The State of PK in Aetolia

Satomi

I just want to say that I apologize if I sound jaded, negative, defeatist. I tend to not detect that in my comments or when I chatter. I am by no means a combatant. I can tend to hold my own in lowbie-midbie tier, and back when wars were a thing I would exploiting the heck out of old Teradrim (pre-revamp). That was really the last time I was really engaged in combat.

I think the negativity just stems from Carnifex Revamp. I grumbled for soooooo long, it just stuck. (also, I didn't know Ashmer had a kill button! I got that Lycan code from somewhere else.)

I can say, though, that just because you have an AI doesn't mean you'll win. Far too many factors to take into account.

That is all. -woo Shortpost-

Ishin

Angwe said:

I really miss Aetolia's RP. But I have to agree with @Jensen about the little extra PK/RP situations that aren't around. After all, the war system is what really brought me to Aet in the first place.

War system. Landmarks. There were a lot of things like that, that kind've..."encouraged" people to get involved. With landmarks it was more GET INVOLVED, but that was less mechanical and more on the people, because nobody wanted to have crippled devo/ess regen. War system speaks for itself. Now, we have ylem and leylines, which is kinda cool. But there's no like...pressing need for it. We all have huge stockpiles of it, yanno?

Serrice

Enorian would like to have a word with you.

Ishin

Serrice said:

Enorian would like to have a word with you.

Who?

Rowena

A more combat orientated experience could probably be created but it would be at the exclusion of a lot of other things. Currently there are places worth hunting that are open PK for example, that is geared towards combat. It's also off-putting for people without an interest in it and while it's great to get people into combat I think the reverse of getting combatants into other stuff would be good.

Jensen

For me we have potatoes without the meat. The side dishes are fantastic with sect, ylem majors/lessers/minors, open pk areas like fracture, HG, and vortex. It all looks sweet, but I'm missing my main dish. If these were all available (I know some were, but some weren't finished yet) when I had my reasons to pvp, I probably would've invested more time in coding and combat theory. For you guys that really enjoy combat on it's own for the sake of pk, it's good, you got your main dish. Those who enjoy coding have their main dish. All I got were potatoes.

It's hard to get people who have been in the game a long time and that know they do not currently enjoy pk or coding to want to do it. It doesn't matter how easy or hard it is to do, how much time you're willing to give them with coding advice, or how much support you give in their training. They have to have some sort of motivator, a carrot, a prize, -something- to want to crawl through the mud, and get their hands dirty for the not fun aspects for them.

Simply stating "coding isn't difficult or learning to fight isn't difficult," however true or untrue that may be, does not change their enjoyment levels or desired gain.

Murad

It has been my experience that a player with an ADEQUATE curing system, good timing, strategy and knowledge of combat in general can defeat even the best of automated offenses.

When I was truly active last time the situations that caused me to "lose" were MOSTLY curing inadequacies, ignorance of new skills and general imbalance of certain classes.

The reality is that the nature of curing systems itself in conjunction with automated offenses becomes your offensive tactic. If you plan for the best response and plan to handle the best response you can defeat a perfect computer so long as it has a single flaw.

Irruel

There is a lot of talk about the journey from low->mid->high tier being fun.
It is fun.
The first time.
Maybe the second.
Tedious as all hell the fifth though


Spam is one of the bigger things too. It seems like every time I start playing again, there's 50% more spam. I make some more gags, toggle on some more game-side options to reduce spam - and 3 days later a new liaison round increases the spam by 50% again.

It was great seeing real effort put into reducing this game-side a few months ago, but even with all of that, and plenty of experience on my side for how to code so that stuff is easy to follow, I can't follow the main window half as well as I could with a handful of highlights and no gags when I began combat and first hit top tier.

Keroc

Irruel said:

There is a lot of talk about the journey from low->mid->high tier being fun.
It is fun.
The first time.
Maybe the second.
Tedious as all hell the fifth though


Spam is one of the bigger things too. It seems like every time I start playing again, there's 50% more spam. I make some more gags, toggle on some more game-side options to reduce spam - and 3 days later a new liaison round increases the spam by 50% again.

