This reboot:

• Hunger and thirst have been removed
• Hunger and thirst related spells have been removed
• Penalties for being hungry or thirst have been removed

• Quaffing potions now uses one fullness

• Severed legs now have proper aliases

• Improved messages for guildmaster

• Improved message for donating a nodonate object

• Improved message for failing to steal

• Energy gun special effects now work

• Invisibility to undead now shows on affect list

• Synth & Azi :

So for those of us who have purchased nohunger and nothirst, shouldn't we get a reimbursement of lifepoints (approx 10 for each). We spent 20 lifepoints to gain these abilities just to have them taken away from us. Almost all of my gen 10s have both of these abilities.

Why was this removed anyway? The option, in exchange for lifepoints, to be able to eat as many align changers as you wanted is very useful.

By the way, I've been too stuffed to eat for about 30 minutes now. I don't know if that's broken…

Most players said that being hungry/thirsty and having to eat, for example eat waybread and drink water, didn't add anything fun to the game. We tended to agree. Newbies found it pretty terrifying as well, and it was spammy. The hunger system still exists but now there are no negatives for being hungry. Nohunger and nothirst were removed as a consequence, but unfortunately it wasn't possible to track who had what and provide reimbursement. Most characters can remort if the lifepoint loss is bothersome.

As you saw, there is an issue with hunger calculation for those who are poisoned – expect a fix soon.

If alignment is a problem, I would tend to want to handle that as a separate topic (alignment) than this topic (food).

If you are going to "fix" things, then fix them. Stop ruining things. Now I can't change my alignment while I'm not using fire breathing because it's useless. Cut to the chase and just take out combat altogether. We'll just sit and chat about knitting. Save us all the time and frustration.

There was nothing wrong with hunger in the first place. You could not be full, and not regen as much per tick or whatever. You could be full all the time and regen more stuff per tick. If the spam was the problem, just take the spam out. Adding a "binge and purge" skill makes more sense than just taking hunger out.

Is this about alignment fixers or are you genuinely annoyed that you no longer have to eat bread every minute?

I think majority of us are annoyed at changes that weren't broken to begin with. Newbies distracted by the nonstop hunger and thirst messages? Just remove the messages. There weren't much, or any (as far as I know) penalization for being hungry or thirsty anyway. Why remove !hunger and !thirst? Sometimes I kill 50 mobs at once and instantly change my align by 500 at a time. I don't have time to wait around to become hungry again to fix it. It was never broken in the first place. I paid 20 life points to gain those abilities and they were swiped from me like I was a toddler in possession of favorite candy.

This change (along with fire breath) has severely reduced my actions per minute, and any true gamer knows there is nothing good that comes from less actions per minute.

A potential remedy is that alignment wouldn't change, but would be set when you create your character, like race or class. After all, it's a critical part of defining your character. I would suspect that most do not change a character's alignment, but I don't want to test that assumption with a live change. That's a pretty involved change, though, and not one we'd want to make without player feedback. The problem, as you mentioned, is that alignment does swing rather significantly as you lay waste to foes before you. It shouldn't require nohunger and clan access to "align fixers" to handle alignment. An alternate change that was discussed would be to reduce the impact of kills on alignment, while keeping the align fixers and potions available, and of course there are the pools in the world which modify alignment.

All that I'm saying is that removing !hunger and !thirst was not necessary, and it did not help or hurt anyone. I don't see what it "fixed". I understand, even though I dislike, that fire breathing was altered, due to the fact that it was "never intended" to be that way. However, I do not see a valid point in removing said abilities from the game. Remove the messages, fix the disadvantages of being hungry/thirst, but don't remove special abilities that players purchased, optionally, with lifepoints. Lifepoints are precious to a gen 10…I am all for min/maxing, meaning if I die or forget to change to leveling gear before leveling even once, it means I remort again. It's easy to say that a solution for the loss of lifepoints is to just remort again, but given my special circumstances, I am (and most other people) are at a lose/lose situation. Even given the option, would we be reimbursed for the 50 million coins required to remort? 20 lifepoints, based on the today's market value for ambrosias, is worth approximately 250 mil. Making the gold is easy – finding someone to sell you the ambrosias is a different ballgame.

