[Incomplete] Nightbringer the C'Tan of Death**

its ok that u like flying, thats the the point at issue here (its a matter of changing flying hight)
if every skill in the game works o him, thats prolly cause he doesnt *actually fly* but its just coded and triggered to make it look like he does

-ignoring from/kharn discussion-

and theres a difference between u saying it might be faulty, and me being able to spot a design flaw.
giving a skill a (drastically) random effect. for no real reason, other than 'cause it fits' is. bad. design.
you can argue around that but in the end its gona come down to that

edit: if you want a bit more convincing, this is from an article:

Chance, randomness... it's been used a lot in games. Of course, the reason I'm talking about it here is because of the misuse of chance.
In reality, things are not random. This goes back to causality. There is no little microchip in a gun which decides your shot will vary between some percentage of error from where you aim it. We use randomness to represent systems which are effected by so many minute variables, it would be ridiculous to try and realistically implement them. This is really what we do with computers, simulate things from life–not recreate them.
Randomness, however, does NOTHING for a game's design. Ignoring the possibility of people having oracular powers, there is nothing to do with skill in this. In fact, this is a common misconception with one of my favorite games, poker:

Betrayer_kharn wrote:furthermore it can be unique and bland at the same time how is simply stopping creep spwaner not bland? it hasn o oohter efect does nothing else and is in that sense bland...

on ur other point there no proof that it is indeed faulty yet theres simply an arguement that it MIGHT not work again i iwll emphasize might here. this is why you code it implement it and truly decide through genuine playtesting if it really doesnt work or not. because its a MIGHt no IT WILL its IT MIGHT which means none of us know for sure and theo nly sure way of finding out is playtesting it.

and again i make my heroes offensive always have and i always will you dont thats why our designs differ.

Okay, not trying to pick another fight, so I'll just address these three points.

-Okay, I misunderstood what you meant. I was thinking more along the lines of unoriginal. That being said, it looks like this skill isn't very good and therefore not being used, so no point in discussing it further (Sorry I brought it up.).

-An ulti that can do anywhere between 140 and 280 damage (Both of which actually seem kind of low, but then maybe the other effects would compensate for it?), as well as up to half its other effects can be crippling. Think of it this way: You know how Warphead's Zzap can target invul towers, and you essentially wasted spell, and have to wait for the cooldown to recharge? It's the same thing, only not COMPLETELY wasted (Though it would fuck up hero-killing opportunities, which seems to be what this ulti would be used for.), and on a bigger CD.
That being said, I may not be the best to spot design flaws. That being said, the main coder thinks it's a design flaw, meaning he shouldn't waste time coding it, thus coming back to what I said in my last post.

-Right, but I think you misunderstand what I am asking: What role do you see him filling? Would he be a hero-killer? A tank? A caster? I get the feeling part of the reason I don't see him the same way as you is that I don't see him fulfilling the same basic function, which is why I am asking this question.

i see him as just a beast to put it simply i guess the best "label" to give him would be hero killer but really i jsut see him as a beast

and i want to give it a try if it doesnt work then u remove a little bit of code and boom its all fixed i know how coding works but thanks. and secondly its not the damage thats spose to be big is the fact they are incapactiated for the drutaion and before that they are blinded so they miss

but the main reason i added the randomness isnt because of the fact that it truly does fit (although i liek this too) it was originally because someone pointed out you would jsut run away (so i though about chapter masters ult and hows its kind of useless against heroes because most people jsut run away then it utterly misses) and i didnt want people being able to 100% predict when that would happen wo i figured id give randomness a try

as for ur article grass thats more or less referring to the concept of chance in poker which in professional poker yes chance helps but its mostly based on skill. from what u quoted it looks liek that was a lead on to an articale about poker... so although it has to do with chance and randomness i really dont see its relevance because its in two different senses here

Okay, thanks. That could explain it, I was trying to make him fit a different role (More along the lines of a mage-tank)

Couldn't they run away just as easily from this though?

