I have left this alone for a while to give other players a chance to speak.

Here are a few ideas:

Mist form: negates smashing hammer by X %

Uncanny anticipation : negates Flinch by X%

Sliding Scales: Negates Keen edge by X %

Witch's eye/God's blessing: Negates Dark Curse by X %

Aura of Aggressive Disharmony: Negates co-ordinated attack by X %

Aura of Defensive disharmony: Negates co-ordinated defence by X %

Aura of disharmony: negates both co-at and co-def by X %

Love you to Death: negates Nightmare Visage by X%

And so on and so forth for all stat boosting buffs/enemy stat reducing buffs. I would exempt base stat boosting buffs from this. (Berserk, Evade, etc.) Similarly I would not pursue things like e.g. Disruptive Blow to reduce % effectiveness of Force Shield etc., because those are secondary effects, rather than primary force multipliers, and so should be ignored for now. (IMO)

The idea would be to use these on SELECT monsters at game critical junctures. Not to spam them like the Souless enhancement that basically negates wither all the time after wither was made too powerful.

I would introduce them as part of a story cycle involving either Morbidstein  (my fave!) doing new experiments to slow down our heroes, or Xind, or Lishka, any classic enemy to wrap a story around. The Shadowlord could respawn the Dreadlord with new lesser minions with some of these enhancements, designed to see how the heroes would deal with these greater challenges. A sequence of levels with harder foes and higher enhancements could easily follow.

Or, as I suggested years ago, it could be part of a shadow lord content event, as we draw closer to him, or an area precious to him, the monsters grow stronger and have increasingly strong %'s of some of these enhancements (typically designed/related to their stat distribution to make them as challenging as possible). The characters pass through veils of shadow, and so must defeat monsters that can negate (partially to fully) the hero's spell and potion gained abilities.

But it should never be used like Souless to 99% nerf Wither all the time. That is boring. Use stats plus enhancement variation to make it tricky for players to anticipate what to do. Make the enhancement variable on a range to screw with expectations, sure, but don't go straight to nerf except on very specific levels you want to make EOC suffer through, and it should be obvious you want them to struggle through those levels by story element guidance. In my opinion.

For example:

Random level 5827 monster that nerfs most bonus buffs is worthless.

But a 5827 monster that nerfs some buffs a bit because it guards a gateway to 5828 filled with only three shadow elites (high stat nightmares) that each have separate total nerfs to crucial hunting buffs that takes you to 5829 and a monster with a collection of nerf enhancements that guards a quest locked door and must be killed 2000 times to advance to  5830 and a boss monster SE... sweet. Make people 2 hit. Make folk consider suicide set ups to max XP gain.

The best version of that would be for the above sequence to be stretched over 50 -100 (or more!!) levels with different combinations of enhancement potency, quest goals, story elements, and boss/ level advancement reveal.

The new enhancements would then ONLY be used for special content, or themed sections. Hallowe'en and Christmas variants could be created easily.

Please do not create new enhancements and then just apply them to all new monsters, nerfing huge swathes of buffs all the time. That would just suck.

That's the idea there. It is rough, and I'm sure unintended consequences abound everywhere. What do folk think?

Hello everyone,

It's been ages since I last posted. Looking at the boards it seems the energy has gone out of the place.

In the roadmap thread some posts by Toreth and others caught my eye. I also saw something in the locked PvP crystal thread I was unaware of.

Quick question then a suggestion I have made before, but maybe could do with being revisited. 

Did I read correctly in Wazzimoto's closed crystal league thread that the PvP Seasons code has been lost? I was going to suggest giving that a second go, as the code should be right there to implement. Grim said

"If you mean the old ranked PvP system we tried to implement, we've stated several times we no longer have the code."

Now, is that the seasons code, or one of the other ladder tweaks lost in the mists of time? I think it would be good to know for sure as I think the seasons now would be a very popular thing to see return, without the initial crazy smash fest, and as an event to opt in to with a decent amount of advanced warning so folk can prepare to participate.

