[Noman's Land, Cave - 5373]
You notice a cyclops, a cyclops and a cyclops.
Also here: the body of Lord Keraelon (prone)
Obvious exits: north, east, west

>410
You trace a simple rune while intoning the mystical phrase for Elemental Wave...
Your spell is ready.
You gesture at a cyclops.
Nothing happens.
*[Because your account is free, you cannot cast this spell such that it would endanger other players.]*


The guy is dead, so I'm obviously not going to endanger any other players. I dragged him 1 room away and went back for the cyclops, only to find out....



[Noman's Land, Cave - 5373]
You notice a cyclops, a cyclops and a cyclops.
Obvious exits: north, east, west
>410
You trace a simple rune while intoning the mystical phrase for Elemental Wave...
Your spell is ready.
You gesture at a cyclops.
Nothing happens.
*[Because your account is free, you cannot cast this spell until the cooldown has expired. To purchase access, please visit the SimuCoins Store.]*

I can understand the desire to prevent F2P accounts from attacking others, but has it actually been an issue?



I'd also like to mention that I don't understand the need for a cooldown on knock-down spells. It's been very frustrating while hunting and needing that extra boost to your attack to be told that you cast 410 too recently, so you have to wait. It would be very nice to see the cooldown removed altogether.

>The guy is dead, so I'm obviously not going to endanger any other players.

This is fixed.

>I can understand the desire to prevent F2P accounts from attacking others, but has it actually been an issue?

It has not. Very likely because those restrictions have been coded into it from the beginning. Unfortunately, some players will go to extreme lengths to abuse even trivial bugs or engage in harassment, as we have sadly discovered in the past by leaving such holes open with the reason of "no reasonable person would abuse this".

>It's also not clear that failing to cast a spell, for whatever reason, should count towards a cool-down.

This is intentional. The "no harm other players" aspect isn't intended to be a safety valve that lets you spam the casting of a dangerous spell in a high-traffic area, confident that you'll never actually hurt another player, more freely than a subscription account would be able to do. Therefore, the cooldown for triggering that safeguard is significantly longer than the normal one.

The restriction applies to any spell that would negatively impact another player in the room, should it hit them. Knockdowns are a negative impact. As anyone who had ever been knocked down and given RT while in an offensive stance, and then seeing another creature generate in the room just afterward, would no doubt agree.

I guess now I can make the post I initially set out to make (when I misread the OP).

It should be important to distinguish between the intent of a player and the results in the game. Between when you intend to cast e-wave and the command is processed by the game, another character could walk into the room. Another character could be hidden or invisible, too.

My analogy with the town justice system was meant to address this general point. There is some history of penalizing players for certain actions, even if no other players were harmed (and maybe could not have been harmed at all). I'm sure from an RP perspective we can justify why my characters have been tossed in jail countless times for endangering public safety, but most likely this sort of thing was designed to foster a positive community of gamers where certain kinds of nuisances far outweigh perks for other characters.

>A F2P account already loses the benefit of a society, add in the fact that knockdowns are limited, it makes hunting more frustrating and difficult than it needs to be, since a F2P account cannot knockdown subscribers due to their immunity anyway.

>Could the cooldown be revisited and possibly removed? As a warmage, I rely on knockdowns and being restricted adds more difficulty than necessary.

It's hard for me to reply here, since I'm sure it is frustrating. On the other hand, F2P accounts are specifically designed to be limited!

I'm not sure how these cooldowns work. You could consider 410 along with 909 and 912, if they are not on the same cooldown and can all be cast. If you can cycle between them, it might help your hunting style a bit. If you're hunting cyclops, you certainly can't afford the mana to e-wave each one individually I don't think.

If that works, you can then also add Quake imbeds from sorcerers to your arsenal, at which point I think you'd do well enough for hunting cycling between four spells with cooldowns. Of course, your mileage may vary depending on the spell, and I have no idea which of these spells are okay for F2P or if they all use the same cooldown. Just some ideas that might help you hunt under the status quo, since it's the best I can do.

---

Check out who's dying any time! https://twitter.com/GSIVDeathLog

>Daid: Pretty sure you have a whole big bucket as your penny jar. You never have only two cents. :p

>But as you can see by my copy/paste. The spell failed completely when another person was in the room. So aren't subscribers immune to the knockdowns caused by a F2P account? Therefore no cooldown would be necessary as they wouldn't be affected.

The dead character issue in that post was an outright bug, which I did fix immediately.

Otherwise, our internal discussions on F2P accounts and area effect spells went in several different directions before we arrived at the current solution. In brief, we intended to strike a balance where: (a) the spells couldn't directly harm other players in any way; and, (b) the spells wouldn't become 100% playersafe for F2P accounts without any other downsides, which could actually be considered an upgrade on the spells compared to full subscribers.

The solution we arrived at was a small cooldown for every cast, and a much larger cooldown if there were a situation where another player would have been harmed otherwise. It isn't perfect from several perspectives, but one of the primary alternatives was simply to disallow all player-affecting area effect spells entirely.

Here's the message for 525.

[Because your account is free, you cannot use player-unfriendly area effect attack spells.]

Dunno if you have me on ignore, or are just plain ignoring me?

Did you firstly try if cycling 410, 909, and 912 works? They may or may not have different cooldowns.

If not, please try. If yes, please tell me if it works.

In the mean time, stop pesting GM for game changes when there may be easy solutions for your warmage.

---

Check out who's dying any time! https://twitter.com/GSIVDeathLog

>Daid: Pretty sure you have a whole big bucket as your penny jar. You never have only two cents. :p

>prep 909
Your hands glow with power as you invoke the phrase for Tremors...
Your spell is ready.
>cast
You gesture.
Nothing happens.
[Because your account is free, you cannot use player-unfriendly area effect attack spells.]
>prep 410
You trace a simple rune while intoning the mystical phrase for Elemental Wave...
Your spell is ready.
>cast
You gesture.
A wave of dark ethereal ripples moves outward from you.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
>prep 912
Your hands glow with power as you invoke the phrase for Call Wind...
Your spell is ready.
>cast
You gesture.
Nothing happens.
[Because your account is free, you cannot cast this spell until the cooldown has expired. To purchase access, please visit the SimuCoins Store.]

I am an old school player returning to test F2P. So far I have to say that you guys have done a great job, and I've been wanting to play again, so when I saw I could do so without the sub, I was all in. I am a little sad I cannot bring back old characters, but I'd rather meet a new like-level group that plays around the same time.

The subject of area effect spells and reading other posts here gives me one main concern--from a design standpoint: Would these limitations cause F2P players to migrate to classes not affected by spell cool downs or that don't rely heavily on area effect damage? Will this cause class imbalance? I'd say E-Wave is a pretty important spell and I'd not make a character if I couldn't use it properly. So F2P shouldn't effectively gimp certain classes. Perhaps an alternative would be to offer class tokens (50 bucks?) that permanently unlock and relieve those limitations. I also am putting in a vote for one off subscription tokens that would remove these restrictions. I understand that you cannot make F2P overly appealing or your core would freak out, but there has got to be a better way!