Streamlining Combat

by Estarra

Back to Common Grounds.

Xiel2009-10-15 05:01:00
I don't think that having forgers/cooks finding mercury more often or herbalists finding spices more often would be a problem, personally. Sugar, however, would be a pain in the rear considering sugaring even one batch of 10 fills for vitae or magicink makes me cringe a little inside.
Merik2009-10-15 05:04:47
While I can't claim that I'd care if illusions got the short end of the stick, I don't see a particular problem with messages not explicitly saying 'You've been given stupidity'.

I would say illusions are a problem for new combatants. The way illusions work, you essentially have to create an entirely separate system for people with illusions. Sure, there -are- ways to make absolutely perfect anti-illusion, but you shouldn't have to be a genius programmer to compete against a certain section of the game. To be perfectly honest, I'm much more inclined to just leave and not fight someone using illusions than I am to sit down and learn how to program well enough to create great anti-illusion just to fight the tiny portion of the game that uses them.
Charune2009-10-15 05:04:57
QUOTE (Romertien @ Oct 15 2009, 12:46 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
EDIT: @Charune: the 'standardized' lines are meant to be after, like your second example. Also, with regards to illusions, I would guess that systems would have a hunting option to cure just off of the 'standard' lines, eliminating the need for lengthy hunting triggers. The idea behind the standard lines would be that anybody could code a simple system that would be okay at curing, while prioritizing/queueing would be a premium system, thus making the system easier to enter.

I definitely understand the desire and highly agree with it. Problem is creating this without it being used for something else (in this case, very profound anti-illusion).
Gregori2009-10-15 05:05:08
QUOTE (Xiel @ Oct 14 2009, 11:01 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I don't think that having forgers/cooks finding mercury more often or herbalists finding spices more often would be a problem, personally. Sugar, however, would be a pain in the rear considering sugaring even one batch of 10 fills for vitae or magicink makes me cringe a little inside.



yeah, mercury and spices increased in chance to find are good. Sugaring is bad, cause imagine you finally get your 100 mercury. Yay! Then you run to your alchemist to get your keg filled. Yay! Then your alchemist sugars 2 or 3 batches of 10. Boo!
Estarra2009-10-15 05:05:20
QUOTE (Xiel @ Oct 14 2009, 10:01 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I don't think that having forgers/cooks finding mercury more often or herbalists finding spices more often would be a problem, personally. Sugar, however, would be a pain in the rear considering sugaring even one batch of 10 fills for vitae or magicink makes me cringe a little inside.


Well, I was just looking at mercury. Is there a spice shortage too? I haven't heard of a sugar shortage!
Gregori2009-10-15 05:08:21
QUOTE (Estarra @ Oct 14 2009, 11:05 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Well, I was just looking at mercury. Is there a spice shortage too? I haven't heard of a sugar shortage!



With the new things requiring spices, they are harder to find. For a while there spices were selling as expensive as sparkleberry cause there just wasn't very much of it. I think I harvested for 8 hours one day and I ended up with 300 spices. It takes 15 per refill of perfume, so 1500 per keg.


Edit:: You could always just go the other way and lower the amount of spices needed in things.
Aerotan2009-10-15 05:12:10
Perhaps, rather than increasing frequency of mercury firings/spice gatherings/whatever else is low they can be made to work similarly to Gemcutting, in that it's possible to get more than one per command per commodity? For instance, when firing, it might be that the coal has a chance to fire into two, three, five, or ten mercury. Likewise, if more sugar is needed, then when an amalgamation sugars, it has the potential to give 1, 2, 3, 5, or 10 sugars per "fill" it would have otherwise given. If it doesn't already work like this. And of course, tweak the numbers as needed.
Estarra2009-10-15 05:14:32
QUOTE (Aerotan @ Oct 14 2009, 10:12 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Perhaps, rather than increasing frequency of mercury firings/spice gatherings/whatever else is low they can be made to work similarly to Gemcutting, in that it's possible to get more than one per command per commodity? For instance, when firing, it might be that the coal has a chance to fire into two, three, five, or ten mercury. Likewise, if more sugar is needed, then when an amalgamation sugars, it has the potential to give 1, 2, 3, 5, or 10 sugars per "fill" it would have otherwise given. If it doesn't already work like this. And of course, tweak the numbers as needed.


Not a bad idea... chin.gif
Xiel2009-10-15 05:16:53
^what he said up there. Sugar, salt and sulfur are the things more easily found, but spices and mercury are painfully scarce due to the RNG thing.
Daganev2009-10-15 05:21:47
QUOTE (Charune @ Oct 14 2009, 10:04 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I definitely understand the desire and highly agree with it. Problem is creating this without it being used for something else (in this case, very profound anti-illusion).