So: just for clarification: has the PvP seasons code been lost completely?

My suggestion: many people say EoC hunting has become very rote. How hard would it be to code levels where certain buffs do not work? (Not ALL of them - unless the designers want to put a TON of thought into the stats of the enemies involved.) But for instance an enemy monster has high attack - flinch does not work. Random high arm/Hp enemies, smashing hammer does not work. Could that be done with a minimum of fuss? We have dark realms that require vision, why not chaotic magic realms where certain buffs that make hunting easier (DC, KE, Flinch, SH, CoAt, Codef, NMV, SW, AB etc.) are disabled? I would argue against the basic stat boosting buffs like Rage, Fury, Evade, Rock skin etc. but they could be included if folk liked the idea.

We already have the Soulless Enhancement that pretty much nerfs wither. So the mechanic could either be specific enhancements on creatures that neutralize some buffs, or, as I would prefer, a level specific toggle in the code that stops the buff working on that level - so it can remain active and be available for the next level/s. But if that is too tricky to manage in terms of code then sure, just switch it off completely and the player would have to recast when the buff can be used again on a higher level. I can hear the howls of protest as high level pot buffs get switched off, but do we want a challenge or not?

And this idea should only be for new levels, not introduced retrospectively.

I think the levels could be introduced with one buff switched off, then, as folk get used to it, combinations to make it harder. Instead of just flinch being switched off when an enemy monster has high attack, shield wall is also removed, etc. etc. Ratchet up difficulty over time.

And I think it would be better not to have runs of levels like that, but a level every say 5 or so with a different buff neutralized. Players say it is rote, let's make the EOC guys work again. The only problem with single levels is players could sublevel past them, which is why having them be obligatory to do via quest locked doors etc would be useful, but that is more work for the design team and I'm trying to keep it simple. So, on second thought maybe it should be 5 level bands of specific nerfs, so sublevelling would be a PITA for the stam economists among us.

Of course, being me, I would like this linked to a story element and/or quest cycle to explain why these levels are harder, but it isn't necessary.  I think of them as the veils in the pattern of Amber - where there is increased resistance to progress. It could be Shadow Lord related, a new incarnation of Xinderoth doing his thing, or a chaotic magic zone as mentioned before, or a new enemy sent to test the adventurers, go crazy. Obviously quest related content does then open the possibility of quest locked doors and narrower bands of obligatory difficult content - but that does mean more development team time, and this is a suggestion that I would hope to not be too hard to implement, hence my being okay without the storyline fluff and quests, though I think they would make the experience far more engaging.

So there you have it folks, a way to make levelling trickier again. What do you think?

Grim/devs: could this be implemented or is buff code/ enhancement coding (if that route was taken)  a nightmare no-one wants to touch?

Thanks.

Captain McSlowpants update. Yesterday 9/2/23, I finally hit level 80 composing. During DXP XC. 5 1/2 years after hitting level 60. Can't remember when they added the new levels though. Ages back. Melissa3 hit 80 in May 2021, by way of comparison.

I have fragging medal silver, 49% to gold. I hold on to frags for the occasional DQ when it comes up, not exactly charging through, mostly because the gap between gold and crystal is huge, and I don't like the look of gold medals much, so don't want to be stuck with one, LMAO!

I think this would be a fun way to reinvigorate the game for long-time players. It may be too development heavy to be done though - new classes and gear for those classes (like in SS) would be a lot of work. It would be great to have a way to play back through the game in different classes, with new class specific gear, class specific quests, enemies and story lines inserted into existing content, to make it new each time through, but that is a ton of new content to be created, and ultimately will it pay back the investment in time and resources for HCS? They'd need to do a feasibility study. 

Given we aren't getting some upgrades to chests and arena that have been asked about forever, I think a radical overhaul (essentially creating a new game as a continuation of the old) like this is unlikely to fly.

We can dream though! I like it.