Maybe I'm not understanding, but I thought they got drawn in during the duration and that the debuffs lasted as long as the duration. Wouldn't this mean that making random duration would not only not help with them running away, but also up to half the duration of the effects? (Which I mentioned right after the damage, though maybe a little too briefly.)

no kharn, that was using poker as an example. the entire article is on pure chance in games and how it does nothing for the game,

(if you wanna know about the poker example, they talk about chance not being the basis of the game, but being able to read people and lead them on -bluffing)

what fromu?

it creates a vortex that pulls everything towards it during the duration you cant run away from somehting that pulls you towards it. liek a whirlpool jsut with a blackhol u cant really swim out of a whirlpool while ur trapped in it which is what this does so long as u trapped in it u get pulled towards center.

and i would have to respectfully disagree with that article than chance does plenty for games and i think u beleive the same cause if u truly beleived chance did nothing fo the game the aos would have NO % items (e.g. crits, or the stun, etc) because those all rely on chance. i could use the same hting with asurmen his % to crit doesnt really fit his theme but it fits the skill because the skill is meant to focus on moving in and out of combat but instead of using chance or randmomness u could have jsut done a flat out + damage in melee but u chose to use randomness and chance to better show this and overall improve the quality of the ult

chance in most games does alot for a game its not necessary but it is most deffinitely beneficial. it allows what is otherwise random in life to be shown in soem form using calculations (e.g. a crit representing a storng or lucky hit)

so again that article has no relevance because u use chance plenty of time thorughout ur enitre AoS and if u really agreed with tat article NONE of it would be present

Yeaaaaaah. I feel as if I need to interject at this point.

The randomness of your ult completely makes it ineffective. Why?

It:

creates a rift at target point within 500 range it blinds all enemies in a 600 aoe causing them to miss 20/30/40% of the time the star lasts for 1-6 seconds but then a massive black hole gets pulled through the rift that sucks everything towards its center for 4-8 seconds doing 15/25/35 damage per second.

When an enemy hero sees the blind debuff go up, he's going to run his ass away from the casting point and out of the range of the vortex. Why? Because it's the smart thing to do? In this case, you give them on average 3.5 seconds to run out of the AoE. Perhaps Etheric Tempest can drag them back into range, but it's unlikely if they run far enough. So you've wasted an ult. At least you got a few creep kills.

So what if people predict your skill? With your random version, they don't even need to predict. All they need to do is react accordingly and they will on average get out of range. You don't really have a slow or stun to set it up, even, so how do you expect people not to be stupid? It could be good if it could show the blind debuff without the actual skull and crossbones, but then how would you know he used his ult?

__________________________________________________________________

As for chance. There's two different types of chance. One is calculated chance, where you can estimate and usually have a sense of what will happen due to your chance. This is your crit, blind, evade anything with a FIXED variable or variables.

And then there's pure chance, which is what your skill is. You don't know when it will proc and you really can't control it, so what good is it to you if it's unreliable? This is what Grass meant by a design flaw; when you can't control your own skill, you've made it useless because all skills and spells have their optimal timing and you want to get rid of that for the sake of uniqueness? What's the point of having it then?

__________________________________________________________________

Directed at Kharn.
You seem to have a misconception that Grass is 17 people in one who are able to code and play test every day just so he can test out every whim or unique skill you make up.

No. He's one person. And the reason we have debate on the forums is because we don't have random people who want to code your hero's skill and play test it in the immediate future.

We want to strike a balance between what seems plausible to the hero and what is feasible within the constraints of the code and gameplay. I'd love to test out so many skills with so many heroes. But we're only getting 1 hero per patch every 3-4 weeks, so we as a community have to propose ideas that interest us AND that grass believes he can implement successfully. It is not feasible to use playtesting as the only method that balances skills, because lots of effort goes into coding heroes. IMHO, it would be best if skills is mostly balanced through debate.

