Back to Basics!
Posted by Oreg
[Sun Sep 5 04:15:15 2021]
As a consumate typoist I cannot expound sufficiently about my annoyance with Cheer and Cheer-Up. I've just finished recoding squire and I still can't reliably remember which skill buffed which stats or for how long. Squire also happens to be oppresively good in too many situations despite of being stunningly tedious.
Since no one stopped me(or particularly disagreed), I assaulted my fellow wizards with a long series of ideas on how to improve the "Squire Experience". The result is Squire losing a number of skills that not only overlapped in status, but had obnoxiously confusing names. This reduces the number of skills you have to keep track of, and gave us some creative room to add some much needed interaction.
Cheer-Up and Yell have died in a fire. They made me feel dumb, and now they are dead.
A new passive skill, Incite, will greatly improve the quality of Cheer by granting increased duration and a more potent buff to Attack, Defense and Mdefense.
After learning Battle Cry, a second new passive skill, Reflex will not only grant improved evasion but will also grant a significant bonus to agility for the Squire's party.
Heal was a silly name for an ability, so it's been renamed Purge to better fit its effect. The passive skill Self-Healing will upgrade Purge, cleansing the player of most negative ailments every few rounds for a short duration.
Scream no longer increases agility, but retains it's bonus to strength. Additionally it now bestows both Dragon Force and Mighty Guard buffs. Overall this improved the quality of the buff while also preventing it from stacking with nearly identicle buffs.
Accumulate received a massive increase to its duration, and became the focal point for Squire's new mechanic. Accumulate and Scream will improve the damage of Throw Stone or Dash on each use, while Cheer and Reflex only have a random chance to grant this improvement. The bonus stacks up to five times for each skill independantly, and the damage modifier is exponential.
To summarize Squire now only has four buffing skills (Accumulate, Cheer, Reflex, and Scream), gained a better version of Heal, which is now called Purge, and can occasionally throw a rock like an anime baseball player. Squire should maintain its position as a powerful support job, while not being nearly as tedious to utilitize.
A massive shoutout to No for enduring some of my more...interesting ideas, while providing better alternatives. Rynn for catching a shameful number of grammar and typo errors, and Meow, who did the lion's share of work (pun intended) reinforcing some of my code, and cleaning sneaky typos.
As Squire is so widely used and appreciated none of these changes were taken lightly, and this project has been in the works for a couple months. So, if there are any mistakes blame Krugen for doing nothing, then send us a bug report.
P.S. As is tradition for major overhauls, everyone's Squire ap has been refunded.


Changes to PK
Posted by Rynn
[Tue Aug 17 16:39:15 2021]
Since we changed the benefits for PKing years ago, it doesn't make sense to make people permanently PK on. You can now turn PK on and off almost at will. Once you have turned PK on or off, there is a 1 hour cooldown before you can go back.


Job View Innate Abilities
Posted by Rynn
[Fri Jun 25 13:07:02 2021]
The 'job view' command will now show if a job has any innate abilities.


Mec: Addendum
Posted by Rynn
[Fri Jun 18 02:08:36 2021]
Also, Self-Repair will now heal Feedback damage 3 rounds after taking the damage.


Adjustments to Mec
Posted by Rynn
[Fri Jun 18 02:07:06 2021]
The Mec job available to Cyborgs (and Randomizers) has undergone some significant adjustments. Over the past few years, we have found that Mec's adherence to job level requirements has caused nearly all Cyborgs to use only the Mec job while playing the race. Some of us found this to be frustrating, as everyone using a single job destroyed the unique traits of the race. To mitigate this, Mec abilities now require player levels instead of job levels to unlock abilities. The level at which abilities unlock in Mec now are roughly equivalent to the player level they would obtain them previously, so most people should not notice a huge difference.
In addition to this change, the "Variable" abilities in Mec have been adjusted to be called "Feedback" abilities. Instead of using your highest attack stat, these abilities are now based on your Vit. Crush and Compress remain unchanged. Mec also now has 4 new passive abilities, meaning you don't have to save all your AP for Cosmic Rave or Shoot-All anymore. Lastly, Maxwell Program now grants you Magic Attack in addition to MP Regen, making it a more appealing choice for Magic Attack cyborgs than before.
Thanks to almost all the wizards for input on how to balance these changes and QC.