There was nothing wrong with the way alignment worked. You are now trying to find a workaround for fixing something that you broke that was just fine to begin with. Stop "fixing" things that are not broken.

When you make a change and most, if not all, of the most experienced players on the game tell you that the change hurt the game, that it reduced the fun and playability without adding anything, then you should listen. To shrug that off is insulting.

Any idiot can fix bugs. It takes half a brain and some common sense to realize when "fixing" a bug is bad for the game. When changing something that is fundamental causes problems, detracts from the game, is annoying, or doesn't add anything to the mud, why do it? If you realize this afterward, why not put it back the way it was?

Coming up with more ways to fix things that aren't broken to fix the other things that weren't broken that now are is dumb. There is a reason why these forums exist. User feedback is important. Try listening for a change.

I'm not sure I can say it better than Wrath. Also - "Is this about alignment fixers or are you genuinely annoyed that you no longer have to eat bread every minute?" - Did you really just miss the entire point here? You didn't have to eat a damn thing if you didn't want to, and if you want to spend the money for food and be full all the time you get a bonus, there was nothing wrong with that. If spam was the problem, don't let newbies see it, take it out, experienced people can gag it, whatever. The shit you are doing is not logical and seems like you are just hell-bent on pissing everyone off.

We purposely changed the hunger mechanism. We never said this was fixing something. If alignment weren't a problem, would you feel it is still a bad change? Our goal here is to make this more fun for newbies and veterans. Do you really prefer to eat align fixers vs. have alignment have a tenth of the impact it does today? The problem is that non-clammed do not have access to such items, so we prefer not to balance around them.

Senseless "fixes" are gonna do more damage then they are going to help. Hunger/thirst was far from the problem with newbies. I've never once seen a new player quit due to hunger pains. They quit because beating on a mob for 30 minutes and dying first gets old real fast. Wish is busting his ass to fix that problem. So for now I'll just sit back and wait for the next unneeded change or "fix" to come in. Mabye give monks behead waitstate for hip toss and palm strike. I hear they attack to fast

You're correct that newbies do not quit because of hunger/thirst. The most common problem with newbies is that they check the who list and find it short, so they quit. We know because we log newbie commands. Attrition after the first few commands is up for discussion, but typically has to do with not being able to kill the mobs sufficiently in the newbie area. We (coders) have a desire to make sure each class has some core "defining" abilities early on. Psionicists and psiblast at level 1 is a perfect example. I can't speak for the world team, including Wish, but they are working on improving the newbie area to better capture new players. As for existing zones, you might want to start a thread on realms if you have an issue with the damage output. The coders implemented a zone-wide damage flag that builders can choose to use for zones, or they can tune and adjust as they always have, but they might not know what you see as a problem if you don't post regarding it. But I can't fix mobs hitting too hard, as I'm not a world guy.

You mentioned unneeded changes. To make this a productive conversation, please share what you think is a needed change. This would make it a positive discussion which moves the topic forward. Is there something that you think would make the game more fun for existing players or help retain new ones?

We could improve classes by expanding remort skills and balancing their distribution. Thief for example has two remort skills total.

Bard seems to be a well designed class. From reviewing the realm boards, it looks like bard was an original class built ground up for tempus and not part of the original diku/circle mud.

I agree that the empty who list is a big part of new players leaving. At the same time, if my new character was able to kick butt i wouldn't mond having the whole mud to myself.

I would love to play a thief, but when I tried, they were just too outclassed and died too easily, compared to better available classes.

"To make this a productive conversation, please share what you think is a needed change."

Seriously? Do you have a cognitive disorder, or are you so remarkably pretentious that you genuinely cannot understand what we have been saying? The non-productive aspect of this entire situation is that you are not listening. Stop using that phrase to attempt to assuage your guilt. Take some responsibility.

Stop fixing (changing, modifying, improving, and whatever other synonyms you have for them so you can't continue to deflect the meaning with arguments over word usage) things that are not broken (are working fine, not a problem, and all other words similar). This has been said before. I don't know how to state it more simply so that you can understand.

