Land of NoR (LoN), a Second Life RPG, has been working on an improved combat and RP system meter. The one in use is called WARPS, standing for Weapons and Role Play System. In July use of the experimental XRPS version of WARPS started. There are several changes being tested and several questions have come up.

You can follow the discussion in the Land of NoR forum.

Update 7/31

If you have not noticed, going into SPAR (/9 spar) forces a save of meter stats. That is important to know as the meter only saves every so often. A SL or viewer crash or other forced relog can possibly force your meter back to the last saved status. Going into spar and back to combat status does a save and reload of meter stats.

Update 7/30

Warning: There is a /9 command in XRPS, /9 swap . This command works in some XRPS universes but not in others. As of 7/28 there was a bug that would disable your primary character sheet if character swapping was not allowed in your universe.

7/31 – It is unclear if the /9 swap has been fixed. Some say it works without breaking your sheet or is not available in LoN. Sheet swapping in Land of NoR is not permitted.

Update 7/28

To reduce combat stacking* attribute points will have an ‘effective’ max value. Quoting Baron Nowhere, “The community has been talking about people dumping all of their points into a single stat to “game” their fellow community members.

To mitigate this, the system will now cap any benefit from a stat to twice the next highest stat.  (If your Dom is 100 and the next stats are all 20’s and 15’s… your Dom will Load as 40)”

XRPS Combat Stacking Discussion

Update 7/22

Quoting Baron Nowhere: Tonight (7/22/2009) at 5pmPDT The way skills decide which are affected by modifiers like +Level is going to be changed.  This may result in a few skills not doing the same magnitude of effect that they were doing earlier today.

Calmly describe it in XRPS Support Group, or IM Baron Nowhere and we’ll adjust.

One big change is falling. Prior to WARPS/XRPS falling was a non-issue. Jump from 350m, splat, no problem. There was no loss of vitality or stamina (energy). Now an equation calculated the damage based on distance fallen. Of course the Land of NoR managers are NOT giving away the exact equation. Many of us find it odd that it is stamina not vitality that is subtracted. However, it does add a bit to the realism of the game. The interesting question is about whether damage is the same for all races?

Another feature in the newer WARPS/XRPS is the admin option to turn on or off ‘No Move on Defeat’. So, get defeated and you cannot move. This stops the rescue by someone running in and RP’ing, ‘/me drags moron that got killed to hospital’. One has to leash or bind someone before they can drag them. Land of NoR role players have lots of opinions on how this will affect game play. I think it is an interesting change. We must wait and see what the Land of NoR community thinks and the staff decides.

When jumping one uses up stamina (energy) now. Some feel this is an added disadvantage particularly for healers. Running backward also takes energy now. — Update. This has been turned off. Jumping and running may not use energy.

On Self-Revive one gets a five minute jinx. This is on top of the five minute defeat timer. So, you are hurting for 10 minutes if you use a self revive. This will change how we deal with self-revive in battle. This is an especially hard on vampires.

There is a new command, “/9 target [avatar name]“. Baron Nowhere described it this way, “Make sure you use /9 target avatar — this will prevent you from wasting melee swings on other nearby objects and bullets (previously if a bullet was closer than the avatar, you would hit that). The command /9 target [avatar name] seta a default target avatar. So, you don’t have to set it each session.”

Another command is, “/9preset [case sensitive avatar name]“. Again Baron describes it, “with /9 preset USER NAME — the user name is case sensitive /9 preset Baron Nowhere — and /9 preset (press enter) or /9 preset clear (press enter) to clear. The Preset will still “scan’ for the user to see if they are in the skill range, but since it’s a NAMED scan, it’s very efficient, and gives you some interesting strategy choices. If you’re a healer, you can /9 preset your person that you’re healing, and be ready to cast on them quickly without having to deal with the user choice menu in battle. Once you preset, it saves until you detach/relog. But you can make a gesture to set it (so you could make 5 preset gestures for your 5 faction friends you heal in battle).  If you want to scan for someone to preset, use /9 preset user.”

It seems that ‘target’ and ‘preset’ aim both offensive and defensive/healing skills at the same avatar. This seems to greatly handicap use of either of these commands. I have not done much testing yet, so check this on your own.

A change in WARPS/XRPS is that all menu commands may now be entered via the chat line using, as Baron describes it, “The /9 works for any menu command is a subtle thing, but as you get used to the meter, you’ll find it’s handy…. like the system supports /9 color green — /9 green — /9 color <0,255,0>.” This is going to be a big change in how gestures are used in Land of NoR.

There is a new menu item labeled Surrender. This offers some new options for RP and combat. Know that the last person to hit you is who you will surrender to. Also, it takes you to the defeated state and your vitaity to zero. A self-revive after surrender also incurrs the 5 minute post defeat jinx.

Some are not happy the Surrenter button is where it is. Accidential clicks are a problem. However, if you click and chatch it before you release the button, slide the cursor off the button and dialog drop down then release it. It might not fire.

There is a new SPAR Mode “/9 spar”. Use “/9on” to return to combat mode. It is great for sparring but has the possibility for abuse. Several people have already figured out how it can be used in combat to restore vitality and stamina. That behavior is easily detectable so it is not a likely problem. In SPAR mode your spells and combat only affect others in spar mode. This limits how it can be abused. It is also considered a non-combat mode and has the same requirements rule-wise for going from non-com to combat mode. For now, sparring is being tested.

Combat stacking* is said to have been changed, devalued. So the coming free re-roll is going to make for lots of changes. Dominance staking is supposedly not as effective as it was. Land of NoR players have been told this change was coming. Also racial-point-based-attacks are more effective. Poisons now add your lvl to the tick. Poisons are rumored to do less damage per tic but faster ticks for the same total damage. Healer poison hits vitality and damage… or is that race related? Unbuffed melee damage is down, an advantage to gunners.

Don’t consider this the gospel or written in stone. Things are changing daily and various tests and experiements are in progress. Expect things to change and make the post out-of-date. Use this posting as a starting place.

XRPS Support Group

SL Group: XRPS Support Group – This is for technical questions and answers.

The XRPS web site: XRPS Official Portal

Free Re-Roll

Remember. A free re-roll is coming July 26th at 12pm SLT through July 29th, at 12pm SLT. Re-roll has been extended. Indefinitly for now. We will be notified by group notice when the closing date is decided on.

*Combat Stacking… some NoR players don’t know about stacking. I guess it is more of a combat junkies thing. Stacking in this case means placing all of your points in abilities so you are better at combat. A healer might have 80% of their points in Dominance. Or a fighter has arranged theirs to provide the best melee advantage.