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The State of PK in Aetolia
So, after having gotten into playerkilling these last few months on this fine game we all enjoy, I've noticed a few things that I dislike. I've also noticed a bunch of things that I do like about it, that keeps me interested in it.
I've also noticed that I am not alone in these likes and dislikes, and in an effort to bring forth discussion about these things so that we can promote the things we all like, and discuss shoring up the things we dislike, I made this thread.
Feel free to follow my format below if you're interested, but it's not necessary.
Things I Like
I genuinely hope that this thread doesn't get closed or modded, as I am actually interested in seeing Aetolia improve. I have heard these things from more than just me, and I'm just really hoping we can have a legitimate conversation about it. Especially since more and more of the events that are ran for us all involve PK of some sort. Thanks!
I've also noticed that I am not alone in these likes and dislikes, and in an effort to bring forth discussion about these things so that we can promote the things we all like, and discuss shoring up the things we dislike, I made this thread.
Feel free to follow my format below if you're interested, but it's not necessary.
Things I Like
- Massive Exp Gain
- Teamwork
- Organization Incentives
- Feeling of accomplishment
- Learning more about mudlet
- Ease of Escape(Looking at you, Leap)
- Lack of counters to the Monk class
- Prevalence of being accused of harassment
- Constant use of out of character goading and trolling(I don't -like- using ignore)
- Exp Loss outside of lessers
I genuinely hope that this thread doesn't get closed or modded, as I am actually interested in seeing Aetolia improve. I have heard these things from more than just me, and I'm just really hoping we can have a legitimate conversation about it. Especially since more and more of the events that are ran for us all involve PK of some sort. Thanks!
"Hell hath no hold on a warrior’s mind, see how the snow has made each of us blind. Vibrant colors spray from new dead, staining the earth such a beautiful red."
2
Comments
As much as you (and hell, all of us) dislike how easily our prey escapes sometimes, mobility and ground control are valid and even necessary tactics in a lot of fights. That's a debate we've had with Zsadist a hundred times. Running, shielding, etc. Cowardice? Is ducking a punch cowardice? I'd argue that -not- ducking is just foolishness. If you're going to use that argument, why not take out sip health and we can all just see who arti bashes who to death first. It's just not realistic. Imagine someone without a system fighting people with systems and now you also can't even run? Nah.
Also keep in mind they balance for group fighting as well. Without leap a feasible way to escape, group fighting would be absurd and I doubt very entertaining.
XP gain - great. Cool, for people who need or like levels. I'm not sure why the triple XP gain for lessers isn't across the board for pk but hey, not my fight. I don't need any more haven points. I do think that there's nothing wrong with offering -more- for PK.
Lack of counters to monk class, I'm not really sure what you mean. If you're talking about damage maybe, but idk. Telepathy can be countered or at least escaped, most times.
Org stuff is cool. Accomplishment, woo. I've seen and am trying to come up with neat ways to make it engaging along with the rest of the lifer leadership, but that's on us. The less admin interference in orgs the better, most times.
Player environment is huge, and here's where you'll likely start getting grr face at me. I might be modded for this, but I'm just going to say that people should probably look inward and fix their own attitude before broaching the subject of everyone else's. You say you don't like using ignore, but how many people are on your ignore list? For what?
Not trying to turn this into a personal attack here, but just consider it. I've seen the way you react to getting killed or even being attacked, and I've seen the skypes and the webtells and the clantells you make about it. Nothing wrong with a bit of banter or even some teasing, but eh. Why ignore someone and then do that?
Then again, I hate the ignore command anyway. In my opinion, if you're going to ignore someone for something that isn't issuable or able to be dealt with through IC means, it's usually a fairly meh cop-out and often used to drop a last word and then leave the conversation patting yourself on the back.
We all have our moments. I was pretty caustic for a while there and it got to the point where half the damn game couldn't stand me. (Hell, probably still can't.
I think you're absolutely right about attitude being a huge problem. But nobody can fix that except us, individually. PK is just a thing. Dying costs nothing but time, and it's a negligible amount at that.
Anything and everything listed under HELP ARTIFACTS or any sub section of that help file.
Let me tell you how absolutely amazing it is to be bashed to death by double oculus venom combo's or a classes normal bashing attack.
It's not.
I would really like an Aetolia where there is a strong incentive and encouragement to enter pvp. A lot more can be done to do this.
__Bad attitude, arrogance, having combat ability so tied up in a player's self esteem that they become obnoxious.__
Combat in this game is fun and fairly balanced, I'd really like for everyone to be more mature about winning, losing, learning. To have a bit less ego, and a bit more sportsmanship and mutual appreciation for the work that has gone into combat theory and development.
