Originally posted on April 6th, 2018
DEVELOPMENT MANIFESTO: FIXING 2.2.0
2.2.0 has been out for a day now, but despite its success and exciting new features, there have been some glaring issues that had to be addressed. Notably, some of these were incredibly hard to correct and fix—leading to surprisingly drastic changes on the server.
DAMAGE-OVER-TIME AND EFFECTS
Many effects introduced in 2.2.0 inflicted massive amounts of damage-over-time and could bypass PvP restrictions in every possible world. This was dangerous to all players and caused numerous deaths and confusion. There were several solutions to this problem:
1) Find a way to disable damage-over-time against players.
2) Completely rework damage-over-time effects.
3) Disable PvP entirely server-wide.
1) Proved to be impossible, as MythicMobs actually uses player targetting for mobs now. So hitting a mob to gain effects is equivalent to hitting a player. Thus, disabling damage-over-time against players also disabled it against normal monsters, which would defeat the purpose entirely.
2) MythicMobs had a special condition that we could use to disable the damage overrides against players. However, it was discovered that it possessed the exact same problem from before where the effects would no longer function correctly after being modified. Similarly, damage effects that directly damaged the target suffered the same issue (such as physical damage from Lithaan's Presence).
There is no easy way to rework these items in order to avoid dealing damage directly to players. The closest method we could come up with is to replace ALL direct attacks with invisible mobs that damaged nearby monsters. But when taken into consideration with the current attack speeds, this would cause extreme amounts of unnecessary lag on the server due to the constant spam of mobs spawning from players' weapon triggers.
3) Thus, we elected to actually disable PvP in all major worlds. Thanks to the power of Multiverse, we could selectively disable PvP only in certain worlds instead. This allowed us to keep all of the current public areas safe while choosing to keep the nether open for PvP. To accommodate this change, the PvP toggling plugin has also been removed, since there's no point toggling the PvP status due to players now being forced into disabled PvP in most worlds.
AURAS AND MELEE DAMAGE STACKING
It was also discovered during this process that auras and AoE spells (similar magic items such as Cascades) scaled melee damage instead of ranged/magic damage. Mechanically, AoE spells and auras lack an actual projectile and instead use a region trigger generated by Crackshot to deal damage in a radius.
This gave players the ability to bypass the short range and manual attacks of melee weapons and instead equip a melee item in their off-hand in order to deal its damage on top of the current aura/AoE spell's damage equipped in their main hand. Effectively, this method can convert any melee weapon into a powerful magic weapon.
While we do not prefer to limit the variety of player-created item loadouts, this combination proved to be far too powerful to keep on the server as it dealt significantly more damage than any other loadout currently existing on the server. We were unable to entirely disable this combination, so we had the choice of modifying either melee weapon scaling or aura/AoE spell scaling.
After heavy amounts of inspection and testing, the problem, at its core, pointed to the design and implementation of auras and AoE spells, so we have decided to modify those instead of lowering the average damage output of melee weapons. Listed here are the four solutions we came up with in order to balance out auras and AoE spells properly.
1) Nerf auras/AoE spells to attack slower.
2) Nerf auras/AoE spells to deal less damage.
3) Remove auras/AoE weapons entirely.
4) Nerf the size/range of auras/AoE spells.
1) Attack speed was not the true issue with these magic weapons. The main issue was being able to deal melee damage with extremely high ranges, thus invalidating melee as a viable class type. Nerfing these would thus, serve no purpose and leave the unbalanced mechanics as they currently are.
2) The issue with this solution is that most auras/AoE spells deal little-to-no damage to begin with, with notable examples such as the Orb of Frost only having a measly 25.0 base damage. Thus, lowering the actual damage of these weapons would not change the currently overpowered damage scaling at all.
3) This solution, while effective, is too destructive in its approach and would remove an entire weapon subtype from the server.
4) In the end we went with this solution as there was no feasible method of disabling off-hand melee weapons entirely available to us in a timely manner. All auras have had their area of effect reduced from 5 blocks wide to 1.5 blocks wide, giving them effectively the same range as the average melee weapon. Hence, stacking melee damage onto auras would fare no better than high-tier melee weapons themselves.
Continuing with this plan, magic weapons such as Cascades have been entirely reworked in order to have slower, heavier bursts with long cooldown times in between. Not only does this discourage rapid melee effect stacking, it also makes the weapons themselves more practical as Cascades, for example, was notorious for having an astronomically long 5.0 second recharge time. Now it will recharge in the inventory/hotbar independently of its charges fired, much like many of the new spells introduced in 2.2.0.
Due to the nature of melee damage stacking with auras and AoE spells, all of these items will now display two new stats in their item description showing how they scale:
* Gains damage/status bonuses from melee items and accessories.
* Ranged and magic bonuses have no effect.
THRUNN OF LOOYS CHANGES
Thrunn of Looys is one of the most cutting-edge items we have ever designed, introducing scaling critical chance—a concept never seen before on Aryntius. We intended this weapon to be used solely as an attack-based melee weapon. But due to the limitations of MythicMobs and Minecraft in general, its effect can escape this limit and be used in conjunction with many other items, most notably auras and AoE spells.
We have decided to make drastic changes to this item, restoring its original thematic concept by shifting it from a weapon into a pair of leggings. The massive 5000.0 physical damage on critical strike has been changed to 100.0 chaos damage on critical strike. As before, the item will keep its ability to scale critical chance, since that is the prime mechanic it possesses.
Lastly, this powerful artifact has been bumped up to the Iridescent tier due to how strong it will be in the current meta, even after the hefty changes. Existing variants of Thrunn of Looys will be replaced entirely by the new version when the next update is released.
