Weapon Locker is Bogus

[Kharmakazi]

Thanks for screwing up Herolab once again and making it just painfull to use why the hell was this stupid weapon locker enabled i now cant have four throwing darts, gauntlets, sword and a buckler bash cause thats to many weapons
Now i have to store a weapon in my locker and if i wanna use it i gotta go pull it outta the locker so i can see what its bonus/damage


Who asked you if i wanna carry twenty weapons i can turn this update off

[Edited to remove profanity]

 

[mattagc]

I just noticed this last night too and have been wondering where it came from as it's causing me grief too.

Is there some rule that I missed that states that you can only have 6 weapons at a time?

 

[charlieluce]

If HLO treated throwing weapons as Hand Ammunition it might not be that bad, but as it stands the Weapon Locker is the "screw up any character that uses thrown weapons" system.


I don't think the devs realized how many characters it was going to affect.


EDIT: Does it make a difference if the throwing weapons are in a stack?

[Edited to remove profanity]

 

[MarcelGM]

Looks like animal rage barbarian gets bugged by this. It thinks you have 14 weapons when you choose that rage ability

 

[ShadowChemosh]

EDIT: Does it make a difference if the throwing weapons are in a stack?

Weapons in a stack count as only one weapon for the purpose of the weapon locker. Say you have 12 daggers but they are stacked together that will only count has 1 of the 6 weapons you can have out.

 

[rob]

@Kharmakazi and @charlieluce: I understand that these are unprecedented times and there's a lot of pent up frustration for most of us. But that's no excuse for using profanity. Please conduct yourself in a civil manner or your posting rights here on the forums will be suspended.

@Everyone: The primary motivation behind this change is that weapons are extremely expensive to keep "live" within the Hero Lab engine. Due to the vast array of different customizations and ways in which weapons behave, there are a ton of calculations involved with each one. This was causing performance issues on the server for characters with a bunch of weapons.

The server is a shared resource, so one player with a ton of stuff can negatively impact all other users. For example, after a few scenes with the standard mantra of "loot the bodies", the party "pack mule" can end up carrying a dozen or two weapons that they have no intention of actually using - they're just carrying them until the weapons can be sold. With this change, the "pack mule" now puts all those weapons into a locker where they incur no performance overhead on the shared server.

We chose a limit that we believed was going to work for the vast majority of users. We needed to find a number that struck a balance between the server performance implications and what makes sense for a realistic usage scenario.

As for the example @Kharmakazi cited, users absolutely CAN have "four throwing darts, gauntlets, sword and a buckler bash". There is absolutely no reason to keep each of those throwing darts as a separate weapon. Simply stack them as a single weapon entry and mark them off as they are used. You'll still have two more weapon slots available.

 

[rob]

Looks like animal rage barbarian gets bugged by this. It thinks you have 14 weapons when you choose that rage ability

This was definitely an oversight on our part. We're working on a hotfix right now to address this issue, which should be out soon.

Edit: The hotfix has been deployed. This should no longer be an issue.

 

[rob]

Some additional notes about this change:

1. We made sure it's straightforward to swap weapons in and out of the storage locker.
2. You can instantly toggle on/off infrequently used "built-in" attack forms, such as the fist and natural attacks.
3. You can customize which weapons are available at any time.

For the typical thrown weapons specialist, the loadout might consist of:

• Favorite thrown weapon with all the perks on it for the initial use
• Two different backup thrown weapons with various perks for use after the favorite
• Stack of generic versions of a thrown weapon that is the fallback once all the special ones are exhausted
• Primary melee weapon
• Backup melee weapon
• Disable the built-in Fist

 

[flyteach]

Rob, in the future, when springing major changes like this, it might help if some warning could be given to prepare players. People are working (or not working), come home, go to play and then find out stuff doesn't work as planned and impacts playing/fun time increasing stress levels rather than relieving them as intended. If the steps and recommendations could be put up a couple of days before rollout, players could prepare.