I would say almost everyone who acquired someone else's system and only uses that is missing 95% of what makes fighting fun. It's not at all a bad thing to get a headstart with someone else's stuff. But if you're not trying to learn the process and improve it yourself you're missing the biggest part of what makes combat interesting and fun. Personally I think Aetolian combat consists 95% of what happens before and after fights, and only 5% of the actual fight itself. When you are only fighting for the sake of victory you can't have a constructive response to losing.
As far as negative attitudes, and let me just say now I am not targeting anyone personally, most of the time it's deserved and simply reciprocated tbh. If you come out of a fight and say "wow that's OP BS" and go after the guy who killed you you are almost always going to get a negative response.
When I actually fought 1v1 I would always send a tell saying good fight and, if I couldn't figure it out myself, review the log together with other people (including the person I fought) and look for things to improve. I have never once, in what's been probably 1000+ duels, received a negative response to that. I have never once reacted negatively when I win vs someone and they ask me what they could do better (unless they don't make any effort to look it over themselves. No issues with helping but I'm not here to hold your hand either). I HAVE, however, been very negative towards people whose immediate reaction is to whine about my class without thinking of what they could be doing better first. Which is not to say I've never been guilty of being a sore loser, I definitely have.
Here's a challenge to every fighter. When you lose, send a tell saying good fight. Don't say anything else. Pull up the log and go through it. Give yourself some time to cool down, review what you can improve, then if needed ask over your various combat resources what you can do to get better if you can't figure it out yourself. Then talk to the person who beat you. I highly doubt a negative attitude will be returned unless you spark it first yourself.
As far as leap, test around with your abilities, skills, and routes. You will be pleasantly surprised at what you can do to stop it. No, you aren't going to be able to lock down a person whose sole intention is to run away and never fight back. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Monks are very strong in teams, yes, but they aren't unbalanced above many other teamfight combos. It can feel uncounterable and overwhelming but that's the nature of teamfights, there are tons of super strong strategies that you can't counter.
Lately, I find more and more that I want to know the why and how to tweak and fix and improve. It's slow, because I really only pk recreationally compared to some people who make it a thing and are very, very good at it. But @ezalor is right - it gets to me and then I spend like 10 hours in a row trying to figure out how to do one thing and next thing you know I'm gutting my system and trying to build it into my own thing. And that's almost as fun as the fights that tell me what I need to look at.
Winning is like eh, I won - but I almost never open that editor and look at anything after a victory.
@Rashar: you learn the most when you lose, but you should also look at things when you win. Look after every fight. You'll never be perfect.
I have many negative things I could be saying, particularly about escape methods and the Monk class inparticular, but that would probably be best for a liaison report or a different thread entirely. I will also say that I have a very large amount of experience in various games, not just muds, and I think that if there is one thing I've learned from my experience in gaming as a whole it's that something is unfun if it is not able to be interacted with at all, or in a meaningful, viable way.
Lastly, I would also say that there are many who participate in PK on a regular basis who don't post on the forums or read them. I know I'm not the only one who feels the way I feel about things.
I do appreciate the continued discussion, however! I look forward to reading further posts from my phone tonight at work. Thanks!
It doesn't help that whenever I seem to get good with a class, they change them in some way that near-completely negates the work I had invested into it due to a need to test, retest, alter code, test, retest, alter code, etc.
That, and the fact that I suck horridly at coding, and it's exhausting enough that I am more than willing to give hardcore PK the middle finger.
So yeah, I enjoy PK. I hate making mistakes. If I were perfect every time (or just automated everything that I would normally forget) then I'd be happy whether I won or lost. And by perfect, I mean that I don't forget to use skills, whether I use them efficiently or otherwise.
****** TOZ IS REAVING ******
****** ZSADIST FADED ******.
I use echoes for things that are important, or visual alerts for things that are super important. And I color code things so when I see certain colors I know 'that's bad' or 'that's good' or 'need to do something or you're going to die' or 'what you're trying failed, read closer' or 'what you were just trying succeeded'. Whatever it may be, and I can hone in and read quickly.
It's always meant a lot to me and my experience.
In general I believe artifacts are a positive within nature of the game in general. One of my biggest issues would be the reliance or growth of power for classes with/without artifacts.
Monks come up a lot in discussion because in general they are fairly powerful without needing to rely on any artifact. Whereas if you take Bloodborn(Rituos) there is a rather large jump in power once they get the silver crown(Eq recovery) artifact. Or any class that uses both balance and EQ for that matter.
