Aetolia's combat/curing

Missari

Thought I'd copy this little line over to its own post to get more discussion without derailing rage.

There are two major limiters for getting into PK:

Coding your own system and Firstaid being useless beyond a bashing/entry into combat tool.

This is limiting to the PK community as a whole. I don't see why we can't have customizable, server side curing that isn't terrible. This would relieve a lot of stress for "established" PKers in upkeeping their systems as well as cutting out 90% of what PK teachers have to teach, coding for curing. If the players only had to focus on how to kill each other rather than why their system can't keep up with affs, we'll get a better quality of PK, and it'll be easier to balance classes, artifacts, stat scaling, and the combination of any of those three items combined.

Moirean Said:

It might make PK meh for a time, but that would only emphasize the weaknesses in the offensive design of our PK system. If having ideal curing makes PK fall apart, that means we are sorely lacking in creative and tactical attack mechanics.

It would, because we do, but heavily implementing better, more challenging and more fun offenses really can't happen on a large scale while systems are a big deal, since it just widens the gap between those with good code and those without.

DISCUSS! 

Daskalos

Anything to lower the threshold would make it better. I personally don't care to keep updating\working on a system anymore, but I do still enjoy PK. Unfortunately, I switched to using a public system and there are people out there who instead of working to build an offense through trial and error, just looked at the cure order and said 'I can exploit that'. Server side, customizable curing would help that, especially since 90% of my curing getting behind is due to lag. Eh, I like the idea! Also, if everyone has perfect curing, it would very much show the flaws in the offensive capabilities of some classes or lack thereof in others.

Kaeus

What do you consider perfect curing. I know Imperian has a much better firstaid like system, but from what I've seen it still has a lot of customization options. I know there are a lot of tweaks people can do outside of raw curing to alleviate certain situations and tactics that most likely are not present in any server side curing.

I guess the question is, do you wish to eliminate the need to ever program curing or just make the difference between a full system and firstaid lower?

Kikon

Being an avid user of First Aid, I wouldn't mind seeing the tick rate bumped up. Full server side curing would be great, but we need more reactionary themed skillsets first.

Daskalos

I wouldn't mind seeing health\mana\moss handled serverside, with users being able to declare priority (health\mana) and declaring a % that one takes priority over the other (so, health but if mana hits 50% mana takes priority, et cetera).

I wouldn't mind being able to 'queue' herb balance OR simply let it cure herb afflictions based on a stringlist I define. That might be harder, but herb balance\smoke balance\elixir balance queing would be huge to help with lag, theoretically. How many times do you lose an herb balance every 5th round because you're curing .10% slower? We put in offensive queues but no defensive queues. Obviously things such as class healing and such would still have to be done manually, so there would still be some give and take, but it would lower the threshold some. My biggest thing is cMUD lags me to hell and back but I absolutely do not want to spend the time learning to write in LUA. I have far, far more important things to do then spend the amount of time it took for me to figure out cMUD, and that's MY biggest holdup right now.

Vharen

A defensive queue system would go a long way in minimizing coding, and Dask's point on the speedup is definitely true. I'm not perfectly happy with the baleq queues either, which would come into play for things like successive commands on bal/eq recovery (stand/light pipes/etc).

If we have a defensive queue, then a relatively decent firstaid curing system would not put the people who use it over their own curing at a significant speed advantage. I can't really see a downside to it.

And if we had a good built-in healer, I could've jumped in and went right to my offensive coding, and I'd be able to fight by now.

Missari

Kaeus said:

What do you consider perfect curing. I know Imperian has a much better firstaid like system, but from what I've seen it still has a lot of customization options. I know there are a lot of tweaks people can do outside of raw curing to alleviate certain situations and tactics that most likely are not present in any server side curing.

I guess the question is, do you wish to eliminate the need to ever program curing or just make the difference between a full system and firstaid lower?

I think it would be awesome if coding your curing system became coding reactionary changes to your curing priorities.

Kikon said:

Being an avid user of First Aid, I wouldn't mind seeing the tick rate bumped up. Full server side curing would be great, but we need more reactionary themed skillsets first.

