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[C] Bio4


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#1 Themes

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Posted 07 March 2016 - 08:15 PM

I say it a lot, but there's a lot of people asking for new content just expecting it to appear. Here's some turbo nerding to show you the sort of things that go into creation for this content. While this may turn into a lot of words and look impressive, most of the time I put into this project is going to go into making this presentable. Just throwing random numbers together is pretty easy.

A few people have expressed interest in Bio4 for Classic in the past and I've spoken with numerous people about getting it implemented. So here's my take on it. Some of these ideas/skills may not work and it needs extensive testing and balancing before it could even be remotely playable.

I'm going to break it down one monster at a time, listing stats, skills and a description, talking about the goals or idea behind each one. Also including some other ideas I had or limitations that hold specific things back. If there's enough interest I'll put some effort into making things a little more readable, but for now it's laid out the way the game expects so I can easily turn it into usable content incase this actually gets used for anything.

I'd also like to note that I havent sat down and figured out how hard these will be to kill or how hard they're going to hit, this is really just a very very quick starting point. Same goes for cast percentages, delay times etc.

Monsters

Paladin 2221.png

This is essentially a tanky support. It has high vit/defense/health. Heals its friends and theoretically helps them by removing some negative statuses with Provoke. It's Demihuman Holy 3.
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Defending Aura/Reflect Shield to prevent rude attack stuff. Generic Holy attack as well as some iconic Paladin abilities and some AoE if it gets in amongst a group. Heals friendly targets on Idle. Provoke is in there as a test, if it doesnt work you could use something like Status Recovery as an alternative to just prevent statusing everything. At some point discussing it (with Xellie and Undying) we were talking about finding out if they can cast Sacrifice on each other, this would also be amusing.

Biochemist 2222.png

This is a weak (low attack) low vit fragile character. It has some support with an Aid Potion but is mostly there to throw Acid Bomb, it could probably use some more variation however. It's Demihuman Fire 3 (following picture has it listed as demon, but it's not).
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This is almost entirely about Acid Bomb. Lots of bomb on rude attacks probably too much, not sure what the damage is going to look like. Also throws out some Bombs and potion pitcher on idle. There's a two handed quicken and small aoe for group.

Scholar 2223.png

This is a tanky caster, lots of spells and some AoE. There's room for more abilities and I was considering trying out Double Bolt with it, if it doesnt work you can probably combo them easily enough. It's Demihuman Ghost 3.
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The scholar has Magnetic Earth and Blinding Mist as potential abilities for rude attack. It will also Dispel on engaging, this I'm not entirely sure about, it does make getting extra ones potentially scary but could just be a really unfun mechanic to introduce (to anyone without GTB). Other than that it just has a lot of bolts and a Fiber/Firebolt combo as well as Soul Siphon.

Champion 2224.png

This is a hard hitting mobile damage dealer. Making use of Snap the Champion can get into a group quickly and has a fairly telegraphed Guillotine Fist for players to avoid. It also has a few things to try like Root or checking to see if Monk combo moves are usable. It's Demon Water 4.
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Plenty of snapping and a long cast gfist for players to avoid, I was considering making one that was less avoidable below a certain health value. I was hoping we could make Root work also, but I dont think it's going to work. You could also add a "Fury" powerup at lower health too.

Stalker 2225.png

This is a mobile semi-caster. It's fairly light on skills right now. There's some huge potential where you can have it respond with specific abilities used on it and imitate Intimidation. I'm not entirely sure what to do with it honestly. It's Demon Poison 4.
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Flying Kick for movement and rude attack as well as cloak. Right now it's just a simple Poison attacks, Full Strip, Storm Gust and Counter Instinct.

Minstrel 2226.png

This is a fairly squishy thing. I'm not sure if performer skills can be used by monsters, but you can substitute in some alternatives to get the same effects. It's fairly light on overall abilities and may benefit from something else. Right now it has a low level Tarot at a low chance, this may not be a good idea but it's hard to say theorycrafting. It's Demihuman Wind 3.
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There's a panic Frost Joke on rude attack. It also casts an Arrow Shower + Curse combo and some other Minstrel like abilities. Tarot is the biggest I dont know here, because it goes through FCP it may not be a good idea, but low chance etc.

Gypsy 2227.png

Pretty much the same deal as the Minstrel, indentical stats to save time/effort. Just some substitutions for skills to make it more Gypsy themed. If they're able to cast songs you can probably throw in a Slow Grace too which could be interesting, possibly give it a cast time or trigger below a certain percentage to remove annoying need to spam agi up on everyone. It's Demihuman Wind 3.
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Dazzler spam and Arrow Shower + Sleep combo in for the Minstrel abilities.

Design
In one of my posts in the Challenge Dungeon thread I talked a little bit about making a distinction between a mobby map with weak monsters and an emptier map with scarier monsters. I didnt really make a decision here because it's very hard to tell how all this theory will translate into actual gameplay. But it depends what people want to see, something similar to Bio3 where you're keeping your interactions to as few monsters at once as possible. Or similar to how Bio4 plays out on Renewal where you're just running around creating huge groups of things to kill.

