Friday with Means - October 9th, 2009 - Parry and Riposte - Back from the dead!

**Means**

I had hopes this week for us being able to share the plans for ALL perks and actions accross all professions this week. Unfortunately it isn't going to happen as we really feel we need to make the ENTIRE plan concerning research, perks, nanos and other changes available at the same time or the changes to perks will only be taken out of context...and a source of MORE questions and argument as opposed to LESS. There are still some details we are fighting about...if we can't agree yet it isn't ready.

A good example of additional changes not contained with in perks would be PARRY and RIPOSTE.

One of the downsides of working on a project for as long as I have is that sometimes you can get "stuck" in the old way of thinking. The previous attempts at implementing parry and riposte actions in the past had been unsuccessful for many reasons...so the idea of resurrecting this old code had always been a firm "no" in my book for good reason. This brings us to the value of having such a good team working on AO. Kintaii (unlike myself) did not see this as a lost cause and continued to work on acceptable solutions to these unused skills and has put together with the rest of the team a good alternative to the old systems for Parry and Riposte that will allow us to bypass all the "old" reasons for not activating these actions. So here is the basics of what we can expect from Parry and Riposte in the larger effort of balancing/renewing that we are currently working on:

Parry and Riposte

A free full IP Reset will of course come with these changes. The addition of Parry and Riposte actions will come along at the same time as the changes to perks and nanos.

Parry

General duration will be 10 seconds.
Based on your Parry skill (and having a martial arts/melee weapon equipped) you will acquire a new action (like Backstab) that enables you to parry/block both regular and special attacks for the duration of the action. As your skill in Parry increases, your chances to negate damage from regular and special attacks during the active time of the Parry action increases. As your Parry skill increases the cooldown of this action will also decrease. The Parry action will always negate the damage of at least one attack…how many additional attacks are parried will entirely depend on your skill.

Riposte

Riposte is an active melee/martial arts action that will do damage based on your Riposte skill. A Riposte is a quick counter-attack based on a temporary opening offered by an off-balance attack by your opponent. An attack by your opponent will “activate” your Riposte ability giving you a short window of time to use it to inflict additional damage on an in-range target. This will not be a “huge” damage special but more of an active combat action that is available often during the course of regular combat. Individual player skill in taking advantage of this action will be a significant factor in how effective it can be.

In-Game Mail:

This week was a milestone for AO. We got to see the huge moment where the first mail (with an ITEM!) was sent and received by another player. The first item sent was the iconic foam-finger that Macrosun uses as his head on TestLive. Go Macrosun! ...and yes...I am a horrible boss...please come back to work on Monday. Screenshot complete with coder-graphics is below!

New Engine

Thank you all for the feedback concerning the appearance of the first screenshots with the new engine. We will be sure to turn on a lot of the expected features (filtering etc) in the next set. You all drew attention to some areas we may not have thought of...so thanks again.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Sephiroth56

Seventh!

EDIT: fine, I know I'm first. I might as well contribute to the thread:
I really like the idea put forth about parry and riposte, albeit being a change from the way we're used to seeing skills work in AO (I'd love to see tweaks to other skills to be more in line with these changes, since they're awesome). The way riposte works gives me all sorts of excitement. Is it a concern that only the person with aggro will be able to utilize this?

Are we going to see more changes to other skills with the same philosophy behind parry and riposte (especially riposte, with including "player skill" or 'reactive play' as I'd like to call it) - I'd love to have a counter-attack on my NT to replace my bobbing chicken (those things that bob their head up and down infinitely) pressing 2 ever 2 seconds, or is it hard to justify the idea of a ninja-NT that'll evade and nuke you if you try to hit him?

I think we're all excited about the in-game mail system to be ready. Especially Macrosun. Is he quitting more than three times a day now?

Aleah

Tl,dr

**shadowgod**

nooo!

Gralmuph

bewbs

Nanostratege

parry and riposte will be usefull again? yay!

nice haloween items you made this year (ceiling leet ^^)

oh and: first page.

cbus97

WTB foam middle finger.

