Post by Warrior on Aug 13, 2020 15:00:44 GMT -8
V I R U S H O R D E U P D A T E
Prototype
At long last, an updated version of the Virus Horde is nearly completed. The intention behind this was to reduce the stress factor of the later waves (juggling a bunch of attacks and skills among a large number of Viruses) and to utilize templates to make the Virus' Posts look uniform, making it a bit easier to track what's going on while scrolling through the thread. The difficulty and rewards are being adjusted as well, including the "Virus Buster" quests.
Some extensions are intended as well, involving you earning more Licenses that will unlock different "routes" of the horde to traverse, and thereby different Viruses to encounter and rewards to claim.
New Features
Automated Virus Spawns. Utilizing similar tools to the Mystery Data Roller, the Virus Spawns no longer have to be manually rolled when you're going through the horde. This also means that there won't be a publicly visible table of Viruses, making the encounters somewhat of a blind endeavor unless you've done research in other threads (which is totally fine, by the way!).
Revamped Virus Stats, including some more randomized features. Not only will their Attacks be randomized each turn (from a pool of at least 5 per virus), some qualities of those attacks such as the Aimers and B-Tier Effects will be randomized as well, meaning you'll have to be adaptable to many different offenses rather than being able to rinse and repeat every turn.
Virus Turns are semi-automated by utilizing Post Templates. While you will still have to perform their Defensive Phases yourself, registering the attacks they take/prevent, the statuses that affect them defensively, and calculate their remaining hp, the template will take care of everything else. There is a drawback though: because of the complexity involved with this feature, Viruses are no longer susceptible to anything that would influence their Offensive Phase. No buffs, no debuffs, no stage effects -- nothing short of dying will halt their attack protocol. While this is a bit of a sting to those that utilized this features for protection (IE: Sand Elemental Navis), Defensively-impairing effects are still fully functional and there may be compensation implemented for those with offensive-debuffs at a later date if deemed necessary.
Viruses will also target random enemies now, using protocols based on who has the highest/lowest of certain values (Remaining HP, Armor, etc). This requires a bit of extra processing on the players, but should help to diversify their patterns even further and prevent certain spawnable pawns from ever being an issue again (not to say that a certain chip is returning, but in the event that it ever did...).
Less Viruses are spawned per Wave, now only capping at 5 max. Even though half of their operation is performed on its own, it felt necessary to further reduce the load on the person operating their defenses (and the meatshield of the team that was dealing with their attacks). The buffs given to them also more than compensate for the reduction of targets.
Rare Virus Spawns may occur now, intending to be in the 10-20% likelihood range. You'll be able to identify these by their gold image, and of course, there's an additional reward for defeating them.
Mega Viruses spawn in the Regular Horde now, but they spawn by themselves regardless of what the wave count would normally be. They will not spawn earlier than the final 3 waves and their rewards are also much greater now; their stats are vastly superior to their current Mega Horde identities, functioning as Mini-Bosses rather than merely suped up jobbers. It is possible (but unlikely) to face multiple Mega Viruses back to back on successive waves. A Sub Chip will exist to avoid the encounter if you do not want to deal with them. In later updates (when higher tiered licenses come around), a Boss may spawn as the final wave of the horde, offering even greater rewards upon defeat. This Boss would not be preventable with a Sub Chip.
Sub Chips are intended to be implemented which will alter your interactions with the Virus Horde slightly. Sneak Run is what you would use to prevent a Mega Virus spawn, and Mini Energy will allow you to restore some of your stats between waves. Initiative's interaction with the Virus Horde is being nerfed in that no first-turn effects will automatically occur at the start of each wave anymore. Instead, you would need the Full Energy Sub Chip to trigger this bonus on future waves.
Viruses no longer have Undershirts. Instead, they will utilize the "Guarding" effect that you may recall from certain Boss Fights, preventing their HP from being reduced below a certain amount within a single turn. To overcome this, though, each Virus will also have a "Weakness". Beyond just functioning as our traditional weakness system (taking x1.3 Damage from those sources before modifiers), striking a Virus with its weakness will also disregard the Guarding entirely, making 1-turning them still possible, just slightly more difficult. Only some will be Elemental Weaknesses; many will have more specific weaknesses such as "S-Attacks" or attacks with certain status effects. Higher difficulty viruses will have multiple weaknesses, and in such cases, their buffer is only ignored by attacks that address all of them at once.
There will be a new method of gating access to the Virus Horde, rather than only being "X Waves per Week" as it currently is. This "Allowance" System will be shared with other automated features as well (such as Boss Fights) and will be primarily acquired through interaction with the core features of the site (Story Mode, Battle Completions, Events, etc).
** Currently ongoing Horde runs will need to be ended prematurely when this feature is implemented.
** Some of the chips available in the Virus Buster quest may not be as easily attainable, as the occurrence of certain viruses will be adjusted.
System Testing
As with the Mystery Data Roller, the random variance of this system (and interaction with other coding) needs to be tested before implementation to prevent any unforeseen issues. The recurring issue of custom code "breaking" when changing pages in a thread will still occur with this feature, simply reload the page when this happens. This is a feature of proboards that cannot be circumvented at this time.
The stats of the viruses that are spawned in this thread do not reflect their updated stats, most of it was placeholder to give them a bit more than simply bare bones terms, and many of their stats are simply recycled from old sources.
To participate in this testing, you will simply spawn a wave of viruses, then process one turn of their attacks. This will require 2 successive posts, and will also serve as a mini-tutorial for how to utilize the feature. Use my next two posts for example.
To start, copy and paste the following template into your next post (removing any pre-stored BBCode that you have set) and press "Reply". That will provide you with the template code for the post following; the only things you'll have to do further (for now) will be modifying the Virus's HP. Put one of them at "0" HP and the rest at whatever values you please (between their minimum and maximum).
[div style='FONT-SIZE:0px;' title='avatar']#s://tinyurl.com/y6dd48w4[/div][div style='background-color: #000000; border: solid white 1px; border-radius: 5px; padding: 0.5em;']
[::Spawn:Horde6::]
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[::Spawn:Horde6::]
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** Click on a Virus to view its stats
** Mouse-over any Red Text to reveal more information about it
Participation Rewards
As a reward for participating in this test, you may claim one of the following for 1 Navi you own:
° Any one chip from the (current) Virus Buster Quest for free
- OR -
° +1 Green, Yellow, and Blue Mystery Data
[HP=4,800/4,800]