Padding/saved posts

Weighting, Padding, Sighting Revamp 2017

Category: Hunting and Combat
Topic: Weighting and Padding
Message #: 65
Author: GS4-ZISSU
Date: 08/26/2017 05:45 PM EDT
Subject: Weighting/Padding/Sighting Revamp!

The great dwarven blacksmiths of Elanthia have perfected methods that allow the weighting and padding of items to coexist with other magical properties that have previously not been possible! The dwarves have a lot to share here, so grab some ale and take a seat.

Weighting / Padding / Sighting Rescale

One of the major goals of redesigning the system was to open up Weighting/Padding/Sighting (from here referred to as W/P/S) services from behind the auction quality service wall due to its power level. To accomplish this, the numbers have been rescaled to create a system that benefits at lower amounts of W/P/S but maintains game balance as players work towards higher amounts.

At a high level, the new values follow the following chart

Old value	New value		Old value	New value		Old value	New value
1	10		11	180		25	1000
2	20		12	210		30	1500
3	30		13	240		35	2000
4	40		14	270		40	2500
5	50		15	300		45	3500
6	70		16	340		50	5000
7	90		17	380
8	110		18	420
9	130		19	460
10	150		20	500

Simply put, the amount of W/P/S needed to go from old style 39 to 40 points (100) is significantly more than the amount needed to go from old style 4 to 5 (10) points. The old values are now breakpoints at which the combat effectiveness of the W/P/S are fed into the combat systems, and very little has changed in how they are used in combat. The new values provide a means to advance the weapon in a more granular way. The above chart shows the lowest value required to achieve that level of combat effectiveness, with additional points working towards the next increase in combat effectiveness.

Item Enhancement

W/P/S properties of armor and weapons have been moved into a dedicated attributes. Doing this will open the possibility of item systems that have been previously blocked due to overlap.

Permanent item enhancements such as flares/permabless/TD/Defender/etc will now be able to be on the same item as a W/P/S item. Adding these properties to currently W/P/S items will still be auction type wins, but adding W/P/S to items with those existing properties will be allowed as the system has been build around allowing W/P/S services on these items.

Temporary item enhancements such as blessing, guiding light flares, and eblade will be castable on W/P/S items up to specific limits, and with reduced effectiveness than a non-W/P/S item. This includes reduction to the AS bonus, flare potency, and/or charge counts of the temporary enhancement. As a general guideline, anything that assess at heavy and over will not accept a temporary flare, and will be very challenging to bless for all but the most skillful clerics. Consecrate (1604) will be very beneficial towards the blessing of weapons, especially those with more than heavy weighting.

W/P/S items are now also player enchantable, and no special temper potion is required! A difficulty penalty to success that correlates to the amount of W/P/S on the item, very similarly to ensorcell. Ensorcell difficulty penalties will remain the same in the new system. The penalty only increases when enough services have been acquired to actually increase the combat effectiveness of an item. An item that is "in between" combat effectiveness levels does not increase in difficulty until the next level has been reached.

Last but not least in the space of item properties is that each W/P/S type now occupies its own attribute, meaning items can now have both CRIT and DAMAGE weighting or padding, and both will be applied during each combat interaction that would normally benefit from them.

Services Model

Moving to the above rescale allows W/P/S services to be offered more commonly at events, and even through automated NPCs. W/P/S offerings will be at most events, big or small, free or otherwise. Wandering merchants may also offer the service on occasion. While it is debuting at Duskruin as a bloodscrip service, it will be offered for silvers at most other venues. The system is built to replace the randomness of limited raffle wins and reward consistent progression.

A 60 day Service Window is started at the first W/P/S on an item. Every W/P/S service done to that item within that 60 days will increase the Service Count within that window. Items will become more expensive to work on as the Service Count increases. Prices increases happen at Service Counts of 5, 10, and 15, with significant prices increases starting at 20+. On the first service after 60 day Service Window ends, the Service Window and Service Counts are reset. Prices for low service counts will be accessible to most players, while those with deep pockets willing to pay more to push into higher service counts can make improvements faster.

Base item pricing will be determined based on the other attributes of the item, including (but not limited to) enchant, flares, resistances, scripts, etc. The price of a single service of W/P/S is consistent no matter how much of that W/P/S type is on the item, but there is a surcharge for other types of W/P/S on the same item.

Item Conversion

Finally, current W/P/S items will be converted to the new system automatically by performing many normal game actions with the item. If you aren't sure, take it to your warrior friends to have them assess the item. These items will see no change in effectiveness on conversion, HCP armor is still HCP of the same value on the new scale.

Note The smithy at Duskruin is not open just yet so we can observe the system and make sure its stable. We'll be observing the system to make sure its operating like we expect and then will announce the opening of the smithy separately.

Having both critical and damage padding

Category: Hunting and Combat
Topic: Weighting and Padding
Message #: 65
Author: GS4-ZISSU
Date: 08/27/2017 09:00 AM EDT
Subject: Re: Weighting/Padding/Sighting Revamp!