So why not buff illusions with 1 free "new line" command?
Gregori2009-10-15 05:26:22
Also you might take a look at Achaea and Imperian's harvesting. It is impossible to strip harvest cause the plant gives you X amount per harvest, and every harvester can harvest any plant.

So Xiel and I both come to the same Galingale plant and I harvest it 3 times and get 15 plants and he harvests it 3 times and gets 36 plants, but the plant never actually gets stripped. You could still do the hibernation thing and what not, and you could even have it that you can only harvest 1 plant 1 time and what you get from it is what you get from it.

In Imperian (it's been a long time since I harvested there) I think you can harvest a couple times and that's it.

In Achaea the plant has stages where you harvest it and it gives you X amount and drops a stage, then harvest it and it gives you a smaller amount and drops a stage. i.e Bountiful = 5 - 6 plants, Full = 3 - 4 plants, Almost bare = 1 - 2 plants.

Hibernation and other effects could still kill plants off so you would need to be careful how much you harvested still, but it would remove the player stripping plants completely bare themselves aspect.
Xavius2009-10-15 06:26:12
QUOTE (Charune @ Oct 14 2009, 11:44 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Another idea - what if the line became an optional message when the affliction is explicit (like in these cases) and not hidden?

CODE
Person weaves a glamour of radiant prismatic colours, dazzling you with a burst of vibrant orange hues.
You are afflicted with stupidity.


I don't like this for one main reason - it would entirely screw up illusions and illusionists. Whereas normally you would have one line to illusion for the glamours case, you now have either one or two. Illusioning the line itself would become a tipoff for the anti-illusion in the system. I'd say systems would choose to lean the way of including the third line, so messages could be ignored if that line isn't seen.

The only remedy for this that I see is having an "optional illusion" line attachment..... and I don't really like that.

The latter is the only one that I think anyone is suggesting, and it could probably be swiped from existing sources in many cases, like "Hmm. Why must everything be so difficult to figure out?"

Anyways, why can't illusionists be expected to routinely create perfect illusions? Drop the \\nl power cost and increase (triple?) the per-character mana cost. People won't be making many 300 character illusions, and if they want to exploit simpler systems, they can do so at a lower mana cost.

The skill can be salvaged, and the envoys can hash out details.
Lorick2009-10-15 06:29:51
Yeah, I agree, I'd like for plants to be independant of the effects of mages and other harvesters. Actually allow newbies the chance to find the herbs they want to harvest. I'd love for people to harvest the maximum allowable herbs with a single command in a location regardless of any changes, but I'd like to see plants be independant of the actions of others. IE, a location has galingale. Bob harvests galingale and gets his amount and moves on, Jerry comes in and harvests and acquires his amount without either player impacting each other, the chances of harvesting from those herbs again, or stripping the location bare.

Also, I'm all for combining the effects of many of the skill sets. Discipline sorely needs to be combined, most likely with Combat. Magic as well, ect. Having so many abilities that are basic and repeated quite often in other games divided among so many lessons means that most newbies are almost always lacking something basic. For example, most of the newbies doing the college quests do not have the resouces to learn how to survivie on the various planes at the time of doing the quest. So many other skillsets demand their attention, including their shiny guild skills.
Shiri2009-10-15 06:36:09
A bunch of these things seem like straight up envoy-related combat fixes that have nothing to do with simplification. What went wrong? (not that swapping lash/succumb is strictly a bad thing)

Scaling mob damage is cool.
Lorick2009-10-15 06:41:20
Well, I'd like for mob damage to scale to a degree. Perhaps have it scale to base health (lets say 12 con for example) so that high con races are still a little tanky while low con races take a little less damage overall than before to health as a base. Skills could impact that per a skill, like.. Athletics can influence health to a major degree and mobs don't hit mana so it is scaled fully while say Runist using the omen to increase max health to a minor degree are not scaled.
Gregori2009-10-15 06:50:47
QUOTE (Nienla @ Oct 14 2009, 05:18 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
EDIT 2: Though if I have a Moondancer choked and they use 'Succumb', I don't understand how its going to be any different than it is now.


You could always just not choke the MD knowing they could succumb you or wait till you are sure they are messed up enough that they can't push a succumb through on you, considering the amount of hindering afflictions your fae give this is not a major issue on your part.

