Curing

Dunn

The point of the change is to remove reliability on client-side systems. Why would they even contemplate making it clearly worse?

Bambizlo

The reason is simple. The best solution would be to have server-side curing mimic illusion checks and be susceptible to illusions as classical client-side server systems have been but it's understandably a drain on resources that could be better used for other aspects of the game. Because of that, the simplest and most reasonable compromise would be to slow down the response time of server-side curing so that while it may be illusion-proof, it would react more slowly, thus still giving people incentive to create their own. In other words it would still have advantages for those without systems, are casual players, or experience dropouts frequently but still have flaws when it comes to more intense play where skill/coding ability/etc (and hence tend to see better usage of illusions) is concerned.

Basic idea is that the majority of class skills/artifacts is the player thinking inside the box and tend to become a simplistic rock-paper-scissors in the end and becomes fairly banal in the end. Certain other intangibles like terrain usage, illusions, and proper baiting techniques is the player thinking outside the box and tends to be a realm that offers much more free roam of creativity that systems cannot fully account for.

Jhui

they took all of this into account when they decided to change it... They are smart people.

There may have been 2-3 people that used illusions properly to gain a CRITICAL mechanical advantage in the game, which eventually would have been eliminated client side until the next illusion was thought up (fun, but dumb).  The other people were just relying on luck.

you give too much credit to illusioners and not enough credit to people like @Vadimuses that implement the proper checks and balances (1000s of lines of code I'd imagine) to account for illusions.

A fun avenue of creativity was lost (well not completely lost), but new avenues can now be available without having to balance around illusions.

Vadimuses

Epiphany said:

@Vadimuses Kudos, man. You have probably made an obscene amount of money, and you are one of the people who actually do have a valid reason to voice complaints, but you are one of the people who seem to be siding with the admistration and pointing out the good things in the system, even though it directly affects you. That's what we need more of. Then maybe changes could be made for the better, instead of perpetually addressing the same dead horse that everyone wants to kick.

I'll take this moment to clear up some misconceptions, Achaea isn't WoW. I haven't made an obscene amount of money; I would have made more money if I worked at McD's for the time I've spent on the system. I'm doing this for passion of helping other people enjoy the game - which might explain my good patience, quality and attention to detail, and so on. It'a also why I do so much pro bono work.

That should then explain why I'm supportive of this, even though the change is exactly designed to remove the services I provide. I've made my systems public because some people had them, some people didn't, and were at a big disadvantage. Levelling the playing field and making it more fair is what I'm interested in - it makes the game more enjoyable for more people.

Nothing against @Vadimuses cause SVO is awesome but I remember taking a look through all the triggers and seeing anti-illusion for specific players, like a trigger called "Sohl isn't a Shaman"

To explain this one as well - it's not a trigger against for a specific player. It's a trigger for a line someone who kept using the same line over and over in an illusion with the name in it, not even bothering to randomise it or anything. That is one issue with illusions - mediocre players copy illusions and then go about owning everyone else with them. I don't think that's okay so some pretty common stuff gets added to an obvious blacklist.

Vadimuses

Jhui said:

you give too much credit to illusioners and not enough credit to people like @Vadimuses that implement the proper checks and balances (1000s of lines of code I'd imagine) to account for illusions.

Illusions massively complicate the design of a good curing system. You really have to think well on your anti-illusion strategies or you'll do a bad job or it or make all the code impossible to work with.

Bambizlo

Jhui said:

There may have been 2-3 people that used illusions properly to gain a CRITICAL mechanical advantage in the game, which eventually would have been eliminated client side until the next illusion was thought up (fun, but dumb).  The other people were just relying on luck.

you give too much credit to illusioners and not enough credit to people like @Vadimuses that implement the proper checks and balances (1000s of lines of code I'd imagine) to account for illusions.

I do agree that only very few people at a given time properly understood and used illusions to great effect but I always considered that as a critical difference between a casual/average player in a class and an exceptional one. Basically something that was part of making a class easy to pick up but hard to truly master. Take serpent combat for instance - super easy ranged combat, relatively hard melee (not counting folks clocking sub 2.0 sec dstab speed of course), proper illusion usage could make for a fearsome force that didn't crutch on artifacts.

