Brad L. McAtee / Kintaii
Former Senior AO Designer & Jack of All Trades
(2007 - 2012)
~~ Twitter :: Facebook :: Norse Noir ~~
Grats on the nerf table discovery but to me it will always be known as "fixer stays on RK table because nothing I attempt works in SL".
This is a very enlightening post, the Secret Nerf Table is something everyone was aware of (n00b, no casting CH in SL!) but seeing how poking at this particular landmine from a developer standpoint is really interesting, as I'm studying to do coding myself at some point (when I can get back into school, I really hate moving for that!).
Document, document, document. I document my freaking "Hello World!" programs, it would follow that leaving notes and such in something as massive as AO is just good programming. Ah well, it was another era, in more ways than one. iPhones didn't even exist when SL came out.
Good luck and try not to trip over too many landmines...though I suppose finding them all is going to have to happen at some point.
No comment.
just for kintaii's post i wish that there was an 'like' button like on facebook :P
Freedom or death!
Anything then being an Omni Tek Corporate slave!
Created 2005-11-16 (paid main that's all mine )
Created 2005-02-03 (froobie)
Created 2007-10-11 (second paid account because i wanted a freaking shade :P)
Yeah, we've gotten a *lot* better about internal documentation over the last four years or so - Each content update has its own walkthrough, technical document, list of assets/items/IDs/mobs/etc. used, and so on and so forth. This sorta thing not only helps our QA staff do bug testing but it also means that some day, twenty years down the road when I'm relaxing on a tropical beach with my lottery winnings, whomever's doing the design work on AO at the time will know exactly what went into the making of, say, Alappaa or Neretva Canyons. Something I desperately wish I had when peering back into areas like Hollow Island (ugggh) or the Subway (ugggggghhhhhhh) or Crypt of Home (UUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH).
Documentation ftw.
Brad L. McAtee / Kintaii
Former Senior AO Designer & Jack of All Trades
(2007 - 2012)
~~ Twitter :: Facebook :: Norse Noir ~~
I liked the old nano icons
Colawren - Gimpest stripped adventurer on RK1.
Reroll Enthusiast.
The alts: Colawrenn, Iriotz, Empea
Proud member of Forsaken and Unity of the Rose.
Just the ones I'm aware of off the top of my head:
- It makes Complete Heal into a Super-Taunt (probably to promote acquisition of new nanos)
- It makes Enforcers Rage nanos do extra damage (no obvious reason for this)
- It makes Gridspace Freedom and Reactive Reflective Field (Extended) not even castable (promote new nanos)
- It makes various calms/roots/snares less effective or non-effective (as you discovered, no obvious reason)
- I THINK it MIGHT makes team heals do extra taunt also. (Only reason for this is to punish teams who pick a sucky tank and make said tank seem even suckier when the Doc dies first, resulting in a subsequent wipe)
Eliminating as many double-standards from this game as possible will make it much easier to balance across the board. If you're ok with GSF being cast in SL, I can't think of any reason to keep it.
EDIT and please do away with the post 1k Attack Rating formulas too, they are causing a lot of headaches as well.
Last edited by Gwop; Apr 8th, 2011 at 17:32:55.
Arlanon, 220/24 Clan Opifex Agent, Putting the FU in FUN since 2001
Gwop, 220/24 Clan Atrox Keeper, creater of the original Hacked Boosted Graft: Mongo Rage
Misc Pics: The Rock! Trox Lockpick! Spray Paint! Basic Battlestation Strategy! Damn, it's HER!
Balanced Weapons: Brigges Nail Gun! Brigges Nail Pistols! Brigges Shock Rifle! Brigges Nano-Charged Rifle!
............................ Brigges Shadow Ops Rifle! Brigges Senior Urban Crossbow! Brigges Viral Vision Enhancer!
LOL Weapon: Brigges Superiour Counter-Counter-Sniper Rifle!
