If they cloned all the meta limited cards (or why not all limited cards for that matter) into a legendary counterpart and added an option to runeforge legendaries at a rune cost that "most" would be satisfied with, this game would have a much more player friendly atmosphere and would do leaps and bounds better than SOE's PoxNora. If DOG is looking to cultivate the oppressive anti-new player PoxNora that SOE was more than happy to stick with then by all means DOG can carry on and keep the playerbase within the 1k mark (and thats being more than generous with the number) to save on server costs or carter only to the whales and sharks or whatever other inexplicable reasons that may govern them. By adding an option to craft legendaries, thereby making all the runes attainable without forcing the player to trade for or gamble on and leave it to luck...this addition would first of all be a massive change from the mentality of how SOE governed (PoxNora into the ground) and secondly it would provide the proverbial carrot on the stick for players to stick around and play till they get their personal milestones done by earning whatever card they wish. Aiming for a large playerbase, with a good deal of freeloaders isnt shooting oneself in the foot from a developer's POV. Its easier to get new players to spend money on a free game that shows good scope of being around in the near future (rather than seeing only about 100 people on at most and thinking the game might tank soon so why waste much money on it). Ofcourse PoxNora has defied the odds by staying alive for so long with barely a population...but how should a new player know that or even care about that? It would be SOE's attitude to make a grand statement about PoxNora surviving thus far even with their BS (mis) management of this game, but is it DOG's too? If a new player wanted to play yet another pseudo-F2P, pay-to-win, pay-to-not-turn-this-into-a-second-or-even-a-first-job...arent there enough games like this available without PoxNora turning into the same again? Yes, developers need to put food on the table as well, this is a moot statement that is made all the time. Any job needs a salary paid since its not charity work. But is making the game more accessible going to take food away from their plates? Why should a player pay $50 or $100 or $1000 for xxx number of boxes and hope to get a legendary when he can pay the same money and have an Assured chance to get a legendary, either by making legendaries a fixed drop or being craftable. Rich and the foolish dont need a lot of incentives to throw money on a game or anything for that matter, but if the average gamer doesnt see the worth in doing so then they just pick up and move to another game in today's large F2P/P2P market. All depends on the clientele DOG choose to cater to I guess, SOE picked the sharks and the whales and the results are most obvious, a shame since PoxNora deserved better than them. Dont do the same mistake DOG.
Are you sure about this? I'm no game designer but if I was designing surge abilities I'd just make the ability check/update whenever a trigger happens, not a constant stream like you say, makes no sense to make a turn based game into constant streaming. Pox is one of the most lax games when it comes to connection.
I will repeat what I said: check how the ability works on the game. Don't take my word about it, just look at the client. Many abilities does works with specific triggers (if "end turn", then "deal damage"; or if "begin of turn", then "generate nora"), but surge doesn't work like that. Shadestriker, anyone? Trigger deception, watch the number increase by 3. Kill one illusion, look at the damage drop. That ability doesn't work under specific triggers (like end turn), is constantly checking the map to determine the bonus. Do the experiment with surge shadows on the utterdark spectre. There is a reason why all champions (friendly and opposite) gain the ability to de-stealth when the US hits the board. Also, surge is not the only event happening on the game. There is a constant stream of data, like damage resolution or the chat. Maybe one side of the match does nothing on their turn, but that doesn't mean the client isn't receiving data to display (and the server isn't streaming it), neither it means is the only match the server is processing. While it isn't a top tier graphics game, and definitely doesn't require the same resources than your average FPS, Pox Nora is way above the resources required to play a flash app on the browser.
The 'trigger', however they decide to implement it, would be upon illusion death, illusion generation, champ enter battle field, champ leave battlefield, etc thats how i'd design it. Chat can stay idle until a trigger happens, damage is again, another trigger, that's how i'd design it, why go out of my way to waste bandwidth if it's so costly as people claim?