 

These are also all melee right now, I had a bunch of ideas where you just have a character with a range and give it a 100% chance to cast a spell and high enough attackspeed that it would always be casting something. But it'd have to be tested. The caster in the current Challenge Dungeon wasnt bad, you could probably get away with making the performers ranged, but adding more stuff to chase at higher changes could keep them at suitable ranges for long enough and still encourage them to close with the group/tank.

 

There's also some cool things to consider like the disabling of items or skills on the map. You could disable Phen Cards, Gods or MVPs. Teleport has been disabled so far on all the Challenge Dungeons (and I'd like to see that remain). You can also look at potentially disabling Assumptio or Resurrection to keep things interesting. Obviously making changes like this would require a rebalancing of incoming damage and monster skill use. But there's a lot of things that can be done to mix up gameplay, even if it's just a little bit.

 

These should all be changed to monstertype 19 (Sword Guardian, Raydric, AL3 dragons etc). This is sort of something that I feel could get overlooked, but there's a whole bunch of pre-programmed AI behaviours, things like cast sensor, passive or looter. I think these are editable and hold some of the most interesting things to play with. You can mix and match, make stuff hyper aggressive, cast sensors whatever.

Drops
I'm not going to go into specifics for drops. But if you look at the drop table for the current challenge dungeon: 

Challenge-Drops-Proposed1.png
You'll see that it's almost entirely made up of items that "should be available already" and a lot of it is fairly situationally interesting and a lot of it is absolute garbage. The only really desirable item there is the Subject Aura and it drops at such a low rate that I'm not sure one exists here yet. Now there's a few reasons why the drop table looks like that, we wanted to get New World items available to people and Campitor was trying to adhere to the theme he was building for the dungeon. However that means along with some things people actually want there's far more items they dont want.

I would suggest thinning out the equipment drops here and consider looking at "new" items. I'm hesistant about adding anything new without making all of the proper pre-renewal items readily available to everyone, however I feel there's room for us to add things like Undyings Wind/Earth Twin Blades or items to buff underpowered/whelming classes.

I would also suggest leaning away from supply based rewards, we've got enough places to get GSBs right now. You may want to add something that fills the gaps in the current supply chains, but it doesnt seem that necessary.

Misc
We have monsterIDs available for this details here and should be able to get them implemented with their own sprites, drops and experience.

Further reading
Read the Challenge Dungeon thread here. I posted way too many words about design decisions and other interesting things.

End

If you read through this or tl;dr'd to the end here. Post your thoughts, mention what you liked and what you didnt. Question some design choices. Ask why not <thing>. Propose your own ideas or changes. Content for the Classic server heavily relies on the input of its current players, we're the ones who know the most about how the game works and we're the ones who will be playing it. Unfortunately it takes a seed like this plus community effort to get any project started and it still doesnt guarantee that the project will get investigated or implemented.

 

This is merely a starting point for getting something implemented, it needs a lot of testing and refining to turn it into something that would be fun or interesting. The current Challenge Dungeon is almost there, but it didnt get enough fine tuning and lacked a couple of things to make it "great". Partly because of how long it was taking to develop, changes and testing for new custom content needs to be done more than once every week or two otherwise things drag on for too long.


Edited by Themes, 07 March 2016 - 08:18 PM.

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#2 darkabe

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Posted 08 March 2016 - 04:37 AM

I'm afraid the HP you gave them are too high and would suffer from the same problem as the current challenge dungeon. I'd rather we focus on making them as challenging as bio 3 and keep their HP in the same range (60~80k).

If they end up as challenging as the 3rd floor ones it may become a good way to get the slotted elemental armor (very low rate obviously)


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#3 fuyukikun

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Posted 08 March 2016 - 04:59 AM

I'm afraid the HP you gave them are too high and would suffer from the same problem as the current challenge dungeon. I'd rather we focus on making them as challenging as bio 3 and keep their HP in the same range (60~80k).

If they end up as challenging as the 3rd floor ones it may become a good way to get the slotted elemental armor (very low rate obviously)

i am no longer playing classic, but i agree with this. bio4 mobs should be in par with bio3 mobs in terms of HP, power and skillset


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#4 Themes

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Posted 08 March 2016 - 12:32 PM

Personally I think it should be a little harder, there isnt that many dungeons where things get easier the further you go down. It probably doesnt need to be significantly harder, but with advances in gear/builds and higher overall skill levels, aiming something to be equivalent to Bio3 seems like a mistake to me. You're right though the values are a little high and could use adjusting, probably the same with their hit/flee values too.

 

It may be a good idea to sit down and start using the Bio3 monsters as a starting point then tweaking things to make them a little tougher. But unfortunately there's only so much you can get away with using theorycrafting, at some point you need to get them ingame and test their skill damage and your own damage agains them.