I disagree, I think if we had a system like this it would facilitate and easier transition into class changes that don't require as long of a transition period to see what is and is not actually broken.

Riluo

@Daskalos Regarding lag/ping. Try living in Australia with the sh\*house latency we get due to the distance from the US. I just wish there was a way to not have to jump through two-three servers in the US, before reaching Aetolia. It makes it impossible for international players to even compete on a proper level. (350+ ping) This is why I would say 90% of pkers in Australia, other countries just leave the game, as we can not keep up. However, I heard from Macavity the other day that Aetolia could switch something up that would reduce that issues considerably. But I am computer illiterate so I will just concentrate on neuroscience/psychology/making Welsh jokes, and pretending I understand.

Although I do agree that first aid could do with a bump to speed it up.

Macavity

I suggest a VPN (virtual private network) to be set up and created in order to reduce the bottleneck issue that some may have with network latency

Macian

When extremely effective curing costs less than the market price of transing a skill, it doesn't make sense not to add the system suggested in previous posts. If people don't have to spend time and money on coding or buying a system, and can instead achieve success faster through an in-game system, it seems to me that they'd be more likely to invest in credits, stay longer, and refer the game to their friends.

I'd much rather focus my time on tactics and use of skills (which I've paid for) than perfecting curing.

The intro to a game hooks people - it's the ease of entry into higher levels that keeps them involved.

What's to lose?

Kaeus

It still takes a great deal of effort to program in offensive things (aff tracking, aliases, triggers, logic, etc). There are many people who don't want to program in curing, so they buy a system. Many people don't want to program in an offense, so they buy an offense.

I would also think "perfect" curing is not currently possible with ANY system that I've seen, mine included. I constantly am updating it and adapting it to combat people's tactics and new skills that come up. For some people, figuring out how to cure effectively is just as fun as figuring out how to fight effectively.

I guess the other question this poses, what tier are you expecting to fight at using only in-game curing?

Macavity

Kaeus said:

It still takes a great deal of effort to program in offensive things (aff tracking, aliases, triggers, logic, etc). There are many people who don't want to program in curing, so they buy a system. Many people don't want to program in an offense, so they buy an offense.

I agree with this...I, personally, do not want to even deal with curing and would rather just focus on offensive builds

Daskalos

I don't think offense should be automated, but I believe the tools should be there to build a very good server-side curing. That being said, a mid-level curing system would be nice to be available. Right now, FirstAid is entrylevel. I'm looking for something that will let people group fight if they want to, and if they tinker with it enough, work their way into top tier.

Irruel

Missari said:

I think it would be awesome if coding your curing system became coding reactionary changes to your curing priorities.

Now that, is an interesting idea.

I use tripwire. I recently noticed a circumstance when a mid-priority aff really ought to temporarily be #1 in priority. So I scripted into my personal scripts, a table.remove and a table.insert to move that aff to #1 and then back again shortly after.

If we had a perfectly efficient server side curer, which we could define priorities to the affs and other things (which affs we use special cures for and under what circumstances), then curing would be latency independent.

Someone that is really good, could figure out when their priority needed to be adjusted, and make those adjustments mid-fight. This could be done with simple aliases, or bot-like automation. The coding itself would be a lot less important though. Ezalor could still exploit Dask's choice of cure priorities, and Dask could change it up by writing a simple alias to do so, if he figured out what the problem was.

Which is about how it should be, in my opinion.

Seir

After having been playing Imperian and once also having disagreed with implementing server-side curing in Aetolia, I have to reverse my stance having seen it in action in Imperian. It has done absolute wonders for the population over there. For one, having a system is no longer a huge, substantial hurdle for most individuals to overcome. It allows every single person to get involved in some shape or form with combat. The server-side curing is fast, can be customized, and strictly defensive without being too good. Yes, it is still possible to beat it and that actually establishes a baseline of whether or not a class is presently too powerful. If you're beating the auto-curing by doing one thing over and over, or not being able to progress against it at all, it actually gives the devs over there some insight as to what needs to be done for a class.