They heard I like to snipe, so they put a scope on my scope so I can snipe while I snipe
Sneak and Destroy
Hmm,
I feel the pain of the dev team on the Secret Nerf Table. But really do the new devs ever go back and read the release notes from earlier versions like say SL launch time? Maybe read some of Gaute's postings on the SL and what it would mean for player nano's? I mean the devs posted during development of SL that they were adjusting heal aggro in SL and that tweaking it to a proper level would be easy as it was just a data base table. In one version of beta they had adjusted doc heals to be like 10000 taunt per point healed and yes I think they hated docs back then. Still agree that somewhere that nugget if info should have been documented though. I do understand why though documenting was lax. Just watch the seven year video when Gaute indicates that the game was launched with a 4 year arc planned. They just did not think it would last past 4 years.
And I will relate my own experience in hidden nerf like code. I am the lead on rather large scale distributed training system. And we wanted to increase rate of target updates. Sounds easy, find the delta time that is used for current update rate and change to new delta time for new update rate. So we run up the system and now targets move properly until they execute certain events at which point they just move in ways they should not. After much digging through the motion equation code we are sure it is solid. So by off chance we start looking through the conditional event handling. Someone 20 years ago had decided that instead of changing the parameters used by the motion equations so that the target motion changed correctly they would just force the target to a position and override the motion the engine. Of course their override math was hard coded and used the old delta time values. Upon further inspection this had been done all over the event code and in some cases other functionality had been built to depend on this event behavior. Cascading problem for sure and one we still fight with today.
The lesson we learned was that even a great 10 year understanding of the code still is not complete on a 20 year old code base. So now we have cloned the source tree and spend time touching and adjusting everything trying to find all the land mines in a controlled sandbox. Yep it is costly at first look but I am sure it has saved us 100's if not 1000's of hours because we have a better understanding of the software.
I hope FC decides from this to poke other tables and see what they do. Things may get interesting but the learning experience will be great.
Lheann
President of When I Grow Up
Lhisa - MA - RK1
MaxKillz - Enf - RK1
Namaru - Enf - RK1
"If you find yourself loosing a fight, your tatics suck."
I swear you guys have a knob or level somewhere for every char in AO, on one extreme it says gimp, on the other it says Ubar, and you guys screw with this knob every day, which way it goes depends on your mood maybe but i know there's a damn knob!
T O O N Z:
Renamed (jeycihn) 220/30(so sexy, so Borealis...I miss it the most...still melee <3 thnx for all your help Scum!
Giit 200/30 NM NT(THE most dangerous, and bitchy thing I ever created)
Sixunder 158/21 NM Tra (158+SMG=Atomic bomb? Feather pillow? meh, depends on what mood she's in oO)
Eightup 158/21 Opi Fix (perfect, maxed twink, definitive "FUN")
Xerrrox 17X Opi Fix (GA4 fr00b...buff prostitute...reason to log in)
Enjey 60/6 NM Eng (high maintenance OP'ness)
Nanimated New NM Agent (no patience for it...sigh)
Somethiing 200 Atrox Sold (potential x1k...not nearly enough "give a f*ck")P A R A D I S E ~&~ P A R A S I T E ~&~ B R O K E N ~&~ CCI ~&~ NOTHING PERSONAL
I was on test server full time with subway launched. There was not collision detection in the first two version that went to test server. It was the first new dungeon to be added since launch at the time and they could not figure out how to make running into walls work properly. It was really funny for the first few minutes then it was just a PITA. I can only imagine the mess that dungeon has involved with it.
Lheann
President of When I Grow Up
Lhisa - MA - RK1
MaxKillz - Enf - RK1
Namaru - Enf - RK1
"If you find yourself loosing a fight, your tatics suck."
