I can understand where you're coming from, but the problem is that you're wanting to make the baseline flares more powerful than they should be. We have to have some sort of base to measure by, and the "common" flares types, which is what you can pick with premium points, are at the baseline. All the nicer and stronger flares are going to be your auction-quality or raffle type ones that can be more useful and more powerful.

The other problem is that you're being very specific to your needs, which is capped hunting. Flares are not designed with just a certain level range in mind, but rather across all level ranges of creatures. And when those are factored in there can be a huge difference to people's needs or wants. Fire and acid are generally good for undead. Cold is good against fire creatures. Vibration is good against stone-based creatures. Etc.

There's also the fact that if the base flares are much nicer then it would be much harder for us GM's to have fun creating all kinds of new and fun flare types to release. Things like disintegration flares, poison flares, gas flares, etc. might have never been invented if the common flares were considered great and there was no need for anything further.

Bottom line is, flares should not be balanced for a specific level range and instead you have to look at the bigger picture: level 0 to level 100.


~Aulis
QC'er
Forums Manager

>Bottom line is, flares should not be balanced for a specific level range and instead you have to look at the bigger picture: level 0 to level 100.

even across 100 levels, they are still unbalanced, you have to admit.

and yes, I am talking about capped hunting, but seeing as I am stuck here, I think it's a valid point.

~Moredin

it's not fair to pidgeonhole people at cap, because we cannot control our hunting options. as it is, capped players make up a sizable percent of the game's population and we shouldn't be dismissed as an outlier group. ie don't say my concerns aren't valid just because I'm at cap.

yes, flares work better in some areas than others, but of the options I have, only fire seems like it has any advantages over the others.

~Moredin

Nah, fire is the clear winner at cap. Cold is good against water elementals, but that's it. Fire is good against everything and it has the potential for double flares. The rest have no incentives whatsoever.

Droit

---

Speaking to you, Ceyrin asks, "Do you spontaneously come back to life when you die?"
Speaking to you, Ceyrin says, "Because I do."
You say, "Yes. I have a condition called Annoraxia.""

Being capped, you should have known what you hunt would be vulnerable to, flare wise. Since there 'are so few capped options'.. Flares are not new, for the most part. You made a decision. If you are not happy, sell the item or see if you can trade it for something you prefer over what you have now. Lower level characters hunting in various other areas might find it much more to their liking.

"the issue I'm trying to convince GMs of is that flares are unbalanced at cap. You disagree?" -- Moredin

---

I'm not sure that I agree that elemental flares need to be 'balanced at cap'. I would agree that in the planning future capped hunting areas it would be great if the current elemental biases of existing capped hunting areas was taken into consideration.

Said differently, I wouldn't change the flares but I would consider making less utilized ones more useful in future area design.

-- Robert

Much to your horror, a devastating inferno of flaming rocks ignite the entire sky and smite the area!

Hopping in on a new topic to see if I can poke and prod people for some more interesting information!

>(Re: Adding bonus abilities to flare crits...) Fire - I think fire has plenty of advantages already.

What advantages does fire already have? Double critting a creature type? Some might argue that this is a property of the creature and not the damage type. Sure, it's a prevalent creature type... But in the future what if it wasn't? Suddenly fire crits is terrible because we balanced around something that wasn't even a property of fire itself?

>I wouldn't change the flares but I would consider making less utilized ones more useful in future area design.

This is certainly one way to handle issues like this, and a very valid solution. However, it presents some issues... The main issue being that there is no 'immediate' fix or even a fix that people would be convinced would ever happen.

>But no, I don't think flares are unbalanced at cap. Situational, yes. Unbalanced, no.

I'm curious to hear more about this. Situationally how? Can an argument be made for every flare type being better than all other types in situations that happen frequently enough to be worth considering?

If you had to choose only one flare type to be available for your capped characters, would it be an easy decision for you? Why or why not? Would the decision be the same for all of your characters?

Gamemaster Konacon
Squares Team

>"I wouldn't change the flares but I would consider making less utilized ones more useful in future area design." -- Faulkil

"This is certainly one way to handle issues like this, and a very valid solution. However, it presents some issues... The main issue being that there is no 'immediate' fix or even a fix that people would be convinced would ever happen." -- Konacon

---

For clarity, I don't believe there are any immediate fixes needed in this case.