It was great seeing real effort put into reducing this game-side a few months ago, but even with all of that, and plenty of experience on my side for how to code so that stuff is easy to follow, I can't follow the main window half as well as I could with a handful of highlights and no gags when I began combat and first hit top tier.

To be fair, running into anything higher then a 3v3 fight was incredibly rare heading back before the event of lessers.

You could probably still follow a 1v1 fight with a few echoes and maybe a gag here and there.

Toz

The team fight size has declined since I started - 17 v 17 war fights don't happen any more. And there is kind of a bloat of flavor text but with the config for combat messages turned on once they are all in it should get better.

Rashar

I would have absolutely zero interest in 17v17, rofl. It's hard for me to stay interested in anything above like, 4-5 person teams. When the bash attack becomes the most efficient route, I start to yawn.

Trager

Toz said:

The team fight size has declined since I started - 17 v 17 war fights don't happen any more. And there is kind of a bloat of flavor text but with the config for combat messages turned on once they are all in it should get better.

Nerf Carnifex 'flavor' lines. Toz attacks one round, there's one whole screen rolling by.

Example:

Toz grimaces menacingly, so angry he looks, as he swings his mighty hammer (Oh how mighty it looks) and his knuckles clench and alongside his ass cheeks while his dog howls before leaping forward and digging his so very sharp claws into my backside that causes me to howl in immense pain before he swings back around for another menacingly angry hammer strike from his mighty looking hammer with clenched knuckles as he fights off occasional bouts of diabetic shock with his superior will.

Toz

Yeah they did - I used to take up my entire screen with an attack. Every 2.26 seconds, complete screen spam.

Lim

I think Keroc reduced it some by tweaking the soul drain messages.

Murad

Even in 2004 there were huge spam fests. The first wars were chaotic and buggy. The Fist/Pillars was an experience that I'm sad many people will never get to have.

Rowena

Toning down the amount that happens in combat would likely make it feel more accessible. All the spam and messages is part of what I've heard a lot of newer players speak of as far as combat is concerned.

There was a combat slowdown maybe... six to nine months back? I believe the response to that was overwhelming positive. Would slowing it down more be something others would like?

Draiman

Personally, no. If fights are going to be slowed down anymore then just completely rework the entire system. Fights can already take an obscene amount of time if two people of equal(ish) skill are fighting one another.

Rowena

I didn't think of how long it takes for some kill conditions. Some classes don't have clear or realistic kill conditions as it is though.

Tenshyo

Ezalor said:

Actually if anything I'd say it's the fact that it's too EASY to become good at combat that has a bit of a negative effect on development. There's a very lacking number of low/middle tier combatants for you to really cut your teeth on since everyone who decides to learn PK rapidly rises past that. I mean look at @Trikal who just started trying to learn like two weeks ago. He's already on the top of killstats and locking everybody. This can be a bit discouraging as you're diving off the deep end as soon as you get in and almost always fighting people much better than you, but you'll be there too in no time!

I've shied away from this thread due to being ultimately unlearned in the ways of Aetolian PK.

Now, I don't consider myself good at combat by any means. I enjoy the lessers, I think they're great. I honestly believe they are a fantastic way for people who are interested in PK to get started. Again, I'm not a real combatant. I'm probably low-tier at best (I don't even rightly now this tier business!) Only thing I know is that I hit like a mac truck.


I'll echo that it gets disheartening, to lose ALL the time. Not that that is a problem, and not saying that winning really important either. From all counts I've heard, losing is more beneficial to the person learning so when they review the log (which I don't do) they can see what happened, why it happened, where it happened, and fix it. As I said losing a lot, to some like myself, gets us to the the point to where we've kind of given up and said "You know what, I'm helpful at X thing, I'll just do that" and that's fine, that is totally fine.

