Fighting in Retardation

Kaeus

I certainly want combat to be challenging, but the type of challenge surrounding things like this isn't the right type of challenge, and again, comes to coding simple bypasses rather than tweaking around core mechanics.

Toz

It's kind of for the same reason we don't throw sharks in with professional swimmers - sure it makes things more challenging, but...why do it? Why bother? It's an unneeded complication that doesn't really advance things, and it just punishes people who are already trying to compete in a pretty highly demanding environment.

Moirean

WTB that for Rio 2016 Olympics.

Irruel

Macavity said:

I really do not think report 1564 should be allowed to advance forward....  If someone has already coded into their system to track afflictions and the curing of those afflictions then they have the know how to create a simple trigger and module that tracks if a person is undead or living, and which cures to watch for in order to remove an affliction from their tracking system.

Studying someone's actions in a fight and finding weaknesses to exploit, such as predictable parrying, or poor curing priorities, is one of the great aspects of IRE combat. Read over the log, learn, develop a better strategy, then go out and kick arse. The thing is, while these decisions are made by lines of code, the player made the tactical choices when they wrote those lines of code.

A hole in their code such as that of a living character chowing down on raw offal, isn't a weakness that is there because of a tactical choice made by the player. It's just a hole in the code which can be patched over.

Studying someone's patterns and figuring out ways to beat them, presumably while that person is doing the same thing to you, means that the winner is the person who understands combat better. That is something that should be promoted.

Finding a hole in someone's code? That has nothing to do with knowledge of Aetolia's pvp abilities or studying the target.

Xiuhcoatl

Finding a hole in someone's code is studying the target. I don't understand how you can say studying their code is alright in the first part of your statement and then say the exact opposite thing on the next one. You can automate finding their curing priorities fairly easily. You can also automate finding their method of parrying and moving around it. In a similar way, if you know they're tracking living and undead cures with no discerning between the two you can easily get around their tracking. This can also be automated.

If you want to say exploiting someone's system is bad, say exploiting someone's system is bad. Don't say these exploits are ok and these aren't, excluding of course literally breaking their client, but fooling their tracking is honestly just another part of combat that started a long long time ago with illusions. This is the ONLY method left of doing it, which can be stopped by simply doing tracking right the first time you put it in. 

I'm not upset with you @Irruel or anyone else in this thread. I just don't understand how you can say exploiting a system like this is ok and a major part of combat. However, this type of system exploit is not ok at all. @Belgarion so far is the only person I've seen that has not contradicted himself as to why this is not a thing. His approach is that, he can't know if the target he's facing is always going to be undead or always going to be living. Look doesn't always work on people with artifacts and there's a fair mixture of undead and living in Spinesreach so that you can never know 100%. That makes it so there's a variable in combat that can't be automated outside of using an attack to check ie slashing paralysis by itself and seeing how they cure it. I can perfectly accept that argument, as it's flawless.

I can't accept an argument going, you can exploit a system like this. However, this exploit is not good, because it would require me to fix my system/patch my system/adjust my tracking/yadda yadda. 

Irruel

@xiuhcoatl

I'm making a distinction between parts of the system that are making combat choices, and parts of the system that are not. Choosing the next cure, or parry or whatever - that is a combat choice. Tracking affs is just code that captures and passes on information to the parts of the system that are making decisions.

Exploiting someone's bad parrying can be done regardless of whether they automate their parry, or manual it. There is in fact no distinction between the two - in both cases the parries chosen are decisions made by the player, either directly at the time or earlier, when the code is written. If they make bad choices and I get an advantage from that, then good for me. Or you.

Exploiting the capturing of information by the client, is something which has slowly been removed from the game. Yes, I could create a trigger based on LOOK XIUHCOATL to set undead/living status (rather than triggering from the cures they eat). Just as I was able to use little coding tricks to protect myself from illusions. The fact it is so easily defeated is the problem - you can't balance a class around tricks like this because while they work, you're boss and when everyone figures them out, you're weak as shit.

This is why the decision was made to remove that sort of thing from Aetolian PVP. Syssin illusions disappeared, and information has gradually been made more and more easily available, and more accurate. I don't mind having to patch holes in my system for this sort of thing, if that is what combat is all about. But it isn't - not anymore.

You just said it yourself - this is one of the last ways to do this. There is a reason for that - this thing has been disappearing from the game since before Aetolia existed. You can probably find the posts on Achaea's midnight board if they still exist, from when I was arguing in favour of using emotes in PVP (I was a sentinel that emoted breaking limbs from Tekura. My argument was that if someone is stupid enough to believe a sentinel can snapkick, then they deserve what they go. I cringe a bit now, thinking back on it)

Xiuhcoatl

@Irruel I see I was not completely understood.

I still can't accept that argument.

Your argument is that using your input to figure out how another system works and exploiting that is ok, but, using input to figure out how another system works and exploiting it is not ok. It is not ok because it's no longer part of the game. Therefor it's not ok. You're looking at attacks and the like as something besides input, and I see where our opinions differ here. I'm going to use every means of input to see what will work on your system. Every means.

