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Heavy automation
Combat, and gameplay in Aetolia in general relies very heavily on automation.
As I began work on my auto target caller, automated tumble stopping and automated aegis usage after adding another area to my autobasher, it struck me that there's not much execution involved in Aetolia, specifically its PVP. There's so much tracking and so many ways to track just about everything that theoretically, there's very little reason for user input to be involved.
I think that there's not much these days that separates a skilled PVPer from someone who uses a skilled PVPers system. I'm not saying there's nothing, I'm just saying the gap is smaller than it ever has been.
I don't really want to write a wall of text about this, I just wanted to say that while I understand many people get a thrill out of the preparation/scripting part of Aetolian PVP, the reliance on heavy automation has been grating on me lately compared to how things used to be.
How about you?
As I began work on my auto target caller, automated tumble stopping and automated aegis usage after adding another area to my autobasher, it struck me that there's not much execution involved in Aetolia, specifically its PVP. There's so much tracking and so many ways to track just about everything that theoretically, there's very little reason for user input to be involved.
I think that there's not much these days that separates a skilled PVPer from someone who uses a skilled PVPers system. I'm not saying there's nothing, I'm just saying the gap is smaller than it ever has been.
I don't really want to write a wall of text about this, I just wanted to say that while I understand many people get a thrill out of the preparation/scripting part of Aetolian PVP, the reliance on heavy automation has been grating on me lately compared to how things used to be.
How about you?
6
Comments
I have tried someone else's AI system, but it felt... distant, surreal. It felt like I wasn't really playing the game as much as watching someone else play it for me, and the victory wasn't remotely as sweet. Not to mention, it feels a bit disheartening seeing previous non-combatants suddenly gain tremendously on the battlefield because they received some system or another with a kill-button, knowing it will be very hard for me to match without doing the same myself.
I do think, though, that it might be difficult to change this?
With auto-bashing, auto-PvP, auto-calling, auto-leylines, auto-questing... it often feels like I'm not playing with other people but I'm playing with their bots and hoping that they are looking back to the screen to see if their chat capture noticed my tell/say/emote to them if I attempted to interact with them while they paused between areas or otherwise.
The amount of PvP automation also has another impact: Concealing kill-paths even from those who are wanting to learn your class. Since combat is automated and those who fight use logic paths within their AI, I have found it is absolutely pulling teeth to get someone willing to walk me through a class' kill path for fear of their logic being revealed, let alone giving me a snippet of code to get me started on making something for myself. I think this is why, in large part, Sect is the same handful of people, it is extremely hard for new people who are not given an offense to break into it - those who have the offense don't really teach. I know there are exceptions (@Rhyot and @Ayuna), but the path to kill is hidden like an Illuminati secret.
Please correct me if I'm wrong in the last impression, I would love to be wrong and know people are teaching others and helping others learn to code and outlining kill methods in a way that help both the coding-inclined and not. I think more people who PvP, both groups and solo, are a better thing.
Tangent threatening to run off-topic aside, I reiterate: I often feel like I'm just playing with monitored bots instead of people.
edit: I do use an automated offense for Sect, I don't want to leave that out. As well, I HAVE macros set up that do work to unravel that I can use, but I don't at the moment because with everyone else a bot, hard to keep up trying it manually, yeh?
It also handles some defenses already too, so it would be nice if that was expanded so that players could also just defup without relying on a system.
I will agree that it can be daunting though, and honestly the only reason I'm even REMOTELY considering even MAYBE getting into PVP is because I actually know how to code now, and there is a small part of me that thinks it's weird when people who have not really put any work into their own systems (either in coding or route/meta planning) are proud of their PVP abilities.
It's frustrating, but a reality of Aetolia and I dunno what to really add on top of it other than it's always been that way and I don't see it changing.
I guess we could always ditch discernment and/or semi-randomize some cure orders.
I have a feeling more people would be unhappy with this than otherwise, though.
I think that goes back to @Teani's point in people being given systems and that. The coding-knowledge creep has gone up in terms of requirements for entry level that sometimes it is just easier to give someone something rather than take the time to teach them what is felt is needed to just START to PvP.
It'll never seem correct to me that in order to play a core facet of a game, you MUST learn how to code. In fact, learning how to code has only made it seem more weird to me hahahaha. But it's a huge draw to Aet on the other hand and I can also get how making the right system would be really satisfying.
The only thing I can think that would "mitigate" this is to have player-run orgs and stuff that work on an honor system where people fighting agree to only use aliases or something. Wouldn't be able to police it tho.
