Was supposed to be a poll .... I fail

Deja Vu

I guess I can get around to getting at without doing a Poll. This is for those of you that have played achaea for more than 6 months or even a year. Has the State of Achaean combat improved or worsened over the years? And do you think the classes are more balanced now or were they more balanced in times gone past?

I started playing five years ago and Achaean combat is very different now, then it was back then.

I was 17 back then and pretty immature. I griefed some people and as a result I was killed from lvl 86 down to lvl 70. Nowadays that doesnt happen anymore and I think that is mostly because Matsuhama left. He used to control the combatants. Made them duel at not and gave favours to people who showed honour. Because of that, there was this entire atmosphere of respect.

Much, much more balanced than it was in the past. We are very close now to reaching a happy medium of acceptable balance between the classes. Exceptions?

1. Rajamala Apostates
2. Bard defense
3. Vodun Summon

Bleak is right, it was a lot different. It has changed tremendously. There are still balance issues though, like a Monk's Kai gain and his usage of banish x 20 and banish while on the ground and that kind of stuff... Though supposedly this game is close to balance, I don't think it ever will be...

Also, in regards to the state of combat it has worsened. No one really wants to fight anymore though except for a handful of people. Oh well.

Balance has gotten better, combat has gotten worse.

There exist now too many escape skills, passive healing, etc... it doesn't take what it used to to be a "decent" combatant and there's an ACC-imposed and enforced glass ceiling on ingenuity that results in way too many things being dumbed down to an unrecognizable level.

Combat sucks now. Theres very few people to fight, unless you're a good fighter yourself.

Shallam has no fighters, Eleusis has Rangor and Cooper, Cyrene doesnt even really exist, its just a figment of our imaginations, and Hashan has maybe 1 or 2 people. All the fighters are in Ashtan and Mhaldor.

Forgot.. Shallam has Ovid

Eleusis has Rangor, Arkantos, Me, Spire, Entaro, Dakeyras. Wait do the unartied one's not count?

lolwut.
How does Hashan have one or two people, but Cyrene doesn't exist?
Because Tynil, Goryllin, and Laorir don't count at all...

Combat really isn't what it used to be. It's incredibly dumbed down at this point. Between mass-distributed systems improving greatly, and constant unnecessary nerfs from the administration/acc, combat is vastly inferior to what it was when I started.

Hip hip, hurray.

Spot on.

It strikes me now that combat almost more resembles present day bashing than it does old school combat.

I'm also noticing a lack of creativity in fighting now as well. Now it's just whore lame skill number 1 until you get person ready for lol instakill

What really blows, is that some classes insta kills don't kill. Take dsb for example. Do you know how rare it is I kill someone with it. I've killed more people with headstomp lately than I have dsb. that's kinda sad eh

Then it's not an instakill, just a strong attack.

The nerfs are coming from people who don't even play anymore, or that shouldn't even be in there.

forgot about a few...

but also, I'd like to count out all the artied fighters because they have a pretty significant edge in some cases (Rangors 11,00,000,000000 damage thurisaz) but most good fighters are artied to the teeth ( I know all i mentioned was the artied fighters, because the are the most prominent fighters in achaea)

I guess what I'm saying is there are no fighters in my range. not quite terrible, but far from good. I consider myself a decent fighter but i know i cant stand up to guys like Rangor, Cooper, Ovid ( with his +20 mace of smiting), Nulaye, Tali, etc.

I kind of blame the administration. it got way too easy there for a while to get issued every time you attacked anyone. Achaea was built as a PK mud, and when business got good enough PK tightened up and now, you can find cause easy enough when people are willing to interact but it seems like most people want to avoid interaction, and thus avoid conflict. For most people theres no motivation to learn to fight.

Go to NoT and theres always noobs who want to fight, and constantly get their asses handed to them, theres never any RP behind it.

I guess i want my cake and to eat it too.

