tl;dr - Dedication, time, blah blah blah. No matter how long the journey, you only fail when you give up. The only thing that prevents you from being great at anything is yourself.

I, too, like the piano analogy, but I focus on a different part. I very much doubt that you progressed to where you are (being able to sit down and immediately play complex songs) by not working a lot at it. You probably had to devote a lot of time not only to technique, but also to each individual song. Competency, and then mastery, in any skill usually can only come through countless hours of devoted study/practice in that area. A piano teacher can help you gasp concepts and techniques in an easier fashion, but they can't play the piano for you. No matter how many times they tell you to do something or how to do something, if you don't practice doing it yourself, you're never going to successfully play the song.

Such as it is in programming, and specifically programming to engage in combat in Lusternia. Just like in piano, there are those that more naturally understand how it works. They learn concepts faster, understand how to apply the concepts, and just seem to naturally see the progression of events to the solution. But don't kid yourself into thinking that the people you are most intimidated by didn't work at all to get to the status they carry. Most of them have 5 years+ of combat experience. They've probably spent countless hours in the arena testing each of their skills, and the skills of every other guild. They've been in countless situations involving ganking, raiding, defense, wildnodes, villages, ect.

Some (But really I'm doubting that it's a majority) are professional programmers. Programming in any language is more or less the same - the concepts don't change. Whether the piano keyboard has 61, 76, or 88 keys, it doesn't change what an octave is, the musical theories of the relationships of musical notes to one another, or any of that. The problem (song/script) is the same, and the techniques and theories that go behind solving (playing) it is the same. Programming is all about breaking down the problem into small individual steps, and then figuring out the order of those and how they go together. It's like looking at each little "chunk" of a piece of music, getting that chunk down well, then moving to the next. Then putting those chunks together to make the piece complete, both you left and right hands doing what they need to do at precisely the right time in relation to one another in order for the song to work. It's no different. It doesn't come overnight, or maybe even in a year, or three. That's just life. Unless you're naturally gifted, you're not going to get to where people who are top tier are in a short amount of time when they've had 5 years of practice - and likely are gifted in that area themselves which separates them somewhat from the pack.

In short, yes, we do understand what it's like to not know what's going on. I'm not a programmer by profession, and I struggle a lot with certain concepts in programming. But I do it. It's something that I'm willing to beat my head against the wall to understand, because it moves me towards a goal. I get stuck, and if I've researched it and can't see the solution after that, I do ask. Zarquan has gotten questions from me, Nick Gammon has gotten questions from me, various people within the game I know to be competent have gotten questions from me, and I hope generally they know that when I've finally come to them they know I've already gave it a think myself.

On the flip side, in the year-ish I've been working off and on with Lua (I only used zmud before that), I've been able to answer OTHER people's questions because I've been over those hurdles. I've created little problems for myself to solve to learn something about the language. Or, and I almost think better yet, I know where to find the answers. I'll grant you that in the heat of combat, you just need to know your skills. You need to know their skills. You need to be aware of the environment around you. That's a practiced skill like playing the piano. You just have to keep pounding the keys until it's second nature. But with programming, it's different in that it's not real time. You're not "performing". You're writing the music you're going to perform. You can cross notes out, add notes, change their values, and most importantly, go back to your music theory books and relearn how things work. KNOWING where to find answers is almost more valuable than knowing them straight off. Memory fades (I can't remember 10% of how to script in zmud), but resources are always there.

The point is, no one has forgotten how hard it is to do well in combat in this game, we just realize that there's no way to do it besides just doing it over and over and over. A teacher can't play the piano for you at a recital, and in the end, even if you have a system written by someone else, it can't fight competently for you. Like anything in life, persistence rewards those loyal to it. If it doesn't keep your interest, and you're not dedicated, then you'll just never play as well as those who are at the recital. The only thing stopping anyone from being great at anything is themselves.

I certainly realize that it takes practice and dedication to master a difficult thing, and would never suggest otherwise. It is also true that complaining about how difficult something is won't lead to any improvement. My overall point was simply that I do think some experienced people have lost sight of how difficult IRE combat is (I used my own self as a parallel); if you disagree, then that is your prerogative. My opinion stems from statements I've witnessed both in-game and on this forum, namely veterans who seem to expect newcomers to instantly master the use of dozens of aliases, and additionally produce curing systems from thin air (not everyone uses MUSHClient).

One major difference between the piano analogy and MUD combat is that with combat, you must be an autodidact, without the benefit of a tutor for assistance. You can ask for help and advice, certainly, find tutorials and forum threads to read, and jump right into the fray to experiment, but by and large, this is still essentially teaching oneself. Also problematic is the fact that there a dozen programming languages, clients, and prefab systems swirling around out there, further confusing the issue for newcomers.

Not everyone learns the same way, I'm afraid. Many people simply aren't capable of the necessary autodidactism to master the principles of MUD combat on their own. Others are visual learners, and having nothing but text and strings of programming language to decipher just won't work for them regardless.

Don't get me wrong: I'm just weighing in on the little sidetrack discussion here. I personally plan to become proficient at combat without complaint, only plenty of research and effort.

I've lost count of the number of people who've said to me, "I'm sorry, but I'm an idiot when it comes to this stuff." That attitude is part of what prevents them from making any progress.

Anyone who is truly willing to spend some effort, do some research, and learn this stuff, even starting from little or no knowledge, will eventually get a handle on it. It's the ones who want everything spoon fed to them (i.e., "make me an auto-targeting system") that annoy me, but thankfully I've only encountered one or two of those.