It doesn't include everything though. For example, you still need to throw a parry script together over there and it offers nothing in terms of offensive scripts. Those things, you need to make yourself. However, it will intelligently cure, utilize class skills to cure if available, use focus/tree tattoo and other related abilities. You can tell it to prioritize mana or health elixir, set at what percentage it should drink, eat the equiv. of moss, auto-raise defenses, auto-light pipes and smoke rebounding if you toggle it to, auto-apply mass salve, and more. Yeah, I think it'd be a good step in the right direction for Aetolia to have something like this. Besting it too easily will point out the glaring flaws that exist in some classes while the classes that can't progress against it at all will get well-deserved upgrades.

tl;dr: Server-side curing's pros outweigh the cons, which are virtually inconsequential to begin with because the only con is a blow to the ego of a few coders that have held a strangle hold combat wise in the game. Even so, offensive scripts are not automated so scripters still hold some advantage without it being a substantial, unfair one. Everyone can then participate in fighting, helping the game on a whole for players both old and new. Make it happen.

Irruel

How does Imperian's version handle hidden afflictions?

Seir

Ah. It doesn't. That's another thing you have to code in, but it isn't difficult.

You can send manual commands to the auto-curing. So, if there's an instance where you have a hidden aff, you can create a small function for handling unknown afflictions that will send a focus/tree command to the auto-curing queue.

Macian

From an offensive perspective, I bet a large number of more casual players would be entirely happy with a GUI where they could somehow drag-and-drop (or hunt through a dropdown list) skills into visual buttons that had the ability to take multiple skills (e.g. you add frenzy, then add your whispers). Maybe this already exists, it's been that long since I tried any of the IRE clients.

@seir back when I played Imperian, I saw the difference that Whyte's system becoming widely available made (Years ago, no idea where it fitted in later times), and I can only imagine that a server-side system one was far more impressive

Seir

Whyte's system was good but had a lot of flaws that certain classes could easily exploit, but it gave people the basis to survive which ended up still being beneficial for the game on a whole. Nothing really negative came out of it.

Moirean

Citadel's introduction (and now tripwire) as well as the free systems before them have kinda done the same here, albeit with a far more expensive introductory level. We're seeing more people engaged in combat - at the same time, we're seeing hints of which classes really are weak. I suspect that's also a contributing factor to why artifacts also feel so out of control right now. With more people doing stronger curing, damage and speed play a much larger factor in deciding victories.

Angwe

^She says like the weak classes weren't always obvious.

Moirean

Uhh, not as obvious as they are these days. You used to be able to walk around, illusion 2 resto breaks, dstab epseth and behead someone. You used to be able to kill people with random voyria jabs. The baseline for even the completely clueless fighters is a lot higher.

Irruel

I agree with Moirean.

Sometimes a class is perceived as weak because it is unpopular. A class can be unpopular for many reasons, and the skills being underpowered is only one of them.

It's hard to say any class is underpowered unless there is a variety of good pvpers all failing at it. Not just a couple either, because some people are just not good at all styles of fighting. A speed knight trying to utilise woodlore traps, as a prime example.

I'm not saying that the exodus of pvpers who dropped the class like a baked potato stuffed with shit couldn't have succeeded if they'd put in the effort learning how - why would they want to? They signed up for the fun of being a speed knight, not of being a sneaky Moirean laying ambushes and tactically using their environment.

It's hard to say for sure now that the class really is weak, when hardly anyone uses it. So when everyone can cure and there are more people fighting, then there are less classes with no one using them, which makes it more obvious when a class is failing.

Tza

I'd just like to drop in my 2 cents here:

I love working on my system (and never completing it, that is) and the fact that you are challenged to write some more interesting scripts here is what keeps me playing to begin with. But there is one thing about coding a PK system that ticks me off majorly.

For some reason it seems to be fashionable to introduce new affliction and curing mechanics whenever introducing a new class or overhauling a class' skills. I mean it probably looks really cool when that is done. At least in theory. For me however this means that I need to code an entirely NEW curing routine just to deal with one or two specific skills of ONE class. 