I'm not a part of the community much if at all so I can't comment there, but as people have said above the better we act about it both IC and oocly will draw in much more people than a negative one will.
To sum up to me things look kinda like this.
1)Gap in power between artiwhores and average joes.
I don't think it's fair to take away from those who've paid to aquire those items, so through grinding and events a good chunk of this can be made up but it will take a fair amount of time.
2)Lack of information and knowledge for new players.
Short of getting someone to sit down and spend a good chunk of time 1 on 1 to get you started or getting a prebuilt system you can dissect and improve on there isn't a whole lot for someone new who would rather do it themselves short of spending probably 20+ hours just getting the lines and triggers set up let alone any actual work. Creating and compiling a list of things like this would make leaps and bounds towards helping new people interested, but would take an absurd amount of work for anyone person/group to keep updated.
Thanks for listening to my random rambling thoughts after a long night of work. Hope things make at least partial sense and I don't sound like a fool.
There -is- a good and helpful community here. Even if some of them seem like grumps. Just gotta poke!
As for arties, well. It does suck. I'm a medium level artiwhore myself, and I'll be the first to say I wish they had less of an impact. But I don't think that's something that's ever going to change, so not something we can really combat.
The effects of artifacts on my class(Syssin) is also wildly different than someone dsling with two lv3 enh rune upgraded weapons etc etc whatever. We get a buff to aff rate, and even that just isn't enough sometimes. But it's cool, that's why we have multiclassing, I guess.
I'd really like to see a sect option where you can opt to fight without artifacts, and people could possibly accept to fight without theirs as well. Whoever wins gets half again/double the points. Or an option to challenge people to a duel out of arena where your artifacts are disabled and get extra rewards. Like fights of skill, more-so than fights of investment or something.
I do like helping people in general, though. Syssin guildmembers get the bulk of it, while people like @Zsadist and the others I'll help with general stuff, like 'omfg I can't get this script to work! wtf!' I might try to lend a hand and see where they're fucking up at. I think @Zsadist in particular has come a really long way from where he first began, and with continued work and effort he'll be a legit higher-up fighter. I might even go so far as to say that he is a prime example of someone who was low/mid tier and has struggled his way up to low-high to high-mid tier as a fighter. That, I think, deserves a lot of respect, because getting your ass beat and losing over and over really sucks, and yet he's kept on ticking away and gradually getting better and better.
I even had a newb guildmate earlier talking to me, and said they were afraid to get involved in PK because they didn't want to get 'pwned' and stuff. I told'em to just help with lessers and at least try, because if you never lose you're either a monster, or you never fight. And if you never fight, you'll never become a monster. They say a journey begins with a single step, you know? At the end, they said they'd give it a try.
I wish we had more people like these two.
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
Open world pvp? I just avoid it. I really don't care for it! Bashing may be mind numbing at times, but its just how I choose to roll. I LOVE to see more areas opened up IN the lands, maybe even a village or two that are made into open PK places. Maybe have something people can lose, a ear...a finger....I'm find if I have to cross areas where pvp is crossed.
Materia Magica has a worse and far more devious design Citizen CPK towns((guards bribed to turn away to pk going on in a town)), Open PK regions with no sense of loss beyond pride, Chaotic PVP murderer areas mixed into all areas which are beyond dangerous. Chaotic regions that can lose EVERYTHING you worked for, but that's why gonking exists. Some people enjoy being butt-holes, an others whom are the victims of course do not, but it affects people two ways! You learn to defend self, or you run away.
In Aet Rajazel thinks I'm a nutter IC, since I'd rather laugh off being punched in the face then fight back. Motivations to what gets a person to PK is just far more important to me. After the last fight we had with the slavers event, it just motivates me far more to grind to 100+ so I can do better next time cross my pole-arm against a Vakmut or slaver. THAT was Fun an taught me I have more to learn, I had a hard time surviving vakmut but I managed with shield tattoo! Going to do repetitive lesser battles keeps my attention so long, but since every fight you have to change you're style depending on who you fight I just lose interest. I'd rather play a healer, which there are no direct healers on shadow unless spam tarot, focus on keeping the group alive/resistances with crystals, or healing howls so the REAL PVP players can fight.
I just get annoyed when people on my team ask me to stop healing them, its not like you're bloody rewarded for healing an helping people use less of their own resources to stay alive. >.> Then I go back to tearing teshen a new bum!
My favorite part of PK, though, in most games is ducking and weaving. I think it's fun being the rabbit, especially in non-text games where I can visually see where I'm going. It's why I love zombie-survival games.
