increase the hide limitations when many slayers are present, to dissuade large groups of slayers
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Kruell
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Re: Slayer/Brig Hide Revamp - Initial feedback and suggestions

Postby Kruell » Wed Oct 03, 2018 7:28 pm

JadeFalcon wrote:- Increase their damage to offset their lower AC, and inferiority against so many classes

No

There is some circular reasoning going on with Slayers. Slayers get beat by mages. Mage classes get owned by any race/class with magic resitance (this includes MR slayers) so people don't want to play them. Slayers have only one weakness really and that is against magic and few people play casters except to go against /hide classes. Right now most slayers seem to like to attack and run so those with high int can harass someone until they get lucky on a backstab. Advocating for Slayers to have more damage will only further break class ballance but it will have the effect of making Slayers top of the food chain again. I can't help feel that those who want slayers to have more damage just want to be able to one hit anyone. Do we really want a game where one class dominates the game by one shotting every other class?

I'm all for making changes that will better the game. Suggesting changes that will throw the balance evern further off than when it was fixed is just the wrong way to go.
If you look like prey you will be eaten


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