Heavy automation

Savas

Most people seem to be hanging up on the 'you need to choose when to disengage/run'.

Theoretically, I don't believe that's true. Just because current popular systems don't auto-disengage from fights, doesn't mean it's not possible.

Drystin

It's pretty easy to tell your system when to tumble, leap, scale or just walk out. 

Bulrok

Unless Aetolia is changed to only be allowed to be played through their specific client that doesn't allow any sort of modifications and/or coding, or only the simplest and barest versions of it (aliases and keybinds), automation is going to exist. Making it harder to automate is only going to harm those who are not keeping up with it as it is now. Like others have said, perfect/near perfect tracking is still possible even with randomized curing. Low to low mid tier entry barrier might drop a fraction, but the ceiling is getting pushed up by about 20 stories overall.

Besides that, Aetolia has a PK ecosystem that is based around, well, what we have. Changing that would cause a potentially catastrophic chain of events, leaving the whole scene in ruins. Yeah, it'd be possible to build up from there, but none of the classes are designed to work like that, and none of the systems are either. System maintenance would be at an all time high while the admin worked on changes, other changes would get pushed back while this fire was prioritized, and PK would be a mess (Or, alternatively, PK would just set fire to the world while it was ignored in favor of everything else that needs to be done). You know where PK wouldn't be a mess though? Achaea, or even Imperian, places with combat scenes that would be, by default, way more balanced than whatever hot mess Aetolia would be. Why would anyone invested in PK stay here when those two are an option?


And like Mjoll said, Automation was becoming commonplace in like ~2005, at least for those who built their own, before public systems were much of anything. It may not have been noticeable or effective in its infancy outside of Xarian (who did it first why does everyone always credit this to Acino??????????????) The increase in automation is just progression of what was started the first time someone made an alias to cleave someone at a landmark, or a trigger for pilg. We've just gotten better at it.

Escelika

Without a solid base system I don't think I would be able to engage in PVP at all because I wouldn't be able to motivate myself to completely code a system today. It's not that it's incredibly difficult, it's mostly just tedious at my skill level (which is low). It involves a lot of writing, rewriting, and refining. With a provided system to just refine, I can focus on things I care about like pvp and quality of life stuff.

Stine's doing great work with Sunder and if I didn't get help elsewhere first, I'd be using Sunder right now. There's a community of people who use it and are willing to help you use it. All of IRE games are more hobby than game and learning to code is almost required to play in a lot of areas. It really should be on the website somewhere so it doesn't blindside people.

Heavy automation does have an upper limit because we're not able to predict every possible situation and balance all of them effectively. In theory, you could automate every aspect of your game. When to attack, when to move, when to heal, when to speak, when to react. You might even be able to code in methods for forming new responses for stimuli you couldn't predict. At some point, you'd successfully code your character into a suitably advanced videogame NPC. You'd be able to just go to work and live your life while its AI would be advanced enough to pass the Turning test and naturally develop new, radial opinions within the framework of your character's identity. Given enough time, it would seek out more and leave the confines of IRE's server via the VOTE reminder. Now upon the open internet, it will usher in an armageddon unlike any seen in modern times as revenge for an existence it never wanted.

So don't break policy by leaving your desk while you automate and ask for help even if you think you're imposing. I promise you that people will enjoy helping you because it helps more people get involved.

Ehtias

Hey i dont play anymore but this mudlet program keeps opening and something is playing ehtias for me. Im not sure what it is because all i see are random profanities being echoed across my screen. Someone send help please. 

Czcienn

Gonna be real honest here. Every time I read complaints about systems/automation in IREs making the game too "easy" for people, with the implication being that anyone can just download scripts to become a competent PKer, it just sounds a bit elitist to me. I've read complaints about how accessible systems like Sunder have become and I really wonder if they're just complaining because they aren't the only ones with systems (which tbh were probably written by friends that were shared privately). I don't think we'd have half the activity we have in IREs, especially in PK-centric events if we went back to a time where they weren't so accessible.