I also do understand and give credit to people like @Vadimuses, having spent quite a bit of time myself both on conjuring up illusions to break systems as well as thinking up/coding in checks of my own to prevent illusions from hindering systems I was working on. It's a long and often frustrating process, but often one that was quite rewarding in its own right.

There's plenty of games that offer simplified game mechanics to appeal to the masses few that allow for a range of creativity and skill to truly master a class (sans just being a cash dump).

Slowing down response time of server-side illusion-proof systems would be a reasonable compromise to allow both the above play to exist while offering a means for casual/newer/poor latency players to enter into combat earlier. It's not a perfect solution (I'll be the first to admit), but compromises unfortunately rarely are.

Kyrton

I don't quite agree with this. Defence is as much part of combat as offence and can be an interesting challenge in itself. Working on "the specifics of ones curing" is a perfectly valid and fun part of combat and not any more or less "elitist" than working on the specifics of ones offence. If combat in Achaea was balanced in a way to make automated offence a quasi-requirement, this would be just as much of an issue.

This isn't really about offence vs curing, but simply about dealing with things that are relevant to the game within the game. It's thus comparable with other such changes we've seen in the past, such as adding in-game maps and landmarks to replace the need for third party maps, adding projects/the crimes system/etc. to make stuff like yahoo groups for ministry organisation less important, increasing in-game help resources to replace the need for help from various websites, and so on.

I agree with this point, however as someone who is recently returning one of my barriers in the past was definitely a curing system.  This was in the days of guilds.. so quite awhile ago.  But it was frustrating to go to Bop and have all your cures get hit with a wall of spam at lvl 30 and not know what the f is going on and then feel like what the fuck how am I ever going to get to lvl 40 let alone get to lvl 80+ so I can be in combat? /ragequit.  

Accipiter

I have to say, I am really liking the curing. I bought SVO when I cam back, so the actual curing is immaterial, but not being half a second behind everyone else is a godsend. If Vadi doesn't do it, I will probably set up a script that puts everything at priority 25 and instead of eating the cures just changes the priorities based on what I have and let the server do the eating faster than my ping allows.

For the illusion thing, we have known since the second multi-class thread that the admins want to change serpents from being anti-client to actually good. I have been playing for a long time, back in the zMud days making triggers for curare that took half a second to process because any character could be replaced with *. 

Illusions are simply a mechanical difficulty right now. They break something OOC rather than making your character unable to cure. Serpents do need the changes coming in multiclass even more now, but until then, the majority of serpents only used stock illusions anyway, and they get to look forward to substantial class reworks in the soon (Blizzard trademark) future.

Greys

Just my take, there are a few friends I had that I can now show this game to between the lesson sale as well as now having a curing thing set up for them.  Before, there is no way I would be able to show them a game that they would either be spending hours coding or paying another player to teach them how to play the game.

Iocun

Accipiter said:

For the illusion thing, we have known since the second multi-class thread that the admins want to change serpents from being anti-client to actually good.

That's a somewhat unfair statement. Did illusions primarily affect scripts, rather than directly people? Yes. But that's simply because curing was first changed to be handled almost completely by scripts. Therefore, any class that requires curing against can be called "anti-client" if you choose to deal with it by using a client.

Several years ago, there used to be many illusions that could only possibly work against a system and not a manualler, but with anti-illusion systems becoming better and better, illusions were also forced to become more "realistic" in many ways, such as always having a proper attack line before an affliction line, not illusioning a hammer breaking your leg without sticking recklessness first to mask the lack of health change, only illusioning a cure when you know your opponent would be attempting to use that cure, not illusioning symptoms in situations where those symptoms shouldn't possibly come up, etc.

In many ways, the advancement of anti-illusion scripts actually required (successful) illusions to become so realistic that they would occasionally work on a manual curer just as much, which can be one of the most challenging and fun parts of using illusions.

Bluef

Jhui said:

they took all of this into account when they decided to change it... They are smart people.

There may have been 2-3 people that used illusions properly to gain a CRITICAL mechanical advantage in the game, which eventually would have been eliminated client side until the next illusion was thought up (fun, but dumb).  The other people were just relying on luck.

you give too much credit to illusioners and not enough credit to people like @Vadimuses that implement the proper checks and balances (1000s of lines of code I'd imagine) to account for illusions.

