Fist de Yuma - February 12, 2002

Ok, it is hard enough for my wife to bang my EGO in shape. Ken Troop makes it harder by giving me credit the Pincer quest. A reader sent me a letter saying this and for the life if me I could not remember anything I said that would bring about this reward. Then I read the post. "I actually conceived of it after I had read a Fist column talking about how disappointing it was that few AC dungeons had the obvious "reward" at the end. When you solved a dungeon, you wanted that tangible "Here it is. I finished this."" Aaaa I remember that. After getting to the bottom of OHN, a rather enormous chore back then, we were met with a portal back. I guess you never know what effect your words might have. A response to a Turbine statement. I would hate to see Ken Troop flamed to the point he stops posting. The information he provides is invaluable to us. Nevertheless there are times when what he says deservers a response. One such was; "The Boss Monsters were not intended to be mage-killable only." I would love to have responded as well as the below. The following was Og the one eye's response to this statement. -------- Really? I guess I find that so hard to believe because it took me all of 10 seconds into my first fight with a Diamond Lord to realize that it was mage only. (Was playing my 1 school archer at the time) Did none of you ever even attempt to fight one of them on a test server before putting them in the game? I cant believe there isnt some sort of testing process, there HAS to be, right? The higher in level things go, the more mage centric they become. Here is what I think happened. As you introduced higher-level monsters, you increased their health. That makes sense, so it takes a mage twice as long to kill a monster with 600 health than it does one with 300 health. The same would hold true for archers/melee, it would take them twice as long to kill something with 600 health than 300 health. The problem is that you also jacked up armor levels. This change did nothing to slow mages down, but it did have a huge impact on melee/archer damage. Also, you ALWAYS leave at least 1 hole in a monsters resistance to different damage types. This makes it so mages can always do full damage against anything. However, with the jacked up AL, it doesnt do all that much for melee/archers. IMHO, in the future you should go about making monsters in one of two ways. 1. Dont leaved gaping holes in monsters resistance to damage types, if you want to control how much damage mages can do. (Go cast frost bolts against some Ice golems and you will see what Im talking about) Then simply balance the monsters armor level to keep archer/melee damage in line with a mages (I didnt say equal, just balanced in comparison). 2. If you do leave holes in monsters resistance to damage types, then dont go nuts with the AL. If you do give it high AL, all you are doing is making another mage friendly monster. High health + high AL makes life very difficult for melee/archers while not stopping mages at all. I also think you should have kept going with what you introduced with Grievvers. They cast protects and are drain resistant. Im not saying everything should be AS drain resistant, but I would still put that in. Casting protects is fantastic as well. It isnt that hard to get around it with Grievvers, but it is a start at least. The other thing that Ill also bring up is monsters casting heal spells and especially them draining. This hardly interferes with a mage (vuln + kill in 1 or 2 bolts, before critter has time to heal/drain), but it has a huge impact on melee/archer. And one last thing you decided to add, high regen rates, which again, do nothing to hinder mages, but are a bane to melee/archers. So, standing between a mage and killing things, we have: 1. High health. Standing in the way of archers/melee killing things, we have: 1. High health. 2. High armor levels. 3. Healing and drain spells. 4. High regen rats. Is it any wonder that mages dominate the content so easily? I cant see why you have kept raising AL levels, when raising health levels already did the same thing to melee that it did to mages. And making things drain back, that is total Imperil/Vuln big damage love, like those spells needed to become more important. All that did was make things more difficult for the melee/archers who were ALREADY underpowered in comparison to mages and put even more of an emphasis on having the big hit ability (Imperi/Vuln). I feel like Captain Obvious, I know this has all been said about a million times here, but that statement just floored me and I had to respond. P.S.- Where I say Archer/Melee I am talking about archers and melee fighters. 