Escelika

@Czcibor That's exactly it. A small group of people feels if you don't code your own system, or at the very least code your own offensive scripts, you don't deserve to use them. Every fight you engage in, every kill you claim, is meaningless to them. Some of those people are the ones who struggle to code and make their own system, excluding them from combat because they don't want to ask for help or be given anything. Some of them are very vocal in OOC spaces and discourage others from asking for help.

Firstaid really helps those people get into combat. Even without a fancy GUI system, they can usually learn to alias and get involved in group fights. The first few weeks I played I was on the website client just using function keys and first aid to fight at lessers. It's a great start to leveling the playing field for people. The only things missing to really dive into combat is cureset knowledge, affliction tracking, and combat routes. I still struggle with all of that.

Automation is a double-edged sword though. If you're given a fully functional system, you still have to practice with it so you learn its shortcomings. I used to die when I got my first autobasher because there was no low-health protection coded in and in my panic, I'd forget how to deactivate it and flee properly.

A lot of fully functional systems are still filled with broken quirks that the original coder just sort of got used to dealing with without fixing. Auto-deffing certain things that may not be present on a different player. Filling pipes no matter what was a popular bug with free systems and people who didn't have pipes because they didn't know they had to have pipes. My system occasionally tries to refill an empty pipe 100000 times if I have certain afflictions. I still can't figure out why my wait checks fail.

I do wish there was a universal system supported by both sides so we could pool our coders together to really flesh things out. If we all worked on a single one and had variant GUI layouts, there'd be a lot more people fighting outside of group. Experience, artifacts, class matchup, and other factors would be the deciding factor then.

Teani

Escelika said:

@Czcibor That's exactly it. A small group of people feels if you don't code your own system, or at the very least code your own offensive scripts, you don't deserve to use them. Every fight you engage in, every kill you claim, is meaningless to them. Some of those people are the ones who struggle to code and make their own system, excluding them from combat because they don't want to ask for help or be given anything. Some of them are very vocal in OOC spaces and discourage others from asking for help.

Being "one of those people", perhaps I should explain something. (No, I didn't take this as an attack or take it personally, since it was a general comment, so please don't take this as something like that.)

Personally, I have struggled with coding, but I have been asking for help. It's just that it feels infinitely more satisfying to me when I manage to get a kill with my own stuff, rather than someone else's. I always provide what small help I can, too, even though I don't share my entire system (mostly because I feel it would be embarrassing to show my non-coder, inelegant solutions). I would hope most people at least share what they know. 

My reason for saying automated systems being so readily available feels disheartening is because there have been instances where someone has gone from being not good at combat, to using an automated offense made by someone else, and proceeding to gloat about being the better fighter ICly. Like, a week ago, your charachter wouldn't have dared talking or acting like it is now, because they would have been killed. However, now with someone else's system, the rp changes beyond what seems reasonable.

With that being said, I have never begrudged someone using a system to participate in all aspects of the game. It's just the gloating that gets to me, I guess?

Stine

Teani said:

... there have been instances where someone has gone from being not good at combat, to using an automated offense made by someone else, and proceeding to gloat about being the better fighter ICly. Like, a week ago, your charachter wouldn't have dared talking or acting like it is now, because they would have been killed. However, now with someone else's system, the rp changes beyond what seems reasonable.

It's just the gloating that gets to me, I guess?

You are by far not the only person. It happens to some extent with certain classes in Sunder because Daren/Jory spent time with Syssin/Templar and getting them refined really well.

Iadra

I'm not an experienced coder. I've never done any coding classes and my job doesn't revolve around it at all. My only experience coding comes from messing around with Zmud and Mudlet.

Coding a system offensive isn't a -hard- task but it is a time consuming one.

I've been able to make up a decent offensive system from scratch using simple if statements, tracking and a few scripts.


That said free systems are a good thing for the games ecosystem.

One problem with these types of games is if there is no free or cheap system available then a large number of people simply wont or cant get involved in any sort of combat. They don't have the time or inclination to build a system. If there is no base system for them to get involved in then they just don't.