 

[mattagc]

Cool, thanks for the info. I wanted to make sure it wasn't some rule I was missing since I use HLO a lot to verify I'm not messing up rules.

 

[Banpai]

I was a bit confused by the change, which is why I came here. Likely not super critical but the interface to bring back weapons out of the locker is a bit confusing.

 

[rob]

Rob, in the future, when springing major changes like this, it might help if some warning could be given to prepare players. People are working (or not working), come home, go to play and then find out stuff doesn't work as planned and impacts playing/fun time increasing stress levels rather than relieving them as intended. If the steps and recommendations could be put up a couple of days before rollout, players could prepare.

That's a fair request. I'll do my best to be mindful of things like this and give everyone a heads-up a little bit in advance. Please don't shoot me if I forget, though.

 

[rob]

I was a bit confused by the change, which is why I came here. Likely not super critical but the interface to bring back weapons out of the locker is a bit confusing.

What would you recommend we do to eliminate the confusion? In what ways can we improve how it works?

 

[Banpai]

What would you recommend we do to eliminate the confusion? In what ways can we improve how it works?

If you want to move an active weapon to the locker the "move to" interface lists "Weapon Storage Locker" as a possible destination, that is pretty straightforward.

If you want to move a stored weapon back into active use, the listed destination is called "Remove (to Character)"... that disrupted learning how to do this. Maybe call it something like "Move to active weapons
" or something like that?
That might include having to rename the "Weapons" list slightly.

 

[magpi]

A very well-prepared alchemist with each bomb is already over the six weapon limit, very annoying.

 

[talsharien]

I have had to rebuild my alchemist as the original sheet seems to have locked in bombs that are no longer there. Even when I rebuild, as soon as I add an alchemist bomb on it comes up with the six weapon error (i have dagger, sling and fist on the sheet as well).

Not sure what is happening with this, I will log on an error report.

 

[magpi]

@talsharien I've been seeing that same Alchemist wonkiness

 

[rob]

Just a heads-up. We've been making some refinements to the way the weapon locker - and weapons in general - behave. In the release going out tomorrow, there should be some improvements with how all of this stuff works. A few of the most important items are:

• Single-use weapons (aka self-destructive) will now only count as a half-slot. That includes grenades and alchemist bombs. So an alchemist will be able to now take 8 different bombs, a backup missile weapon, and a melee weapon. That ought to cover the vast majority of alchemists out there, plus it will ease things a little for certain other types of characters across game systems.
• Infused alchemical items can now be created in quantity and will automatically merge into an existing stack, which should eliminate a major annoyance that exacerbated the active weapon limit.
• Merging and splitting gear is now vastly more accessible, as it's been moved into the item's vertical ellipsis menu instead of in the item details.
• When we report the maximum weapon limit, we'll include extra messaging that prompts users to merge similar weapons into a single stack and/or disable unused natural attacks to free up weapon slots. That's something we should have done last week but simply didn't catch it prior to release.

 

[Jamz]

@Rob, would it be possible to add a "enable/disable" type button next to weapons as another option to Weapons Locker?

So instead of moving a weapon to the locker, you can just "disable" it which would disable any "maths" (whatever causes server problems, a grey out weapon name only if needed). "enable" puts the weapon back online with a error if you are a at max and that you have to disable another weapon first.

That way if you have, say, a handful of weapons you like to use and don't want to forget about some others you occasionally use you can quickly get to them? For instance, my ranger has a Bow, kukri, rapier, whip, dagger, & fists. A little mix since he does some melee and range. But now i find a low-grade silver short sword and a cold iron axe. I won't typically need those but I don't want to forget I have the cold iron axe and want quickly to pull it out, throw it, and return to my other standard weapons list...

 

[rob]

@Rob, would it be possible to add a "enable/disable" type button next to weapons as another option to Weapons Locker?

I'll explore this possibility - or something like it - with the team. I know that this exact approach won't work, since the disable option would currently also short-circuit the re-enable behavior. However, there may be some extra hoops we can jump through to find a solution here that's more useful/efficient than what we've got.