Ooze and Poisoned Blood Discussion

The way I see it is that you could make this a debate about balance or the mechanics of the game working properly.

This could be intended. The people at Gas Powered Games could have looked at their Magical Balance Spreadsheet and said to themselves "Golly... everything seems really balanced except for the poor Unclean Beast. Yeah, he sucks... but what sucks the most about him is his underpowered Ooze ability. What should we do? Oh, I know! We'll make him sometimes die from it and not even give the other demigods assist money who were about to kill him. That will maybe get some people to occasionally play Beast and get this otherwise worthless ability."

Maybe...

But what I really think happened is they gave up on fixing their game. There was an error where sometimes Beast would die from Ooze which wasn't supposed to happen so instead of fixing the problem, they just put in the suicide message and went on to plan SupCom 2.

For some reason, you've dedicated a lot of effort into fixing their game for them. Thank you very very much for that. You've dedicated your efforts entirely to fixing bugs not balancing, and that is good...

But many of your fixes have balance consequences, so I don't think its an issue if the (subject to debate) most powerful demigod gets a nerf from you fixing one of their errors... just because it's one they put a tiny bit of effort into covering up.

-Edited so sound like less of a jerk... but not completely.

Smart one

I can only quote myself from uberfix post

"Sorry to put this thread bit off topic but so far ooze is the only skill that allow to kill yourself and since such option exist I belive that what it was intented by programers.

I do not agree that it dosnt give assist money to whoever was fighting beast before but 'xxx just suicided' in my opinion was made for beast only (since there is no other way to bring your hp below 1 for any other demigods)

Erebus killing himself with his own blood is obvius mistake. However his blood shouldnt heal anyone especially himself.

In my opinion it should give a suicide and assists to whoever he fought."

"Lord Erebus's vampiric blood gains the ability to heal him and poison others."

Based on that description, I thought it made sense if poisoned blood healed Erebus himself but hurt others.

Ooze suicide is a NPE (Negative Playing Expierence). It denies the players who spent the last 30 seconds (and probably multiple sigils) to burn through the 10k hp beast they are trying to kill satisfaction for killing the fucker. Similarly, it reduces the combat for the past 30 seconds to something as pure luck (you got lucky Ooze ticked when it did). NPE's are bad in games and most game designers do not intentionally put in NPEs beacause they don't sell games.

When you are playing UB, you are not rushing suicidally into battle with the hope that you'll get a kill and a suicide. If you were a random person I was playing with, and you told me this was your plan, I would laugh at you and call you terrible names.

Similarly, I'm sure the designers of the game would realize this and not build in a crutch to an already apparently strong demigod.

As Ptarth has noted, the suicide text is generic and is not UB-specific. For this reason, we cannot dismiss "XXX has committed suicide" as something that was intended. If it was intended, we would see a suicide marking for Erebus as well.

The fact that Ooze I properly turns off and doesn't allow you to suicide (unless you Sigil and you are taking Ooze damage as it turns off...) means that the developers are retarded and can't copy-paste code correctly. Ooze should auto turn-off always for all 4 levels of Ooze.

The Poison Blood LE fix is a bit more up-in-the-air because it follows more on balance (making it heal allies is a much larger balance change). I'm inclined to say healing allies is the simplest way to fix it and dealing damage to allies is... out of line since that is the ONLY ability in the game that does so. Plus, Erebus should be immune to his own blood, from a lore/fluff perspective.

The "ideal" fix, in my mind, is that it can only reduce someone to 1 hp, not kill them. It should also not mark them as an Assister if that's at all possible. This removes the potential exploit (farming to artifacts) while disrupting current balance as little as possible: the only time the change would have differing behavior than it does now if is it would KILL you. However, healing allies is more in line with the rest of the demigods and follow their precedent.

For Lord Erebus

* Poisoned Blood potions when consumed by Lord Erebus can kill himself resulting in the message, "Ptarth killed Ptarth."
* Kills made in such a fashion reward the Lord Erebus with gold.
* This results in Lord Erebus being able to farm himself.