Put said things back the way they were. Fire breathing and hunger/thirst specifically. Stop continuing to ruin things trying to "fix" the original ruination. Specifically: leave alignment alone. Don't touch anything else like this. Instead try adding something new to somewhere that actually needs it. If you don't know where, ask for help.

"I can't speak for the world team, including Wish", then don't. How did that even come up? The world had nothing to do with anything. You twisted the hunger/thirst thing and diverted blame somewhere else. YOU are the problem. Let me state that again in case you missed it. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

"This would make it a positive discussion which moves the topic forward." The most important piece of this puzzle is for you to get your head out of your ass. You're not impressing anybody.

Once again Wrath nails it. You say you want player feedback, and then totally ignore everything the players that play the most say. You're just trying to troll everyone while make the game worse, and you know it. You regularly type a lot of words which mean very little, and just dodge the question and change the subject, textbook fallacies. You purposely provide the polar opposite of a "productive conversation".

re: world team comment, Bushido brought it up. Mob damage is a world, not code, issue.

Fire breathing does more damage per second than prismatic spray at one fifth the mana cost with just a .5 second waitstate. There were a few issues getting it to work right at first, and we may make changes so stuff doesn't get half implemented like that again. But is there something wrong with the ability? I can try to compare against an old release, but I believe even with waitstate it does more damage than ever before. What's bad about that change?

The change to firebreathing reduces the effective actions per minute and game play of the mage. Even if it is a half second wait state, it disrupts the use of the skill.

It just isn't fun or useful to use now.

If a change does not make things more fun or useful, then it probably needs to be reverted.

"But is there something wrong with the ability?"

You think maybe? Perhaps the spell is now worthless, hence all the chatter about it. Maybe we've said that repeatedly and at length and somehow you have completely missed it?

Your math is flawed, as is your comparison. Don't bother giving me the numbers. Make a mage and actually test it. Make a mage and use it for a few years like the rest of us, then switch it to your version and you will see how worthless it has become.

To someone who does not have/use a Mage and has never used fire breath, you will not know how much less effective fire breath has become. It is not about the math, because any one can add up numbers.

Think about as a boxing match. If you land 12 punches to your opponent's face in the first minute of round one, it's going to do much more damage than landing 1 punch per each of the 12 rounds. The first example is how fire breath was, and the latter is how it is now.

The addition of wait state to the spell, which has a direct correlation with the victim's recovery time, is the main reason why the spell has lost its use.

Red is totally right. I don't recall seeing all the mages you have played but I know that Wrath, Red, and myself, all have at least two. So you are going to completely fuck firebreath up, and then tell us how it's better now? You endlessly repeat how much less mana it is, so now you're concerned about our mana? We are gen 10 mages, we have a lot of mana. Since you don't play a mage, or play much at all, what is your motivation for making these insanely fucked up changes? We all told you that you made firebreath worthless, which you did, and then you tell us how much better it is. So once again, the guy who doesn't play a mage, is telling all the mages how much better firebreath is while not listening to any of the actual mages that play. That really makes me question why you are making these changes. Why don't you stop taking your personal bullshit out on us and actually fix shit that needs fixing. You are regressing to a huge fucking baby playing last get-backs, when you should actually be helping the game. If you don't want to help the game, that's fine, go knit. To reiterate, you change stuff, say you want player feedback, then don't listen to the players when they give feedback, which makes you completely full of shit.

For those of you who aren't banned, if you want to get banned, this is how you get banned. There's a line where you're not speaking truth to power, you're just being an asshole to volunteers.

This is mostly directed to Azimuth and in response to him.

First thanks for that vote that we are speaking the truth about what a baby Merriam is. This is a personal vendetta of his. We know it, he knows it, and you know it. Why you allow it to continue is beyond me.

We are ALL volunteers on Tempus. We may not all spend our time fixing things that aren't broken, but we also put in a lot of time. Whether it is helping newbies, helping to build and proof zones, or giving feedback, we ALL contribute. Regardless of our personal reasons, we all think highly of Tempus and only want to see it improve.