Again, I'm in no way trying to downplay the sheer vastness that is Lusternian combat, nor the amount of time and work it takes to become a force within it. What I am saying is that you shouldn't expect to be good at it without those qualities. Lusternia does have a higher curve than lets say WoW because it isn't visual. I 100% agree. We're tactile beings, so when we're presented with a visual world and interface, we tend to pick it up much more quickly. Lusternia is not that. If a person can't pick it up right away, and they don't want to invest that much time into it, they probably shouldn't involve themselves in combat too heavily here (Or at least involve themselves and expect to perform on a high level), and enjoy other aspects of Lusternia - or move to another game that they do enjoy.

P.S. Zarquan - I'm still waiting for my auto-targeter. Please give it to me soon.

Are you referring to my previous post? I will break you.

Heh, I didn't actually even think of that. I'm fairly sure he's referring to people with have actually emailed/msg'd him and said, "Make me an auto-targeting system, please." but I could be wrong.

It was a random pick, having nothing to do with your post.

Your approach actually looks similar to mine, except I don't use regex to match each thing, just one trigger and a list of creatures of interest.

Oh yikes, I'm not great with regex so I'd prefer to break it up into individual targets... That and I don't want to accidentally target a loyal who might also be mantekarr1234 a bubbly mantekarr... But I'm sure you've already got a safeguard in place for that!

I had one, but the odds are against the mistarget, so now I don't bother. If you got yourself a pet mantekarr and it's not invincible (and you went hunting with me), whoops! I'm not targeting things by number, as that's more of a pain to do target status tracking and name highlighting, so ignoring friendly targets is more trouble than one might think.

Estwald's goat is constantly getting keeled because he takes it on Astral bashes.

I disagree. I don't think it's always the case that people who complain about the difficulty they're having want to be spoon-fed the information.

Using myself as an example again, I'm gifted when it comes to learning languages, reading, and writing. I was always at the top my English classes in high school, and other students would pay me to review their essays and term papers. However, I am terrible at self-teaching mathematics, and required a tutor even in high school just to keep my grades up. I'm adept at specific mathematics disciplines once I've been properly instructed in their use, but I cannot seem to reach that understanding without the benefit of a tutor, or at least a very good teacher.

I do agree that people can achieve almost anything they put their minds to, but if MUD combat for them is like mathematics are for me, the extremely painful journey to competence may simply not be worth it for them. I'm not implying that you should feel sorry for them and coddle them publicly, but I am saying that they're not necessarily lazy or stupid as you seem to believe.

And now I'm going to stop dragging this thread off-topic before I get zapped.

You're disagreeing and agreeing with me, actually. I'm saying I very much enjoy helping those who are willing to do at least some of the work themselves. There are others, however, that don't want to do a single thing and are looking for someone else to hand them a neatly packaged finished product that's even pre-configured to their exact specifications.

If it's a clear-cut case of laziness and lack of effort, then I absolutely agree that they don't deserve the time of day. No question about that.

*flees thread*

Hay can u makke me a auto basher plz thx

^\\"\\w+(\\d+)\\"\\s+.+$
Send(target %1)
Send(bashingAttackAlias)

Spam IH, you'll (attempt to) kill the first thing on the list and work your way down.

Well my point is that all that time that others can use for developing their programs and such, some of us don't have that luxery. I play to have fun, but if I spent all that time trying to figure out how to make triggers and code and complex things that will let me target whatever and have lightning reflexes during raids and combat, I'd never get my schoolwork done ((I'm currently in college at the moment, making sure I get top grading is such things because hey, real grades in real life are more important.)) And jobs. I didn't start this before I had the free time as a kid or something. I only joined recently. I admire the people who are able to make such programs and make reflexes and great combat. What pisses me off is when those characters consider themselves to be all powerful and crap, calling us weaklings and stuff. I suppose they are staying in character, but damn lighten up and try to consider something. Real life situations are more important. Now, I've spent too much time here, so I'm going to play to have fun. I don't want to go on an angry rant.

Yeah, simple things like that would of helped. I had to look that crap up and stuff. (Granted, when I finally learned how to ask the question correctly through google search, I got a simple little youtube film. Which helped. Wasn't sure it was called alias and such though. I had no idea for so long people could do this stuff until I entered battle for the first time.)

But it's the stuff like this that gets me.
^\\"\\w+(\\d+)\\"\\s+.+$

Seriously what is it? 0_E It's just... jibberish.

That was a joke. I really, really don't recommend you actually use that for an "autobasher". That might work in some areas, but you'd have to hit IH each time anyway, so you may as well just hit your actual attack alias/macro and just target manually. A lot of places you'll rip into something you really shouldn't be hitting, or end up just whacking away futilely at your nexus or something.

Figured it was odd. I only had to make variable = target

t* = %1

but see? I can't tell if your joking or not. I don't understand what the symbols and such. I've made tons of alias's (is there a plural word for that?) because I can't figure out how to make things get triggered off of other things. Granted, when I get killed one way I make sure to make a simple trigger copying the symptoms like "your entangled" But it only works after it displays that. I can't get it to react as soon as "Bob entangles you with giant weeds, Holy crap!" I have to enter a command and THEN get a response once I figure out I'm entangled. Treant helped alot with this however, so I can at least get in a couple hits now. Before I was manually typing out every action. I'm a fast typer, but not that fast. And half of the peoples names here are real funky, like Serendipitiy or Lyanionoa. Try typing that out manually real fast without screwing up the spelling. Hehe

The most helpful thing you can do is learn to use regular expressions. Google it, there's plenty of resources all over that will show you how it's done. That's like half of programming here. The rest can be taught easily enough if you sit down and want to learn it. I'd be more than willing to give a basic programming class in relation to MUDs if people want, over IRC or something.