Also:

What do you mean by describing him as a beast? When I think of beasts, I think of Carnifex/Asurmen/Lucius/Bloodthirster. Nightbringer is like a ganker/chaser/mage-tank. He has two nukes that do 250+240 each, a type of life steal, evasion, and a really weird ult that's good and bad at the same time.

Numbers can be adjusted, as usual. He can cast some powerful spells and has life steal and evasion to make him survive very well, but I don't see him in a purely offensive role. He's very good at setting up ganks, but he doesn't fit any one role perfectly.

jsut to throw some support to gly...

if you'll notice, whenever i talk about criticals, i always reference the overall %dmg boost, always.

so how would a fixed time solve this dilemma? u bring it up to say that randomness wouldnt be good but a timed and fixed variable would be even easier to avoid so really if you see the blind debuff your oging to run end of sotry thats an obvious so if i made it fixed now they have a set time when they know they can get out of there to the point where they would even abuse it and stay a little logner to get a skill off or whtever

by implementing this randomness i have now gotten rido f that possibility and now they have now way of predicting when and where it will hapenn which can make the ult ALOT more effective or not so effective not useless but not as effecive as it could be

as for what u stated if done right you could quite easily keep them in range with your etheric tempest as theres an 800 range on it and currently no proposed radius for the black hole as to when u start getting sucked to the center

as for your chances i can make mine your % for the blind its roguhly a 17% chance difference between the time so i could easiyl reword it as a 17% to be 1 sec a 17% to be 2 secs etc and now its the same thing u have mentioned it is now calculated and the black hoel has a 20% chacne to be 4 secs 20% to be 5 secs 20% to be 6 secs etc and again now i haev calculated chance so i dont htink uve showed any difference between the two at all because seeing as how it is indeed a computer it is ALL calculated and there is no such thing as true randomness in any program on a computer

as for ur arguemnt saying it has optimal timing it still does u would use it normally at the beggining of a fight or mroe towards the middle because u know the black hole is delayed and thats all u need to know u need to know that it wont be instant therefore you want to time it accordingly in this case i would do it closer to the beg to compensate for it possibly being 6 seconds cause now i have casted it initially and i would wait to use etheric till they have started to run and gotten semi far then i would pull them back

but even further is their an optimal timing for crits? no there isnt because its random u cant time when u get ur crits so u jstu have to hope for the best u might jump at them with asurmen then use blade storm to compensate for not being able to rpredict when ur crits hit so u still timed it properly even not knowing when the crit will go off.

i nevero nce said grass was more then one person but i do know coding and i know that addign randomness will not take that much mroe time then jstu coding a fixed variable jstu instead of palcing that fixed variable u put a few more lines in for the randomness so it will take a little more time then jsut coding a fixed variable for it so dont assume anything (such as me thinking hes more then one person)

if you read grass's arguement was never that it couldnt be implemented hes jsut iffy on the randomness and i am simply saying give the randomness a try before u completely throw it out

and again if u read i said i cant really describe my idea of a beast he is jsut simply a beast a beast is a beast end of story. and to me he is a beast

@grass
and there ya go i alrdy stated how i can reword it to show % if not ill show it again
blind:16.6%-1 sec
16.66%-2 secs
16.66%-3 secs
16.66%-4 secs
16.66%-5 secs
16.66%- 6 secs

blackhole:20%- 4 secs
20%- 5 secs
20%- 6 secs
20%- 7 secs
20%- 8 secs

now i stated the % it will be per interval

A fixed time makes your skills take effect immediately so that you don't need to rely on luck. Luck is a fickle goddess to gamble with. She'll allow you to win, but in those times when you need it the most, she'll let you down.

So why gamble with uncertainty when you can be assured some sort of effect?

