Yeti changes

[Frost]

Recently the yetis were radically changed. They're now a LOT less powerful and to me also much less interesting to fight.

Before: very fast, maybe as fast as JackOs. It was a real challenge to solo them. The Cindy battle was very exciting because mages had to keep running.

Now: slow. They seem to hit harder, but for mages it's just not a challenge. Even my mage with 15 Vit and 1 Luck can solo 3 yetis easily. The Cindy battle has become a slugfest where you pound away at a yeti until it's dead, then move on. Mages spend most of the time standing around throwing lightning bolts or flar. I just watched a mage finish the last 4 rounds of the Cindy battle solo!

I haven't found a discussion about this, so I'll ask here. Why were they changed?

[Frost]

Ali-G, why was this changed? What was "balanced?"


$ git show 77e821
commit 77e821ab5efaf99f7a0fff5d5fa89bfad59e59d0
Author: Ali-G
Date: Sun Jun 12 06:18:10 2011 +0200

Balanced the Yeti's speed stats to avoid buggy features. Thank you to peteam

diff --git a/db/mob_db.txt b/db/mob_db.txt
index 89e0a23..db16158 100644
--- a/db/mob_db.txt
+++ b/db/mob_db.txt
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@
1069, Scythe, Scythe, 40, 3000, 0,
1070, BallLightning, BallLightning, 40, 10, 0,
1071, IceElement, IceElement, 100, 5000, 0,
-1072, Yeti, Yeti, 100, 8500, 0,
+1072, Yeti, Yeti, 100, 8500, 0,
1073, TheLost, TheLost, 30, 5000, 0,
//1074, RedBone
//1075, Stalker

[Alige]

The Yeti is indeed slower now but its xml now works fine with the new speed. It had buggy features while walking, standing, etc...
I agree that it might change a lot of things and we might need to change it back as before, taking care of its movements.
I assume that I should of thought of that before but it seemed to me that the Yeti looked way better after the changes made by peteame.

Ali-G

[radiant]

The Yeti used to have speed 220, making it even faster than JackO (250). Strangely enough, I actually liked the faster version better, because it was closer to the player speed (150 with no speed skill adjustment) and a group of them could be more easily herded around without having some fall off the back of the pack, where they're liable to move on to a player who doesn't want to be chased.

[Alige]

What I mean is that the speed was changed because we had buggy features due to the xml. We might need to have a closer look to the xml to change it so that we can reestablish a higher speed. However, I think that they were a bit too fast (for me) but this doesn't mean speed 220 was a bad idea!

Thanks to Frost for opening this thread, I agree we needed to talk about that.

Ali-G

[Matt]

I read it like five times now, what are "buggy features"?

[Alige]

It was as if the Yeti had fire in the ass while being constipated.

[Reid]

It was as if the Yeti had fire in the ass while being constipated.

And why did you changed his speed then? It's xml's issue.

[Alige]

Speed and xml are connected.

[Reid]

Speed and xml are connected.

Seriously?

You just need to adapt the xml with the speed, not to adapt the speed with the xml..

[alastrim]

I think this is the post where pateame reported the yeti speed issue:
http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 2&#p108092

[pateame]

Quoting myself on that post:

I don't know if that speed decrease on mob_db.txt can affect the current rebalance project, so I just leave it as a values example for testing purposes. .

What I wanted was to can see all the frames on yeti animation, not only idle animation frames while attacking and walking.

[+] Old Yeti mob_db values:
Speed = 220, Adelay = 1500, Amotion = 672, Dmotion = 900

[+] New config values example:
Speed = 380, Adelay = 666, Amotion = 1000, Dmotion = 600 .


Attack looks better, but now walk/run is too slow for overpowered mages and archers
- Escaping from old yeti battle:
"OMG! it's gonna hit me!"
- Escaping from current yeti:
"Nah... that old ape is too slow."

Yeti attacks are melee style, just a piece of cake for running mages and archers.
I was thinking on new ways of attack, as long range attacks to can make battle against mages/archers a bit interesting (maybe throwing snowballs?).
You can play with mob_db.txt values as much as you want on a test server to get a faster monster with a synchonized attack, but maybe you will need to remove those idle animations on .XML first to don't crash with speed/adelay/amotion/dmotion values.
Im glad to see your interest on fix that issue, ¿Why dont you fix the yeti mask and item gathering quests related with yeti too?.

[Nard]

This is a typically wrong placed update. I can understand the Artist's and Developer's point of view who wants aspect to be perfect. And this job has to be done.
but the problem is
Whom this update intended for? answer: gamers, not developers and artists
Does the update fits the content developers ideas? answer no; because it breaks the idea of "free cindy" quest to be solved by a team
Does it increase fun to play? obviously no
The only advantage I can see is mine as a mage. I got 10 tears in the same time I got one before.

This thread underlines the necessity of a team of testers, who can give a feedback and contradictory point of view before an update is released.
Fortunately we have now test servers. http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 13&t=13388

[pateame]

I'm trying to explain the technical issue with 'speed' value on mob_db.txt, wich not only affects the walk/run speed but also the attack sequences. The drama involved with player frustrations doesn't require an explanation.
... Soon we will got the same problem if Wolf monster is released, wich require a slow speed value to display all frames correctly, and surely will be a boring challenge for current mages/archers.
- Let's take a look again:

- On my test server it currently have speed : 425

- Here's how it looks with player speed : 150


So... why bother drawing 5 attack frames if we only can see just one? Why bother drawing 6 walking frames if we only can see just one?. Solutions aren't here yet, but I wish to find a way to solve this with testing and feedback from devs.

[Crush]

It seems like the walking sequence is reset when a new tile is reached. That's a client bug which should be solved when it isn't yet (what client version are you using?).

The attack animation being reset when damage is dealt makes sense, though. When the content development define the attack speed of a monster they should also adjust the delays in the animation xml so that the animation duration matches the attack duration.