S86 Powers - Balance Info

This thread will be used to record information on powers as they're updated. These updates are for balance only, and will take into account other powers which currently exist, magic spells, and their effect on a player with no powers.

Let me be clear about one thing: Powers users are not meant to be gods. If a typical player with no powers has little or no chance of besting you, your power is overpowered and will be nerfed. Likewise, if your power is relatively weak in comparison to other powers or serves too little an advantage in a fight, it will be buffed.

I'll be putting a lot of focus on each individual power one-by-one, so this update may take longer than others have. Please provide any feedback relating to balance changes in this thread.

*pulls out nerfbat* Alright, let's get started.

So I'm working on people's new powers, and to be honest I'm starting to get kinda burnt out. I don't mind coding this stuff, and I'm excited when someone has a power idea for themself, but... So many of them are the same! I'm trying to crack down on repeat powers, but then there's people like sirriusxm who literally come up with ten powers, each of which already exist, and I ultimately just snap and say "okay you can have the same power as so-and-so". I get that the game's mechanics are relatively limited, but I'm not sure I can create another explosion- or fire-based or "sword shoots stuff" power XD

How bad is it? Here, I made a list:

Powers that use fire:
Air_spike - Pyro Blade
FyreCat - Fyre Arrow, Fyre Aura
JJoiler - Gunblade
Requested:
aung77 - Blaze rod summons blaze
sirriusxm - Sword shoots fire

Powers that use explosions:
FSCarver - Explosive Personality, Phasewalk
FyreCat - Fyre Arrow
Gamekills99 - Rocket Boots
GeorgeIpsum - Volatility
JJoiler - Gunblade
kamyarm007 - Geomancer
toad33 - Master Sword
Requested:
awsomextreme - Sword shoots TNT
blacknova777 - Obsidian creates homing ghast fireball
Gamekills99 - Sword strikes create explosion

Powers where swords shoot stuff:
Air_spike - Pyro Blade
Gamekills99 - Bone Blade (I know, being removed)
JJoiler - Gunblade
onlycoops - El'druin
repete8 - Aero Blade
toad33 - Master Sword
Requested:
awsomextreme - Sword shoots TNT
Icecharger - Sword shoots splash potions
sirriusxm - Sword shoots fire

I DO have a solution in mind for this though, which will be addressed after the balance update. Until then, BE ORIGINAL!

We should add a sword that shoots lightning again )))))))0

Admin wrote:We should add a sword that shoots lightning again )))))))0

It never shot lightning, it just directed lighting strikes, and it's still there.

HeyLookoverthere wrote:

Admin wrote:We should add a sword that shoots lightning again )))))))0

It never shot lightning, it just directed lighting strikes, and it's still there.

I loved that sword....

Admin wrote:

HeyLookoverthere wrote:

Admin wrote:We should add a sword that shoots lightning again )))))))0

It never shot lightning, it just directed lighting strikes, and it's still there.

I loved that sword....

Yeah so did Clown...

Balance update:

Air_spike
Acrobat
* Changes: Removed immunity to fire when level 30+.
* Reason: Fire was your third immunity, after falling and cacti, which was excessive. I more added this immunity because your other power had a chance to ignite you. So instead I decided to change your other power as well.
Pyro Blade
* Changes: Ignition is no longer random, and now guaranteed. Ignition duration depends on sword material. Superpower: Removed fire line, now will instead ignite several nearby enemies when you ignite your primary one.
* Reason: I considered this ability underpowered since its effects were at the mercy of a RNG, while other powers are guaranteed to trigger. The fire line was difficult to manage and carried the potential to turn the field into an inferno. Now the effect is quick and simple, yet still effective, which makes it easier to maintain and less likely to cause problems.

aung77
Acrobat - No changes made.
Nether Cloak
* Changes: Superpower: Regen hunger while hidden.
* Reason: aung77 is one of three people with a power that hides them, however he's the only one that not only consumes an item to do so, but must sneak to maintain the effect and gains no additional benefits. Therefore, to balance this I've made aung77 the only one who can potentially recover health at an increased rate while hidden.
Summon Blaze
* Changes: Can only have three blazes active at a time.
* Reason: Blazes are very difficult to control from a coding perspective; there's actually no direct way to reference a fire started by a specific blaze's fireball. To keep SOME order, I capped how many can be summoned at a time

awsomextreme
Haste - No changes made.

Balance/coding update:

blacknova777
Diversion - No balance changes. Power is no longer activated if you somehow hurt yourself (which, in turn, led to your copy attacking you).
Pulse - No balance changes. Will now inform you if the power is still in cooldown when you attempt to use it.
Mortar - No changes.

bobby16may
Aquaphile - No balance changes. Optimized code.
Polar Blade - No changes.
Snow Miser - No balance changes. Optimized code.