Trager said:

I was INTERESTED in PK, so I had to take the necessary steps to be GOOD at PK. Just like not everyone can learn to code, neither can we write up fifty + rooms that looks amazing to the human eye, or draft momentous events that everyone can join into. We all have our ups and downs, our strengths and weaknesses.

This where I personally think the game gets a large portion of its diversity. Where there are those people who GET coding, who GET PK. Then you've got the people who are MONSTERS of crafting, CRAZY are writing room descriptions, INSANELY good at writing events. All of those things are important

Seir

So as someone who is preparing to come back, I saw this thread and I apologize for necro'ing the thread, but I can empathize with some of the viewpoints expressed in this thread. I can understand the frustration from a few individuals who REALLY want to compete but find that the entry level to do is unnecessarily high and when an individual is faced with a cliff, they sometimes turn away and ask, "Why bother?"

Now, I've kept abreast of changes within Aetolia over the last few months but I haven't kept track of balance changes, additions to combat mechanics, and so forth but I'm going to begin by saying that my opinion isn't about any of that. Rather, I want to discuss my observations over the years in Iron Realms as a whole and where I've seen PK thrive and where I've seen it die in a few respects. Now, originally, I was brought to Aetolia from both Lusternia and Imperian. I was playing both fairly off and on but Aetolia caught my eye with the war system and the rumors of the roleplay that was in Aetolia. After hearing a bunch of large names from Imperian went to try Aetolia as well and seeing the new Sentinel skill at the time (Dhuriv) come out, I decided to give it a go.

Time passed, I picked up Citadel from Lanira. I got Sibatti/Sintor's offense and made a few alterations to the venom queue, made changes to how it tracked affs, my strategies, etc. and I started PK'ing with fair regularity. I can safely say that without those individuals helping me out with their scripts, I probably would not have stuck around with Aetolia. Why? Scripting presents a barrier to entry that, like @Areka said, not all have the desire nor patience for. Some just can't grasp the logic behind it, some just don't want to have to code in order to enjoy a large facet of the game, some don't have enough time in their day to devote to coding and just want to use what free time they have to enjoy the game. So what do I think would help in this regard?

Server-side curing.

Yes, I know this subject was once met with some taboo and yes, I also realize that it'd be a fairly large undertaking with the administration due to the amount of work involved. I also get that we have the firstaid system but I don't know of (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong) anyone that fights solely using Firstaid. However, one thing I've noticed after playing Achaea and Imperian (both games that have server-side curing and, ironically, one of them developed theirs after seeing Aetolia's Firstaid system) is that it brings out a ton of people who normally wouldn't have gotten involved with conflict and combat because the game itself has provided them the means to participate, even in the smallest way. The fact was that both newcomers and combat veterans were able to adopt this new system and be successful with it. Newcomers had the minimum necessary to succeed while combat vets and coders were able to slap their own client-side code to make the most out of the server-side curing. These games, or Imperian in particular, saw a resurgence in activity with shardfalls (their version of leylines) and conflict. I truly, truly wish Aetolia had it. One thing I've heard from combatants in other games is that they'd love to try Aetolia out, but the high barrier and their lack of desire to code something new in order to participate is a large turnoff for them. In the other game that has server-side curing, Achaea, they've never truly lacked in population or willing combatants, but it also provided newbies the means to automatically cure themselves effectively and not just have to sit there and die when a combat veteran came and jumped them. They could hold their own, at least for a short while, and that made people more willing to try and get better because there was at least one means for them to lean on until they had a better grasp on how combat worked in the game.