DEVELOPMENT MANIFESTO: FIXING 2.2.0
2.2.0 has been out for a day now, but despite its success and exciting new features, there have been some glaring issues that had to be addressed. Notably, some of these were incredibly hard to correct and fix—leading to surprisingly drastic changes on the server.
DAMAGE-OVER-TIME AND EFFECTS
Many effects introduced in 2.2.0 inflicted massive amounts of damage-over-time and could bypass PvP restrictions in every possible world. This was dangerous to all players and caused numerous deaths and confusion. There were several solutions to this problem:
1) Find a way to disable damage-over-time against players.
2) Completely rework damage-over-time effects.
3) Disable PvP entirely server-wide.
1) Proved to be impossible, as MythicMobs actually uses player targetting for mobs now. So hitting a mob to gain effects is equivalent to hitting a player. Thus, disabling damage-over-time against players also disabled it against normal monsters, which would defeat the purpose entirely.
2) MythicMobs had a special condition that we could use to disable the damage overrides against players. However, it was discovered that it possessed the exact same problem from before where the effects would no longer function correctly after being modified. Similarly, damage effects that directly damaged the target suffered the same issue (such as physical damage from Lithaan's Presence).
There is no easy way to rework these items in order to avoid dealing damage directly to players. The closest method we could come up with is to replace ALL direct attacks with invisible mobs that damaged nearby monsters. But when taken into consideration with the current attack speeds, this would cause extreme amounts of unnecessary lag on the server due to the constant spam of mobs spawning from players' weapon triggers.
3) Thus, we elected to actually disable PvP in all major worlds. Thanks to the power of Multiverse, we could selectively disable PvP only in certain worlds instead. This allowed us to keep all of the current public areas safe while choosing to keep the nether open for PvP. To accommodate this change, the PvP toggling plugin has also been removed, since there's no point toggling the PvP status due to players now being forced into disabled PvP in most worlds.
AURAS AND MELEE DAMAGE STACKING
It was also discovered during this process that auras and AoE spells (similar magic items such as Cascades) scaled melee damage instead of ranged/magic damage. Mechanically, AoE spells and auras lack an actual projectile and instead use a region trigger generated by Crackshot to deal damage in a radius.
This gave players the ability to bypass the short range and manual attacks of melee weapons and instead equip a melee item in their off-hand in order to deal its damage on top of the current aura/AoE spell's damage equipped in their main hand. Effectively, this method can convert any melee weapon into a powerful magic weapon.
While we do not prefer to limit the variety of player-created item loadouts, this combination proved to be far too powerful to keep on the server as it dealt significantly more damage than any other loadout currently existing on the server. We were unable to entirely disable this combination, so we had the choice of modifying either melee weapon scaling or aura/AoE spell scaling.
After heavy amounts of inspection and testing, the problem, at its core, pointed to the design and implementation of auras and AoE spells, so we have decided to modify those instead of lowering the average damage output of melee weapons. Listed here are the four solutions we came up with in order to balance out auras and AoE spells properly.
1) Nerf auras/AoE spells to attack slower.
2) Nerf auras/AoE spells to deal less damage.
3) Remove auras/AoE weapons entirely.
4) Nerf the size/range of auras/AoE spells.
1) Attack speed was not the true issue with these magic weapons. The main issue was being able to deal melee damage with extremely high ranges, thus invalidating melee as a viable class type. Nerfing these would thus, serve no purpose and leave the unbalanced mechanics as they currently are.
2) The issue with this solution is that most auras/AoE spells deal little-to-no damage to begin with, with notable examples such as the Orb of Frost only having a measly 25.0 base damage. Thus, lowering the actual damage of these weapons would not change the currently overpowered damage scaling at all.
3) This solution, while effective, is too destructive in its approach and would remove an entire weapon subtype from the server.
4) In the end we went with this solution as there was no feasible method of disabling off-hand melee weapons entirely available to us in a timely manner. All auras have had their area of effect reduced from 5 blocks wide to 1.5 blocks wide, giving them effectively the same range as the average melee weapon. Hence, stacking melee damage onto auras would fare no better than high-tier melee weapons themselves.
Continuing with this plan, magic weapons such as Cascades have been entirely reworked in order to have slower, heavier bursts with long cooldown times in between. Not only does this discourage rapid melee effect stacking, it also makes the weapons themselves more practical as Cascades, for example, was notorious for having an astronomically long 5.0 second recharge time. Now it will recharge in the inventory/hotbar independently of its charges fired, much like many of the new spells introduced in 2.2.0.
Due to the nature of melee damage stacking with auras and AoE spells, all of these items will now display two new stats in their item description showing how they scale:
* Gains damage/status bonuses from melee items and accessories.
* Ranged and magic bonuses have no effect.
THRUNN OF LOOYS CHANGES
Thrunn of Looys is one of the most cutting-edge items we have ever designed, introducing scaling critical chance—a concept never seen before on Aryntius. We intended this weapon to be used solely as an attack-based melee weapon. But due to the limitations of MythicMobs and Minecraft in general, its effect can escape this limit and be used in conjunction with many other items, most notably auras and AoE spells.
We have decided to make drastic changes to this item, restoring its original thematic concept by shifting it from a weapon into a pair of leggings. The massive 5000.0 physical damage on critical strike has been changed to 100.0 chaos damage on critical strike. As before, the item will keep its ability to scale critical chance, since that is the prime mechanic it possesses.
Lastly, this powerful artifact has been bumped up to the Iridescent tier due to how strong it will be in the current meta, even after the hefty changes. Existing variants of Thrunn of Looys will be replaced entirely by the new version when the next update is released.