golden eagles= DEATH

You need to examine golden eagles...

They come in 4 groups of 15

BA gets 6 or 7 per group.  Word of Death gets 3 in each slot.

The remaining 5-6 in each slot will shred an entire party in 1 round.

I have seen this thing go down 7 or 8 times now... trying different tactics... nothing works.

If you're not going to let the spellers (healer/sorc/mage/wizard) top-tier spells hit up to 15 monsters in each group, {WoD, BA,FA,LF, Precog. Death.} like in previous versions of avatar then you probably want to tone down the monsters attack or strength of attack. Just advocating for better balance. Golden Eagles never had that strong of an attack compared to other lvl 15 denizens anyway. I am keeping in mind the descriptor 'simulation' but I think this should be looked at.

Jake. Thanks for the report. sounds like something will have to get done, probably tomorrow night late will be my first chance.

Steve. Ok. Thanks for the historical perspective. I don't have control of spells (there is no editor for them-- and Jude doesn't want me (and I don't either) messing about with data that doesn't have a front end written for it. I have no idea if he has coded some set of max numbers per group effected-- I don't think this is the case. I seem to recall seeing "you killed 13" at some point in the past, and being surprised that it didn't just say "a lot" ... but that was back when I was playing the game-- not running it. I am all for better balance and I want feedback. I especially want helpful feedback, " I ran this..., I cast that..., I saw this...." Or "spell xxx only did zzz against mob yyy." Responses about what is 'fair' or 'historical' have their place. But that sort of discussion is best had if I have failed to meet expectations-- or decided against what you consider to be the best interests of the players or the game. I appreciate what you are trying to do -- support Jake and better the game -- I really do. I understand that you are playing the game daily, so when 12 hours go by and I haven't responded -- it seems like the dreaded silence from the authors/operators. Nothing is further from the truth. I try and catch up daily, but that isn't always possible. Give me some time to weigh in, okay?

I made several adjustments to Golden Death Machines.

-they have less hits
-I lowered their resistance to fire
-I reduced the number of swings they get per round.

None of these will cause a 1 burning air to clear the encounter type change... however-- you should have a fighting chance now.  If further adjustments are warranted, they will be made.

Grabbers are still laying out WAAY to much damage.  I hit them with freezing air, and the ones that are left tend to kill one or two chars and do serious harm to the rest of the party, every time.  Grabbers are supposed to be pesky thieves that could kill you if you are not careful/well equipped/powerful party.  NOT-- kill somebody every encounter no matter how studly your group is.  I suggest you turn them down another notch.  They obviously get a lot of swings.  That is okay.  Turn down their damage output per swing????

Made another pass thru and eliminated some of the offensive firepower of:
grabbers
astral dragons
werelions (and reduced their frequency)
and something else I can't recall now.

expect to see these changes go live with the 2 AM reboot.

Werelions are a perfect example of what is wrong with your data. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good things with it... but the werelion debacle is a perfect example of what needs to be fixed. The are "supposed" to be rare. They are supposed to be fairly dangerous especially to weak parties on 15. As implemented -- they show up 2 times in 20 rooms on 15, and you either slaughter them in 1 round, or you are scrapping pieces up off the floor (if somebody survives) or pressing r to call the city guards. I am all for making the game harder than traditional, much harder than NOVANET... but there has to be a middle ground between a pushover encounter and a "you gotta kill them in one round or it is auto death" encounter. They are still too common-- need a 50% (maybe more) reduction... and still too powerful -- which can probably be fixed by reducing the numbers involved. I seem to recall 2 groups of werelions and maybe 7-9 in a group. You have 3 groups and 9-15 in each. Does anyone recall what werelions appeared with? I can't recall. Shapeshifters? And on the subject that is another kill you quick encounter. And DHD's. And the False Leto one, and Leviathons, and Giant Bagels, and Behemouths, and Kraken and Mountain Titans, and ...

You get the idea.

I want it to be hard. And deadly. And brutally efficient at killing you when you make mistakes. All that is good. What isn't good and is the main problem I see is that it is ruthlessly efficient at wiping out your party when you have taken the correct actions. IE if it is 1 or 2 Giant Bagels in slot 1, I can live. If it is 3 or god help you 4 -- somebody is going to die no matter what you do. And I think you need to tone down the whole exit round thing. I stay and fight-- I die. If I see I am outgunned and try to evade-- it is worse. The whole party is likely to get smoked trying to get out the door. And this is Giant Beagles we are talking about. What on earth is going to happen when I get to real STUDs????

Oh, and good job on astral dragons. They were breathing for too much damage before-- I can actually survive a round or two with them now.

