The Mana World Forums

Hi I would like to discuss this :
http://mantis.themanaworld.org/view.php?id=430

Description: Healing items (beer, apples, water) will no longer instantaneously give their HP, but rather hand out those HP over time.
Additional Information: This patch fixes the following game balance bugs:
* Without patch, you can win against any monster if you just have enough beer
* Without patch, the winner in any PvP battle is largely determined by the amount of beer available

First off I like the idea of limiting players like this, but I wonder if this is the best way. I think players would be more or less immortal either way, if they can estimate correctly how many healing items they should "que" at the same time. So alternatively I was thinking of a timeout for certain types of items. Although due to the large variety of healing items, it should be a general timeout, and not just an item specific timeout. Possibly even a combination of both ideas, or would that be to big of a limitation?

Last night we had a heated debate about this topic.


A few details about the mechanics behind the patch which might not be apparent for non-programmers: When a character uses a healing item, the health points are not healed instantly but instead added to a stack of queued heathe points. While a character has queued health points his/her normal hp regeneration kicks in much more frequently (every 0,5 seconds). The hp regenerated by this extraordinary natural hp regeneration are deducted from the queued hp stack.


I would like to have health items which heal faster than others and counterbalance this (and also get around some technical problems) by adding a cooldown time during which no new items can be consumed.


Platyna would like to solve the problem differently by adding an mp cost to using health items and thus limit the number of health potions you can consume by your mp.


A player also made a quite interesting suggestion to me: reducing the effect of healing items when the player uses a lot of them in a short amount of time. When a character uses a healing potion a cooldown time starts. When the character uses another health item during the cooldown time its effect is halved and the cooldown time is extended. The next items effect during cooldown is divided by 4, 8, 16 and so on.

Ok crush, thanks for that clarification.

I would like to have health items which heal faster than others and counterbalance this (and also get around some technical problems) by adding a cooldown time during which no new items can be consumed.

Yeah I think cooldown is necesairy.

Platyna would like to solve the problem differently by adding an mp cost to using health items and thus limit the number of health potions you can consume by your mp.

This might be a solution in short term, but for tmwserv I assume there will be a magic spell to heal, then it would be odd/unbalanced to have to use mp for items to. It's even more strange considering some healing items like cupcake also restore mp.

A player also made a quite interesting suggestion to me: reducing the effect of healing items when the player uses a lot of them in a short amount of time. When a character uses a healing potion a cooldown time starts. When the character uses another health item during the cooldown time its effect is halved and the cooldown time is extended. The next items effect during cooldown is divided by 4, 8, 16 and so on.

Good alternative, it will also help sink health items a lot faster as opposed to a cooldown that disallows usage.

5t3v3 wrote:This might be a solution in short term, but for tmwserv I assume there will be a magic spell to heal, then it would be odd/unbalanced to have to use mp for items to.

We are talking only about eAthena here. Healing items on TMWServ are a completely different topic.

I really like the spread-health-over-time thing you did now. It makes the game a lot more challenging and fun. However for the arena, I still think it isn't enough. I just tested it with a lvl 70+ she was hitting me for 40+ damage a hit, and I could more or less maintain full health by using apples and an occasional chicken. So in my opinion the only way avoid that pvp is all about who's willing to buy the most health-items would be by setting a cooldown-time out

I wonder how an AGI/LUK build would do against you.

I dont really like the delay between using a healing item and receiving a benefit, for higher level players the effect of this patch is minimun, as they can probably kill most monsters unaided. But for lower level players the ability to kill 1 monster, may be a life/death decision for them.

I would increase the weight of healing items, the more healing ability the heavier the item, thus strength to carry a number of items limits a players ability to carry them. It would also limit lower level players from carrying more healing then they need.

For higher level players, the ablitiy to "clock the game", at level 90, whereby you can play on and max out your stats, or take a reward, like a colored belt (white to black) depending on how many times the game has been clocked.

To prevent "mules" being stored at various levels to quickly cycle through the game again and again, the abilty to trade would be lost after the first cycle through.

Rotonen wrote:I wonder how an AGI/LUK build would do against you.

nothing?
luck doesn't do anything at all and agi would only increase your attack rate.
= many miss hits without any dmg
useless build

ikms wrote: I would increase the weight of healing items, the more healing ability the heavier the item, thus strength to carry a number of items limits a players ability to carry them. It would also limit lower level players from carrying more healing then they need.

And how do you explain why your small healing potion is heavier than your warlord plate mail? Another problem would be that often healing potions are monster drops. That would require a npc at every common training map.

I don't think this patch is unfair to lower levels. You still can get the same reward from potions, all you have to do is anticipate being hit, and heal in advance. IF that still isn't enough, you're in way over your head and need to attack lower lvl monsters. As for cooldown. I think one healing item every 5sec or 10 sec should do the trick for pvp, without actually ruining other gameplay.

Turmfalke wrote:

Rotonen wrote:I wonder how an AGI/LUK build would do against you.

nothing?

Criticall dodge / critical hit? With a sufficient bit of DEX in there it'll do suprisingly good. Also without a high enough DEX yourself, you'll find it suprisingly hard to hit the high AGI build.

A char build on luck-agility, + enough dex to be able to hit me would probably have low vitality and hence don't do all that well. Unless of course he/she is several levers higher than me in which case I'd do bad because I'm lower. Either way, the point is pvp is still all about who buys the most health-items.