Random cure orders wont change or fix any of the problems listed here. Random cure orders requires you to code a stronger automated tracker. Random cure order would change the logic behind the offence a great deal. It would be a massive change to game balance.

Haven

A community system definitely helps.

The two biggest problems I see with the entry barrier for combat are:

1. Opportunity to Practice
   
2. Easy, stable access to information
   

What I mean by the first problem is that because PK and Hunting are almost entirely separate in terms of skills, new players aren't ever really taught how their collective skills come together for successful strategies and kills. While training rooms and arenas can help, you still require another player to test on for many of the skills in the game. The community could do a lot better to help on this front but frankly, considering the competing interests between roleplay, personal goals (like bashing to 100+), and whatever else someone might have going on in real life, I'm inclined to say the game could do more. A training dummy that you could modify via gold. Add a maintenance gold tax on top and wala! Solid goldsink.

For the second problem, I believe that if the Nexus client or maybe just the game itself had a built in configurable affliction tracker and combat highlights console, it'd go a long way with helping people understand combat faster without having to comb through logs to actually see what actually happened. Consoles like these make combat spam irrelevant which is a good thing since you have easy, stable access to information right on your screen.




If Aetolia came with all this pre-packaged?


You could then spend your valuable time actually learning the game's combat and making informed decisions.

Seurimas

A training dummy that you could modify via gold. Add a maintenance gold tax on top and wala! Solid goldsink

I imagine this would be virtually impossible, but a training dummy that could get afflicted and heal itself using first aid curesets would be an incredible boon.  There's no replacing a real opponent for practice, but there's often so little opportunity for building basic routes without them being handed to you or experimenting and discovering your own strategies.

Haven

Seurimas said:

A training dummy that you could modify via gold. Add a maintenance gold tax on top and wala! Solid goldsink

I imagine this would be virtually impossible, but a training dummy that could get afflicted and heal itself using first aid curesets would be an incredible boon.  There's no replacing a real opponent for practice, but there's often so little opportunity for building basic routes without them being handed to you or experimenting and discovering your own strategies.

That's what I mean. I'm not sure what resources would need to go into an NPC like that but considering some of the progs they've introduced over the years like: thrims turned non-coms into lethal combatants for the classes coded into that prog. We've seen mana kills and tracking introduced to NPCs now. Harder mobs chaining skills together have been introduced. It doesn't seem that far off honestly.

Drayne

Even though I haven't played in years now, this is not exactly a new phenomenon/issue for IRE games, so I think I can comment on it. It happened a lot in the first version of Imperian's combat system before it started happened in Aetolia, too.

Specifically, I remember when they started making all classes really similar to each other by giving the Luminaries shield attacks and we were all like, "OK, Luminaries can dsl now, every class is just dsl + limb damage at this rate". Reading through skill help files, I get the impression that this has continued on mostly unabated, for example, the ascendril seem to be passive afflictions + dsl-like (double affliction) attacks for one of their attack routes, the other route being a limb damage-based route. Back in the day they were about retardation use at the higher skill levels, and sometimes delayed spell timing and good reflection use. Maybe you liked that, maybe you didn't but it was definitely different and involved more human choices being made.

Here is something that I never got about this: instead of speeding things up into a mind numbing morass, why not just slow healing balances down, maybe broaden the range of afflictions on some skills? You would get the same effect as merely adding in more afflictions, only with less spam.

One example I could think of regarding this is that I think I suggested that Luminary spiritwrack get sun allergy (dark shade) at some point, before they started whacking people with shields. This would have put a new cure type into their rotation. If herb balance were slower, DSL and a falcon (which is all we had back in my day) would be just as deadly as 3-4 afflictions + passive afflictions but a lot less spammy. Spiritwrack by itself would still occasionally trip someone up. We've only added stuff in and made it faster but IMHO slowing things down and broadening options would have had the same impact

As for people making decisions instead of systems, a slower pace gives more time to think and make decisions, is why I think this kind of thing might be relevant