Possibly a Cabbage's Flamebate Posts

Community discussion: Clbum balance suggestions

zagerblag Posted:

I think avtr and flipr should be buffed and have their refreshes swapped. Also, it could be nice if Hackers got more varied abilities. I don’t know what you could have them do. Perhaps they could zombie other posters? This could be an Offense boost, or perhaps something else.

I think it would be interesting to have them do the inverse of what trolls do. While trolls have abilities that buff themselves (and hopefully eventually that tree of theirs will be fleshed out), Hackers could have abilities that debuff threads. Alternatively, a sort of “damage over time” ability is something the game should have eventually, and if there’s any natural place to put it, it would probably be a Hacker ability (deploying malicious code on a forum would do damage for longer than simply posting one thing that’s offensive, stupid, or full-of-drama, if you think about it.) Possibly Hackers could also have an attack that deploys some sort of worm that allows them to use somebody else’s computer for a time, which would have the in-game effect as “an attack that restores some PP.”

This is getting far afield, but a neat project for Ep3 development would be to give all clbumes unique combat abilities and mechanics so they do something other than “spam their most powerful attacks.” It would be neat, for example, if Camwhores had attacks that had the opposite mechanic as emo attacks, that is they do the most damage when your ego is full and they cost some ego to use, then buff up the camwhore healing abilities, so the end result is possibly that camwhores might want to spend a turn healing themselves even if it’s unnecessary to do so to simply “pwn the forum.” There’s lots of different directions we could go here.

Clbum Balance at the Level Cap: How much do we really care?

Big Brother Posted:

I don’t care how much strengthened the other clbumes are, even if it makes trolls far less powerful then them. I just don’t like the feeling of being weakened.

This is an important point. All things being equal, nerfs are fairly discouraging, while buffing something, even something you never use or can’t use, never really ****es anybody off.

“Man, you made trolls suck now” is something that’s going to annoy people.

“Camwhores, Emos, and Hackers are a lot better now, but trolls are still really good” isn’t going to annoy anybody.

Especially since if you run into the problem where “everybody is overpowered” that’s definitely solvable by “making harder forums.” Make a forum with the damage output of Cosplay, the pwnage of Engrish, and the number of threads of Praypal and suddenly nobody is overpowered anymore.

Community discussion: Clbum balance suggestions

futhermocker Posted:

This is definitely not true, even with 128 defense, the level 35 forums still hit for 350+ each hit, and you are *very* unlikely (if not impossible) to pwn them at max threads without any consumables. Even with 5140 ego, there this one time where I got extremely unlucky and died on the very last thread when trying to pwn Fetish at 12 threads, and that’s with me using a boatload of 5-HTP’s when I had around 1000 ego left, I just got really unlucky since the forum kept hitting me without missing.

Do you have optimal .moar files? You get +57 defense from an optimal set of .moars. Which, along with +24 from upgrade packs, +35 from the fetish, +12 from earbleeders, and +8 from the democrat book should put you at 136, so it looks like you could be doing better.

Also, the huge damage output of trolls means that they don’t have to stand there and get hit, everything in fetish or cosplay can be trivially killed in 2 hits (1 counterattack) by a maxed out troll. You may want to put 14 points into egomania instead of 13 to guarantee you can do it all the time, but it’s definitely possible to pwn level 35s with max threads easily with around 2500 ego virtually every time. You could probably take as much as 3500 damage if you’re terribly unlucky (i.e. you never successfully dodge despite your really high dodge rate) but that just doesn’t happen.

Maxed out Trolls take at most 4200 damage from a level 35 forum bumuming they never dodge, even once. Hackers take a maximum of 5600 damage from a level 35 forum, bumuming they never dodge, even once. Since trolls naturally have a higher defense than hackers when maxed out (maxed out hackers get +60 from beast0rs, +57 from .moars, and +12 from earbleeders, so 129 defense for a lower evade rate to go along with their lower damage per turn).

Regardless of the specific numbers, the issue is that high-end trolls need to spend less on egomania than any clbum except probably emos (who are special), so they have a significant advantage in terms of “upgrade points they can devote to offense.”