Shamans would be a prime example of this. Was there seriously no way to make this class competitive and interesting without giving them mechanics a la "You can't cure affliction z so long as you have affliction x and y. And even then you can only cure them if you cartwheel thrice and clap your hands four times. But only if the moon is full."... Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating a tiny bit. But the fact remains, that I'd have to code and maintain a completely separate logic to deal with their one or two skills and, in my opinion, that just plain sucks.

On the other hand, if you code something to deal with venoms then you improve your curing against a range of classes and skills. Same goes for limb breaks, parry and pre-restore. Some of those can be fine-tuned against specific classes and skills, but the basic concept of HOW to deal with those afflictions remains the same.

So my suggestion to make combat entry easier would be to cull the ways afflictions can be given and especially the ways they can be cured. Have some simple ones in there (eat <herb) and have more complex ones (move out of the room, do x, do y) but stick to those specific affliction/curing ways. Don't introduce new ones each time a class needs an overhaul. THAT is what makes coding and maintaining a system so extremely tedious - in my very personal opinion at least.

Moirean

Absolutely agree with this. It always frustrates me when class revamps involve overhauling curing and adding new afflictions. I think there are ways to add new tactical concepts without heavily augmenting existing curing (and mandating system recodes) - these sort of additions are more elegant, easier to adjust to and more forgiving to casual play.

That being said, if there was really quality baseline curing, you COULD try out more creative curing options with revamps, since everyone wouldn't be set back hours/days/longer coding to adjust for it.

Daskalos

I also don't know why we have all these duplicate afflictions... as an example:

Affliction:      Lethargy.
Diagnose:        feeling rather lethargic.
Cure message:    The lethargy evaporates, leaving you full of energy.

Description:
Increases balance recovery time by 40%.

Herb:     Ginseng.       Slice:       Ovary.
Salve:    Nothing.       Poultice:    Nothing.
Smoked:   Nothing.       Tincture:    Nothing.
Special:  Nothing.
<8090/7728h 7705/7705m 32400e 32400w <eb> <db>> <100|97|100|100|14.07%> <08:14:41:852> affliction blood_poison
Affliction:      Blood_poison.
Diagnose:        affected by a circulatory poison.
Cure message:    You are relieved to catch up with the pace of reality.

Description:
Increases balance recovery time by 50%.

Herb:     Kelp.          Slice:       Eyeball.
Salve:    Nothing.       Poultice:    Nothing.
Smoked:   Nothing.       Tincture:    Nothing.
Special:  Nothing.
<8090/7728h 7705/7705m 32400e 32400w <eb> <db>> <100|97|100|100|14.07%> <08:14:46:73> affliction confusion
Affliction:      Confusion.
Diagnose:        confused.
Cure message:    The confusion lifts from your mind and it is clear once again.

Description:
Equilibrium recovery time is doubled and you will be unable to CONCENTRATE should you be disrupted.

Herb:     Ash.           Slice:       Bladder.
Salve:    Nothing.       Poultice:    Nothing.
Smoked:   Nothing.       Tincture:    Nothing.
Special:  Nothing.
<8090/7728h 7705/7705m 32400e 32400w <eb> <db>> <100|97|100|100|14.07%> <08:14:50:803> affliction blood_curse
Affliction:      Blood_curse.
Diagnose:        affected by a circulatory curse.
Cure message:    You are able to once again control your concentration.

Description:
Increases equilibrium recovery time by 50%.

Herb:     Ash.           Slice:       Bladder.
Salve:    Nothing.       Poultice:    Nothing.
Smoked:   Nothing.       Tincture:    Nothing.
Special:  Nothing.

Affliction:      Idiocy.
Diagnose:        afflicted with the mind power of an idiot.
Cure message:    Your mind feels free of its idiocy.

Description:
Increases equilibrium recovery time by 30%. Prevents the primary healing effect of moss when consumed, instead curing the affliction.

Affliction:      Berserking.
Diagnose:        frothing at the mouth.
Cure message:    Your insane rage calms.