Is this intended, if not what would the appropriate fix be?

In my oppinion, the Poisoned Blood potion intentionally gives damage to yourself and your allies and this should stay this way. The Poisoned Blood potion only giving damage to enemies but not allies would be too arbitrary. Changing Poisoned Blood potion so that it only damages enemies would be a balance fix and not a bug fix.

However, suicides through Poisoned Blood potion should obviously not grant any money to yourself. Erebus should still be able to kill himself with it though, to provide a tactical opportunity to reduce the amount of money the enemy receives (Assist instead of Kill) by suiciding, in addition to suiciding by walking into the enemy base and getting killed by towers. There is nothing wrong with that.

For Unclean Beast

* Ooze can under certain circumstances kill the Unclean Beast using it.
* When this event occurs, the message "Ptarth suicided" appears.
* This is a result of Ooze doing damage to the user and then checking to see if health has reached a certain critical value to automatically stop.
* Is this intended, if not what would the appropriate fix be?

This is also intended, imho. The one thing that definitely has to be changed here is, that the enemy gets the Assist properly, unless he does so already? But I am not sure if Ptarth fix is really necessary. On the one hand I think it would of course be less annoying for the other players, if UB was not able to suicide anymore this way (after all, it's a rather easy way to deny the enemy the full amount of money). On the other hand I want the system to stay at it's true form, with the player having to watch out for his Ooze usage.

Btw. I don't understand your reasoning behind this:

re: Poisoned Blood

1. Drink a potion is not a direct effect on a team mate from another.
1. I disagree. If your teammate drops a health potion for you, you gain life.
2. Likewise if your teammate dies and drops a health potion for you, you gain life.
3. I fail to see how this is not a direct effect on your teammates.

A dropped item is an independent entity, which does not care by whom it gets picked up from or by whom it was dropped. It can be picked up by yourself or an ally just as easily as by an enemy. There is no direct connection at all between the person who dropped the item and the person who picked it up. It's completely independent.

Quoting Spooky__,

reply 5

(after all, it's a rather easy way to deny the enemy the full amount of money)

It's easy for you? For me it's either pure luck when it happens in a battle or I'm just dumb and forgot to turn ooze off on the way back to the citadel and sigil wears out then I die.

It is pure luck. Your chance simply depends on the enemy rate of fire. I mean easy as in "you don't actually have anything to do for it" (compared to drinking poisoned blood or walking into enemy towers).

The suicide code is generic to all demigods. It occurs whenever the instigator is the same as the unit that dies. I'm not sure why it doesn't fire when a poisoned blood potion takes effect.

Here is the snippet from conquest.lua that is relevant.

Code: c++
local killAnnouncement = ''
    if hero == hero.KillData.Instigator then
        print(LOCF('<LOC conq_0004>%s just suicided', heroNick))
    elseif instBrain.Conquest then
        if instBrain.Conquest.IsTeamArmy then
            killAnnouncement = (LOCF('<LOC conq_0005>%s killed %s', instBrain.Conquest.TeamName, heroNick))
        elseif instBrain.Conquest.TeamArmy then
            local killer = hero.KillData.Instigator
            local instNick = instBrain.Nickname
            # Calculate the reward here
            local reward = Game.CalculateHeroKillGold(killer, hero)
            reward = reward * (hero.BountyGivenMod or 1) * (killer.BountyRecievedMod or 1)
            instBrain:GiveResource('Gold', reward, 'Bounty')
            # Announce killer and reward
            killAnnouncement = LOCF('<LOC conq_0006>%s killed %s (+%d gold)', instNick, heroNick, reward)
            if killer:GetArmy() == GetFocusArmy() then
                local VOTag = 'KillHero_' .. hero:GetUnitId()
                LOG ( "KILL VO : [".. VOTag .. "]" )
                if killer.Character.CharBP.VO[VOTag] and killer.Character.CharBP.VO[VOTag].Sound then
                    killer:PlaySound(killer.Character.CharBP.VO[VOTag].Sound)
                elseif killer.Character.CharBP.VO['KillHero_Generic'] then
                    killer:PlaySound(killer.Character.CharBP.VO['KillHero_Generic'].Sound)
                end
            end
        end

Looking at the Ooze code, it actually possesses the correct code to kick the Unclean Beast out of Ooze when low on life. There are two problems with it though.