Brandyn1400
Power Theft - No balance changes. Almost completely recoded in anticipation for public use using the new config. Will now directly assign your target's powers to you until they regain theirs, at which point you will be reverted to having only Power Theft.

Don't know if I'm burnt out, but I didn't see a lot of opportunities to balance the above powers.

I was the first one to have a sword that shoots stuff....JUST saying...

JJoiler wrote:I was the first one to have a sword that shoots stuff....JUST saying...

I know, which is why I'm pissed that like 15 other people wanted their sword to shoot stuff...

sirrus86 wrote:

JJoiler wrote:I was the first one to have a sword that shoots stuff....JUST saying...

I know, which is why I'm pissed that like 15 other people wanted their sword to shoot stuff...

make them get new powers!

JJoiler wrote:

sirrus86 wrote:

JJoiler wrote:I was the first one to have a sword that shoots stuff....JUST saying...

I know, which is why I'm pissed that like 15 other people wanted their sword to shoot stuff...

make them get new powers!

I wish... In their defense, you're still (and will always be) the only one who can shoot arrows and change arrow types.

and i was the first with fire powers :P

protip: when you submit your plugin to bukkit, don't be drunk. http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/acientcave/

I was able to fix the typo in the plugin name but the link will forever be misspelled.

HeyLookoverthere wrote:protip: when you submit your plugin to bukkit, don't be drunk. http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/acientcave/

I was able to fix the typo in the plugin name but the link will forever be misspelled.

lol well done sir

Balance / Changes:

aung77
Summon Blaze - Blaze are auto-killed after 60 seconds instead of the previous 180 seconds. 60 seconds is more than enough to take out nearby enemies. And yes, I am going to try to make stronger versions of Blazes for the superpower.

blacknova777
Diversion - Can no longer attack or interact while hidden. More than anything this is to prevent use of other powers while enemies are unable to find or attack you.
Mortar - Recoded to trigger via left-click instead of arm swing animation.

diamondmario
Adaptability - Optimized code. Resistance increase is now more gradual, preventing immunity from occurring as quickly.
Brawler - Reduced damage increase from 300% to 200%. Superpower: Reduced damage increase from 700% to 600%. This makes it have a similar output to diamond swords.
Jackpot - Iron and gold ore placed by you can no longer be re-mined to perpetuate the diamond drop chance (for example, you can't mine an iron ore, place it, then mine it again hoping to get a diamond each time).

Epic_Avenger29
Supercharge - No changes made.
Thunder Bow - Removed in favor of nazizombies2354's Shock Bow, which will be called Thunder Bow. (you and nazi will share the same offense power after this update)

FSCarver
Explosive Personality - Renamed "Martyr" to make easier to reference. And yes, this was a decision I made before brysi had the idea for Martyrdom, it's just a coincidence they share similar names.
Phasewalk - Optimized code, no balance changes.

FyreCat
Evasion - No changes made.
Fyre Arrow - Renamed "Pyro Bow" to de-personalize for public use. Otherwise no changes made.
Fyre Aura - Renamed "Fire Aura" to de-personalize for public use. Optimized code.

Gamekills99
Acid Blood - No changes made. (I will be replacing this with the power you requested, however this power will continue to exist in the database for future use)
Blast Blade - No changes made.
Rocket Boots - No changes made.

That's all for today, more tomorrow.

they will always be Fyre's Arrow and Fyre's Aura to me

After a few hours of coding this morning I managed to do something never done before in the powers plugin.

Congratulations aung77, for being the first person with a power that utilizes custom entities.

aung77
Summon Blaze - Superpower: Instead of regular blazes, Super Blazes will be summoned. These blazes look and act the same as normal, but have over double health and do double physical (contact) damage. And yes, they still ignore you.

This is only the beginning. What changes I made to make this possible were surprisingly minimal, requiring a small custom entity class and about 9 lines of code telling Bukkit "no, not the usual Blaze, use this one instead". Who knows, using this method I might even be able to make mobs tameable...

Alright, I'll let you guys start fighting over who gets the next one.

Tameable mobs were my idea...just saying.


''I have an idea for an ability called 'Friend of the Hostiles'.
It allows the user to tame hostile mobs in the same way you tame dogs/cats.
If the user gets attacked, or the user attacks another player/mob, the tamed mobs will help out the user by attacking the threat.

