Image Designer Archive

There are some new experimental changes to the HAM bars on Test Center. According to the developers, if it's popular, it will not only be implemented to the live servers, but may even be added to other professions.

That includes image designers.

Why was it done?
This change was added to eliminate the ideaof "hitting yourself in the head, just to do a headshot to another player". To do damage to someone else, you had to do damage to yourself.

How it works
Right now it's only limited to combat, so I'll use that as an example. If you are fighting something, and you do something that takes action, health, or mind points, it no longer shows up as damage (which part of your HAM bar). Instead, it reduces the overall amount of that HAM bar.

So let's say you are a TKM with 900 mind. Let's say you use a special attack that costs 100 mind. Instead of having 800/900 mind, you would just have 800/800 - the total mind is reduced, rather than giving you damage. That 100 mind cost does not show up as wounds either, but it CAN regenerate on it's own. The rate of regeneration has also been increased significantly, so you can recover from these attacks faster.

What it means
Doctors and medics will no longer be able to heal theHAM costcaused by these special attacks. However, there still will be damage to heal when those special attacks hit someone.

If this is added to other skills, image design will be affected. When we do image design on another player, our TOTAL mind will be reduced, instead of us receiving mind damage. But it will regenerate much faster than it did before.

Personal Opinion
*disclaimer - As usual, this information will not be sent to the developers unless the vast majority of the image design community agrees with it.*
I personally think that these changes wouldbenefit image design. Most of us don't rely on combat medics to heal our minds, so we have to wait for the regeneration rate to give us our mind pool back. With this change, we would regenerate that mind pool much faster.

Any other thoughts and opinions?

If it means I can do more than one skin color change without dipping into my crate of muon, then I'm all for it.

The new HAM system has been taken out again, rescheduled for January most likely due to balance issues.

I'm of mixed minds. My Image Designer likes it but my Doctor doesn't.

I love it!