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Comments
On the other hand, I may or may not qualify as sane.
Hate enchanting, though. I would quite happily use a script for that.
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
Svof
Mudlet Discord join up
And we would have banned combat automation but it's impossible to do so - there's no reliable way for us to tell whether someone is using automation in the midst of combat, so after a couple half-hearted attempts to fight it (laughable with today's systems, like inserting or removing random characters in affliction strings) we just gave up. Doesn't mean I'm a fan!
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You're ****************************** and your mama is **************************** what the ************** are you doing************, what the ******* you **************************** and you people can take your automation and **********************.
I loved censored Def Comedy Jam.
For me, fighting manually with aliases and macros was a lot more fun way back then. I used to go to a random computer lab in college during break between classes (broadband internet was so OPed, poor peasants on dialups are losers), spend a couple of minutes uploading some aliases onto a school computer and I could jump into combat right away. To manage offense, sipping health or mana, cure afflictions, navigating around an area was intense. Even when I left Achaea for almost 10 years I could still manually walk down the highway from Ashtan to Shallam (heck back in the day there wasn't even a too hasty message) when I logged back in in 2011. People had it rough back then, we had to remember things on our own like phone numbers, directions to our text cities, where to meet up with friends at the mall at 10pm for a ride home.
Best part for the commoner is artefacts provided less of an advantage back then as no one super efficient with curing/balance/equilibrium queues to begin with so being able to cut .3s off your attack speed didn't really matter.
But as Sarapis said, its not possible to ban automation in combat so its all moot these days.
I did enjoy those days, where combat wasn't quite so structured and formulaic. Not to say that folks weren't using mechanically-sound setups back then, but it was basically like playing Streetfighter or Tekken. There were some folks that really knew what they were doing, but you could have good fun and success just button-mashing in an arcade. The "anything goes" environment was fun, and anyone could get easily involved.
Sometimes I get nostalgic for those days, but at the same time, I enjoy the modern era just as well for different reasons. With systems are as they are, and mechanics getting balanced around optimal play, Achaean combat has evolved to a sort of high-speed chess, where everyone is playing optimal, and everyone knows the moves you're going to make, so fights are won and lost in minute nuance, playing one or two moves ahead of your opponent. (Like sealing/avoiding the Lucena or Philidor positions, for the chess buffs)
So I'm not so quick to lament either era, the early days were just good mindless fun, and the modern days are academically stimulating. They both have facets I enjoy and things I don't, but that's just another great example of why Achaea is more fun than other games of its kind, because it has that capacity to evolve over time.
Fighting games played by casual players (where button mashing can be enough to win) does still have an analogue in Achaea as well, in fights between novices who just barely know the basics of PvP, whether they use a curing system or not. Those sorts of fights unfortunately seem rarer these days (or maybe it's just that I'm just not in a position to notice them any more), but 3-4 years ago you could still find them somewhat regularly.
The problem is that, with fighting games, generally there are enough players that you could probably find people your skill level, if you tried.
In Achaea, the player base is much smaller, but more significantly, the flux of new players is smaller still. The number of combatants roughly as good as you may be a small number throughout the game, and they might even be in different cities, houses, or whatever else.
Therefore, it now feels like combat is this greatly technical thing, when it does still have its rough, press buttons and hope you win side to it. This is because the number of people fighting at a lower level are fairly limited, and seen as "works-in-progress" or even worse "non-combatants." This is not just in the number of players, but more severely, the willingness to compete as well.
This is no unfortunate accident of affairs, either - the vast majority of low-skilled combatants are... not actually combatants at all, but people who aren't very interested in combat to begin with, and perhaps just know a few things for roleplay reasons, or because they tried to get into it but didn't like it, or because their faction has mandatory defense and militarization laws. If they were competitively interested on a regular basis, they would eventually break into the technical scene.
The unfortunate accident of affairs (which is also no true accident, but we'll say it is) is that, as curing systems grew more advanced, killing people got a bit harder, thus requiring more upfront knowledge to even beat someone - especially affliction classes. There are still things like damaging people out that theoretically shouldn't work in a lot of cases but can in actual practice - especially against someone who doesn't know how to deal with it - but it's easy for people to dismiss these because it wouldn't work on @Jhui.
(Admittedly, Nim does this a lot herself, but that's because both her and I, for our own varying reasons, like a challenge~)
I hear occultists have been using this method to great success. Then again, they only need 1 button, so it's a bit easier.
I'm not really. I didn't say fighting games weren't technical, I said it was possible to enjoy them while not understanding any of the technicalities. A technical player who understands a fighting game's frame data and hitboxes will beat a button-masher every time, but a button-masher can still play and have fun without any of that knowledge.
By contrast, button-mashing simply isn't an option in Achaea anymore, you have to understand the mechanics and act methodically, or you're just going to flail ineffectually at their automated curing. It is a higher bar of entry, but that has also shifted the focus to a more strategic style of play. Gone are the days where I lose and say "Man, that guy is just faster/better than me" and in are the days where I can go and pinpoint the deciding moment of a defeat and say "I see what you did there, you magnificent bastard. I'll be ready for that next time."
I like both styles of play, which is why I've enjoyed Achaea throughout its existence.
Now personally, I loved old Achaea it wasn't so complex and I don't have to sit here for hours trying the figure out the best way to get around fitness so I can use damnation.
On the other hand I was killing all kinds of people with para/voyria swords and delphinium arrows.
