PK

Daskalos · October 2013

That being said, Enorian won the City V City FFA because of Sessi and her reflecting skills!

Minarael · October 2013

Having entry-level combat requirements in the upper end of guild advancement stuff should not require much beyond basic healing and the sort of aide you've already been providing, Sessi. Basically - understand how to survive and how to provide a supportive role in combat. Then once people get their feet wet and can -help- if they get the urge, provide the structure to support their growth in knowledge and skill.

Also - a good combatant -should- be, primarily, about knowledge and quick thinking. I find the auto-bash system style that I've seen a lot of here to be really distasteful (to me) and -boring-. A healing system's purpose -ought- to be just to get the stuff that isn't relevant to strategy out of the way. Aetolian PK has gotten less and less interesting to me the longer I've been here. :P

Missari · October 2013

coughcough-Server side curing-coughcough

Sessizlik · October 2013

I think @Minerael converted me a Little. Some combat requirements where you learn about -your- role, where -you- can fit in, might not be a bad idea. However, the combat requirements that are usually used are "Fight in X spars, win X of them, explain why you lost and why you won".

Kaeus · October 2013

Server side curing might get more people involved to some extent at lower levels, but I don't know if it will ever replace the effectiveness you can get from tweaking/coding your own curing to adjust to the changing strategies and updates to skills.

As far as curing goes, there are different ways you can handle afflictions based on the class(es) you might be fighting. The nature of combat/curing (at least in my mind) give an opportunity to strengthen your chance against an opponent by improving in both ways.

I guess the question becomes finding out what you would like server-side-curing to do for you, and what level of participation in PK you expect to do with that curing.

Minarael · October 2013

The type of adjustment you are talking about, Kaeus, is the kind of stuff that casual pk'ers just don't care enough about to bother with in the first place. We need an entry-level introduction into pk so folks -like- Sessi can jump in and play but not have to get intensely involved in coding curing orders and the like. For people who the pk bug bites hard in the bum, that will emerge as their knowledge evolves and they get frustrated at not being able to compete against certain people/classes.

Missari · October 2013

The point, it was found! I'm so happy. :>

Jensen · October 2013

My two cents on pk. Our players are not respectful enough toward each other and this in turn is hurting the new pk player base. CHARACTERS do not need to respect each other but the bickering, shouting, and swearing that isn't RP based needs to stop. I have the highest respect for 2 specific players that showed me respect when I was a lifer, Mazzion and Dourif. Mazzion has congratulated my character for bravery and honor when I dueled him 1v1 even though was a newer fighter. He didn't trash talk me because I wasn't very good, he encouraged me to fight better opponents. Dourif, despite bring undead and me a duiranite saw me die to a death tarot and went out of his way to let me know one of the tarot lines had recently changed and that I should tell my friends. We're all playing the same game and need to keep the conflict between characters and not players. For non coms who want to learn to fight, find yourself a system that's free or one you can afford. Chances are your org can give you one or point you to one. From there, play with it, die a lot, and you will learn the basics of your class. Have a combat secretary help you. If the sec cannot help a beginner get started they should not hold the position. Getting into low or mid tier combat opens up a whole area of RP that your character was denied, it is a lot of fun. Also props to the players who always will drop what they're doing to back you up. They deserve a medal. I have more to say but I'm on a phone and at my patience limit

Xenia · October 2013

Daskalos said:

That being said, Enorian won the City V City FFA because of Sessi and her reflecting skills!

I have to say, stuff like this always excites me to hear. Awesome job Sessi! The RP that getting into PK opens up is a lot of fun. The feeling of contributing and making a difference in a fight (on the the combatants terms in this case) are always seeds of motivation to that character.

PK doesn't have to mean that a person constantly goes out searching for a fight, makes combat their soul focus and interest. It can be something as simple as what Sessi did, showing up and using the skills that work with her RP and she is comfortable with, to support her city.

Daskalos · October 2013

Yea, when we were going into it she said 'what can I do to help' and I said 'just reflect me as I'll be first target'. When I was reading the log of it, on 4 different occasions I would have died had it not been for timely reflections, and even though she died out of the FFA, it came down to me\Rivas vs 2 others if I recall and we were able to win. Had I dropped earlier, it would of been 2 on 1 with Rivas as the one. She played a very vital role!

Sessizlik · October 2013

You're being too kind, @Daskalos. I just spammed reflection as often as my balance allowed and panicked the rest of the time. XD But it was fun, even for a non-com like me!

