Nexus Improvements: Outer planes, Factions and Information

[Kandarin]

The Dev team has been busy improving the game for the past few months, and the latest improvements patch is now live. The updates are a broad mix of many topics. Many of them are improvements on the experience of the newly added outer planes, while others are about providing a smoother experience and more information to players, especially if they are running a Faction. Many thanks to all the players who came to us with bug reports or concerns about site issues in the last few months; Without you, we'd know much less about what was in need of improvement.

The changes are:

Site
● Updated much of the information in the Character Planner to reflect the current state of skills and spells that have received updates this year.
● Wiki links on the site have been updated to point to the current HTTPS-supported wiki address. This should address recent issues with access to the wiki.
● The Hypermap now points to a new version with the current outer planes detailed. Many thanks to plscks for setting it up and to the members of the community who supplied much of the exploration information used to create the map.

Maps
● Wandering monsters can now be found roaming the outer planes. Depending on which plane it is and who you are, these may be a boon or a hazard.
● The memory engrams powering some outer planes exploration badges have changed to point to new stories.
● Something has changed about the Necrotic Tower. This announcement will not reveal what it is but those familiar with this building's more intact form in Nexus War may have some idea.

Mechanics
● All Hellhounds now possess the critical hit ability previously possessed only by Nether Hounds.
● The Myrmidon's critical hit chance now applies to spell and spellgem attacks made by Nexus Champions with Tattoo of Sorcery.
● Dealing damage to stronghold fortifications is now subject to the same criteria as the ability to capture flags: The attacker must be in a faction hostile to the target faction that has a standing stronghold, and must have been in the faction for at least 24 hours. If a character attacks fortifications without these criteria, the fortifications will soak a substantial amount of incoming damage.
● The mechanism for heavy item spawns was resulting in an excessive amount of heavy items on every tile eligible for them. As a result, the spawn rate for heavy items has been toned down a bit. There should still be more than enough for anyone who has a use for them.
● The Morality bounds for Angels and Demons have returned to +40 and -40, the same as Transcended classes. Since they spend Morality as a resource, Redeemed are an exception with a maximum Morality of 50.
● Laurentia and the Underground are now considered the same plane for the purposes of the Revenant's Eye of Death. Revenants investigating a corpse in one of these places will be able to see the exact location of the killer or killed in the other.
● Character resets no longer remove Alchemy recipes. This is a different sort of character development than what is governed by character resets.
● Infectious Zombies now inflict Shambling Infection. Characters who die violent deaths under the influence of Shambling Infection will rise as wandering, aggressive Shambling Zombies. The infection cannot be detected in the Status Effect screen, but can be healed by most common means of healing.
● The Wyrm Master's Acid Blood and the Holy Champion's Cloak of Magma are now triggered by a far wider range of attacks that would realistically cause a spray of blood. In general, if the base item upon which the attack is based dealt Slashing or Piercing damage, it will trigger the effect. There are some additional exceptions that never dealt one of these damage types but would still logically cause bleeding, the most prominent of which is the Pariah's Blood Claws. Acid Blood now renders the Wyrm Master immune to damage from Vials of Acid and Weapon Breaker attacks directed at Vials of Acid.
● Casting Glyphs vs Good is now considered an Evil deed if the caster is of Good alignment.

Factions
● Faction flag collections now show the viewer's political relation to the faction whose flag was captured (green if the captured flag is from your allies, etc).
● Flag capture renown rewards now factor in the level difference between the attacking and attacked faction. Flags of factions of a much lower level than you are worth less renown than normal, and flags of factions of a much higher level than you are worth more.
● Setting the stronghold of an Unaligned Faction no longer deals damage if the character doing so is not of Neutral alignment; the patron Powers of such Factions are morally unaligned and not Neutral per se, and will not punish you for not abiding by neutrality.
● Revoking a stronghold now only starts a 24-hour timer in which you cannot set your stronghold if the revoking was done during a raid (specifically, if your ward is not at its maximum). If a faction revokes while not under attack, they can set a hold again immediately.
● In addition to a faction's flag collection, a faction page now also shows a list of factions who have currently hold that faction's flag. As with the faction's flag collection, this shows political stances relative to the viewer and is limited to factions that are still active and have standing strongholds.
● The Faction Renown store now shows items for sale that you cannot afford with your current renown rather than hiding them, so that new factions can understand some of the possible rewards and strategies available to them once they earn more renown. The buttons to buy items that you cannot afford are greyed out and clicking them has no effect.
● The Faction Renown store for single breath upgrades (Planar Domain, Planar Screen and Adamant Denial) now tells you which of these upgrades you already bought.
● New Faction Upgrades have been added. The new upgrades are unique to specific alignments. Like other upkeep-using upgrades such as the Forge, these use up 5 Renown per day. Unlike Forges, Medical Bays and Gunsmithing Tables, these upgrades do not require the Stronghold to be standing to work. The new upgrades are:
- Soul Creche: Exclusive to Good factions, this upgrade boosts the amount of Aethersprites that will roam the angelic plane of Elysium.
- Infernal Hatchery: Exclusive to Evil factions, this upgrade boosts the amount of lesser demonic creatures that will roam the demonic plane of Stygia.
- Polarity Adaptor: Exclusive to Unaligned factions, this upgrade causes members of your faction to be unaffected by the negative effects of glyphs cast by other members of your faction.