The Ooze exit check takes 1 tick to perform, that means you'll take an extra hit of damage. Combined with taking damage before the last tick, you can then experience the suicide effect.

On the bright side this clears up any debate about the issue, it is obviously a bug. If you want proof but don't want to look at the code yourself, try committing suicide with Ooze 1 (outside of combat). You can't do it. You'll get down to 100 health. The check will kick in and you will end up with around 64 hp. (You can also trigger it when a Sigil of Life wears off.)

For those who are interested in the code, here is the original and below it is my fix for Ooze 4.

Code: c++
    OnAuraPulse = function(self, unit, params)
        if unit.AbilityData.OozeOn then
            Buff.ApplyBuff(unit, 'HEPA01OozeSelf04', unit)
            if unit:GetHealth() < 100 then
                local params = { AbilityName = 'HEPA01OozeOff'}
                Abil.HandleAbility(unit, params)
            end
        end
    end,

Code: c++
    OnAuraPulse = function(self, unit, params)
        if unit.AbilityData.OozeOn then
            if unit:GetHealth() < 100 then
                local params = { AbilityName = 'HEPA01OozeOff'}
                Abil.HandleAbility(unit, params)
            else
                Buff.ApplyBuff(unit, 'HEPA01OozeSelf04', unit)
            end
        end
    end,

As you can see, I essentially made one change. I moved the Buff.ApplyBuff (which causes the damage) down and inside the if statement. If the Unclean Beast fails the health check, then and only then is the Buff.ApplyBuff ran. In contrast in the original version the check was made AFTER that Buff was applied. This is what caused the 1 extra tick effect to occur.

On the bright side this clears up any debate about the issue, it is obviously a bug.

Indeed

.

I know, I know. Apparently things that are blatantly obvious to us poor code monkeys aren't so much.

While discussing Ooze I code vs Ooze 2-4, I would point out that I've brought up the ridiculous silliness of Soul Power 1 (80 points of damage) vs Soul Power II and III (100, and 120 damage respectively) and this was ruled a balance fix, and that we could not know is this was GPG's actual intent without their confirmation. Let's remain consistent across the board. It could be just as easy to say Ooze I was meant to be safe so you can use it as a spare pick up point, but the higher versions of Ooze are meant to be more risky. Or it could be just as easy to say they decided after testing that Ooze should kill you, and forgot to make the change to ooze I.

Below is why I believe the current fixes for Ooze and Poison Blood are balance changes and not bug fixes, but I want to also acknowledge there is a problem with them. They should be fixed to work with the consistency and gameplay mechanics of the other ways in the game to avoid the killing blow of an enemy demigod.

UB suicide is intended as a game mechanic as it is implemented as such in the game. The unfortunate side effect is that UB can escape giving up a kill if his Ooze happens to be the damage effect that kills him.