We started the conversation politely, but we were basically told we were too stupid to do arithmetic. We were insulted on multiple levels by that fool, and therefore we responded in kind. The conversation devolved into a childish spat because that is where Merriam directed it. He is every bit as much to blame as we are.

Regardless of how omniscient he thinks he is, the fact simply is that he lacks even a fraction of the experience necessary to know how something like fire breathing works for a mage, and how changes like the ones he made would affect gameplay. With all the feedback from those who actually do have the necessary experience, a mature adult would have accepted his folly and learned from the experience. These things have happened in the past, and luckily we have had coders that were mature enough to accept their mistakes, and to correct them. When everybody is saying "hey there is a problem" only a fool ignores them.

Instead with Merriam, we get told that we are stupid because the spell is now much more powerful and we just can't wrap our dumbness around that. We go on at length about the problems, then we are greeted with a post that says "is there something wrong with the ability?" as if we are somehow failing to grasp with our ant brains his awe-inspiring posts. Oh, and the big one, that what we are saying isn't worthwhile, that our complaints are "unproductive".

We're not asking for quad damage swords here. We have also argued points on the other side when things were moved along to the other side of the scale. We have experience and would like the game to work as well as possible. This isn't something that was breaking the mud. Instead of receiving this feedback with an open mind, we got told we just don't understand what the problem was. Well, I can assure you, we know exactly what the problem is.

Merriam is pissing EVERYBODY off with this crap. This is no mystery to you. While I admire his enthusiasm, and appreciate the time he spends, these things do not justify his bullshit. These things need to be said, and banning people for saying them isn't the solution. We tried the polite way and were thoroughly ignored.

Things got heated because we weren't being taken seriously. Still aren't. Fire breathing is still useless. EVERYONE who has spent time on a mage agrees. Just put it back the way it was, learn from this, and move on.

How did it get like this?

Obviously because you stopped playing.

Sure, I'll revert the change. Just as soon as you convince me that it isn't, in fact, a quad damage sword, as you say. So far, I've mostly seen comments about how removing it has ruined everything, and all the fun has drained from Tempus. There's been no refutation at all of the evidence showing it to be massively overpowered.

Read the policy again. Polite public behavior between imms and players is a condition of both playing here and working here. I have both fired imms and banished players for violating this contract. If you feel like you're not being heard, you can mail me personally and I promise I'll give a response.

So I have to provide proof that a spell that has been a part of the game for years, is suddenly not a quad damage sword, even though nothing has changed (until it was scrapped).

"There's been no refutation at all of the evidence showing it to be massively overpowered."

Beyond Merriam's vendetta against all things mage, I haven't seen any evidence that it was overpowered. Where was that? I must have missed it with my ant brain. All I saw was conjecture and assumptions along the lines of "it was never intended to be that way". Let's address that then.

A few likely scenarios for that: Either the person made the change for the spell to also be a PC spell, and then quit Tempus altogether, hence unable to see the drastic overpoweredlyness of it. Maybe he made the change, realized how crazy powerful it was, breaking the mud and all that, but then just couldn't figure out how to add that single line of code for a wait state. Then subsequent coders, also overwhelmed by the logistics of that one line of code, left it as is for years, until our lord and savior Merriam came along and solved the conundrum. Or, and here's my vote for most likely, he put it in, realized that there wasn't a wait state, but because it wasn't overpowered and everybody was having a blast using it he said to himself, "This is an addition to the mud that actually adds fun instead of just pissing everybody off", and left it the way it was.

Without seeing all this "evidence" about how overpowered it is, it's hard to refute it. I can tell you that I don't hear a bunch of people complaining about how they keep getting one-shot PK'd by fire breathing. I don't see anybody abusing it to spam level himself, which would be perfectly legal anyway. Maybe fire breathing is doubling our hit, mana, and move points, and that's why it is so powerful. If the version now is "more powerful" than the last, then how the FUCK was the old version overpowered? You're just being a dick now. Do you two take turns sticking your heads up the other's ass? Or do you stick to just cramming up your own?

The fact is Merriam has a beef with mages. Can you blame him? Look at the who list and all you see are mages. They are the ONE fun, playable class. It makes no sense to NOT destroy them. I mean c'mon, what else can you do? Make the other classes playable and fun? Then we'd have all kinds of people actually playing the mud, and we can't have that.