Description:
Will cause you to strike out at a random target in the room, causing minor harm and knocking you off balance. This action is aggressive and can cause side-effects as a result.

Herb:     Lobelia.       Slice:       Testis.
Salve:    Nothing.       Poultice:    Nothing.
Smoked:   Nothing.       Tincture:    Nothing.
Special:  Nothing.

Affliction:      Epilepsy.
Diagnose:        suffering from epilepsy.
Cure message:    Your nerves suddenly calm down.

Description:
Causes periodic epileptic fits which knock you off balance.

Herb:     Goldenseal.    Slice:       Liver.
Salve:    Nothing.       Poultice:    Nothing.
Smoked:   Nothing.       Tincture:    Nothing.

<8090/7728h 7705/7705m 32400e 32400w <eb> <db>> <100|97|100|100|14.07%> <08:16:40:405> affliction indifference
Affliction:      Indifference.
Diagnose:        indifferent.
Cure message:    Your focus returns.
Body part:       Head.

Description:
You will be unable to eat or drink any consumables. Additionally doubles the mana cost of the FOCUS ability.

Herb:     Nothing.       Slice:       Nothing.
Salve:    Epidermal.     Poultice:    Oculi.
Smoked:   Nothing.       Tincture:    Nothing.
Special:  Nothing.
<8090/7728h 7705/7705m 32400e 32400w <eb> <db>> <100|97|100|100|14.07%> <08:17:14:864> affliction impatience
Affliction:      Impatience.
Diagnose:        impatient.
Cure message:    You are patient once again.

Description:
Prevents the FOCUS ability and MEDITATION. Decreases the efficiency of the mana elixir by half.

Herb:     Goldenseal.    Slice:       Liver.
Salve:    Nothing.       Poultice:    Nothing.
Smoked:   Nothing.       Tincture:    Nothing.
Special:  Nothing.
<8090/7728h 7705/7705m 32400e 32400w <eb> <db>> <100|97|100|100|14.07%> <08:17:21:975> affliction anorexia
Affliction:      Anorexia.
Diagnose:        anorexic.
Cure message:    Food is no longer repulsive to you.
Body part:       Torso.

Description:
You will be unable to eat or drink any consumables.

Herb:     Nothing.       Slice:       Nothing.
Salve:    Epidermal.     Poultice:    Oculi.
Smoked:   Nothing.       Tincture:    Nothing.
Special:  Nothing.

I'd understand if a class only had one or the other, but when you can get both... I don't get it. Do we really need 5 different skills to slow down eq\balance? Do we need anorexia\impatience by itself AND a combo skill in indifference? There are probably more, but these are the ones that stick out to me.

 

Angwe

You forgot blurry_vision, which is a copy/paste of clumsiness cured by applying mending. Sentinels can give it with Dhuriv Blind, but it goes unused due to it being a targeted move (who doesn't static parry head when fighting Sentinels?) and stripping blindness first, despite being the fastest move in Dhuriv. I've often pondered practical applications for it, aside from possibly aiding transfix attempts in group combat.

Edit: Correction, blurry_vision is cured by epidermal (as well as tree and renew, natch).

Tza

To add on to what @Daskalos said: Can't asthma and limpveins be merged? The venoms too. Depending on whether a person is living or undead, the venom then simply causes different flavour messages. Tmi, anorexia/belanophobia (sp?) already works that way. I really don't know why asthma and limpveins are separate like that.

Valdus

I originally had a huge post here but then realized how much I was rambling, so here's the abridged version:

I'm going to throw in my two cents, just in case everyone is afraid we're not reading these comments - we definitely are, we are just swamped.

Right now we're in a bit of a crunch when it comes to active coders, meaning there is limited coding power to be spent on the projects at hand. We've got several big class updates in the pipeline as well as major events on the horizon, which are taking priority since their releases are what keeps the game moving forward. A coding project like this, that takes a basic concept (firstaid) and expands it into the realm of viable systems, is a MASSIVE undertaking, for a number of reasons. The combat balance changes this would require notwithstanding, creating a system that allows players to set their priorities and queue cures is a pretty huge project on its own. An ugprade to firstaid, short of these configurations, may be something to consider - even if for now, it's simply increasing the tick rate.