The proper way to handle this would be the way every other death works in this game, with the exception of awarding a kill to UB. So, any opposing DGs who qualify for an assist when UB suicides himself should in fact get such a reward. Much like what happens when you attempt to save a kill by committing suicide yourself into damage not originating from an opposing DemiGod. (such as a tower or creep)

Poison Blood is originally intended as a game mechanic to not only to damage enemy units, but to ensure proper balance is maintained for giving LE a higher regeneration rate (15 per second is on the high end when looking at how GPG implements regen on items). Tactically speaking, it also gives LE the option of not leaving a potential 3000HP healing potion laying around to be used at a later date against him. Considering his skills are well suited for striking behind enemy lines, one could also argue this is an intentional game design decision. The unfortunate side effect is that LE can kill himself and be awarded a kill bonus in this manner, which is clearly not intended. It should be handled in the same manner as any other deliberate attempt to escape giving up a kill from a non-demigod source. LE dies, is not awarded a kill for himself, and appropriate awards for assists are given out. As for damaging team mates, this is clearly intended as it is described this way in the skill description. One could also argue that it is a "flavor" for the forces of darkness, in that a selfish and uncooperative vampire lord would gladly see a teammate die for his own gain.

So, Team mates should be able to die from friendly LE poison blood potion and LE should be awarded a kill for that effort. Although there is a gold benefit, there is also a penalty in that your teammate is out of commission for several seconds which is more undesirable then free gold later in the game.

On the topic of "why does LE's poison blood not trigger a suicide?" I would check if Poison Blood is damage, or a negative heal.

UB suicide is intended as a game mechanic as it is implemented as such in the game.

Ptarth just confirmed, that it is not intended as a game mechanic

.

But I still agree with you on the Poison Blood. Only the self-kill award has to be fixed, nothing else (although with proper Assist kills from Demigods that might have hurt the Demigod that died from a Poison Blood).

I think the ooze should stay the way it was. I do not use the uber fix because I think the UB's ooze was ment to be like that and I agree with it.

However I can not stand to read some of these posts because there to long... so this is all I am going to say about it.

The End.

So, I can see a suicide taking the KILL as a tower or something, but why should that be the only way to die without an assist possible?

I would say poison blood should hurt everyone but le, why does le blood hurt himself in the first place? Then I would need to bring up the logic behind biting a suit of armor or a walking castle and taking blood out.

why does le blood hurt himself in the first place

Because when he respawns, his physical body is a different entitiy now, incompatible with the blood he left behind in his previous incarnation and thus poisonous to himself too

Smart idea to create a thread for this, ptarth - this is what, the 3rd time someone got the debate sparked up again in the uberfix thread

re: ooze suicide:

Ptarth just confirmed, that it is not intended as a game mechanic

People will still disagree though. I think Ptarth's logic is sound on this... would could try harassing frogboy to get an official answer (though I'd like to point out that we did that on tb's attack/move bug, gpg told him tb was working as designed... but they fixed his attack move all the same).

Here was my response from the uberfix this...

Ptarth said:

Looking at the Ooze code, it actually possesses the correct code to kick the Unclean Beast out of Ooze when low on life. There are two problems with it though.

The Ooze exit check takes 1 tick to perform, that means you'll take an extra hit of damage. Combined with taking damage before the last tick, you can then experience the suicide effect.
Like Mist Form, the ability exit check has a hardcoded cutoffs. Also like Mist Form the cost of the ability was changed, but check was not updated to reflect this change.

On the bright side this clears up any debate about the issue, it is obviously a bug. If you want proof but don't want to look at the code yourself, try committing suicide with Ooze 1 (outside of combat). You can't do it. You'll get down to 100 health. The check will kick in and you will end up with around 64 hp.

so the bottom line is that the code to have it turn off on low health is in there (its clearly designed that way), but it wasn't implemented correctly, so a bugfix was required. If the code to turn off ooze was absent, then it would be a matter of debate as to what the dev's intent was (was it just an oversight or did they mean to allow for ub suicides as an escape). But the code is there, it just doesn't work right without a fix.

From a viable strategy point, using any character, if I go for a kill, say, in a group of enemy towers and pull it off, but then find myself killed by "forces of darkness/light," its not that bad a thing as I got the full money for a kill and the other team got squat (or at best, an assist) as the "forces of darkness/light" got 0 gold for the kill. It's a reasonable strategy (in certain situations) to let a tower kill you to avoid giving someone on the other team a kill. Anyway, this option is available to all dgs.