>>Unless there have been changes to the way padding combines across items, this is still the case. e.g. adding a small amount of damage padding to my armor would cost me half the crit padding on my head and legs.

Armor items that have BOTH crit and damage padding on them do not see the padding values halved.

If you are stacking a damage padding accessory over crit padded torso armor at the hit location, these values will be halved.

Zissu

Category: Hunting and Combat
Topic: Weighting and Padding
Message #: 167, 182
Author: GS4-ZISSU
Date: 08/27/2017 11:13 AM EDT, 01:18 PM
Subject: Re: Weighting/Padding/Sighting Revamp!

>>Regarding the armor accessories over armor, you're saying as long as one of the two parts of the equation has both types of padding, you won't see a halving of padding?

Not quite.

• Having 2 types of padding on the same item have no effect on each other.
• Having torso armor and an accessory of the same type of padding will choose the larger of the two.
• Having one of the two with padding, and the other with another attribute (including a different type of padding) will halve the padding benefit.

The reasoning behind this is if all of these properties are on the same item, the servicing aspect of those items is calculated accordingly. When split across two items, it would make those items serviceable independently much cheaper while providing the same benefit.

>>Could we see a change to assessing or loresong that will show how far into a padding/weighting cycle an item is?

It's something I'd like to do.

>>Lastly, if it's currently tempering, is it eligible for a service?

Yes.

>>Related to that question, are the 5000 point service caps exclusive of each other or is that combined, ie you could only get 2500 of both or you could get 5000 of both.

It currently caps out at 5000 total weighting.

>>PP Premium Padding isn't changing to being additive, it will still take you to 150pts.

>>So... sighting on e-bows... yes? no?

May not be a one size fits all answer, but in general yes.

Zissu

Other Factors to Consider

Category: Hunting and Combat
Topic: Weighting and Padding
Message #: 142
Author: GS4-COASE
Date: 08/27/2017 05:02 AM EDT
Subject: Re: Weighting/Padding/Sighting Revamp!

One important thing I would like to emphasize is this is explicitly -not- a "Duskruin" implementation. While this was released during a Duskruin event and it made sense to have the merchant aspect debut at the ongoing event, this is an expansion to the entire game and not just something that is only for players that attend pay events. It is, in fact, a major update to all gear, as you can now have pretty much any armor padded or any weapon weighted/sighted and any existing weighted/padded items have become much more useful:

• You can now bless it to varying degrees.
• You can now eblade it to varying degrees.
• You can now enchant it.
• You can now stack it with many other properties.

You now also have the very easily accessible option of steadily improving pretty much any gear that you have with a benefit that, due to the above, no longer comes with quite so many restrictions. While it may seem underwhelming to only be able to put 2 points of weighting on a fresh item at this one event, that two points is now quite a lot better than two points was a few days ago, since it no longer restricts you in quite so many ways. It is also important to note that since this Duskruin is the very first outing of the system, we made the decision to be very conservative with access to make sure the system is actually working as it should. It wouldn't be ideal for either side if we allowed unlimited services, only to need to refund large amounts of purchases if it turned out that price or other changes needed to be made.

Cost and time-wise, while the prices will vary significantly based upon the exact attributes of your item, we have designed the system such that if you want to to gradually improve your 5x weapon from 0 to heavy weighting over a few years, you can do it for less than 12k bloodscrip (and will be able to break up part of that cost into silvers too) or for around 9m if you go the all-silvers route (silvers is the primary currency that we designed this for, BTW, not scrip or any other alternate currency).

If you want to do it faster, then you also have the -option- to pay more, either silver or scrip. And the option to pay silvers was pretty much completely unavailable outside of pay events in the past. That will not be the case going forward. Wandering merchants can and will offer services for your gear. Merchants at free events will offer these services. Going to pay events will offer opportunities for guaranteed access and the option to pay in alternative currencies but, again, this is a game expansion, not a Duskruin or pay event expansion. It is for everyone, whether you grind bloodscrip or just want to play the game and improve your favorite pieces of gear over time.

Coase

Changes to Padding and Damage Weighting (1)2008

Category: Hunting and Combat
Topic: Weighting and Padding
Message #: 600
Author: GS4-WARDEN
Date: 1/29/2008 6:24:33 AM
Subject: Changes to Padding and Damage Weighting

Some changes to damage padding, damage weighting, and critical padding have been implemented.

For the above mentioned benefits, there is no longer any randomization for ratings up through "somewhat" padded/weighted on the ASSESS scale. For items with greater ASSESS ratings, there is some variance in their benefit, but they will never provide less benefit than "somewhat" padded/weighted on a given strike.

This results in an improvement for all damage weighted/padded items (most noticeable at the lower ratings). By and large, it also results in an improvement for all critical padded items (again, most noticeable at the lower ratings), though there are some conditions in which items with high padding ("exceptional" ASSESS rating or higher) will see a small decrease in benefit.

Critical weighting is handled differently than damage weighting and has not been changed with this implementation.