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#5 Xellie

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Posted 08 March 2016 - 06:13 PM

So awesome, glad you put it all together!

 

Would consider snatch at low chance for the stalker. It seems like a scary mechanic, but it's right there in thanatos tower and it's not so bad. On mobs using joke/scream maybe they need to use wide freeze/wide stun.

 

Scholar is an interesting line of thought, but with it being so tanky and full of dispell, is it a bit much to give it much dmg/matk? I guess a lot of it would depend on mobiness, but she's going to shut a character right down and require a lot of attention... so maybe it should be designed on a more pure support type role?

 

Also you forgot to have the champ fist people on ally taking damage!

 

I love your paladin AI btw.

 

For tarot you could look for skills that replicate certain tarot cards, rather than tarot itself. Exile, coma, that 6666 bash thing at really low chance.


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#6 Themes

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Posted 08 March 2016 - 09:07 PM

Yeah snatch was something I had forgotten, but depending on how it works I'd do it the same as GFist (give it a long-ish cast). If you can hide/move away from the monster to avoid it I think that would be perfect. However if there's no teleport in the dungeon having very little control over getting snatched would be very very very miserable. In typing this I just realised that the Champ is Demon, I wonder if that means you cant hide its fist....so many things that need testing.

 

Oh I just looked at how much Int I gave that Scholar, jesus. Yeah I'd lower its damage significantly. I dont really think I wanted to make any of them too "supporty" because they can really only provide so much help to their friends and it would force some weird interactions when they're singled out. But you're right every single thing in that post depends on how big/mobby the map is. Honestly I'm really curious if just giving it max aspd and just a ton of abilities on chase will mean that it just stays at range chain casting things. You could give it a high chance to dispel when actually attacking (melee range) so that players are forced to deal with it casting on them. Another thing that I thought would be super fun is having the Scholar cast Mindbreak on its targets, if it works there could be some very amusing interactions and encourage some goofy tanking strats however also potential random abuse and stuff so I donno. But again more to test.

 

There's a lot I forgot honestly, it really was thrown together quickly and pulled from notes I had written down late last year. The Paladin AI was done first which is probably why it's the least -_-ty, after that I was like ahh this could take forever.

 

The tarot substitutes are good idea, you could probably just put each of the tarot replacement abilities high up on the priority list and give them a low chance.

 

There's basically almost unlimited possibilities for anyone who is remotely curious. If you want to see a list of monster only skills you can see the mostly complete page on irowiki here. You can also check to see what skills a monster has by clicking on the details link under skills on a monsters irowikiDB page (looks like this). A lot of player abilities are used already by monsters, there's some that dont work properly and unfortunately we dont really know which these are. Ideally as Classic development continues things can be tracked to further refine the process and figure out what works and what doesnt.

 

Random questions for everyone:

  • Are you okay with doing a mix of races? We had talk here for a while of making all the Bio3 stuff Demi and I'm curious if thats something anyone would prefer.
  • Are you interested in creating "harder" content or would you like something around Bio3 difficulty with new flavour?
  • What would you like to see on the drop tables?
  • What map would you like to see this on? Bio4? I ask because of its size it has potential to be fairly annoying as a Challenge Dungeon map.
  • Would you prefer a dense map with lots of slightly weaker monsters or fewer tougher monsters?

Edited by Themes, 08 March 2016 - 09:23 PM.

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#7 Xellie

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Posted 08 March 2016 - 09:42 PM

I'll longpost back at you after sleeps, but I'm not entirely sure demon skills can be hidden. I'll do a test later.

 

> Race mixing is fine by me. I think it spices things up a bit

> Slightly harder than bio3 would be quite something... refreshing?

> something something drops, depends on the difficulties

> The bio4 map is dreadful, I think an editted bio 3 would be the way to go.

> Fewer tougher monsters appeals more to me


Edited by Xellie, 09 March 2016 - 01:09 AM.

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#8 lxst

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Posted 10 March 2016 - 02:58 PM

  • im cool with the race mixing. if all are one race it takes away from smart decision making on the fly.
  • i personally cant comment on the diff. just because i cant rlly solo all the bio 3 mobs, only half of them. and only with very particular setup for each. but im sure that ppl who have kinda "done it all, seen it all" would prefer something harder, but not as long winded as challenge. 
  • i would like the drops to contain perhaps things from the list of items that dont drop but exist already in classic. like watter , earth, wind, slotted armors. also i know we still have quite a few new world drops. although, if we use them all wont that kind of make it hard to put in new world stuff long term post the fabled "new client/server".
  • also not particularly qualified to comment on what map it should be. i've never seen content past what we have on classic because i quit back in the day before half the stuff we have came out, lol.   
  • i would prefer spread out hard mobs with a lot of weaklings in-between. kinda force the "set up this area so we can pull the big guy" situation, lol.

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#9 WhiteWolf182

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Posted 10 April 2016 - 02:21 PM

This is awesome, maybe someday we will see it in Classic. 

It would be nice if a CM/GM can answer about the thread.


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