● Faction leaders now receive notifications informing them of goings-on in the faction. The events that cause notifications are:
- When someone joins the faction.
- When someone leaves the faction. Idling out does not trigger this notification.
- When another faction leader promotes or demotes a faction member.
- When another faction leader kicks, bans or user bans a faction member.

Quality of Life and Interface
● Buttons in the interface that can be disabled if you don't have enough AP or MP are now greyed out and unclickable if you don't have enough AP or MP. Whenever you see a button greyed out, the button will always clearly state what resource you need more of in order to use the button. Previously these buttons disappeared, which created issues with buttons "jumping around" the interface as characters crossed thresholds of AP and MP.
● Newly created characters now start with all interface panes open by default.
● The buttons to wear or remove wearable items now say which inventory slot the item uses.
● /me emote messages will now work correctly no matter what capitalization is used on the emote command.
● When reaching Level 10 or Level 20, the game now tells you where to go in the interface to purchase a new class.
● When changing your character description or gender preference, what you did is now stored in your message log, allowing you to retrieve your old description if desired.
● Many quality-of-life improvements to the healing pane:
- The dropdowns for healing characters with FAKs, leeches, herbs, Surgery or the Shepherd's Heal Others now only lists injured nondemons (which includes both the Fallen and the Redeemed). These buttons will not appear if there are no nondemons present who needs healing.
- If you have First Aid, the dropdowns for healing characters now show how wounded those characters are next to their names, e.g. 32/60 HP.
- If you have both Energize and Sense Magic, the dropdown for Energizing characters will display only nondemons with less than maximum MP, as well as how full their MP pool is e.g. 16/49 MP. The Energize button will not appear if there are no nondemons present below max MP.
- If you have Absolve Suffering, the Absolve Suffering dropdown will only display nondemons who have a negative status effect that Absolve Suffering is capable of removing. It will not say which status effect they are afflicted with, though you will still find out what you cured if you Absolve them. If there are no nondemons present with negative status effects, the Absolve button will not appear.
- If you have Arcane Channel, the Arcane Channel dropdown will only list characters that have 70% or less of their maximum AP pool. You will not be able to see how much AP they have, but this should prevent Conduits with this skill from uselessly giving AP to people who are already at or very close to maximum. If there is no one present who fits this criteria, the Arcane Channel button will not appear.
- The gist of all of the above is if you see buttons in the healing pane (in fact, if you see the healing pane at all) there is someone present who you can help and you are able to help them. Pushing any button in the healing pane will always help someone. The only exceptions are if A) you're an Energize user who somehow didn't buy Sense Magic, B) you're trying to heal through Blood Curse, which you should be able to detect with mortal skills, or C) you're trying to heal a Fallen (without Masquerade of Deception active), in which case your inability to heal them should be a big clue about their true nature!

Major Bugs
● Resolved an issue where thrown weapons used on set up targets did not appear in the location to be picked up. This includes Rocks fired by Slings.
● Kills of hostile and enemy player characters now correctly grant renown when the killer is a pet.
● Fixed a bug where the recent adjustment to Wondercraft reduction of crafting costs also impacted the guild's reduction of enchanting AP costs.
● Character resets now correctly remove Eye of Judgment.
● Reset characters now correctly carry their Lore MP bonus with them if they had the full Lore of Haldon. This does not apply retroactively to resets prior to this patch; if you have the full Lore and reset before this patch, your maximum MP cap will need to be updated manually.
● Corrected an issue that allowed players to set stepping stones and stone-like mechanics in impassable void and regenerate AP there.
● Bent portals now always place characters outside, fixing an issue in which characters were trapped in underground caverns.
● Corrected a bug that caused Holier Than Thou kill morality losses to incorrectly apply to non-lethal blows struck by Holier Than Thou angels.
● Arcane Affinity MP reduction checks now work for spells and spellgems attacking wards, fortifications, doors or glyphs.
● Corrected a bug that allowed Good attackers to lose less morality for area-of-effect attacks on other Good characters if the attacker was in an Unaligned faction.
● The Holy Champion's Holy Bulwark skill now protects against mana drain by Mischievous Imps.
● Corrected issues that allowed users of Void Walker Stepping of the Stone, Lich Phylactery, and Conduit Open Wormhole to get trapped in spaces removed in the recent map rework.