To be fair I also only transed one skill throughout my alts which was a gift from ironbeard (for puppetry cause oblit op).
I also got addicted to knight because it was the one class I could afford to use lessons in weaponry to parry head so axk+punch+punch+ didn't instantly kill me.
But thinking back to it, I liked old Achaea because I was basically going around and bullying serpents that stole things. while not really standing a chance against wulfen/poergh (except on jester rip oblit)
I like current achaea, because instead of playing a game with broken mechanics that honestly should have been fine tuned for balance along time ago (weaponry/forging/cause counting/dragon monk/ext ext)
We have a new game that actually lowers the bar some on the coding part, especially since there are so many free scripts for mudlet that can easily get you into combat. Let alone the many people in the game who are more than happy (usually) to help you with a problem you come up with in coding. and getting the balancing bar set. I'm honestly pretty sure every class is pretty equal in terms of power with no class that really outshines the others in every aspect.
I just miss actual theft. Although im sure it was hard on newbies, it added people into the game to actually hunt down. Pickpocket I kinda feel bad about hunting them down because they didn't get enough to matter to start with
Don't let these old timers fool you, Achaea 17+ years ago, was a lot slower, had less cures/afflictions and there were 5 guilds...now there is what 20+ Houses, dragons, soon multiclass...everything has been sped up, everyone is doing multiple afflictions and it's constantly being revamped, redone or tweaked and so forth.
I mean if every time I sat down to play a game of chess the rules were somehow tweaked and manipulated it would be very frustrating. Good games shouldn't need constant attention to make them grand. It's not like we put in another suit in a deck of cards...or make rooks able to fly.
Just last week I learned I now have to apply health or sip health. Oh and let's get rid of the vitality vials all together, let's add MORE afflictions for people to worry about. None of these changes make Achaea any better, just more complex, and ruins all the previous balances.
Every time one thing is adjusted it spikes something else. Adding to a never-ending flux in play. Sometimes I cringe when I see the new announcements...What game changing tweak is it going to be installed this week.
Don't get me wrong I think many of the new changes are awesome, refining Achaea even more but...old Achaea vs. new Achaea, completely different games in terms of PvP combat.
Now with server-side curing...people don't even learn to cure, just turn it on and go. What's the point of having all these afflictions and cures if the system does it all for you. Now we care about swapping curing priories...tricking the system and if you die, it's the servers fault.
Automated Defenses is going to equal Automated Offenses.
My last and final thought is this, aliases and macros are a form of automation, they automate typing. Even IF everyone was manually doing everything anyone with a good alias/macro set up is going to stomp anyone else having to type out commands. "gg" vs. "get gold"
Okay, I say to myself. This'll be simple! Just back to my initial strategy of Instill/Leech -> Cadmus -> moon/humbug -> madness/hecate -> enlighten -> unravel.
Great! Then I discovered the pain and agony of trying to keep track of passive, hidden curing. Ugh.. throws my entire strategy through a loop. Okay! I have Readaura to deal with that!
(Mind you, I'm testing all of this without being attacked on a willing subject)
He decided to attack me while I tried to do stuff.. The only thing I have manual control of is Instill. It's affs mix with the Leech, if I remember correctly. That means, probably, about half my afflictions are copies of what the leech put there initially because the spam of being beaten to death was too great. Add on passive curing, I never even got cadmus off before I was pulped.
I'm a newbie trying to learn how to fight. After the time I spent on all of this I just tableflipped and said "**** it, I'm out!"
While I agree that Occultists really only need one button (in actuality, it's about 5 if you don't use any other skills then what I listed. Less if you are script-savvy enough to have your offense track what stages you're at) it isn't as cut and dry for newbies. Maybe I need to send myself into an epileptic fit with multi-colored messages so that I can keep track of what is being cured so I know which aff I should instill next (since instills hit 2 cure-types). Who knows. Worst case, I'll import a bloody chat logger and have it log what they eat.
Anyway, I was reading, saw a bunch of chat about combat, newbies, veterans, etc, and the comment from @Ernam hurt my soul.
In Aetolia, my offense 'is' 1 button press with a ton of scripts and triggers to keep track of it... but in Aetolia, you can see everything they cure with trans vision. You can't here
Edit: Oh, I'm not done trying to learn how to fight. It just gets frustrating because coming from Aetolia feels like I have to go backwards in time to a land where combat is actually a pain in the rear to keep track of for a not-so-script-savvy player. It actually feels more hardcore here -insert tired face-
A game that doesn't need tweaking and adjusting make it fun and fair is a nice ideal, but how often do you think someone lays out a set of rules for a new game and, after playtesting it for a while and getting feedback from a few thousand people, decides that they got it completely right and there's no room for improvement?
It's not as random as you might think, when you learn to use symptoms (room messages) and expert diagnose.
See: http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/3234/expert-diagnose-tutorial
All I am saying is, yes Chess is an age old game and if I want to make rooks fly and pawns use arrows fine...it's an in-house rule.
Changing and tweaking makes things out of balance, then you have to tweak and change things that are out of balance. It's a never ending cycle.
Here we have people automating getting gold when they walk around...should the game designers tweak and change how gold is gathered? Maybe...
(Sorry, trying my best to keep this on-topic)...
There are TONS of versions of poker, but the deck remains the same...when games went from, actually "playing" them to "paying" for them...is where we all have a problem.
tl;dr: Computer starts learning how to play new games - no programmer knowledge on how to play that game necessary. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/a-google-computer-can-teach-itself-games/