A fun avenue of creativity was lost (well not completely lost), but new avenues can now be available without having to balance around illusions.

He's got the magick stick. He hits the baddest chicks. But damn, had no idea it came with such omniscience about other people's pvp strategies. You sprung off in your tongue, @Jhui.

Xli

I've been using the server side curing as part of Svo today, done quite a few tests with it, pretty damned impressed. There's a few teething troubles (server and Svo both trying to cure paralysis, for example), but they're minor.

Sorry if you're affected by the illusion nerf, but... lalalalalala I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER MY CACKLING

Naah

So wait.
I can no longer illusion a mangle to get a jump start on salve balance, or create a huge string of hocus pocus illusions to be a dick?

Decan

I like how the assumption is that now that PK is more 'accessible' to the people who didnt participate before will magically want to start trying. This is an opinion, and a poorly thought out one at that. People who dont pk, choose not to because they are not interested in it, theyd rather craft or chat on their OOC clans, or play on ships, or whatever else. By dumbing down combat and the need for effort, you dilute the aspect of PK that the people who do enjoy it enjoy the most about it. It would almost be like making everyone level 100 because "bashing is not enjoyable for some people and we want everyone to be on the same playing field". It seems like the "Lets lower test standards so everyone can pass" idea american schools are suffering from is being taken to the game. And i find it completely halarious to say something like "Afflictions wont be obsolete with auto curing". Why wont they? Game mechanics are the only way to kill someone, not how good the player is defending, or the one attacking. Each class will be limited to one or two "recipies" and nothing outside of those recipies will work (AKA monk breaks, bbt, serpent has to use x combo then x combo then x combo) It polarizes combat into "do this to win" and unless you still stick on client side systems (assuming they will continue to be supported) you cant be better than the next guy Oh and illusions leaving the game... well thats just sad. Slowly but surely all the distinguishing and uniqueness of the way the game worked is being filtered out to cater to those who generally do not invest the time and effort to be better, all for the sake of what? Credit sales? Player retention? Im not sure why copying a spin off game is the best option. "You know how a copy of a copy just isnt as sharp as the original?"

Jarrod

You're quick to call out this change as being based on an 'opinion' that's wrong, when your entire post is an assumption that the top PKers (which you are definitely not one of) don't like this change.

Most of them like the change, as it's an exceptionally good one for the future of the game.

Kuy

Naah said:

So wait.
I can no longer illusion a mangle to get a jump start on salve balance, or create a huge string of hocus pocus illusions to be a dick?

Now you have to use real mangles.

Even though against most people, you don't even need that. Talk to me in game, Naah. There are things I want you to try.

Achimrst

Naah said:

So wait. I can no longer illusion a mangle to get a jump start on salve balance, or create a huge string of hocus pocus illusions to be a dick?

Makarios

Just to address a pretty common concern I've seen in this thread, you can change the priority order of the server side curing. The same thing will only work against everyone if those people leave it as the stock priority (which they would be very remiss in doing if they want to pk at a higher proficiency level than just starting out), which is identical to a client side system.

Vadimuses

There is for some reason a limit of 25 slots though, while there are more afflictions in a balance than that. One way would be to use single slots per cure balance for 1-24, and stack everything else at 25 - but it's still weird.

Decan

If server side customizations are possible as mentioned above, how are afflictions not obsolete? Does this mean we just traded Clientside customization for server side customization? How is that better except to justify a reason to remove illusioning? Seems like more of a "how can server side compete with clientside? I know! Make it immune to illusions, then people will have to use it." Type solution than one that makes the game better. New players still have to put forth similar effort in both cases to be "good" but if this change is meant to take away complexity for new players I don't see the difference. What I do see is an attempt to make a complex game less complex, but I'm iffy on how that is supposed to benefit anyone. What made Achaea better than the rest was the complexity and effort needed to learn and explore.

Jovolo

How does it make Achaea less complex?