Minor Bugs
● Fixed a bug where deaths by stronghold setting with the wrong morality did not apply some of the common effects of death.
● Stepping Stones, Nexal Marks and Phylacteries are no longer listed twice in the dropdown to remove them.
● Fixed a bug where stronghold revoking announcements did not correctly display the plane from which the stronghold was removed.
● Fixed a bug where learning a spell while within one's stronghold incorrectly started the confirmation sequence for stronghold revoking.
● Fixed a bug where under some circumstances, characters were able to repair Heavy Items.
● Corrected a bug wherein leaving a faction as a Wyrm Master moved Tentacles outside no matter where they were.
● Updated the attack strings of many innate weapons to use proper grammar.
● Resolved a minor bug where healing herb users were told they had run out of bone leeches when they ran out of herbs.
● Adjusted many, many possible situations where Defiler Poison is attached to another attack to correctly show the presence of poison.
● Corrected an issue in which a Tier 3 character sometimes displayed the respawn message of its Tier 2 parent class.
● Memories of a Past Life can no longer be wasted attempting to rename a spell.

[Azure]

[Liemannen]

These fixes look good, thank you for everyone coding and suggesting them.

I think I will love the non-jumping buttons fix the most.

[Samizdat]

[AmIaGhost]

Agreed, there is a lot of nice fixes here, but AK got nerfed hard.

[plscks]

First things first, nice job on the update! Lots of great stuff here, so many good things! I'm glad to see the game moving forward and changes being made for the good or the bad, but still changes nonetheless! Adjustments that will inevitably be refined and adjusted some more in the search for perfection. I for one feel good about having a gameplay patch not too terribly long ago, followed by a great holiday event and map overhaul and now a nice content filled update! Great job! Keep the updates coming please! Now if I may, I'd like to comment on a few specific points.

[catvom]

[Kandarin]

Since several people have asked for an explanation on the strongholds change, I will provide one. First of all, let me say that devs change mechanics in response to stuff players figure out how to do all the time, and real time feedback on what works and what doesn’t in the raiding game has actually been a helpful driving force behind a lot of balance development for a long time. We’re not in the habit of calling out exactly what player action led to the change, not least because it usually wasn’t something rulebreaky.

Coming up with a hot new raiding strategy isn’t rule breaking, but it does force us to make hard choices about how the game ought to be played. If you play as an innovator in a game with a healthy, ongoing development cycle, you’re going to hear “that’s neat, we didn’t think anyone would do that” sometimes from the dev team. You’re also going to hear “whoa, we didn’t intend for that tactic to be as strong as it is, we’re going to dial it back or introduce a counter to it” sometimes too. A dev promise to players that you will always hear the first response every time - that we will never adapt game balance in response to something that you do - would mean the kind of balance paralysis that is fatal to a PVP game. It’d be incompatible with a healthy, ongoing development cycle.

Some examples from the past (which will refrain from naming any names):

•In its initial Breath 3.5 implementation, Tap Ley Line rewards were higher and allowed storage of more excess MP. In combination with Mystic Vigor and the Conduit’s Wisp Form, some players figured out that if someone had documented the ley line map in detail for you, you could coast from ley line to ley line accumulating a large net gain of AP. Several people used this to casually double their daily AP, which was not the intended benefit of a 20 CP skill. Later on, several people used this to accumulate thousands of AP and raid pretty much every faction in one night, which was definitely not the intended use! As a result, we patched it ( https://www.nexusclash.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=76112#76112 ) to the mechanic that you know today.
•Earlier in this breath, the Conduit’s Wisp Form caused pets to be passive to characters in wisp form, who with the right skills were capable of being potent fighters. As a result, several raiding factions used Conduits as an unbeatable tank class to enter holds and assassinate defending petmasters while their pets stood by helplessly. Curiously, this state of affairs had existed for all of Breath 3 without it being exploited to anything resembling the same degree until the tactic was “discovered” by players in the current breath. Negating the entire class abilities of three classes was not the intended effect of a 30 CP skill. As a result, we patched it such that Wisp Form made pets defensive: ( https://www.nexusclash.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=73869#73869 )
•Earlier in this breath (and for all of Breath 3 though again it was a more recent “discovery” for most) players figured out that they could use a combination between the Nexus Champion’s Tattoo of Adaptation and the immunity provided by Affinity Potions to guarantee that pet walls did zero damage to the NC while tanking. As a result, all competent raiding factions used only Nexus Champions to tank and petmaster classes were effectively a “trap” class choice that could never stop a raid with a competent NC. It was never the intent that one class would be so much more effective at tanking than all others nor that it be so sure of a tactic that could only be stopped by exceptionally capable active defenders. As a result we patched it, which (together with other petmaster changes) led to the stronger petwalls and increased interest in petmaster play that we see today: ( https://www.nexusclash.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=8971 )