Neophyte Nerf"Shareida"Batted First Order
Freshman Jefferey"Bailan2"Ginsberg - Retired
Shareidah - First Order
A Producer's point of view
Interesting... I wonder.Originally Posted by SoapTarder
207 Agent without glasses rubber banded like a champ. Doing it now at 220... no effect.
Arlanon, 220/24 Clan Opifex Agent, Putting the FU in FUN since 2001
Gwop, 220/24 Clan Atrox Keeper, creater of the original Hacked Boosted Graft: Mongo Rage
Misc Pics: The Rock! Trox Lockpick! Spray Paint! Basic Battlestation Strategy! Damn, it's HER!
Balanced Weapons: Brigges Nail Gun! Brigges Nail Pistols! Brigges Shock Rifle! Brigges Nano-Charged Rifle!
............................ Brigges Shadow Ops Rifle! Brigges Senior Urban Crossbow! Brigges Viral Vision Enhancer!
LOL Weapon: Brigges Superiour Counter-Counter-Sniper Rifle!
They heard I like to snipe, so they put a scope on my scope so I can snipe while I snipe
Sneak and Destroy
Ekarona 220/30 Female Solitus Engineer, long term member of Northern Star and proper "poor" gimp.
Ekaslave 220/low Female Solitus Trader, FLAT(TM) pricing TS, almost all can do!
Ekaros almost there/almost there too Male Solitus Martial-Artist.
Ekadv gimp/gimp Female Opifex Adventurer
I hope u guys do some DEFENSIVE_MODIFICATION on agents, cose that 200% crit chance is just too much
SOON™coming back...
Neosh 220/20 Shade | Neokirurg 220/21 Doc crit setup | Neoc 216/18 Crat
Shades are really invisible (from FC point of view)
Patterns/symbs SALE ----- Refined imps SALE
In PvM, anything over 100% doesn't matter. In PvP, crit chance is halved. The duration is a mere few seconds and it is castable once every SEVEN MINUTES. My crit chance is already so high without this that the only thing it's good for is the +400 damage to three normal attacks and a Fling Shot... So once every seven minutes I get an extra 1600 damage, and that's only if I remember to cast it.Originally Posted by Neosh1
Baseless, irrelevant, senseless whining. And Agent Doc isn't even out yet.
Let's stay on topic please.
Last edited by Gwop; Apr 8th, 2011 at 18:15:49.
Arlanon, 220/24 Clan Opifex Agent, Putting the FU in FUN since 2001
Gwop, 220/24 Clan Atrox Keeper, creater of the original Hacked Boosted Graft: Mongo Rage
Misc Pics: The Rock! Trox Lockpick! Spray Paint! Basic Battlestation Strategy! Damn, it's HER!
Balanced Weapons: Brigges Nail Gun! Brigges Nail Pistols! Brigges Shock Rifle! Brigges Nano-Charged Rifle!
............................ Brigges Shadow Ops Rifle! Brigges Senior Urban Crossbow! Brigges Viral Vision Enhancer!
LOL Weapon: Brigges Superiour Counter-Counter-Sniper Rifle!
They heard I like to snipe, so they put a scope on my scope so I can snipe while I snipe
Sneak and Destroy
I've always assumed it was purposefully done, to mimic what its like to run on ice without (for some reason) radiation protection.
of course, back in the day rubber banding was actually rubber banding. how it works now, where you just get pulled back and stop running is very irritating. the old way was alot funnier.
wtf happened to my avatars eyebrows?
I used to listen to Dubstep in the 90's... every time I connected to the internet.
These were actuall put directly onto the nanos, not in 'The Secret Nerf Table' Just have a look at the Auno entries for them, and you should see them.
I believe that was technically to compensate for the crit ratings halved in PvP and to allow agents a couple of guaranteed crits, though personally I don't like that nano.
Ebondevil - Omni Level 220 Agent on Atlantean, Feel free to contact me any time if you have questions, in game or out.
Varinox - Omni Level 220 Meta-Physicist on Atlantean
Yamarra - Omni Level 150 Shade on Atlantean
Feel free to send me any tell in game or a Private Message if you require anything.