Onto the beast - as it stands, the UB can take it a step further by trying to use the method I described or simply by engaging in combat with anyone. A ub can run up and engage an opponent with ooze enabled. In order for the ub to suicide, all that needs to happen is for the person that is fighting him is to drop him to around <100 hp or so. There aren't many scenarios where a ub will get dropped right down to that threshold of <100 hp with the exception of intense combat. At which point, I'd argue that because the odds that you'll hit <100 hp on a ub and get the "commit suicide" screen are extremely low, its not a viable strategy at all to be willing to have the ub on your team pull that.

Also, let's talk about committing suicide in dg. The code in the game (not talking about uberfix) does turn off the ooze at <100 hp. In short, if you aren't in combat, its impossible to trigger a suicide with ub (with the 1 exception of the hp flag changing hands). And suicide is the taking of one's own life, yes? So, as the game is coded its impossible to kill yourself without someone/something assisting. I'd argue that the mere fact that ooze turns off should make it clear that it is not designed to kill the UB. Otherwise there would be no point in having that code at all.

edit - and I'd add, its not that game breaking or even much of a nerf. The ub is hardly a weak dg and this simply gave players an extremely low % chance (1-3% I'd guess) of "committing suicide" when in reality, 1 additional auto-attack from any dg would have killed him (as his hp has be below 100). And again, the odds of someone pulling this off as a strategy are extremely low - meaning, its just dumb luck if a player "commits suicide" by taking damage in a fight.

Quoting Spooky__,

reply 18

why does le blood hurt himself in the first placeBecause when he respawns, his physical body is a different entitiy now, incompatible with the blood he left behind in his previous incarnation and thus poisonous to himself too

I CALL BS!

Quoting pacov,

reply 19

Smart idea to create a thread for this, ptarth - this is what, the 3rd time someone got the debate sparked up again in the uberfix thread

re: ooze suicide:

Ptarth just confirmed, that it is not intended as a game mechanic
People will still disagree though. I think Ptarth's logic is sound on this... would could try harassing frogboy to get an official answer (though I'd like to point out that we did that on tb's attack/move bug, gpg told him tb was working as designed... but they fixed his attack move all the same).

Here was my response from the uberfix this...

Ptarth said:

Looking at the Ooze code, it actually possesses the correct code to kick the Unclean Beast out of Ooze when low on life. There are two problems with it though.

The Ooze exit check takes 1 tick to perform, that means you'll take an extra hit of damage. Combined with taking damage before the last tick, you can then experience the suicide effect.
Like Mist Form, the ability exit check has a hardcoded cutoffs. Also like Mist Form the cost of the ability was changed, but check was not updated to reflect this change.

On the bright side this clears up any debate about the issue, it is obviously a bug. If you want proof but don't want to look at the code yourself, try committing suicide with Ooze 1 (outside of combat). You can't do it. You'll get down to 100 health. The check will kick in and you will end up with around 64 hp.

so the bottom line is that the code to have it turn off on low health is in there (its clearly designed that way), but it wasn't implemented correctly, so a bugfix was required. If the code to turn off ooze was absent, then it would be a matter of debate as to what the dev's intent was (was it just an oversight or did they mean to allow for ub suicides as an escape). But the code is there, it just doesn't work right without a fix.

From a viable strategy point, using any character, if I go for a kill, say, in a group of enemy towers and pull it off, but then find myself killed by "forces of darkness/light," its not that bad a thing as I got the full money for a kill and the other team got squat (or at best, an assist) as the "forces of darkness/light" got 0 gold for the kill. It's a reasonable strategy (in certain situations) to let a tower kill you to avoid giving someone on the other team a kill. Anyway, this option is available to all dgs.