Experience Gained: 47720 (Special) [total: 2933660]
Needed for LVL: 122.00775356245
I've seen similar stuff re: Sunder/Darkside/whathaveyou. Just as often, people who want to get into PVP and are interested in starting from the ground up are more or less directed away from it because it's inconvenient.
I also miss trample/vivisect and bard class but thats another story. Also tracking monk macros on limbs based on the amount of times you hit, instead of a fancy percentage readout. In retrospect, I know if we changed this stuff it would end up a reee celerity discussion, but maybe Keroc was onto something with the changes, since I know many people like the hiding changes now....save for syssin...but maybe some syssin.
Yes, on the flip-side, it is frustrating that RNG can murder you, but it definitely adds in a bit of 'luck', which in small doses, is a GOOD thing for a game to have. While I know it is not in practice, on paper, anyone could follow the logical code of afflictions and determine a winner of a bout s'long as they knew their curing priorities. And what fun is there to be had (for most people) in basically mapping logic trees?
Even if your kill condition is to get a few class specific uncurable affs that gate your insta. Then that's pretty straightforward and easy to get around it with a few bindings, but even that's only to get your offense going. Special conditions like tumbling, reacting to target's vital levels and tracking the offense of your opponent to react to their tricks, parrying correctly etc. Things add up really fast. Idk how one can deal with those, with 'skill' alone.
To me, currently, the actual skillful thing to do is to pilot the automation correctly. Depending on the fight you're partaking in. Because an almighty, superior route against *everyone* doesn't exist.
I view automating certain aspects of the game as time savers. Almost all of the activities mentioned - questing, bashing, fishing, etc - can be gigantic time sinks if you're doing it manually, to the point that it may not even be worth it. I'll go through and do things once, completely manual the first time, so that I know how it works and what I'm doing, but after that a lot of things are just repetitive. I don't get that 'yay I'm succeeding' feeling from completing a quest for the 15th time, for instances.
As far as a barrier to entry or requiring coding knowledge, I would agree that you need to know some basics - but that's where it ends. Just like your character won't be the best combatant when you start because they're learning, so too can you learn coding as you find different situations that you need to add a new special case. There is a wealth of examples and places to pull information from, or ask questions, such as here on the forums, different public systems, at least one or two clans ingame, direct to people in game, the mudlet wiki, the LUA manual, and even stackoverflow.com since LUA is a real coding language.
Anyone who used or looked into Fallout, as an example, can see that it's not amazing code - it's just tons of 'if this, then this, else if this, then that' continually. It's almost to the point where you can read it as English, and therein lies the beauty of the marriage between understanding skills and coding knowledge; you don't need to be an expert coder to be able to rack up PvP wins as long as you can account for what you want to do in different situations.
I don't think random curing solves anything other than change for change's sake. (mostly) Deterministic curing allows for tighter kill windows and rewards knowledge of your opponent, their habits, usual strategy and their class.
Personally I lean towards everyone at least being on equal curing, firstaid does a good job of at least closing the gap from what I've seen. Heck, I had paid for Citadel/Fortress before so I could focus on coding my offense/illusion proofing stuff only before. As far as giving away offenses - I do tend to hold some of my scripts tight to my chest, more out of 'I don't really have the free-time to debug it for everyone' (<3 you Stine for Sunder support
Ultimately how the person reacts/their system reacts can be a game-changer in a fight if they're on equal footing - ala staying put in the room the entire time is not necessarily the best strategy, or knowing when to reset or change up tactics based on how ahead/behind you're getting. You could go through the roof trying to code a full AI for these things, but honestly having a few separated attack routines that focus on specifics for the situation and altering manually seems better to me. Then just having a few captures to see when someone leaves/enters so it isn't lost in spam and react accordingly.
I started getting into Paladin fighting with Asilient's help long ago with an Oninput script to just manually chain venoms in DSK(was it DSK back then? I can't even remember), with echoes to call out what was going on, etc. That worked fine back then when most people's curing was..awful (mine included) Arguably it could still work just fine, as long as you have a clear indication of what they have/don't have ala tracking - I don't see a reason why you necessarily have to have it fully automated, if only for ease. I have my Lycan stuff setup in Keypad macros for if I want to take over and just go manual, it can be a bit more exciting. Group fights though? Way too much going on, besides just spamming a macro to wail a particular thing, I think it's too much to try to do a measure of specific tracking without the computer doing the brunt of the work.
I'm also still figuring out LUA myself for Mudlet, I do javascript react and Adobe ExtendScript variant of it at that at work and it's..weird, so having other people's scripts to at least look over to disassemble and figure out how it works is the best way I've found to learn it. That and bugging the heck out of @Haven .
Tl;dr Ramble ramble - Automated is a partial necessity at this point, we should all be nicer to each other and share how combat works.