The introduction of the simple combat messages as well as the affliction database means it's easier than ever to create a system - you don't need to collect trigger lines, you don't need to worry about illusions for the most part, and information about each affliction and what it's cured by is readily at your fingertips. Perhaps a publically sourced, basic system would be a good investment? I know Xarian just released a copy of his system, so working together as a community to establish a basic system for easy access could do wonders until the administration has the time and vision to implement a server-side solution.

To comment on the overlap in affliction effects, there are a few outliers for sure, and we're always open to adjusting these to address the big offenders. But each of those afflictions has a context that at least partially explains the overlap. In this case, the blood poison/curse afflictions are vampire-specific and count as physical afflictions, which supplements their otherwise mental-affliction-heavy offense. Idiocy and plodding are lycanthrope and shaman specific and have a primary effect of stealing a moss balance, not just slowing balance and equilibrium. Berserking is primarily designed to break aura and shield, the balance loss is accessory to this. I would agree that classes should not be able to stack these afflictions, and for the most part, they can't - recent changes to the afflictions themselves might necessitate a review of what is available to each class and how it stacks, but that's an issue with oversight, not design.

We are going to try to shy away from new afflictions with our upcoming releases, but for the few that slip through the cracks, we'll be trying our hardest to make them have innovative effects on combat rather than clone the afflictions that already exist.

A final comment on class design and exposing the problems they have inherently - these are all mighty goals that we'd love to see accomplished, but our priority is to make as much content accessible to as many people as we can, and that means putting overwhelming large changes to our combat structure on the backburner.

Missari

Tza said:

To add on to what @Daskalos said: Can't asthma and limpveins be merged? The venoms too. Depending on whether a person is living or undead, the venom then simply causes different flavour messages. Tmi, anorexia/belanophobia (sp?) already works that way. I really don't know why asthma and limpveins are separate like that.

This, a million times this.

I asked for this every day for a year while I was liaison, I was scolded and ridiculed for trying to make the game bland and scoffed at for trying to destroy uniqueness. 

As for the "I like making my system" posts, nothing would stop you from coding your own system and just not using the server side stuff. If you enjoy coding and recoding your system every time there's a change, by all means have at it. This is merely a system for those of us who have gotten over it, and for the new players who probably don't have a background in programming, or those who don't have the time/have no want to learn programming to play a game and to participate in a VERY large part of this game.

Valdus said:

The introduction of the simple combat messages as well as the affliction database means it's easier than ever to create a system - you don't need to collect trigger lines, you don't need to worry about illusions for the most part, and information about each affliction and what it's cured by is readily at your fingertips. Perhaps a publically sourced, basic system would be a good investment? I know Xarian just released a copy of his system, so working together as a community to establish a basic system for easy access could do wonders until the administration has the time and vision to implement a server-side solution.

Having a commonly available system is a good start, but you still have to know how to program, either in cMUD's proprietary language, or in LUA/VB/C for MUSH, Mudlet or mudbot, and as was pointed out earlier, you have to put up with someone that understands systems looking at the code and going "I can exploit this" without a word to the community as to what the weakness is, except maybe to their friends so they can win more fights as well.

As for how much work it would be, the baseline for the whole thing is already implemented in Imperian, a little cooperation with the admin over there and some time devoted to Aetolianizing it here and there would go a long way even if it took a long time. (And a good hold-over until then would be increasing firstaid's tick so it's at least usable as an entry point without being crippling.)

Valdus

We'll look at bolstering firstaid's tick for now.

As for using Imperian's setup, I know there are a lot of nice features that would translate well, and it's something to consider once we have more coding power. There are also a lot of fundamental differences in how afflictions would need to be handled, since we have prerestoration and linear curing trees, which would mean affliction classes would need a heavy looking at.

As it stands, there's simply no chance of this happening right now.