In response to the last question on your post, if I had to choose one common flare type for my capped character (a wizard in this case) I would choose fire. It is indeed the most useful in my chosen hunting areas (Temple Nelemar and The Rift) and also one that fits the character. The decision might be different for other characters for either RP or mechanical reasons.

Lightning - My personal favorite but of limited usage in various areas due to reflection off water, igniting gas, etc.
Fire - Good all around functionality for my hunting areas, has some of the downsides that Lightning has (igniting gas) but not as many, situationally useful against stone critters when combined with cold.
Cold - Situationally useful against elementals and stone critters when combined with fire. Incredibly fun to use when hunting fire mages.
Earth - Situationally useful in gas areas. A good general flare for all areas I suppose. I had an gnome earth mage in Plat for a limited time and this was definitely his flare of choice (RP decision).
Air - I really haven't used these flairs enough to have an opinion.

-- Robert aka Faulkil

Much to your horror, a devastating inferno of flaming rocks ignite the entire sky and smite the area!

>>This is why I, as a ranger who eblades his own arrows, am attuned to fire.

Droit<<

I may have read that as Droit is immune to fire and Tee Hee'd

Carry on.

~D
AIM: Delcian

"Only after disaster can we be resurrected." - TD

Seven stars in your cloak shine brightly, forming The Gryphon in the twinkling night sky.

It probably goes without saying, but we think these extra effects are cool and we like them. Please don't try to level the playing field by disincentivizing fire.

Droit

---

Speaking to you, Ceyrin asks, "Do you spontaneously come back to life when you die?"
Speaking to you, Ceyrin says, "Because I do."
You say, "Yes. I have a condition called Annoraxia.""

Maybe the way to go is to suggest special affects for flares on a per critter basis? For example, maybe rift crawlers should take double flares from vibe flares. I don't know if that actually makes sense, it's just an example.

Or all the ithzir become more susceptible to lightning and OTF turns into a giant electric death dome.

That sort of thing...

Answers below, response in general first. Given the current game direction which in the last five to ten years has steadily moved away from directly proportional effects to greater randomness (see % setoff spells like 115, 117 recasting, 240, open roll type Cman maneuvers, increased randomness in weighting and damage calculations), I think it is a good time to revisit flares. The entire system got a major downtweak back when we were moving away from crits and into attrition warfare (sometime before growing pains IIRC). Given the limitations on it; the need to contact first with a weapon, the random chance involved, the removal of any weighting (on weapons) or padding (on armor) and difficulty in enchanting, we are currently paying a high price for what is often very little effect.

There are some situations where the flares work well, but most players are going to invest in at most one very nice flared weapon. The niche value and limited level ranges when it really works well make it harder to justify spending treasure on that over something that works universally well across all levels. Right now the only flare types used over a wide spectrum of foes are those that happened to still have decent crits below the threshold imposed on the system when it got downtweaked. That is fire, lightning, acid, and vibe. If that wasn't good enough, two of them now kill you when used in three of the highest hunting grounds in the game (bowel-fire, parts of nelemar and OTF- lightning) Cold has the coolest crit messaging but you cannot see them on anything but a fire creature under the current system (unless you buy an immolator or other very expensive toy).


>Suddenly fire crits is terrible because we balanced around something that wasn't even a property of fire itself?

Fire still has passable death crits and more knockdowns than the other elemental types.


>Can an argument be made for every flare type being better than all other types in situations that happen frequently enough to be worth considering?

Not at the cap, anyway. In the case of steam I do not think it is ever better than any other elemental flare type.

>If you had to choose only one flare type to be available for your capped characters, would it be an easy decision for you? Why or why not? Would the decision be the same for all of your characters?

Yes. Given no other limitations, I would take vibe without even taking time to consider. Nothing is immune to it, it crits better than most all the others (fewer knockdowns than fire and fewer nerves than lightning though), it never sets off environmental effects, and a major subset of foes are susceptible to it (stone creatures and golems that GMs love to drop in invasions) .I only have one capped character but the only other possible effect would be if I was still in GoS, in that case fire would be my choice for the ability to fight trolls more effectively.


AIM: GS4Menos

>Here lies the formless world we´re living in
>Gravity is finally giving in
>High altitudes and still upward we go
>I was never meant to lead but to follow

>I would never put any standard flare on my main weapon because I require it to be blessable.

Good point, I often overlook that downside, playing a paladin. Add that to the negatives listed previously.