The situation is completely different with succumb being in MD hands. It means that SD can finally use that third skillset they are supposed to take and not just choke, scourge, fae, succumb, count to 10, toadcurse.
Unknown2009-10-15 06:56:16
QUOTE (Gregori @ Oct 15 2009, 02:50 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
You could always just not choke the MD knowing they could succumb you or wait till you are sure they are messed up enough that they can't push a succumb through on you, considering the amount of hindering afflictions your fae give this is not a major issue on your part.

The situation is completely different with succumb being in MD hands. It means that SD can finally use that third skillset they are supposed to take and not just choke, scourge, fae, succumb, count to 10, toadcurse.


Amen.
Unknown2009-10-15 07:00:03
My turn to reply:

1. Cool on all the affliction changes, except as Celina said, choke already has a cure message (You sense the choking effect of the shadow leaving you). So does bedevil (The deadly bedeviling aura surrounding you dissipates).

2. Combat friendly commands, spam filter, planar rift are neat.

3. Anything that reduces the importance and power of demesnes is fine by me, so woo reducing rooms. I think I saw some discussion about how this should work when talking about whether the effects follow the room the caster is in + adjacents. Maybe just add a command do it, Like DEMESNE FOCUS to make that room + adjacents have the effects. Like focusing vibes into the room in other IRE's.

4. I'm not really down with dissolve taking down shield too, like Lehki said, it's not a problem right now, so if it's not broke, why fix it.

5. Why not just merge killing saplings/illusory terrain into one command?

6. Lowering commodity costs for certain important things like quicksilver would be good, but I agree with the ideas where getting mercury/sugar/etc would be like gemcutting, or even just upping the chance in general.

7. Eh on armour, I'd rather not bring back old trueshield again.

8. Again, cool on lash/succumb switch, about time it happened.

9. Pretty sure all defense-stripping moves give messages, but judging by how it's phrased, I think people might want a specific 'Your levitate defense is stripped' message, I'm neutral on that. Seeing someone else's shield drop definitely doesn't happen though, but it might have to do with shroud.

10. Cool on warrior stuff, but what does bashing have to do with streamlining combat? It's not within the scope of this report, IMO, even the kind-of-unrelated-lash/succumb-thing deals with combat at least, this is just bashing. After all the improvements to help others bash better, now the problem is tanking? Maybe some people should learn to run faster. It's kind of weird to expect a priest in robes to tank as much as a warrior in like a billion layers of metal plate.

11. Nice on cure system.

12. I heavily agree with combining many of the common skills together like resilience/magic and maybe even others to make costs cheaper for everyone.

Edit: Oh yeah guessed it right and ninjaed on both defense-strip/shroud hiding losing shield, go me.
Zallafar2009-10-15 07:02:37
QUOTE (Estarra @ Oct 14 2009, 02:23 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Messages
  • There was a vague comment that we should provide a message whenever a defense is stripped. However, this should already be the case and you should bug specifics if you do not see a defense being stripped.

I made this comment, and looking back at my email I didn't communicate what I meant. What I wanted to suggest was that whenever a defense is stripped that we get a message indicating specifically which defense was stripped. Example:

Raising his hands to the sky, Raeri faces eastwards and summons a sparkling wind that wraps around you, stripping away one of your defenses.
Your thirdeye defense has been stripped.

QUOTE (Estarra @ Oct 14 2009, 02:23 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Messages
  • There was a suggestion to have a message when someone else's shield goes down. However, there should already be a message when shields go down. If not, please bug with specifics.

I bugged this as you requested. The response informed me that the message for a shield going down is omitted if the person is using the invisibility illusion or yesod. So my streamlining suggestion becomes that even when a person is invisible that we can see when their shield comes down.

By the way, I noticed that I am getting more information now when my bugs are resolved as not a bug. Thank you, it's appreciated.


Gregori2009-10-15 07:04:29
Oh, something Sojiro said there reminded me... You don't see someone's shield drop, having this show regardless of shroud may or may not be a good idea. I am neutral on it.

However the one that I think would be good, though not really a combat thing, is people leaving by cubix/prism/medallion/bubblix/orgix always show regardless of shroud. People just 'poofing' on you is annoying and without spectacles half the time you have no idea what happened, you just know they are no longer there.

Besides... I want people to see my awesome exit message when I use my orgix all the time!

Edit:: To be fair though typically you know when someone's shield has dropped regardless of shroud due to the fact they are hitting you or someone in the room next to you again, which is the reason their shield dropped. Are there skills out there that drop shield on actions you do to yourself that would need to be noticed?