Community discussion: Clbum balance suggestions

Yeah, these are the important facts:

Troll:

Adjusted: 285*8.17502=2330

Camwhore:

Adjusted: 212.5*8.09869= 1721

Emokid:

Adjusted: 202.5*8.25135=1671(*)

Hacker:

Adjusted: 129.0*12.14418=1567

In the endgame, with optimized equipment, Hackers are significantly weaker than all of the other non-challenge clbumes, but the difference between Hackers and Camwhores (emos should be doing more than the above as the result of their ego falling) is only 154 damage though the difference between Camwhores and Trolls is roughly 600 points of damage per turn (Or, trolls deal approximately 50% more damage per turn than Hackers). That’s why Trolls are seriously overpowered for powerplayers, while Hackers are non-negligibly underpowered. The gap between Trolls and Camwhores is four times the gap between Camwhores and Hackers.

URGENT REPORT IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED!

GGH Posted:

it’s pretty obvious.

The tigers are receiving a fellatio from the grbum.

It happens all the time.

Why are their genitalia not attached? What is that yellow stuff? What’s going on?

Selling the best program file for hackers

zagerblag Posted:

The Useless Program is better; it actually provides Offense, unlike the RectumScan.

This. You have more than enough luck and defense from your 4x Beast0rs, let alone other .moars, charisma caps really low, and Ripro+Implant+Book is more than enough processing power to pwn any forum at max threads without consumables (though you have to be careful spamming avtr against engrish and dykea.

RectumScan really isn’t all that good, but it is awfully rare.

Andy_Dextruss Posted:

Rectum is considered best for hackers, as the op stated, due to the pp boost.

The people who consider this, however, are wrong for the reasons I stated above. The best program for hackers is the best program for anybody, since Ripro+Book+implant is more than enough processing power. The only “Best for hackers” .moar file that isn’t “best for everybody else” is Ripro, which gets the nod over ****.milf because you give up frugality for processing power.

It’s worth it to give up frugality on your .moar for PP, it’s not worth it (for Hackers at least) to give up offense for anything.

Is there anyway to revert iRAWR's ban?

Acid Flux Posted:

So, do we want to set a precedent that high-end donors get to play by a different set of rules?

Something similar to this happened in the very early days of Kingdom of Loathing, at least three custom items were created as a quid pro quo due to huge donations. In retrospect, Jick considers all but one of these to be huge mistakes for varying definition of “huge”, so it’s probably a precedent that ET should avoid setting, since it’s not entirely improbable that he would end up regretting it later on. What’s even better than learning from your own mistakes is “learning from the mistakes of others in similar situations”, since that doesn’t require you to make mistakes in the first place. If/When ForumWarz explodes in terms of popularity/playerbase, “being able to buy favors from the admins with money” is a precedent that the admins will almost certainly regret.

Community discussion: Clbum balance suggestions

zagerblag Posted:

Your math is completely misleading; you only calculate the damage modifiers without the mbumive boosts from .moar files and Upgrade Points, which are available to all clbumes.

Key point. The analysis really needs to factor in the fact that any serious player will be getting at least +50 offense from .moar files alone (really serious players will be getting +57 offense, and enough bonuses to other clbumes that means no upgrade points need to be spent on anything but offense and egomania). This has the effect of comparatively underpowering clbumes with weak attacks but naturally high stats while comparatively overpowering clbumes with strong attacks but naturally low stats.

When .moars let trolls easily get 150 offense without needing consumables to pwn level 35 forums at max threads, the fact that Hackers can get 180 offense without needing consumables to pwn level 35 forums at max threads doesn’t really offset the difference between the basic attacks for those clbumes. Trolls end up doing dramatically more damage per turn when you look at the extremes of the power spectrum.

Community discussion: Clbum balance suggestions

Avtr needs to be made a useful skill again, since it’s so terribly underwhelming at the top of the skill tree. Upping its power to 150 or so would be reasonable, considering its comparatively mbumive PP cost.

I would actually suggest making avtr attack 160, refresh: 2, 10 PP.

Very Rare Files, Abuse, and Evil Trout to the rescue.

I wonder if it’s possible that just nobody reads this forum, which is plausible since it’s all ads. I can’t be the only person who’s been caught by the “abuse filter” multiple times without doing anything wrong, can I be?