3 school, life speced, 100 focus/self mages with weapons is not what Im talking about. They arent mages, since they have many of the same problems that I discussed, but they arent really melee/archers either. -------- I agree with a lot of what Og the One Eye says here. Where I disagree is the cure. Making monsters drain resistance will only hurt if you have to fight a horde of them. I fight Armored Tuskers all the time. One on one I never need to drain anything. It is only when facing a bunch of heavy hitters I need drain. Of course that is at high levels. At this point most of the drain resistance monsters are high level mage hunts anyway. Drain resistance monsters should be quest monsters for the most part. The part of filling the holes I disagree with. Melee/archers use those holes as do mages. Of course a mage is much more effective. This is my cure. Increase the hitting power of melee/archers at high levels. I'm sure that this is the route Turbine is taking. Right now Fist is still doing close to the damage he did at mid levels. When fighting the other day I was hitting in the low 20's. My new UA (Fist de Yuma Jr) is not hitting much less. Of course Jr has 20 more strength at the start. Still Fist is stronger for now and has 70 UA points on Jr. I expect to see that more damage for high-level melees in a few months. It will be a slow increase as it is easier to give more than take away what they have given. Increasing the damage a melee/archer does will not be a total fix but it will be a good start. I also expect to see fewer spell tossing/draining monsters and have some heavy hitters instead. This will be a good response to the no melee defense hybrids out there. It should be careful to note that when Og the One Eye is talking about hybrids he is talking the 100/100 focus/self melees. I feel that such a player should just go ahead and be a mage. Any melee/archer without Melee defense may start having problems soon. For that matter anyone who did not spec melee defense might be a bit troubled. My big hope is that the melee/archer will be close to a mage in power with the added benefit of avoiding the big melee hits. That will be as it should be, a little less power in exchange for much better defense. Right how we have little power and (with spell casters) almost no defense. Jargon There are a lot of short cuts used in the game. I'm bad at it myself as I'm not the greatest typist or speller. There was a discussion of terms on the boards the other day. The below is a classic use of jargon terms by Thomas Joyce. So, I was hunting with my OG the other day in BSD when this l337 BM comes up and starts draining my apes, Im like WTF? hes like STFU o.0! On my way to OP to use some of my SIKs for my L7s, I find a sing. trove with uber loot. I run into this nice UA. We fellow and make some mad XP. We decide to fight some bugs, but OHN isnt good enough, so I summon SUB and we take Shoushi to head to ML. I was quickly killed by a brood noble...back to the LS. Ooo the cries You would think they were taking away their right to eat. The pincer and queen quest will stop distributing xp other than the turn in value. That means a pincer worth 3 million will be worth 3 million, not 8.4 million. Seems reasonable to me. It means a 40 million xp queen head will not be worth over 100 million. They fixed a bug. To hear the people on the boards Turbine was taking away their purpose for living. The best thing about it will be stopping the queen camping. The quest had been run 24/7, mostly by chains. This is a great quest and even with the bug fix will be well worth the adventure. Of course the people who are only there to level and think they are Gods will find it beneath them. Brain dead people. Weeks after I gave up on chains, chains have not given up on me. Turbine seems to be making a 180 on chains and I'm the target of the brain dead chain member's wrath. I'm being attacked for of all things having mules that some vassals leveled. This is a tradesman who is never played. He provides a service to the family members. They leveled him to take advantage of that service. I get no gain out of it. I have to stop hunting to provide the service to members. He reached the lofty level of 35 after over a year. On top of that the vassals were true vassals. I helped and supported them. They are not xp providers they are friends who did me a favor. There will never be a slew of 100lv tradesman running around doing the queen quest. He never hunts, he is never in anyone's way. All he does is provide service to our family members. After reading some of the logic these people use it is no wonder that the Left has it so easy with the moral equivalent argument. Tying together unrelated or tenuous relationships is a great way to sway the weak minded or uninformed. Quests I think there are two types of quests. There are quests that can be solved and those that must be powered. The queen quest is an example of a power quest. You really need a high level group with lots of power. There are thinking parts but without the power you are not going to do it. The thinking quests of course can be powered. The new Ring quest is a great example. When it is mobbed there was no danger for even the unthinking player. When I soloed it I found places where I could funnel the hollows to me one or two at a time. This was a change from the rest of the place. It had a sharp corner of more that 90 degrees. This had to be put there to let a smart player solved the quest without having to fight 10 hollows simultaneously. Even the ambush at the fort had an out for a quick thinking player. The ladders and walls let you escape and pick them off one at a time. I really applaud Turbine for this quest. The EV quest is a smaller example. There are spots there to cut down on the numbers that can get to you. Admittedly it