My attacks are input to figure out how well you're curing, what speed you're curing at, and how many different methods of curing you're using and if you're using them efficiently. This part of combat is now largely forgotten about because of the massive spread of plug and play systems. 

The next part of combat is things like affliction order and priorities. Again, this is over looked now because people have systems doing a lot of the tracking for them. However, this is a major part of combat to this day. If I can leave the room before I heal up and come in after I heal an affliction or three and you don't clear those, I'm going to keep doing that until your attack is looping afflictions I don't care about. 

This is in a similar method, testing the waters of what your system is doing. Which will be one of three things. You will handle it correctly based on my status, you will handle both attempts to cure as valid and cure two afflictions, you will handle the first attempt as valid and the second as invalid. I want you to register the first attempt as valid and the next one as invalid. In the way I do it, if you take off the balance gate for curing and go by the new config method of tracking, it has effectively eliminated this method. As my method wants you to believe I cured nothing at all. 

Should combat be balanced around this? I never said that. Nor am I aiming for that to happen at all. It's simply another method of testing what systems will be willing to accept. Both messages, the correct message, or the incorrect message. 

Edit: More advantageous ways of doing this would be like kneeling if both your legs are broken and you're not prone. That way they don't get the message you fall over, and never register you as prone. This will work on numerous people. Alternatively diving to make people think you have stupidity stuck on you. There's a lot of little manipulations you can still do today. 

Xavin

The thing is, not even LOOK PERSON is reliable anymore because of an iron coin artifact that lets you show up as any race/status as you want. So it's entirely possible that someone, using a class that wouldn't blatantly give them away, might use Xiuhcoatl's method of spamming herbs and slices and mask what is actually curing them by pretending to be the opposite of what they really are.

Things like that are why there either needs to be a config or some hard-coded server-side prevention for consuming the wrong type of curatives.

Haven

@Xiuhcoatl: I know you're not gaming the system exactly but I can't think of a better phrase at the moment. You're using in-game elements to break an outside source in hopes of an in-game advantage. This might be a bad example but off the top of my head: it'd be like playing Street Fighter with your friend, except you know that when you press left-left-down-X it makes your character do something that triggers your friend's seizure if he hasn't taken his meds. You're intentionally banking on your friend not taking his meds so he can have that seizure for you to take advantage of for the win.

That's why illusions and the like were largely removed from the game and replaced with mechanics that reflect "in-game trickery" as opposed to "out-of-game trickery". There is a difference between a mechanic like blackout or mindblank or sleights or hypochondria that "trick", give false and or deny people information and eating opposing cures to trick someone's system or illusioning "You have been slain by Varian.". The former uses an in-game element to manipulate an in-game source for an in-game advantage while the latter uses an in-game element to manipulate an out-of-game source for an in-game advantage.

Macavity

Xavin said:

The thing is, not even LOOK PERSON is reliable anymore because of an iron coin artifact that lets you show up as any race/status as you want. So it's entirely possible that someone, using a class that wouldn't blatantly give them away, might use Xiuhcoatl's method of spamming herbs and slices and mask what is actually curing them by pretending to be the opposite of what they really are.

Things like that are why there either needs to be a config or some hard-coded server-side prevention for consuming the wrong type of curatives.

Artifacts are really not a sound argument, because if that was the case then ALL artifacts should be removed and not allowed, or the opposite a config should be introduced that negates all artifact powers used against you.

Daskalos

While artifacts aren't always a valid argument, this is a game breaking, in the current incarnation of combat, tactic. If you cannot track cures, you cannot pull off kills. I've coded around it, and it's a simple enough toggle, but if I don't know if I'm fighting undead or living, it creates a whole new set of issues. Not knowing which set of cures is 'accurate' just creates more problems.

Overall, I expect this will be patched rather soon as I think the IGNOREOFFBALCURES was an attempt to fix this very thing but that they misunderstood what the problem was.

 

Macavity

I can see another tactic being nerfed soon as someone uses it...

in battle they give a stack of the opposite cures to the person, then use force abilities to eat said cures to keep someone from eating their own cures for a few ticks.  That is if eating the opposite cure takes your own cure balance.  

this is a slippery slope we are on

Moirean

See, I think doing that is perfectly viable. You're using IG mechanics to mess with them at the IG level. You're not faking output. 

Macavity

so let me clarify this so I understand your side on this @Moirean.

Watching someone eat plant/slice to track their curing and using the opposite to fake a cure, is considered not IG mechanic

but...

Giving someone plant/slice and forcing them to eat it to stop their cure balance is??

am I the only one that sees the two being basically the same here

Moirean

Force takes action on your part and is you attempting to mess with their actual, literal curing. Eating the wrong stuff costs nothing and is an attempt to break the coding someone made to track afflictions. They aren't the same at all.

Oleis

Okay, I usually don't stop conversations unnecessarily but this derail is pants-on-head stupid. Lifers eating slices and undead eating plants should be gagged by the config option, and I'm going to fix it up to make it that way.

Solus

What is this I don't even.

Daskalos

What?