I want to play a role playing game with conflict and fighting. Its really annoying when someone just sends me a tell saying "Duel?" when i have no idea who they are. I want a legitimate role played reason to fight, but if you have a genuine reason and jump me I wont issue. but i dont want to be bothered by the "upper tier" fighters unless i do something that really warrants the attention because as much as i like combat, I want a fight where i'll at least have a chance at winning.

The excuse "I dont have a system" is a pretty crappy excuse. Unless you're just coming back from inactivity or a new player theres no excuse to not have a curing system.

Hath's system: 100 cr.
Vadi:60 cr.
Acropolis: free
ACP: free. its crap but it can be worked with.

Vadi you can use with pretty much any client, and can use it with linux and mac. most of the time its reliable, but not without its flaws, you dont have to have Zmud for it, and its only 60 credits. thats like $30 or something, and I figure if damn near everyone these days has selfishness, you can also afford to buy vadi at some point.

I used acropolis for the last 2 years or so, it needs to be updated but theres enough people who can help you that to make it useable.

I hear haths system is good, but 100 cr. is a bit steep for a system that'll only work with Zmud

anyways. I've bounced around enough for now but i think i've made my points

Srsly?
You have no idea what it was like a couple of years ago then
100cr for a good system is a great deal back then.

Hell, lots of people charged 300-500 without a problem.

Remember tranqs 2000cr one?

They all worked on just a single client. I believe Vadis system is the only multi client system out there.

The saddest thing about this statement is that it is 100% true.

yes, I remember the expensive systems, and I never bought one. I had one i built that worked fairly well at the time. most people who did buy them still sucked because they had no idea how to use them.

with all the free ones out there, 100 cr. is too much. every house i've been in has an OOC clan for combat, etc. you can get acropolis and ask for help. or if you use a different client theres lots of help available for mush, or just buy Vadi. Sorry Hathrael.

With all the free ones?
You mean Acropolis and ACP?

You realise those free ones have been around a while, especially ACP which back in the day was great right?
Saying 100cr is too much because there are free ones available is a little off.

I, for one, am very interested in a copy of the system.
I've had a fair amount of systems over the time, not always buying another one because it's better but to find the pros and cons. Hopefully your system will be as good as Vadis but customizable too.

I'm happy to pay 40cr for a changeable Vadi system. Especially since the system can be used to every charactor I own, rather than it being locked down to single class/charactor.

Did you just call Laorir a fighter?

You're just jealous you weren't mentioned.

Also, a 100 credits isn't very expensive for a system you can use on all your classes as well as modify it to your liking. Especially compared to other systems, even Vadimuses'.

Yup.
A fighter is someone who gets in fights, I would classify him as such.

It would be nice if the more active fighters suggested stuff, even in the Dais. The ACC can still read them and suggest them to the administration, and I would be more than happy to. I used to yell nerf all the time, i admit it, but I used to use a crappy manual system and didn't really know what was going on beyond my AM I PARALYSED? Y/N MAUL MAUL MAUL.

After practicing with people like Rangor and Kandor and Spire and Santar, even if you die a lot you start to pick things up, learn what they hate, what they like, when to run, when to fight etcetera. I'd love to see combat being broadened in a sense.

The worst part about combat right now is that no-one has to think about defending themselves, because they have a system that does it for them. I'd like to see more dynamics in combat and forces people to use their brains.

I would love to see Matsuhama back in there and 100% involved and active. That would be awesome.

The ACC isn't really important. I hate people who talk about the ACC like they are jerks/nobodies/gods/higher/lower beings who know nothing/everything. Just because you aren't in the ACC or don't like the ACC doesn't mean you can't suggest stuff. And it is true that the ACC is made up of players who don't play/don't give much of a damn anymore. There are a few active fighters amongst them and some of them could put some effort in too, even a tiny bit (you know who you are).

But yeah it would be absolutely fantastic if more active combatants posted more serious threads asking for changes/abilities/balances. That would be great. Even if the ideas turn out to be stupid, or get laughed at, at least it's out there, and at least you will know what the majority really think once it's out. You never know if you can be the next bright spark that changes the face of achaean combat forever and hopefully for the better.