Toz · October 2013

You can definitely run combat requirements without a revolt on the lifer side of things. It just can't be, 'Fight x spars', or 'Take Ciem' - you want to find a middle ground. The fight x spars one is going to burn out anyone who doesn't pk because they'll lose constantly, or end up fighting some level 10 guy so they can claim they got their 'win'. Taking Ciem isn't really a 'combat' thing either because it's a one-time deal, you run Ciem at 5 AM EST with 3 of your friends and there's nobody around to fight back. So, I do really like lessers as a requirement - one, it shows people what they're like and teaches them some basics about a relatively new conflict system. Two, they're rewarded EVEN IF THEY LOSE. That's major, for getting people involved. It's frustrating when you need to win to advance, because you don't know how to win, or you aren't able to code well enough to win, or whatever - but by rewarding participation and ATTEMPTS, you give them a carrot, and maybe nudge them a little towards wanting to learn to pk. I used to have people fight in bloodbaths or FFAs, but a group combat event where they can go and feel helpful even doing little things is a major boon for getting people hooked, if they're going to get hooked. And if they aren't interested? You show up to a lesser, die 4-5 times, and then move on with your life. Though granted, the 'fex do try to make a point to take people who die a ton (*cough @Xenia cough*) out bashing more often, to help make up for the lost xp, so they really aren't losing anything but maybe an hour or two of time.

EDIT: I ran combat requirements in the Bahkatu, for advancement. And there wasn't even a revolt there, so.

Irruel · October 2013

@sessizlik @seir

Requiring someone to attend a lesser, is not a pvp requirement. It's an Ylem requirement, and it's not an ongoing thing, it just one lesser. Most non-peak lessers don't even see an enemy come in.

We used to RP while protecting troops, to relieve the boredom. This experience could be made interesting, and 'not-work' if the guild does it right. But if all they do is write it into their reqs as a line of text and that's all, then I agree with you - it's not a good idea.

@Missari
Back in that thread about server-side curing, didn't the attending dev say something about speeding up the tick in the mean time? Do you know if that ever happened?

Sessizlik · October 2013

I see lessers as a far better option than spars any day of the week. Especially for those who has Little to no interest in combat/pk. It gives them/us a chance to feel useful. It might take a few months to find a lesser with enemies, (doubt it, but let's say it does), but it's still gonna be a lot faster than a non-com trying to struggle through spars and then try to analyze what the pit Went wrong.

Missari · October 2013

@Irruel Nope, not that I've seen from changelogs and announces anyway.

Haven · October 2013

It'd be in the game's best interest implementing server side curing. The concern with "but I want to make tweaks" is valid and would be an invaluable option to an ever expanding complex PK environment. I'd suggest that the skillset SURVIVAL be converted and expanded to represent toggleable/tweakable configurations of the server side curing.

Granted this would be a pretty huge project but I firmly believe Aetolia would be better off with such a system in place.

Teani · October 2013

Love that this thread has spread awareness and made people make more of an effort to acknowledge those who want to be helped. And those who used harsh words earlier seem to be more quiet about their public rages now.

Love that people are discussing/sharing good tips and tricks on how to improve the situation in the game.

This, ladies and gentlemen (and all other, more scruffy people!) is an awesome community!

I swear, at some point I am going to get over my fears and actually step into the Hunting Grounds! Just, er not yet <.<

Oleis · October 2013

I am in no way knocking Imperian, but their implementation of server side curing has thrown an enormous wrench into the gears of balancing skillsets and classes globally. No matter how well-designed it is, its peak responsiveness is always going to be better than the responsiveness of a client side system. I'll be very frank and say that I'm not interested in implementing server-side curing. Many of the unique concepts that make Aetolian classes (especially future revamps) unique would wither in the face of auto curing the way many of Imperian's affliction classes have. That said, the lack of a free and reasonably-featured curing system was my biggest impediment to playing Aetolia back in the day, and it's something we hope to rectify. I'm making zero promises. Not even a shadow of a premise of a promise. But know that we're discussing the subject and our available options.

Haven · October 2013

Correct me if I'm wrong but I imagine these features wither in the face of auto-curing because they were fundamentally flawed in the first place and thus needed to be re-balanced/fixed. All the automation did was accelerate how quickly both players and administration would notice these cracks and reallocate resources to address the issues. Which, in my opinion, is a good thing because we are then able to grow/improve.

Currently, without server side curing, these cracks remain hidden until someone builds a system competent enough to recognize them and even then it won't mean it'll be addressed because that system might not be widely available enough for enough people to experience the problem in order to raise complaint that resources be reallocated to fix the issue.

As an example, let's take a look at the afflictions confusion and berserking and why they were changed. As far as I know, confusion was scaled back to be similar to its counterpart lethargy because it was proving to be too potent of an affliction used against classes that primarily used equilibrium in their current incarnation. Rather than buffing those classes to deal with the affliction and possibly unbalancing their design, the affliction was toned down to level the playing field between balance classes and equilibrium classes. They were flawed in their previous incarnation and it wasn't until curing got better on a wider scale that we were able to discern this. The importance of the wider scale of quality is that these cracks cannot be as easily dismissed as "that's just @InsertPKerHere being biased" if everyone is experiencing the same issue and able to see the flaw.

With server side curing, I would think that we would be able to filter out the cracks in the complex PK system in place at a much -faster- pace which would be a good thing. If everyone had competent curing then as players sort out effective strategies with their respective classes at a faster rate, we'd be better able to balance what should and should not happen.