If you look closely you can see that all of these instances had some things in common:
•All involved inventive reinterpretation of game mechanics and new strategies, which I do have to give folks some credit for despite being one of the people responsible for ensuring balance.
•All of these strategies required massive effort, planning and time spent on the game to counteract (if you’re online at just the right time and are an exceptionally good damage dealer you might be able to do something about that Nexus Champion tank)
•At the time we did the patch, only a relatively small number of people had figured out the strategy, but the wider game was beginning to feel that it was “mandatory” to adopt it to be competitive. Then as now, this forced the dev team to make a choice: enshrine the tactic as the competitive key to the raiding game that every faction/group in the game ought to be doing going forward, or nerf it.
•In all cases, if we’d done nothing pretty soon everyone would have been doing it.

From the dev team’s standpoint, a strategy with no possible counter strategy is a design failure in need of fixing. If someone does X you should always be able to reply with Y. That doesn’t mean Y should win, especially if the people doing X are more numerous or organized or understand the game mechanics better or some combination thereof. But it’s disheartening to not have a Y, and I’ve heard a lot of dispirited players every time it comes up.

So yes, I can confirm that the fort change is a response to the factionless raid team. You folks developed a strategy with no real counter strategy. The reason we can’t just “discuss it with the people involved” is that the longer term reason isn’t so specifically something you did. If/when there was something deemed to be rulebreaking or the kind of abuse that requires enforcement (even if there isn’t technically an existing rule against it) the response wouldn't be a patch, it would be some sort of admin rules discipline - which would also not be announced. The problem is the fact that it’s now generally known to the playerbase at large that factionless meta raid clubs are by far the best strategy, and that they swing the balance strongly in favor of factionless over factioned, which is just the opposite of the intent of game balance.

As far as the change “impacting every factionless player because of this” - we’d be interested in hearing more stories if there are any, but I’m not aware of prior groups or players who made a point of factionlessly trying to clear populous strongholds. Break in, yes. Assassinate characters, also yes. But historically, for most of our players factionless is (and should be) something you do to turn your back on the whole politics/war/raiding thing - not something you do for an extra competitive edge to win it. Long term we do feel that factionless and the de-facto-factionless factions #1 and #2 ought to get some kind of unique benefit or advantage to support their “life apart from the wider game of war and politics” playstyle, but it’s not yet clear what that should be. “Make factionless the best raid strategy” definitely isn’t it.

Nexus players are smart, they’re competitive and they like to have fun. When we have a new breath we hope that lots of new and returning players will show up and new groups will form. If we didn’t do the change, or reverse it now, or someone thinks of a clever workaround that allows raids to be done with retaliation not possible again and we don’t adapt to it, we’re going to see a lot of new factionless raid metas crop up as the game’s main strategy, rendering the entire “factions” concept into a trap for clueless newbies and suckers. We’d be forced as a dev team to either accept the new reality and either scrap the entire concept of factions or accept a circumstance where factioned players are effectively a second-class player type for those not connected enough in the community to earn an invite into one of the “real” community of private factionless meta clubs.

Neither of those are acceptable outcomes. Yes, it’s a violent setting and should be. But your casual everyday player is going to quit if they wake up dead in their stronghold twice a day every day. We’ve had quite a few folks quit already over the regular raids of just one group, since their raids have been focused on a relatively narrow range of microfaction targets. The community will be shut down if we have a half dozen or more groups doing it and no one can live in their stronghold at all.

Some people may look at that and say “Then that’s their fault for being casual players! If they want to be allowed to play, they ought to get better at the game!” Nexus’ greatest strength as a game has always been that that isn’t our attitude.

Some others (generally, the people who did not say the aforementioned don’t-be-casual thing) have also pointed out that many aspects of running or being in a faction feel chorelike and aren’t as appealing as they should be. To that I can only say: We’re aware of it and improving the experience of living in and running factions is a serious concern for us. Many changes have been made since the start of 2018 (and more are planned) to make aspects of factioned play run smoother, have more options, and be better connected to the broader plot of the game. Keep watching this spot, and keep making suggestions and feedback about what would make the game better. But it’s not sustainable for us to not emphasize factioned as the primary play style over factionless, and a system where it’s likely that factioned communities will get wiped out by factionless isn’t sustainable.