is more of a power place as without help you have to be able to fight great numbers of EV's. Still it is not as bad as it could have been. I find it easy to cut down on the numbers when using my weaker UA. (Too bad that this place is campers heaven right now.) I expect to see many more quests with a real reward at the end. I'm starting to really look forward to patches again. Island quest I got a call from The Crippler asking if I could help with the island quest. I was getting a few pincers with two of my players at the time. That was no problem as the quest was not starting for a while. I got there just in time. I was surprised to see there were only four of us. A small group can do the island quest but you really need people who know the place inside out. I'm not one of those and I was not sure of Crip or Gimp with a Limp knew it that well. The last person was another mage and I don't remember his name. That was something else that concerned me. Three mages and only one melee was not how I liked to work. I'm hoping the melee balancing tilts the things back a bit. More and more people use only using mages these days. I know that Mage get played much more than Fist. They were doing this in a different order that I was use too. We did the part I see done second, first. In hindsight I think this was an error. When we did the part I felt should have been done first the Golem was not there. Crip asked me to go check the crater to see if the Big B had spawned. I took the long way around to avoid fighting. The other mage said he would come help me after I left. He took a shorter route and arrived little before I did. The guy is a great team player. He fed me mana health and stamina while I fought the Plasma golems. I had my video turned way down so I could not see the Big B. The other mage said lets get him and charged. That made the Golem stand. Until that point I thought it had not spawned. I landed a yield and Vuln on it just as the other mage's war hit. Good teamwork again. Neither of us needed the stone (Going to have to get Fist over here someday.) Most of the time you have to kill a bunch of Hellfires before finding the right one. I lucked out, it was the first one I killed. The four of us met back at the buffing spot just before Relic town. We buffed up and headed out. After killing a bunch of Relics we did not have the watchman. Finally, after working our way to the very end, we got him. At least we did not have to wade through a horde of bones to get to the portal. I felt we had the power to complete the quest from there. If we worked together, hurried and not rushed, we would do ok. What I did not count on was lag. After clearing the start I was able to make the jump and not lose my spells. One mage had to redo his buff after hitting the trap. I'm not sure who messed up but some triggered the Hellfire. We got past that and Crip and I cleared the golems. We hit the room and got the last golem and headed down the passage. We only needed to clear a little more and we would get to the buffing room. We started down the ramp. I took a few steps and froze in place. Seconds later I came out of lag at the end of the room, surrounded by relic and cursed bones. I did a quick 180 and ran back up the ramp. The bones had really clogged the ramp and I was stuck. I battled as well as I could. With full buffs I was not taking all that much damage per swing, but there were a lot of them hitting me. I lost use of the mouse half way into the battle. Trying to switch and blast using just the keyboard was not fun. Luckily the mouse returned after a minute or so. I heard someone die and knew this was not going well. The final kicker for me was a wisp, well away from the battle, who decided to start draining me. I hit heal but with all the de-buffs it fizzled. I saw my health ticking away and hit recall. With 14 hit points I escaped into the portal. The other two had their hands full with some golems. They had a shot at recovering the guy who died body but he did not giver permission fast enough. With just the two of them Crip and the remaining mage ported out. Crip is having bad luck with this quest. This was the second failure for him that day. I found out later that when I lagged out on the ramp Crip did as well. I did not see him but he ended up running into the wall at the end of the room with me. With half the party lost in lag the end was inevitable. How to talk to others On the above quest we has a small conflict. We ran to the buffing spot just before Relic town. One mage had no buffs and we all had a lot of de-buffs. An Elder came running up with a Drudge on his tail. The un-buffed mage took off running and I switched to war. Crip pulled a weapon and Gimp tossed a few buffs on himself. The Elder stopped to help fight the Drudge. We were a little ticked. Everyone knows not to draw stuff to that spot. Well I was wrong, later I found he did not know. I said, "Not cool ". Now this is a good guy but he has a tact problem. Being someone renown for his lack of tact, saying he is tactless is really something. I told him this was a buffing spot and he replied, "I missed the sign." At this point both Crip and I are really pissed at him. He later sent an apology for drawing stuff to us but the damage had been