🎮 HUD Bulletin Update 🎮
Greetings Denizens of Norune @everyone
Through the wizardry and tinkering of , Creator and Engineer of Blackbox, the engine itself has undergone a rather drastic overhaul.
It has certainly been a rough time learning the rope of things as I stepped up to this position and boy oh boy have I had a lot to learn about the back-end side of things beyond the spreadsheets/theory-crafting/brainstorming freedom that comes with pen and paper.
And what became clear early on is the confusion of roles as well as ‘who does what’.
**The important bit is this project is a collaborative effort, with each participant having their own realms of work.**
Why is this important?
A lot of uh-ohs happened early on with balance testing, function testing and many other things that made the system as a whole tick. Outrageous firebolt DoT ticks, Arcane Barrages hitting for obscene numbers and many other quirky behaviors of the system. Which resulted in grumblings about ‘changes never being posted or documented’.
This gave birth to a DEV environment, as it was not needed previously by Blackbox Systems.
Before I go any further, I want to address one thing directly:
Some of the rumors and criticism that have circulated have unfairly blamed the Blackbox team and our coders for issues that were far more complex than any single person’s responsibility. That’s not accurate, and it’s not fair to them. They’ve been working hard under very challenging circumstances.
At the same time, I take full responsibility for the areas that fell under my oversight — including where I fell short in communication or coordination. My goal with these updates is to be transparent about what actually happened and how we’re moving forward, not to shift blame.
With that said:
**The fun bits**
The documentation.
All the new goodies and bits and bobs for doin yer wizardry are in the process of being tested, quality-checked, and scribed down.
Great effort went into refining the combat math logic that takes place behind the scenes to both allow for the growth of a stat-point system as well as put in place ‘diminishing returns’ or ‘caps’ to prevent stats from running away with the house.
To prevent egregious exploits, to eliminate the need for a gear spreadsheet to determine the ‘optimal loadout’ and thuswise be weaponized to harass our fellow players via pvp or other toxic metagame-sourced decisions. I saw it happen in previous systems, and watched it happen here too.
Will that solve the problem entirely? **heck no** but its better to try than to simply pretend the problem doesn’t exist. Thats why these systems exist and why freeform isn’t an option. If everyone could play nicely, that would be one thing. But we’ve all seen examples of where that good faith would be heavily exploited, and in this day and age where logs can easily be edited or screenshots manipulated… the only sources that can be readily relied upon are automated system logs. And yes, I’ve seen it happen on both sides of the aisle.
The logs also hold us accountable. No sneaky ‘admin favors for friends’. I could personally set one of your stats to over 9000 and the system will step in and curb it at the dice logic level. Untouchable by anyone on the Game Master team, or even admins.
Spawn an item? Its flagged and reported in a HUD-dedicated alert channel in both the system access portal and in our discord.
**Create uniquely-named abilities as flavor for people?** Not any better than others as they share the **same pool of formula strings**. The only thing different is the name. It won’t do *UBER-DAMAGE*.
But for now, that’s all as I work on that documentation and learning my new toys.
Till next update
May your days be filled with joy, wonder and the companionship of those who hold you dear and those that you do in return.
Happy Roleplay Adventures
Best Regards
Xaldun, Norune Hud Development
Administration of Norune
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