Otherwise, I love being the stalker waiting to murder my target :P
For example, as I Syssin I knew my window to seal my lock was during the very end of my hypnosis stack. If I saw impatience of indifference ticking for the second time, and I wasn't near my lock, I knew I had to reset the fight and get ready to give it another shot. Same thing goes for Sentinel in the form of crossbows (loading, envenoming), Bloodborn for certain rituals, Praenomen and Indorani for winions, etc, so forth.
I also noticed that the players I caught flak from for running about were predominantly Vampire. Which, let's be honest, if you're not artifacted to the teeth, I wish you the best of luck standing toe-to-toe with those kinds of classes, that put out some hard, sustainable damage. But again, every class has those power spikes that ebb and flow during a fight with any substance.
@Trager you are correct that running lets you quickly regenerate you're necessary reserves before someone can inflict a killing blow, but what I love so much is all classes have multiple ways you can handle fighting. Some Ssysin are experts in using bows and choose to fight the ranged style, or get up close and stab in the butt! Carnifex can don a hammer or a polearm, but when they want to tank, they don a shield and their soulgems for spell blasting souls at people! Monks fight with fists/kicks, throws, and stances, or they can mess with yer mind an make you do things would not normally do! Anyways some perps who try to get into that window are below the level playing ground in competitive pvp.
I am just about to hit 87, so its not like lessers have been dead to me, However its a very notable when blasting an finding damage is sub-par to some the big boys an girls. I kinda feel like a glass cannon sometimes because its just how much a STAGGERING effort it is when you're below 100 even WITH artifarts to help build you up, the extra bonuses are mandatory to keep yer ass alive for those burst windows some classes do exceptionally well exploiting an I truly applaud when they do such, its helping me learn better protect, Or just burrow in the ground an hide.
also, when I was a wee one and was at lessers or doing battles over territory (long long ago) I just spammed chasm on people, and if they focused me, I'd fly.
OK! Enough class talk, we put this to another thread when need comes
If classes were PERFECTLY balanced, so every class could kill every other class, the class with the fastest kill route would be best or the class with the favourable match up against another class would always win 100% of the time. If things were so that classes could not kill each other, then it would always be a draw. Always a clear outcome.
In the past this stuff wasn't as big an issue because damage was a factor, people could die without complicated affliction offences or limb tracking. I don't think that tracking should be blamed. Removing tracking adds a sense of randomness to the game, and classes that still rely on random afflicts really win on straight luck, dice rolls.
The main issue as far as randomness is concerned is people feel cheated when they lose. I don't know that's the best way to handle things in a regular game, but making things more random MAY be the only answer for text combat short of letting people bash each other like the old days which generally involved a lot of running.
One very theoretical solution could be to weaken automated curing drastically but give everyone stronger active curing so they need to find a balance between offence / defence and pick their moments. The problem that brings is that if active curing is too strong like it has been in the past people become unkillable and if you rely on it but it's not strong enough you're just going to die to relentless offence. Integrating the two somehow may be a solution, attacks that also cure, but the end result could just be that text combat will always be pre-determined and that players are just spectators as it plays out. The combat portion of the game in that sense would be far from a competitive title and more along the lines of the "skip fight," option in things like Heroes of Might and Magic, King's Bounty and Masters of Orion.
Just some food for thought.
I -like- the reward of actual reaction time from a person in a fight.
I know you can make the argument that variance is created by one class vs a different class, what artifacts someone has vs someone else, etc. That just all seems very mechanical, very stale. That variance is highly predictable, as we all know everything about each other by now, for the most part. I know what class Trikal is going to be, I know what class Valingar is going to be, I know their general power level, etc. So there's really no excitement in the fight, you can usually predict how its going to play out 90% of the time.
One of the reasons I like watching real fighting, via MMA, in real life is how unpredictable it is. Fighters have styles, they have variables too in their training, their preparation, and so forth...but still, anything can happen. A guy who is primarily a grappler can go out there and land a lucky punch that vastly changes the fight. There's no such thing in combat in Aetolia.
I know Aetolia is just a game, but I just wish this aspect of it could be more interesting. Watching robots fight each other has been semi-entertaining for me the last few months, but I just expect better in 2015, particularly with all the talented minds we have behind this game now.
I genuinely enjoy the fighting in D&D/Mass Effect/Dragon Age/etc., the required automation for real success in Aetolia really makes it boring for me. Coding is not fun to me, neither is watching/glazing over text as two computer systems battle each other.
I enjoy table-top and FPS fighting primarily because it happens at a speed I can follow, participate during, and have my own abilities actually impact the outcome (not just the system someone made and is letting me use). I particularly enjoy table-top fighting because the CHANCE factor will heavily play into the outcome. I really-really like that.