AIM: GS4Menos

>Here lies the formless world we´re living in
>Gravity is finally giving in
>High altitudes and still upward we go
>I was never meant to lead but to follow

>just want to be clear...there are no environmental effects to set off at cap, right?

>Moredin

Lightning is the only problem at cap. There are maybe 3 or so wet rooms in OTF and all of the first floor of Nelemar. Rooms wet enough to reflect it on you. On the up side, nerving those darn seers before they dispell sure is nice.

AIM: GS4Menos

>Here lies the formless world we´re living in
>Gravity is finally giving in
>High altitudes and still upward we go
>I was never meant to lead but to follow

Konacon, care to share your thoughts? Are you considering doing something about this? Don't usually get such a long post from a GM so I was curious. I understand Aulis' points about not judging flares based on one level range, but here's my argument as to why it DOES matter:

1. among those people who choose to get a common flare, fire is the overwhelming winner at cap.
2. because most people aspire to be at cap, they will try to plan for reaching that eventuality.
3. anything someone chooses to add a flare to, they most likely will plan on keeping/using that weapon forever; this is a rare merchant service and most people wouldn't get it on a weapon they don't use frequently. this is especially true with flares added via premium points.
4. therefore, even when you're not at cap, you'd still be inclined to choose fire if it's your primary weapon/runestaff, and you plan on using it at cap.

That said, I'll put aside the cap issue for a second:
it's possible to get from level 10ish (swamp trolls) to 68ish (troll kings) doing nothing BUT trolls. there is a gap in the 40s where you'd have to downhunt level 39 bog trolls and then uphunt tomb trolls at 52, but it's still doable! with sunfist access, obviously the range is 0-100.

does any other flare offer comparable "side-benefits" across such a wide level range even under the most optimal conditions? Even with a few fire-immune critters, I honestly think the answer is no.


~Moredin

>By far, the most difficult part of changing the flaring system isn't the code, it's designing a change so fantastic that it is loved (and desired) by the majority.

i figured the coding couldn't be too bad given the number of types of flares that have been released over the years.

>mainly because I live in Thrown Weapons land right now

that's great. I remember when I rolled a warrior YEARS ago and trained in thrown weapons because I thought it sounded cool, and some guy essentially said "thrown weapons don't even exist! silly noob". Reroll.... :(

>Ultimately, the first step to making a change is determining if a change needs to be made.

I can see a lot of GMs blowing this off. NEED is relative by definition. It doesn't absolutely have to be changed or gemstone will be broken, by any means. but I think this is something that could be done relatively easily (maybe an appropriate project for a new/training dev GM), and would go a long way with the players because, as you said, many people have exposure to, and use, flares, especially with the runestaff flares addition. and this number will continue to increase as more runestaff users get flares added to their weapons or go shopping for flaring runestaves.

Appreciate your thoughts...it gives me a lot of insight into how these things are approached behind-scences!

~Moredin

Flares are, however, more easily obtained since you can get them via premium points.

Also, with a runestaff being able to flare just from casting a spell of war now there is definitely something to be said for having that extra damage now and then.

Weighting has no real effect when on a runestaff, unless used in melee.

But honestly, who uses a runestaff in melee?

-GM Marstreforn-
(just call me Mars if you can't spell it)

Honestly Mascarpone the runestaff flares are seperate subject imo. Though I do agree that the trade off for weighting being generally superior is the rarity. You also have to acknowledge that low levels of weighting are not inherently better than flares. Flares are also preferable on smaller, faster weapons that aren't going to hit hard no matter how much weighting you put on them (unless you're an ambushing rogue).

Of the five main flares the only one that strikes me as highly inferior is Cold. The resistance of pretty much all undead to cold attacks makes these flares less than ideal. That said you wouldn't hear me complain if acid prevented troll regeneration in standard D&D fashion.

Keith/Brinret

Five Jewish men who influenced the history of Wester Civilization:
Moses said the law is everything.
Jesus said love is everything.
Marx said capital is everything.
Freud said sex is everything.
Einstein said everything is relative.

>But honestly, who uses a runestaff in melee?

grimswarm shamans swing at 600 with 117 up....owwwiee

~Moredin

So what you are saying is that we should give the Grimswarm shamans a weighted runestaff! Got it!

Thanks for the suggestion. ;)

-GM Marstreforn-
(just call me Mars if you can't spell it)