I've been thinking of either using the mob specific drops to tame them, or if possible to auto-tame mobs in a radius via either a specific action or command.
If the latter tame option gets implemented, a cooldown would be great if possible.''

FSCarver wrote:Tameable mobs were my idea...just saying.


''I have an idea for an ability called 'Friend of the Hostiles'.
It allows the user to tame hostile mobs in the same way you tame dogs/cats.
If the user gets attacked, or the user attacks another player/mob, the tamed mobs will help out the user by attacking the threat.

I've been thinking of either using the mob specific drops to tame them, or if possible to auto-tame mobs in a radius via either a specific action or command.
If the latter tame option gets implemented, a cooldown would be great if possible.''

Heh yes I remember this. At the time I lacked the knowledge to do this, but I'm gonna give it another shot.

sirrus86 wrote:

FSCarver wrote:Tameable mobs were my idea...just saying.


''I have an idea for an ability called 'Friend of the Hostiles'.
It allows the user to tame hostile mobs in the same way you tame dogs/cats.
If the user gets attacked, or the user attacks another player/mob, the tamed mobs will help out the user by attacking the threat.

I've been thinking of either using the mob specific drops to tame them, or if possible to auto-tame mobs in a radius via either a specific action or command.
If the latter tame option gets implemented, a cooldown would be great if possible.''

Heh yes I remember this. At the time I lacked the knowledge to do this, but I'm gonna give it another shot.

Check out the petcreeper source? it was recently updated and I re-added it, but it was spewing errors to the console so much (though I never got any complaints from users) that I disabled it because it was annoying me.

HeyLookoverthere wrote:Check out the petcreeper source? it was recently updated and I re-added it, but it was spewing errors to the console so much (though I never got any complaints from users) that I disabled it because it was annoying me.

Thanks, just checked it.

In this version of Pet Creeper, he makes it so once you tame a mob it's target event is cancelled if it targets you (same way I make it so mobs ignore players with certain powers). He also makes it so when you do tame a mob it removes them and spawns a new one, which gets around the "mob is already targeting the player" hurdle I had. I couldn't find where he made it so mobs would follow the player, but it gave me an idea of how to make it happen.

...Which is good because turns out either reflection can't make a custom version of a non-tameable mob tameable, or no one's ever done it before. I was actually coming on here to say I'd given up until I saw this post

sirrus86 wrote:

HeyLookoverthere wrote:Check out the petcreeper source? it was recently updated and I re-added it, but it was spewing errors to the console so much (though I never got any complaints from users) that I disabled it because it was annoying me.

Thanks, just checked it.

In this version of Pet Creeper, he makes it so once you tame a mob it's target event is cancelled if it targets you (same way I make it so mobs ignore players with certain powers). He also makes it so when you do tame a mob it removes them and spawns a new one, which gets around the "mob is already targeting the player" hurdle I had. I couldn't find where he made it so mobs would follow the player, but it gave me an idea of how to make it happen.

...Which is good because turns out either reflection can't make a custom version of a non-tameable mob tameable, or no one's ever done it before. I was actually coming on here to say I'd given up until I saw this post

this isn't the right place for this, but http://forums.bukkit.org/forums/resources.60/ is great. I saw this one recently I meant to play with it. Unless I misunderstand it changes the name above the players head without spout. (which even the last version of Dispnamechanger I tried couldn't do)

http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/easily-change-the-name-of-a-player-event-the-name-above-the-head-p.82756/

HeyLookoverthere wrote:this isn't the right place for this, but http://forums.bukkit.org/forums/resources.60/ is great. I saw this one recently I meant to play with it. Unless I misunderstand it changes the name above the players head without spout. (which even the last version of Dispnamechanger I tried couldn't do)

http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/easily-change-the-name-of-a-player-event-the-name-above-the-head-p.82756/

Display names are literally one command. To remove nameplates though, never seen that. Looks like he uses the HumanEntity packet.

Oh and I took another stab at your power Carver. I'm sorry, but...


...your wolves are gonna get jealous.

sirrus86 wrote:

HeyLookoverthere wrote:this isn't the right place for this, but http://forums.bukkit.org/forums/resources.60/ is great. I saw this one recently I meant to play with it. Unless I misunderstand it changes the name above the players head without spout. (which even the last version of Dispnamechanger I tried couldn't do)

http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/easily-change-the-name-of-a-player-event-the-name-above-the-head-p.82756/

Display names are literally one command. To remove nameplates though, never seen that. Looks like he uses the HumanEntity packet.

Oh and I took another stab at your power Carver. I'm sorry, but...


...your wolves are gonna get jealous.

Sirrus, I love you.