P.S. The foam hand is nodrop! The first ever in-game mail and you're sploiting already, not a good sign :P

**Obtena**

Interesting. I love the in-game mail. GG. Now you just need to upgrade it so you can transfer items and credits with it.

Parry/riposte ... nice to ressurect them. Does their use require parry/riposte on the weapon equipped? If so, it's too bad the current itemization in AO removed them from most (ALL?) currently used weapons for relevant professions. I guess MA's will benefit the most. Will MA attack lockouts prevent the use of these new skills? That would SUCK.

Alternity

Autohead

Removed

**Kintaii**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Obtena

Parry/riposte ... nice to ressurect them. Does their use require parry/riposte on the weapon equipped? If so, it's too bad the current itemization in AO removed them from most (ALL?) currently used weapons for relevant professions. I guess MA's will benefit the most.

We forgot to mention that Parry/Riposte will work based off of the IP spent in their respective skills and will NOT be tied to a "weapons special" in the same sense that Burst/Fling Shot/ect. ect. are. The only requirement to use Parry or Riposte will be that you have a melee weapon (and yes, the MA fists weapons will count) equipped - Whether or not this weapon has "Parry" listed as a special attack will be a moot point, as this is an entirely new system and not tied to the older attempts at making Parry/Riposte work.

So long as you're using a melee weapon, you're good to go with the new attacks. =)

navycut

woo possible MA lub with parry and rip fix

Dagget

Nice to see the mail system coming along. Can we expect that prior to the new engine, or is it scheduled to hit live in conjunction with the new engine?

The suggested Parry/Riposte system will do wonders for Keepers, Shades, and maybe MA's, the professions who currently put IP there for other reasons already. Remains to be seen if other melee professions will consider it a good use of IP.

Wrangeline

OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!

MAIL!!!!!!!

WITH ITEMS!!!!!!

That foam finger is nodrop is it not? Make sure we can't send nodrop items in mail before putting it on live!

Having that said.. "YES!!"
Thank you!

TheMekon

yay for parry and riposte returning and being effectively useless to 90% of the playerbase..

Dont get me wrong, great to see that you are still flogging such a dead horse that nobody really gives a damn about.

Solstiare

Am I reading this right, that the mail system will be player to player, and not player SHOP to player, correct? Because I want these lazy whinering @%$^ers to have to fly/run/crawl to the far corners of the map instead of slacking off in town. Damn kids, go outside!

Troxxor

Page 1, woo :P

Hai!

Grats on the 1st mail ^.^

Will we be able to mail nodrops directly from a corpse (with a negative amount money attached)? So those ppl who sell nodrops can do it through the mail

Or are we still going to faff with warps etc...

Yes/no/roll an engi n00b?

Solstiare

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheMekon

yay for parry and riposte returning and being effectively useless to 90% of the playerbase..

Dont get me wrong, great to see that you are still flogging such a dead horse that nobody really gives a damn about.

AWWwww, Do you need a hug?

**Obtena**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kintaii

We forgot to mention that Parry/Riposte will work based off of the IP spent in their respective skills and will NOT be tied to a "weapons special" in the same sense that Burst/Fling Shot/ect. ect. are. The only requirement to use Parry or Riposte will be that you have a melee weapon equipped - Whether or not this weapon has "Parry" listed as a special attack will be a moot point, as this is an entirely new system and not tied to the older attempts at making Parry/Riposte work.

So long as you're using a melee weapon, you're good to go with the new attacks. =)

Awesomeville. Means makes it sound like while it's working, it's a attack blocker but it's based on chance related to your skill. So i expect it suck pretty bad on my enfo but would be at the pinnacle of awesomeness for MA's, shades, maybe keepers.

Wrangeline

It will be interesting to see how many melee people/professions raise their parry and/or riposte skill seeing as they would have to remove IP from something else in order to get it.