As for the war system, that was the next thing that drew me to Aetolia. One thing I've always found appeal, in any conflict system, was my character's individual ability or contributing ability to shape the world around them and mold the political landscape through their martial actions. The war system, despite its flaws, helped define politics in Aetolia to a large degree. We saw that whole Spirean-Duiran backdoor deal that helped Duiran win a war against Bloodloch and all of it was handled through subversive roleplay with the leaders of the organizations at the time, as an example. What amazed me when wars happened in Duiran was that, no matter the odds, I would have members of Duiran asking how they could help, they were eager to participate regardless of their combat ability, they wanted to help capture land and learn how to march troops, make their character's mark on the world and I never experienced anything like that in any other game. If there's one thing I miss about Aetolia, it's that. The only thing close to Aetolia's war system that I ever experienced was village revolts in Lusternia, where you had members of a village join your org's sphere of influence by using diplomacy to convert them to your cause and everyone competed with the other orgs to make this happen. If you won, the village declared loyalty to your org and if your org had enough villages under their control, your org would 'grow'. Example: Celest, as one of the cities, if they had 0-1 villages, would be known as the Grand Duchy of New Celest. Having 2-4 would turn them into the Principality of New Celest and if they had 5+, they'd become the Kingdom of New Celest. It was those ways that got me motivated because I wanted to see my org grow and be a contributing factor to that both as a combatant and a roleplayer.

Maybe I'm wrong about what could help fix these issues. I'm not saying I'm right, but I've truly observed some amazing things from both server-side curing and conflict systems that allow characters to make their impact in the world, both from a combat and roleplay standpoint. Again, sorry for the necro, but some of the things that folks were saying resonated with me a bit.

Ishin

RIP War system.

RIP Landmarks.

RIP Conflict.

Angwe

War is coming back (eventually, right?) and I'm getting my computer fixed. Mood: tentatively optimistic.

Razmael

Seir said:

Server-side curing.

I feel like you haven't checked out FirstAid in a long time. We've been running their code for FirstAid for quite a few months now minus a couple of extra features they had.

Malok

I genuinely hope the War System comes back in some iteration soon. You could even have NPC factions and whatnot too. Could really tie more of the cities' Ministries into it as well. The possibilities are endless. There is a lot of potential for good times and having a driving force behind more of us wanting to play the game. A lot of the things being released in Aetolia lately have been really nice and are good changes, but theres still that one thing that needs to come out and blow us all away. I hope we see this at least one time this year.

Seir

Razmael said:

Seir said:

Server-side curing.

I feel like you haven't checked out FirstAid in a long time. We've been running their code for FirstAid for quite a few months now minus a couple of extra features they had.

I would be more than glad to be wrong on this subject and will definitely check it out.

Edit: @Razmael: Yeah. It's fairly responsive similar to elsewhere. Great additions then and I take back what I said about the lack of it. Curious as to what you didn't include from the other games, but it does provide an excellent backbone for people to fall back on.

Serrice

Oh please. A desire for conflict is most of the time, just a thin veneer for, 'hey, I want to go stroke my e-peen by going and ganking someone who likely has 0% chance of winning'. Why else would BL declare on Duiran and Eno as soon as the second-to-last war ended? Why else would they suddenly collapse and not fight as soon as Duinorian got their war going and crushed their way to victory?

You have leylining if you want to feel like you're participating and feel like you're a part of something. If you just want to fight, you can join the Sect, go Fracture, Vortex, face like-minded people who also want to fight. I fail to see how a war system, how mechanics like landmarking, how any of this would contribute at all except to be as a shiny new 'thing' that we'll all ooo and ahh at and then forget in a month or two.

But the scripting barrier to PK is probably a real thing, idk.

Trager

Serrice said:

Oh please. A desire for conflict is most of the time, just a thin veneer for, 'hey, I want to go stroke my e-peen by going and ganking someone who likely has 0% chance of winning'. Why else would BL declare on Duiran and Eno as soon as the second-to-last war ended? Why else would they suddenly collapse and not fight as soon as Duinorian got their war going and crushed their way to victory?

You have leylining if you want to feel like you're participating and feel like you're a part of something. If you just want to fight, you can join the Sect, go Fracture, Vortex, face like-minded people who also want to fight. I fail to see how a war system, how mechanics like landmarking, how any of this would contribute at all except to be as a shiny new 'thing' that we'll all ooo and ahh at and then forget in a month or two.