Edit: and this was before discerning and inline envenoming was a thing, even!
All coding does for you is change your focus in the game by helping eliminate tediousness so you can focus on the more important and engaging decisions. If you already know that you have to "envenom weapon with venom;envenom weapon with venom2;DSTAB HAVEN", what difference does it actually make whether you type it out manually or not? Let's take it a step further: If you already know that in order to stick asthma on your target, you need to force them to make a curing choice between a serious upset like paralysis or falling behind with a pad like clumsiness/weariness, then what difference does it make that I spam an alias or macro to chase balance or let a script fire it? The answer is that there is none.
When you eliminate all the syntaxes and you understand the strategy you need to employ, the real focus of combat becomes watching for upsets, RNGs like dodge/other people or NPCs interrupting, and making tactical decisions like: "Do I need to call in for backup? Do I need to reset the fight? Do I need to change my tactic? Do I need to flee?" versus "Amg, why did I type GITNESS instead of FITNESS! Gahh! Curse you fat fingers!"
The struggles a lot of people face isn't really automation but usually a combination of not knowing how combat comes together and or not knowing how to execute what they do know properly. The reason for that is because the game doesn't telegraph what's happening to the user well beyond the health and stat indicators on the prompt. This in turn birthed all these coding systems to help telegraph and execute the "real important info".
And while, yes, you could theoretically try to code a system so complex that you never have to look at the screen again, you're going to lose out to the innovators more often than not.
Automation may suck in a lot of regards, especially if you have some top tier fighters giving out full offenses to people on firstaid but consider the fact it could be much worse if those people weren't encouraged to participate at all. Sunder and Darkside (yes both) have decent setups for group to let people jump in and feel like they are helping. This gives them the chance to see how the code works and what it can do in groups and learn from people willing to take the time to walk them through the code to set up their own offenses.
You just need a queue system and an affliction tracker. Watch the AFF tracker display and hit your marcos while you're off balance to fire when your char regains balance.
The thing is, it still doesn't sit well for me that people might be able to use someone else's offense to close the gap without understanding the mechanics themselves. And I do think I like the idea of randomized cure orders more. I realize this means that someone can be undone by bad luck, but it also means that reacting well when a fight doesn't go the way you were expecting becomes a skill in itself. I'm not saying that doesn't happen as things are -- I don't have the experience to have a real opinion on that -- but in a game that doesn't rely on something like, say, twitch reactions or timing dodges/parries and watching for visual cues like some 3D action games, I can't help but feel that luck-based mechanics can make things less static and more exciting.
Either way, though, I appreciate your advice. I may very well try that. I've been wanting to get into Aetolia for a while.
Being able to override your systems actually pretty important. Randomized cures becomes a coding hurdle for people more than anything else. That's been proven on most IREs. Impy we don't have a cure order and don't show random cures people still have incredibly accurate aff tracking. It just gives combat a higher barrier of entry.
As far as afflictions go unless everything either runs on two cures total or we just make everything loki enabling absolute chaos someones going to figure out a way to track it with a degree of accuracy. Hell I played Midkemia from launch until shutdown and some of still figured out relatively decent aff tracking with only three aff pools existing so only three cures. We also had a diagnose that showed enemy affs on a really short bal/eq timer that pretty much killed the gap from tracking accurately anyways however. Different combat system entirely though since it wasn't a standard IRE.
The reality is that a good system will put you above those who are just using firstaid, or using a system that supports firstaid but not using any prios aside from the defaults. Good systems are those with dynamic aff prio swapping and/or different priorities for each class, but even this will not save you against good classes. Good classes are designed to eventually overwhelm you, even when you're curing optimally. The goal is to slow your opponent down enough to stall their offense while, to an extent, pushing your own. I manually adjust the routes that I'm using against an opponent based on what affs they currently have. Could I automate this? Sure, but I wouldn't trust it, as there are so many conditions to account for. Instead, I know when to swap between routes, and it works just fine for me.
Good PvPers know what other classes are capable of, they know when to run, they know when NOT to go full auto, and they know when to push. They're consistently making upgrades, reviewing logs, and trying to learn more about what other classes (including their own) are capable of. You do not need to be a good coder to get far. For example, I am not a good coder, but I know enough to work with pre-existing code and cannibalize code elsewhere and modify it towards my needs as necessary. Being a good coder just means that it's easier for you to build something from scratch that serves your specific needs and purposes, but it's not necessary.
Basically, to use an example for my point: there's a reason why someone like Fezzix is winning with Syssin while many struggle with it. It's not because of his coding ability, but because of how much he has practiced, learned, and done with the class while knowing, understanding, and making changes for his opponents as necessary.