Personally I think combat has gone to all sorts of hell. Back when i was getting decent you only needed to be trans a coupl eof skills and artiewhores were all but unheard of (Osek and Szanthax were the only consistent artied up fighters back then in the arena). Nowadays everyone has a system, everyone has arties, everyone has every skill and it's mother, and it's just getting bland. I feel like i'm fighting the same fight 400 times until the next mass distributed system update, or the next big nerf/upgrade.

Hopefully there will be changes for the better sooner rather than later. Would be nice to see some ideas floating around hopefully after this.

The problem is the majority often doesn't know what they are talking about.

The majority is also who the administration listens to when decision time comes.

This is what ACC is supposed to address, however, ACC has simply become a microcosm of Achaea proper... the majority there still does not know what it is talking about but they are still listened to regardless of how poorly their previous suggestions have panned out. See: Sylvans, Druids, Sentinels.

See also: How we got into this mess.

The majority of people are dumb as hell. Just ask any of the classleads when anything for their class is slightly nerfed. I got like 500 messages after I got TRB deleted about how that ruined monks and they sucked now and TRB was entirely necessary for their survival in a fight and blah blah blah.

People suck.

Well the big problem here is, it is the peoples game.

I think what we need is to give arms to the workers, go on strike, overthrow the government and install a new government. A government that will listen to the people, who will give everyone equal rights, and equal worth. Peace, Land and Bread.

I remember when we were taught never to use trb against other monks because you could literally sit there with trb and pnb up and bbt them to death without throwing a combo.

In other words, you want Anarchaea with free credits. Real Utopia.

lol. those were the days...

I'm not 100% sure, but i think when I started playing in 2001 Cooper was one of the top fighters and that was with only trans weaponry and RSL. I'm sure Cooper will confirm or deny if thats true but i thought he told me that once...

A system and trans skills are mandatory now. Its always been that way to a certain degree. if you were a knight, you HAD to be able to hit your target, so trans weaponry was a must (before Chivalry was changed to increase accuracy). same goes for anyone else. your main offensive skill to truly be useful had to be trans.

My system back then was an alias to envenom which would coat my swords with whatever i wanted to use.. 10 layers of venoms, as long as I could hit every single time and my opponent couldnt cure I could venomlock someone in 4 dsl's and that actually worked on some people. most curing was manual with a few triggers but I cant think of too many people who had really solid healing other than manual, with a few exceptions. A lot was manual, but at the time most people (at least all this is how i remember it) never really understood game mechanics and combat was manageable with manual curing. Now, if you try to manualy cure, chances are you'll get raped because as time has passed we've figured out the game.

I'm extremely heavily reliant on an automated system because even when i have to manually enter a cure or whatever I have minor dyslexia and I'll enter the wrong commands. ebe (for eating bellwort) might come out as eab, eeb, bee, whatever. if i had to rely on manual curing i'd lose every fight every time. also, since attacks are done now with a simple macro (or alias) theres a lot going on in the press of a key. try fighting a raja apostate, or even a good knight manually. you'll die pretty quick.

the need for systems and skills aside I still say the biggest problem with achaean combat is if you dont like it, and dont want to be in combat (and there are more noncoms than combatants) and you find yourself caught in combat theres the issue button and now PK rules are enforced too much. If you are a good customer for IRE, you can avoid permanent punishments as long as you dont multiplay or anything like that, and keep your actions at least somewhat reasonable. I think the admins are more likely to shrub Johnny neverboughtcredits before they'll shrub Ovid because Ovid is probably a few thousand bucks into the game. but even that has limits we've seen.