Warden

Changes to Padding and Damage Weighting (2) 2008

Category: Hunting and Combat
Topic: Weighting and Padding
Message #: ?
Author: GS4-WARDEN
Date: 1/29/2008
Subject: Changes to Padding and Damage Weighting

There are two main approaches we use for applying criticals. For purposes of this post, I'll call anything that uses an AS/DS check "Combat Damage", and nearly everything else that applies criticals (your non-bolt spells, maneuver attacks, falling off a cliff and landing on your noggin, etc.) is "Direct Damage".

The benefits of critical padding against Combat Damage were either improved or essentially unchanged, except for the cases of moderate to high rank criticals vs exceptionally or higher rated padding, which saw a small reduction in benefit. I would imagine players with exceptionally or masterfully crit padded armor will not even be able tell there was a change in this regard.

The benefits of critical padding were improved against Direct Damage attacks for all critical padded armors.

Warden

Armor Accessory & Padding Changes - REVISIONS 2005

Category: Weapons, Armor, and Items
Topic: All About Armor
Message #: 1021
Author: GS4-COASE
Date: 5/31/2005 6:41:00 PM
Subject: Armor Accessory & Padding Changes - REVISIONS

In response to player concerns, we have modified our previous changes to the padding system:

Padded partial armor has been restored to allow its padding to give full protection to partially covered areas by default. If an armor accessory with the same type of padding is worn over top of either full coverage or partial armor, then only the highest level of padding will apply. For example, lightly damage padded full plate in combination with a heavily damage padded helm would result in heavy damage padding on hits to the head and light damage padding on every other type of hit.

If padded armor is combined with specially enhanced armor accessories (or vice versa), then the previously announced system of averaging bonuses will continue to be used. Specially enhanced armor includes: differing types of padding (i.e. combining damage and critical padding on a hit location), armor that is resistant to specific damage types, blessed armor, TD enhancing armor, flaring armor, and spiked armor.

Returning to the original examples given, here is how they would be affected by this revision:

Player is wearing "decently" damage padded light leather and no helm. He gets hit in the head. He would have an effective damage padding level of "decent". [The base padding level is that of the partial armor]

Player is wearing "decently" damage padded light leather and a "very heavily" damage padded helm. He gets hit in the head. He would have an effective damage padding level of "very heavy". [Only the best level of damage padding is applied]

Player is wearing "decently" damage padded light leather and a "heavily" crit padded helm. He gets hit in the head. He would have an effective damage padding level of "fair" and an effective crit padding level of "somewhat" ([decent + 0] / 2 = fair, [very heavy + 0] / 2 = somewhat). [No change]

Player is wearing "somewhat" damage padded half plate and no leg greaves. He gets hit in the legs. He would have an effective damage padding level of "somewhat" (full protection), as half plate fully covers the legs. [No change]

Player is wearing "somewhat" damage padded half plate and is wearing "very heavily" damage padded leg greaves. He gets hit in the legs. He would have an effective damage padding level of "very heavy". [Again, only the best level of one particular padding type is applied]

Player is wearing "somewhat" damage padded half plate and puts on unpadded leg greaves. He gets hit in the legs. He would have an effective damage padding level of "somewhat". [Again, best level of padding.]

Some additional examples:

Player is wearing unpadded chain hauberk and puts on "very heavily" critical padded leg greaves. He gets hit in the legs. He would have an effective critial padding level of "very heavy". [Again, best level of padding]

Player is wearing "very heavily" damage padded chain hauberk and puts on a blessed helm. He gets hit in the head. He would would have an effective damage padding level of "somewhat" ([very heavy + 0] / 2 = somewhat). [Combining padded armor with a specially enhanced accessory results in the padding level being averaged]

Coase

Older Warden Post

Editor's note: This post is from before November 2009 (probably years before). The padding/weighting values have since been released.

I've added a few more thresholds to help you out. Everything from "masterful" down through "light" is unchanged from the convention that has been used for the past several years. Note that incredible has been moved up the list, to be, well, incredible.

In order of descending magnitude:

wondrous

incredible

fantastic <-- standard claidhmores

phenomenal

expert

superb

masterful

exceptional

very heavy

heavy <--- standard katanas

decent

somewhat

light

no padding/weighting <-- This is the baseline

slightly diminished

somewhat diminished

noticeably diminished

substantially diminished

The specific values associated with each threshold are not something we'll be releasing. Player estimates of current value correlations are based on player research.

<<a non-claidhmore weapon(meaning a weapon not NAMED a claidhmore) that has 40 points of weighting, would it read as "claidhmore" weighting, or "fantastic" weighting? >>

A non-claidhmore with critical weighting equivalent to a claidhmore would assess as fantastic.

<<How would armor be worse than average?>>

Any armor with negative padding would be worse than average, and it would actually cause the wearer to take extra damage or more lethal criticals (bummer!). There are some suits of armor in the game with negative damage padding. I'm not aware of any armor with negative critical padding, offhand, but it probably exists.

Warden

See Also

• Item properties saved posts