Decan

exactly my question, i stated it is an ATTEMPT to do that, but it doesnt really. they stated in the OP that they wanted to make things easier for new players, but you cant make pk easier for new players without reducing it to the combat mechanics of a DIKU mud. so to me it looks more like a case of "they did it so we will too" for the sake of getting rid of illusions because illusions have always been the PK 'wild card" so to speak for people that had them, meaning you either used them 'right' or used them 'wrong' as was stated earlier in the thread, the numberes that use them 'right' are much lower than the ones who use them 'wrong'

Jarrod

It was stated weeks ago in another thread that illusions were being phased out of combat, and classes losing them would gain actual effective skills to make up for it.

Quit complaining that an RNG thing that you never used optimally is being replaced with skills that don't have to beat a system because they actually have effects.

Nemutaur

Vadimuses said:

There is for some reason a limit of 25 slots though, while there are more afflictions in a balance than that. One way would be to use single slots per cure balance for 1-24, and stack everything else at 25 - but it's still weird.

Yeah, but honestly stuff like loneliness, claustrophobia, agoraphobia, vertigo can be in the same slot. Then you have lovers and pacifism in the same slot and it bunches together quite nicely. I have slots 1 and 2 free for prio switching, as well as slot 9 and 12 for moving up certain afflictions if off focus balance. More than enough slots. 

Don't forget 26 though! Don't know if it got announced, but it was mentioned by @Makarios in ACC chat. That slot is now for affs that are to be ignored, basically like VIGNORE from Svo.

Decan

@Jarrod Since you cant tell what the complaint that i have is, ill spell it out for you real simple like: I like a complex game that requires people to work for their efforts, illusions did that for many people, either by finding ones that worked, or by fixing their system to prevent them from working. Obviously though, "Make game moar easier" is the preferred route these days, but Im pretty sure what ever replaces illusions will not be able to supplement for what could be done using illusions IE flay illusions, mangle illusions, other general afflictions used to throw people off herb balance. For serpents combat is reduced significantly, and if you dont think so, then you dont know serpent combat even half as well as you would claim.

Zii

Its the Best Thing Ever.

(Best Thing Ever)

Iocun

Decan said:

People who dont pk, choose not to because they are not interested in it, theyd rather craft or chat on their OOC clans, or play on ships, or whatever else.

I can't talk for anybody else, but for me, the importance of client-side systems was one of the major things that kept me away from PvP for a long time. I didn't like the idea of having to rely on another player's scripting, and I kept pushing the arduous task of making my own system away, so I was unable to really get into combat until I finally had enough time and energy to make my own. It's very likely that with in-game curing, I would have gotten into PvP much earlier.

Sure, not everyone will become a super enthusiastic combatant out of the blue now, but that's not even the goal. Not everyone is an enthusiastic hunter either, but almost everyone still hunts or has hunted occasionally, because there are almost no barriers to doing so on a casual level. Server-side curing may have relatively little effect on the amount of players who consider combat their primary interest, but it may very well have an effect on the amount of players who fight occasionally, rather than completely shying away from anything resembling combat. It's now much easier to "just give combat a quick try".

Jovolo

Decan said:

exactly my question, i stated it is an ATTEMPT to do that, but it doesnt really. they stated in the OP that they wanted to make things easier for new players, but you cant make pk easier for new players without reducing it to the combat mechanics of a DIKU mud. so to me it looks more like a case of "they did it so we will too" for the sake of getting rid of illusions because illusions have always been the PK 'wild card" so to speak for people that had them, meaning you either used them 'right' or used them 'wrong' as was stated earlier in the thread, the numberes that use them 'right' are much lower than the ones who use them 'wrong'

It wasn't meant to make combat itself simpler, it was supposed to making getting into combat easier - as in, requiring less of an investment and ooc knowledge in attaining Svo or Omnipave to be able to cure and thus fight. It accomplished that, and it's a good thing.

Cooper

Decan why are you complaining about a change that doesn't affect you and helps out new players immensely?

You don't fight, never have (at least not to a point where illusions would have mattered).

If you can't see how this is going to help retain new players and old ones too the you should just step out of the thread. This is a massively good change.

Decan

I still dont agree, and sum up the argument for it like this:

I dont like to pk bash because I have to invest time and effort into setting up a client finding places to bash so the game should do all that for me so I can play better be dragon with as little effort as possible on my side.