Because coding an ability that constantly scan for champions which match race = X is more easy than coding an ability that triggers on half dozen situations. The basic coding, afaik, is "if..., then...", and following that basic premise, current surge goes as "if there are champions with race/condition = X, then increase by that much damage in this champion, repeat every Z seconds". You proposal would be "if a champion with race = x is deployed*, increase the damage in this champion; if champion with race = x is removed*, then decrease damage in this champion". It is longer, and technically it counts as 2 abilities because there are two different conditions to trigger it (deployment and removal) with two different results, increasing or decreasing. Also, the * is to indicate a huge oversimplification: deployment from rune dock is not the same than summon, and destruction is neither the same than removal. Vengeful, as example, doesn't work on removal like blink, and, iirc, that ability on Vex doesn't work on summon, only deployment. Taking that into consideration, to mimic the effect of surge (which does work on all those cases), the ability would have to be coded to trigger on deployment, summoning, spawning, destruction and removal, and when we add stuff like surge: poison or surge: shadows, we also have to code events like cleanse or stealth. Do you really grasp how complex surge actually is? Which point me back to the original premise: do you actually have a notion how much resources the game requires? Isn't about bandwidth, is about processing resources AND bandwidth. The server have to run at once several events on several matches, and this data have to be streamed back and forth between the participants. The client doesn't wait idly while the opponent resolves his turn, the client display in real time all the events happening, including trivial stuff like damage resolution and combat abilities, like deflect. And we are not taking into consideration players watching the match, which while actively doesn't contribute to the match, usually are chatting. EDIT: when talking about processing resources, I'm not talking about the user end, I'm talking about the server.
Had to comment on this one: more than upsetting, I found it hilarious. Really, every time someone brings some credentials ("trust me, I'm an expert on this subject"), is very funny to made a couple questions specific to said topic and watch the wannabe expert crash in flames. So far: you said the assessment done by the developers from the links I posted are not relevant because they are specific to flash applications. Then you linked the prices for hosting on-line games... based on flash. First strike. You said the resources and technical aspects for flash or browser based games are the same than a java stand alone client. Second strike. I asked from the very beginning you should tell us a estimate cost for maintain a server like Pox Nora. You have a rough estimate of population, resources and so on. C'mon, the guy on one of the links did it with nothing more than just a wild guess. You haven't do even half the effort (other than that hilarious link) and for what I can tell, you're not even attempting to do it. Third strike. Welcome to ignore list.
Well this would be fun to discuss, if you wouldn't be so obnoxiously rude. If anybody else is interested in the subject I'd be happy to go into more detail or address Shimaru's misconceptions, but otherwise I am going to bow out of this and let the thread return to its original purpose.
Shimaru u are missing some stuff here. When he said constant stream of data he ment game checks position of a character every 0.01 second CONSTANTLY, not once 10 seconds when u click something. Surge IS simple to do, just make a counter that checks when something enters/exits the game and add that number to surge stuff. What u suggested would calculate everything for each champ individually wasting a lot of time computing same stuff again. Vengeful HAS to be a trigger unless u wanna recheck entire battle history every 0.01 for number of dead champs, again massively wasteful. For Vex is another trigger If champ is in vex range AND champ = real AND hp falls below 0 then trigger ability. To make game check it in real time is MUCH harder, and puts a lot more strain on server. For every surge ability u just add simple, separate counters and u solve the problem easily. Also what u described on what zenity ment was one ability, but in 2 lines of code, not 2 abilities. By saying what is longer and shorter u make it sound like u would rather pay 10-100 TIMES more for server per month than take 5 minutes more to type out the code.
I would think an ability like surge could check the state of the board every time it is updated. so it wouldn't have to check for each single action that affects surge, simply trigger whenever anything updates the board. deploy a zombie: recalculate surge, hit end turn: recalculate surge, move an elf over a cliff, recalculate surge.
Exactly, that is how it does work, or at least should. I'd just add my diff surge checks, so that say after an elf dies there is no need to update non related surges, like surge lich or skeletion, as they weren't changed.
well I think then you would be adding too much complexity. you would have to code every action with the relevant checks. with a game that keeps adding new abilities, it would be easier (I would think) to just make each ability recalculate itself upon every action (relevant or not).
The server maintains all state anyway, and it can update the client whenever something changes. For example, all surge calculations would happen on the server, and when a champs damage changes, the server sends that information to the client so it always shows the correct value (without knowing anything about how it was derived). Things only get more complicated than that if you add client-side prediction. I could imagine that sokolov was referring to this, and perhaps he was addressing why certain actions lag in the client, when it looks like it should be possible to predict them. Complications like surge would explain why the client has to wait for data from the server before executing most or all actions. I vaguely remember him addressing something like that once.
Well that was an example, u don't check for surge if there are no surge skill champs on board. With easily updateable counters u avoid a mess of every skill checking what every action do, u just send client say damage +/-1 for champs with surge x. There is no need for client to actually predict anything in this game tho, not like 0.1 sec matters. It does matter on games like World of Tanks and Warcraft tho, but that system has nothing to do with pox.
Well it's nice if things like movement or attack commands provide instant feedback without waiting for server responses, the game can feel a bit sluggish with a slow connection. But yeah, it's not a big deal.