By the way. I'm not talking about your blind and black hole induced chances. Those are fine and are set pretty easily. What I'm talking about is the chance you take by making the blind hole last from 1 to 4 seconds and then the black hole from 4-8 seconds. By letting the proc times hang in the middle of nowhere, you can't trust it as a skill to activate when you need to. All you can do is hope for fate to be kind.

When you play a game, you want to make sure that your skills can be trusted upon to do something when you take the effort. For example, if you press a button to fire a fireball, you want that fireball to be fired when you press a button. If it sometimes takes a while to fire that fireball or doesn't fire at all, then it's not very good.

Just my thoughts.

your doing it wrong kharn
(15% to do 3x damage) = good
(15% to do 1x damage, 15% to do 3x damage, 15% to do 6x damage) = bad

i understand your thoughts you want 100% certainity which to me is boring but still ur point is it might not work when there is no chance it wont work it is guaranteed to go off just might not be as long as you want for me this forces the user to implement techniques to make the best of the time alotted. in tohers words by adding this "randomness" i make the user rely more on their play skill then the skill itself which is how i like it alot more then simply relying on the skill. it is guaranteed it will blind and it is guaranteed it will incapacitate your enem for at least 4 secs this forces you to play to the best of your ability for those 4 secs so sa to make the best of the time you are given which in turn i beleive makes it more effective then it could ever hope to be.

and at grass i dont see how more detail is bad but sure. i dont see hwo dispalying the % it will use x interval in explicit detail is considered bad but sure why not

ok, im gona quote this again:
"Randomness, however, does NOTHING for a game's design. Ignoring the possibility of people having oracular powers, there is nothing to do with skill in this. "

and saying 15% for 1x, 3, 6x etc is the same thing as saying "can critical for 1x, 3x, or 6x damage when it triggers"
its the randomness that is bad
again: not the displaying the %'s but having the %'s there in the first place (in other words, no random duration!)

I thought the blind star thing was a random duration between 1 and 4 seconds? Or does the debuff last 4 seconds, and it blinds every second up to 4 seconds?

As for what you said that if they know exactly how long it lasts, they can start running based on it or get a spell off, how is this different than now? If I know it can last up to 4 seconds, I can still get a spell off before running. At worst the debuff lasts all 4 seconds, and at best it lasts 1, meaning I'm probably no longer debuffed after my spell. I mean, if I know it lasts up to 4 seconds, couldn't you just plan to get away the same as if you knew it were going to last 4 seconds?

Also, I was saying that if the duration is random, they can, at worst, suffer the full duration, but in most cases, they get out early, allowing them to get away more often, since they end up drawn towards you less time.
Also, since. as I understand it, it doesn't draw you in right away, this still isn't a hard skill to run from.

@grass
i know your quote grass and again i disagree with it in every aspect and i beleive so do you you are jsut trying to use it as a defense because if u truly took their point you would implement NO randomness of any sorts in ur game meaning nothing with a % and u haev plenty of it so really that quote is irrelveant and extremely false it is opinion based nothing more and in my opinion randomness adds to a game in the articles writer it is bad.

again our opinions differ i feel it is beneficial you feel it is not we have made this abundantly clear and the only attmept to prove me wrong is using your opinion and an opinionated article so i still choose my opinion over that articles

@fromu
its a blind debuff that last from 1-4 secs so long as the stars presetn u r blinded

think about this fromu if yo usee a dog and its guarding somehitn valuable to you and you know you have exactly 4 seconds to get that item and get out you will sue it to your fulelst advantage BUT if all you know is it is going to attack between 1-4 secs now u think more citicalyl and you say to yourself well do i risk staying there longer or do i jstu run and try again later

same principle if you know you have 4 seconds you will use that 4 seconds to run in do what you wanan do run out BUT if all you know is it will be between 1-4 secs then you start to say well do i risk it do i run in and cast a spell or do i just run away if they choose to stay it works advantageously and if they chose to run it works advantageously cause then you sucke them back it and they wasted the time they owulda had to atk running.