But the scripting barrier to PK is probably a real thing, idk.

Seir

Serrice said:

Oh please. A desire for conflict is most of the time, just a thin veneer for, 'hey, I want to go stroke my e-peen by going and ganking someone who likely has 0% chance of winning'. Why else would BL declare on Duiran and Eno as soon as the second-to-last war ended? Why else would they suddenly collapse and not fight as soon as Duinorian got their war going and crushed their way to victory?

You have leylining if you want to feel like you're participating and feel like you're a part of something. If you just want to fight, you can join the Sect, go Fracture, Vortex, face like-minded people who also want to fight. I fail to see how a war system, how mechanics like landmarking, how any of this would contribute at all except to be as a shiny new 'thing' that we'll all ooo and ahh at and then forget in a month or two.

But the scripting barrier to PK is probably a real thing, idk.

You were still fairly fresh to Aetolia when the war system ended, but Bloodloch declared war again (or was intending to before the system got disabled) because its coffers supported it and its leaders knew that in a game of attrition, it would've bankrupted both Duiran and Enorian in the long run due to the increased security/troop costs that came with an active war. ICly at the time, it's specifically why after a previous war and in a council meeting, Seir wanted Bloodloch to give Duiran gold in exchange for some territory, but this was ultimately cast aside in favor of just originally giving Loch some land and dictating peace for a decade else Enorian, Duiran, and (at the time) probably Spinesreach (since they wanted to be left alone and Loch wanted retribution against them) would've wardec'd on Loch again. Loch's coffers (at the time, don't know how it is now) dwarfed any other organization's coffers and they could afford constant war. We couldn't. Enorian could barely afford the war at the time.

I won't deny that, for some, a desire of conflict is complete ego gratification and a desire to compete. Won't lie, I have a pretty fierce desire to compete but it's because of the roleplay that came along with the war system. The impact of marching troops, capping land, etc. It felt more tangible, real, and different than most conflict systems not just in IRE, but other MMO's in general. It also allowed for the roleplay environment I outlined above. Leylines are great for a middle of the ground conflict medium, just like shardfalls provide that function in Imperian and sanctioned raids in Achaea, but when you've been to one leyline, you've kind of been to them all. Wars just felt as if they were more high-stakes because we actually had something to lose or gain and there were consequences if we did lose. My biggest gripe with the war system was that it'd be determined very early on because of who could sneak troops before the other, but the easiest way to deal with that is just give everyone a set amount of troops to start with and go from there.

And as a former Lusternian like myself, @Serrice, it's the same reason why I was such a large proponent of supermob raids (which, for those that don't know, involved raids on super important mobs that were loyal to a plane of power for a respective organization. The closest equiv. to Aetolia that I can make is that it would be like if someone raided Dendara and killed the spirits in there. Super hard to do and would require a group, but the after effect in Lusternia was that the organization that killed the supermob would temporarily convert it to their cause and have it attack the opposing org to drain them of 'power' and open up the avenue of a quest where they could also do more damage). It's largely because it had a tangible effect on the world, on organizations, and it gave some flavour to the conflict system beyond the occasional scrap for ylem.

Riluo

@Seir that sounds like a lot of fun.

Seir

Riluo said:

@Seir that sounds like a lot of fun.

They were great, but ultimately made near impossible to do because of the work that went into bringing those mobs back and the fact that the opposing org could actively prevent efforts to 'revive' said mobs. There was a lot of griefing involved because some players (admittedly myself included at the time) didn't know how to restrain themselves specifically because legitimate avenues of conflict were being made increasingly difficult to find. That's really the odd sort of balance you have to find. I preferred village revolts more simply because they brought non-combatants and combatants together. Non-combatants would influence the denizens of the village to that org's cause while the fighters would defend the influencers from the combatants on the other side. It kept both sides of the coin engaged and interested without being griefy, but still allowed organizations to grow and have a tangible impact on the world and in the growth of their organization.