A parting thought. Let the record show that abusing bugs and cheating is perfectly fine on Tempus even though it is explicitly stated on the policy to be illegal. Doing either, or both, of these things merits ZERO repercussions. Starting a polite conversation, then getting mocked at and disrespected by an Imm, and then returning fire, will get you BANNED from the game. Cheat, abuse bugs, harass, do whatever you want, but whatever you do don't complain about the coders making mistakes. They are infallible, all-knowing little bitches.

I like firebreathing. When I was leveling up, I really did not use it. As i learned more about Tempus, it became one of my favorite spells, because it is an excellent way yo start combat.

I am not quite sure how it has developed a reputation of being over powered, or mage being over powered. I do feel mage is highly convenient for living in the world of Tempus and has a lot of positive advantaged.

As a casual player that is not as knowledgable as other players, I did not really utilize firebreath as much as I could. The way it was did not give my character an unfair advantage compared to psiblast, wrench, or scream.

To make things more clear, what is mage or firebreath being compared to that makes it look overpowered? It definitely is not a quad damage sword.

It could be that other classes are seriously underpowered, as seen with the large difference in remort skills across classes.

I enjoy and decided to be mage because it offered me the highest reward for putting years into being gen 10. That was the ability to utilize skills and spells to destroy as many mobs in the shortest amount of time possible.

I like tempus's combat system because i can quickly run a zone with my mage and clear it fast. That fits me very well because i have little time to play.

I like firebreath. It is limited by not being useable in combat. It feels yo me as a quick way for mages to do damage to start a fight.

That makes sense to me thematically because a mage is high in mana and low in health. It makes sense to deal as much damage as possible to give the mage the best chance of winning. That is true for all classes.

Unfortunately, the other classes feel severely under powered as opposed to mage just being an outlier that is over powered.

One can make the argument that psiblast,wrench, or scream is over powered be ause you can keep using it in your fight (as you should be able to by the way).

With a lot of changes in store for tempus, code and world wise, it makes sense to me to revert firebreathing, keep mages as is, then implement changes.

In the new world, where other classes are viable and fun, then we can make a better judgment of how appropriate a skill or class is or whether it is overpowered.

I want to see firebreathing reverted and to really see how it fits within the context of the changes to tempus that have yet to be implemented.

If anyone could please show me how firebreathing is over powered, i would appreciate it. I did not feel it made me overpowered or gave me an unfair advantage while i was leveling to gen 10.

I stopped playing other classes because i kept dying against mobs or it took too long. I like face paced combat, where i win and the mobs die.

Mage with all of its advantages and warts provided me that. If not i probably would not have staying on tempus (like other new players i help) let alone want to reach gen 10.

Isn't it everyone's primary objective to keep players and attract new players?

Making one of the few fun and practical classes in the world of tempus less effective and less fun does not accomplish that goal.

So if I started playing mage again would I re-cryo within an hour? Changing this particular spell can't possibly ruin mage.

I never thought firebreathing was very mage-like anyway. Just get rid of it.

But, if you guys decide to keep it I would hope you change it back. The zero-waitstate/limited-use made it unique. Now it sounds like another one of those skills that you just don't use because it does little damage and doesn't knock down…like elbow. I'm sure it does more damage than elbow but that's not my point. If you wanted damage and waitstate in one package, mage already has plenty of those. And, no need to throw in the less mana argument, this is mage. They have mana, let them spend it.

The way firebreathing was before? I did mage gen 0 to 10 pretty quickly because of it. Doing that without would've been a lot slower but not impossible. Firebreathing was also a good way to deal damage early in battle which made doing damage overall really easy. Considering Tempus style combat (Stun = x2damage and time on floor) doing high damage in multiple commands in a short time is very good. It was so good at doing that that I'd rate it the same or above skills like wrench and cleave. I think the only thing that kept it from being overpowered is the fact that you couldn't keep using it after several breathes and the mage was forced to use other options. Overpowered? I don't know. Maybe. Very powerful? Most definitely.