Updates to speed 57 Zizuph Keeper 25 Jul
I have made an update to how haste bonuses affects swing speed.
For decades, haste bonuses would reduce your swing speed at a fixed rate - so
going from 5 second swings to 4 second swings would require just as much haste
as going from 3 second swings to 2 second swings. This meant that haste would
give more and more bang for your buck, the higher it got. This was typically
capped, but occasionally bugs would show up - at one point the Shadow Union's
fling would instantly reset, with high levels of haste, for example.
The vampire guild of the early 2000s provided a haste boost. When combined
with the runed falchion (which provided double the vampire benefit), players
could have a consistent 2 second swing time, or 2.5x as many attacks and
specials as a player with no haste. The guild code can be see in the open
source repository at /d/Emerald/common/guild/vamp/ for those that wish to see
these details. Other equipment, such as the serrated obsidian halberd, gave
higher levels of haste, enabling players to reach these levels.
In an attempt to nerf these bonuses, the AOB team at the time decided to
significantly reduce how much haste any equipment would give. They also added
logic to add up each individual item's contribution to haste, in an attempt to
reduce its usefulness. They left the underlying scaling formula in place,
which was the core issue. In order to neuter the value of haste, they both
halved the strength of the strongest haste items, and also halved the strength
of all haste boosts. The exponential swing speed of up to 2.5x remained in
place.
This is unfortunately an example of what happens when a wizard in charge cares
more about nerfing things that they don't like, than figuring out what is
actually broken and fixing it. It was that same person that added the 60
second delay between herbs, taking them from being much too powerful in large
quantities, to being largely worthless.
The net result, up until now, meant that small haste boosts underperform their
expected combat aid. It also means that two small haste boosts would give you
less improvement than a single boost of double-size. It meant the weakest
haste imbuement has been significantly worse than the strongest haste
imbuement.
It did not need to be that way. At the time, the admin in question was highly
focused on nerfing the vampire guild, instead of fixing a formula that scaled
poorly. He was on record at the time of explicitly saying that this was his
goal. It is exactly that kind of motivated reasoning that led me to create
this game.
Going forwards, the overall haste formula has been updated. A 10% combat aid
boost will scale your hit rate by 10%, and so forth. Many small haste sources
will no longer be penalized. Most haste sources will give you a faster swing
speed from before. NPCs that are hasted may also hit faster (though some of
these were already at a cap).
With this now properly scaling, I can reevaluate whether some of these
double-nerfs (halving of their raw haste values, and the halving of what haste
provides) and potentially increase haste boosts on some items again. I will
put up a separate post regarding that if I do. For now, you should be able to
enjoy your haste items a little more.
Z