done. I later had a long talk with him. I pointed out that, "Sorry, I didn't know" is much better that, "I missed the sign." If he wanted to assume a leadership position in Elder he was going to have to learn how to talk with people. I really needed to have that talk as a few of his actions had my vassals rebelling and two had left Elder over him. I have vassals who are a lot like me, hot heads. Fortunately they are also like me in that after getting over it we forgive and forget. Several of my main vassals called for me to leave Elder. I have smoothed that over, I hope. I'm going to work with the new Elders on how to deal with people better. No one is wrong in these cases, it is just how you come across. Remember, "Sorry" is easy to say and is much better than, "So what". Even if you think something is trivial don't demean the other person. So that brought up that many times people don't know how to talk to others. They say something that is quite meaningless and end up creating a problem where there should be cooperation. Here are a few ideas that might help. Think before you type. It only takes a few seconds to form a phrase that is not insulting. Read it before hitting return. This has saved me many a time from problems. By stopping to read what I have typed I can see it may be far harsher than I meet it to be. It also gives me time to cool down and maybe decide not to send anything. Even response to grief play can be phrased such that you have fewer problems later. A long time ago I was leveling in BSD. I had a big problem with getting people to respect battles. Many there thought it was a FFA place. On most days I was successful. Respect breeds respect. I did this by asking people nicely not to jump my battles. "Please don't attack the one I'm fighting. The others are ok but let me have mine to myself." Most people responded to this. If I had tried, "Hay you stupid ass, didn't you see I was fighting that one.", I would not have gotten anywhere. There was one guy there who loved to jump other people's battles. He took pride in making people mad. We had a war of tells for a while. At the end he surprised me. "I have had many words with players and you're the first not to start cursing. I'll respect your battles." By holding to my guns and using logic and good sense I gained what I wanted, along with someone's respect and friendship. Remember. True grief players want you to get mad! This gives them the biggest kick. Those that ignore them give them nothing. Soon they will move on to a victim who will give them the conflict they desire. I have learned this over time. I have got into war of words with people in this column and on the boards. In no case did I gain anything from it and in all cases I lost respect. That took a while to get pounded into my thick skull. This is why you will not been seeing names of players for anything but good here now. Assume that the person did not know they did wrong. A person fighting a lot in a FFA like the Citadel may now how to act in OHN. By assuming they don't know you go into teaching mode. Never curse. For some reason kids think cursing makes them seem older. In fact it is just the opposite. If someone curses we immediately peg them as a kid. Adults will seldom curse. Avoid wiseass remarks. "I didn't see the sign" may have been seen a witty to someone but in reality was insulting. A wiseass remark will seldom work so there is no good reason to use them. Even if you think it is funny, don't laugh out loud. There was an event the other day where and Elder pulled a Olthoi by error. As the Elder turned to fight it the Olthoi disengaged and ran a long way to attack an AFK player in a far off corner. Now they Elder thought the AI of the Olthoi was funny. I agree it was. Nevertheless doing a laughing E-mote or typing "Ha Ha, that was funny" will have people thinking you were laughing at the poor AFK guy, not the stupid AI of the Olthoi. Unless you're laughing at something that happens to you, laughing at any event will almost always be taken badly. Laugh all you want behind the screen but don't carry it into the game. If really angry at someone, take it to private tell. Better yet log for a while. If you have to have it out with someone don't bring down others with your shouting match. The same goes for the boards. Take it to PM. If you don't have something that adds to a post on the boards, pass. The worse thing VN did was show the count of posts and reward stars for high numbers. This has led to people posting just to add to their numbers. Most of them just add to the noise level and nothing to the debate. To bad they don't reward good posts and punish the stupid ones. Be nice to get 10 points for a great post and see a, "STFU" post lose 5. Most of all remember this is for fun. If your not having fun go play something else. It is not "Just a game" as you have real people behind all those players. Making fun of someone and creating a bad environment will distract from the fun of others. That in turn will take away from your fun. Don't assume people know what you know. That was my mistake. "Please don't draw stuff here, it is a buffing spot", would have informed and been better than, "Not cool." Lastly remember the use of "/Squelch -account " is your best defense.