so yes you still can get the spell off but now you do not know for sure whether u should or shouldnt now there is a risk invovled in staying where as before there is 100% no risk at all

it takes 1-4 seconds to draw you in then draws you in. as for the other statement it is false if it is random in the purest sense it can be in a computer program there are no "most cases" yet because it has not been implemented even still you could never get a "most cases" number at best you coudl get a very inaccurate average because as i stated it is random so there is an at worst and at best but there is no "most cases".

no, i fully agree with that article, and i dont use random chance just for the sake of having chance. i use calculated chance, not pure random chance.
a crit/bash is calculateable, a random duration is not

and saying its just your opinion completly destroys your entire arguement, because i have articles backing me up, but your dismissing them because "you think their wrong" (opinion)

Betrayer_kharn wrote:
@fromu
its a blind debuff that last from 1-4 secs so long as the stars presetn u r blinded

think about this fromu if yo usee a dog and its guarding somehitn valuable to you and you know you have exactly 4 seconds to get that item and get out you will sue it to your fulelst advantage BUT if all you know is it is going to attack between 1-4 secs now u think more citicalyl and you say to yourself well do i risk staying there longer or do i jstu run and try again later

same principle if you know you have 4 seconds you will use that 4 seconds to run in do what you wanan do run out BUT if all you know is it will be between 1-4 secs then you start to say well do i risk it do i run in and cast a spell or do i just run away if they choose to stay it works advantageously and if they chose to run it works advantageously cause then you sucke them back it and they wasted the time they owulda had to atk running.

so yes you still can get the spell off but now you do not know for sure whether u should or shouldnt now there is a risk invovled in staying where as before there is 100% no risk at all

it takes 1-4 seconds to draw you in then draws you in. as for the other statement it is false if it is random in the purest sense it can be in a computer program there are no "most cases" yet because it has not been implemented even still you could never get a "most cases" number at best you coudl get a very inaccurate average because as i stated it is random so there is an at worst and at best but there is no "most cases".

Okay, thanks for clarifying that.

However, I disagree. The example is flawed, since if the dog attacks on the 3rd second, it isn't the same as your spell ending on the 3rd second. For the spell, if I plan that it will end on the 4th second, and play based on that, I can only be pleasantly surprised, since I will always have planned to be out by the time the black hole starts. If it doesn't last all 4 seconds, it doesn't matter, since that means nothing is happening to me until the 4th second anyway.
Either way, I am safe if I pretend it has no chance. The only person who gets screwed is the guy playing Nightbringer.

Wait... just reread the skill and I'm wondering if I didn't completely misunderstand it. Is the Blind 1-4 seconds, but the Black hole starts when the Blind ends, or is it Blind lasts 1-4 seconds, and Black Hole starts on the 4th sec of the ulti until the 8th (As I read it)?



When I said most cases, I took that in a statistical way. The Blind lasts 1-4 seconds, meaning approximately 1/4 of the time, it will be at full duration. Therefore, most of the time, it won't. Purest sense of random means that in this case, there is more chance of it not being at full duration (1 in 4).

@fromu
yes i beleive you are misunderstanding it the black hole starts immediately after the blind and if it last 8 secs it will last 8 secs not 4 secs cause the blind was 4 it is on its separate duration.

which i again why i stated you can never be safe becuase even if ur in for a second u could get caught in the black hole for at least 4 secs which means now with this randomness you have no way of truly being safe and you start to wonder if u should actually risk it as opposed to it having a set duration that people would abuse to the fullest

and i know what you did but the very fact we made it unpredictable means you cant look at it statiscally just like crits lets say 20% statiscally you could say 1 out of every 5 attacks should crit but we both know you wouldnt base your decision on that becase someone could get what we call "lucky" and crit 5 tiems in a row this completely destroy ur statistic and the fact that it is random (20% to do 2x but 80% to do 1x......)means u cant have a solid statistic on it because it is almost unpredictable.