Werelions appeared most often on 15 which was very rare and even more rarely on 14. There were 2 groups of 7 up to 15 and always
appeared with Numetors (lvl 7 lycanthrope) whose numbers also varied between 6-15. This is my best recollection.

Thanks Steve. Numetors. That is ringing some bells. I am sure they could find a better match for the WL's -- like maybe Zadentors -- but anyhow- not a third group of werelions and not shapeshifters.

JF -- you bring up many good points.  Please keep in mind that I have not spent much time running 15.  These are EXACTLY the kinds of issues I iron out before releasing data to the production server.  In this case, you are doing some of that testing-- and locating the trouble spots for me.

In general-- this game is much harder than vanilla avatar.  We have a vavatar expert among us now, so I am sure he will let us all know how we stack up on that count soon.  Finding the correct balance between "cakewalk" and "kobyashi maru" encounters is difficult.  It is a tweak and test, tweak and test sort of thing.  Vampires, for example, probably need to be tweaked ever so slightly towards the more powerful side.  I turned them down a bit too far.  Giant Bagels (love the name, BTW) is a clear cut problem.  Too many in an encounter group and they may have a bit too many hits each.  Easy.  The others-- it is going to take a scalpel to fix them, not a sword.  I am working on it.

The two more troubling things in your report is that you can do everything "right" yet still suffer terrible losses and the exit strategy is more likely to lead to even worse results.  This is a real problem that is going to require some serious effort to fix.  We made the exit round adjustments to attempt to control the players that were endlessly cherry picking the dungeon.  The concept that you can walk thru 20 encounters more or less unscathed to find the encounter you want to kill and then repeat is almost game breaking.  The current system is designed to penalize the encounter evaders, and favor the encounter clearers.  It works.  Perhaps too well.  When a party encounters monsters it cannot clear, it needs to be able to exit and have some chance of survival.  If it is truly as bad as you are letting on -- this is going to require a significant redo.

I hope to free up some time to work on things on Thursday and Friday.  I will keep you posted.

Thanks for the reports, (and thanks to steve for the game data.)

JPA

JPA-- yes, you told me I would be playtesting the data-- yes, you indicated it was in rough condition.  yes, I understand that this is work you normally do.  

I did not understand the degree to which this was rough data.  Nor did I understand the volume of deaths I would be facing in running this untested data.  So far, only 1 comp -- but I am getting pummeled on a regular basis.  Some runs my chars are dying 4 to 7 times.  I have the resources to absorb this sort of abuse for a while-- but eventually this is going to overwhelm me.  I really don't want to create vegetables out of my chars by continuing to take the kind of death totals I have been facing.

Are you going to do some of this balancing yourself? and when should I expect to see some of it?  I find myself avoiding playing much, or for very long due to the anxiety it raises.

Does this make sense?  I don't want to be a whiner-- but I feel like I am getting what I asked for, and it pretty much sucks. And it is *sometimes* as bad as I make it out to be on the evade round. Sometimes = 30-60 % of the time. There are some encounters that you can evade with, some that you can almost never evade out of. My seeker (with an excellent def and decent buddies) can usually get out of most rooms. My healer or sorc-- not so much. Most of the time they die. This concerns me because I am not trying to escape from the studs. If I cannot escape Bagels, how am I going to evade Shiva?

JF

***WARNING***
This response contains some humor.

You got what you wanted, and now you don't want it anymore?  Typical young person.

You want to evade SHIVA?  I want a lot of things.  Doesn't mean I will get them, or should get them.  I have a hilarious analogy about that very thing, but I don't think you are old enough to hear it.  Maybe I will email it to your dad.  (*Wink*)

Humor ends.

I hope to be able to get some quality balancing time in on Thursday and Friday.  Who knows if it will actually happen or not...  I sympathize with your plight.  When I comp a char doing testing, I just go fix it via the OP lesson.  You don't have that option, so try not to COMP anyone.  *Wink*

we will discuss restitution (if needed) on a case by case basis. You have demonstrated your fairness many times over. I sincerely doubt you would try and take advantage of me now. Stop worrying so much.

You have to let us know when you are trying to be funny -- typical old person.

If my math is correct, my dad is at least ten years younger than you, so he may not be old enough for your email either.

I'll try and chillax on 15. But it is hard--all that dying makes me itchy and uncomfortable. If I comp somebody else, I'll let you know.

Only the young would be stupid enough to express vanity at their youth. Don't worry. You will lose yours in due time.

I have uploaded some changes to exit rounds:

They should be happening much less frequently.

When they do happen, significantly fewer monsters in a room will get a shot at you.

Hopefully these changes will make exiting a room a better option than it has been.