Onto the beast - as it stands, the UB can take it a step further by trying to use the method I described or simply by engaging in combat with anyone. A ub can run up and engage an opponent with ooze enabled. In order for the ub to suicide, all that needs to happen is for the person that is fighting him is to drop him to around <100 hp or so. There aren't many scenarios where a ub will get dropped right down to that threshold of <100 hp with the exception of intense combat. At which point, I'd argue that because the odds that you'll hit <100 hp on a ub and get the "commit suicide" screen are extremely low, its not a viable strategy at all to be willing to have the ub on your team pull that.

Also, let's talk about committing suicide in dg. The code in the game (not talking about uberfix) does turn off the ooze at <100 hp. In short, if you aren't in combat, its impossible to trigger a suicide with ub (with the 1 exception of the hp flag changing hands). And suicide is the taking of one's own life, yes? So, as the game is coded its impossible to kill yourself without someone/something assisting. I'd argue that the mere fact that ooze turns off should make it clear that it is not designed to kill the UB. Otherwise there would be no point in having that code at all.

edit - and I'd add, its not that game breaking or even much of a nerf. The ub is hardly a weak dg and this simply gave players an extremely low % chance (1-3% I'd guess) of "committing suicide" when in reality, 1 additional auto-attack from any dg would have killed him (as his hp has be below 100). And again, the odds of someone pulling this off as a strategy are extremely low - meaning, its just dumb luck if a player "commits suicide" by taking damage in a fight.

Except when you are being pursued nearing the end of a sigil, it happens almost every time when the sigil wears off. This is the strategy I am trying to preserve, since UB is designed to expose himself in combat.

eg: Sigil, get the kill, run, suicide rather then give up an immanent kill.

Fair that you don't give up an assist? No. Fair that you can kill yourself this way? Hell yes, UB is very Nerconomicon like, and that is full of, I'd rather die and be reborn then let you kill me, kinda stuff.

Just a few observations.

Lay off knocking GPG. They did have to rush things with Demigod on a reduced staff, but insulting their competency is uncalled for. Also, if you want them to help us make an official patch, starting off by saying, "So, you guys suck, but do this for me" isn't the way to go.
I'm trying not to comment all that much to maintain some level of impartiality. If you want a response from me, please indicate so.
I copied and paste most of the previous text from the UberFix thread. Some information may be slightly inaccurate, but on the whole it is pretty good.
It might be helpful for people to describe what evidence would be necessary to prove themselves wrong and what evidence that they would accept for another's claim to be valid.
Try to avoid using GPG's intention for an ability. Without documentation it is hard to say what was intended. From my conversations with Sorian and from Frogboy's posts, I've come to the conclusion that most of the original design documentation has either be lost or was in the minds of people no longer associated with the project.
Re:Spooky post #6 I believe the confusion lies within a semantic problem with LO and I. However, to my recollection death potions are available to your allies for a few seconds before they are available to your enemies.

Orion, this is not a strategy.

What next? Are you going to say that the Forces of Light Control the Map invalid gamestate bug that Ptarth found is actually a valid strategy that GPG put in the game? Should he not fix that? Is getting Orb of Defiance for Occulus a good strategy that he shouldn't mess with by giving Occ a stone animation?

I could go on and on. In this case, it's my opinion that GPG felt it was easier to put in the suicide mechanic because it was easier than making sure that the "Ooze Safety" worked as it was intended.

Quoting Thundercles,

reply 23

Orion, this is not a strategy.

What next? Are you going to say that the Forces of Light Control the Map invalid gamestate bug that Ptarth found is actually a valid strategy that GPG put in the game? Should he not fix that? Is getting Orb of Defiance for Occulus a good strategy that he shouldn't mess with by giving Occ a stone animation?

I could go on and on. In this case, it's my opinion that GPG felt it was easier to put in the suicide mechanic because it was easier than making sure that the "Ooze Safety" worked as it was intended.

Except that keeping it in gives you more options. Removing it gives you less options. Why do that?

I would say making Poisoned Blood healing allies improves the viability of the skill more than the possibility of farming yourself to death...

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