@grass
lmao grass you say by me stating its my opinoin i destroy your arguement yet you use an artcill to support you that is PURELY opinionated. there are no facts on that article simply the writers opinion that chance ruins the game

and by stating you use chance u stae you dont agree with the article read the intro again it states

Chance, randomness... it's been used a lot in games

its referring to chance in geenral (both calculated and random) u can see this by the comma separating the phrases if it said random chance then it would be discriminating against simply random chance BUT it says chance, randomness referring to both chance and random chance so that article is stating it doesnt agree with chance at all random or calculated

plus i already stated seeign as how it is a computer game ther is NO such thing as "random" even what we call random is still calculated so even foloowing your premises my calculated chance should still be accepted because we use the term "random" to describe it BUT we both know there is no such thing as truen randomness in any computer program it is impossible to achieve in a computer. so we use calculations to simulate random chance but in reality it is still calculated chance.

and as i stated above your crits are jsut as bad 20% to do 2x but 80% to do 1x thats worse then 20%-1x, 20%- 2x, 20%-3x, 20%-4x, 20%-5x if we are to calculate this (by calculations) has a 80% cahnce to do 2x damage or more where has yours has a quarter of that standing at 20% so even calculated my "bad randomness" is calculated to be 60% of the time more effective then ur crit

FINAL
but as i stated i will nto base my entire decision on statistics and calculations because those can be proven wrong time and time again in situation invilving chance calculated or your so called "random" this is why i feel it is not a design flaw cause even following your calculation i have shown that me "random" chance is more effective then ur "calculated" chance a majority of the time more specifically 3/5ths of the time (statiscally speaking seeing as how you are so content on using statistics)

ok, u took the crit the wrong way...

its like the 'spell' deals 2x ur damage, but only happens 15% of the time (critical)

your spell does *random* effects 100% of the time (on cast)
critical does the same effect a % of the time

still the other % of the time it does nothing correct?
so i did it right 15% of the time it does its effect 85% it doesnt

so my "random" is still better in the sense it always does its job 100% of the time jsut with varying time and opposed to only doign its effect 15% of the time and on top of that while it goes off 100% of the time it has an 80% cahcne to do 2x its damage or more as opposed to yours which goes off 15% of the time and does its proper dmage 100% of the time so mine is 20% less damage wise (i honestly think its 100% because even a 4 sec disable is well worth it) but has chacne to become even better where as yours can never improve because as i stated even at 4 secs of disable it is still well worth it and in no sense a waste

ok, lets put this in a different perspective:

if crit were an active skill, it would always deal 2x your adamge when u use it
your spell is an active skill, but it can do varying things when u use it

that is bad design

ok so if you activate your crit it always hit

mine is an active skill and it always blinds and it always creates a blackhole

so even from that perspective it is the same as your crit simply mine has a % chance to be better then what it could be yours has a 0% chance to be better then what it could be

so even going onthat you looked at it from 2 different ersepctives u stated yours wil lalways go off but mine will not when mine will indeed always go off it hasn o chance of failing but after it goes off it has a cahcne to be better sometimes with the blind and almsot always with the black hole (maxed it would probably only be 4-5 seconds anyway since it is an incapacitation)

yes, it does always work... ill give u that... but sometimes it will suck (4 blink, 4 drag) and sometimes it will be amazing (op) (with 1 blind and 8 drag)
that kind of randomness is poor design.

so tell me. is that randomnes there because: 1. you like it? 2. it 'fits the theme of the skill'? or 3. for balance?

2. it fits theme of skill i never said we coudlnt reduce the max if your onyl concern is that at 8 secs it will be op then by all means reduce it but it is a space and tiem rift and even a c'tan cant completely control space and time with 100% predictability

then scrap the random. because making a skill with flawed design just cause it fits a theme is so unessesary