lets see what happens when Mhaldor declares full on war with Cyrene, and starts killing everyone with a ranking from cyrene. and have the admins allow it as long as Cyrene doesnt surrender to Mhaldor under Mhaldors terms. Heres how that little scenario would play out. Cyrene would piss and moan about Mhaldor beating them down. they would petition the games administration to make Mhaldor back off. Goryllin would die a LOT and i think he'd take it on the chin. The forums would light up and we'd have wahmbulance pics on every page. eventually rather than fighting back as a city defending itself the admins would get tired of Cyrenes whining, and tell Mhaldor to back off. Cyrene would clearly lose the war without having to surrender, or they'd win when mhaldor drowns in the river of tears, and any chance of IC reloution would go completely out the window. What could have been a decent war will be a complete cluster- because rather than actually standing up for anything as individuals or as a collective group, everyone will run from it.

I know i crap on Cyrene a lot, but thats because i have never seen Cyrene do anything physical. to be honest, I'd love to be proven wrong. I've always wanted to try playing a character from Cyrene, but Cyrene doesnt actually do anything. this same scenario could be Hashan/Shallam, whatever. the point is all your going to get is a lot of crying and nothing of anything else

You're wanting a city founded on neutrality and freedom from war to do something...
at you, good sir. at you.

Yes, Cyrene has a purpose.

It's where the people who aren't willing to get into conflicts can go. This is necessary to the game. Otherwise they'll end up in cities where there's supposed to be conflict, and goodness knows we don't want that.

...Oh, wait...

It's getting better. Classes are becoming more unique, min-maxing is producing less advantages, and I expect Achaea to continue this trend.

Hell, when I made Trevize, Raja were -the- race to be for almost every class.

If you dont stand for something, you'll die for nothing (no idea who said that but its a good quote)
Freedom is not free

Cyrene and Ashtan are very similar. both cities are founded on the idea of freedom, and Ashtan has changed quite a bit.. you see a lot more respect among citizens now than you used to. big difference. mess with Ashtan and you'll get a boot in the ass. Mess with Cyrene and you get Goryllin on you. no offence to Goryllin but he's pretty much the only person from Cyrene who actually does anything about it.

If Mhaldor attacks Cyrene, solution is simple and proven: run to the hills.

But yes, Trici is right, Achaean conflict is limited and too old by now. I think combat has to be far less predictable.

We do stand for something: we serve as a safe haven and refuge for those who do not want to fight... It just sounds like you do not like this niche. We have people who are fine with fighting so the rest of the city does not have to - so we have people who "stand" for allowing everyone else to live peacefully.

lolno. I'll address this in a second.

You need to do more reading. Cyrene was founded on freedom FROM violence. Not freedom. We have many laws on how you can act, what you can do, and we have one fairly restricting (yet inadequate) tenet that governs our actions - respect, the ideal the city was founded on. We are not "free."

Yeah - Terra, Poergh, even Katalyst and Amunet (lately) have been more active on the combat front. This would be a good way to back up your argument, if the rest of it wasn't so flawed.

You're being fairly ignorant. When we have RP reason (I.e. you can't just say, "RAWR, I AM EVIL, I WILL FIGHT YOU!" to provoke us), nearly all of the Wardens, Lisbethae, Demandred, Trici, and many others who don't do it with as much regularity (but have fought in the past) have all been involved in a large-scale conflict.


Look - it just looks like you really do not know what you are talking about. If you want to use Cyrene as an example for people who would be targetted by Mhaldor, that is perfectly acceptable; however, if you want to try to make any other claim, do a little more research first.

[Edit]: Done with my explanation derail, continue on bashing the state of combat in today's era.

Machine Head.

Deathsight is pretty tame these days, that's for sure. There will always be those whose RP is entirely combat and it's a shame that it doesn't accomplish much. The only conflict options are basically for one group to force another group into combat. It lasts a couple weeks (or god forbid, months on end. See: Shala Khulia) and then it goes back to what it was. At best, the defenders improve their group work. At worse, a loyal denizen is permanently destroyed and a lot of players go dormant.

It remains an issue that there are those who want to fight (small population) and those who don't want to (large population.) The game dynamics tend to favor the aggressors, but then punishes those who are bold enough to initiate interesting conflict through means other than "rawr, me smash" tactics.

The RP has narrowed down each person's options so much that they can barely breathe without something coming into conflict. Attack a city, but people from X Order can't defend because their god has said clearly he/she doesn't want to become involved in what could quickly escalate into a shrine war. Join X organization, you can't uphold your RP'd beliefs for an Order, a clan, a race, what-have-you. No one will back down from their carefully-crafted exclusions, keeping alliances from forming during times of what could become meaningful conflict. See: Oakstone and the Church during the Babel debacle.

There's also the assumption that *everyone* is going to be interested in fighting. More people are able to do so, but only because of the things that are believed to be destroying it: simpler combat, easier skills, and easy-to-access defense systems.

I've done some fighting and while I enjoyed much of it, there were just a lot of times when logging in was no longer fun:
*log in*
*party invite to defense group*
*die from area attack before deffing up*
Do I log out? Or do I suck it up and fight so that the other people in my org/house/city/order/whatever see me RP'ing me holding up my character's sworn oaths?

I think a lot of the time the aggressors see the nonfighters as lacking RP, while the nonfighters see the aggressors as forcing their own RP onto them.

Attempts to spice up combat were quickly outlawed by orgs/Orders/cities/houses. I have to say, though, that the best thrill I've had in combat was when that ever-so-controversial combat clan was up and running. It was challenging, educational and just plain fun.

Cyrene's best fighter is Tynil. Laorir can throw dragon around and he actually fights/leads of his own volition. Goryllin... :\ Trici, I haven't seen you fight recently, but I know you've made good on the nifty new things Sylvan can do.

Everything surrounding TRB was full of lol.

And I'm hardly saying that we are the standard when it comes to combat in Achaea, either. Everyone knows I am just Cyrene's stalward forums-defender.

I used to be. It's a tough job.

Obviously.
We either go dormant (Metzger, Gnaash, etc.) or we want to end the world, and bring oblivion (you).
Luckily, I have my own little rebellion going on to let out the steam.

Nobody gives a -

Silas lives on inside you? I hope not literally. (It's literally, isn't it?)

I used to manual cure... back when I was in the runewardens guild. I was doing really well, then I tri transed and thought I was doing real well. Then I met Swishowski. 20 years old and wiped the floor with me. He was a magi. As the years went on, I met more and more people just being known for having HUGE amounts of credits. I bought a -load myself, but never could really do anything with them because well, I've never taken the time to teach myself scripting enough to make my perfect system.

Skill doesn't always < credits.

My two cents, I've taken too long to read this topic so I don't remember anything I was going to say.

I'd say that in terms of mechanics, combat is very well balanced currently, considering how many factors have to be considered.

If there is a problem with game mechanics, I'd say it's that defensive power is still too great. There are many people who are almost in no danger of dying in many one on one matchups simply because they're armed with their dragonarmour, SoA, sip rings, and such. There should be more danger of death for everyone one on one.

Putting that aside, I think there are two major problems with combat, and they aren't mechanics-based. The first is that there's not much to fight for, so it's hard if you get into a fight to really get into it. Raids and shrines are really contrived and repetitive forms of conflict. I think this could be addressed by the admin, who are by far the best positioned to create conflict in game, instigating larger scale conflicts (that don't feel like one-shot episodes of Cheers, and instead like part of a bigger story).

The second is that people really like to play it safe. Speaking for myself, I've observed that as time has passed, I've increasingly shied away from getting in fights where the odds are against me. I'm not entirely sure why this is - I don't care about experience, for example. Everyone nowadays seems to need to know that their safety net is big enough - they need astral, pierce, wings, whatever. I must admit that in the rare event that I'm anticipating a fight I find myself always ensuring that I have a pilg to back me up (even though I always forget to use it). It's pandemic.

To be honest, no good fighter of any class is in any real danger of dying in a 1v1 fight.